Consistent with the federal government's policy of assimilation, residential schools were set up with the purpose of removing aboriginal children from their homes at an early age, and forcing them into an environment that stripped them of their identity. These schools were operated by churches that were anxious to claim souls and teach their different ways to the children. The churches believed that the children would then return to their homes and have the ability to influence their parents to change as well.

In 1911, Bishop Bompass and the Anglican Church opened the Choutla Residential School in Carcross. Many kinds of abuses were inflicted on the children by some of the people working at Choutla, resulting in severe trauma.

Even today, the effects of mission schools resonate loudly in the communities and with individuals who only recently have started to talk about what happened to them. This is a problem that aboriginal people across Canada share and are struggling to overcome. Much of today's social dysfunctions

Choutla Residential School, Carcross, Yukon. (Yukon Archives, National Archives of Canada collection, #398)

Children in a classroom at Choutla Residential school, in the 1930s. Status First Nations children came from all over the Yukon to attend school in Carcross. (Yukon Archives, Anglican Church, Diocese of Yukon, 86/61 #637, PHO 333)

and illnesses can be attributed to mission school syndrome. Ada Haskins from the Yanyedi clan and daughter of Johnny Johns explains her experience at Choutla.

“At the age of six I went to mission school in Carcross. And I stayed there until I was 12 years old. At the age of 12, I told my dad about the mistreatment we had at the school, about everything, including food and other things. So, of course my dad wrote a letter out to the government. The principal got the letter back. They told me to pack my things and get out. So I did. I packed my personal things and I left. I walked home. They didn’t inform my father about anything and I just walked by myself all the way home. After that, I had no education. I couldn’t go to the public school in Carcross because that was only for white people. Therefore, I got no education.”