A national crime: the Canadian government and the residential school system, 1879 to 1986

For over 100 years, thousands of Aboriginal children passed through the Canadian residential school system. Begun in the 1870s, it was intended, in the words of government officials, to bring these children into the "circle of civilization." The results, however, were far different. More often, the schools provided an inferior education in an atmosphere of neglect, disease, and often abuse. "A National Crime" shows that the residential system was chronically underfunded and often mismanaged, and it documents in detail how this affected the health, education, and well-being of entire generations of Aboriginal children.