Writing about the 'Basic Concepts and Objectives' of Canada's Indian policy in 1945, Alan G. Harper, an official of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs put his finger squarely on the motivation behind residential schools. Noting Ottawa's desire to promote self-sufficiency among the indigenous population, and rightly zeroing in on Canada's systematic attack on traditional Indian religion and cultural practices, the observer concluded that the dominion's purpose was assimilation. As important as the push for self-support and Christianization among the Indians was in its own right, it was 'also means to another end: full citizenship and absorption into the body politic.' Clearly, Canada chose to eliminate Indians by assimilating them, unlike the Americans, who had long sought to exterminate them physically. 'In other words, the extinction of the Indians as Indians is the ultimate end' of Canadian Indian policy, noted the American official. The peaceful elimination of lndians' sense of identity as Aboriginal people and their integration into the general citizenry would eventually end any need for Indian agents, farm instructors, financial assistance, residential schools, and other programs. By the cultural assimilation it would bring about, education in residential schools would prove 'the means of wiping out the whole Indian establishment.'