John S. Milloy. "A National Crime": The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999. Pp. 402. Illus.

"A National Crime" examines the relationship between, as its subtitle indicates, "the Canadian Government and the Residential System, 1879 to 1986," by which time residential education for Aboriginal children was largely a thing of the past. Drawing on primary research undertaken for the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, John Milloy offers a detailed narrative divided into three parts. The first examines the origins of government policy, the second various aspects of residential school life through the Second World War, and the third the system’s decline. Chapter 3, detailing the "vision" behind residential schools, and chapters 9 and 10, on school closures, are especially valuable for setting out government policy during two critical time periods. Milloy’s efforts to disentangle schools’ funding arrangements are similarly commendable.

The book’s title, "A National Crime," gives it a particularly engaging quality. It also raises a very important larger question. What precisely was the crime? Was it the schools themselves, their very existence, or rather that they were not as effective as they might have been? It may be more the latter, from Milloy’s perspective, for the book’s title is taken from a 1922 report lambasting the federal government for inadequate attention to disease within schools (p. 51).

The real "national crime" was certainly the schools themselves. If we accept the residential school system as a crime, the victims (Aboriginal peoples) have not, in this book, been given an opportunity to describe/confront/face their perpetrators. Absent are the voices and narratives of Aboriginal peoples who have endured this legacy. Milloy’s subtitle acknowledges the kinds of sources he uses, but such a restriction only serves to justify government policy by not giving clear agency to Aboriginal peoples. His assertion that Aboriginal communities "were silent, or at least their voice was not often imprinted on the written record" (p. 59), is not so much a statement of fact as it is the inevitable consequence of relying on the sources he chose to use.

It is not just the voices of students and parents who are absent. Although Milloy asserts in the preface that he used the principal sets of church records (p. vii), his extensive notes (pp. 309-79) argue otherwise. They almost wholly cite Department of Indian Affairs records, including, so Milloy reminds the reader, "a very significant number of files that are still closed to general researchers" (pp. vii, xvii). Milloy’s preference for Department of Indian Affairs records necessarily results in his giving their perspective. Too often incidents from individual schools are offered by Milloy more as light relief or harsh reality than as contextualized first-hand reports. Such a statement as "a brief episode at Kitimat illustrates what was the norm throughout the system" (p. 123) is useless on its own without any sense of the nature of the particular school, the denomination in charge, numbers of children, or character of the local Aboriginal community. Over the long run, it will be through the stories of individual schools, as told by their participants, that the history of residential schooling will finally emerge. Apart from his introduction (pp. xiii-xiv), Milloy rarely critiques his sources or "reads them against the grain," so to speak.

Most of the accountability is in practice off-loaded to the churches, which are, like students and parents, denied voice. To the extent that they are present, as in the introduction, they are portrayed as the deceivers (pp. xi-xii). Throughout the book there are numerous examples (such as on pp. 71-5, 87-90, 111, 130, 145, 149, 158) whereby the government recognized shortcomings in policy and practice of the schools. From its perspective, it was the churches that failed to respond to suggestions for change or even adhered to government policy.

Milloy truly recognizes an injustice, but such a singular perspective and one which lacks critical analysis of all parties involved in residential education must leave the reader wary. Milloy appears to be defensive on behalf of the government, does not give voice to Aboriginal peoples, and puts much of the responsibility on religious associations. He in effect negates the government’s role in the government’s ill-conceived plan to assimilate Aboriginal peoples. If the government can publicly acknowledge the role it played in the development and administration of these schools (Globe and Mail, 8 January 1998, A19), then surely Milloy could have delineated for readers this accountability.

"A National Crime" has the potential to be a major source for discussion of residential schooling, but in practice it does little to move the discussion along. Aboriginal peoples are once again silent victims, the churches silent perpetrators, and that’s it. Intended to explain the past, "A National Crime" more exemplifies what was the problem in the first place.

Jan Hare and Jean Barman
University of British Columbia