“They gave me a number…” Indian Residential School Denialism and Genocide

By Michelle Stirling ©2023

In commentaries by former residential school students, usually those who self-identify as ‘survivors,’ they state that when they entered the school “They gave me a number…” and go on to detail how they were often stripped of their clothes, subjected to vigorous showers, and scrubbing and their hair cut off.

For people who have surface knowledge of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jewish people (and others) in Germany during World War II, this sounds familiar. Even some Jewish scholars, who should know better, see Indian Residential Schools as genocide because of apparently dehumanizing indicators like this.

Rodney Clifton, Professor Emeritus of the University of Manitoba, actually worked at Stringer Hall from 1966–67, the Anglican Mission hostel in Inuvik, NWT, whose student residents attended Sir Alexander Mackenzie School. His explanation of receiving students is both horrifying and enlightening.

It is horrifying because he describes some of the returning students to the hall as wearing the exact same clothes that they had left in, though now in a shambles. For some, their clothes had not been changed in the two summer months and the kids had not had a bath, the water being too cold on the barren tundra. He describes the children as having stood in smudge fires while at home with their parents, to fight off the vicious biting insects of the Northern Tundra (this was long before “Deep Woods OFF” or similar repellents). For those unfamiliar, the famous Canadian tune “The Blackfly” offers a glimpse of how such biting insects can drive one to distraction. Thus, dirty, smoky, and smelly, many of the children often also had pus-filled infected insect bites on their heads and even in their ears. Lice were also common.

This situation required that the child be submitted to showers and vigorous scrubbing upon arrival, and likely the burning of unsalvageable clothes be done immediately. Clean institutional clothing was provided as part of the educational package and to provide commonality between students, so there was no difference between those who might have nicer clothing than those were poor.

For some children, this showering and loss of personal effects was emotionally dehumanizing, but it was absolutely necessary to return the child to a healthy condition and allow for treatment of the pus-filled sores. Likewise, to live in close community, common public health considerations required that infectious or contagious conditions be treated and healed.

And what of the number assigned?

Rodney was supervising 85 boys ages 12 to 21 in three dormitories for 22 hours for 6 days a week. In the event a child was not well, Clifton was required to sit up all night with the child and call the nurse if the child’s condition worsened.

In the book “From Truth Comes Reconciliation,” Clifton recounts how a large part of his job was spent in the laundry storage room, where all clothes for all children and staff (including himself) were sorted…by Rodney…by number and placed in the relevant numbered cubicle.

That is all.

That was the purpose for the number assigned to the child.

Unlike in Auschwitz, this number was not tattooed on the child’s body.

Let us say the children and youth had two changes of institutional clothes — pants, shirts, socks, and underwear. That’s 85 x 4 items x 2 = 680 pieces of clothing, and two sets of numbered towels and facecloths = 340 sets, washed and sorted once weekly. Just to keep the students in clean laundry.

Public hygiene in such residential facilities is extremely important, particularly in the north of Canada where tuberculosis (TB) was, and still is, prevalent and highly contagious. Many people are latent carriers of TB but the symptoms are not manifest. Thus, sharing of clothes and towels was prevented by this numbered system, which also ensured properly sized clothes were available to students.

Children were not commonly referred to by number in Indian Residential Schools, as Jewish people were in Nazi Holocaust death camps in Poland and in the Nazi labour and concentration camps across Europe. In Indian Residential Schools, children were typically referred to by name.

It is true that often children’s names were Anglicized or translated while attending Indian Residential Schools. The purpose of the schools was to prepare the children and young people for participation in the larger society, so this convention was no different than that applied to incoming immigrants to Canada. Immigrants who presented a difficult-to-pronounce European name, were summarily admitted to Canada with a simpler version of their name like “Smith.”

Prior to Christmas and Easter holidays, those children at Stringer Hall whose families were geographically close enough, were given transportation home for celebrations. Those children whose families lived in very remote locations remained behind as the travel time and cost were prohibitive for short visits in those days; but when summer break came, they were given government paid transportation home.

No one ever left a Nazi death camp to go home for seasonal celebrations.

At the end of the school term, the children were given paid transportation home to their parents for another two months where they were free to enjoy their language, culture and no baths, no clean clothes, no regular meals, and little to no medical treatment.

Undoubtedly the children experienced painful culture shock at residential schools — especially in the first year; immersion language learning is difficult for anyone, but also most effective; their parents enrolled them for this education — hoping to give them skills and a better chance for the future. And the parents kept enrolling their children, year after year!

That’s not genocide. Not even close. These are facts no one can deny.

More than six million people never left Auschwitz and the other concentration camps and death traps the Nazis set up across Europe. More than 11 million people (not only Jews) were turned to ashes. Those who did leave, were skeletons, starving, near death, covered in lice, dehumanized, demoralized, a sorry remnant of humanity.

To compare Nazi death camp genocide to Indian Residential Schools is a perversion of history.

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Michelle Stirling is a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists. She researched, wrote, and co-produced historical shows about Southern Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Hugh Dempsey, then curator of the Glenbow Museum.