... They would learn to use guns like Europeans, and live life like the Europeans. The schools weren't bad; it was the way in which they were organized. The teachers were not sensitive to the needs of the students. In the 1950s, the Canadian government finally came to see that these schools were a failure and in approximately 1980 the last school was finally shut down. Today, the Natives want respect for what people have done to their communities by sending their children to residential schools. Native children have received letters of apology and today they speak of the abuse in which they got at these schools. Administers were charged criminally for their actions. The aboriginal children later went to everyday schools where they had the same curriculum but their needs didn't change. Only 20% of aboriginal children completed grade 12. Natives still have difficulty today. They couldn't stand up for themselves and say, no, that they weren't attending. The government treated them very poorly. Another, example of Natives being mistreated throughout Canadian history occurred in 1990. The Mohawk community had a confrontation at Oka, Quebec. The Mohawk made a barrier of women and children because the Canadian government wanted to expand a golf course into their community of Oka. This was a problem for the Mohawks because this was where they had their ancestral burial grounds. The people of the aboriginal community brought it to court, and the court rejected them. The leader of the Mohawk community stated that "We are prepared to fight... and if necessary, to die... in defense of our land."4 The Mohawk leader said this because he didn't want to give away the land that was rightfully theirs. ...
