Some missing residential school students disappeared into arranged marriages, report says

Some children who disappeared from residential schools ended up in arranged marriages organized by school principals and the government, according to the final report from the special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian Residential Schools.

Leah Redcrow believes her grandparents, who were married at Sacred Heart Indian Residential School (later called Blue Quills) in Alberta in 1928, may have been one of an unknown number of couples whose marriages were arranged by authorities.

Researchers who study the issue say a large scale study is needed to find out how many people were affected and when it ended. Still, there are records showing arranged marriages of residential school students in the 1890s and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) collected testimony from survivors who said they faced arranged marriage as late as the 1950s. 

Redcrow, executive director of Acimowin Opaspiw Society, which represents Blue Quills survivors, says she believes arranged marriages were common at the Sacred Heart/Blue Quills school and said there's enduring impact on the Saddle Lake Cree Nation — affecting everything from land to family connections. 

People who spoke with CBC Indigenous said it shows how the government of Canada used marriage as a tool to further the assimilation of Indigenous youth and illustrates how much control the government and schools exerted over the personal lives of Indigenous people. 

Special interlocutor Kimberly Murray's final report examines the ways that children were moved through various institutions — like homes for unwed mothers, hospitals and treatment centres — and how that made it difficult for families to find out what happened to their kids. 

Murray included the issue of arranged marriages because it illustrates that point, she said, especially if names were changed after marriage. 

Beginning in the 1890s, the government "directed Indian Agents and principals to consult the youth who were soon to be discharged from [residential schools] and encourage marriage between them," according to Murray's report. 

Murray said she first became aware of arranged marriages when she was editing a report by the TRC on the history of residential schools. 

"I had no idea, especially about the [File Hills] colony," she said.

"I thought that was outrageous that they set up these colonies and married people together and moved them."

File Hills Colony

The File Hills Colony was an experiment by Indian agent William Morris Graham to create an agrarian utopia in Saskatchewan by taking land from the local Cree community, giving it to others and cultivating it for farming, said Karen Brglez, a PhD student in history at the University of Manitoba.

In the early 1900s, File Hills was touted as a model community to show off Canada's efforts assimilating Indigenous people. 

In 2022, the federal government apologized to Peepeekisis Cree Nation for the scheme and the community received $150 million in compensation for loss of land.

Brglez studied Catherine Motherwell who was a missionary and principal at the File Hills Residential School near Regina. Brglez said her research shows Motherwell "creepily" arranged marriages for her students and found partners for them at nearby institutions like the Round Lake Indian Residential School and the Regina Indian Industrial School.

Brglez added that the hypersexualization of Indigenous girls and women made officials fear unmarried or unemployed female graduates would engage in sexual relationships that did not adhere to the standards of settler society. 

Motherwell would visit these places and select girls to visit the File Hills school for short vacations. Then she would encourage relationships between the visiting girls and suitable boys, Brglez said. After the couples were married, they could be moved onto the File Hills Colony to farm the land and further assimilate. 

"A big fear of government officials and church officials was that they were going to put 18 years into 'civilizing' these children within the school, and then they were going to go back to the reserves and were going to 'regress,'" Brglez said.

By orchestrating marriages between students, schools and the government discouraged students from returning to their communities, particularly if they came from different communities, she added. 

Anne Lindsay, a historian and archivist who worked for the TRC, said it was also possible some students from different cultures only had one shared language — English or French —  furthering their assimilation.  

Lindsay said it's tricky to identify arranged marriages since officials used coded language in letters and other documents, calling it "colonial shorthand." 

Additionally, policies varied over time and many were unofficial. 

"A lot of the things that people sort of think were policy… were not written down. It was just kind of how people did it," Lindsay said. 

It's not clear how much the eugenics movement influenced the practice but Brglez said she's seen evidence Motherwell looked for girls with light skin to marry boys who would settle on the File Hills colony. 

"Eugenics was involved by trying to whiten this colony and show how civilized these young people were," Brglez said. 

"There's this idea that they're biologically inferior… but that they have the potential to be assimilated through the civilizing process."

Redcrow said her grandparents, never spoke about their time at residential school, which she believes is due to trauma they suffered. Nevertheless, she says, they did their best to protect their children and remained happily married for over 60 years — calling the couple a major success story.

The couple also took in orphaned children, Redcrow said, adding they probably raised close to 20 kids. She also said they demonstrated a desire to do better for their own kids calling it a "sacred responsibility."

Redcrow said children from other communities who attended Blue Quills often ended up married and living in Saddle Lake and may have received land there. 

She said her own great-grandmother was from Enoch Cree Nation and was sent to the Lac La Biche school because the school in her area was full. After her great-grandparents got married at the school, the couple returned to his family's home in Saddle Lake. 

"That's why we don't know who her siblings are or anything," Redcrow said. 

Forced labour and other impacts

In Murray's report on missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian Residential Schools she also drew attention to the issue of trafficking children for the purpose of forced labour, especially on farms.

While some research has been done on forced domestic and farm labour, there's still more to investigate, Murray said. 

"I actually believe that we should be looking into human trafficking for sexual purposes as well," Murray said.

"I have come across some records… where girls are being sent to Muskoka homes in the summer time and before they go, the institution's getting their teeth done and doing their hair."

Girls sent to these homes wrote letters to the schools asking to be allowed to return, she added.