The volume and intensity of Native testimony about the cultural oppression that characterised the schools make it clear that attempted assimilation was a cause of severe pain and lasting damage, as well as an impediment to effective instruction. To be treated as 'dirty savages,' to be warned that your parents were doomed to damnation because of their religious beliefs, to be told you were too 'dumb' to understand what incompetent teachers were teaching, and to be treated constantly as though your race made you susceptible to dishonest and sexually licentious behaviour took a toll on the psychological and emotional well-being of many residential school children.

      If skills were acquired, it was with great difficulty, and in harsh and uncongenial conditions. The inadequacy of the care meted out to students, worse at some periods than others, but generally insufficient all the same, was a major blot on the residential school records. Health care might have improved after Dr. Bryce's sensational revelations forced government to work on such things as ventilation and water supply, but the food, clothing, diet, workload, and problems of supervision and discipline remained.

      There is a consensus in the testimony of former residential school students that the worst aspects of these institutions were the loneliness and emotional deprivation, the inadequate food and clothing, and the excessive work and punishment.

      A special place in perdition must be reserved for those who abused residential school students sexually. If there are explanations for poor food, heavy workloads, and harsh discipline, there can be no justification of the subjection of young boys and girls to the sexual appetites of the male staff members. The failure of church organisations to take action to weed out sexual exploiters, and to prevent the entry of others, leaves the missionaries open to severe censure. More complex is the issue of student sexual abuse at the hands of other residential school students. Again, the evidence is overwhelming that a great deal of the sexual exploitation and violence perpetrated on male, and in rare instances female, students was the work of older students. School staff should have known and taken action to thwart such exploitation.