The residential school system was a system of boarding schools in Canada that were designed to assimilate and Christianize Indigenous children by separating them from their parents, culture, and community. The schools were funded by the state and run by churches, and more than 150,000 children were taken from their homes between 1883 and 1997, often forcibly, and placed in distant boarding schools where the focus was on manual labor, religious instruction, and cultural assimilation. The schools systematically undermined Indigenous, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit cultures across Canada and disrupted families for generations, severing family ties. The purpose of the residential schools was to eliminate all aspects of Indigenous culture. Students had their hair cut short, they were dressed in uniforms, they were often given numbers, and their days were strictly regimented by timetables. Boys and girls were kept separate, and even siblings rarely interacted, further weakening family ties.

Living conditions at the residential schools were poor, and students were often subjected to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Many children died from disease due to overcrowding, malnutrition, and poor sanitation, or died after being abused or trying to run away. Most schools had their own cemeteries, and sometimes when children died, their parents were never informed. The last residential school did not close its doors until 1996, and many of the leaders, teachers, parents, and grandparents of today’s Indigenous communities are residential school Survivors.

From the 1990s onward, the government and the churches involved began to acknowledge their responsibility for an education scheme that was specifically designed to “kill the Indian in the child.” On June 11, 2008, the Canadian government issued a formal apology in Parliament for the damage done by the residential school system. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that what happened was "cultural genocide" and identified more than 3,000 children who died from disease due to overcrowding, malnutrition, and poor sanitation, or died after being abused or trying to run away. The recent discoveries of more than 1,300 unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools in western Canada have shocked and horrified Canadians.