The Witness Blanket Exit Ticket/ Final Discussion

Independently reflect and respond to the following questions:

a. What was lost because of the residential school system?

The indigenous heritage and cultures have been lost due to the residential school system
such as how to hunt for food, their language, their way of living, and more.

b. How does the loss of these ways of life affect Indigenous people today?

The loss of these ways of life affect Indigenous people today as they had been indoctrinated
to Christianity and learned the European style of life. This led to the Indigenous not growing
up with their own tradition meaning that it was lost as they cannot carry on their practices to
the next generations.

c. In History, we must balance Historical Perspective (understanding why people do what they
did) with ethical judgment (making judgements about the ethics of an event to help us decide
what lessons to take from it).

Please make a statement that offers your overall ethical judgment of residential schools after
looking through the sources found in The Witness Blanket.

After looking through the sources found in The Witness Blanket, my ethical judgment is that I
find this highly immoral and I condemn the churches’ and federal governments’ actions toward
the Indigenous children.

Reflections on this section

Now that we are witnesses to these stories, what do we do next? What responsibilities
do we have?

Now that we are witnesses to these stories, our responsibilities are to spread the word about
Indigenous people and the suffering that they have been through. It is our responsibility to
ensure that Indigenous people never have to go through this kind of atrocity ever again and
that measures taken against Indigenous people should be prevented with this knowledge.