Water People: Genocide, Children, and Nature in Canadian Residential Schools

This paper focuses on connections between Indigenous Peoples and water to better understand the cultural destruction wrought by residential schools. We begin with an overview of how genocide studies address connections between childhood socialization and the natural world, and how human links to nature are impacted by genocide. This point is further illustrated through a discussion of the centrality of water within Anishinaabe culture, whereby relationships with water contribute to the process of becoming Anishinaabe. We note that childhood is an important time for the development of water relations. Residential schools interrupted these relationships by transforming water into a tool of violence, compelling Indigenous children to reimagine their connection to water through the lens of settler capitalism and Judeo-Christian morality. Drawing on Survivor testimonies of their childhood and relationships with water before, during, and after residential schools, we demonstrate how their ability to co-create themselves as Anishinaabe with water was stifled in residential schools. We also note Survivor testimonies where water is engaged to resist assimilation and heal trauma, evidencing how the natural world can play an ambivalent role in projects of cultural destruction.