The Truth of Residential Schools is Still Being Denied

It’s sometimes said that history is written by the winners. It may be more accurate to say it’s erased by them.

September 30 in Canada is a national holiday - “Orange Shirt Day” - to commemorate the harms of the Indian Residential School system in Canada. In Ottawa, it’s being proposed that denying the harm and history of Residential Schools should be criminalized.

The denialists, included many of the “usual suspects” on the right have been playing down and minimizing the harms of residential schools, and these articles have been excreted by a number right-wing think tanks and media outlets in Canada.

The reality is that we are nowhere close to dealing with the reality of the way how First Nations and Indigenous people were treated in the past, or how they continue to be treated in this country.

Indigenous children being taken by Child and Family Service Agencies in Canada is every bit the catastrophe that residential schools were, and that’s being ignored just as residential schools were. The tragedies associated with CFS in Manitoba alone include hundreds of deaths. Missing and murdered women girls and two-spirit. More than half the homeless people on the streets of Winnipeg were once in CFS. Many of the people in Manitoba’s jails, which have twice the national incarceration rate were in CFS and the vast majority are Indigenous. The Manitoba Government doubled the number of children they were taking from First Nations families to 11,000, and then took the children’s federal child allowance, too. Other provinces did it as well.

There are heartbreaking tragedies from earlier this month. And this year. And last year. And the year before. So, while we are acknowledging the intergenerational trauma that comes from residential schools, we are not acknowledging that the trauma has never stopped - that it is fresh and happening all the time, because of the ongoing crisis in First Nations and Indigenous communities due to CFS, to communities living in years or decades of forced poverty, with routine and blatant discrimination at a level where rarely makes national news: the provincial level.

In the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, there are a string of stories about two families who were involved in running Residential Schools that provides irrefutable evidence about the criminal indifference to the safety of children, and people who downplayed it even when children were dying at alarming rates.

In this instance this is not the Catholic Church, but the major protestant denomination - Methodism. While the focus to date has been on the Catholic Church, Protestant churches have not faced the same reckoning, despite the fact that they were running not just Residential Schools, but the Federal Residential School Bureaucracy.

The shared belief in Methodism and its specific tenets are the common thread that connects Egerton Ryerson, Duncan Campbell Scott, as well as the two other families involved in Methodist Residential Schools across Western Canada, the Woodsworths and the Ferriers.

While Methodism as a distinct branch of protestant Christianity in Canada was lost when the United Church of Canada was created, as a merger of Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists, in 1884, Methodism was the largest protestant denomination in Canada, and they were running active missions.

Many loyalists who moved to Upper Canada after the American Revolution were Methodists, including the Ryersons. Egerton Ryerson was a convert to Methodism at the age of 17. His father, an Anglican, threw him out of the house. Ryerson ended up becoming a publisher and a preacher. One of the goals of the Methodists was to prevent the Anglican Church from becoming the “official religion” of Upper Canada, and Ryerson played a significant role in the development of free public education in Ontario.

The Canadian Encyclopedia says that “Methodism … led by John Wesley (1703-91), who encouraged personal holiness and a disciplined (hence “methodical”) Christian life. It was distinctive in its Arminianism, the belief that individuals are free to accept or reject God's grace, and that it is possible to attain “perfection” (the overcoming of a will to sin) in this life.”This is a distinctive way to look at the world. This perfection and overcoming a “will to sin” included temperance, or abstaining from alcohol.

These specifics of the Methodist theology matter. While the idea that people can perfect themselves through their own determination can serve as a powerful message of inspiration for self-improvement, progress and change, the idea of perfection is not one that allows much room for humility or self-doubt, or criticism.  

Methodism were also known for their missions to Indigenous people.

The letter Ryerson wrote to the Federal Government recommending the establishment of Residential / Industrial Schools for First Nations is relevant for all the assumptions it makes.

Ryerson assumes that First Nations lack civilization and sobriety, and that the only way of addressing this is to ensure that schools convert them to Christianity.

“it is a fact established by numerous experiments, that the North American Indian cannot be civilized or preserved in a state of civilization (including habits of industry and sobriety) except in connection with, if not by the influence of, not only religious instruction and sentiment but of religious feelings. Even in ordinary civilized life, the mass of the laboring classes are controlled by their feelings as almost the only rule of action, in proportion to the absence or partial character of their intellectual development.  The theory of a certain kind of educational philosophy is falsified in respect to the Indian; with him nothing can be done to improve and elevate his character and condition without the aid of religious feeling.

This influence must be superadded to all others to make the Indian a sober and industrious man. Even a knowledge of the doctrines and moral precepts of orthodox Christianity, with all the appliances of prudential example and instruction, is inadequate to produce in the heart and life of the Indian, the spirit and habits of an industrial civilization, without the additional energy and impulsive activity of religious feeling. The animating and controlling spirit of each industrial school establishment should, therefore, in my opinion, be a religious one. The religious culture in daily exercises and instruction should be a prominent object of attention; and besides vocal music, generally, sacred vocal music should form an important branch of their education.” 

Another prominent Methodist who played an important role was James Shaver Woodsworth. Woodsworth was:

“the director of western missions for the Methodist Church from 1886 to 1915. One of his sons, J. F. Woodsworth, served as principal of both the Red Deer and Edmonton residential schools. (James Woodsworth was also the father of J. S. Woodsworth, the founder of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a forerunner of today’s New Democratic Party.)”

Being the Superintendent for the Methodist Missions in Western Canada – then termed the “Northwest” meant being responsible for the Methodist Residential Schools in all present-day British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, all from Brandon, where the Woodsworth family moved to in 1882.

It also meant recruiting people to do the Missionary work – one of whom was another future CCF Co-founder, and Methodist Minister, William Irvine.

Deaths, forced labour and denial at the Brandon Residential School

In 1895, the Brandon Industrial School was established, and was being run by another Methodist Minister, Thompson Ferrier. It drew on students from all over Manitoba.

“From its beginning, the school focused its recruiting efforts on Cree and Anishinawbe children from northern Manitoba communities including Norway House, Gods Lake, Berens River, Nelson House, Oxford House, Island Lake, and Little Grand Rapids; other students came from Cross Lake, Fisher River, and St. Peter’s.” 

Ferrier was also associated with other Residential Schools. A photo of him in a canoe with Indigenous students at another Manitoba Residential School at Portage la Prairie introduces the first Chapter of John S. Milloy’s book, “A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986”.

Over many years, Ferrier was accused of accused of paying First Nations parents to send their children to the school, where they were underfed, overworked and many died.

 “In 1900, Ferrier was accused of paying northern Manitoba families to send their children to Brandon. DIA official Martin Benson considered the charge unfounded, but he wrote, erring to the protocols Aboriginal parents insisted on when making such agreements and commitments, “He may, however, make some present by way of clothing or otherwise to induce them to part with their children as it is said to be pretty generally the practice in the West to fill up the schools by this means.”

In just eight years, from 1898 to 1906, 25 children died while living at the school, which required children to work half-days of unpaid labour to help pay for the school’s operation. The school at Brandon was one of the ones where the death rate was so high that Ferrier proposed “a new cemetery.”

“In the 1902–1903 school year six pupils died at the school. Drawn from distant communities including Gods Lake, Norway House, and Berens River, the youngest of these children was only seven, the oldest 16; most were in their early teens when they passed away. As Paul Hackett has shown, this pattern of declining health following admission to residential schools would continue throughout the residential school system’s history…. On 29 May 1912, Rev. Thompson Ferrier, Principal of the Brandon Residential School, wrote to the Secretary of the Department of Indian Affairs at Ottawa to propose the establishment of a new cemetery for children who died at the school… In 1915, Ferrier responded to criticism that the boys at the school were poorly dressed by explaining that “In the month of April there is a great deal of work to be done that the boys cannot be very tidy in their clothing in doing.”[1]

Ferrier is cited multiple times in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Report

“In 1903, Brandon, Manitoba, principal T. Ferrier wrote that “while it is very important that the Indian child should be educated, it is of more importance that he should build up a good clean character.”

Such a heavy emphasis was required, in Ferrier’s opinion, to “counteract the evil tendencies of the Indian nature.”

Denying a National Crime

What was happening at the Brandon Residential School was exactly what Dr. Peter Bryce, Canada’s First Chief Medical Officer, described as a “National Crime.” It was Bryce who wrote a 1907 report that detailed the fact that First Nations students at Residential schools were dying in appalling numbers of Tuberculosis, when the deaths could be prevented. He wrote:

“I believe the conditions are being deliberately created in our residential schools to spread infectious diseases […] The mortality rate in the schools often exceeds fifty percent. This is a national crime.”

In 1922, Bryce went public again with a self-published booklet called “A National Crime.” He was pleading because nothing had really been done since his first report, in 1907.

This is not because his first report was secret. It was public and sparked coverage in the major newspapers of the day.

“Upon its release in the fall of 1907, the report made national headlines. Saturday Night magazine reviewed the statistics presented by Bryce and concluded, “Even war seldom shows as large a percentage of fatalities as does the educational system we have imposed on our Indian wards.” The headline in the Montreal Star read “Death Rate Among Indians Abnormal.” A similar story in the Ottawa Citizen concluded that the schools were “veritable hotbeds for the propagation and spread” of tuberculosis.

In releasing the report, Indian Affairs asked for comments from Indian agents and school principals. The Indian Affairs inspector at Gleichen, Alberta, wrote that “on the whole, I agree with the Dr.’s conclusions.” He said that “if more funds had been expended to better the conditions complained about in this report and a great deal less on drugs, there would have been fewer deaths among the pupils.” The Indian agent in Morley, Alberta, J. I. Fleetham, wrote that “as far as the Stony Reserve is concerned, I am fully of the opinion that fully 40% of the population more especially those under 25 years of age have more or less tuberculosis in their blood and that 75% of the deaths during the last three years are from this disease.”

One of Bryce’s recommendations was the Federal Government should take over the schools, which caused defensive blowback from the churches. Ferrier was one of the people who responded, blaming the children and minimizing the deaths by getting the math wrong:

“The churches and schools aggressively defended their records. Brandon, Manitoba, principal T. Ferrier pointed out that when the schools were first established, there was no medical screening of students and “a large number of pupils were taken into the schools that should never have been admitted.” Admission was now much tighter, and the diet and clothing were much improved. He argued that since the schools that responded to Bryce’s survey had been in operation for an average of fifteen years, the death rate should have been stated as 1.6% per year, not 24%.

This is an early example of how Bryce’s findings were going to be misread over the years, both by supporters and critics of the schools. As noted above, Bryce did not present the figure of 24% as a death rate. He stated that, according to figures provided to him by the principals, a quarter of the individuals who had enrolled in these schools since they opened (and he noted that some had opened as early as 1888) were dead. Since 24% was not a death rate, dividing it by fifteen (as Ferrier had done) does not produce an annual death rate.”

In 1906 – the year before Bryce released his report - Ferrier had a book promoting Residential Schools called “Indian Education in the North West”^[2] which was published out of Toronto by the Methodist Church, in which Ferrier calls for the “destruction and end of treaty and reservation life.”

In it, he mentions travelling to the Morley Boarding School, which was the Morley Residential School in Alberta, with one of the Woodsworths.

“And I am sure if all the members of our Mission Board could have seen the Morley Boarding School, as Dr. Woodsworth and I saw it last winter, the conclusion would be that the difficulties in managing a school on a reserve have been more than a match for our church at that point.”

Ferrier’s depiction of Indigenous people is a litany of shameful racist stereotypes, many of which have endured to this day. It is coloured, in part, by the fact that Ferrier, as a Methodist, despised alcohol. He wrote:

“On the reserve the white man's vices have taken a deeper root than his virtues.

His fire-water has demoralized whole tribes, and the diseases he has introduced have annihilated many.

The Indian is growing up with the idea firmly fixed in his head that the Government owes him a living, and his happiness and prosperity depend in no degree upon his individual effort.

Rations and treaty are all right for the aged, helpless, and infirm.

Strong and able-bodied Indians hang around for rations and treaty, neglecting other duties and the cultivation of their land, in order to secure what in many cases could be earned several times over in the same length of time. The system destroys his energy, push, and independence…

“As fast as our Indian, whether of mixed or full blood, is capable of taking care of himself, it is our duty to set him on his feet, and sever forever the ties that bind him either to his tribe or the Government. Both Church and State should have, as a final goal, the destruction and end of treaty and reservation life.”

This litany of racist myths was being debunked at that very time by Dr. Bryce’s research, who found that First Nations had comparatively low levels of nervous orders and alcoholism:

“From the very first questionnaire he gave following his appointment as Chief Medical Officer, a survey which covered about three-quarters of the population, Dr. Bryce noticed two startling facts. First, contrary to popular opinion, Canada’s Aboriginals in fact exhibited comparatively low levels of nervous disorders and alcoholism. Second, while most physical disorders occurred at similar rates in the Canadian population at large, those whose occurrence depended on heavy amounts of unsanitary contact, such as diseases of the eye and tuberculosis, were much higher among First Nations.”

The other is that the entire passage from Ferrier’s book promoting residential schools was cited verbatim in the 1909 book, “Strangers Within Our Gates” by J. S. Woodsworth – Methodist Minister, and future national leader of the CCF party, which later became the NDP.

It came out supporting Thompson Ferrier after Ferrier had been interviewed about deaths at the Brandon Residential School, in the wake of the report that called Residential Schools, “A National Crime.”

Strangers Within Our Gates

In 1909, J. S. Woodsworth set out his ideas of who would make a suitable immigrant to Canada in his book, Strangers Within Our Gates. He used it to rank the suitability of various nationalities to integrate into Canadian society, based on their race.

Like the Reverend Thompson Ferrier’s book, it was a publication of the Methodist Church – specifically, The Missionary Society of the Methodist Church, Canada, the Young People’s Forward Movement Department. It is not an overstatement to say that it was racist even by the standards of the age, with Indigenous people and Blacks being placed at the bottom of the list.

Having quoted Ferrier’s horrific stereotypes about First Nations, J. S. Woodsworth goes on to say:

“Mr. Ferrier thinks that the main hope lies in giving the young generation a good, practical training in specially organized industrial schools…

Much missionary work, evangelistic, educational, industrial and medical, has been done among the Indians.

Many are devout Christians living exemplary lives, but there are still 10,202 Indians in our Dominion, as grossly pagan as were their ancestors, or still more wretched, half civilized, only to be debauched. Surely the Indians have a great claim upon Canadian Christians!”

Woodsworth also quotes an American writer, John R. Commons – a social gospeller, prohibitionist and labor advocate, and pioneer in economics and Christian sociology. The way Commons describes blacks American is blatantly racist, and historically inaccurate to boot. Commons wrote:

“The very qualities of intelligence and manliness which are essential for citizenship in a democracy were systematically expunged from the negro race through two hundred years of slavery. And then, by the cataclysm of a war of emancipation, in which it took no part, this race, after many thousand years of savagery and two centuries of slavery, was suddenly let loose into the liberty of citizenship and the electoral suffrage. The world never before had seen such a triumph of dogmatism and partisanship.”

There is no question that blacks fought for their own freedom in the American Civil War, and there were some incredibly successful black American entrepreneurs, businesspeople, writers and politicians. There were people in the U.S. and elsewhere at the time who believed that blacks should have the right to vote. Commons is showing sheer bigotry and ignorance.

J. S. Woodsworth’s reaction was to write:

“Whether we agree with the conclusion or not, we may be thankful that we have no “negro problem” in Canada.”

As Superintendent for the Methodist Missions across Western Canada, J. S. Woodsworth’s own father, James Woodsworth, lived in Brandon and was responsible for overseeing Ferrier and the Brandon Residential School. As mentioned above, the complaints against Ferrier kept coming.

“In 1915, parents refused to return children to the Norway House, Manitoba, school at the start of the school year because of complaints over the school’s lack of food and poor quality of clothing in the previous year. Methodist Church representative [Thompson] T. Ferrier reminded Chief Berens, “These children can be taken back to the school by the Department, in spite of whether the parents are willing or not now that they have been entered as pupils of the school.”

The Woodsworth and Ferrier families had deeper connections in running Residential Schools. Among Rev. Thompson Ferrier’s children was Russell T. (Thompson) Ferrier, who became director of education for the department of Indian Affairs.

J. F. Woodsworth was son of Superintendent James Woodsworth, and brother to J.S., the future CCF Leader. J. F. Woodsworth was a Principal at more than one Residential School. He and Russell T. Ferrier are both named as officials who were telling First Nations parents to persuade children to stay in school longer than the act required by law. They also sent police to recover children whose families did not want to send them to school.

“In 1914, “new Red Deer principal, J. F. Woodsworth, wrote letters to parents who had not sent their children back to school after the summer vacation that informed them that if the children were not returned within a week, “I shall send a policeman to bring them.” Later that month, he issued a warrant for the arrest of fifteen runaway students. By 1919, the school was in state of crisis brought on by chronic underfunding and a devastating bout of influenza.”

That influenza was the “Spanish Flu,” which killed millions around the world and was incredibly deadly on many First Nations. The death rate on some isolated reserves reached 95%.

“Although students could be withdrawn from school once they reached the age of sixteen, in the 1920s, the government policy was to encourage parents to keep their children in school until they turned eighteen. Russell T. Ferrier, the director of education for the department, wrote, “Indian Agents, principals and others interested in Indian education are urged to make every possible endeavor to persuade parents to leave their children in school for a longer period than prescribed by the Act.”

In February 1925, Russell Ferrier writes, arguing that medical officers need to do health checks, because when children get sick after admission, it drives down admissions.

“Russell T. Ferrier, Superintendent of Indian Education, writes to Indian commissioners and agents, saying each child should be pronounced fit by a medical officer before being admitted to a school. “When a pupil's health becomes a matter of concern soon after admission, the consequent parental alarm and distrust militates against successful recruiting.”

Russell Ferrier becomes “Superintendent of education” for the department but when asked for printed departmental regulations, says that there are none.

“The government’s general lack of policy seems to have been summed up in a 1928 letter from Russell T. Ferrier, then superintendent of education and a former senior official in the Methodist Missionary Society. Sister Mary Gilbert of the Grouard school in Alberta had written him to ask for “regulations concerning the education of Indian children.” Ferrier replied, “The only printed matter in this connection is the Indian Act, Section 9 to 11A inclusive.”

“There had been no doctor at all to visit the sick at Red Deer Industrial School that November. The Principal, J. Woodsworth, who had been ill along with the students and staff, sent along word to the Departmental Secretary, J.D. McLean, that five children had perished: Georgina House, Jane Baptiste, Sarah Secsay, David Lightning, and William Cardinal, who had died of the sickness “as a runaway from the school.”

Conditions were “nothing less than criminal. We have no isolation ward and no hospital equipment of any kind. “At the height of the sickness, without medical attention, “the dead, the dying, the sick and convalescent, were all together” in the same room. “You must,” he pleaded, “put this school in shape to fulfil its function as an educational institution. At present it is a disgrace.”

It was not the only disgrace. Because no one had recovered sufficiently to bury the children in the school cemetery, the Red Deer undertaker had to be summoned. Woodsworth assured McLean, however, that he had kept a watchful eye on expenses. ‘I directed the undertaker to be as careful as possible in his charge, so he gave them a burial as near as possible to that of a pauper. They are buried two in a grave.”

These are all people that J. S. Woodsworth knew - his father, brother, Thompson Ferrier and Russell T Ferrier. They promoted residential schools, ran them, and had firsthand experience of the hunger, sickness and deaths at Residential Schools. Thompson Ferrier knew that Dr. Peter Bryce had called the schools a “National Crime” and played it down. Ferrier’s son was hired into the Residential School bureaucracy.

There are many official biographies of J.S. Woodsworth online that mention none of this.

J.S. Woodsworth then continued to promote discriminatory ideas, shifting to promoting eugenics.

Richard Sanders details Woodsworth’s anti-immigrant screeds:

“Woodsworth’s hateful view of the so-called “Oriental Problem,” revealed his dogged fixation on religion as a filter for judging aliens. Woodsworth’s section on “Chinamen” relied on a 15-page excerpt from what he called “a splendid little book” by Rev. J.C. Speer, a missionary and Methodist Minister like himself…

Perhaps the most slandered immigrants in Woodsworth’s overtly racist book, Strangers Within Our Gates, were east Europeans.  He saw them as so politically inferior that he urged the Canadian government to “reform” matters by removing their right to vote…  

Just after the outbreak of WWI, Woodsworth addressed Winnipeg’s prestigious Canadian Club on “The Immigrant Invasion after the War: Are We Ready for it?” This was one of 16 lectures in 1914 that were attended, on average, by 430 of the city’s most powerful men.  His talk came between speeches by Solicitor General Arthur Meighen on WWI, and Prime Minister Borden on “Canada and the Empire.”  Other speakers that year included the top brass from Canada’s ultraconservative military, banking and press establishments. The fact that Woodsworth was warmly welcomed by this powerful circle, reveals his role as the Canadian elite’s favourite “socialist.”

After listing 24 non-English nationalities pouring into Canada’s gates, Woodsworth asked:

“Mix these peoples together, and what is the outcome?  From the racial standpoint it is evident that we will no longer be British, probably no longer Anglo-Saxon. From the standpoint of eugenics it is not at all clear that the highest results are to be obtained through the indiscriminate mixing of all sorts and conditions.... From the religious standpoint, what will be the outcome? For...most of our foreign immigrants do not belong to the churches which are... dominant in Canada. From the political standpoint it is evident that there will be very great changes and very serious dangers.”

Woodsworth continued to emphasize eugenics, when he took charge of the Bureau for Social Research as its Sectary. The bureau made social policy recommendations, and Woodsworth

According to a 2004 article in the Journal of Historical Sociology, Sterilizing the “Feeble-Minded”: Eugenics in Alberta, Canada 1929-1972, Woodsworth’s work directly informed the adoption of sterilization policies in Alberta.

“The eugenics platform was championed in western Canada by a number of influential social reformers including J. S. Woodsworth, a Winnipeg-based proponent of the “social gospel.” Woodsworth was concerned with the declining quality of immigrants arriving in the west. He translated his personal fear into a public crisis, spreading the idea that no segment of Canadian society would be left untouched by the influx of thousands of immigrants of inferior stock from central and eastern Europe. In time, his policy recommendations turned to eugenics and sterilization programs (Chapman 1977: 13).

Woodsworth was a core member of the Bureau of Social Research, an agency created by the provincial governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba and mandated to study social issues including child welfare, crime, and race and immigration problems.

Under Woodsworth’s influence the Bureau published articles about the “problem of the mental defective,” taking the eugenics position that mental defectiveness was hereditary and recommending the segregation and sterilization of mental defectives.”

Woodsworth was Secretary to the Bureau – which is to say, he was in charge. His appointment was announced in the Winnipeg Free Press, which published a number of the Bureau’s reports, with headlines like the one on October 11, 1916: “The Problem of the Mental Defective” which provided readers with a massive dose of pseudoscience, suggesting “feeble-mindedness” was hereditary.

“They are under a terrible handicap and are a tremendous moral, physical and financial burden on the homes to which they belong. the public schools which they often attend, and the society of which they form a part. They do constitute a grave national problem.”

In fact, much of what Woodsworth and the Bureau were peddling came from an outspoken Canadian eugenicist, Dr. Helen MacMurchy. Her intellectual and medical credentials were and are impressive. She earned her MD in 1901 and was “the first woman in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Toronto General Hospital, with a cross-appointment as lecturer at the University of Toronto, as well as the first woman accepted by Johns Hopkins University medical school for post-graduate study.” She went on to produce publications and shape the debate favouring the sterilization of the “feeble-minded.”

“This preoccupation with the feeble-minded swept the country… In Manitoba the 1913 Conference of Charities and Corrections devoted much of its attention to the issue. Three years later J.S. Woodsworth produced a series of articles on mental defectives for the Winnipeg Free Press that purportedly resulted from his investigations for the Bureau of Social Research. In fact, much of the material was taken straight out of MacMurchy's reports.”

Woodsworth’s articles led to Alberta’s 1928 eugenics laws. The Alberta Eugenics Board was active for the next 44 years, until it was dissolved in 1972. “From 1929 to 1972, when the Board was finally disbanded, the Board saw 4800 cases of proposed sterilization and approved virtually all (4739) of these. 2834 sterilization procedures were eventually performed, the majority on females.”

The Methodist Church in particular adopted and promoted eugenics. In 2016, the United Methodist Church in the US issued a statement of repentance for its historic support and promotion of eugenics:

“Methodist bishops endorsed one of the first books circulated to the US churches promoting eugenics. Unlike the battles over evolution and creationism, both conservative and progressive church leaders endorsed eugenics. The liberal Rev. Harry F. Ward, professor of Christian ethics and a founder of the Methodist Federation for Social Service, writing in Eugenics, the magazine of the American Eugenic Society, said that Christianity and eugenics were compatible because both pursued the “challenge of removing the causes that produce the weak.”2

“Ironically, as the Eugenics Movement came to the United States, the churches, especially the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and the Episcopalians, embraced it.

Methodist churches around the country promoted the American Eugenics Society “Fitter Family Contests” wherein the fittest families were invariably fair skinned and well off.

Methodists were active on the planning committees of the Race Betterment Conferences held in 1914, and 1915.⁴ In the 1910s, Methodist churches hosted forums in their churches to discuss eugenics. In the 1920s, many Methodist preachers submitted their eugenics sermons to contests hosted by the American Eugenics Society. By 1927, when the American Eugenics Society formed its Committee on the Cooperation with Clergymen, Bishop Francis McConnell, president of the Methodist Federation for Social Service, served on the committee. In 1936, he would chair the roundtable discussion on Religion and Eugenics at the American Eugenics Society Meeting.

The laity of the church also took up the cause of eugenics. In 1929, the Methodist Review published the sermon “Eugenics: A Lay Sermon” by George Huntington Donaldson. In the sermon, Donaldson argues, “the strongest and the best are selected for the task of propagating the likeness of God and carrying on his work of improving the race.”

When we talk about Residential Schools, we have not been talking about this side of it, which in many ways is worse.

I make these points about eugenics being more accepted or promoted by particular Christian denominations, because they were never universally accepted, and eugenics were opposed by Catholics. If support for eugenics had truly been so widespread, more provinces in Canada would have passed eugenics laws, but only two did – British Columbia and Alberta.

It is often mentioned that prominent figures like Nellie McClung and Emily Murphy of Canada’s Famous Five, who both helped ensure women were recognized as full persons under the law, both endorsed eugenics. Emily Murphy’s husband was a Reverend in the Anglican Church, and McClung was a Methodist.

However, J.S. Woodsworth’s promotion of eugenic sterilization is unknown, as his promotion and family’s involvement in Residential Schools is overlooked.

If we can’t even talk about honestly about what happened over a century ago, how can we hope to accept or change what we’ve got to deal with right now?

Because what has happened with child and family services to Indigenous children in Canada in the last 30 years has not even begun to touch our political consciousness. And it’s one of the worst things that has ever happened to Indigenous people in this country, and our streets and our jails and our homeless shelters are filled with people who’ve been chewed up by this system, robbed, then abandoned.

It’s a monumental injustice, made worse by the silence around it.

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