Good Intentions, Debatable Results: Catholic Missionaries and Indian Schooling in Hobbema, 1891-1914

Authors

  • Gary Taljit

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21971/P75P48

Abstract

Oblate missionaries played a large role in educating and "civilizing" natives in the Canadian Northwest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The missionaries' goals were to gain converts and to prepare the Indians to cope with the new, white-dominated society. Under the aegis of a Dominion government that sought an inexpensive means of assimilating the Indians, the missionaries built schools where native children could be inculcated with "Canadian" values and mores. This essay looks at missionary education at the Hobbema residential school from 1891 to 1914 as a case study. The writer argues that for a variety of reasons, Indians often resisted the educational efforts of the Oblates and the sisters who taught at the school. Indians questioned the motives of the missionaries, the health conditions at the schools, and the benefits of the education. However, some Indians believed education could help them adjust to the new society. Nevertheless, the ethnocentrism, paternalism, and strict discipline that characterized the residential school experience often made it an unhappy one for children, although the situation for students at Hobbema was probably not as bad as it was for Indian students at other localities.

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Author Biography

Gary Taljit

Gary Taljit has a diploma in journalism from Grant MacEwan Community College. He graduated in the spring of 1992 from the University of Alberta with a B.A. (Honors) in history, first class standing. An earlier version of the article appearing in this issue won The Henry Gerrie Ward Essay Prize in Western Canadian History and The Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau Prize in Canadian History. In the fall of 1992, he will be taking first year law at the University of Alberta.

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Published

2008-02-21

How to Cite

Taljit, G. (2008). Good Intentions, Debatable Results: Catholic Missionaries and Indian Schooling in Hobbema, 1891-1914. Past Imperfect, 1. https://doi.org/10.21971/P75P48

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Articles