Kristin Burnett and Shannon Stettner
This essay is a part of a collection. See the opposite entries right here.
In late 2019, we have been awarded a contract to supply a report in regards to the position performed by YWCA Canada within the Residential College and Indian Hospital programs in Canada. As we beforehand famous, the report is out there on request (reconciliation@ywcacanada.ca). We have been excited by the chance as a result of we noticed it as an opportunity to additional our understanding of the methods the settler colonial venture was enacted throughout Canadian social, political, and financial establishments together with, on this occasion, via girls’s voluntary and repair associations and social welfare businesses. Given the working restrictions to Library and Archives Canada through the Covid 19 international pandemic, our entry to the archives was very restricted. As such, we perceive our work to be very preliminary.
However, we have been lucky to uncover a very wealthy supply that provided a glimpse into YWCA Canada’s post-WWII service work in Residential Colleges and Indian Hospitals throughout Canada. In 1968, YWCA Canada’s Intercultural Coordinator issued a name to member associations in search of examples of labor carried out with Indigenous Peoples and communities. The request was made with the hope that the “change of program concepts and social motion w[ould] stimulate many extra inventive actions,”[1] and mirrored a rising curiosity inside YWCA Canada to increase its work extra formally to Indigenous Peoples and communities. Member Associations throughout Canada responded by outlining actions that primarily lined the Nineteen Sixties, with some references to the Nineteen Forties and Nineteen Fifties, with probably the most detailed response coming from the Edmonton YWCA department. In response, they submitted a report from February 1964 that was initially ready for Indian Affairs, which, on the time, was housed within the Division of Citizenship and Immigration (DCI). The give attention to getting ready Indigenous Peoples for off-reserve employment and Indigenous girls for European-Canadian domesticity was a cornerstone of Indian coverage after WWII. Heidi Bohaker’s and Franca Iacovetta’s examination of citizenship packages confirmed that throughout the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties, the DCI “sponsor[ed], fund[ed], monitor[ed] the actions of voluntary teams (resembling church organizations) and volunteer businesses and educational specialists coping with [Indigenous] Peoples in city settings.” [2] The YWCA was effectively located to help the DCI’s efforts.
The responses of the YWCA branches to the Intercultural Coordinator illustrated necessary connections existed between the YWCA and Canada’s Residential College and Indian Hospital programs, the character of which want additional excavation. Up to now analysis has largely centered on the roles performed by the church and state inside Residential Colleges and Indian Hospitals. This overlooks the fabric and ideological programs that supported and perpetuated these establishments. Residential Colleges and Indian Hospitals didn’t exist in isolation. Sean Carleton’s work Classes in Legitimacy illustrates how state supported education each justified and fuelled Indigenous land dispossession by adapting Indigenous and non-Indigenous college students to settler capitalism. The work undertaken by organizations just like the YWCA made Indigenous land dispossession doable via packages that familiarized Indigenous youth and adults with capitalist labour regimes in city areas distant from houses and communities. In flip, philanthropic and social welfare businesses have been rewarded financially via state and public help.
Like different service and government-led initiatives after WWII, the intention of the state and its associate businesses was to not make city areas extra suitable with Indigenous methods of life, however to assimilate Indigenous Folks. In a November 1962 subject of YWCA Canada’s nationwide publication The Journal, for instance, YWCA Canada’s government director Agnes Roy reported on a current journey to the Arctic, commenting:
It might be that via the YWCA we will create an enthusiasm amongst our members for the North, in order that they are going to be excited by taking on positions as nurses, academics or church staff. It might be doable {that a} YWCA workers particular person with leisure and group work abilities, spending quick intervals within the northern communities, may assist to complement the lives of women and girls, growing their abilities and pursuits, and giving them a hyperlink with women and girls world wide.[3]
On this manner, the group positioned itself as a service supplier and a cultural middleman whereby they assisted Indigenous girls and women with discovering their place (learn: assimilating) in European-Canadian society.[4]
Actions supported by YWCA Canada and its member associations
After the Second World Warfare, the creation of rehabilitation divisions inside provincial tuberculosis sanitariums turned commonplace and included a spread of actions like vocational counselling and coaching, placement steerage, aftercare supervision, and employment providers.[5] Given their wealth of expertise with employment counselling and job placement providers, YWCA Canada and its member associations have been effectively positioned to take part and their experience was often drawn upon. A main objective of rehabilitation packages was to “prepare sufferers to take a standard place within the enterprise and social world.”[6]
In keeping with a presentation made by Indian Affairs to the Canadian Tuberculosis Affiliation in 1956, the objective of residences for Indigenous sufferers was to “give [them] the possibility to be taught trades that their bodily situation will permit them to undertake. It’s additional acknowledged that the sort of work they may be capable of do is discovered for probably the most half in industrial centres…. It is usually important to introduce them to life within the non-Indian neighborhood and assist them to regulate to it.”[7] In different phrases, one of many main capabilities of rehabilitation packages in Indian hospitals was to assist Indigenous Peoples assimilate into the European-Canadian neighborhood and to forestall them from returning house.
The Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton began its rehabilitation division in 1955.[8] In April 1956, Camsell bought a small bus to move sufferers to programming like picnics, cooking classes, and tour town to go to “a number of of the industries.” [9] Indian Affairs approached the Edmonton YWCA within the early Nineteen Fifties to begin working with Indigenous women just lately discharged from the hospital.
In keeping with a report ready for Indian Affairs by the Edmonton YWCA Youth Program Director in October 1955:
There’s a group of 9 women now that now we have arrange a venture for. We will be unable to do any actions with them within the line of sports activities for a while as a result of the vast majority of the ladies aren’t but sturdy sufficient to take part. The women are assembly on the Y on Wednesday afternoons and are doing copper photos for his or her first venture. [10]
The YWCA offered area and crafting provides for women from the hospital and faculty, and the Camsell Hospital bought the art work in its reward store. The proceeds from these gross sales have been then “donated” to the hospital auxiliary. The Edmonton YWCA coordinated with different girls’s service organizations within the metropolis to help crafting actions for the sufferers at Camsell. In a single occasion, the IODE provided to serve tea for the ladies from the hospital on the YWCA on Friday afternoons. The Edmonton YWCA steered that as a substitute of serving tea for the ladies, the cash might be donated to offset the price of crafting supplies.
The rehabilitation program on the Camsell additionally labored with women discharged from the hospital, which generally included an extended convalesce interval lasting anyplace from three to 6 months in a rehabilitation house (additionally known as convalescent houses) beneath the supervision of Indian Affairs.[11] The Camsell operated two convalescent houses – one for girls and one for males. Described as “main the way in which,” the Camsell’s pilot venture provided coaching in areas like barbering, hairdressing, lab and x-ray work, workplace abilities, carpentry, and cupboard making. Youthful sufferers have been returned to residential colleges following their discharge.
The Edmonton YWCA report additionally listed organizations, departments, and amenities that had requested their providers:
- Indian Affairs Department
- Charles Camsell Hospital
- Regional Workplace
- Dept. of Metropolis Welfare
- Household Service Bureau
- Fineview House
- Dept. of Northern Affairs
- Edmonton Indian Company
- Canadian Native Friendship Centre
- Catholic Indian and Metis Service
This listing illustrates the various connections between voluntary organizations, service suppliers and organizations and the state, Indian Hospitals, and Residential Colleges.
Why do these preliminary findings matter?
The sorts of assimilatory actions run by the YWCA, and different volunteer associations, have been about offering materials and ideological help for the Residential College and Indian Hospital system in Canada. The objective was to assimilate Indigenous sufferers and youth to European-Canadian life exterior of Indian Hospitals and Residential Colleges, together with potential locations of employment. We see this in a January 1964 report that reads “The women from the Upgrading Class and the College women someway acquired right into a chat session. It was great to see the younger ones who’re simply beginning out achieve encouragement and hope from simply watching and speaking with those who’ve clearly ‘made it’.”[12] The measure of Indigenous Peoples’ “making it” turned assimilation via integration requiring the removing and disconnection of Indigenous Peoples from their tradition, communities, and land. As within the Habkirk and Ferguson weblog, our analysis implicates the on a regular basis work of service organizations and their volunteers in supporting the colonial venture. The place there have been shortfalls of cash or items, we see girls’s philanthropic work filling gaps. Figuring out these histories and acknowledging these connections is integral to enacting Reconciliation as a result of the “burden of truth-telling shouldn’t be positioned on the shoulders of survivors. Reconciliation requires establishments, governments, and people to dwell as much as their very own tasks and full and fulfill the TRC’s 94 calls to motion. We should all be taught the true historical past of Residential Colleges, hearken to Survivors and take a stand in opposition to those that would deny, distort and minimalize this historical past.”[13]
Kristin Burnett is a Professor within the Division of Indigenous Studying at Lakehead College.
Shannon Stettner is a historian who works within the federal civil service.
Authors’ notice: This analysis was supported by Undertaking Grant from AMS Healthcare.
[1] “Experiences from Y.W.C.A. s and Y.M.C.A.-Y.W.C.A.s re: packages involving their Eskimo, Indian and Metis Membership and Communities throughout Canada,” January 1969, MG28-I198, Vol. 23, file 19 Indians and YWCAs throughout Canada (1962-9), YWCA of Canada fonds, LAC.
[2] Heidi Bohaker and Franca Iacovetta, “Making Aboriginal Folks ‘Immigrants Too’: A Comparability of Citizenship Applications for Newcomers and Indigenous Peoples in Postwar Canada, Nineteen Forties-Nineteen Sixties,” The Canadian Historic Evaluate, 90/2 (2009): 451-52.
[3] Agnes Roy, “Arctic Journey,” The Journal (November 1962), 9.
[4] Mary Jane McCallum, Indigenous Girls, Work, and Historical past, 1940-1980 (Winnipeg: College of Manitoba Press, 2014). See additionally Mary Jane McCallum, To Make Good Canadians: Lady Guiding in Residential Colleges, MA Thesis, Native Research, Trent College, 2001.
[5] Katherine McCuaig, The Weariness, the Fever, and the Fret: The Marketing campaign in opposition to Tuberculosis in Canada, 1900-1950 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s College Press, 1999), 201. For a dialogue of rehabilitation and incapacity extra broadly see: Leah Morton, “‘It has impacted our lives in nice measure’: Households, Sufferers, and Well being Care throughout Manitoba’s Polio Period, 1929-1953,” (PhD Diss., College of Manitoba, 2013).
[6] McCuaig, The Weariness, the Fever, and the Fret, 201.
[7] Ottawa, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Claims and Historic Analysis Centre, fil L. 14, p.2, “Indian Rehabilitation and Integration Providers which are being promoted by the Indian Affairs Department, Division of Citizenship and Immigration,” presentation on the Annual Assembly of the Canadian Tuberculosis Affiliation at Niagara Falls, 16 Might 1956. Cited in Drees, Therapeutic Histories, 94.
[8] Drees, Therapeutic Histories, 47-50. See additionally: Shawn Selway, No one Right here Will Hurt You: Mass Medical Evacuation From the Jap Arctic, 1950-1965 (Hamilton: James Avenue North Books, 2016), 151-52.
[9] Report titled “Edmonton YWCA report on programming for Indian Younger Folks,” February 1964, MG28-I198, Vol. 23, file 19 Indians and YWCAs throughout Canada (1962-9), YWCA, LAC.
[10] Report titled “Edmonton YWCA report on programming for Indian Younger Folks,” February 1964, MG28-I198, Vol. 23, file 19 Indians and YWCAs throughout Canada (1962-9), YWCA, LAC. 5
[11] “Rehabilitation Program Expands as Former Sufferers Show Its Value,” The Indian Information (March 1957), 2.
[12] Report titled “Edmonton YWCA report on programming for Indian Younger Folks,” February 1964, MG28-I198, Vol. 23, file 19 Indians and YWCAs throughout Canada (1962-9), YWCA, LAC.
[13] NCTR, “Reconciliation Begins with a Dedication to Reality-Telling,” (29 September 2023): https://nctr.ca/analysis/reconciliation-begins-with-a-commitment-to-truth-telling/. [last accessed 17 November 2025].
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