Residential schools in Canada were first created by churches as early as the 1830s, with the Mohawk Indian Residential School opening in 1831 in Brantford, Ontario. The federal government began to play a significant role in establishing and funding these schools starting in the 1870s and 1880s. The Indian Act of 1876 gave the government exclusive rights related to Indigenous peoples, and by the 1880s, residential schools were formally authorized and expanded across Canada as part of assimilation policies. Attendance became compulsory for Indigenous children aged 7 to 15 in 1920 under the Indian Act. The residential school system operated for over a century, with the last school closing in the late 1990s.