The Long Term Effects of Forcible Assimilation Policy: The Case of Indian Boarding Schools

Donna Feir

No 1301, Department Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Victoria

Abstract: For decades in North America and Australia, indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools. These schools had the stated goal of cultural assimilation and are perceived to have been an educational failure. I offer the first causal evidence on the long run effects of these schools using the interaction of changes in Canadian national policy and variation in the power of the Catholic Church. I find that the average boarding school had substantial effects on both cultural and economic assimilation. However, I find suggestive evidence that highly abusive schools only affected cultural connection.

Keywords: Assimilation; Boarding Schools; North American Indians (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I24 I25 I28 I38 J01 J15 J18 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 133 pages
Date: 2013-11-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-his and nep-ure
Note: ISSN 1914-2838
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/economics/_assets/docs/discussion/ddp1301.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The long-term effects of forcible assimilation policy: The case of Indian boarding schools (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vic:vicddp:1301

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Victoria PO Box 1700, STN CSC, Victoria, BC, Canada, V8W 2Y2. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kali Moon ().