Seeing Like An Inuit Family The Relationship Between House Form And Culture In North: Fill & Download for Free

IQ tests measure abilities which are quantifiable. What is able to be tested and real life intelligence are not always the same thing. The human mind is more complex than a simple test can measure. But there are some correlations between testing well on an IQ test and one’s first semester grades in college. The tests are not predictive past the first semester.That which is testable is influenced by cultural factors. Even language is tied to cognitive framing and different thinking styles. These styles influence how IQ tests are answered. For example, Inuit have several different words for “ice.” Imagine if an American that was a native English speaker took an IQ test with a question on it about a special form of ice. The English speaker would have no knowledge of it. Does this make the English speaker less intelligent? Even if the English speaker learned Intuit he would be at a disadvantage taking a test in Inuit covering Intuit usage.The IQ testers decided to check to see how intelligent different European immigrants were after coming to America. Guess what—the Italians and Poles were considered less intelligent than those from England. Native Americans were tested at English speaking only schools and did not do as well—they were accused of being less intelligent as well.Intelligence is between 50–70% genetic. It tends to be a combination of several genes and not one or two that leads to intelligence. Some have argued that intelligent brains are more efficient while processing information. Using fMRI scans, people of varying intelligence were measured while engaged in a cognitively demanding task. Those who performed the best also seems to use the least amount of mental energy to do so. Interestingly, when people are learning a new task their brains show more activity and use more energy. But after repeating a task the brain wires up and becomes more efficient, using less brain space and less energy to do the task.Height is genetically influenced. Within a population there will be a bell curve with most people average in height and shorter at the far left and taller at the far right tail of the curve. Some populations of people—such as those from Denmark are on average taller than those from Japan, for example. But if you picked one person from Denmark and one person from Japan randomly you may find the Japanese person be taller than the person from Denmark.Complicating the matter is nutrition and environment. In populations with better nutrition and less serious illnesses people grow taller. Their genes have not changed, but, like fertilizer, crops and people grow under more beneficial environmental conditions.Korea is an interesting example of a genetically similar population split by war and thus changing the environment. Sanctions on North Korea by the U.S. have led to famines and undernourishment as part of the U.S. led sanctions.IQ has a similar patterns as height. Nutrition helps lift IQ. Avoiding pollutants like lead has increased IQ, as has reducing birth defects by avoid drugs during pregnancy, etc.The best way to understand the genetic influence of IQ is to study identical twins reared apart. And the results are astonishing.So about 50-72% of IQ may be related to genes. May is the operating factor when you consider that identical twins reared apart may have more similar homes than you might imagine. Most adopted children are raised in middle or upper middle class homes. Many who adopt really want children and have the means to care for children and provide them a good home environment. It would be interesting to see the results of identical twins reared apart coming from very different socioeconomic backgrounds.Studies of the bell curves of various populations have been done. But all of these are going to be subject to the problems we discussed earlier. The other factor is that not all demographic groups have similar environments.Another complicating factor has been the Flynn Effect.The Flynn EffectJames Flynn has hypothesized that the environment of people through time has become more cognitively demanding. Prior to 1900 many people lived in small villages and did farming. They went to school when it was out of farming season. Abstract analysis of philosophical and cultural matters was not demanded of them. Most of the things you needed to learn you could master before the age of 25. Change was slow. Then came the urbanization of many to work in factories. More technology was invented, such as radios, computers, etc. Living in a city is a higher mentally demanding task. Then a few years later people are required to use computers to do their jobs, analyze data, etc. Thinking is a skill. As these skills are developed at younger ages people would test better.A way to test this is to watch some of the old movies your great grandparents liked. The humor is more slapstick, and the themes are usually more simple. The narratives are less nuanced and complex. “How could somebody think this was great?” you might ask yourself. They did. Even propaganda has become more complex as people are more sophisticated.Consider this anti-Russian propaganda that people took seriously.After first seeing this I thought only idiots would be convinced by it. But this was considered normal propaganda.Or consider anti-marijuana propaganda. The movie Reefer Madness led people to believe that smoking marijuana would turn you into a crazed murderer.Flynn extends this to moral issues as well.His father had made a racist statement about blacks.“How would you feel if someone said that about you if you were black?” Flynn said to his father.“But I’m not black” his father responded.“But what if you were?”This line of questioning was considered unthinkable to his father’s generation. His father could not relate to racial discrimination. His father was Irish and hated the British. He also faced anti-Irish immigrant discrimination.“How would you feel if there were a sign that said “’No Irish served here’ at a restaurant?”“That would be terrible,” his father replied.“That is how black people in the South feel under Segregation at restaurants.”“But I’m Irish, not black. That is a silly question,” said his father.“How is that different from a black person being denied service by whites?”Modern children are raised differently than their ancestors.IQ scores are increasing faster in nations which are becoming more developed.Eyferth study - Wikipedia“The children studied had been raised by their unmarried German mothers. Most of the fathers, white or black, had been members of the US occupation forces stationed in Germany. At the time of the study, the children were aged between 5 and 13 (mean age: 10). The mothers of the children were approximately matched for socio-economic status; they were mostly of low SES. There were about 98 mixed race (black-white), and about 83 white children in the sample. The total sample consisted of about 5 percent of the German children known to have been fathered by black soldiers between 1945 and 1953, in addition to a matched sample of 83 German children whose fathers were white soldiers. Of the fathers of the mixed-race children, about 80 percent were French Africans and the remaining approximately 20 percent were African Americans. For assessing IQ, a German version of the WISC intelligence test (Hamburg Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, HAWIK) was used.” Id.ResultsThe white children studied averaged an IQ of 97.2, whereas the average of the racially mixed children was 96.5. Id.But despite this there remain group differences in IQ based on race. Flynn explains that studies have been done to show how the average white family has a more verbally rich environment than the average black family. White parents speak to (and with) their children more. And it has been shown that speaking with your child tends to increase your child’s IQ. Some of this is related to socioeconomic status. Multiple generations of poverty have reduced the overall education, number of words spoken, and levels of demanded complexity of information.But why has welfare not helped? Because welfare in America never kept you from being poor. It just kept you from homelessness and starvation. But this is far from the ideal for human beings to thrive. Poverty in the inner city is not an intellectually enriching experience. For this reason Flynn looked at the results of welfare in the Nordic countries and compared them to the U.S. In the Nordic countries they are far more humane and lift people up to more of a middle class standard. This lifts the entire socioeconomic environment up. The problems of poverty like addiction, violence, gangs, and child abuse drop considerably. Flynn argues that the answer to disparities in IQ differences is not caused by poverty because of the existence of welfare. It is caused by a lack of well funded welfare programs. Clinton’s disastrous “welfare to work” requirements destroyed the welfare state and millions of children are raised by daycare centers and people other than their parents. Poverty also causes a person’s IQ to drop due to constant stressors to the brain.It's Poverty, Stupid!Direct effects“At its most basic, poverty can be defined as a lack of necessary material resources, which can directly affect poor children's overall development and, specifically, their development in reading. For example, children in poverty are likely to have fewer books and less access to the Internet, and we know that availability of reading materials in the home is directly connected to reading development. Poor children also tend to own fewer toys and have fewer experiences with novel or stimulating environments, all of which can adversely impact their oral language and general knowledge, which in turn will hinder their reading development.But most children in poverty face more fundamental problems than simple lack of books and experiences. Children in poverty frequently experience food-insecurity, and in this country, many also go without basic health and dental care, putting them at serious risk for both current illness and longer-term health issues. Poor health, painful teeth, and lack of nutritious food impact children's physical and cognitive development, and they also make it harder to learn to read.Family-mediated effectsPoverty also affects children indirectly, through its adverse effects on their families. Families that cannot afford even inadequate housing move frequently and may suffer periods of homelessness, causing some poor children to routinely change schools two or three times within a single year. Working adults in poor families are more likely to hold low-wage, service jobs, with no benefits, no paid sick or family leave, and unpredictable hours, which means that routine health or dental care is often out of reach, quality child care is rarely available and difficult to arrange and pay for, and one car break-down, late bus, or sick child can cause tardiness or absence for both children and working parents.According to medical researchers Wadsworth & Rienks (2012), living in that kind of stress results in "constant wear and tear on the body, dysregulating and damaging the body's stress response system, and reducing cognitive and psychological resources for battling adversity and stress" (p. 1). Such stress, along with unhealthy housing conditions, can lead to chronic health problems like asthma, which is 66 percent more common in children living below the poverty level. Higher levels of stress can also impact family relationships. Hart and Risley's classic 1995 study found that parents living in poverty even communicated with their children more negatively, averaging “five affirmatives [to] 11 prohibitions per hour” (p. 117).Poverty also seems to be specifically related to the amount and types of reading done in families. In part due to lack of time and resources, parents in high-poverty homes are less likely to model literate behaviors like reading for pleasure, and also less likely to read aloud to their young children, who thus miss a vital foundation for school learning.Community-mediated effectsRather than helping to make up for the disadvantages they face, the characteristics of the communities in which many poor children live are more likely to pose additional barriers. Neighborhoods in which poor families are increasingly concentrated in this country have higher than average rates of violent and property crime as well as more open enticements to harmful behaviors such as drug or alcohol use. Because poor people have less political influence, such neighborhoods also often lack adequate civic services, from police and fire protection to trash collection. They are more likely to experience dangerous levels of traffic, outdoor air and water pollution from nearby industry and agriculture, and indoor pollution from mold, insects, and lead paint. Again, these factors all negatively impact children's emotional, physical, and cognitive health, and thus their ability to learn to read.Susan Neuman and her colleagues at New York University have found that poorer neighborhoods also have significantly fewer reading-related resources of all kinds, from bookstores and public libraries to the very signs in the stores, and of course, the deep disparities between schools in poor and well-off neighborhoods are well-known and long-standing.Societally-mediated effectsInterwoven and often causal in all the above-discussed issues is the way our country continues to treat people in poverty, including children. New voter-identification laws, recent restriction of advance voting and voting hours, and inadequate polling places in poor neighborhoods combine to discourage poor people from using their votes to improve their lot. The increasing influence on our political process of massive political spending also works to silence their voices. The zoning of dangerous traffic and polluting industries into poor neighborhoods, unequal school funding, deliberate concentration of poverty housing coupled with restrictive housing codes in more affluent neighborhoods, lax enforcement of housing codes and unconcern for civic services in poor neighborhoods are all common because most people in poverty lack the political power to effectively oppose them. At the same time, families in poverty are often blamed for not surmounting these societally-erected barriers, while teachers and schools lower their expectations for poor children because their parents are perceived as "not caring." Id.'Back-and-forth' conversations with young kids may aid brain...“We found that the most relevant component of children’s language exposure is not the sheer number of words they hear, but the amount of back-and-forth adult-child conversation they experience,” said lead study author Rachel Romeo of Boston Children’s Hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.“These ‘conversational turns’ are strongly related to the physical strength of white-matter connections between the two key language regions in the left hemisphere of the brain,” Romeo said by email. “Most importantly, this relationship between conversational turns and brain structure held independent of family socioeconomic status, indicating the importance of turns across all sociodemographic backgrounds.”Much of the advice parents get on the importance of talking to young kids dates to a landmark study in the early 1990s that found by the time children enter elementary school, kids from low-income families have typically been exposed to 30 million fewer words than kids from more affluent households. Since then, researchers and educators have been examining how increased language exposure in early childhood might help close income-based achievement gaps in school-age children.For the current study, researchers examined data from recordings of all conversations between 40 children and their parents over two consecutive weekend days. Children ranged in age from 4 to 6 years old, and their parents came from diverse income and education levels.From the recordings, researchers calculated how many words children heard adults speak and how many words the kids spoke. They also looked for conversational turns by measuring how many exchanges occurred with no more than five seconds passing between something said by the child and a response from the adult.Then, researchers looked at brain scans of the children and found greater conversational turn-taking associated with stronger connections between two brain regions, known as Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area, that are central to the comprehension and production of speech.Families’ socioeconomic backgrounds did not appear to influence the results, researchers report in The Journal of Neuroscience.Beyond its small size, another limitation of the study is that many parents of girls failed to complete the home recordings, leaving 27 boys and only 13 girls in the analysis. It’s also possible that parents’ conversations with their kids on recording days differed from what they might sound like at other times.Even so, the results add to a large and growing body of evidence suggesting that efforts to increase conversations in low-income households might help reduce the chance that these children will underperform relative to more affluent kids in school, the authors conclude.“Previous studies have demonstrated that the quality of early language interactions have a significant impact on later language and cognitive skills,” said Natalie Brito a developmental psychologist at New York University in New York City who wasn’t involved in the study.“But this is the first study to find associations connecting home language exposure, brain structure, and language skills,” Brito said by email.While children in the current study did have better scores on tests of verbal skills when parents had higher income and education levels, conversation turns still independently influenced these scores, noted Dr. Caroline Kistin, a pediatrics researcher at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center.In the current study, higher parental income and education levels were associated with higher verbal scores. But when the authors statistically controlled for those factors in their analysis, conversational turns were still associated with higher verbal scores, indicating that the differences were not due solely to socioeconomic status.“Back-and-forth adult-child conversation likely improves language development for all children,” Kistin, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “Organizations that work with young children should recognize the importance of the caregiver-child bond and support families in caring for their children and forming supportive relationships that have been shown to positively influence child development.” Id.SOURCE: bit.ly/2OA9DDf The Journal of Neuroscience, online August 13, 2018.Denmark, Finland, and Sweden are proof that poverty in the US doesn't have to be this highJames Flynn discusses the Flynn Effect, economics, and IQ.Ted Talk about how are lives are more cognitively demanding than those of our grandparents.An Important ConsiderationAsking why one group tests better than others is not really a useful question. The reason is because as a society we treat people as individuals, not demographics. And this makes sense because if I were to randomly select one black person and one Japanese person to teach a class in physics I could pull out Neil DeGrasse Tyson and some random Japanese person. Tyson has a PhD. The random Japanese person in this case is a high school graduate but he has always struggled with science and math. Which one should I choose?Studies have also shown that affirmative action in law school and medical school has not led to a decrease in performance by those professionals. Lower entrance exam scores only correlate to first semester grade performance.Research comparing demographics and IQ also do a disservice to people because they increase stereotypes which harms actual individual people. Imagine if you happened to be black and you scored well on your LSAT. You entered law school and graduate having graded onto law review.“So did you get in on affirmative action?” a person says to you.It would hurt to hear that, greatly.ConclusionIQ is influenced by nature and nurture. The exact percentage of each contribution has not been proven. It has been estimated at 50–70% genetic.Different racial populations score differently in America. However, there is evidence from the Evferth Study that given a good environment blacks and whites have IQ’s which are similar.The IQ test has to be renormalized back to 100 as average, as subsequent generations seem to be doing better on the tests. This may be because the increased complexity of modern society is more cognitively demanding than in the past.Asking which demographic scores better is not a good question. The reason is because human beings are individuals, not demographics. You have to look at each person individually. Within any given sample you may find a genius black person and a less intelligent Japanese person. The other problem is that studying the group differences has no practical purpose and increases stereotypes that hurt real individuals.It is highly likely that the difference in IQ scores among American populations are due to poverty and the implications of poverty on the developing brain. Therefore, programs that lift people out of poverty will also have the effect of decreasing group to group IQ differences.IQ scores are increasing faster in developing countries.

Residential Schools in Canada Residential SchoolsResidential schools were government-sponsored religious schools that were established to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture. Although the first residential facilities were established in New France, the term usually refers to schools established after 1880. Residential schools were created by Christian churches and the Canadian government as an attempt to both educate and convert Indigenous youth and to integrate them into Canadian society. However, the schools disrupted lives and communities, causing long-term problems among Indigenous peoples. Since the last residential school closed in 1996, former students have demanded recognition and restitution, resulting in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement in 2007 and a formal public apology by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2008. In total, an estimated 150,000 First Nation, Inuit, and Métis children attended residential schools.Early Residential Schools in New France and Upper CanadaResidential schools have a long history in Canada. The first residential facilities were developed in New France by Catholicmissionaries to provide care and schooling. However, colonial governments were unable to force Indigenous people to participate in the schools, as First Nations people were largely independent and Europeans depended on them economically and militarily for survival.However, residential schools became part of government and church policy from the 1830s on, with the creation of Anglican,Methodist,and Roman Catholic institutions in Upper Canada (Ontario). The oldest continually operating residential school in Canada was the Mohawk Institute in what is now Brantford, Ontario. This began as a day school for Six Nations boys, but in 1831 it started to accept boarding students. These colonial experiments set the pattern for post-Confederation policies.Residential Schools After 1880Beginning in the 1870s, both the federal government and Plains Nations wanted to include schooling provisions in treaties, though for different reasons. Indigenous leaders hoped Euro-Canadian schooling would help their young to learn the skills of the newcomer society and help them make a successful transition to a world dominated by the strangers. With the passage of the British North America Act in 1867, and the implementation of the Indian Act (1876), the government was required to provide Indigenous youth with an education and to integrate them into Canadian society.The federal government supported schooling as a way to make First Nationseconomically self-sufficient. Their underlying objective was to decrease Indigenous dependence on public funds. The government therefore collaborated with Christian missionaries to encourage religious conversion and Indigenous economic self-sufficiency. This led to the development of an educational policy after 1880 that relied heavily on custodial schools. These were not the kind of schools Indigenous leaders had hoped to create.Beginning with the establishment of three industrial schools on the prairies in 1883, and through the next half-century, the federal government and churches developed a system of residential schools that stretched across much of the country. Most of the residential schools were in the four Western provinces and the territories, but there were also significant numbers in northwestern Ontario and in northern Québec. New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island had no schools, apparently because the government assumed that Indigenous people there had been assimilated into Euro-Canadian culture.At its height around 1930, the residential school system totalled 80 institutions. The Roman Catholic Church operated three-fifths of the schools, the Anglican Church one-quarter and the United and Presbyterian Churches the remainder. (Before 1925, the Methodist Church also operated residential schools; however, when the United Church of Canada was formed in 1925, most of the Presbyterian and all the Methodist schools became United Church schools.)Isolation and AssimilationOverall, students had a negative experience at the residential schools, one that would have lasting consequences. Students were isolated and their culture was disparaged or scorned. They were removed from their homes and parents and were separated from some of their siblings, as the schools were segregated according to gender. In some cases, they were forbidden to speak their first language, even in letters home to their parents. The attempt to assimilate children began upon their arrival at the schools: their hair was cut (in the case of the boys), and they were stripped of their traditional clothes and given new uniforms. In many cases they were also given new names. Christian missionary staff spent a lot of time and attention on Christian practices, while at the same time they criticized or denigrated Indigenous spiritual traditions.Daniel Kennedy (Ochankuga’he) described his experience at the Qu’Appelle (Lebret) residential school in his memoirs, published as Recollections of an Assiniboine Chief (1972):In 1886, at the age of twelve years, I was lassoed, roped and taken to the Government School at Lebret. Six months after I enrolled, I discovered to my chagrin that I had lost my name and an English name had been tagged on me in exchange… “When you were brought here [the school interpreter later told me], for purposes of enrolment, you were asked to give your name and when you did, the Principal remarked that there were no letters in the alphabet to spell this little heathen’s name and no civilized tongue could pronounce it.‘We are going to civilize him, so we will give him a civilized name,’ and that was how you acquired this brand new whiteman’s name.’” …In keeping with the promise to civilize the little pagan, they went to work and cut off my braids, which, incidentally, according to the Assiniboine traditional custom, was a token of mourning — the closer the relative, the closer the cut. After my haircut, I wondered in silence if my mother had died, as they had cut my hair close to the scalp. I looked in the mirror to see what I looked like. A Hallowe’en pumpkin stared back at me and that did it. If this was civilization, I didn’t want any part of it. I ran away from school, but I was captured and brought back. I made two more attempts, but with no better luck.Realizing that there was no escape, I resigned myself to the task of learning the three Rs. …visualize for yourselves the difficulties encountered by an Indian boy who had never seen the inside of a house; who had lived in buffalo skin teepees in winter and summer; who grew up with a bow and arrow.(Daniel Kennedy (Ochankuga’he), former student at Qu’Appelle residential school)Life at Residential SchoolsUntil the late 1950s, residential schools operated on a half-day system, in which students spent half the day in the classroom and the other at work. The theory behind this was that students would learn skills that would allow them to earn a living as adults. However, the reality was that work had more to do with running the school inexpensively than with providing students with vocational training.Tasks were separated by gender. Girls were responsible for housekeeping (cooking, cleaning, laundry, sewing), while boys were involved in carpentry, construction, general maintenance and agricultural labour. Funding was a pressing concern in the residential school system. From the 1890s until the 1950s, the government tried constantly to shift the burden of the system onto the churches and onto the students, whose labour contributed financially to the schools. By the 1940s, it was clear to many that the half-day system had failed to provide residential students with adequate education and training. However, the half-day system was not eliminated until the late 1950s, when more funding became available owing to a strong economy.Daily Routine at Residential SchoolsSchool days began early, usually with a bell that summoned students to dress and attend chapel or mass. Students then performed chores (usually referred to as “fatigue” duty) before breakfast. Breakfast, like all meals, was spartan, and eaten quickly in a refectory or dining hall. This was followed by three hours of classes or a period of work before breaking for lunch. The afternoon schedule followed a similar pattern, including either classes or work, followed by more chores before supper. Time was also set aside for recreation, usually in the afternoon or evening. Some schools had small libraries, while many schools offered organized sports as well as musical instruction, including choirs and brass bands. The evening closed with prayer, and bedtime was early. It was a highly regimented system.On weekends there were no classes, but Sunday usually meant more time spent on religious practices. Until the 1950s, holidays for many of the students included periods of work and play at the school. Only from the 1960s on did the schools routinely send children home for holidays. Therefore, many students in the residential school system did not see their family for years.Education and Vocational Training at Residential SchoolsOverall, students received a poor education at the residential schools. This was true both in terms of academic subjects and vocational training. Students had to cope with teachers who were usually ill-prepared, and curricula and materials derived from and reflecting an alien culture. Lessons were taught in English or French, languages that many of the children did not speak. In the workplace, the overseers were often harsh, and the supposed training purpose of the work was limited or absent.The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, published in 2015, outlined several “undeniable” conclusions about the system:First, the federal government failed to set clear goals and standards for education at the residential schools.Second, the curriculum at residential schools was essentially an elementary curriculum, which reflected a belief that Indigenous people were intellectually inferior.Third, the government did not develop or implement a policy regarding teacher qualification.Fourth, the teaching staff was, in general, underqualified, overworked and poorly paid.Fifth, the curriculum (which emphasized the “four Rs” — reading, writing, arithmetic and religion) was not only basic but also largely irrelevant to the students’ needs, experiences or interests.Sixth, students left school without the skills they needed to either succeed in their home communities or in the “broader labour market.” Moreover, many of them left without completing their education.In short, the education and vocational training provided by residential schools was inadequate.Between Two WorldsMoreover, the attempted assimilation of Indigenousstudents left them disoriented and insecure, with the feeling that they belonged to neither Indigenous nor settler society.John Tootoosis, who attended the Delmas boarding school (also known as the Thunderchild school) in Saskatchewan, was blunt in his assessment of the residential school system:[W]hen an Indian comes out of these places it is like being put between two walls in a room and left hanging in the middle. On one side are all the things he learned from his people and their way of life that was being wiped out, and on the other side are the whiteman’s ways which he could never fully understand since he never had the right amount of education and could not be part of it. There he is, hanging in the middle of two cultures and he is not a whiteman and he is not an Indian.They washed away practically everything from our minds, all the things an Indian needed to help himself, to think the way a human person should in order to survive.(John Tootoosis, former student at Delmas school)Abuse at Residential SchoolsMany students suffered abuse at residential schools.While some staff tried to be good instructors and parental surrogates, the institutional setting and the volume of work defeated even the best of intentions. Impatience and correction often led to excessive punishment, including physical abuse. In some cases, children were heavily beaten, chained or confined.Some of the staff were sexual predators, and many students were sexually abused. When allegations of sexual abuse were brought forward — by students, parents or staff — the response by government and church officials was, at best, inadequate. The police were seldom contacted, and, even if government or church officials decided that the complaint had merit, the response was often simply to fire the perpetrator. At other times, they allowed the abuser to keep teaching.Health, Death and Disease at Residential SchoolsAccording to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission(TRC), at least 3,200 Indigenous children died in the overcrowded residential schools. Due to poor record-keeping by the churches and federal government, it is unlikely that we will ever know the total loss of life at residential schools. However, according to TRC Chair, Justice Murray Sinclair, the number may be more than 6,000.Underfed and malnourished, the students were particularly vulnerable to diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza (including the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918–19). Food was low in quantity and poor in quality, in large part due to concerns about cost. Faced with limited funding, schools were instructed to observe “the strictest economy… in all particulars.” In general, school menus seem to have been both monotonous and nutritionally inadequate. According to Basil Johnston, who attended the residential school in Spanish, Ontario, he was served “mush, mush, mush, sometimes lumpy, sometimes watery, with monotonous regularity every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.”Menu for the Qu’Appelle, North-West Territories, Industrial School, 1893(Source: Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 174; as quoted in Canada’s Residential Schools: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [2015], vol. I, p. 491)BreakfastFour days in the week porridge of oatmeal or cornmeal with either milk or syrup, this is served with hot tea and bread; the working pupils, and those not in robust health, receive butter in addition.On three days all the pupils receive butter and cheese with their bread instead of porridge, this is served with hot tea.Dinner [lunch]Soup, meat or fish, vegetables and bread ad libitum [i.e., not regulated]. For dessert, rice or stewed apples, or stewed rhubarb or syrup, or bread and milk, with cold water to drink, excepting to the weak children, and those working outside, who get hot tea.SupperMeat for the working pupils, hashed meat and vegetables for the rest, bread ad libitum and dessert similar to that named for dinner, hot tea.Moreover, research by food historian Ian Mosby (published in 2013) revealed that students at some residential schools in the 1940s and 1950s were subjected to nutritional experiments without their consent or the consent of their parents. These studies were approved by various federal government departments and conducted by leading nutrition experts. They included restricting some students’ access to essential nutrients and dental care in order to assess the effect of improvements made to the diet of other students. Overall, the experiments do not seem to have resulted in any long-term benefits.Nutritional deficiencies and overcrowding led to regular outbreaks of diseases at the schools. Tuberculosis and influenza were the major killers, but students were also affected by outbreaks of smallpox, measles, typhoid, diphtheria, pneumonia and whooping cough. In the winter of 1926–27, for example, 13 children died from a combination of measles and whooping cough at the Lytton school. Louise Moine, who attended the Qu’Appelle school in the North-West Territories, remembered one year in the early 20th century when tuberculosis was “on the rampage”:There was a death every month on the girls’ side and some of the boys went also. We were always taken to see the girls who had died. The Sisters invariably had them dressed in light blue and they always looked so peaceful and angelic. We were led to believe that their souls had gone to heaven, and this would somehow lessen the grief and sadness we felt in the loss of one of our little schoolmates. There would be a Requiem Mass in the chapel. We would all escort the body, which was lying in a simple handmade coffin, to the graveyard which was located close to the R.C. [Roman Catholic] Church in the village.(Louise Moine, former student at Qu’Appelle residential school)Although medical experts such as Dr. Peter Bryce, Dr. James Lafferty, Dr. O.I. Grain and Dr. E.L. Stone recommended measures to improve health and medical treatment, these were not implemented by the government, largely due to concerns about cost and opposition by the churches.The schools could have helped children to reduce their vulnerability to tuberculosis by providing them with sanitary, well-ventilated living quarters, an adequate diet, warm clothing, and sufficient rest. Rather, the residential schools regularly failed to provide the healthy living conditions, nutritious food, sufficient clothing, and physical regime that would prevent students from getting sick in the first place, and would allow those who were infected a fighting chance at recovery.(Canada’s Residential Schools: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [2015], vol. I, p. 451)Resistance and ClosureIndigenous students and parents resisted and protested the harsh regime in place at most residential schools. Some children refused to co-operate and sabotaged the operations of the kitchen or classroom, stole food and supplies, or ran away (as did Chanie Wenjack in 1966). At least 25 fires were set by students as a form of protest. Their parents and political leaders protested the schools' harsh conditions and pedagogical shortcomings, though their objections were mostly ignored.By the 1940s it was obvious to both the government and most missionary bodies that the schools were ineffective, and Indigenous protests helped to secure a change in policy. In 1969, the system was taken over by the Department of Indian Affairs, ending church involvement. The government decided to phase out the schools, but this met with resistance from the Catholic Church, which felt that segregated education was the best approach for Indigenous children. Some Indigenous communities also resisted closure of the schools, arguing either that denominational schools should remain open or that the schools should be transferred to their own control. By 1986, most schools had either been closed or turned over to local bands. Ten years later, Gordon Residential School in Punnichy, Saskatchewan, finally closed its doors.Recovery, Reparations, and ReconciliationIndigenous communities, often with church support, and since 1998 with government financial assistance, have been carrying out the difficult work of supporting their members with the long-term impact of residential schools, including family breakdowns, violence and aimlessness. Beginning in the late 1990s, former students demanded that government and churches publicly acknowledge their role in the schools and provide compensation for their suffering.In 2005, the federal government established a $1.9-billion compensation package for the survivors of abuse at residential schools. In 2007, the federal government and the churches that had operated the schools agreed to provide financial compensation to former students under the Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.On 11 June 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, on behalf of the Government of Canada, offered an apology to all former students of residential schools in Canada. The apology openly recognized that the assimilation policy on which the schools were established was "wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country." The apology recognized the profoundly damaging and lasting impact the schools had on Indigenous culture, heritage and language and was one of the steps that the government has taken to forge a new relationship with Indigenous peoples in Canada.Harper’s apology and the compensation packages offered by the federal government excluded survivors of residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador. Since Canada did not establish or operate residential schools in that province (Newfoundland was not part of Canada at the time the schools began operating), the federal government argued that it was not responsible for compensating former students. After survivors launched a class-action lawsuit against the government, a settlement of $50 million was reached on 10 May 2016. The settlement was approved by Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court Justice Robert Stack on 28 September 2016.On 24 November 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized to survivors of residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador.Names of Children Who Died in Residential Schools ReleasedOn 30 September 2019, the names of 2800 children who died in residential schools in Canada were released by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in a ceremony in Gatineau, Quebec (see Truth and Reconciliation Commission). The ceremony was the culmination of years of archival research of government and church records dealing with Indigenous children in 80 schools across the country, with records going back as far as the 1890s. According to archivists, another 1600 children who died in residential schools remain unnamed, and researchers continue to pore over records to discover their identities.The names and schools of the children were displayed on a huge 47-metre long, blood-red cloth banner. Tia-o-qui-aht First Nation Elder Dr. Barney Williams, a residential school survivor and member of the Indian Residential School Survivor Committee (an advisory body to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission), believes that the ceremony was important to ensure that the children who died are not forgotten: “Today is a special day not only for myself but for thousands of others, like me, across the country to finally bring recognition and honour to our school chums, to our cousins, our nephews, to our nieces that were forgotten.” To Elder Williams, the unveiling of the 2800 names was a “heartwarming” and “very emotional” moment for himself and thousands of Indigenous families across Canada.