Kristin Burnett and Shannon Stettner
On Wednesday December 11, 2024, YWCA Canada issued an apology, circulated to its members via email, for the organization’s role in supporting the Residential Schools and Indian Hospital systems in Canada. It was released under the headline “Reflecting on Our Past, Committing to Reconciliation: YWCA Canada’s Apology to Indigenous Communities | Les excuses de YWCA Canada envers les communautés autochtones.” YWCA Canada released the apology in response to a report we wrote for them in 2022 as contracted researchers. The apology included a link to their website with a content warning and another link to a 4-page summary report entitled “The Role of YWCA Canada in Canada’s Residential Schools and the ‘Indian Hospital’ System.” We did not write the summary report that reduced our detailed 85-page research report to little more than a single page of findings. However, YWCA Canada will make the full report available upon request (reconciliation@ywcacanada.ca). We encourage readers to request a copy, bringing it into the public domain.
While we applaud YWCA Canada’s decision to better understand the roles they played in Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals in Canada, we believe releasing the summary report instead of our full report serves to obscure the active roles played by YWCAs across Canada in Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals. In a moment where we are increasingly seeing Canadians unwilling and indeed actively “minimizing, distorting, and denying”[1] this history and its continued impact in the present, the processes and activities of truth telling have never been more important.
Archives, YWCA Canada, and the Settler Colonial Project
Between 1975 and 1992, YWCA Canada donated some of their records to Library and Archives Canada, including correspondence between the national YWCA and member associations, reports to various government departments, conference reports, meeting minutes, funding requests, budgets, and newsletters. Many historians have examined these records to better understand the history of women in Canada broadly. Studies of these records have not included a critical examination of the YWCA’s participation in Canada’s Residential School and Indian Hospital systems, to date. It is this set of records that we examined during the fall of 2021.
According to those records, YWCA Canada and some of its branches, like many other philanthropic and service organizations, supported both the function and purpose of the Residential Schools and Indian Hospital systems. Specifically, the support provided by the YWCA facilitated the day-to-day operations of these institutions in several ways, including through:
- School curriculums
- Rehabilitation programs
- Social clubs and extra curricular activities
- Y-teen extension programs
- Residences and hostels
- Indian placement and relocation programs
During the post-World War II period, and especially in urban areas, philanthropic and service organizations, like the YWCA, partnered with the state to extend programs to Indigenous peoples. These organizations positioned themselves as “helping” Indigenous women and girls find their place (read: assimilate) in settler-Canadian society.[2] We saw this sentiment expressed at the June 1961 National Convention, where the members passed a resolution for “YWCA of Canada [to] extend its fullest efforts to provide program [sic] for Indian and Eskimo girls and women with a view to encouraging their participation.”[3] This approach persisted across the decade such that, in June 1970, members of the Intercultural Task Group proposed that the national branch should look for government funds for local projects and serve as cultural mediators between local branches and local Indigenous peoples.[4] Indeed, lucrative economies of goods and service provision grew and operated within and alongside Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals where service organizations benefited enormously.[5]
These findings are important because they counter those views deeply held by many Canadians that Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals were institutions that operated at a distance from Canadian society.[6] This narrative positions settler colonialism as a “sad chapter”[7] in Canadian history rather than as an ongoing structure embedded into the social, economic, and political fabric of Canadian society. The former characterization fuels the efforts of people to “minimize, distort, and deny” the historical and ongoing impacts of Canada’s Residential School and Indian Hospital systems. The latter acknowledgement offers settlers the opportunity to recognize historical and ongoing harms, which is necessary to establish “a respectful and healthy relationship [between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples]”[8] and to change our behaviours moving forward.
Continuing truth telling
Our findings are not unique to YWCA Canada. We know that similar work in Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals was carried out by service organizations and philanthropic societies across Canada. We believe our report joins the important work of many others who seek to move the history and ongoing impact of Residentials Schools and Indian Hospitals beyond the narrow scope allowed by the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
To amplify this work, we propose a blog series that:
- Troubles both the current state of the historical discipline and reconciliation;
- Explores the role of historical inquiry in responding to the “minimization, distortion, and denial” of settler colonialism; and
- Interrogates the processes and challenges of doing paid public history in the context of ongoing settler colonialism and settler apologies.
Expressions of interest should be sent to kburnett@lakeheadu.ca by July 1, 2025. We ask that submissions be sent by August 1, 2025. Guidelines for authors can be found here: https://activehistory.ca/about/
Kristin Burnett is a Professor in the Department of Indigenous Learning at Lakehead University.
Shannon Stettner is a communications officer in the federal civil service.
[1] NCTR, “Reconciliation Begins with a Commitment to Truth-Telling,” https://nctr.ca/reconciliation-begins-with-a-commitment-to-truth-telling/ [accessed 18 February 2025].
[2] Mary Jane McCallum, Indigenous Women, Work, and History, 1940-1980 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2014).
[3] “Five W’s,” The Journal (October 1961), 35-36.
[4] Meeting minutes of the Intercultural Task Group, 26 June 1970, MG28-I198 Vol. 62 file 5 “Intercultural Committee, 1970-1972,” YWCA, LAC.
[5] Brian Gettler, Colonialism’s Currency: Money, State, and First Nations in Canada, 1820-1950 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020); Hugh Shewell, “What Makes the Indian Tick?” The Influence of Social Sciences on Canada’s Indian Policy, 1947-1964,” Histoire sociale/Social History, 34/67 (May 2001): 133-67; and Travis Hay, Inventing the Thrifty Gene: The Science of Settler Colonialism (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2021).
[6] Survivors of the Assiniboia Indian Residential School, ‘Did You See Us?’: Reunion, Remembrance, and Reclamation at an Urban Indian Residential School, edited by Andrew Woolford (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2021); Sean Carleton, Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022).
[7] “PM Cites ‘sad chapter’ in apology for residential schools,” CBC News, 11 June 2008. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/pm-cites-sad-chapter-in-apology-for-residential-schools-1.699389 [last accessed 9 March 2025].
[8] NCTR, “Reconciliation Begins with a Commitment to Truth-Telling,” https://nctr.ca/reconciliation-begins-with-a-commitment-to-truth-telling/ [accessed 18 February 2025].
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