For well over a century, the Government of Canada, working with churches, ran residential schools that First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were sent to, often far from home. More than 150,000 children attended. The schools were designed to separate children from their families, languages and cultures, and the last federally run school closed in 1996. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard from thousands of Survivors and in 2015 released 94 Calls to Action. Literature about the schools comes from Survivors themselves, from their children and grandchildren, and from writers who explore this history through fiction. Reading it well means understanding the history, paying close attention to craft, and noticing not only what was taken but what people kept, protected and rebuilt.
Reading for survival, not only suffering
Anishinaabe writer and scholar Gerald Vizenor uses the word survivance, combining survival and resistance, to describe an active presence that refuses to be reduced to victimhood. You do not need to adopt the term to use the idea. When you read a text about residential schools, look for what sustained people: a word of a language kept in secret, a sibling, humour, sport, art, memories of land and family, and the work of healing later in life. This does not soften or erase the harm. It honours the fact that the writers and characters are whole people, and it matches what many of these texts actually spend their pages on.
- Treats characters only as victims of what was done to them
- Focuses on graphic detail, as if suffering were the point of the text
- Speaks about the schools as something finished and in the past
- Ends the analysis at 'this was terrible'
- Recognizes the harm clearly and also the agency, relationships and strength characters show
- Focuses on the writer's choices about what to show, withhold and emphasize
- Notices intergenerational effects and healing that continue in the present
- Asks what the text suggests about survival, identity and recovery
How writers handle trauma through point of view and structure
| Technique | What it looks like | Why a writer uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Retrospective first-person narration | An adult narrator looks back on childhood | Gives distance; the reader sees both the child's confusion and the adult's understanding |
| Delayed revelation | The most painful memory is held back until late in the text | Mirrors how trauma is buried; when it surfaces, earlier scenes take on new meaning |
| Gaps and silences | A scene cuts away before harm is shown; white space; things implied rather than described | Refuses to make suffering a spectacle, protects the character's dignity, trusts the reader to understand |
| Framing narrative | The story is told within a present-day situation, such as telling it to a counsellor, a grandchild or a student | Makes the act of telling part of the meaning and highlights who is listening |
| Fragmented or non-linear structure | Memories arrive out of order, triggered by things in the present | Reflects how traumatic memory works and shows the past acting on the present |
| Multiple generations | Parents, children and grandchildren each carry part of the story | Shows that the legacy did not end when the schools closed, and that healing can also be passed on |
| Attention to sources of strength | Extended scenes of play, skill, language, family or land | Keeps characters whole rather than defined only by what was done to them |
A novel to know: Indian Horse
In Indian Horse (2012) by Richard Wagamese, an Ojibwe writer, the narrator Saul Indian Horse tells his story as an adult, looking back from a treatment centre where he is recovering from alcohol addiction. As a boy he is taken to a residential school, where he discovers hockey, which becomes a refuge and a source of joy and remarkable skill. The structure does important work. Saul's narration moves toward a memory he has kept buried, and the novel does not reveal it until late in the book, so the reader, like Saul, has to come to it. Telling the story is itself part of his recovery. Other texts approach this history in different forms: Tomson Highway's semi-autobiographical novel Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998) follows two Cree brothers from northern Manitoba, and David A. Robertson's graphic novel Sugar Falls (2011) presents a Survivor's story in words and images.
Reading responsibly
- Centre the Survivor's voice. When a text is based on real experiences, credit the Survivor's own words and framing rather than your guesses about what they 'must have felt'.
- Respect silences. A writer's decision not to describe something is a choice. Analyze why the text withholds it; never invent or speculate about what 'really' happened.
- Avoid the past-tense trap. The schools closed, but many texts show effects carried through families and communities today. Writing 'that was a long time ago' misreads the literature.
- Use accurate, respectful language. Say residential schools, Survivors, intergenerational effects, and name specific nations and communities when the text does.
- Do not turn people into symbols. A Survivor's story does not exist to teach outsiders a lesson or to make any reader feel better. Respond to what the text actually says and does.
- Look after yourself and others. Some readers have family connections to this history. Discuss the text, and leave personal and family experiences to those who choose to share them.