“A Survivor Reflects on Resilience” and “Cry Me a River, White Boy” Essay Example

population for the U.S. government’s interference with the Indian residential school system and the policy of assimilation. Later on, opposition leaders presented their apologies, and the leaders of aborigines were welcomed for responding.

In both of these essays, it is shown that the way of treating of children in Indian Residential Schools is a very sad chapter of the lives of many native Canadians. These schools separated thousands of children from their own families, culture, and communities. In order to educate Aboriginal children, the federal government began to develop this system.

The purposes of the residential schools are clearly depicted in “A Survivor Reflects on Resilience&rrdquo; as cruel and unjust. The main purposes of their existence were to limit and isolate the influence of the native culture on children as well as assimilate them creating a single dominant culture. At that time, these objectives grounded on the fact that Aboriginal cultures were unequal sounded in the following words “Kill the Indian in the child”. Fortunately, nowadays, everyone understands that this assimilation policy was not right and caused a lot of harm.

In “Cry Me a River, White Boy”, the author calls the apology an event, which closed the sad page of the Canadian history. In his speech, the Prime Minster tells that now the government recognizes that the consequences of the residential schools system were negative and had a damaging influence on both Aboriginal culture and language. Of course, there were some students who spoke positively about their experience at residential schools, but there were much more of those who endured it without pleasure. These two stories are overshadowed by horrible accounts of the physical, emotional, as

well as sexual abuse and children’s separation from beloved families and native communities. Now, the main task of the government is to support The Aboriginal Healing Foundation in that passionate way they supported the idea of the Indian residential school system many years ago.