"When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly impressed upon myself, as head of the Department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men."
~Sir John A. MacDonald, 1879; First Prime Minister of Canada, the dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, he had a political career which spanned almost half a century. Macdonald was born in Scotland, when he was a boy his family immigrated to Kingston in the Province of Upper Canada
"Chief Justice says Canada attempted ‘cultural genocide’ on aboriginals". "The objective – I quote from Sir John A. Macdonald, our revered forefather – was to 'take the Indian out of the child,' and thus solve what was referred to as the Indian problem. 'Indianness' was not to be tolerated; rather it must be eliminated. In the buzz-word of the day, assimilation; in the language of the 21st century, cultural genocide." She made clear that this treatment extended well into the 20th century"