Canada's Residential School System

From the 1870s into the 1990s, the Canadian government and Catholic churches ran a vast network of boarding schools called "Indian residential schools," where Indigenous children were taken and forced to assimilate into white Canadian culture. Countless children suffered sexual, physical and psychological abuse in these institutions, and survivors and their families are wrestling with the repercussions to this day. Connie Walker, the host of the podcast Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s, speaks with us about her own family's experience with a residential school, which she uncovered while reporting the new second season of the show, and what the U.S. can learn from Canada’s attempted reckoning with this past.

Cover for the podcast "Stolen," from Gimlet Media/Spotify
(Gimlet Media/Spotify)