Hidden from History:
The Canadian Holocaust

Archival Documents from the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs (DIA)

1. Coming Soon



2. The cover of Dr. Bryce's 1922 book, "The Story of a National Crime", in which he describes how native children were "deliberately contaminated with infectious diseases" in residential schools; a crime covered-up by DIA Superintendent-General Duncan Campbell Scott and other senior government officials.



3. Letter to Duncan Campbell Scott from Indian Agent (and later Member of Parliament) A.W. Neill, West Coast Indian Agency, dated April 25, 1910, in which Neill warns that residential schools cause fatal illnesses in native children since their "constitution is so weakened that it has no vitality to withstand disease."



4. Application for Admission Form for Sandy Mitchell into Kuper Island Catholic residential school, August 10, 1939. (Mitchell died that same year after being subjected to drug testing at the school). This form forced all Indian parents to surrender their guardianship rights over their own children to the residential school Principal, who thus had full legal power and liability over every native student.



5. The same Application for Admission Form was used in Protestant schools, in this case for the United Church's Port Alberni facility, dated September 3, 1952. Note that the federal government's Citizenship and Immigration Minister has taken over Indian Affairs from the Department of Mines and Resources.



6. Extract of report of West Coast Indian Agent Gerald Barry to Major D. McKay, Indian Commissioner for British Columbia, April 14, 1939, concerning the United Church's Ahousat residential school. Besides describing the school's drinking water as "light yellow" and the absence of water pressure with which to fight fires in the "fire-trap" school, Barry notes the use of a drug called "Luminol" by Principal Alfred Caldwell, who murdered 14 year old Albert Gray that same year, according to eyewitnesses (see newspaper articles, "Beaten to Death for Theft of a Prune"). Luminol was an early version of a "rape drug" which induced trances and memory loss in those receiving it; namely, children who were drugged by Caldwell and other staff prior to rapes and other abuses.



7. A clear cover-up: West Coast Indian Agent P.D. Ashbridge's infamous report of February 3, 1940, in which he admits he avoided investigating a fore at the United Church's Ahousat residential school: "As this was the property of, and conducted by, the Church, care was taken to avoid too close (an) inquiry." (Report to D. McKay, Indian Commissioner for BC).



8. Proof of the shared responsibility - and liability - of the United Church and federal government for Indian residential schools: The 1933 Financial Statement for the Ahousat residential school, indicating the joint funding of that school by the government and the United Church's Womens' Missionary Society ("W.M.S.").