Twenty-four submissions demanded non-denominational schools, and a small minority based their opposition to church-run schools on the grounds that missionary schooling infringed on their freedom of religion.

       On the other hand, thirty-one groups expressed a desire for the retention of Christian influence in the schools, largely out of concern that moral instruction be part of schooling.

      Aside from a fundamental difference of opinion on the desirability of Christian religion in their schools, Native criticisms and suggestions tended to form a consensus. Above all, like Shingwaukonce, Ahtahkakoop, and Red Sky, they regarded education as essential to the survival of their communities and the future well-being of their children. Their complaint was that Indian Affairs' educational system in general, and its residential schools in particular, were failing Native communities badly.

      The Indian Affairs Branch, which by the time the committee held its hearings had its own proposed program for 'reform' of Native education. Like the Christian churches, and in marked contrast to the nearly unanimous views of the Indian communities, Ottawa still favoured the use of schooling for the assimilation of Aboriginal peoples. In a presumably more enlightened age such as the late 1940s, Indian Affairs' rhetoric was stripped of its most obnoxious phraseology. Now Ottawa officially favoured what it called 'integration' of Native children's education. It was supposed to stand in sharp contrast to the old, segregated system.

      Integration was the latest nostrum of a bureaucracy that had been without an effective policy for Native education since the early days of the twentieth century. A policy of integrated schooling would enable Ottawa to avoid capital expenditures on new schools by relying on provincial and local facilities to provide classrooms for Aboriginal students. Money would be saved by not duplicating school buildings, at the same time that responsibility for the quality of itistruction would be shifted to a considerable degree onto the provinces.