If the categories into which the problems of residential school for students fell are obvious enough, the degree of the impact of these problems on Native communities is much less clear. This fuzziness is not to suggest that former students have not clearly and loudly complained of their bad experiences. Nor is it meant to imply that their complaints have been exaggerated, or that the damage to which they have objected publicly is unimportant. Rather, the difficulty lies in assessing the extent and the depth of the negative results, as well as the degree of responsibility that the various parties must bear for the consequences. One complication is the fact that residential school usually affected only one-third of Inuit and status Indian children directly. (The proportion of non-status Indians and Metis who attended residential school was tiny, though impossible to determine.) However, many of the problems of familial and social relations could be transmitted indirectly, to siblings who did not attend, or via destructive, anti-social behaviour in the community in general. A further difficulty is the phenomenon of denial, which many victims of sexual abuse in particular experience until some traumatic event or skilful counselling brings them to confront their past. Precision of assessment of the damage is not possible, though it is clear that great harm was done.

      For Native children, their conditioning in early childhood ill prepared them for the structure, routines, and discipline of boarding schools. In Aboriginal societies -- and, in spite of the great variety of otherwise distinctive groups, these features were a constant of Inuit and the various Indian nations -- child-rearing strategies and instructional techniques were sharply different from those used by Euro-Canadians. The deeply entrenched ethic of observing the autonomy of individuals ensured that very little coercion and physical punishment were employed to caution, restrain, and reprove children. Ridicule, exemplary stories, and emphasis on familial obligation were what Native parents used in place of the Euro-Canadians' threats, deprivations, and corporal punishment. On the whole, most of the discipline and instruction were specific to the culture of the Euro-Canadian overseers rather than the Native background from which the children had come.