Declining missionary fluency in Native languages was both effect and cause of increasing pressure in the schools to end the children's use of Aboriginal languages. The principal at Portage school reported as early as 1902 that 'I do not allow the children to speak any Sioux as I have found it necessary to make any progress in English (sic). About the same time it was 'an offence to speak either Chinook or Siwash' at Ahousaht school on the west side of Vancouver Island. By the 1920s, 'Adhesive [was] put on pupil's mouth if caught speaking own language' at Round Lake school in Saskatchewan. And after the Second World War. in several newly established residential schools in northern Quebec, French, rather than English, was the European language tatight to Native students.

      In spite of the Department of Indian Affairs' insistence that English, or French, be used rather than a Native language, the assimilative linguistic campaign never completely succeeded. The missionaries themselves opposed a total ban on the use of Inuktitut or Indian languages. Many principals and teachers simply saw little point in trying to enforce language bans.

      An overwhelming body of evidence indicates, however, that children who did not experience cultural alienation over language policy were decidedly the minority. By far the more common experience was that boarding-school students were sternly forbidden to speak their language. They usually were punished, sometimes severely, if they broke the rule. School records and student recollections agree that vigorous disciplinary action was taken to discourage the use of Aboriginal languages. A woman who attended the Spanish school recalled, 'Speaking our language was a major punishment due,' and the Conduct Book of a Roman Catholic school on Vancouver Island recorded many instances of punishment for such infractions as 'talking Indian,' 'Indian dances,' and 'Forbidden Games.' It is also clear from a vast body of evidence that the missionary attack on Native languages was often part of a broader assault on Aboriginal identity and the individual Native person's sense of worth as an Indian or Inuit.