The Canadian Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by various Christian churches. The school system was created as a civilizing mission to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Euro-Canadian culture.
The system began with laws before Confederation and was mainly active after the Indian Act was passed in 1876. Attendance at these schools became compulsory in 1894, and many schools were located far from Indigenous communities, in part to limit cultural contact. By the 1930s, about 30 percent of Indigenous children were attending residential schools. The last federally-funded residential school closed in 1997, with schools operating across most provinces and territories. Over the course of the system's more than 160-year history, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally.
