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who was the ice skater who was attacked | Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan: A Complete Timeline of Kerrigan's Attack and Aftermath | The orchestrated assault on the figure skater was called "the whack heard around the world."By Eudie Pak
On January 6, 1994, Nancy Kerrigan was attacked after practice at the Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan, in what would become one of the biggest sports scandals in history.
The hitman was Shane Stant, who used a 21-inch collapsible baton to strike Kerrigan's right leg. He, along with his uncle Derrick Smith, were contracted by Jeff Gillooly, the ex-husband of skating rival Tonya Harding , and Harding's bodyguard, Shawn Eckhardt.
So how was Harding involved? Kerrigan was her longtime rival — the one person in the way of her making the Olympic team. Harding's desperation to win at all costs prompted Gillooly to set up the attack. (Though she didn't admit it at the time, Harding later confessed in 2018 that she "knew something was up.")
Thus, fierce competition and the lust for fame and fortune were the motivations behind taking Kerrigan down, bringing together a stranger-than-fiction motley crew of amateur hooligans. The crime had all the machinations fit for a tabloid soap opera, which was most recently depicted in the 2017 dark comedy I, Tonya .
Explore our photographic timeline of the infamous scandal.
Kristi Yamaguchi, Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan and Tonia Kwiatkowski on the podium at the 1991 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Minneapolis, Minnesota
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A peek into their long-standing rivalry, Harding beats Kerrigan at the 1991 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. The following month, she was triumphant again, winning silver to Kerrigan's bronze at the ISU World Championships in Germany. Harding also became the first American woman to perform a triple axel successfully in a competition that year.
Fast forward three years later, and Kerrigan becomes the victim of Harding and Gillooly's lust to win. Hired hitman Stant clubs Kerrigan's right knee and cameras were able to capture the immediate aftermath. The following day on January 7, newspapers plastered Kerrigan's traumatized face on their covers as she screamed out in tears, “Why? Why? Why? Why me?”
Fortunately for Kerrigan, the injury left her with just bruises – no broken bones. Unfortunately for Kerrigan, her injury was severe enough that she was forced to pull out of competing in the national championships the following night.
Tonya Harding pumps her fists as she finishes her gold medal-winning program at the women's championship on January 8, 1994
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Harding wins gold at the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships and is guaranteed a spot at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway — just as she had hoped. Still, in support of Kerrigan who had to forgo the competition due to the attack, her fellow skaters offered her a spot to compete in the Olympics as well.
After an FBI investigation is launched into Harding's bodyguard, Eckhardt, on January 12, Eckardt confesses to his involvement in the attack and incriminates Stant, Gillooly and Smith, who was the driver of the getaway car.
Kerrigan tries her best to remain positive at a press conference after a number of the criminals were formally charged. At the same time, the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) deliberates on whether Harding should compete in the Olympics and ultimately decides that she is allowed to since — aside from her repeated denials of being involved in Kerrigan's attack — no evidence has emerged to contradict her claims.
As the mastermind behind Kerrigan's attack, Gillooly would later surrender to the FBI four days later after a warrant was issued for his arrest. Although Harding would continue to deny any involvement, Gillooly would confess on January 27 that he orchestrated the assault and would also implicate Harding, Eckhardt, Stant and Smith.
Still, around this time, Harding denies involvement, issuing the following statement to the press: "Despite my mistakes and rough edges, I have done nothing to violate the standards of excellence in sportsmanship that are expected in an Olympic athlete."
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On February 1, in exchange for a lighter sentence, Gillooly testifies against his ex-wife and pleads guilty to the crime of racketeering. Days later, Gillooly and Harding's trash was recovered, revealing notes of Kerrigan's practice schedule in Massachusetts. A handwriting expert confirms that the notes were written by Harding.
After some tense jockeying between the U.S. Olympic Committee and Harding on whether she could compete in the Olympics, the committee decides she can participate.
With all of the allegations swirling around Harding, the press is in a frenzy when she and Kerrigan share the ice at an Olympic practice session for the first time since the January 6 attack. Kerrigan purposely wears the same outfit she had on when she was assaulted as she skates around Harding. Kerrigan later tells the press: "Humor is good, it's empowering."
On the night of the Olympics, Harding abruptly stops performing during her first skate due to a broken shoelace. Although she's allowed a re-skate, it proves pointless. Harding ultimately comes in eighth place at the Olympics, with many people calling the results "karma."
With high expectations to win gold due to the infamous events that propelled her into the media spotlight, Kerrigan skates her best yet, but still falls short of gold, thanks to a surprise upset by 16-year-old Ukrainian Oksana Baiul . Taking silver, Kerrigan appears to be displeased and later gets caught on camera complaining about Baiul who was causing a delay in the medal ceremony. “Oh, come on. So she’s going to get out here and cry again. What’s the difference?” Kerrigan said, not knowing the cameras were rolling.
With evidence mounted against her, Harding officially pleads guilty to the charge of "conspiracy to hinder prosecution." She receives three years probation and is slapped with a $160,000 fine. A few months later, her 1994 national championships title is revoked, and she is banned from the USFSA forever.
With the exception of Harding, everyone else involved in Kerrigan's attack serves jail time. | https://www.biography.com/crime/tonya-harding-nancy-kerrigan-attack-photos | 73 |
who was the ice skater who was attacked | Nancy Kerrigan - Wikipedia | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|Nancy Kerrigan|
|Personal information|
|Full name||Nancy Ann Kerrigan|
|Country represented||United States|
|Born|| October 13, 1969 |
Stoneham, Massachusetts , U.S.
|Height||5 ft 4 in (163 cm) [1]|
|Former coach|
|Retired||1994|
Medal record
Nancy Ann Kerrigan (born October 13, 1969) [2] is an American figure skater and actress. She won bronze medals at the 1991 World Championships and the 1992 Winter Olympics , silver medals at the 1992 World Championships and the 1994 Winter Olympics , as well as the 1993 US National Figure Skating Championship . Kerrigan was inducted into the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2004.
On January 6, 1994, an assailant used a police baton to strike Kerrigan on her landing knee; the attacker was hired by the ex-husband of her rival Tonya Harding . The attack injured Kerrigan, but she quickly recovered. Harding and Kerrigan both participated in the 1994 Winter Olympics , but after the Games, Harding was permanently banned from competitive figure skating. At the Olympics, Kerrigan won the silver medal in a controversial showdown with gold medal winner Oksana Baiul . She then started touring and performed with several ice skating troupes that included Champions on Ice and Broadway on Ice . In 2017, she was a contestant on Dancing with the Stars .
Kerrigan was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts , [2] the youngest child and only daughter of welder Daniel Kerrigan (1939–2010) [3] and homemaker Brenda Kerrigan (née Schultz, b. 1940). She is of English, Irish and German ancestry, and has stated: "There's very little Irish in me, just my name." [4] While her brothers Michael and Mark played hockey, she took up figure skating [5] at age six. She did not start private lessons until age eight and won her first competition, the Boston Open, at age nine. [2]
Kerrigan's family was of modest means. Her father sometimes worked three jobs to fund her skating career; he also drove the Zamboni at the local rink in exchange for Nancy's lessons. [6] Kerrigan was coached by Theresa Martin until she was 16, then began working with Evy and Mary Scotvold [7] after a brief period with Denise Morrissey. The Scotvolds remained her coaches through the rest of her competitive career.
Kerrigan began to reach prominence at the national level when she placed fourth at the junior level at the 1987 U.S. Figure Skating Championships . She made an early impression as a strong jumper, but was comparatively weak in compulsory figures . [8] She made her senior debut the following season, moving up the national rankings each year: 12th in 1988, fifth in 1989,when she was the bronze medal winner at the 1989 Winter Universiade and fourth in 1990. [9] She continued to be held back by compulsory figures until they were eliminated from competitions after the 1990 season. [10]
Kerrigan's rise at the national level continued when she placed third at the 1991 U.S. Figure Skating Championships . She qualified for the 1991 World Figure Skating Championships , where she won the bronze medal. Her medal was part of the first-ever sweep of the women's podium by a single country at the World Championships, as her teammates Kristi Yamaguchi and Tonya Harding won gold and silver, respectively. [11]
In the 1992 season, Kerrigan again improved on her placement at the previous year's national championships by finishing second. She won a bronze medal (Yamaguchi took the gold) in the 1992 Winter Olympics and earned the silver medal at the 1992 World Championships. [12]
The following season—with Yamaguchi retired from eligible competition—Kerrigan became United States champion, even though her performance was flawed. She admitted that she would have to improve her skating in time for the World Championships. [13] She won the short program at the World Championships in Prague , but had a disastrous free skate that resulted in her tumbling to fifth in the standings. [14] This was followed by an even worse performance at a televised pro-am event, where Kerrigan fell three times, botched the landing of another jump, and appeared dazed and depressed, losing to 1988 Olympian Caryn Kadavy . [15]
Before and after the 1992 Olympics, she had many corporate sponsorship contracts (with companies such as Campbell's Soup , Evian , Reebok , and Seiko ) [16] and opportunities to perform professionally, which were permitted after the International Skating Union abolished the earlier strict amateur status rules that had governed eligibility for the sport. [17] [18] In preparation for the 1994 Winter Olympics, she curtailed these activities to focus on her training, instead. She also began working with a sports psychologist to better handle her nerves in competition. [16] [19]
On January 6, 1994, at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit, Kerrigan was the victim of a crime that brought her international fame far beyond the skating world. As she was walking through a corridor at Cobo Arena immediately after a practice session, Kerrigan was bludgeoned on the right lower thigh with a police baton by an assailant, who was later apprehended and identified as Shane Stant. The assault was planned by rival Tonya Harding 's ex-husband Jeff Gillooly [20] and co-conspirator Shawn Eckardt (1967–2007). [21] [22] The conspirators' goal was to prevent Kerrigan from competing in both the National Championships and the Lillehammer 1994 Olympics . [23]
The attack's immediate aftermath was recorded on a TV camera and broadcast around the world. [24] The initial footage showed the attendants helping Kerrigan as she grabbed at her knee, crying out: "Why, why, why?" Kerrigan was also seen being carried away by her father Daniel. Harding won the championship, with Michelle Kwan second. Although Kerrigan's injury forced her to withdraw from the U.S. Championships, her fellow skaters agreed that she merited one of the two spots on the Olympic team. [25] The USFSA chose to name her to the Olympic team rather than Kwan, who was sent to Lillehammer as an alternate in the event that Harding was removed from the team. [26]
Kerrigan recovered quickly from her injury and resumed her intensive training. She practiced by doing complete back-to-back, double run-throughs of her programs until she felt completely confident in her ability to compete under pressure. [19] [27] The fame she had acquired from the attack led to further opportunities; she was reported to have already signed endorsement contracts for $9.5 million before the Olympics began. [28]
Harding denied any involvement in the planning of the attack but later pleaded guilty to conspiring to hinder the prosecution. [29] In late 2005, Kerrigan expressed objections to Shane Stant's wishes to have the attack removed from his record so he could join the Navy SEALs , which do not recruit anyone with a felony conviction. Kerrigan stated in a letter dated November 25, 2005, that "to allow Stant to have the attack removed from his record would not only be an insult to [her], but it [also] would send the message that a crime like that can ultimately be swept under the rug." Stant's request had already been denied by a judge, saying that it is against the law to expunge an assault conviction. Stant was 34 when he tried to remove the attack from his record. [30]
The attack was depicted in the 2017 film, I, Tonya . [31]
The ladies single skating event of the 1994 Winter Olympics in the Hamar Olympic Amphitheatre of Norway took place seven weeks after the attack, and Kerrigan skated what she considered to be the best two performances of her life in the short program and free skate. [27] She won the silver medal, finishing second to Oksana Baiul and ahead of Chen Lu as Tonya Harding finished in eighth place amid controversy. Harding had trouble with her equipment (the laces on her skates) and was given a reskate by the judges. Kerrigan was in first place after the short program, but lost the free skate and the gold medal to Baiul in a close and controversial 5–4 decision. [32]
Kerrigan appeared to display dissatisfaction and disappointment with her second-place finish. While Kerrigan and Chen waited over 20 minutes for Olympic officials to find a copy of the Ukrainian national anthem , someone mistakenly told Kerrigan the delay in the presentation was because Baiul had cried off her make-up and was getting it retouched. Kerrigan, with obvious frustration, was caught on-camera saying, "Oh, come on. So she's going to get out here and cry again. What's the difference?" [33] CBS chose to air the undiplomatic comment. This marked a distinct shift in the way Kerrigan was portrayed in the media, which had been somewhat protective of her image up to that point because of the attack against her. [34]
Kerrigan elected not to attend the closing ceremonies at the Olympics. Her agent claimed this was because Norwegian security had advised her to leave due to death threats that had been made against her, but this was later denied. [34] Instead, she left Norway early to take part in a prearranged publicity parade at Walt Disney World , her $2 million sponsor.
Following the 1994 Winter Olympics, Kerrigan participated in a Walt Disney World parade. She was caught on microphone saying to Mickey Mouse , "This is dumb. I hate it. This is the corniest thing I have ever done." [35] She later said that her remark was taken out of context and she was not commenting on being in the parade but rather on her agent's insistence that she wear her silver medal in the parade. She said that her parents had always taught her not to show off or brag about her accomplishments. She added that she had nothing against Disney or Mickey Mouse: "Who could find fault with Mickey Mouse? He's the greatest mouse I've ever known." [36] [37]
Commenting on the media backlash, Mike Barnicle of The Boston Globe said, "Now the thing is over so we've got to kill her. That's us [the media], not her." [38] Either because of the bad publicity or her own inclinations, some of Kerrigan's previously announced endorsements and television deals were dropped after the Olympics. [34]
|International|
|Event||1984–85||1985–86||1986–87||1987–88||1988–89||1989–90||1990–91||1991–92||1992–93||1993–94|
|Olympics [39]||3rd||2nd|
|Worlds [40]||3rd||2nd||5th||WD|
|Skate America [41]||5th||2nd|
|Lalique [41]||3rd||3rd|
|NHK Trophy [41]||5th|
|Nations Cup [41]||1st|
|Goodwill Games [42]||5th|
|Piruetten [41]||1st|
|Novarat Trophy [41]||1st|
|Universiade [41]||3rd|
|National|
|U.S. Champ. [43] [44] [45] [46]||9th N.||11th J.||4th J.||12th||5th||4th||3rd||2nd||1st||WD|
|U.S. Olympic Festival [47] [48]||3rd||1st|
Kerrigan was inducted into the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2004. [49] She was also honored at Ice Theatre of New York 's annual benefit gala in 2008. [50]
Kerrigan's Olympic skating outfits were designed by fashion designer Vera Wang . Along with Christian Lacroix 's designs for Surya Bonaly in 1992, Wang's designs marked a new trend toward couture in figure skating. [51] Kerrigan's white 1992 free-skating costume resembled a wedding dress with sheer illusion sleeves and a basketweave design on the bodice . [52] Kerrigan's 1994 Olympic dresses were also designed by Wang. She wore another white dress trimmed with black velvet bands and sheer black sleeves for the original program and a champagne-colored dress set with 11,500 rhinestones for the free skate. Wang donated those two dresses to Kerrigan, the values of which were estimated at $9,600 and $13,000, respectively. [53]
Kerrigan turned professional after the Olympics. She appeared in a few competitions such as Ice Wars , but focused her career on performing in a variety of ice shows . [54] She has appeared in Champions on Ice , Broadway on Ice , and an ice show adaptation of the musical Footloose , among other productions. [55] [56]
In 2003, Kerrigan became a national spokeswoman for Fight for Sight . [57]
In the 1994 TV movie Tonya and Nancy: The Inside Story , she was portrayed by Heather Langenkamp . [58] Years later, Langenkamp commented: "Good girls always get short shrift in this society, we want the story to be about the bad girl. I can't imagine a more admirable character than Nancy Kerrigan and it's too bad we don't make movies about people like that. People consider good girls boring, unfortunately". [59]
In 1994, Kerrigan hosted Saturday Night Live , season 19 episode 15, featuring musical guest Aretha Franklin .
In Tattoo Assassins , a Mortal Kombat -style arcade fighting video game developed in 1994 by Data East (the release of which was cancelled, though rare, nearly-complete prototypes are in existence), one character the player can fight as is heavily based on Kerrigan. Namely, the figure-skater "Karla Keller" played by Cristine Dupree. Keller's backstory as given in the game itself has her as an Olympic hopeful but in a fictionalized version of the assault on Kerrigan, Keller's rival and fellow figure-skater "Eva Gunter" (a fictional version of Tonya Harding) attacks her late at night and injures her so much that Keller is forced to pull out of the Olympics. Since then, Keller trains in martial arts so she can one day take revenge on Gunter by beating her up. In the game, Karla Keller is dressed in full figure-skater attire (even wearing ice-skates) and like all other fighters in the game, has magical tattoos on her skin that come alive when the player performs special attacks and finishing moves. [60] [61]
In 1995, Kerrigan had a guest appearance on Boy Meets World in the episode "Wrong Side of the Track" where she helps Eric Matthews discover his potential for skating in a dream sequence. [62]
In 2004, Kerrigan sang a cover of " The Best " for a Tina Turner tribute album. [63]
Kerrigan appeared in the Fox television program Skating with Celebrities (2006) and played a small part in the ice-skating comedy feature film Blades of Glory (2007) with Will Ferrell . She hosted Nancy Kerrigan's World of Skating on the Comcast Network starting in 2005, and has done commentary work for other skating broadcasts. [64]
During the 2010 Winter Olympics , Kerrigan served as a "special correspondent" for Entertainment Tonight . [65]
She has written an instructional book on advanced figure-skating technique, Artistry on Ice ( ISBN 0-7360-3697-0 ).
In 2014, ESPN aired The Price of Gold , a 30 for 30 documentary about the 1994 attack. [66] On February 23, 2014, NBC aired a documentary during the 2014 Winter Olympics on the incident called Nancy & Tonya . [67] [68]
On July 10, 2016, Kerrigan competed against Kayla Harrison on the "Battle of the Olympians" episode of the television program, Flea Market Flip (S7 E2)
On March 1, 2017, Kerrigan was named as one of the contestants who would compete on season 24 of Dancing with the Stars . She was paired with professional dancer Artem Chigvintsev . [69] [70] Despite receiving higher judges' scores than Bonner Bolton and David Ross , Kerrigan and Chigvintsev were eliminated during a double elimination in the seventh week of the competition. [71]
In November 2017, she appeared on Keeping Up with the Kardashians in the Christmas special episode.
In December 2017, a fictional movie about Tonya Harding and the attack on Kerrigan, entitled I, Tonya , was released; Caitlin Carver played Kerrigan. [72]
In January 2018, Kerrigan joined Inside Edition as their Super Bowl correspondent. [73] She also appeared in an episode of Fresh Off the Boat as herself. [74] In 2021, she played a voice role in the animated Easter movie, Eggs .
Kerrigan graduated from Stoneham High School and attended Emmanuel College in Boston to study business. [75] She created the Nancy Kerrigan Foundation, which aims to raise awareness and support for the vision-impaired. Her mother Brenda is legally blind. [76]
Kerrigan married her agent Jerry Solomon on September 9, 1995, the year after she retired from competition. The marriage was her first and his third. [77] They have three children together: Matthew (born 1996), [78] Brian (born 2005), and Nicole (born 2008). [79] [80] [81] Solomon also has a son from his second marriage. [82] In April 2017, Kerrigan said that she had six miscarriages in eight years, while attempting to have her three children. She said that the miscarriages were "devastating" and "a strain" on the marriage. [83]
- ^ Kubatko, Justin. "Nancy Kerrigan Biography and Olympic Results" . Olympics at Sports-Reference.com . Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on April 20, 2011 . Retrieved June 3, 2011 .
- ^ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Kerrigan | 73 |
who was the ice skater who was attacked | Remembering the attack on Nancy Kerrigan at the figure skating national championships 25 years ago - OlympicTalk | NBC Sports | “They say history repeats itself. It’s been 25 years since Detroit was the epicenter of the figure skating world.”
Todd Sand ’s first response to the question of what he remembered most about the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit is not as surprising as it seems.
“It was the year the pros were coming back,” Sand said. “That was the main chatter leading up to the season and the nationals.”
Indeed it was.
And the 1994 nationals would be the first significant place to gauge the impact of the International Skating Union’s 1992 decision to give professionals the option to be reinstated for Olympic-style events. That put 1988 Olympic champion Brian Boitano and 1982 world champion Elaine Zayak into the mix for the 1994 Olympic team, a competition made more cutthroat by the U.S. having earned just two spots in both men’s and women’s singles for those Winter Games in Norway.
The denouement of those comebacks figured to be the big story in Detroit.
“Yeah, right,” Zayak said, with a hearty laugh, when reminded of that scenario this week. “I really made a comeback the right year, huh?”
Zayak’s standing-ovation-worthy skating to get fourth place after seven years away from any serious competition and Boitano’s making the Olympic team with a disappointing second to Scott Davis now are among the footnotes to the most attention-getting and notorious story in the history of figure skating in the United States.
You likely remember it: The attack on Nancy Kerrigan by associates of Tonya Harding that marks its silver anniversary on Sunday.
But after 25 years, as the national championships return to Detroit for the first time, even that story has become somewhat fuzzy ancient history to most of those who will compete there Jan. 23-27, notwithstanding its revival in the 2017 mockumentary, “I, Tonya,” which brought actress Allison Janney the 2018 Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Harding’s mother.
“I joke around that we’re going back to the scene of the crime,” Sand said.
Sand, a three-time Olympian, was 30 when he won the 1994 U.S. pairs’ title with Jenni Meno , then 23, whom he married a year later. He and Meno, who live in suburban Los Angeles, are coming back to Detroit for nationals as coaches of two senior pairs, including reigning U.S. champions and 2018 Olympian team event bronze medalists Alexa Scimeca-Knierim and Chris Knierim .
“I’ll think about it, for sure,” Sand said. “But it’s pretty far in the past for everyone except our generation and older. The skaters now don’t know what you’re talking about, really.”
So, with a little help from Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine (that’s a Rocky & Bullwinkle reference, young’uns), let’s revisit an episode that would have fit right into one of the TV cartoon show’s segments of “Peabody’s Improbable History.”
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Thursday, January 6, 1994 was a gray winter’s day in Detroit, with the temperature hovering in the mid-20s and a brisk wind. It was the second day of senior competition at the 1994 nationals, with the pairs’ short program (then called the technical program) starting at 2:20 p.m. and the men’s free skate at 6:45 p.m., both in venerable Joe Louis Arena on the city’s riverfront. The women’s singles event would begin Friday afternoon at 3:35.
Nearly all the several dozen media covering nationals, me included, were in Joe Louis Arena for the pairs’ competition. Twenty-five minutes before the pairs began, the women’s singles practice group C, whose six skaters included reigning U.S. champion Kerrigan and a 13-year-old prodigy named Michelle Kwan , took the ice for a 50-minute practice session one-half mile away at Cobo Arena. It was one of three women’s practice groups.
Dana Scarton , then a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, went to the practice to interview skaters and coaches for a feature story. As the group C practice ended at 2:40 p.m., Scarton moved into the hallway skaters entered after coming off the ice and going through a split blue curtain. Security was lax in those pre-9/11 days, allowing media and other credentialed personnel access to nearly all backstage areas but dressing rooms, even though tennis star Monica Seles had been stabbed by a fan of a rival eight months earlier at a tournament in Germany.
“Skating was really innocent back then,” Sand said. “That helped make what happened even more surreal.”
Scarton, whose story in the Jan. 7, 1994 Post-Gazette is the best eyewitness account of what happened, wrote that she introduced herself to Kerrigan and asked for a brief interview as the skater passed through the blue curtain. Before Kerrigan could answer, Scarton reported, a large man charged the skater from behind, crouched near her and swung “something that looked like a crowbar,” then swung it again, hitting Kerrigan in the legs both times. The attacker fled, not only from the arena but the city, leading to several wildly inaccurate suspicions about his identity over the next several days.
The immediate aftermath, with Kerrigan sitting on the hallway floor screaming in pain and crying, “Why? Why? Why?” was captured by cameras from a Chicago-based sports and entertainment company, Intersport, in a clip that would be widely re-used for years to come . The Intersport crew had been following Kerrigan to get footage for a TV special.
Kwan, the youngest skater at the 1994 nationals, came off the ice at that practice just after Kerrigan.
“I didn’t see her being hit,” Kwan said in a text message this week. “I heard her crying and screaming, which was scary.”
At 28, Zayak was four and a half years older than anyone else in the women’s event (Kerrigan, 24, was next oldest). A decade had passed since her last “amateur,” or OIympic-style, competition, a sixth place at the 1984 Olympics and a third at the 1984 world championships.
Zayak said this week she had decided to return to the sport because the erratic skating she saw from Kerrigan and Harding at 1993 nationals made her think, “Is this really all we have for the Olympics?”
As an amateur, she was, like Harding, famed for her jumping, which included Zayak’s unprecedented six triple jumps at the 1982 worlds. Because four were the same jump, a triple toe loop, the ISU soon passed the “Zayak Rule,” limiting triple jump repetitions to one of each type, and one of those repeated triples needed to be in a jump combination.
Zayak, in the Jan. 6 afternoon practice group after Kerrigan’s, said she was going into a dressing room when she saw the chaos and heard Kerrigan screaming. “There was too much screaming for it to be just from a fall,” Zayak recalled. Then she found out Kerrigan had been hit and heard others say, “We think it has to do with Tonya.”
“I was like, ‘What, you’re saying Tonya hit somebody?’” she said. “I was scared and a nervous wreck. I didn’t want to go out on the ice. I just fooled around out there. It was hard to concentrate. I was thinking there might be somebody trying to get me out of the competition, too.”
In the middle of the pairs’ competition, someone came running into the press area at Joe Louis Arena with news of the attack. As we all headed immediately for the press room to begin reporting that story, which would consume most of our lives for the next three months, Mark McDonald of the Dallas Morning News joked, “Where was Tonya?”
Boitano, resting before the men’s free skate that night, said his reaction upon learning Kerrigan had been attacked was the same as McDonald’s. The rough-edged Harding already had earned a reputation for unusual behavior – an asthmatic who smoked, a skater prone to equipment malfunctions and a chip on her shoulder against the sport’s establishment.
“We found out right after we skated the technical program,” Sand said. “We couldn’t understand what was happening or why. The thought it could happen to anyone passed through our minds. We were very focused on what we were doing and pretty confident things would be locked down after that. But you were more aware of your surroundings when you were just walking around.”
Harding, in the practice group after Zayak’s, later said she was still in her hotel room when the attack occurred. But the jokesters were onto something, no matter that Harding would steadfastly and implausibly maintain she learned of who was involved and the plans for it only after it happened.
Over the next few days, Zayak found herself on the same shuttle bus to the rink as Harding.
“She talked like she didn’t have a care in the world,” Zayak said. “All she talked about was the inhaler she was using.”
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At 26, pair skater Jason Dungjen was excited about competing at the 1994 nationals because they were taking place in his hometown for the first time in the event’s then 80-year history. Dungjen, now a coach at the Detroit Skating Club, grew up 20 miles north in suburban Troy, Mich., and he spent many days watching the NHL Red Wings play at Joe Louis Arena.
“Now I was going to be out on that ice trying to make the Olympics,” he said.
Dungjen and partner Kyoko Ina of New York were 13th of 16 in the starting order for the pairs’ technical program. They had yet to skate when he heard about the attack.
“People started running around and yelling about someone who had been hit on the knee,” Dungjen recalled. “I wasn’t sure what was going on but I thought, ‘OK, I feel bad for whoever it was, but I’ve got to focus.’
“Once you step on the ice, everything hopefully goes away, which, thank God, it did. It became a massive distraction after that.”
Dungjen and Ina would finish second in both the short program and the free skate two days later to make the Olympic team. They finished ninth in the 1994 Winter Games and fourth four years later in Japan. Meno and Sand were fifth in 1994 and eighth in 1998.
Veterans like Boitano, then 30, and Zayak were experienced enough not to be rattled by the unsettling circumstances.
“All the medals and titles I had won outdid most of the girls that were there,” Zayak said. “I had been to the Olympics and five world championships. I could handle myself. I expected to skate great.”
When Zayak went into her hotel lobby a day after the attack, she saw a media swarm that included a reporter from the National Enquirer. Figure skating, perceived as the most genteel of sports, had hit the supermarket tabloids and, even in an era before social media, went viral on national TV and print news outlets for the next two months. One revelation after another about Harding and her associates ultimately turned the story into something even a B movie screenwriter would have rejected as too bizarre and too improbable – even for Mr. Peabody.
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Kerrigan withdrew from nationals soon after the attack because the damage to her knee, while fortunately not serious in the long term, would not allow her to skate in Detroit. U.S. Figure Skating officials, unaware of their own rules, first said the withdrawal would keep her out of the Olympics, only to learn shamefacedly that was not necessarily true from Newsweek writer Mark Starr , who found a rulebook and noted it allowed Olympic selection of athletes who had not competed at nationals.
Harding won the event, with Kwan second and Nicole Bobek third. Harding and Kerrigan were named to the team, provided Kerrigan could show fitness. Kwan became the first alternate.
Uncertainty over Kerrigan’s condition meant U.S. Figure Skating sent Kwan to Norway to train in case she was needed as an 11th-hour substitute. It was the first time U.S. Figure Skating sent an alternate to the Olympic site in advance of the competition.
Kwan’s 1993-94 U.S. Figure Skating media guide bio said, “…she lists Tonya Harding as having had a major impact on her career,” a connection that drew on Kwan’s being known as a jumping jack at that point in a career when artistry eventually became her calling card. Ironically, even after Kerrigan’s fitness was clear, Kwan nearly wound up replacing Harding.
“I didn’t know many details but was prepared just in case I was told that I was on the team last minute,” Kwan recalled in the text message.
Four days after nationals ended, the Portland Oregonian reported the FBI was investigating allegations that Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly , and her bodyguard, Shawn Eckardt , were involved in the attack. Over the next several weeks, the likelihood increased that Harding herself was aware of – and had not objected to – a plan to attack Kerrigan, the 1992 Olympic bronze medalist whose on-ice elegance made her a Madison Avenue darling.
The motive was money: without Kerrigan in the competition, Harding, who was fourth at the 1992 Winter Games, and the gang who couldn’t whack straight stood a better chance to reap rewards that would accompany an Olympic medal.
“When it comes right down to it, I see those little dollar signs in my head,” Harding had said before the 1994 nationals. “Nancy has already seen some of that.”
Harding’s lawyers threatened a $25 million lawsuit if USFS and the U.S. Olympic Committee barred her from skating in Norway. Utterly overmatched by Harding’s legal team, the USOC agreed to keep her on the team if the suit was dropped. Early in the morning after the Feb. 12 Opening Ceremony, the USOC held a press conference to announce Harding could compete. The media circus had just moved into a fourth ring.
Kerrigan recovered well enough to win the Olympic silver medal behind Oksana Baiul of Ukraine. Harding finished eighth, famously delaying the free skate with a broken skate lace. Boitano had a disastrous Olympic technical program and wound up sixth.
“At the time, it bothered me that this dark cloud overshadowed everything else about nationals,” Boitano said. “I had done photo shoots for the cover of TV Guide and Newsweek, and both were taken over by the attack.
“I didn’t think at first it helped the sport a lot, and it hadn’t even become the hype it would at the Olympics, where it was all Tonya and Nancy, all the time. I could have gotten straight 6.0s (perfect scores under the old system) in the Olympics, and people would have asked, ‘Well, what are Tonya and Nancy doing?’
“In retrospect, it was good for most of us. It catapulted skating to another level of interest, one that it will never get back to. I was able to work at a high level for many more years to come.”
Or, as Dungjen said when asked about the edgy message about history repeating itself in the USFS promotion for 2019, “At this point, any press is good press.”
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Tonya Harding pleaded guilty March 16, 1994 to conspiracy to hinder prosecution and was sentenced to three years’ probation, a $100,000 fine and 500 hours community service.
Three months later, U.S. Figure Skating stripped her of the 1994 national title and banned her from participating or coaching in USFS-sanctioned events. The USFS media guide says “Vacant*” in the box for the 1994 women’s champion. The asterisk is explained at the end of the list of annual champions.
The senior events at this year’s nationals will take place at Little Caesars Arena, about one mile from where Joe Louis Arena stood. “The Joe,” site of the Skate America Grand Prix event in 1995, 1997, 1998 and 2013, is scheduled for demolition. Cobo Arena now is used as exposition space in the Cobo Center, a meeting and convention facility.
“Even without the same arenas, I think there will, of course, still be memories for anybody who was there in 1994,” Dungjen said. “It will be in the back of your mind.”
At this year’s nationals, Dungjen will be coaching lower-level skaters whose events take place at the Detroit Skating Club in suburban Bloomfield Hills. Boitano is coming for the USFS athlete alumni event.
Zayak, who lives and coaches in northern New Jersey, will not attend. She has been back to the Detroit area just once, for her 2013 induction into the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame.
As her 16-year-old son, Jack , has become more involved in sports, Zayak has reduced her coaching to three days a week, working with local rather than national-level skaters. She has come to terms with the idea that her heralded 1994 comeback was swallowed up by what the mockumentary scriptwriter called, “THE INCIDENT.”
“I don’t think anyone outside the world of figure skating would remember I was part of that nationals,” she said. “Even my son asked me, ‘You were there, mommy?’
“The first thing that comes to my mind about it was I got two standing ovations. Even with all that craziness, it’s a memory I will never forget. I couldn’t have asked for a better year to come back.”
Philip Hersh, who has covered figure skating at the last 11 Winter Olympics, is a special contributor to NBCSports.com/figure-skating. Look on this site for his stories at the 2019 U.S. Championships.
As a reminder, you can watch the U.S. Championships live and on-demand with the ‘Figure Skating Pass’ on NBC Sports Gold. Go to NBCsports.com/gold/figure-skating to sign up for access to every ISU Grand Prix and championship event, as well as domestic U.S. Figure Skating events throughout the season. NBC Sports Gold gives subscribers an unprecedented level of access on more platforms and devices than ever before.
Jordan Larson , who in Tokyo captained the U.S. to its first Olympic women’s volleyball title as tournament MVP, is returning to the national team for the first time since the Games.
Larson, 36, competed at the last three Olympics, winning a medal of every color.
She said in March 2020 that she planned an international retirement for after the Tokyo Games in 2021 for “other endeavors in my life that I want to see. Getting married, having children, those kinds of things.”
“I would want nothing more than to have a family,” she tweeted Thursday . “Unfortunately, god has other plans. I have been blessed to do what I love for a very long time and still have a passion for it.”
U.S. head coach Karch Kiraly said in a VolleyballMag.com video interview published Thursday that Larson “will be in our gym.”
“She is on our roster for VNL in terms of eligibility,” Kiraly said, referencing the volleyball nations league, which begins May 30 and runs at various times through mid-July final rounds in Texas. “Jordan had a certain life path planned out, mapped out, and then some things changed, and so her life took a couple of unexpected turns, which led her to kind of reassess things.
“In general, I guess I’d say she is surprised at how much she is still enjoying this game and surprised at how good her body is still feeling after having played for quite a number of years.”
Larson continued to play club volleyball after Tokyo in China and Italy.
Without Larson, the national team placed fourth at last fall’s quadrennial world championship.
If Larson goes for a fourth Olympics, she can become the second-oldest U.S. Olympic female indoor volleyball player after program record five-time Olympian Danielle Scott-Arruda , according to Olympedia.org.
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The U.S. men’s hockey roster for the world championship that starts next week includes three 2022 Olympians and, as of now, zero players who have made an NHL All-Star team.
The last time a U.S. men’s team for worlds had zero NHL All-Stars was 2010. In most years since, there have been one or two players with All-Star experience with many others choosing rest after a seven-month NHL campaign.
The first 22 players were named Thursday, including 2022 Olympians goalie Drew Commesso , forward Sean Farrell and defenseman Nick Perbix .
The player on the team with the most NHL points this season was Alex Tuch (79 for the Buffalo Sabres, 10th-most among Americans). Casey DeSmith is the most experienced goalie after playing 38 games for the Penguins this season.
Three more skaters can still be named to the team. The first U.S. game at worlds, co-hosted by Finland and Latvia, is May 12.
While the NHL didn’t participate in the last two Olympics, rosters at the annual world championship include NHL players.
As usual, worlds take place during the Stanley Cup playoffs. NHL players whose teams get eliminated in the playoffs are sometimes added to national teams during the world championship.
Notable Americans whose NHL teams are still in the playoffs include Auston Matthews , Matthew Tkachuk , Jack Hughes , Jack Eichel , Jason Robertson and goalie Jake Oettinger .
Notable Americans whose NHL seasons are over but were not named to the team Thursday included two-time Olympian Patrick Kane , Brady Tkachuk , Johnny Gaudreau and goalies Connor Hellebuyck and Jeremy Swayman .
The head coach is San Jose Sharks head coach David Quinn , who also coached the U.S. at the 2022 Olympics (quarterfinals) and 2022 Worlds (fourth place).
Last year, the U.S. men lost a world championship semifinal for an 11th consecutive time, again missing out on a first gold or silver finish since 1950.
The U.S. has lost all 11 of its semifinals at worlds since the IIHF reinstituted a bracketed playoff round in 1992. Its last silver medal at a standalone worlds was in 1950. Its last gold was in 1933.
Last year’s world team had three 2022 Olympians: goalie Strauss Mann and forwards Ben Meyers and Farrell. The most notable NHL veterans on last year’s team were five-time All-Star defenseman Seth Jones and forward Alex Galchenyuk .
OlympicTalk is on Apple News . Favorite us! | https://olympics.nbcsports.com/2019/01/04/nancy-kerrigan-tonya-harding-attack-25th-anniversary/ | 73 |
who was the ice skater who was attacked | Tonya Harding - Skating, Jeff Gillooly & Nancy Kerrigan Attack | Tonya Harding is an American figure skater who ruined her future in the sport when she was implicated in the attack on fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan at the 1994 Winter Olympic trials.
(1970-)
In 1991, Tonya Harding won her first national skating title and became the first American woman to complete a triple axel in competition.
In 1994, she earned notoriety when ex-husband Jeff Gillooly hired a hitman to assault skater Nancy Kerrigan at the Olympic trials. Harding pleaded guilty to hindering the investigation into Kerrigan's attack, and was subsequently banned from competing in the U.S. for life.
Since then, Harding has made guest appearances on shows like Rosanne , Larry King Live , The Weakest Link and Celebrity Boxing . Harding returned to the public eye with the big screen release of I, Tonya in late 2017, and competed on Dancing with the Stars the following spring.
Figure skater and boxer Tonya Maxine Harding was born in Portland, Oregon, on November 12, 1970. The daughter of LaVona and Al Harding, she began skating at the age of 3. Harding dropped out of high school during her sophomore year to pursue ice skating. She would later earn her GED.
Harding won her first national title in 1991, also becoming the first American woman to complete a triple axel in competition.
Harding took the silver medal at the world championships and placed fourth at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. She made history the previous year when she became the first woman to land a triple axel jump in competition at the 1991 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Harding was married to her first husband, Gillooly, a conveyor belt operator, from 1990 until 1993. He often served as Harding's manager, and she accused him of abuse, filing for divorce twice.
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In January 1994, Harding earned notoriety when Gillooly hired a hitman to assault fellow U.S. figure skater Kerrigan at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Gillooly later pleaded guilty to helping Harding plan the Kerrigan attack. He served time in prison and changed his name to Jeff Stone upon his release in 1995 and took a job as a used car salesman.
Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding was booked in 1994 for her part in the infamous attack on rival skater Nancy Kerrigan.
In a practice leading up to the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Harding’s ex-husband Gillooly hired a hitman to assault competitor Kerrigan . The hitman clubbed Kerrigan in the knee with a police baton, seriously bruising her kneecap and quadriceps tendon and preventing her from participating in the championships.
Harding and Kerrigan had competed against each other for years, including in the 1992 Olympic Games, when Kerrigan took home bronze and Harding took home fourth. The goal of the 1994 attack was to keep Kerrigan from participating in that year’s Olympic Games in Norway. Despite her knee injury, Kerrigan went on to win the silver medal at the 1994 Olympic Games.
Harding pleaded guilty to hindering the investigation into Kerrigan's attack, which allowed her to avoid jail time. Under the plea bargain, Harding was stripped of her gold from the 1994 U.S. Championships. She was also banned from competing in the U.S. for life.
The media jumped on the attack as a catfight, with director Nanette Burstein calling the incident “the evil witch vs. the snow queen” in her 2014 ESPN documentary The Price Of Gold .
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Harding has sought the spotlight in other ways since the end of her ice skating career in 1994, including several television guest appearances on shows such as Rosanne , Larry King Live and The Weakest Link . She has also participated in televised celebrity boxing matches, garnering fame for her winning bout against Paula Jones on the popular FOX show Celebrity Boxing in 2002.
Harding made her official debut as a professional boxer — a career she would hold only briefly — in February 2003, losing the undercard match of the Mike Tyson-Clifford Etienne bout in a four-round decision. In 2008 she was a commentator on the popular truTV program The Smoking Gun Presents: World's Dumbest.
Harding has been married three times. She and her first husband, Gillooly, were married from 1990 until 1993. She and her second husband, Michael Smith, were married from 1995 to 1996. In June 2010, Harding married third husband Joseph Jens Price.
Harding became a mother on February 27, 2011, when she gave birth to Gordon, her first and only son with Joseph Price.
A dark comedy about Harding's life, I, Tonya , was released in December 2017. Starring Margot Robbie as Harding, the movie explores the skater's troubled childhood, professional ascent into the sport and the fallout after the Kerrigan attack.
The following month brought the two-hour ABC special, Truth and Lies: The Tonya Harding Story , in which Harding discussed her troubled relationship with her mother, her reaction to seeing her life dramatized on the big screen and the incident that propelled her to infamy.
In trailers for the special, Harding admitted that she "knew that something was up" in regards to a planned attack, but insisted that she was a pawn in the scheme. "I am always the bad person and I never understood that," she said.
Tonya Harding pumps her fists as she finishes her gold medal-winning program at the women’s championship January 8, 1994.
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In April 2018, Harding was named to the cast of Dancing with the Stars: Athletes , alongside 2018 U.S. figure skating Olympian Adam Rippon and retired sports greats like basketballer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar .
The decision was said to be a controversial one, though, as a Harding friend told People , "Tonya gets ratings. God knows, she gets ratings."
"],["
"]]" tml-render-layout="inline">
- Name: Tonya Maxine Harding
- Birth Year: 1970
- Birth date: November 12, 1970
- Birth State: Oregon
- Birth City: Portland
- Birth Country: United States
- Gender: Female
- Best Known For: Tonya Harding is an American figure skater who ruined her future in the sport when she was implicated in the attack on fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan at the 1994 Winter Olympic trials.
- Industries
- Astrological Sign: Scorpio
- Interesting Facts
- In 1991, Tonya Harding became the first American woman to complete a triple axel in competition.
- Article Title: Tonya Harding Biography
- Author: Biography.com Editors
- Website Name: The Biography.com website
- Url: https://www.biography.com/athletes/tonya-harding
- Access Date:
- Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
- Last Updated: September 11, 2020
- Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
- I have never been the stereotypical figure skater.
- I was told my whole life, you're fat, you're ugly, you're never going to amount to be anything.
- I moved around 13 different times before I was in fifth grade, not having money, not having a lot of friends.
- I just want to be me, and skating is me. I don't want to compete. I'd like to have my own skating show, though. | https://www.biography.com/athletes/tonya-harding | 73 |
who was the ice skater who was attacked | Today in History: Nancy Kerrigan Was Attacked at Michigan Ice Arena | It’s hard to believe one of the most heinous attacks on an athlete happened almost 30 years ago today.
On Jan. 6, 1994, Nancy Kerrigan, one of the rising stars in American figure skating, was ambushed while walking down a corridor in Detroit’s Cobo Arena. The assailant, later ID’d as Shane Stant, attacked Kerrigan with a telescopic baton.
His aim was to injure Kerrigan so badly that she couldn’t skate in the ongoing 1994 United States Figure Skating Championships and the 1994 Winter Olympics.
Later it was determined that rival skater Tonya Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly and his friend Shawn Eckardt were behind the attack. Harding was jealous of Kerrigan, and the attack was meant to stop Kerrigan from competing, ostensibly so that Harding could get all the glory.
Kerrigan recovered in time to skate in the Olympics, and Harding participated as well. However, not long after, Harding was banned for life from U.S. Figure Skating. at the Games and became one of the most sympathetic and beloved Olympians of all time.
© 2023 - 910 Media Group | https://www.9and10news.com/2023/01/06/today-in-history-nancy-kerrigan-was-attacked-at-michigan-ice-arena/ | 73 |
who was the ice skater who was attacked | Assault of Nancy Kerrigan - Wikipedia | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|Assault of Nancy Kerrigan|
|Location|| Cobo Arena |
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
|Coordinates||42°19′35″N 83°2′49″W Coordinates : 42°19′35″N 83°2′49″W|
|Date|| January 6, 1994 |
c. 2:35 PM ( EST ( UTC−05:00 ))
|Target||Nancy Kerrigan|
Attack type
|Bludgeoning|
|Weapon||ASP telescopic baton|
|Injured||Nancy Kerrigan|
|Perpetrators|
|Assailant||Shane Stant|
|Accused||Tonya Harding|
|Charges|
|Litigation||Harding v. US Figure Skating Ass'n, 851 F. Supp. 1476 (D. Or. 1994)|
On January 6, 1994, Nancy Kerrigan , an American figure skater , was struck on the lower right thigh with a telescopic baton by assailant Shane Stant as she walked down a corridor in Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan. Kerrigan had been practicing skating on an ice rink in the arena shortly beforehand.
The attack was planned by Jeff Gillooly, the ex-husband of fellow American figure skater Tonya Harding , and his co-conspirator Shawn Eckardt. [1] [2] [3] They hired Stant, and his uncle Derrick Smith, to carry out the attack. Gillooly and Eckardt both claimed that Harding was involved in the attack and had knowledge of it beforehand. Harding initially denied all knowledge of the attack, [4] [5] but soon accepted a plea agreement admitting to helping cover up the attack after the fact. [6] [7] Later, both a grand jury [8] and a disciplinary panel from the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) [9] found further evidence of Harding's involvement during the planning and execution phases.
The attack was intended to prevent Kerrigan from taking part in the ongoing 1994 United States Figure Skating Championships and the forthcoming Winter Olympics , thus increasing the prospects of Harding in both figure skating events. Kerrigan could not compete in the US Championship but recovered in time to compete in the Winter Olympics. Both women competed in the 1994 Olympics, and Harding was later banned for life from USFSA figure skating events. [10]
Nancy Kerrigan is an American former figure skater who, in January 1994, was about to take part in the United States Figure Skating Championships in Detroit, Michigan . Her main rival in that tournament was Tonya Harding . The attack took place just days before the tournament, and rendered Kerrigan unable to take part. [11] The Winter Olympics were also set to take place in February, where Kerrigan and Harding were likely to be the two female figure skaters representing the United States. The attack benefited Harding as it allowed her to win the U.S. Championships with ease and could have benefited her if it had taken Kerrigan out of the Olympics. [1]
Jeff Gillooly was Tonya Harding's ex-husband. [1] At the time of the attack, the couple were together and still referred to each other as husband and wife. Shawn Eckardt, a friend of Gillooly's who was also Harding's bodyguard before the attack, had originally been hired by the figure skater after she received an anonymous death threat . [12] Shane Stant later testified that Harding was part of staging the death threat against herself. [13] Derrick Smith, an associate of Eckardt, was paid $6,500 to carry out the attack; Eckardt had received the money from Gillooly. Shane Stant, Smith's nephew, initially planned to carry out the attack by himself and had travelled to Kerrigan's home rink in Cape Cod in late December 1993, but was unable to locate her. Stant then followed Kerrigan to the Nationals in Detroit in early January 1994. Gillooly opposed carrying out an attack in Detroit, feeling it too likely they would be caught, and instructed Eckardt to wire Stant funds to return home without carrying out the attack. Eckardt instead wired the funds to Smith, who then traveled to join Stant in Detroit. [14] Stant and Smith then planned to carry out the attack together. [15]
On the afternoon of January 6, 1994, Kerrigan was practicing for the U.S. Championships on an ice rink inside Cobo Arena . A camera crew was recording her practice session and showed her leaving the ice rink and walking through a curtain and down a hallway; the camera then cuts out. [16] Stant stated in a 2018 interview that he was standing "about a foot and a half" (around half a meter) behind the camera crew and waited for them to stop filming before he followed Kerrigan through the curtain. [17] Stant approached Kerrigan from behind, extended a telescopic baton , struck her lower right thigh and walked away. He then escaped from the arena by smashing through a locked glass door. Smith was waiting in a car outside and acted as a getaway driver . The camera crew began recording again shortly after the attack and recorded Kerrigan sitting on the floor crying surrounded by arena staff. Here, Kerrigan exclaimed the now-famous line, "Why? Why? Why?" [a] This footage was later broadcast around the world in news programs. Kerrigan was then carried away to a changing room by her father. [16] The attack severely bruised her knee and quadriceps tendon and forced her to withdraw from the U.S. Championships. [18]
Harding met Jeff Gillooly in 1986 when she was skating at the Clackamas Town Center ; she was 15, he was 17. They later exchanged phone numbers and went out to the movies, chaperoned by her father. [19] In 1988, the couple moved into a home together, and Harding claimed she began experiencing physical abuse from Gillooly. [20] They married on March 18, 1990. Harding's mother, LaVona, said she opposed the marriage: "I knew Jeff had a violent streak [...] he tried to break down the door because he thought [Tonya] had gone out with another boy." [21] On June 17, 1991, Harding filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Two days later, she received a restraining order against Gillooly: "He wrenched my arm and wrist, pulled my hair and shoved me [...] he bought a shotgun, and I am scared for my safety." [21]
Harding later claimed she was the victim of acquaintance rape sometime during her separation from Gillooly in 1991, "by a friend of mine, who I knew for eight years." [22] In summer 1991, she became engaged to mechanical engineer Mike Pliska. He ended their engagement after he saw Harding disrespecting people and giving her phone number to another man. [23] In autumn 1991, Harding dated a Canadian banker. In October, she decided to reconcile with Gillooly and withdraw the divorce, saying they were still in love and seeking counseling: "I know he's changed. I see it in his eyes, and I believe in him... I don't want to lose him. I really don't." [21] [24]
On March 10, 1992, Harding had a roadside physical altercation with a female motorist in Portland, Oregon . The first deputy on the scene observed Harding holding a baseball bat after breaking the motorist's eyeglasses. The incident ended in apologies and no criminal charges were filed. [25]
In both March and July 1993, police came to Harding and Gillooly's shared apartment after reported arguments. In a July affidavit, Harding wrote that she had been in an abusive marriage for two years, "he has assaulted me physically with his open hand and fist [...] put me down to the floor on several occasions." [23] Harding was granted another restraining order and filed for divorce. [26] In spring 1993, she dated Tom Arant who spoke about Harding to The Oregonian , saying she would complain about Gillooly, yet still contacted him often: "she couldn't stop talking to him." [27] That summer, a man from Harding's gym claimed to The Oregonian that Harding offered to pay him to "take care" of Gillooly, "slap him around a little." He said he was offended and declined. [28] [24]
On August 28, 1993, Harding and Gillooly were granted a divorce. Ten days later, Harding's lawyer asked the restraining order to be lifted because the couple again wished to reconcile. [23] On October 2, at approximately 3 a.m., neighbours of the couple called the police when they heard them arguing outside and a single gunshot. The neighbours reported seeing Gillooly pick Harding up and place her in a truck, and feared Harding had been shot. [29] A police officer stopped the truck and confiscated a found shotgun and a 9mm Beretta pistol that had recently been discharged. [30] The officer then interviewed Harding and Gillooly separately about what had happened, but their stories did not match. Gillooly first stated that the gun had fired when he was carrying it. Harding then admitted that she had fired the gun and was worried about the publicity. Gillooly said that Harding had been moving her possessions into his truck when they started an argument over his former girlfriend; he declined to press charges. [29] In November 1993, the couple were evicted from their apartment for failing to pay rent. [31]
During Tonya Harding's FBI testimony on January 18, 1994, she requested and received some ice to treat her swollen ankle. When asked about her finances, Harding said she had one bank account which was currently $109 overdrawn . [30] She was also asked about her relationship with Gillooly and replied she still considered him her husband. When asked whether Gillooly had ever threatened her, Harding said he had not. FBI agent James Russell then asked if she was at Shawn Eckardt's house at any time on January 11, Harding replied that she "definitely" had not been. Russell then advised her that while concealing criminal knowledge did not violate Oregon law, lying to the FBI would violate federal law. Harding said she understood that. Russell then told her that he knew she had lied to him. Harding's lawyer, Robert Weaver, then stated he wished to speak privately with his client. When Harding returned, she testified that she and Gillooly went to Eckardt's home on December 28, 1993; he went inside, she drove away. Harding said that Gillooly phoned her one hour later asking her to pick him up. [32]
After Harding's plea deal on March 16, 1994, she has since made other claims about the assault scandal. In 2018, she said she had prior knowledge of Gillooly and Eckardt discussing "[taking] out" one of her competitors in late 1993. Harding said she protested that she wanted to win fairly, and asked them what they were talking about. [33]
In Harding's 2008 authorized biography, The Tonya Tapes (written by Lynda D. Prouse from recorded interviews), Harding denied ever asking Vera Marano for the name of Nancy Kerrigan 's training rink and that Marano may not have remembered details properly and "was a little bit out there." Harding also expressed anxiety when Prouse asked about Marano's testimony: [34]
Jeff Gillooly first testified about the attack plot on January 26, 1994. [35] He said that in early December 1993, Harding phoned him after the 1993 NHK Trophy competition and was upset about her placement. He said he was also upset for her and later spoke about figure skating politics to his friend Shawn Eckardt. [30] According to Gillooly, Eckardt then wondered aloud what would happen if Nancy Kerrigan were to receive a threat. [36] Gillooly said he liked that idea. According to him, Eckardt wanted to keep the idea of injuring Kerrigan a secret from Harding, but Gillooly explained that injuring a competitor might psychologically affect Harding's performance too. Gillooly claimed that when he told Harding about plotting to injure Kerrigan, she thought it was "a good idea." [37] However, she was skeptical about Eckardt's ability to arrange it. [30] Gillooly assured her Eckardt knew people who could carry out the attack, and they could abort the plot if they did not like Eckardt's plan. [38]
Shortly after Eckardt had spoken on the phone with Derrick Smith, he visited Gillooly and Harding at their home and quoted $4,500 to execute the plot. Gillooly replied that it was too much and said he could pay $2,000. [38] On December 25, Gillooly had an answering machine message from Smith asking for more details about the plan. He claimed that he then phoned Eckardt to cancel the deal. Eckardt replied that Smith was already driving to Portland and that he needed more information about Kerrigan — a photograph and the location of the ice rink where she practiced. [30] [38] On December 27, Harding phoned her friend Vera Marano, a Pennsylvania figure skating writer, saying she and Gillooly had a "bet" about where Nancy Kerrigan trained. [30] Marano then called a USFSA contact to find the name of the rink and left a message on Harding and Gillooly's answering machine. [38] He said the message was difficult to understand, it sounded like "Tunee Can." Harding then phoned Marano again asking her to spell the arena name, and Gillooly said he watched as Harding wrote out "Tony Kent Arena." [39] [38]
Smith and his nephew, Shane Stant, arrived in Portland on December 27, drove to Eckardt's home, and asked for a meeting with Gillooly tomorrow at 10 a.m. Gillooly said Harding would be training at that time, but he agreed to meet them. On December 28, Harding finished her practice session at 10:30 a.m., then Gillooly drove them to Eckardt's home. According to him, she knew about the meeting and was anxious about Gillooly talking to dangerous people. [38] [40] He also testified that Harding told him she wanted Kerrigan injured either at her home or skating rink. [41] Gillooly said he would phone her after the meeting, and Harding then drove to Gillooly's mother's house. [38]
He arrived at 11 a.m. to the meeting held at Eckardt's home office, knocking on the door with Stant letting him in. [30] [38] Eckardt introduced Gillooly to Derrick Smith, using only his first name, Stant was introduced as Smith's "friend." Stant said it was "a pleasure" to meet Gillooly, then remained silent. Smith told Gillooly he could solve "problems," and Gillooly said he wanted Kerrigan out of the National Championships so Harding could win an Olympic gold medal. [38] [39] Once this was achieved, Harding would receive endorsements and he could offer $1,000 per week for her security. Gillooly said he could pay $6,500 for this plan and wanted to know what they could do. [30] Eckardt suggested cutting Kerrigan's Achilles tendon , using a beater car to run her off the road, or "just kill her," but those ideas were opposed. Gillooly said only her right leg needed to be disabled, her landing leg ; he claimed to have previously verified this with Harding. They settled on injuring Kerrigan's right leg. Gillooly was told his money would be returned if the deed was not completed. He then phoned Harding asking her to pick him up. [38]
According to Gillooly, as he was driving himself and Harding home, she asked if the meeting went well. When he told her about their "money-back guarantee," Harding laughed out loud. Gillooly said he felt "pretty good" about the meeting and thought Smith was competent. He then told her, "I think we should go for it." According to Gillooly, Harding replied, "Let's do it." [38] [42]
He said the men would need another photo of Kerrigan and her "skating times." Gillooly suggested that Harding call the Tony Kent Arena because she knew ice skating terminology. According to him, she did phone the arena asking for Kerrigan's "patch and freestyle times," and phoned again for the address. They also found two photos of Kerrigan from the World Team handbook and Olympian magazine. Gillooly said Harding told him to tear off the magazine's mailing label because it had their home address. They drove to Eckardt's home that night with the photos, practice times, and $2,700 in cash. Gillooly said he paid Eckardt while Harding was in another room having coffee with Eckardt's mother. He remembered Harding briefly talking to him and Eckardt saying Kerrigan's photo was "flattering." Gillooly and Harding were surprised that Eckardt's mother seemed to know about the plot too. [38]
Gillooly testified that by January 1994, he and Harding were upset that the plot had apparently failed. When Eckardt said it could still be done for more money, Gillooly asked "Do I have stupid written across my forehead?" Harding told him that Eckardt should return the money. On January 1, 1994, she had a late-night skating session from 11:30 p.m to 1 a.m., and Gillooly asked Eckardt to meet them at the rink. When Eckardt arrived, Gillooly agreed to pay more if Kerrigan could still be disabled before the Nationals competition. [38]
According to Gillooly, Harding then approached both men and asked Eckardt if his previous back pains were better. She then angrily asked him why "this thing" (the plot) was not completed. Eckardt was flustered and said he did not know why. [38]
On January 22, 1994, Vera Marano was interviewed by the FBI. She said she worked as a freelance writer and had written some figure skating articles about Harding, regularly trading phone calls with her. Marano stated that Harding had phoned her about a "bet" regarding Nancy Kerrigan. She said Harding then asked for the name of Kerrigan's training rink and also wanted to know if Kerrigan owned property in Cape Cod . [35]
Shawn Eckardt first testified about parts of the attack plot on January 12, 1994. He had known Gillooly since they were in the first grade at school. In 1993, Eckardt was enrolled in a paralegal course at Pioneer Pacific College and trying to build a business called World Bodyguard Services. [38] He claimed that in mid-December, Gillooly approached him to ask if he knew anyone who could disable Kerrigan. [43]
On December 22, 1993, Eckardt received a call from his friend Derrick Smith who lived in Phoenix, Arizona . [38] Smith wanted to know if Eckardt was still interested in moving to Phoenix to help set up an anti-terrorist training camp as they had previously discussed. [44] Eckardt claimed he had a contract to disable a female figure skater issued by her rival's husband, that it involved good money because one of the rival's sponsors was George Steinbrenner . [38] [30] It was true that Steinbrenner had recently given Harding a $10,000 donation through the USFSA. [45] [46] Smith was interested in the deal and agreed to drive to Portland with his nephew, Shane Stant, to meet with Eckardt and Gillooly. [38]
On December 28, as the men were waiting for Gillooly to arrive at his office, Smith persuaded Eckardt to tape record the meeting to use as "leverage." Eckardt hid the tape recorder on his desk under a paper towel. After the meeting, Gillooly left, returning that night to pay Eckardt in cash. He later gave the money to Smith who then drove Stant to the Seattle airport so Stant could fly to Boston . [47] Smith returned to Arizona and was communicating separately with Stant and Eckardt by phone, while Eckardt reported back to Gillooly. Eckardt did not know where exactly Stant was and told Gillooly that Smith needed more money. Gillooly refused to pay more until he had receipts proving that someone was in Boston for their plan. [38]
On January 1, 1994, Eckardt met Gillooly and Harding at the skating rink during her late-night session. He remembered Gillooly saying he would pay more money if the plot happened. Eckardt said Harding then skated up to him and commiserated about his ongoing back pain. [48] According to him, she then said "You need to stop screwing around with this and get it done." [30]
When Derrick Smith was first interviewed by FBI on January 12, 1994, he held to the cover story that had been agreed upon with his co-conspirators until later in the day when he confessed to his part in the plot. [49] He had met Eckardt when they were students at Mt. Hood Community College , shared an interest in espionage and survivalism, and had discussed opening a school together someday. [50] Smith later worked for the United States Army as an "intelligence analyst" for about 3 years until he was discharged. [30] He then worked in Milwaukie, Oregon as a group home coordinator for Developmental Systems Inc., a company that employed and trained mentally retarded adults to sort laundry hangers. [50] [30] The company claimed Smith was good at his work, remaining quiet and patient if a little anti-social. [51] He quit that job in late 1993 and moved to Arizona with his wife. [50] [51] Smith then applied for a police officer job and was waiting for his interview to be scheduled before Eckardt told him about possible bodyguard work in Oregon. [30]
When he phoned Eckardt on December 22, 1993, Eckardt told Smith he had a client who needed someone physically "taken down," saying the job would entail more bodyguard work in the future. Smith did not want to commit the assault himself because he had no criminal record, but said he might know someone who would do it. He knew his nephew, Shane Stant, was currently unemployed so Smith told him about his conversation with Eckardt. [38]
On December 28, he and Stant were in Portland to discuss the attack plan. Before Gillooly arrived to the meeting, Smith asked Eckardt to tape-record the impending plotting for security. [52] During the meeting, he thought Eckardt was leading Gillooly to think he had many " underground " contacts. After the meeting, he and Stant agreed not to injure Kerrigan "too badly." [53]
Shane Stant first testified about the attack plot after he turned himself in to the FBI on January 14, 1994. [49] He was the son of Derrick Smith's wife's sister. [30] Stant and his girlfriend also moved to Arizona along with Smith after once serving 15 days in jail for stealing cars. He was interested in bodybuilding, martial arts , and helping Smith open his training camp someday. [38]
When Smith told Stant about his phone call with Eckardt, Stant wanted to know more specifics. Eckardt then phoned him to say the plot involved making "an accident happen" to a skater, maybe cutting an Achilles tendon. Stant said he would not cut anyone. Eckardt then offered more money than Gillooly stated and said more bodyguard work would follow. Stant agreed to go to Portland with Smith for a meeting, then he paid $59 for a 21-inch (53 cm) ASP tactical baton from a store called Spy Headquarters. [38]
On December 29, 1993, Stant agreed to execute the plot and took a flight to Boston, yet discovered he could not rent a car with his girlfriend's credit card. He received his own credit card from an evening mail delivery the next day. On December 31, Stant drove to Yarmouth, Massachusetts , reaching the Tony Kent Arena that afternoon. Nancy Kerrigan had already finished her practice session and departed to Stoneham, Massachusetts for the weekend. [38] Stant, thinking Kerrigan would still be training at the arena, frequented the parking lot for two days and relocated his car every half hour. [30]
On January 11, Ann Schatz interviewed Harding for KOIN-TV in Portland , Oregon . Schatz asked Harding whether someone she knew could have planned the attack. Harding replied, "I have definitely thought about it." Gillooly stood in her view behind the camera during the interview. The interview ended with Harding saying, "No one controls my life but me...if there's something in there that I don't like, I'm going to change it." [54] [55] [56] Harding also confirmed she had spoken with FBI agents in Detroit and again in Portland. [57] On January 13, Eckardt and Smith were arrested. [58] [59] On January 14, the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) made a statement on whether Eckardt's arrest affected Harding's Olympic placement: "We will deal only with the facts." [60] [61] Harding and Gillooly's separate lawyers confirmed the couple were in daily contact and cooperation with law enforcement. [62] On January 15, Harding and Gillooly spoke with reporters, but declined to comment about the investigation. [63] On January 16, Harding's lawyer held a news conference in which he read a statement denying Harding's involvement in the attack on Kerrigan. [64] [65] Harding left her home that evening to practice figure skating with her coaches, where she spoke with reporters and performed a triple Axel . [66] [67] [68]
On February 5, 1994, the USFSA disciplinary panel stated there were reasonable grounds to believe Harding had violated the sport's code of ethics . [69] Her admitted failure to report about an assault on a fellow competitor, supported by her FBI transcripts, led to Harding being formally charged with "[making] false statements about her knowledge". The USFSA also recommended that she face a disciplinary hearing. Claire Ferguson , president of the USFSA, decided not to suspend Harding's membership before a hearing took place. If she had been suspended, she likely still would have competed at the Olympics after filing suit, seeking an injunction against the USFSA, and asserting her rights under the Amateur Sports Act of 1978 . [70] The panel examined evidence including the testimonies of Stant and Smith, Harding and Gillooly's telephone records, and notes found in a Portland saloon trash bin on January 30. [71] Harding was given thirty days to respond. [72]
On February 1, 1994, Gillooly's attorney negotiated a plea agreement in exchange for testimony regarding all involved parties in the attack. In July, Gillooly was sentenced to two years in prison after publicly apologizing to Kerrigan – adding "any apology coming from me rings hollow." [73] [74] Gillooly and Eckardt pleaded guilty to racketeering , while Stant and Smith pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit second-degree assault. [75] [76] Judge Donald Londer noted the attack could have injured Kerrigan more seriously. [77] Eckardt died in 2007. [78]
On March 16, Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution as a Class C felony offense at a Multnomah County court hearing. She and her lawyer, Robert Weaver, negotiated a plea agreement ensuring no further prosecution. [79] Judge Londer conducted routine questioning to make certain Harding understood her agreement, that she was entering her plea "knowingly and voluntarily." Harding told Londer she was. Her plea admissions were knowing of the assault plot after the fact, settling on a cover story with Gillooly and Eckardt on January 10, witnessing payphone calls to Smith affirming the story on January 10 and 11, and lying to FBI. [6] [7] Law enforcement investigators had been following and videotaping the co-conspirators since January 10, and knew about the payphone calls. [80] [73] [81] Harding's penalties included three years of probation , a $100,000 fine , and 500 hours community service . She agreed to reimburse Multnomah County $10,000 in legal expenses, undergo a psychiatric examination , and volunteered to give $50,000 to the Special Olympics Oregon (SOOR) charity. Oregon sentencing guidelines carried a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment for the offense. [82]
On March 21, 1994, a Portland grand jury issued an indictment stating there was evidence Harding participated in the attack plot. The indictment concluded more than two months of investigation and witness testimonies from Diane Rawlinson; Harding's choreographer Erika Bakacs; freelance figure skating writer Vera Marano; and Eckardt's college instructor and classmates. [83] [84] [85] [73] It stated there was evidence Harding fraudulently used USFSA-provided skating monies to finance the assault. It also read that Harding, Gillooly, Eckardt, Smith, and Stant agreed to "knowingly cause physical injury ... by means of a dangerous weapon." The grand jury foreman said the evidence implied Harding as "involved from the beginning or very close." She was not charged in the indictment due to the terms of her March 16 plea agreement. [86] [8]
On June 29, the USFSA disciplinary panel met for nine hours over two days to consider Harding's alleged role in the attack. [87] On June 30, chairman William Hybl stated,
The panel decided that pertinent FBI reports, court documents, and Harding's March 16 plea agreement presented
Harding chose neither to attend nor participate in the two-day hearing. Weaver said the decision disappointed her but was not a surprise, and that she had not decided on an appeal. [88] [89] Harding was stripped of her 1994 U.S. Championship title and banned for life from participating in USFSA events as either skater or coach. The USFSA has no dominion over professional skating events, yet Harding was also persona non grata on the pro circuit. Few skaters and promoters would work with her, and she did not benefit from the ensuing boom in professional skating after the scandal. [90]
The attack and the scandal surrounding it were depicted in the 2017 film I, Tonya , with Margot Robbie portraying Harding, Ricky Russert portraying Stant, and Caitlin Carver portraying Kerrigan. [91]
The character of Karla Keller in the cancelled Data East arcade fighting game Tattoo Assassins is largely based on Kerrigan, Keller's backstory directly referencing the assault. [92] [93]
A sidequest in the video game Spyro: Year of the Dragon centers around defending a polar bear ice dancer named Nancy from getting assaulted by Rhynoc hockey players as she attempts to rehearse for a performance.
The penultimate episode of the animated comedy Futurama , " Stench and Stenchibility ", features a devilish six-year-old girl named Tonya (voiced by Tara Strong ; a reference to Harding), who is the opponent of Bender Rodriguez ( John DiMaggio ) in a tap dancing competition held by Randy Munchnik . As Bender attempts to sabotage her performance by filling her tap shoes with tacks in the locker room, Tonya catches him in the act, and breaks his leg with a nightstick in a similar manner to the attack on Kerrigan.
Barack Obama referenced the attack while giving a speech in 2007 in Iowa during his run in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries , stating "Folks said there's no way Obama has a chance unless he goes and kneecaps the person ahead of us, does a Tonya Harding." [97]
- ^ Some newspapers, such as the New York Daily News , misquoted Kerrigan as saying "Why me!?". This sentence cannot be heard on the clip filmed by the camera crew. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_of_Nancy_Kerrigan | 73 |
who was the ice skater who was attacked | Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan: A Complete Timeline of Kerrigan's Attack and Aftermath | The orchestrated assault on the figure skater was called "the whack heard around the world."By Eudie Pak
On January 6, 1994, Nancy Kerrigan was attacked after practice at the Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan, in what would become one of the biggest sports scandals in history.
The hitman was Shane Stant, who used a 21-inch collapsible baton to strike Kerrigan's right leg. He, along with his uncle Derrick Smith, were contracted by Jeff Gillooly, the ex-husband of skating rival Tonya Harding , and Harding's bodyguard, Shawn Eckhardt.
So how was Harding involved? Kerrigan was her longtime rival — the one person in the way of her making the Olympic team. Harding's desperation to win at all costs prompted Gillooly to set up the attack. (Though she didn't admit it at the time, Harding later confessed in 2018 that she "knew something was up.")
Thus, fierce competition and the lust for fame and fortune were the motivations behind taking Kerrigan down, bringing together a stranger-than-fiction motley crew of amateur hooligans. The crime had all the machinations fit for a tabloid soap opera, which was most recently depicted in the 2017 dark comedy I, Tonya .
Explore our photographic timeline of the infamous scandal.
Kristi Yamaguchi, Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan and Tonia Kwiatkowski on the podium at the 1991 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Minneapolis, Minnesota
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A peek into their long-standing rivalry, Harding beats Kerrigan at the 1991 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. The following month, she was triumphant again, winning silver to Kerrigan's bronze at the ISU World Championships in Germany. Harding also became the first American woman to perform a triple axel successfully in a competition that year.
Fast forward three years later, and Kerrigan becomes the victim of Harding and Gillooly's lust to win. Hired hitman Stant clubs Kerrigan's right knee and cameras were able to capture the immediate aftermath. The following day on January 7, newspapers plastered Kerrigan's traumatized face on their covers as she screamed out in tears, “Why? Why? Why? Why me?”
Fortunately for Kerrigan, the injury left her with just bruises – no broken bones. Unfortunately for Kerrigan, her injury was severe enough that she was forced to pull out of competing in the national championships the following night.
Tonya Harding pumps her fists as she finishes her gold medal-winning program at the women's championship on January 8, 1994
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Harding wins gold at the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships and is guaranteed a spot at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway — just as she had hoped. Still, in support of Kerrigan who had to forgo the competition due to the attack, her fellow skaters offered her a spot to compete in the Olympics as well.
After an FBI investigation is launched into Harding's bodyguard, Eckhardt, on January 12, Eckardt confesses to his involvement in the attack and incriminates Stant, Gillooly and Smith, who was the driver of the getaway car.
Kerrigan tries her best to remain positive at a press conference after a number of the criminals were formally charged. At the same time, the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) deliberates on whether Harding should compete in the Olympics and ultimately decides that she is allowed to since — aside from her repeated denials of being involved in Kerrigan's attack — no evidence has emerged to contradict her claims.
As the mastermind behind Kerrigan's attack, Gillooly would later surrender to the FBI four days later after a warrant was issued for his arrest. Although Harding would continue to deny any involvement, Gillooly would confess on January 27 that he orchestrated the assault and would also implicate Harding, Eckhardt, Stant and Smith.
Still, around this time, Harding denies involvement, issuing the following statement to the press: "Despite my mistakes and rough edges, I have done nothing to violate the standards of excellence in sportsmanship that are expected in an Olympic athlete."
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On February 1, in exchange for a lighter sentence, Gillooly testifies against his ex-wife and pleads guilty to the crime of racketeering. Days later, Gillooly and Harding's trash was recovered, revealing notes of Kerrigan's practice schedule in Massachusetts. A handwriting expert confirms that the notes were written by Harding.
After some tense jockeying between the U.S. Olympic Committee and Harding on whether she could compete in the Olympics, the committee decides she can participate.
With all of the allegations swirling around Harding, the press is in a frenzy when she and Kerrigan share the ice at an Olympic practice session for the first time since the January 6 attack. Kerrigan purposely wears the same outfit she had on when she was assaulted as she skates around Harding. Kerrigan later tells the press: "Humor is good, it's empowering."
On the night of the Olympics, Harding abruptly stops performing during her first skate due to a broken shoelace. Although she's allowed a re-skate, it proves pointless. Harding ultimately comes in eighth place at the Olympics, with many people calling the results "karma."
With high expectations to win gold due to the infamous events that propelled her into the media spotlight, Kerrigan skates her best yet, but still falls short of gold, thanks to a surprise upset by 16-year-old Ukrainian Oksana Baiul . Taking silver, Kerrigan appears to be displeased and later gets caught on camera complaining about Baiul who was causing a delay in the medal ceremony. “Oh, come on. So she’s going to get out here and cry again. What’s the difference?” Kerrigan said, not knowing the cameras were rolling.
With evidence mounted against her, Harding officially pleads guilty to the charge of "conspiracy to hinder prosecution." She receives three years probation and is slapped with a $160,000 fine. A few months later, her 1994 national championships title is revoked, and she is banned from the USFSA forever.
With the exception of Harding, everyone else involved in Kerrigan's attack serves jail time. | https://www.biography.com/news/tonya-harding-nancy-kerrigan-attack-photos | 73 |
who was the ice skater who was attacked | The True Life Story Behind I, Tonya: Inside the Figure Skating Scandal That Shocked the World | The scandal surrounding Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan was immortalized in I, Tonya (2017)
By Ale Russian
Updated on November 10, 2022 11:21 AM
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It was the sports scandal that rocked the world.
Seven weeks before the 1994 Olympic Winter Games, Tonya Harding 's skating rival, Nancy Kerrigan , was clubbed on the knee by an assailant.
Authorities soon determined that Harding was involved and that her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, had allegedly hired the attacker. For the media, the narrative was perfect: Kerrigan was the pretty, poised, innocent victim. Harding was the rough-around-the-edges assailant from the wrong side of the tracks.
Decades later, Margot Robbie immortalized the infamous skater in I, Tonya — a 2017 biopic that offers a surprisingly sympathetic view of Harding's life before, during and after the shocking event.
Ahead of the 1994 attack, the rivalry between Kerrigan and Harding was gaining steam. The two competed in the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville, France, where Kerrigan took the bronze medal just one step ahead of Harding, who came in fourth place.
Harding was the favorite before the 1992 games after she made history by becoming the first American woman to land the triple axel in competition during Fall 1991. She was never able to perform it in competition again after that year.
Kerrigan, on the other hand, became America's Sweetheart after the 1992 games and went on to the sponsorship deals and public acclaim that eluded Harding. The two competed against each other leading up to the 1994 games as they vied for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team.
Less than two months before the games, Kerrigan was attacked at an Olympic practice session in Detroit as the cameras rolled. It was later found out that the assailant, Shane Stant, had been hired by Harding's ex-husband Gillooly and her bodyguard, Shawn Eckardt, though Harding denied knowing him in the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary series episode about the attack.
The attacker meant to break Kerrigan's right leg to keep her out of the competition but merely bruised it. Despite her injury, Kerrigan famously went on to compete in the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway, where she nabbed the silver medal, while Harding came in eighth place after having trouble with her laces.
Following the attack, media speculation surrounded Harding and Gillooly, and they eventually blamed each other in interviews with the FBI. Gillooly accepted a plea bargain in exchange for his testimony against Harding and spent six months in prison. Stant, Eckhardt and getaway car driver Derrick Smith also served time in prison for the attack.
Harding long disputed her involvement but was eventually convicted of hindering the investigation into the incident. She received three years probation, 500 hours of community service and a $160,000 fine — and was ultimately banned from the U.S. Figure Skating Association for life.
Kerrigan was later inducted into the Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2004 and served as a special correspondent during several Olympics. The former skater returned to the spotlight, competing on season 24 of Dancing with the Stars . The married mom of three – who danced alongside Artem Chigvintsev – made it to week seven in the popular television competition.
Gillooly changed his name to Jeff Stone and receded from the spotlight, though I, Tonya screenwriter Steven Rogers told PEOPLE he agreed to be interviewed for the first time since the incident for the movie. Eckardt, who later changed his name to Brian Sean Griffith, died in 2007 from natural causes at the age of 40.
For Harding, life post-scandal proved difficult. According to a 2008 PEOPLE profile , Harding was arrested twice, once for a DUI and once for an attempted suicide. But in 2010, Harding wed Joseph Jens Price. The couple welcomed a son the following year, and Rogers said Harding lights up whenever he's mentioned.
Harding surprised fans — and even Robbie herself — when she attended the Los Angeles film premiere of I, Tonya . The former skater was seen wiping away tears as she posed with Robbie on the red carpet.
Like Kerrigan, Harding also competed on Dancing with the Stars . Appearing in season 26, a four-week event in 2018 that featured only athletes, Harding was paired with pro dancer Sasha Farber and placed third overall.
And although Harding continually denies her involvement in the scandal, she has remorse about the Kerrigan scandal. "Of course, I feel guilty for what happened," she said in the 2008 profile, "But I can't dwell. I have to go on living." | https://people.com/movies/the-true-life-story-behind-i-tonya-inside-the-figure-skating-scandal-that-shocked-the-world/ | 73 |
who was the ice skater who was attacked | Today in History: Nancy Kerrigan Was Attacked at Michigan Ice Arena | It’s hard to believe one of the most heinous attacks on an athlete happened almost 30 years ago today.
On Jan. 6, 1994, Nancy Kerrigan, one of the rising stars in American figure skating, was ambushed while walking down a corridor in Detroit’s Cobo Arena. The assailant, later ID’d as Shane Stant, attacked Kerrigan with a telescopic baton.
His aim was to injure Kerrigan so badly that she couldn’t skate in the ongoing 1994 United States Figure Skating Championships and the 1994 Winter Olympics.
Later it was determined that rival skater Tonya Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly and his friend Shawn Eckardt were behind the attack. Harding was jealous of Kerrigan, and the attack was meant to stop Kerrigan from competing, ostensibly so that Harding could get all the glory.
Kerrigan recovered in time to skate in the Olympics, and Harding participated as well. However, not long after, Harding was banned for life from U.S. Figure Skating. at the Games and became one of the most sympathetic and beloved Olympians of all time.
© 2023 - 910 Media Group | https://www.9and10news.com/2023/01/06/today-in-history-nancy-kerrigan-was-attacked-at-michigan-ice-arena/ | 73 |
who was the ice skater who was attacked | Assault of Nancy Kerrigan - Wikipedia | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|Assault of Nancy Kerrigan|
|Location|| Cobo Arena |
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
|Coordinates||42°19′35″N 83°2′49″W Coordinates : 42°19′35″N 83°2′49″W|
|Date|| January 6, 1994 |
c. 2:35 PM ( EST ( UTC−05:00 ))
|Target||Nancy Kerrigan|
Attack type
|Bludgeoning|
|Weapon||ASP telescopic baton|
|Injured||Nancy Kerrigan|
|Perpetrators|
|Assailant||Shane Stant|
|Accused||Tonya Harding|
|Charges|
|Litigation||Harding v. US Figure Skating Ass'n, 851 F. Supp. 1476 (D. Or. 1994)|
On January 6, 1994, Nancy Kerrigan , an American figure skater , was struck on the lower right thigh with a telescopic baton by assailant Shane Stant as she walked down a corridor in Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan. Kerrigan had been practicing skating on an ice rink in the arena shortly beforehand.
The attack was planned by Jeff Gillooly, the ex-husband of fellow American figure skater Tonya Harding , and his co-conspirator Shawn Eckardt. [1] [2] [3] They hired Stant, and his uncle Derrick Smith, to carry out the attack. Gillooly and Eckardt both claimed that Harding was involved in the attack and had knowledge of it beforehand. Harding initially denied all knowledge of the attack, [4] [5] but soon accepted a plea agreement admitting to helping cover up the attack after the fact. [6] [7] Later, both a grand jury [8] and a disciplinary panel from the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) [9] found further evidence of Harding's involvement during the planning and execution phases.
The attack was intended to prevent Kerrigan from taking part in the ongoing 1994 United States Figure Skating Championships and the forthcoming Winter Olympics , thus increasing the prospects of Harding in both figure skating events. Kerrigan could not compete in the US Championship but recovered in time to compete in the Winter Olympics. Both women competed in the 1994 Olympics, and Harding was later banned for life from USFSA figure skating events. [10]
Nancy Kerrigan is an American former figure skater who, in January 1994, was about to take part in the United States Figure Skating Championships in Detroit, Michigan . Her main rival in that tournament was Tonya Harding . The attack took place just days before the tournament, and rendered Kerrigan unable to take part. [11] The Winter Olympics were also set to take place in February, where Kerrigan and Harding were likely to be the two female figure skaters representing the United States. The attack benefited Harding as it allowed her to win the U.S. Championships with ease and could have benefited her if it had taken Kerrigan out of the Olympics. [1]
Jeff Gillooly was Tonya Harding's ex-husband. [1] At the time of the attack, the couple were together and still referred to each other as husband and wife. Shawn Eckardt, a friend of Gillooly's who was also Harding's bodyguard before the attack, had originally been hired by the figure skater after she received an anonymous death threat . [12] Shane Stant later testified that Harding was part of staging the death threat against herself. [13] Derrick Smith, an associate of Eckardt, was paid $6,500 to carry out the attack; Eckardt had received the money from Gillooly. Shane Stant, Smith's nephew, initially planned to carry out the attack by himself and had travelled to Kerrigan's home rink in Cape Cod in late December 1993, but was unable to locate her. Stant then followed Kerrigan to the Nationals in Detroit in early January 1994. Gillooly opposed carrying out an attack in Detroit, feeling it too likely they would be caught, and instructed Eckardt to wire Stant funds to return home without carrying out the attack. Eckardt instead wired the funds to Smith, who then traveled to join Stant in Detroit. [14] Stant and Smith then planned to carry out the attack together. [15]
On the afternoon of January 6, 1994, Kerrigan was practicing for the U.S. Championships on an ice rink inside Cobo Arena . A camera crew was recording her practice session and showed her leaving the ice rink and walking through a curtain and down a hallway; the camera then cuts out. [16] Stant stated in a 2018 interview that he was standing "about a foot and a half" (around half a meter) behind the camera crew and waited for them to stop filming before he followed Kerrigan through the curtain. [17] Stant approached Kerrigan from behind, extended a telescopic baton , struck her lower right thigh and walked away. He then escaped from the arena by smashing through a locked glass door. Smith was waiting in a car outside and acted as a getaway driver . The camera crew began recording again shortly after the attack and recorded Kerrigan sitting on the floor crying surrounded by arena staff. Here, Kerrigan exclaimed the now-famous line, "Why? Why? Why?" [a] This footage was later broadcast around the world in news programs. Kerrigan was then carried away to a changing room by her father. [16] The attack severely bruised her knee and quadriceps tendon and forced her to withdraw from the U.S. Championships. [18]
Harding met Jeff Gillooly in 1986 when she was skating at the Clackamas Town Center ; she was 15, he was 17. They later exchanged phone numbers and went out to the movies, chaperoned by her father. [19] In 1988, the couple moved into a home together, and Harding claimed she began experiencing physical abuse from Gillooly. [20] They married on March 18, 1990. Harding's mother, LaVona, said she opposed the marriage: "I knew Jeff had a violent streak [...] he tried to break down the door because he thought [Tonya] had gone out with another boy." [21] On June 17, 1991, Harding filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Two days later, she received a restraining order against Gillooly: "He wrenched my arm and wrist, pulled my hair and shoved me [...] he bought a shotgun, and I am scared for my safety." [21]
Harding later claimed she was the victim of acquaintance rape sometime during her separation from Gillooly in 1991, "by a friend of mine, who I knew for eight years." [22] In summer 1991, she became engaged to mechanical engineer Mike Pliska. He ended their engagement after he saw Harding disrespecting people and giving her phone number to another man. [23] In autumn 1991, Harding dated a Canadian banker. In October, she decided to reconcile with Gillooly and withdraw the divorce, saying they were still in love and seeking counseling: "I know he's changed. I see it in his eyes, and I believe in him... I don't want to lose him. I really don't." [21] [24]
On March 10, 1992, Harding had a roadside physical altercation with a female motorist in Portland, Oregon . The first deputy on the scene observed Harding holding a baseball bat after breaking the motorist's eyeglasses. The incident ended in apologies and no criminal charges were filed. [25]
In both March and July 1993, police came to Harding and Gillooly's shared apartment after reported arguments. In a July affidavit, Harding wrote that she had been in an abusive marriage for two years, "he has assaulted me physically with his open hand and fist [...] put me down to the floor on several occasions." [23] Harding was granted another restraining order and filed for divorce. [26] In spring 1993, she dated Tom Arant who spoke about Harding to The Oregonian , saying she would complain about Gillooly, yet still contacted him often: "she couldn't stop talking to him." [27] That summer, a man from Harding's gym claimed to The Oregonian that Harding offered to pay him to "take care" of Gillooly, "slap him around a little." He said he was offended and declined. [28] [24]
On August 28, 1993, Harding and Gillooly were granted a divorce. Ten days later, Harding's lawyer asked the restraining order to be lifted because the couple again wished to reconcile. [23] On October 2, at approximately 3 a.m., neighbours of the couple called the police when they heard them arguing outside and a single gunshot. The neighbours reported seeing Gillooly pick Harding up and place her in a truck, and feared Harding had been shot. [29] A police officer stopped the truck and confiscated a found shotgun and a 9mm Beretta pistol that had recently been discharged. [30] The officer then interviewed Harding and Gillooly separately about what had happened, but their stories did not match. Gillooly first stated that the gun had fired when he was carrying it. Harding then admitted that she had fired the gun and was worried about the publicity. Gillooly said that Harding had been moving her possessions into his truck when they started an argument over his former girlfriend; he declined to press charges. [29] In November 1993, the couple were evicted from their apartment for failing to pay rent. [31]
During Tonya Harding's FBI testimony on January 18, 1994, she requested and received some ice to treat her swollen ankle. When asked about her finances, Harding said she had one bank account which was currently $109 overdrawn . [30] She was also asked about her relationship with Gillooly and replied she still considered him her husband. When asked whether Gillooly had ever threatened her, Harding said he had not. FBI agent James Russell then asked if she was at Shawn Eckardt's house at any time on January 11, Harding replied that she "definitely" had not been. Russell then advised her that while concealing criminal knowledge did not violate Oregon law, lying to the FBI would violate federal law. Harding said she understood that. Russell then told her that he knew she had lied to him. Harding's lawyer, Robert Weaver, then stated he wished to speak privately with his client. When Harding returned, she testified that she and Gillooly went to Eckardt's home on December 28, 1993; he went inside, she drove away. Harding said that Gillooly phoned her one hour later asking her to pick him up. [32]
After Harding's plea deal on March 16, 1994, she has since made other claims about the assault scandal. In 2018, she said she had prior knowledge of Gillooly and Eckardt discussing "[taking] out" one of her competitors in late 1993. Harding said she protested that she wanted to win fairly, and asked them what they were talking about. [33]
In Harding's 2008 authorized biography, The Tonya Tapes (written by Lynda D. Prouse from recorded interviews), Harding denied ever asking Vera Marano for the name of Nancy Kerrigan 's training rink and that Marano may not have remembered details properly and "was a little bit out there." Harding also expressed anxiety when Prouse asked about Marano's testimony: [34]
Jeff Gillooly first testified about the attack plot on January 26, 1994. [35] He said that in early December 1993, Harding phoned him after the 1993 NHK Trophy competition and was upset about her placement. He said he was also upset for her and later spoke about figure skating politics to his friend Shawn Eckardt. [30] According to Gillooly, Eckardt then wondered aloud what would happen if Nancy Kerrigan were to receive a threat. [36] Gillooly said he liked that idea. According to him, Eckardt wanted to keep the idea of injuring Kerrigan a secret from Harding, but Gillooly explained that injuring a competitor might psychologically affect Harding's performance too. Gillooly claimed that when he told Harding about plotting to injure Kerrigan, she thought it was "a good idea." [37] However, she was skeptical about Eckardt's ability to arrange it. [30] Gillooly assured her Eckardt knew people who could carry out the attack, and they could abort the plot if they did not like Eckardt's plan. [38]
Shortly after Eckardt had spoken on the phone with Derrick Smith, he visited Gillooly and Harding at their home and quoted $4,500 to execute the plot. Gillooly replied that it was too much and said he could pay $2,000. [38] On December 25, Gillooly had an answering machine message from Smith asking for more details about the plan. He claimed that he then phoned Eckardt to cancel the deal. Eckardt replied that Smith was already driving to Portland and that he needed more information about Kerrigan — a photograph and the location of the ice rink where she practiced. [30] [38] On December 27, Harding phoned her friend Vera Marano, a Pennsylvania figure skating writer, saying she and Gillooly had a "bet" about where Nancy Kerrigan trained. [30] Marano then called a USFSA contact to find the name of the rink and left a message on Harding and Gillooly's answering machine. [38] He said the message was difficult to understand, it sounded like "Tunee Can." Harding then phoned Marano again asking her to spell the arena name, and Gillooly said he watched as Harding wrote out "Tony Kent Arena." [39] [38]
Smith and his nephew, Shane Stant, arrived in Portland on December 27, drove to Eckardt's home, and asked for a meeting with Gillooly tomorrow at 10 a.m. Gillooly said Harding would be training at that time, but he agreed to meet them. On December 28, Harding finished her practice session at 10:30 a.m., then Gillooly drove them to Eckardt's home. According to him, she knew about the meeting and was anxious about Gillooly talking to dangerous people. [38] [40] He also testified that Harding told him she wanted Kerrigan injured either at her home or skating rink. [41] Gillooly said he would phone her after the meeting, and Harding then drove to Gillooly's mother's house. [38]
He arrived at 11 a.m. to the meeting held at Eckardt's home office, knocking on the door with Stant letting him in. [30] [38] Eckardt introduced Gillooly to Derrick Smith, using only his first name, Stant was introduced as Smith's "friend." Stant said it was "a pleasure" to meet Gillooly, then remained silent. Smith told Gillooly he could solve "problems," and Gillooly said he wanted Kerrigan out of the National Championships so Harding could win an Olympic gold medal. [38] [39] Once this was achieved, Harding would receive endorsements and he could offer $1,000 per week for her security. Gillooly said he could pay $6,500 for this plan and wanted to know what they could do. [30] Eckardt suggested cutting Kerrigan's Achilles tendon , using a beater car to run her off the road, or "just kill her," but those ideas were opposed. Gillooly said only her right leg needed to be disabled, her landing leg ; he claimed to have previously verified this with Harding. They settled on injuring Kerrigan's right leg. Gillooly was told his money would be returned if the deed was not completed. He then phoned Harding asking her to pick him up. [38]
According to Gillooly, as he was driving himself and Harding home, she asked if the meeting went well. When he told her about their "money-back guarantee," Harding laughed out loud. Gillooly said he felt "pretty good" about the meeting and thought Smith was competent. He then told her, "I think we should go for it." According to Gillooly, Harding replied, "Let's do it." [38] [42]
He said the men would need another photo of Kerrigan and her "skating times." Gillooly suggested that Harding call the Tony Kent Arena because she knew ice skating terminology. According to him, she did phone the arena asking for Kerrigan's "patch and freestyle times," and phoned again for the address. They also found two photos of Kerrigan from the World Team handbook and Olympian magazine. Gillooly said Harding told him to tear off the magazine's mailing label because it had their home address. They drove to Eckardt's home that night with the photos, practice times, and $2,700 in cash. Gillooly said he paid Eckardt while Harding was in another room having coffee with Eckardt's mother. He remembered Harding briefly talking to him and Eckardt saying Kerrigan's photo was "flattering." Gillooly and Harding were surprised that Eckardt's mother seemed to know about the plot too. [38]
Gillooly testified that by January 1994, he and Harding were upset that the plot had apparently failed. When Eckardt said it could still be done for more money, Gillooly asked "Do I have stupid written across my forehead?" Harding told him that Eckardt should return the money. On January 1, 1994, she had a late-night skating session from 11:30 p.m to 1 a.m., and Gillooly asked Eckardt to meet them at the rink. When Eckardt arrived, Gillooly agreed to pay more if Kerrigan could still be disabled before the Nationals competition. [38]
According to Gillooly, Harding then approached both men and asked Eckardt if his previous back pains were better. She then angrily asked him why "this thing" (the plot) was not completed. Eckardt was flustered and said he did not know why. [38]
On January 22, 1994, Vera Marano was interviewed by the FBI. She said she worked as a freelance writer and had written some figure skating articles about Harding, regularly trading phone calls with her. Marano stated that Harding had phoned her about a "bet" regarding Nancy Kerrigan. She said Harding then asked for the name of Kerrigan's training rink and also wanted to know if Kerrigan owned property in Cape Cod . [35]
Shawn Eckardt first testified about parts of the attack plot on January 12, 1994. He had known Gillooly since they were in the first grade at school. In 1993, Eckardt was enrolled in a paralegal course at Pioneer Pacific College and trying to build a business called World Bodyguard Services. [38] He claimed that in mid-December, Gillooly approached him to ask if he knew anyone who could disable Kerrigan. [43]
On December 22, 1993, Eckardt received a call from his friend Derrick Smith who lived in Phoenix, Arizona . [38] Smith wanted to know if Eckardt was still interested in moving to Phoenix to help set up an anti-terrorist training camp as they had previously discussed. [44] Eckardt claimed he had a contract to disable a female figure skater issued by her rival's husband, that it involved good money because one of the rival's sponsors was George Steinbrenner . [38] [30] It was true that Steinbrenner had recently given Harding a $10,000 donation through the USFSA. [45] [46] Smith was interested in the deal and agreed to drive to Portland with his nephew, Shane Stant, to meet with Eckardt and Gillooly. [38]
On December 28, as the men were waiting for Gillooly to arrive at his office, Smith persuaded Eckardt to tape record the meeting to use as "leverage." Eckardt hid the tape recorder on his desk under a paper towel. After the meeting, Gillooly left, returning that night to pay Eckardt in cash. He later gave the money to Smith who then drove Stant to the Seattle airport so Stant could fly to Boston . [47] Smith returned to Arizona and was communicating separately with Stant and Eckardt by phone, while Eckardt reported back to Gillooly. Eckardt did not know where exactly Stant was and told Gillooly that Smith needed more money. Gillooly refused to pay more until he had receipts proving that someone was in Boston for their plan. [38]
On January 1, 1994, Eckardt met Gillooly and Harding at the skating rink during her late-night session. He remembered Gillooly saying he would pay more money if the plot happened. Eckardt said Harding then skated up to him and commiserated about his ongoing back pain. [48] According to him, she then said "You need to stop screwing around with this and get it done." [30]
When Derrick Smith was first interviewed by FBI on January 12, 1994, he held to the cover story that had been agreed upon with his co-conspirators until later in the day when he confessed to his part in the plot. [49] He had met Eckardt when they were students at Mt. Hood Community College , shared an interest in espionage and survivalism, and had discussed opening a school together someday. [50] Smith later worked for the United States Army as an "intelligence analyst" for about 3 years until he was discharged. [30] He then worked in Milwaukie, Oregon as a group home coordinator for Developmental Systems Inc., a company that employed and trained mentally retarded adults to sort laundry hangers. [50] [30] The company claimed Smith was good at his work, remaining quiet and patient if a little anti-social. [51] He quit that job in late 1993 and moved to Arizona with his wife. [50] [51] Smith then applied for a police officer job and was waiting for his interview to be scheduled before Eckardt told him about possible bodyguard work in Oregon. [30]
When he phoned Eckardt on December 22, 1993, Eckardt told Smith he had a client who needed someone physically "taken down," saying the job would entail more bodyguard work in the future. Smith did not want to commit the assault himself because he had no criminal record, but said he might know someone who would do it. He knew his nephew, Shane Stant, was currently unemployed so Smith told him about his conversation with Eckardt. [38]
On December 28, he and Stant were in Portland to discuss the attack plan. Before Gillooly arrived to the meeting, Smith asked Eckardt to tape-record the impending plotting for security. [52] During the meeting, he thought Eckardt was leading Gillooly to think he had many " underground " contacts. After the meeting, he and Stant agreed not to injure Kerrigan "too badly." [53]
Shane Stant first testified about the attack plot after he turned himself in to the FBI on January 14, 1994. [49] He was the son of Derrick Smith's wife's sister. [30] Stant and his girlfriend also moved to Arizona along with Smith after once serving 15 days in jail for stealing cars. He was interested in bodybuilding, martial arts , and helping Smith open his training camp someday. [38]
When Smith told Stant about his phone call with Eckardt, Stant wanted to know more specifics. Eckardt then phoned him to say the plot involved making "an accident happen" to a skater, maybe cutting an Achilles tendon. Stant said he would not cut anyone. Eckardt then offered more money than Gillooly stated and said more bodyguard work would follow. Stant agreed to go to Portland with Smith for a meeting, then he paid $59 for a 21-inch (53 cm) ASP tactical baton from a store called Spy Headquarters. [38]
On December 29, 1993, Stant agreed to execute the plot and took a flight to Boston, yet discovered he could not rent a car with his girlfriend's credit card. He received his own credit card from an evening mail delivery the next day. On December 31, Stant drove to Yarmouth, Massachusetts , reaching the Tony Kent Arena that afternoon. Nancy Kerrigan had already finished her practice session and departed to Stoneham, Massachusetts for the weekend. [38] Stant, thinking Kerrigan would still be training at the arena, frequented the parking lot for two days and relocated his car every half hour. [30]
On January 11, Ann Schatz interviewed Harding for KOIN-TV in Portland , Oregon . Schatz asked Harding whether someone she knew could have planned the attack. Harding replied, "I have definitely thought about it." Gillooly stood in her view behind the camera during the interview. The interview ended with Harding saying, "No one controls my life but me...if there's something in there that I don't like, I'm going to change it." [54] [55] [56] Harding also confirmed she had spoken with FBI agents in Detroit and again in Portland. [57] On January 13, Eckardt and Smith were arrested. [58] [59] On January 14, the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) made a statement on whether Eckardt's arrest affected Harding's Olympic placement: "We will deal only with the facts." [60] [61] Harding and Gillooly's separate lawyers confirmed the couple were in daily contact and cooperation with law enforcement. [62] On January 15, Harding and Gillooly spoke with reporters, but declined to comment about the investigation. [63] On January 16, Harding's lawyer held a news conference in which he read a statement denying Harding's involvement in the attack on Kerrigan. [64] [65] Harding left her home that evening to practice figure skating with her coaches, where she spoke with reporters and performed a triple Axel . [66] [67] [68]
On February 5, 1994, the USFSA disciplinary panel stated there were reasonable grounds to believe Harding had violated the sport's code of ethics . [69] Her admitted failure to report about an assault on a fellow competitor, supported by her FBI transcripts, led to Harding being formally charged with "[making] false statements about her knowledge". The USFSA also recommended that she face a disciplinary hearing. Claire Ferguson , president of the USFSA, decided not to suspend Harding's membership before a hearing took place. If she had been suspended, she likely still would have competed at the Olympics after filing suit, seeking an injunction against the USFSA, and asserting her rights under the Amateur Sports Act of 1978 . [70] The panel examined evidence including the testimonies of Stant and Smith, Harding and Gillooly's telephone records, and notes found in a Portland saloon trash bin on January 30. [71] Harding was given thirty days to respond. [72]
On February 1, 1994, Gillooly's attorney negotiated a plea agreement in exchange for testimony regarding all involved parties in the attack. In July, Gillooly was sentenced to two years in prison after publicly apologizing to Kerrigan – adding "any apology coming from me rings hollow." [73] [74] Gillooly and Eckardt pleaded guilty to racketeering , while Stant and Smith pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit second-degree assault. [75] [76] Judge Donald Londer noted the attack could have injured Kerrigan more seriously. [77] Eckardt died in 2007. [78]
On March 16, Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution as a Class C felony offense at a Multnomah County court hearing. She and her lawyer, Robert Weaver, negotiated a plea agreement ensuring no further prosecution. [79] Judge Londer conducted routine questioning to make certain Harding understood her agreement, that she was entering her plea "knowingly and voluntarily." Harding told Londer she was. Her plea admissions were knowing of the assault plot after the fact, settling on a cover story with Gillooly and Eckardt on January 10, witnessing payphone calls to Smith affirming the story on January 10 and 11, and lying to FBI. [6] [7] Law enforcement investigators had been following and videotaping the co-conspirators since January 10, and knew about the payphone calls. [80] [73] [81] Harding's penalties included three years of probation , a $100,000 fine , and 500 hours community service . She agreed to reimburse Multnomah County $10,000 in legal expenses, undergo a psychiatric examination , and volunteered to give $50,000 to the Special Olympics Oregon (SOOR) charity. Oregon sentencing guidelines carried a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment for the offense. [82]
On March 21, 1994, a Portland grand jury issued an indictment stating there was evidence Harding participated in the attack plot. The indictment concluded more than two months of investigation and witness testimonies from Diane Rawlinson; Harding's choreographer Erika Bakacs; freelance figure skating writer Vera Marano; and Eckardt's college instructor and classmates. [83] [84] [85] [73] It stated there was evidence Harding fraudulently used USFSA-provided skating monies to finance the assault. It also read that Harding, Gillooly, Eckardt, Smith, and Stant agreed to "knowingly cause physical injury ... by means of a dangerous weapon." The grand jury foreman said the evidence implied Harding as "involved from the beginning or very close." She was not charged in the indictment due to the terms of her March 16 plea agreement. [86] [8]
On June 29, the USFSA disciplinary panel met for nine hours over two days to consider Harding's alleged role in the attack. [87] On June 30, chairman William Hybl stated,
The panel decided that pertinent FBI reports, court documents, and Harding's March 16 plea agreement presented
Harding chose neither to attend nor participate in the two-day hearing. Weaver said the decision disappointed her but was not a surprise, and that she had not decided on an appeal. [88] [89] Harding was stripped of her 1994 U.S. Championship title and banned for life from participating in USFSA events as either skater or coach. The USFSA has no dominion over professional skating events, yet Harding was also persona non grata on the pro circuit. Few skaters and promoters would work with her, and she did not benefit from the ensuing boom in professional skating after the scandal. [90]
The attack and the scandal surrounding it were depicted in the 2017 film I, Tonya , with Margot Robbie portraying Harding, Ricky Russert portraying Stant, and Caitlin Carver portraying Kerrigan. [91]
The character of Karla Keller in the cancelled Data East arcade fighting game Tattoo Assassins is largely based on Kerrigan, Keller's backstory directly referencing the assault. [92] [93]
A sidequest in the video game Spyro: Year of the Dragon centers around defending a polar bear ice dancer named Nancy from getting assaulted by Rhynoc hockey players as she attempts to rehearse for a performance.
The penultimate episode of the animated comedy Futurama , " Stench and Stenchibility ", features a devilish six-year-old girl named Tonya (voiced by Tara Strong ; a reference to Harding), who is the opponent of Bender Rodriguez ( John DiMaggio ) in a tap dancing competition held by Randy Munchnik . As Bender attempts to sabotage her performance by filling her tap shoes with tacks in the locker room, Tonya catches him in the act, and breaks his leg with a nightstick in a similar manner to the attack on Kerrigan.
Barack Obama referenced the attack while giving a speech in 2007 in Iowa during his run in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries , stating "Folks said there's no way Obama has a chance unless he goes and kneecaps the person ahead of us, does a Tonya Harding." [97]
- ^ Some newspapers, such as the New York Daily News , misquoted Kerrigan as saying "Why me!?". This sentence cannot be heard on the clip filmed by the camera crew. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_of_Nancy_Kerrigan | 73 |
who was the ice skater who was attacked | Skater Nancy Kerrigan attacked | Olympic hopeful Nancy Kerrigan is attacked at a Detroit ice rink following a practice session two days before the Olympic trials. A man hit Kerrigan with a club on the back of her knee, causing the figure skater to cry out in pain and bewilderment. When the full story emerged a week later, the nation became caught up in a real-life soap opera.
One of Kerrigan’s chief rivals for a place on the U.S. Figure Skating Team was Tonya Harding . In mid-December 1993, Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, approached Shawn Eckardt about somehow eliminating Kerrigan from the competition. Eckardt set up a meeting with Derrick Smith and Shane Stant, who agreed to injure Kerrigan for a fee.
On December 28, Stant went to Massachusetts , where Kerrigan was practicing. However, he couldn’t carry out the attack so he followed her to Detroit, where Smith met him. After hitting Kerrigan, Stant fled the ice rink in Smith’s getaway car. With Kerrigan unable to skate, Harding won the championship and a place at the 1994 Olympics.
On January 11, Derrick Smith confessed to FBI agents. Three days later, Stant surrendered and also confessed. Harding was questioned on January 18, but denied her involvement. She claimed that she would cut off any connection with Gillooly if he was responsible. The next day, Gillooly was charged with conspiracy to assault Kerrigan. Shortly after, he agreed to a deal in which he implicated Harding.
Harding then came forward, changing her story and admitting that she had learned of Gillooly’s role in the attack after the championships but did not inform authorities. Meanwhile, U.S. Olympic officials named Kerrigan and Harding to the team that would compete in Lillehammer, Norway. When the United States Olympic Committee began considering removing Harding from the team, she filed a lawsuit that successfully stopped this action.
At the Olympics, the competition between Harding and Kerrigan set ratings records. Harding’s performance was a drama in itself. She broke down crying after a lace on her skates broke. Even after being allowed a restart, Harding wasn’t able to pull herself together and finished eighth. Kerrigan took home the silver medal, and many thought she deserved the gold.
Back in the U.S., Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder the prosecution of Kerrigan’s attackers. She was fined $100,000 and sentenced to probation and 500 hours of community service. Other than Gillooly’s testimony, there was never any further evidence of Harding’s knowledge of the plans before the attack. But Gillooly got revenge on Tonya by sinking to new tabloid depths, selling graphic photos of the couple having sex on their honeymoon.
Meanwhile, Harding wasn’t above trying to exploit the crime and her notoriety herself. However, an attempted movie career was dead in the water from the beginning. Kerrigan even succumbed to the temptation years later, appearing on a talk show with Harding to promote herself.
In 2003, about a year after fighting in a “celebrity boxing” event, Harding made her professional boxing debut. Her story was the subject of the 2017 film I, Tonya . | https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/skater-nancy-kerrigan-attacked | 73 |
name at least two benefits of recycling more of our wastes | 7 benefits of recycling | Friends of the Earth | Share:
From the pollution produced by landfills to the devastating effects of plastic in our oceans, we urgently need to stem the flow of rubbish pouring into our environment. Here's a reminder of why recycling is such a good thing – for you and the planet.
29 Mar 2018 | 05 Sep 2022 | 3 min ute read
We need to drastically improve our recycling habits at home, in schools and at workplaces.
The UK government has a target to recycle 65% of municipal waste by 2035, but we've got a long way to go to reach that goal – currently, the UK's recycling rate is about 45%.
We need to remember that recycling is crucial to the future health of our planet. Here are 7 reasons why...
The world's natural resources are finite, and some are in very short supply.
At a basic level:
- Recycling paper and wood saves trees and forests. Yes, you can plant new trees, but you can't replace virgin rainforest or ancient woodlands once they're lost.
- Recycling plastic means creating less new plastic , which is definitely a good thing, especially as it's usually made from fossil fuel hydrocarbons.
- Recycling metals means there's less need for risky, expensive and damaging mining and extraction of new metal ores.
- Recycling glass reduces the need to use new raw materials like sand – it sounds hard to believe, but supplies of some types of sand are starting to get low around the world.
Recycling reduces the need to grow, harvest or extract new raw materials from the Earth.
That in turn lessens the harmful disruption and damage being done to the natural world: fewer forests cut down, rivers diverted, wild animals harmed or displaced, and less pollution of water, soil and air.
And of course if our plastic waste isn't safely put in the recycling, it can be blown or washed into rivers and seas and end up hundreds or thousands of miles away, polluting coastlines and waterways and becoming a problem for everyone.
The world's increasing demand for new stuff has led to more of the poorest and most vulnerable people (for example, those living around forests or river systems) being displaced from their homes, or otherwise exploited. Forest communities can find themselves evicted as a result of the search for cheap timber and rivers can be damned or polluted by manufacturing waste.
It's far better to recycle existing products than to damage someone else's community or land in the search for new raw materials.
Making products from recycled materials requires less energy than making them from new raw materials. Sometimes it's a huge difference in energy. For example:
- Producing new aluminium from old products (including recycled cans and foil) uses 95% less energy than making it from scratch. For steel it's about a 70% energy saving.
- Making paper from pulped recycled paper uses 40% less energy than making it from virgin wood fibres.
- The amount of energy saved from recycling one glass bottle could power an old 100-watt light bulb for 4 hours and a new low-energy LED equivalent for a lot longer.
Because recycling means you need to use less energy on sourcing and processing new raw materials, it produces lower carbon emissions. It also keeps potentially methane-releasing waste out of landfill sites.
Reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere is vital for stopping disastrous climate change.
Lambeth council in London pointed out that "it is 6 times cheaper to dispose of recycled waste than general refuse." So, the more you recycle, and the less you put in the bin, the more money is saved, which should be good for households, businesses and local public services.
Recycling food waste and green waste is a great idea too, often generating lots of valuable compost that can be used to grow more food and other crops.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused devastation in all areas of our lives, including employment. There are over 500,000 young people aged 16-24 out of work, and numbers are expected to grow substantially with the end of the furlough scheme.
Instead of propping up declining, polluting industries, the government must future-proof livelihoods by investing in more green jobs .
Right now, young people are being taught and given careers advice on jobs that may not even exist in 10 years' time. We're setting them up to fail where we could be training them to succeed .
The truth is we all need to get into the habit of using less stuff in the first place. And the things we do use ought to be reused as much as possible before being recycled, to minimise waste .
This would significantly aid the response to the global waste management challenge, which has seen many countries in the Global South unfairly shoulder the responsibility of managing the waste of countries in the Global North. The question of what to do with waste is one that governments cannot ignore.
It's important that we combine our efforts to manage our waste with increased calls for tougher government action on reducing plastic waste .
Discover easy ways to reduce your environmental impact, from food to fashion. | https://friendsoftheearth.uk/sustainable-living/7-benefits-recycling | 74 |
name at least two benefits of recycling more of our wastes | Recycling in the United States | US EPA | Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash and turning them into new products. Recycling can benefit your community, the economy, and the environment. Products should only be recycled if they cannot be reduced or reused. EPA promotes the waste management hierarchy , which ranks various waste management strategies from most to least environmentally preferred. The hierarchy prioritizes source reduction and the reuse of waste materials over recycling.
On this page:
Recycling provides many benefits to our environment. By recycling our materials, we create a healthier planet for ourselves and future generations.
Conserve natural resources: Recycling reduces the need to extract resources such as timber, water, and minerals for new products.
Climate change: According to the most recent EPA data , the recycling and composting of municipal solid waste (MSW or trash) saved over 193 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2018.
Energy savings: Recycling conserves energy. For example, recycling just 10 plastic bottles saves enough energy to power a laptop for more than 25 hours. To estimate how much energy you can save by recycling certain products, EPA developed the individual Waste Reduction Model (iWARM).
Waste and pollution reduction: Recycling diverts waste away from landfills and incinerators, which reduces the harmful effects of pollution and emissions.
EPA released significant findings on the economic benefits of the recycling industry with an update to the national Recycling Economic Information (REI) Study in 2020. This study analyzes the numbers of jobs, wages and tax revenues attributed to recycling. The study found that in a single year, recycling and reuse activities in the United States accounted for:
- 681,000 jobs,
- $37.8 billion in wages, and
- $5.5 billion in tax revenues.
This equates to 1.17 jobs per 1,000 tons of materials recycled and $65.23 in wages and $9.42 in tax revenue for every ton of materials recycled. For more information, check out the full report .
Environmental Justice: Across the country, waste management facilities are concentrated in underserved communities, and they can have negative impacts on human health, property values, aesthetic and recreation values, and land productivity. Recycling provides these areas with a healthier and more sustainable alternative.
International: Waste generated in the United States also affects communities in other countries. Recycled materials are exported to some countries that are not able to manage those materials in an environmentally sound manner.
The recycling process is made up of three steps that are repeated over and over again. This creates a continuous loop which is represented by the familiar chasing arrows recycling symbol. The three steps of the recycling process are described below.
Businesses and consumers generate recyclables that are then collected by either a private hauler or government entity. There are several methods for collecting recyclables, including curbside collection, drop-off centers, and deposit or refund programs. Visit How do I recycle... Common Recyclables for information on specific materials.
After collection, recyclables are sent to a recovery facility to be sorted, cleaned, and processed into materials that can be used in manufacturing. Recyclables are bought and sold just like raw materials would be, and prices go up and down depending on supply and demand in the United States and around the world.
After processing, recyclables are made into new products at a recycling plant or similar facility. More and more of today's products are being manufactured with recycled content.
Recycled materials are also used in new ways such as recovered glass in asphalt to pave roads or recovered plastic in carpeting and park benches.
You help close the recycling loop by buying new products made from recycled materials. There are thousands of products that contain recycled content. When you go shopping, look for the following:
- Products that can be easily recycled
- Products that contain recycled content
Below are some of the terms used:
- Recycled-content product - The product was manufactured with recycled materials either collected from a recycling program or from waste recovered during the normal manufacturing process. The label will sometimes include how much of the content came from recycled materials.
- Post-consumer content - Very similar to recycled content, but the material comes only from recyclables collected from consumers or businesses through a recycling program.
- Recyclable product - Products that can be collected, processed, and manufactured into new products after they have been used. These products do not necessarily contain recycled materials. Remember not all kinds of recyclables may be collected in your community, so be sure to check with your local recycling program before you buy.
Some common products you can find that are made with recycled content include the following:
- Aluminum cans
- Car bumpers
- Carpeting
- Cereal boxes
- Comic books
- Egg cartons
- Glass containers
- Laundry detergent bottles
- Motor oil
- Nails
- Newspapers
- Paper towels
- Steel products
- Trash bags
While the benefits of recycling are clear, the current system still faces many challenges.
- Many people are confused about what items can be recycled, where they can be recycled and how. This often leads to recyclables going in the trash or trash going in the recycling bin.
- America’s recycling infrastructure has not kept pace with today’s waste stream. Communication between the manufacturers of new materials and products and the recycling industry needs to be improved to prepare for and optimally manage the recycling of new materials.
- Domestic markets for recycled materials need to be strengthened in the United States. Historically, some of the recycled materials generated in the U.S. have been exported internationally. However, changing international policies have limited the export of materials. Improving communication among the different sectors of the recycling system is needed to strengthen the development of existing materials markets and to develop new innovative markets.
- We need to better integrate recycled materials and end-of-life management into product and packaging designs.
- More consistent measurement methodologies are necessary to improve recycling system performance. These more standardized metrics can then be used to create effective goals and track progress.
Draft National Recycling Strategy : EPA has developed the draft National Recycling Strategy with a focus on advancing the national municipal solid waste (MSW) recycling system. It identifies strategic objectives and stakeholder-led actions to create a stronger, more resilient, and cost-effective recycling system.
Recycling Pledge : EPA invites U.S.-based organizations to sign the America Recycles pledge. Signing the pledge signifies interest in participating in dialogue and taking action to improve the recycling system.
America Recycles Day : Every year on November 15, EPA reminds everyone of the importance and impact of recycling through education and outreach.
Basel Convention : The United States is a signatory to the Basel Convention, but has not yet become a Party to the Convention. The Basel Convention establishes standards for the transboundary movement of various types of waste. | https://www.epa.gov/recycle/recycling-united-states | 74 |
name at least two benefits of recycling more of our wastes | Recycling in the United States | US EPA | Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash and turning them into new products. Recycling can benefit your community, the economy, and the environment. Products should only be recycled if they cannot be reduced or reused. EPA promotes the waste management hierarchy , which ranks various waste management strategies from most to least environmentally preferred. The hierarchy prioritizes source reduction and the reuse of waste materials over recycling.
On this page:
Recycling provides many benefits to our environment. By recycling our materials, we create a healthier planet for ourselves and future generations.
Conserve natural resources: Recycling reduces the need to extract resources such as timber, water, and minerals for new products.
Climate change: According to the most recent EPA data , the recycling and composting of municipal solid waste (MSW or trash) saved over 193 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2018.
Energy savings: Recycling conserves energy. For example, recycling just 10 plastic bottles saves enough energy to power a laptop for more than 25 hours. To estimate how much energy you can save by recycling certain products, EPA developed the individual Waste Reduction Model (iWARM).
Waste and pollution reduction: Recycling diverts waste away from landfills and incinerators, which reduces the harmful effects of pollution and emissions.
EPA released significant findings on the economic benefits of the recycling industry with an update to the national Recycling Economic Information (REI) Study in 2020. This study analyzes the numbers of jobs, wages and tax revenues attributed to recycling. The study found that in a single year, recycling and reuse activities in the United States accounted for:
- 681,000 jobs,
- $37.8 billion in wages, and
- $5.5 billion in tax revenues.
This equates to 1.17 jobs per 1,000 tons of materials recycled and $65.23 in wages and $9.42 in tax revenue for every ton of materials recycled. For more information, check out the full report .
Environmental Justice: Across the country, waste management facilities are concentrated in underserved communities, and they can have negative impacts on human health, property values, aesthetic and recreation values, and land productivity. Recycling provides these areas with a healthier and more sustainable alternative.
International: Waste generated in the United States also affects communities in other countries. Recycled materials are exported to some countries that are not able to manage those materials in an environmentally sound manner.
The recycling process is made up of three steps that are repeated over and over again. This creates a continuous loop which is represented by the familiar chasing arrows recycling symbol. The three steps of the recycling process are described below.
Businesses and consumers generate recyclables that are then collected by either a private hauler or government entity. There are several methods for collecting recyclables, including curbside collection, drop-off centers, and deposit or refund programs. Visit How do I recycle... Common Recyclables for information on specific materials.
After collection, recyclables are sent to a recovery facility to be sorted, cleaned, and processed into materials that can be used in manufacturing. Recyclables are bought and sold just like raw materials would be, and prices go up and down depending on supply and demand in the United States and around the world.
After processing, recyclables are made into new products at a recycling plant or similar facility. More and more of today's products are being manufactured with recycled content.
Recycled materials are also used in new ways such as recovered glass in asphalt to pave roads or recovered plastic in carpeting and park benches.
You help close the recycling loop by buying new products made from recycled materials. There are thousands of products that contain recycled content. When you go shopping, look for the following:
- Products that can be easily recycled
- Products that contain recycled content
Below are some of the terms used:
- Recycled-content product - The product was manufactured with recycled materials either collected from a recycling program or from waste recovered during the normal manufacturing process. The label will sometimes include how much of the content came from recycled materials.
- Post-consumer content - Very similar to recycled content, but the material comes only from recyclables collected from consumers or businesses through a recycling program.
- Recyclable product - Products that can be collected, processed, and manufactured into new products after they have been used. These products do not necessarily contain recycled materials. Remember not all kinds of recyclables may be collected in your community, so be sure to check with your local recycling program before you buy.
Some common products you can find that are made with recycled content include the following:
- Aluminum cans
- Car bumpers
- Carpeting
- Cereal boxes
- Comic books
- Egg cartons
- Glass containers
- Laundry detergent bottles
- Motor oil
- Nails
- Newspapers
- Paper towels
- Steel products
- Trash bags
While the benefits of recycling are clear, the current system still faces many challenges.
- Many people are confused about what items can be recycled, where they can be recycled and how. This often leads to recyclables going in the trash or trash going in the recycling bin.
- America’s recycling infrastructure has not kept pace with today’s waste stream. Communication between the manufacturers of new materials and products and the recycling industry needs to be improved to prepare for and optimally manage the recycling of new materials.
- Domestic markets for recycled materials need to be strengthened in the United States. Historically, some of the recycled materials generated in the U.S. have been exported internationally. However, changing international policies have limited the export of materials. Improving communication among the different sectors of the recycling system is needed to strengthen the development of existing materials markets and to develop new innovative markets.
- We need to better integrate recycled materials and end-of-life management into product and packaging designs.
- More consistent measurement methodologies are necessary to improve recycling system performance. These more standardized metrics can then be used to create effective goals and track progress.
Draft National Recycling Strategy : EPA has developed the draft National Recycling Strategy with a focus on advancing the national municipal solid waste (MSW) recycling system. It identifies strategic objectives and stakeholder-led actions to create a stronger, more resilient, and cost-effective recycling system.
Recycling Pledge : EPA invites U.S.-based organizations to sign the America Recycles pledge. Signing the pledge signifies interest in participating in dialogue and taking action to improve the recycling system.
America Recycles Day : Every year on November 15, EPA reminds everyone of the importance and impact of recycling through education and outreach.
Basel Convention : The United States is a signatory to the Basel Convention, but has not yet become a Party to the Convention. The Basel Convention establishes standards for the transboundary movement of various types of waste. | https://www.epa.gov/recycle/recycling-united-states | 74 |
name at least two benefits of recycling more of our wastes | 7 benefits of recycling | Friends of the Earth | Share:
From the pollution produced by landfills to the devastating effects of plastic in our oceans, we urgently need to stem the flow of rubbish pouring into our environment. Here's a reminder of why recycling is such a good thing – for you and the planet.
29 Mar 2018 | 05 Sep 2022 | 3 min ute read
We need to drastically improve our recycling habits at home, in schools and at workplaces.
The UK government has a target to recycle 65% of municipal waste by 2035, but we've got a long way to go to reach that goal – currently, the UK's recycling rate is about 45%.
We need to remember that recycling is crucial to the future health of our planet. Here are 7 reasons why...
The world's natural resources are finite, and some are in very short supply.
At a basic level:
- Recycling paper and wood saves trees and forests. Yes, you can plant new trees, but you can't replace virgin rainforest or ancient woodlands once they're lost.
- Recycling plastic means creating less new plastic , which is definitely a good thing, especially as it's usually made from fossil fuel hydrocarbons.
- Recycling metals means there's less need for risky, expensive and damaging mining and extraction of new metal ores.
- Recycling glass reduces the need to use new raw materials like sand – it sounds hard to believe, but supplies of some types of sand are starting to get low around the world.
Recycling reduces the need to grow, harvest or extract new raw materials from the Earth.
That in turn lessens the harmful disruption and damage being done to the natural world: fewer forests cut down, rivers diverted, wild animals harmed or displaced, and less pollution of water, soil and air.
And of course if our plastic waste isn't safely put in the recycling, it can be blown or washed into rivers and seas and end up hundreds or thousands of miles away, polluting coastlines and waterways and becoming a problem for everyone.
The world's increasing demand for new stuff has led to more of the poorest and most vulnerable people (for example, those living around forests or river systems) being displaced from their homes, or otherwise exploited. Forest communities can find themselves evicted as a result of the search for cheap timber and rivers can be damned or polluted by manufacturing waste.
It's far better to recycle existing products than to damage someone else's community or land in the search for new raw materials.
Making products from recycled materials requires less energy than making them from new raw materials. Sometimes it's a huge difference in energy. For example:
- Producing new aluminium from old products (including recycled cans and foil) uses 95% less energy than making it from scratch. For steel it's about a 70% energy saving.
- Making paper from pulped recycled paper uses 40% less energy than making it from virgin wood fibres.
- The amount of energy saved from recycling one glass bottle could power an old 100-watt light bulb for 4 hours and a new low-energy LED equivalent for a lot longer.
Because recycling means you need to use less energy on sourcing and processing new raw materials, it produces lower carbon emissions. It also keeps potentially methane-releasing waste out of landfill sites.
Reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere is vital for stopping disastrous climate change.
Lambeth council in London pointed out that "it is 6 times cheaper to dispose of recycled waste than general refuse." So, the more you recycle, and the less you put in the bin, the more money is saved, which should be good for households, businesses and local public services.
Recycling food waste and green waste is a great idea too, often generating lots of valuable compost that can be used to grow more food and other crops.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused devastation in all areas of our lives, including employment. There are over 500,000 young people aged 16-24 out of work, and numbers are expected to grow substantially with the end of the furlough scheme.
Instead of propping up declining, polluting industries, the government must future-proof livelihoods by investing in more green jobs .
Right now, young people are being taught and given careers advice on jobs that may not even exist in 10 years' time. We're setting them up to fail where we could be training them to succeed .
The truth is we all need to get into the habit of using less stuff in the first place. And the things we do use ought to be reused as much as possible before being recycled, to minimise waste .
This would significantly aid the response to the global waste management challenge, which has seen many countries in the Global South unfairly shoulder the responsibility of managing the waste of countries in the Global North. The question of what to do with waste is one that governments cannot ignore.
It's important that we combine our efforts to manage our waste with increased calls for tougher government action on reducing plastic waste .
Discover easy ways to reduce your environmental impact, from food to fashion. | https://friendsoftheearth.uk/sustainable-living/7-benefits-recycling | 74 |
name at least two benefits of recycling more of our wastes | Frequently Asked Questions: Benefits of Recycling | Q: Why is it important to recycle?
A: With the involvement and enthusiasm of people like you, recycling is back and so are thousands upon thousands of recycled products made from materials that would otherwise be piling up in our nation's landfills. It makes a huge difference to our environment, our quality of life, and our country's future.
Why It's Important
As stewards of the environment, we are responsible for preserving and protecting our resources for ourselves and for future generations.
Getting Back To Basics
Recycling is really just common sense, and until the "modern era," it was a common household activity. Before the 1920s, 70% of U.S. cities ran programs to recycle certain materials. During World War II, industry recycled and reused about 25% of the waste stream. Because of concern for the environment, recycling is again on the upswing. The nation's composting and recycling rate rose from 7.7% of the waste stream in 1960 to 17% in 1990. It's currently up to around 30%. California is at about 48%.
The Garbage Crisis
The world has changed a lot in the past century. From individually packaged food servings to disposable diapers, more garbage is generated now than ever before. The average American discards seven and a half pounds of garbage every day. This garbage, the solid waste stream, goes mostly to landfills, where it's compacted and buried. As the waste stream continues to grow, so will the pressures on our landfills, our resources, and our environment.
Recycling - An Important Part Of The Solution
The more we recycle, the less garbage winds up in our landfills and incineration plants. By reusing aluminum, paper, glass, plastics, and other materials, we can save production and energy costs, and reduce the negative impacts that the extraction and processing of virgin materials has on the environment.
It all comes back to you. Recycling gets down to one person taking action. New products can be made from your recyclable waste material. Recycling is good for our environment, our communities, and our economy. Visit America Recycles website at www.americarecyclesday.org to learn more about this subject.
Q: What is recycling's greatest economic benefit?
A: In a broad sense, recycling is part of an ethic of resource efficiency – of using products to their fullest potential. When a recycled material, rather than a raw material, is used to make a new product, natural resources and energy are conserved. This is because recycled materials have already been refined and processed once; manufacturing the second time is much cleaner and less energy-intensive than the first. For example, manufacturing with recycled aluminum cans uses 95 percent less energy than creating the same amount of aluminum with bauxite.
Investments in recycling collection support a strong and diverse recycling manufacturing industry, which brings jobs and high wages to states and localities. The collection of recyclable materials is the first - the most critical link in a chain of economic activity. Investment in local collection infrastructure pays great dividends in supporting significant downstream recycling economic activity. Importantly, many of these recycling manufacturers rely on a steady and consistent supply of recyclable materials generated from recycling programs.
California’s investments in recycling collection infrastructure have brought substantial returns in the form of reciprocal investments and job creation by recycling manufacturers. The National Recycling Coalition reports that the recycling industry in California is both diverse and significant. The state hosts 4,342 recycling and reuse establishments that employ over 84,000 people, generate an annual payroll of $2.25 billion, and gross $14.2 billion in annual revenues. In California, for every job in recycling collection there are eight jobs created through manufacturing the recovered material into a new product.
Q: What are the environmental benefits of recycling?
A: It conserves energy, reduces air and water pollution, reduces greenhouse gases, and conserves natural resources.
Stanford recycled, composted, and otherwise source reduced 62% of its waste and reduced landfill by 35%. The results are cleaner air and water, less pollution, more forested land and open space, and reduced greenhouse gases.
Everyone knows recycling means less trash going to our landfills but the greatest environmental benefit of recycling is the conservation of energy and natural resources and the prevention of pollution that is generated when a raw material is used to make a new product.
Recycling at Stanford Conserves Energy
The paper, glass, metals, plastic, and organic material Stanford recycled in 2016 saved a total of about 70,481 million BTUs of energy; enough energy to power nearly 613 homes for one year. Or said another way, conserved 12,131 barrels of oil or 567,3014 gallons of gasoline.
Producing products using recovered rather than raw materials uses significantly less energy which results in less burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.
Recycling at Stanford Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Stanford’s recycling efforts last year reduced greenhouse gas emissions by about 2447 metric tons of carbon equivalent (MTCE), equivalent to taking 1889 cars off the road per year, conserving 1,009,626 gallons of gasoline or 48 railway cars of coal.
By reducing air and water pollution and saving energy, recycling offers an important environmental benefit: it reduces emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons, that contribute to global climate change.
Recycling at Stanford Conserves Natural Resources
By recycling over 2303 tons of paper last year, Stanford saved 32,115 trees. Stanford reduced the need for 414 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone by recycling over 288 tons of ferrous scrap metal.
By using recycled materials instead of trees, metal ores, minerals, oil and other raw materials harvested from the earth, recycling-based manufacturing conserves the world's scarce natural resources. This conservation reduces pressure to expand forests cutting and mining operations.
Waste Generation Increases
In 2014, Americans generated about 258 million tons of trash and recycled 66.4 million tons and composted 23 million tons of this material, equivalent to a 34.6 percent recycling rate. On average, we recycled and composted 1.51 pounds of our individual waste generation of 4.44 pounds per person per day.
The state of the economy has a strong impact on consumption and waste generation. Waste generation increases during times of strong economic growth and decreases during times of economic decline. To learn more about waste generation in the US see the US EPA report Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures.
This data is taken from Stanford University's Recycling and Solid Waste Report 2016 and fed into the US EPA WAste Reduction Model (WARM) .
Q: Can recycling save energy?
A: Yes it can! Here’s some fun facts from CalRecycle to show you how!
If you look at the big picture of what it takes to create a product from scratch -- to get the raw materials, transport them, process them and manufacture them -- making goods with recycled material like paper, plastic, glass, and metal is a major energy saver.
Seattle economist Jeffrey Morris estimated that manufacturing one ton of office and computer paper with recycled paper stock can save nearly 3,000 kilowatt hours over the same ton of paper made with virgin wood products.
A ton of soda cans made with recycled aluminum saves an amazing 21,000 kilowatt hours by reducing the virgin bauxite (bozite) ore that would have to be mined, shipped, and refined. That’s a 95% energy savings.
A ton of PET plastic containers made with recycled plastic conserves about 7,200 kilowatt hours.
The San Diego County Office of Education has figured out that recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100 watt light bulb for four hours.
The Steel Recycling Institute has found that steel recycling saves enough energy to electrically power the equilvalent of 18 million homes for a year.
With all the energy that is saved when we recycle bottles and cans and paper, we should all recycle and buy recycled more often!
Q: How much energy is saved by recycling?
A: The amount of lost energy from throwing away recyclable commodities such as aluminum cans and newspapers is equivalent to the annual output of 15 power plants. The energy savings applies to all recycling sectors:
Aluminum. Recycling of aluminum cans saves 95% of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminum from its virgin source. One ton of recycled aluminum saves 14,000 kilowatt hours (Kwh) of energy, 40 barrels of oil, 130. 152.32 million BTU's of energy, and 10 cubic yards of landfill space.
Newsprint. One ton of recycled newsprint saves 601 Kwh of energy, 1.7 barrels of oil (71 gallons), 10.2 million BTU's of energy, 60 pounds of air pollutants from being released, 7,000 gallons of water, and 4.6 cubic yards of landfill space.
Office Paper. One ton of recycled office paper saves 4,100 Kwh of energy, 9 barrels of oil, 54 million BTU's of energy, 60 pounds of air pollutants from being released, 7,000 gallons of water, and 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space.
Plastic. One ton of recycled plastic saves 5,774 Kwh of energy, 16.3 barrels of oil, 98 million BTU's of energy, and 30 cubic yards of landfill space.
Steel. One ton of recycled steel saves 642 Kwh of energy, 1.8 barrels of oil, 10.9 million BTU's of energy, and 4 cubic yards of landfill space.
Glass. One ton of recycled glass saves 42 Kwh of energy, 0.12 barrels of oil (5 gallons), 714,000 BTU's of energy, 7.5 pounds of air pollutants from being released, and 2 cubic yards of landfill space. Over 30% of the raw material used in glass production now comes from recycled glass.
As you can see, by recycling you are saving energy in addition to conserving resources and reducing pollution!
Q: How much energy is in a can?
A: Last year alone, recycling bottles and cans saved enough energy to power up to 522,000 homes in California.
Energy drinks are all the rage, and in recent years beverages that invigorate consumers have flooded the marketplace. What many people might not realize is that the same bottles and cans that provide them with energy beverages could actually save the kind of energy needed to power their homes and televisions.
How much energy? In 2004, the 12 billion bottles and cans recycled by Californians saved the equivalent of enough energy to power up to 522,000 homes, according to CalRecycle calculations. It takes 95 percent less energy to make an aluminum can from recycled aluminum than from processing bauxite ore, and glass furnaces can run at lower temperatures when using recycled glass, thereby saving energy and extending equipment life.
To help Californians find the recycling bin instead of the trash can, CalRecycle has some simple tips for bottle and can recycling:
• Own a business or work in an office building, gym, school, restaurant or other location where people dispose of CRV containers? Order a free “Recycling Starter Kit” at www.bottlesandcans.com
• On the go? Hold onto your empty beverage containers until you find a recycling bin. Keep an extra bag or box in your car so that you can collect your beverage containers without having them roll around in your car.
• Throwing a party? Set up a separate bag or box for recyclable beverage containers only. Later, redeem them for cash or put them in your curbside recycling bin.
For more information about this press release and other CRV beverage container recycling related programs, please contact the CalRecycle .
Q: What is the connection between source reduction and reduction in green house gas emissions?
A: Reducing the amount of paper you use is not just being cost-effective, it is taking concrete steps to reduce climate change. More so than any other waste management option - including composting, recycling, and landfilling - source reduction helps turn back the clock on climate change.
What is Source Reduction?
Source reduction, often called waste prevention, is any changes in the design, manufacture, purchase, or use of materials or products (including packaging) to reduce their amount or toxicity before they become municipal solid waste. Source reduction also includes the reuse of products or materials.
Reducing Green House Gas (GHG) Emissions
When a material is source reduced (i.e. less of the material is made), the GHG emissions associated with making the material and managing the post consumer waste are avoided. In addition, when paper products are source reduced, trees that would otherwise be harvested are left standing and continue to grow, removing additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. GHG emissions reductions resulting from source reduction of a variety of common materials are listed in the table.
What Can You Do?
What can the average citizen do to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Besides reducing emissions from fossil fuels through energy and transportation efficiency, we also can help minimize climate impacts through source reduction, reuse, and recycling. This saves energy which translates directly to reduced greenhouse gas emissions. We should all do our share to protect the earth and its atmosphere.
For more information on source reduction visit: http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/index.htm . | https://lbre.stanford.edu/pssistanford-recycling/frequently-asked-questions/frequently-asked-questions-benefits-recycling | 74 |
name at least two benefits of recycling more of our wastes | 10 benefits of recycling | What are the benefits of recycling | Cleanipedia ZA | The Poll
Is eco-friendly cleaning important to you?
Yes, I try to do what’s best for the environment
No, I go for what I feel is most hygienic
It depends on cost
1528 Votes
Don’t waste good waste! Here are 10 reasons to recycle:
Preserve the world’s natural resources: The Earth’s natural resources are finite. Recycling preserves valuable natural resources for the good and longevity of the planet. It also ensures we can continue to live the way we are accustomed to.
Protect the world’s wildlife: The more we recycle, the less we need to disrupt and damage the natural world, including habitats. If fewer forests are being cut down and fewer rivers are being diverted, less wild animals are being harmed or displaced in the process.
Protect the world’s people: In the search for new materials, it is often the poorest and most vulnerable people who end up being displaced from their homes. Communities living around forests or river systems can find themselves evicted in the search for cheap timber.
Keep plastic out of the oceans: If plastic waste isn’t safely recycled, it can be blown or washed into rivers and oceans, where it can harm wildlife and pollute coastlines and waterways. Recycling plastic safeguards our health and major food sources, and protects wildlife in their natural environment.
What are the benefits of recycling metals** ?:** Recycling metal means there is less need for expensive, dangerous and harmful extraction of new materials. Aluminium is generally considered to be a metal – see number 6 to find out: what the benefits of recycling aluminium are.
What are the benefits of recycling aluminium** ?:** Making products from recycled materials requires less energy than creating them from raw materials. Sometimes the difference is immense, for example producing new aluminium from recycled cans and foil uses 95% less energy than starting from scratch.
What are the benefits of recycling paper?: Trees take years to grow but can be chopped down in just minutes. That’s why planting new trees isn’t enough – we also need to recycle. Making paper from pulped recycled paper uses 40% less energy than creating paper from virgin wood fibres.
Create new jobs: Recycling has created a wealth of new jobs, in the recycling industry itself and in manufacturing. Some stores contain entire lines of merchandise made from recycled goods, showcasing the benefits of recycling at a more local level.
Save money: Let’s move away from the wider benefits of recycling and focus on the direct benefits to you and your family. Upcycling furniture, recycling old fabrics into throws and tablecloths, shopping at second hand stores, reusing containers, using food scraps as compost – these are all great ways to recycle and save money.
Feel good!: Simply put, doing good makes you feel good. Save the planet, be happy.
While recycling is a great way to reduce to amount of waste we produce, the best thing we can do is to reduce how much we use in the first place. Reduce, reuse, recycle – if everyone did this, imagine the impact we could have on the wellbeing of our planet?
Recycle as much as you can at home
Encourage your kids to recycle and teach them the wider benefits of recycling
Does your workplace recycle? If not, make it happen!
Encourage friends and family to recycle
How can we recycle at home?
Making a difference really does begin at home! You can start recycling at home and make a huge impact on the effect you and your family have on the natural environment. Start by separating your waste, keep plastic, paper, tins, and glass aside and recycle them in separate containers.
What is the easiest thing to recycle at home?
The easiest materials to start recycling at home are the things you use in your home every day, plastic, glass, tins, and paper. You can also begin to keep your fruit and vegetable peels aside to compost them.
How do you sort and store recycled material at home?
There are several ways you can begin to sort and store recycling at home. The best and most efficient way is to get separate bins for paper, glass, plastic, and tins and throw your recycling in the appropriate bin after use.
How to make recycling at home easier?
To make recycling easier, make it a part of what you as a family do on a daily basis. Teach the kids the importance of recycling and how to do it and they’ll love throwing the different kinds of materials in the corresponding bins to help you. Reuse as many materials as you can too to make fun DIY crafts at home with the kids too.
Why should I start recycling at home?
There are numerous benefits to recycling at home. Here are just a few:
Recycling plastic contributes to keeping plastic out of the world’s oceans and land fills
Save the world’s trees by not consuming so much paper
Creation of new jobs in the recycling area
Save money by upcycling and reusing as much as you can
Originally published | https://www.cleanipedia.com/za/sustainability/10-benefits-of-recycling-at-home.html | 74 |
name at least two benefits of recycling more of our wastes | Reducing and Reusing Basics | US EPA | The most effective way to reduce waste is to not create it in the first place. Making a new product emits greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change and requires a lot of materials and energy - raw materials must be extracted from the earth, and the product must be fabricated then transported to wherever it will be sold. As a result, reduction and reuse are the most effective ways you can save natural resources, protect the environment and save money.
On this page:
- Reduces greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.
- Prevents pollution caused by reducing the need to harvest new raw materials.
- Saves energy.
- Reduces greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global climate change.
- Helps sustain the environment for future generations.
- Reduces the amount of waste that will need to be recycled or sent to landfills and incinerators.
- Allows products to be used to their fullest extent.
- Saves money.
- Think Green Before You Shop . Reduce associated greenhouse gas emissions by thinking green when you shop.
- Reduce your food waste by shopping smart, buying what you need, composting food scraps, and donating unused food to food banks or shelters. More ways to reduce your impact.
- Reuse or repurpose items such as old clothing, cloth grocery bags, and containers to prevent waste.
- Buy used items to reduce waste as well as the emissions created by producing new materials or disposing of them in landfills. Donate unused clothing, electronics and building materials to make sure others can reuse them too!
- Buy products made with recycled content . Check labels to see if a product or its packaging is made from recycled materials .
- Know before you throw. Know what items your local recycling program collects and encourage your household to recycle right and recycle more .
- Learn about what else you can do at home, at school, at work and in your community!
- Maintain and repair products , like clothing, tires and appliances, so that they won't have to be thrown out and replaced as frequently.
- Borrow, rent or share items that are used infrequently, like party decorations, tools or furniture.
One person's trash is another person's treasure. Instead of discarding unwanted appliances, tools or clothes, try selling or donating them. Not only will you be reducing waste, you'll be helping others. Local churches, community centers, thrift stores, schools and nonprofit organizations may accept a variety of donated items, including used books, working electronics and unneeded furniture.
- Prevents usable goods from going into landfills
- Helps your community and those in need
- Tax benefits may be available
Disclaimer: These sites are listed for informational purposes only. U.S. EPA does not endorse any of these entities nor their services. Contact Us to suggest any additional links. | https://www.epa.gov/recycle/reducing-and-reusing-basics | 74 |
name at least two benefits of recycling more of our wastes | Frequently Asked Questions: Benefits of Recycling | Q: Why is it important to recycle?
A: With the involvement and enthusiasm of people like you, recycling is back and so are thousands upon thousands of recycled products made from materials that would otherwise be piling up in our nation's landfills. It makes a huge difference to our environment, our quality of life, and our country's future.
Why It's Important
As stewards of the environment, we are responsible for preserving and protecting our resources for ourselves and for future generations.
Getting Back To Basics
Recycling is really just common sense, and until the "modern era," it was a common household activity. Before the 1920s, 70% of U.S. cities ran programs to recycle certain materials. During World War II, industry recycled and reused about 25% of the waste stream. Because of concern for the environment, recycling is again on the upswing. The nation's composting and recycling rate rose from 7.7% of the waste stream in 1960 to 17% in 1990. It's currently up to around 30%. California is at about 48%.
The Garbage Crisis
The world has changed a lot in the past century. From individually packaged food servings to disposable diapers, more garbage is generated now than ever before. The average American discards seven and a half pounds of garbage every day. This garbage, the solid waste stream, goes mostly to landfills, where it's compacted and buried. As the waste stream continues to grow, so will the pressures on our landfills, our resources, and our environment.
Recycling - An Important Part Of The Solution
The more we recycle, the less garbage winds up in our landfills and incineration plants. By reusing aluminum, paper, glass, plastics, and other materials, we can save production and energy costs, and reduce the negative impacts that the extraction and processing of virgin materials has on the environment.
It all comes back to you. Recycling gets down to one person taking action. New products can be made from your recyclable waste material. Recycling is good for our environment, our communities, and our economy. Visit America Recycles website at www.americarecyclesday.org to learn more about this subject.
Q: What is recycling's greatest economic benefit?
A: In a broad sense, recycling is part of an ethic of resource efficiency – of using products to their fullest potential. When a recycled material, rather than a raw material, is used to make a new product, natural resources and energy are conserved. This is because recycled materials have already been refined and processed once; manufacturing the second time is much cleaner and less energy-intensive than the first. For example, manufacturing with recycled aluminum cans uses 95 percent less energy than creating the same amount of aluminum with bauxite.
Investments in recycling collection support a strong and diverse recycling manufacturing industry, which brings jobs and high wages to states and localities. The collection of recyclable materials is the first - the most critical link in a chain of economic activity. Investment in local collection infrastructure pays great dividends in supporting significant downstream recycling economic activity. Importantly, many of these recycling manufacturers rely on a steady and consistent supply of recyclable materials generated from recycling programs.
California’s investments in recycling collection infrastructure have brought substantial returns in the form of reciprocal investments and job creation by recycling manufacturers. The National Recycling Coalition reports that the recycling industry in California is both diverse and significant. The state hosts 4,342 recycling and reuse establishments that employ over 84,000 people, generate an annual payroll of $2.25 billion, and gross $14.2 billion in annual revenues. In California, for every job in recycling collection there are eight jobs created through manufacturing the recovered material into a new product.
Q: What are the environmental benefits of recycling?
A: It conserves energy, reduces air and water pollution, reduces greenhouse gases, and conserves natural resources.
Stanford recycled, composted, and otherwise source reduced 62% of its waste and reduced landfill by 35%. The results are cleaner air and water, less pollution, more forested land and open space, and reduced greenhouse gases.
Everyone knows recycling means less trash going to our landfills but the greatest environmental benefit of recycling is the conservation of energy and natural resources and the prevention of pollution that is generated when a raw material is used to make a new product.
Recycling at Stanford Conserves Energy
The paper, glass, metals, plastic, and organic material Stanford recycled in 2016 saved a total of about 70,481 million BTUs of energy; enough energy to power nearly 613 homes for one year. Or said another way, conserved 12,131 barrels of oil or 567,3014 gallons of gasoline.
Producing products using recovered rather than raw materials uses significantly less energy which results in less burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.
Recycling at Stanford Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Stanford’s recycling efforts last year reduced greenhouse gas emissions by about 2447 metric tons of carbon equivalent (MTCE), equivalent to taking 1889 cars off the road per year, conserving 1,009,626 gallons of gasoline or 48 railway cars of coal.
By reducing air and water pollution and saving energy, recycling offers an important environmental benefit: it reduces emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons, that contribute to global climate change.
Recycling at Stanford Conserves Natural Resources
By recycling over 2303 tons of paper last year, Stanford saved 32,115 trees. Stanford reduced the need for 414 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone by recycling over 288 tons of ferrous scrap metal.
By using recycled materials instead of trees, metal ores, minerals, oil and other raw materials harvested from the earth, recycling-based manufacturing conserves the world's scarce natural resources. This conservation reduces pressure to expand forests cutting and mining operations.
Waste Generation Increases
In 2014, Americans generated about 258 million tons of trash and recycled 66.4 million tons and composted 23 million tons of this material, equivalent to a 34.6 percent recycling rate. On average, we recycled and composted 1.51 pounds of our individual waste generation of 4.44 pounds per person per day.
The state of the economy has a strong impact on consumption and waste generation. Waste generation increases during times of strong economic growth and decreases during times of economic decline. To learn more about waste generation in the US see the US EPA report Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures.
This data is taken from Stanford University's Recycling and Solid Waste Report 2016 and fed into the US EPA WAste Reduction Model (WARM) .
Q: Can recycling save energy?
A: Yes it can! Here’s some fun facts from CalRecycle to show you how!
If you look at the big picture of what it takes to create a product from scratch -- to get the raw materials, transport them, process them and manufacture them -- making goods with recycled material like paper, plastic, glass, and metal is a major energy saver.
Seattle economist Jeffrey Morris estimated that manufacturing one ton of office and computer paper with recycled paper stock can save nearly 3,000 kilowatt hours over the same ton of paper made with virgin wood products.
A ton of soda cans made with recycled aluminum saves an amazing 21,000 kilowatt hours by reducing the virgin bauxite (bozite) ore that would have to be mined, shipped, and refined. That’s a 95% energy savings.
A ton of PET plastic containers made with recycled plastic conserves about 7,200 kilowatt hours.
The San Diego County Office of Education has figured out that recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100 watt light bulb for four hours.
The Steel Recycling Institute has found that steel recycling saves enough energy to electrically power the equilvalent of 18 million homes for a year.
With all the energy that is saved when we recycle bottles and cans and paper, we should all recycle and buy recycled more often!
Q: How much energy is saved by recycling?
A: The amount of lost energy from throwing away recyclable commodities such as aluminum cans and newspapers is equivalent to the annual output of 15 power plants. The energy savings applies to all recycling sectors:
Aluminum. Recycling of aluminum cans saves 95% of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminum from its virgin source. One ton of recycled aluminum saves 14,000 kilowatt hours (Kwh) of energy, 40 barrels of oil, 130. 152.32 million BTU's of energy, and 10 cubic yards of landfill space.
Newsprint. One ton of recycled newsprint saves 601 Kwh of energy, 1.7 barrels of oil (71 gallons), 10.2 million BTU's of energy, 60 pounds of air pollutants from being released, 7,000 gallons of water, and 4.6 cubic yards of landfill space.
Office Paper. One ton of recycled office paper saves 4,100 Kwh of energy, 9 barrels of oil, 54 million BTU's of energy, 60 pounds of air pollutants from being released, 7,000 gallons of water, and 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space.
Plastic. One ton of recycled plastic saves 5,774 Kwh of energy, 16.3 barrels of oil, 98 million BTU's of energy, and 30 cubic yards of landfill space.
Steel. One ton of recycled steel saves 642 Kwh of energy, 1.8 barrels of oil, 10.9 million BTU's of energy, and 4 cubic yards of landfill space.
Glass. One ton of recycled glass saves 42 Kwh of energy, 0.12 barrels of oil (5 gallons), 714,000 BTU's of energy, 7.5 pounds of air pollutants from being released, and 2 cubic yards of landfill space. Over 30% of the raw material used in glass production now comes from recycled glass.
As you can see, by recycling you are saving energy in addition to conserving resources and reducing pollution!
Q: How much energy is in a can?
A: Last year alone, recycling bottles and cans saved enough energy to power up to 522,000 homes in California.
Energy drinks are all the rage, and in recent years beverages that invigorate consumers have flooded the marketplace. What many people might not realize is that the same bottles and cans that provide them with energy beverages could actually save the kind of energy needed to power their homes and televisions.
How much energy? In 2004, the 12 billion bottles and cans recycled by Californians saved the equivalent of enough energy to power up to 522,000 homes, according to CalRecycle calculations. It takes 95 percent less energy to make an aluminum can from recycled aluminum than from processing bauxite ore, and glass furnaces can run at lower temperatures when using recycled glass, thereby saving energy and extending equipment life.
To help Californians find the recycling bin instead of the trash can, CalRecycle has some simple tips for bottle and can recycling:
• Own a business or work in an office building, gym, school, restaurant or other location where people dispose of CRV containers? Order a free “Recycling Starter Kit” at www.bottlesandcans.com
• On the go? Hold onto your empty beverage containers until you find a recycling bin. Keep an extra bag or box in your car so that you can collect your beverage containers without having them roll around in your car.
• Throwing a party? Set up a separate bag or box for recyclable beverage containers only. Later, redeem them for cash or put them in your curbside recycling bin.
For more information about this press release and other CRV beverage container recycling related programs, please contact the CalRecycle .
Q: What is the connection between source reduction and reduction in green house gas emissions?
A: Reducing the amount of paper you use is not just being cost-effective, it is taking concrete steps to reduce climate change. More so than any other waste management option - including composting, recycling, and landfilling - source reduction helps turn back the clock on climate change.
What is Source Reduction?
Source reduction, often called waste prevention, is any changes in the design, manufacture, purchase, or use of materials or products (including packaging) to reduce their amount or toxicity before they become municipal solid waste. Source reduction also includes the reuse of products or materials.
Reducing Green House Gas (GHG) Emissions
When a material is source reduced (i.e. less of the material is made), the GHG emissions associated with making the material and managing the post consumer waste are avoided. In addition, when paper products are source reduced, trees that would otherwise be harvested are left standing and continue to grow, removing additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. GHG emissions reductions resulting from source reduction of a variety of common materials are listed in the table.
What Can You Do?
What can the average citizen do to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Besides reducing emissions from fossil fuels through energy and transportation efficiency, we also can help minimize climate impacts through source reduction, reuse, and recycling. This saves energy which translates directly to reduced greenhouse gas emissions. We should all do our share to protect the earth and its atmosphere.
For more information on source reduction visit: http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/index.htm . | https://lbre.stanford.edu/pssistanford-recycling/frequently-asked-questions/frequently-asked-questions-benefits-recycling | 74 |
name at least two benefits of recycling more of our wastes | What are three benefits of recycling? - Communities for Recycling | Share:
Most Americans believe strongly in the importance of recycling. Yet out of 37.4 million tons of materials that could be picked up in curbside recycling from American homes, 20 million tons are thrown in the trash. We can – and should – do better!
There are many reasons why recycling is a good idea for your community and the environment. Here are the three of the top benefits to remember, as well as a few tips for becoming a more successful recycler.
Did you know recycling can cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change? If we were to fully recycle the 20 million tons of household recyclables that are thrown in the trash, we would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 96 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. We’d achieve the same effect as taking more than 20 million cars off U.S. highways – all from recycling!
This is because taking raw materials from the earth like oil, trees, and metal ores – then processing those into packages and other materials like cardboard boxes, plastic jugs, or aluminum cans – requires a lot of energy. When we recycle these materials instead, it only requires a fraction of the energy to put that material back into use, leading to lower amounts of emissions that harm our planet.
So if you care about curbing climate change, you can make a difference by putting your family’s recyclables into the right bin on recycling day, and not the trash can. Be sure to brush up on your knowledge about what’s recyclable, too, by checking your community’s recycling guidelines.
Recycling not only benefits the environment, but also the economy. If all of the 37.4 million tons of recyclable materials generated in U.S. households were collected curbside and delivered back to economic use, it would generate 370,000 new full-time equivalent jobs. These “green jobs” can involve collecting curbside recyclables, processing recycled materials, supplying the materials to companies, transporting materials, maintaining equipment, and more.
Pratt Industries is one example of a company that has shown this dynamic at work. Pratt has established five 100% recycled paper mills in the U.S., with plans to build more in the future, bringing hundreds of new jobs to each site. These mills manufacture containerboard – also known as cardboard used to make boxes – saving more than 85,000 trees every day and 3.3 cubic yards of waste for every ton of paper produced, while employing local workers and processing recyclable paper from American communities.
The positive economic effects of recycling are huge for our nation and our communities. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, recycling and reuse activities account for $37.8 billion in wages for workers and $5.5 billion in tax revenues every year.
By these calculations, recycling makes a whole lot of cents. The next time you are at school, in the office, or on the go, know that your choice to recycle is helping to strengthen your community and support workers.
Recycling puts our used materials back into action as new products, helping to create a “circular economy” that eliminates waste and allows for a continuous use of resources. Why is that important? Because the earth’s natural resources aren’t endless, but limited.
Without recycling, we have to rely on extracting raw materials and cutting down trees to supply manufacturing needs. This can result in disruption of wildlife habitats, expensive and risky mining efforts to obtain metal ores, and depleting minerals that can’t be restored. But with recycling, we can better conserve and extend these natural resources.
For example, recycling glass not only helps save space in the landfill, but also saves resources. For every ton of glass recycled, we can conserve 1,300 pounds of sand, 410 pounds of soda ash, 380 pounds of limestone, and 160 pounds of feldspar.
So don’t throw out your bottles or cans in the trash! Recycling your recyclables can make a big impact in more ways than one.
While there are many benefits to recycling, these are three key reasons why recycling is worth the effort.
“When we become better at recycling, we can create a ripple effect that spreads a positive impact far and wide, from supporting jobs for our neighbors to preserving our planet,” says Scott Mouw, Senior Director of Strategy and Research at The Recycling Partnership. “Every one of us can play a part in making this happen.”
Have a question for us? Let's chat! | https://recyclingpartnership.org/communitiesforrecycling/what-are-three-benefits-of-recycling/ | 74 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | Residential Schools in Canada (Plain-Language Summary) | In the early 1600s, Catholic nuns and priests established the first residential schools in Canada. In 1883, these schools began to receive funding from the federal government. That year, the Government of Canada officially authorized the creation of the residential school system. The main goal of the system was to assimilate Indigenous children into white, Christian society. ( See also Inuit Experiences at Residential School and Métis Experiences at Residential School .)
(This article is a plain-language summary of residential schools in Canada. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry Residential Schools in Canada .)
In the following years, new schools were built. A total of 130 operated between 1831 and 1996. Over 150,000 First Nations , Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend residential school during this period. Thousands died either at school, or because of their experiences in the system. Many more remain missing.
While experiences varied, many students had negative experiences at school. They were forcibly removed from their homes and separated from their parents at a young age. They were forbidden to wear traditional clothing or participate in ceremony . School staff often used numbers to refer to students instead of their name. The vast majority of children were not allowed to speak their own languages at school.
Abuse was common at the schools. Children were beaten and locked in small spaces by teachers and staff for misbehaving. Numerous students were sexually abused . A large percentage did not receive enough food to eat. Poor living conditions and malnutrition meant many became sick with preventable diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza .
Only a few hours a day were spent in the classroom. Most teachers were unqualified, and the curriculum they taught was basic. Students learned reading and writing in either English or French, basic math, and religion. The schools received little funding from the government, so students were forced to spend half of their day working to maintain school buildings and grow food. Girls cooked, cleaned, sewed and laundered. Boys took part in carpentry, construction and farming. All students had a variety of other daily chores in addition to their work. When they left school, most did not have the skills they needed to find a well-paying job.
Indigenous students and parents protested and resisted against residential schools throughout their operation. In 1969, the churches handed over the administration of the schools to the federal government. The last federally run residential school closed in 1996.
In the 1990s, residential school Survivors began to speak publicly about the abuse they endured at school. They demanded that the federal government and the churches tell the truth about what happened. They also wanted the government to give money ( compensation ) to Survivors.
In 2008, the federal government formally apologized to residential school Survivors. More apologies followed, from provincial and territorial governments, as well as some churches. Compensation was provided to some — but not all — Survivors. Some of that money was used to create the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
Survivors were able to tell their stories during the TRC. In 2015, after six years of work, the commission released a summary report of its findings. It outlined 94 Calls to Action. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed to implementing all of them.
|What were residential schools?||Residential schools were government-sponsored schools run by churches.|
|What was the purpose of residential schools?||The purpose of residential schools was to educate and convert Indigenous youth and to assimilate them into Canadian society.|
|How many students attended residential schools?||An estimated 150,000 children attended residential schools.|
|How many children died at residential schools?||An estimated 6,000 children died at residential schools (records are incomplete).|
|How many residential schools were there in Canada?|| In total, over 130 residential schools operated in Canada between 1831 and 1996. |
In 1931, there were 80 residential schools operating in Canada. This was the most at any one time.
|When did the first residential school in Canada open?||The Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, accepted its first boarding students in 1831.|
|When did the last residential school in Canada close?||The Gordon Residential School in Punnichy, Saskatchewan, closed in 1996. It was the last residential school in Canada.| | https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools-in-canada-plain-language-summary | 75 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | Residential Schools in Canada (Plain-Language Summary) | In the early 1600s, Catholic nuns and priests established the first residential schools in Canada. In 1883, these schools began to receive funding from the federal government. That year, the Government of Canada officially authorized the creation of the residential school system. The main goal of the system was to assimilate Indigenous children into white, Christian society. ( See also Inuit Experiences at Residential School and Métis Experiences at Residential School .)
(This article is a plain-language summary of residential schools in Canada. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry Residential Schools in Canada .)
In the following years, new schools were built. A total of 130 operated between 1831 and 1996. Over 150,000 First Nations , Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend residential school during this period. Thousands died either at school, or because of their experiences in the system. Many more remain missing.
While experiences varied, many students had negative experiences at school. They were forcibly removed from their homes and separated from their parents at a young age. They were forbidden to wear traditional clothing or participate in ceremony . School staff often used numbers to refer to students instead of their name. The vast majority of children were not allowed to speak their own languages at school.
Abuse was common at the schools. Children were beaten and locked in small spaces by teachers and staff for misbehaving. Numerous students were sexually abused . A large percentage did not receive enough food to eat. Poor living conditions and malnutrition meant many became sick with preventable diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza .
Only a few hours a day were spent in the classroom. Most teachers were unqualified, and the curriculum they taught was basic. Students learned reading and writing in either English or French, basic math, and religion. The schools received little funding from the government, so students were forced to spend half of their day working to maintain school buildings and grow food. Girls cooked, cleaned, sewed and laundered. Boys took part in carpentry, construction and farming. All students had a variety of other daily chores in addition to their work. When they left school, most did not have the skills they needed to find a well-paying job.
Indigenous students and parents protested and resisted against residential schools throughout their operation. In 1969, the churches handed over the administration of the schools to the federal government. The last federally run residential school closed in 1996.
In the 1990s, residential school Survivors began to speak publicly about the abuse they endured at school. They demanded that the federal government and the churches tell the truth about what happened. They also wanted the government to give money ( compensation ) to Survivors.
In 2008, the federal government formally apologized to residential school Survivors. More apologies followed, from provincial and territorial governments, as well as some churches. Compensation was provided to some — but not all — Survivors. Some of that money was used to create the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
Survivors were able to tell their stories during the TRC. In 2015, after six years of work, the commission released a summary report of its findings. It outlined 94 Calls to Action. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed to implementing all of them.
|What were residential schools?||Residential schools were government-sponsored schools run by churches.|
|What was the purpose of residential schools?||The purpose of residential schools was to educate and convert Indigenous youth and to assimilate them into Canadian society.|
|How many students attended residential schools?||An estimated 150,000 children attended residential schools.|
|How many children died at residential schools?||An estimated 6,000 children died at residential schools (records are incomplete).|
|How many residential schools were there in Canada?|| In total, over 130 residential schools operated in Canada between 1831 and 1996. |
In 1931, there were 80 residential schools operating in Canada. This was the most at any one time.
|When did the first residential school in Canada open?||The Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, accepted its first boarding students in 1831.|
|When did the last residential school in Canada close?||The Gordon Residential School in Punnichy, Saskatchewan, closed in 1996. It was the last residential school in Canada.| | https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools-in-canada-plain-language-summary | 75 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | The Residential School System | By Erin Hanson (2009), with updates and revisions by Daniel P. Gamez & Alexa Manuel (September 2020). The original version of this article has been archived, but may be accessed here. To cite this article, we have recommendations at the bottom of the page.
Note on terminology: There is constant debate and reflection on the use of specific terms as umbrella categories to designate multiple Aboriginal, Indigenous, or Native peoples. For the most recent version of this article, we have decided to follow the terms Indigenous , First Nations, Métis and Inuit, or alternatively Indigenous Peoples, in the plural, following the guidelines of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples , the most widely accepted international instrument today. The term Indigenous Peoples can also be found in UBC’s Indigenous Peoples Language Guidelines .
The term residential schools refers to an extensive school system set up by the Canadian government and administered by churches that had the nominal objective of educating Indigenous children but also the more damaging and equally explicit objectives of indoctrinating them into Euro-Canadian and Christian ways of living and assimilating them into mainstream white Canadian society. The residential school system officially operated from the 1880s into the closing decades of the 20th century. The system forcibly separated children from their families for extended periods of time and forbade them to acknowledge their Indigenous heritage and culture or to speak their own languages. Children were severely punished if these, among other, strict rules were broken. Former students of residential schools have spoken of horrendous abuse at the hands of residential school staff: physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological. Residential schools provided Indigenous students with inappropriate education, often only up to lower grades, that focused mainly on prayer and manual labour in agriculture, light industry such as woodworking, and domestic work such as laundry work and sewing.
Residential schools systematically undermined Indigenous, First Nations, Métis and Inuit cultures across Canada and disrupted families for generations, severing the ties through which Indigenous culture is taught and sustained, and contributing to a general loss of language and culture. Because they were removed from their families, many students grew up without experiencing a nurturing family life and without the knowledge and skills to raise their own families. The devastating effects of the residential schools are far-reaching and continue to have a significant impact on Indigenous communities. The residential school system is widely considered a form of genocide because of the purposeful attempt from the government and church to eradicate all aspects of Indigenous cultures and lifeworlds.
From the 1990s onward, the government and the churches involved—Anglican, Presbyterian, United, and Roman Catholic—began to acknowledge their responsibility for an education scheme that was specifically designed to “kill the Indian in the child.” On June 11, 2008, the Canadian government issued a formal apology in Parliament for the damage done by the residential school system. In spite of this and other apologies, however, the effects remain.
The early origins of residential schools in Canada are found in the implementation of the mission system in the 1600s. The churches and European settlers brought with them the assumption that their own civilization was the pinnacle of human achievement. They interpreted the socio-cultural differences between themselves and Indigenous Peoples as “proof” that Canada’s first inhabitants were ignorant, savage, and—like children—in need of guidance. They felt the need to “civilize” Indigenous Peoples. Education—a federal responsibility—became the primary means to this end.
Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald commissioned journalist and politician Nicholas Flood Davin to study industrial schools for Indigenous children in the United States. Davin’s recommendation to follow the U.S. example of “aggressive civilization” led to public funding for the residential school system. “If anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young. The children must be kept constantly within the circle of civilized conditions,” Davin wrote in his 1879 Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds (Davin’s report can be read here .)
In the 1880s, in conjunction with other federal assimilation policies, the government began to establish residential schools across Canada. Authorities would frequently take children to schools far from their home communities, part of a strategy to alienate them from their families and familiar surroundings. In 1920, under the Indian Act , it became mandatory for every Indigenous child to attend a residential school and illegal for them to attend any other educational institution.
The purpose of the residential schools was to eliminate all aspects of Indigenous culture. Students had their hair cut short, they were dressed in uniforms, they were often given numbers, and their days were strictly regimented by timetables. Boys and girls were kept separate, and even siblings rarely interacted, further weakening family ties. Chief Bobby Joseph of the Indian Residential School Survivors Society recalls that he had no idea how to interact with girls and never even got to know his own sister “beyond a mere wave in the dining room.” 1 In addition, students were strictly forbidden to speak their languages—even though many children knew no other—or to practise Indigenous customs or traditions. Violations of these rules were severely punished.
Residential school students did not receive the same education as the general population in the public school system, and the schools were sorely underfunded. Teachings focused primarily on practical skills. Girls were primed for domestic service and taught to do laundry, sew, cook, and clean. Boys were taught carpentry, tinsmithing, and farming. Many students attended class part-time and worked for the school the rest of the time: girls did the housekeeping; boys, general maintenance and agriculture. This work, which was involuntary and unpaid, was presented as practical training for the students, but many of the residential schools could not run without it. With so little time spent in class, most students had only reached grade five by the time they were 18. At this point, students were sent away. Many were discouraged from pursuing further education.
Abuse at the schools was widespread: emotional and psychological abuse was constant, physical abuse was metred out as punishment, and sexual abuse was also common. Survivors recall being beaten and strapped; some students were shackled to their beds; some had needles shoved in their tongues for speaking their native languages. These abuses, along with overcrowding, poor sanitation, and severely inadequate food and health care, resulted in a shockingly high death toll. In 1907, government medical inspector P.H. Bryce reported that 24 percent of previously healthy Indigenous children across Canada were dying in residential schools. This figure does not include children who died at home, where they were frequently sent when critically ill. Bryce reported that anywhere from 47 percent (on the Peigan Reserve in Alberta) to 75 percent (from File Hills Boarding School in Saskatchewan) of students discharged from residential schools died shortly after returning home.
The extent to which the Department of Indian Affairs and church officials knew of these abuses has been debated by some. However, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) and John Milloy, among others, concluded that church and state officials were fully aware of the abuses and tragedies at the schools. Some inspectors and officials at the time expressed alarm at the horrifying death rates, yet those who spoke out and called for reform were generally met with silence and lack of support. The Department of Indian Affairs would promise to improve the schools, but the deplorable conditions persisted.
Some former students have positive memories of their time at residential schools, and certainly some might have been treated with kindness by the priests and nuns who ran the schools as best they could given the circumstances. But even these “good” experiences occurred within a system aimed at destroying Indigenous cultures and assimilating Indigenous students.
“Sister Marie Baptiste had a supply of sticks as long and thick as pool cues. When she heard me speak my language, she’d lift up her hands and bring the stick down on me. I’ve still got bumps and scars on my hands. I have to wear special gloves because the cold weather really hurts my hands. I tried very hard not to cry when I was being beaten and I can still just turn off my feelings…. And I’m lucky. Many of the men my age, they either didn’t make it, committed suicide or died violent deaths, or alcohol got them. And it wasn’t just my generation. My grandmother, who’s in her late nineties, to this day it’s too painful for her to talk about what happened to her at the school.”
– Musqueam Nation former chief George Guerin,
Kuper Island school
Stolen from our Embrace , p 62
Church and state officials of the 19th century believed that Indigenous societies were disappearing and that the only hope for Indigenous people was to convert to Christianity, do away with their cultures, and become “civilized” British subjects—in short, assimilate them. By the 1950s, the same officials were doubting the viability of such project. The devastating effects of the residential schools and the needs and life experiences of Indigenous students were becoming more widely recognized. 2 The government also acknowledged that removing children from their families was severely detrimental to the health of the individuals and the communities affected. In 1951, with the amendments to the Indian Act, the half-day work/school system was progressively abandoned, conceding power to the provinces to apprehend children, and transitioning from the school system to a ‘child welfare system’. This time is referred to as the ‘Sixties Scoop’ because of the systematic removal of Indigenous children from their families without consent from their parents or authorities.
In the 1960s the drastic overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the welfare system consolidated, and authorities would constantly place Indigenous children with white middle-class families in an attempt to acculturate them. This practice, as well as the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in ‘child welfare systems’ continues today. In 1969, the Department of Indian Affairs took exclusive control of the system, marking an end to church involvement in residential schooling. Yet the schools remained underfunded and abuse continued, and many teachers and workers continued to lack proper credentials to carry out their responsibilities. 3
In the meantime, the government decided to phase out segregation and began incorporating Indigenous students into public schools. Although these changes saw students reaching higher levels of education, problems persisted. Many Indigenous students struggled in their adjustment to public school and to a Eurocentric system where Indigenous knowledges were excluded, fostering discrimination by their non-Indigenous peers. Post-secondary education was strongly discouraged for Indigenous students because those who wanted to attend university would have been enfranchised.
The process to phase out the residential school system and other assimilation tactics was slow and not without reversals. The residential school system in Canada lasted officially for almost 150 years, and its impacts continue on to this day. As mentioned above, the system’s closure gave way to the ‘ Sixties Scoop ,’ during which thousands of Indigenous children were abducted by social services and removed from their families. The ‘Scoop’ spanned roughly the two decades it took to phase out the residential schools, but child apprehensions from Indigenous families continue to occur in disproportionate numbers today . In part, this is the legacy of compromised families and communities left by the residential schools.
Starting in 1969, residential schools in Canada began to decline in numbers . In 1970, the Department of Indian Affairs calculated fifty-six remaining schools, excluding the Northwest Territories. By 1980, the same institution reported sixteen, and one decade later, eleven. In 1996, Gordon Reserve Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, the last of its kind , was closed and demolished. By 1999, the Department of Indian Affairs registered no remaining residential schools in operation. 4
“So why is it important to understand the history of genocide in Canada? Because it’s not history. Today’s racist government laws, policies and actions have proven to be just as deadly for Indigenous peoples as the genocidal acts of the past.”
The residential school system is viewed by much of the Canadian public as part of a distant past, disassociated from today’s events. In many ways, this is a misconception. The last residential school did not close its doors until 1996, and many of the leaders, teachers, parents, and grandparents of today’s Indigenous communities are residential school Survivors. Although residential schools have closed, their effects remain ongoing for both Survivors and their descendants who now share in the intergenerational effects of transmitted personal trauma and loss of language, culture, traditional teachings, and mental/spiritual wellbeing.
According to the Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba , several generations of Indigenous Peoples were denied the development of parenting skills not only through their removal from communities and families but also from the severe lack of attention paid to the issue by school officials. 5 In addition, children were taught that their traditional ways were inferior, including their languages and cultures. The residential schools were operational through several generations of Indigenous Peoples so the process of healing from these damages will also take several generations -a process that has already begun, but has not been easy nor has it been simple.
The historic, intergenerational, and collective oppression of Indigenous Peoples continues to this day in the form of land disputes, over-incarceration, lack of housing, child apprehension, systemic poverty, marginalization and violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA peoples, and other critical issues which neither began nor ended with residential schools. Generations of oppressive government policies attempted to strip Indigenous Peoples of their identities not only through residential schools but also through other policies including but not limited to: the implementation and subsequent changes to the Indian Act; the mass removal of Indigenous children from their families into the child welfare system known as the Sixties Scoop ; and legislations allowing forced sterilizations of Indigenous Peoples in certain provinces, a practice that has continued to be reported by Indigenous women in Canada as recently as 2018 ; and currently, through the modern child welfare systems which continue to disproportionately apprehend Indigenous children into foster care in what Raven Sinclair has called the Millennium Scoop . 6
In 2019, BC ended its practice of “birth alerts” in child welfare cases, which allowed child welfare agencies and hospitals to flag mothers deemed “high risk” without their consent -a practice which disproportionately targeted Indigenous mothers and was found to be “racist and discriminatory” and a “gross violation of the rights of the child, the mother, and the community”. 7 One of the findings of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Report (MMIWG) asserts that the Canadian State “has used child welfare laws and agencies as a tool to oppress, displace, disrupt, and destroy Indigenous families, communities, and Nations. It is a tool in the genocide of Indigenous Peoples.” 8 Child welfare laws and agencies, like the residential schools, effectively aided in the removal of Indigenous children from their families and continue to aid in the genocide of Indigenous Peoples.
I have just one last thing to say. To all of the leaders of the Liberals, the Bloc and NDP, thank you, as well, for your words because now it is about our responsibilities today, the decisions that we make today and how they will affect seven generations from now.
My ancestors did the same seven generations ago and they tried hard to fight against you because they knew what was happening. They knew what was coming, but we have had so much impact from colonization and that is what we are dealing with today.
Women have taken the brunt of it all.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here at this moment in time to talk about those realities that we are dealing with today.
What is it that this government is going to do in the future to help our people? Because we are dealing with major human rights violations that have occurred to many generations: my language, my culture and my spirituality. I know that I want to transfer those to my children and my grandchildren, and their children, and so on.
What is going to be provided? That is my question. I know that is the question from all of us. That is what we would like to continue to work on, in partnership.
Nia:wen. Thank you.
—Beverley Jacobs, President, Native Women’s Association of Canada, June 11, 2008
Read the full transcript and watch the video here.
The residential schools heavily contributed to educational, social, financial and health disparities between Indigenous Peoples and the rest of Canada, and these impacts have been intergenerational. 9 Despite the efforts of the residential school system and those who created and maintained it, Indigenous Peoples largely escaped complete assimilation and continue to work to regain what was lost, while also seeking justice for years of wrongdoing; including from the Canadian government, the churches, and the individuals responsible for specific cases of abuse.
It was not until the late 1980s that the Canadian legal system began to respond to allegations of abuse brought forward by Survivors, with fewer than fifty convictions coming out of more than 38,000 claims of sexual and physical abuse submitted to the independent adjudication process. 10 Notable cases include 1988’s Mowatt v. Clarke, in which eight former students of St. George’s Indian Residential School in Lytton, B.C ., sued a priest, the government, and the Anglican Church of Canada; both the Anglican Church and the government admitted fault and agreed to a settlement. In 1995, twenty-seven Survivors from the Alberni Indian Residential School filed charges of sexual abuse against Arthur Plint while also holding Canada and the United Church vicariously liable. In addition to convicting Plint, the court held the federal government and the United Church responsible for the wrongs committed .
Meanwhile, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples had been interviewing individuals from Indigenous communities and nations across Canada about their experiences. The commission’s report, published in 1996, brought unprecedented attention to the residential school system—many non-Indigenous Canadians did not know about this chapter in Canadian history. In 1998, based on the commission’s recommendations and considering the court cases, the Canadian government publicly apologized to former students for the physical and sexual abuse they suffered in the residential schools. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation was established as a $350 million government plan to aid communities affected by the residential schools. However, some Indigenous people felt the government apology did not go far enough, since it addressed only the effects of physical and sexual abuse and not other damages caused by the residential school system.
The St. George and Alberni lawsuits set a precedent for future cases, proving that the churches and the government of Canada could be sued as an entity. As the number of cases grew, a National Class Action was filed in 2002 for compensation for all former Indian Residential school Survivors and family members in Canada. In 2005, Canada and nearly 80,000 Survivors reached the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement in which Canada committed to individual compensation for Survivors, additional funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, and the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In September 2007, while the Settlement Agreement was being put into action, the Canadian government made a motion to issue a formal apology. The motion passed unanimously. On June 11, 2008, the House of Commons gathered in a solemn ceremony to publicly apologize for the government’s involvement in the residential school system and to acknowledge the widespread impact this system has had among Indigenous Peoples. You can read the official statement and responses to it by Indigenous organizations here (scroll down to “ Choose a topic ” and select “ Apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools ”). The apology was broadcast live across Canada (watch it here ). Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper issued a ‘statement of apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools ’, noting that
“…the Government of Canada now recognizes that it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this. We now recognize that it was wrong to separate children from rich and vibrant cultures and traditions that it created a void in many lives and communities, and we apologize for having done this”.
Echoing Stephen Harper, former Chief Justice of Ontario Warren Winkler also observed that the residential school system removed children
“from their families and communities to serve the purpose of carrying out a “concerted campaign to obliterate” the “habits and associations” of “Indigenous languages, traditions and beliefs,” in order to accomplish “a radical re-socialization” aimed at instilling the children instead with the values of Euro-centric civilization” ( Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6113, le 351-10, part 1 ). 11
The federal government’s apology was met with a range of responses. Some felt that it marked a new era of positive federal government–Indigenous relations based on mutual respect, while many others felt that the apology was merely symbolic and doubted that it would change the government’s relationship with Indigenous Peoples. Although apologies and acknowledgements made by governments and churches are important steps forward in reconciliation, Indigenous leaders have argued that such gestures are not enough without supportive action . Communities and residential school survivor societies are undertaking healing initiatives and providing opportunities for survivors to talk about their experiences and move forward to create a positive future for themselves, their families, and their communities.
The Indian Residential School Survivors Society was formed in 1994 by the First Nations Summit in British Columbia and was officially incorporated in 2002 to provide support for survivors and communities in the province throughout the healing process and to educate the broader public. The Survivors Society provides crisis counselling, referrals, and healing initiatives, as well as acting as a resource for information, research, training, and workshops. It was clear that a similar organization was needed at the national level, and in 2005, the National Residential School Survivors Society was incorporated.
Books & Articles
Fournier, Suzanne and Ernie Crey. Stolen from our Embrace: The Abduction of First Nations Children and the Restoration of Indigenous Communities. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1997.
Haig-Brown, Celia. Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School . Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1998. First published by Tillicum Library, 1988.
Manitoba. Public Inquiry into the Administration and Indigenous People. “Indigenous Women.” Vol. 1, chap. 13, in Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba. Winnipeg: Public Inquiry into the Administration and Indigenous People, 1999.
This chapter of the Indigenous Justice Inquiry of Manitoba’s report on Indigenous people in the justice system examines how the residential school system has contributed to the abuse and discrimination that many Indigenous women face regularly.
Miller, J. R. Shingwauk’s Vision. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
Widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive, key texts on the residential school system, in Shingwauk’s Vision Miller has included the perspectives of government and church officials, school staff, and students to create a rich history of the residential school system from its original inception to its phasing out. Cree scholar Winona Wheeler calls Shingwauk’s Vision “the most thorough and comprehensive study of Indian residential schools in Canada to date and most noted for its good use of a wide range of Indigenous life histories and personal reminisces” (Wheeler, “Social Relations of Indigenous Oral Histories,” in Walking a Tightrope : Indigenous Peoples and their Representations, 2005. 193)
Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, Indian Residential Schools: The Nuu-Chah-Nulth Experience. Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, 1996.
Roberts, John. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples: Exploring their Past, Present, and Future. Toronto: Emond Montgomery, 2006.
Secwepemc Cultural Education Society, Behind Closed Doors: Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Penticton: Secwepemc Cultural Education Society & Theytus, 2000.
Websites
[1] Milloy, John S. A National Crime : The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986. University of Manitoba Press, 1999. 91–2; Fournier and Crey, Stolen from Our Embrace. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1997. 49.
[2] Royal Commission on Indigenous Peoples, Volume 1: Looking Forward, Looking Back. Chapter 10, “1.2 Changing Policies.” Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1996. 344-353.
[3] Milloy, John S. A National Crime : The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986. University of Manitoba Press, 1999. Xvii, 91–2.
[4] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 2 1939 to 2000. The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada . Vol. 1. 2 vols. Montreal; Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 103.
[5] Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba. 1999. The Justice System and Aboriginal People . Ch. 14 ( http://www.ajic.mb.ca/volumel/chapter14.html )
[6] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada), Marion Buller, Michèle Audette, Brian Eyolfson, and Qajaq Robinson. 2019. Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls . 104; Longman, Nickita. 2018. “Examining the Sixties Scoop and Beyond.” Discourse Magazine , 2018.
[7] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada), 355.
[8] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada), 355.
[9] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: The Legacy: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 5 . Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 3.
[10] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: The Legacy: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 5 . Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 7.
[11] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 2 1939 to 2000. The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada . Vol. 1. 2 vols. Montreal; Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 574.
MLA:
Hanson, Eric, et al.“The Residential School System.” Indigenous Foundations . First Nations and Indigenous Studies UBC, 2020. Website. [Date accessed].
Chicago:
Hanson, Eric, Daniel P. Games, and Alexa Manuel. “The Residential School System”. Indigenous Foundations. https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/residential-school-system-2020/. (accessed Month, day, year).
APA:
Hanson, E., Gamez, D., & Manuel, A. (2020, September). The Residential School System . Indigenous Foundations. https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/residential-school-system-2020/ | https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/ | 75 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | Canadian Indian residential school system | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Aboriginal residential schools" redirects here. For the residential school system in the United States, see American Indian boarding schools . For other uses, see Indian school (disambiguation) .
In Canada , the Indian residential school system [nb 1] was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples . [nb 2] The network was funded by the Canadian government 's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches . The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. [4] [5] [6] : 42 [7] Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. [8] : 2–3 By the 1930s, about 30 percent of Indigenous children were attending residential schools. [9] The number of school-related deaths remains unknown due to incomplete records. Estimates range from 3,200 to over 30,000, mostly from disease. [10] [11] [12] [13]
The system had its origins in laws enacted before Confederation , but it was primarily active from the passage of the Indian Act in 1876, under Prime Minister Alexander MacKenzie . Under Prime Minister John A. Macdonald , the government adopted the residential industrial school system of the United States, a partnership between the government and various church organizations. An amendment to the Indian Act in 1894, under Prime Minister Mackenzie Bowell , made attendance at day schools , industrial schools , or residential schools compulsory for First Nations children. Due to the remote nature of many communities, school locations meant that for some families, residential schools were the only way to comply. The schools were intentionally located at substantial distances from Indigenous communities to minimize contact between families and their children. Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed argued for schools at greater distances to reduce family visits, which he thought counteracted efforts to assimilate Indigenous children. Parental visits were further restricted by the use of a pass system designed to confine Indigenous peoples to reserves . The last federally-funded residential school, Kivalliq Hall in Rankin Inlet , closed in 1997. Schools operated in every province and territory with the exception of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island .
The residential school system harmed Indigenous children significantly by removing them from their families , depriving them of their ancestral languages , and exposing many of them to physical and sexual abuse . Conditions in the schools led to student malnutrition, starvation, and disease. [14] [15] Students were also subjected to forced enfranchisement as "assimilated" citizens that removed their legal identity as Indians. Disconnected from their families and culture and forced to speak English or French, students often graduated being unable to fit into their communities but remaining subject to racist attitudes in mainstream Canadian society. The system ultimately proved successful in disrupting the transmission of Indigenous practices and beliefs across generations. The legacy of the system has been linked to an increased prevalence of post-traumatic stress , alcoholism , substance abuse , suicide , and intergenerational trauma which persist within Indigenous communities today. [16]
Starting in the late 2000s, Canadian politicians and religious communities have begun to recognize, and issue apologies for, their respective roles in the residential school system. Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered a public apology on his behalf and that of the other federal political party leaders. On June 1, 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was established to uncover the truth about the schools. The commission gathered about 7,000 statements from residential school survivors [nb 3] through various local, regional and national events across Canada. In 2015, the TRC concluded with the establishment of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and released a report that concluded that the school system amounted to cultural genocide . Ongoing efforts since 2021 have identified thousands of probable unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools, though no human remains have been exhumed. During a penitential pilgrimage to Canada in July 2022, Pope Francis reiterated the apologies of the Catholic Church for its role, also acknowledging the system as genocide. [18] [19] In October 2022, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion calling on the federal Canadian government to recognize the residential school system as genocide. [20]
Attempts to assimilate Indigenous peoples were rooted in imperial colonialism centred around European worldviews and cultural practices, and a concept of land ownership based on the discovery doctrine . [8] : 47–50 As explained in the executive summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 's (TRC) final report: "Underlying these arguments was the belief that the colonizers were bringing civilization to savage people who could never civilize themselves ... a belief of racial and cultural superiority." [8] : 50
Assimilation efforts began as early as the 17th century with the arrival of French missionaries in New France . [21] They were resisted by Indigenous communities who were unwilling to leave their children for extended periods. [22] The establishment of day and boarding schools by groups including the Recollets , Jesuits and Ursulines was largely abandoned by the 1690s. The political instability and realities of colonial life also played a role in the decision to halt the education programs. [23] An increase in orphaned and foundling colonial children limited church resources, and colonists benefited from favourable relations with Indigenous peoples in both the fur trade and military pursuits. [24] : 3 [25] : 58–60
Educational programs were not widely attempted again by religious officials until the 1820s, prior to the introduction of state-sanctioned operations. [26] Included among them was a school established by John West , an Anglican missionary, at the Red River Colony in what is today Manitoba . [8] : 50 Protestant missionaries also opened residential schools in what is now the province of Ontario , spreading Christianity and working to encourage Indigenous peoples to adopt subsistence agriculture as a way to ensure they would not return to their original, nomadic ways of life upon graduation. [6]
Although many of these early schools were open for only a short time, efforts persisted. The Mohawk Institute Residential School , the oldest continuously operated residential school in Canada, opened in 1834 on Six Nations of the Grand River near Brantford , Ontario. Administered by the Anglican Church, the facility opened as the Mechanics' Institute, a day school for boys, in 1828 and became a boarding school four years later when it accepted its first boarders and began admitting female students. It remained in operation until June 30, 1970. [27]
The renewed interest in residential schools in the early 1800s can be linked to the decline in military hostility faced by the settlers, particularly after the War of 1812 . With the threat of invasion by American forces minimized, Indigenous communities were no longer viewed as allies but as barriers to permanent settlement. [28] [24] : 3 This change was also associated with the transfer of responsibility for interactions with Indigenous communities from military officials, familiar with and sympathetic to their customs and way of life, to civilian representatives concerned only with permanent colonial settlement. [25] : 73–5
Beginning in the late 1800s, the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) officially encouraged the growth of the residential school system as a valuable component in a wider policy of integrating Indigenous people into European Canadian society. [24] The TRC found that the schools, and the removal of children from their families, amounted to cultural genocide , a conclusion that echoed the words of historian John S. Milloy, who argued that the system's aim was to "kill the Indian in the child." [4] [5] [6] : 42 [nb 4] Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. [8] : 2–3 As the system was designed as an immersion program, Indigenous children were in many schools prohibited from, and sometimes punished for, speaking their own languages or practising their own faiths. [14] The primary stated goal was to convert Indigenous children to Christianity and acculturate them. [25] [ page needed ]
Many of the government-funded residential schools were run by churches of various denominations. Between 1867 and 1939, the number of schools operating at one time peaked at 80 in 1931. Of those schools, 44 were operated by 16 Catholic dioceses and about three dozen Catholic communities; 21 were operated by the Church of England / Anglican Church of Canada ; 13 were operated by the United Church of Canada , and 2 were operated by Presbyterians . [31] [32] [29] : 682 The approach of using established school facilities set up by missionaries was employed by the federal government for economic expedience: the government provided facilities and maintenance, while the churches provided teachers and their own lesson-planning. [33] As a result, the number of schools per denomination was less a reflection of their presence in the general population, but rather their legacy of missionary work. [29] : 683
Although education in Canada was made the jurisdiction of the provincial governments by the British North America Act , 1867 , Indigenous peoples and their treaties were under the jurisdiction of the federal government. [33] As a condition of several treaties, the federal government agreed to provide for Indigenous education. Residential schools were funded under the Indian Act by what was then the federal Department of the Interior . Adopted in 1876 as An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians , it consolidated all previous laws placing Indigenous communities, land and finances under federal control. As explained by the TRC, the act "made Indians wards of the state, unable to vote in provincial or federal elections or enter the professions if they did not surrender their status, and severely limited their freedom to participate in spiritual and cultural practices." [29] : 110
The report commissioned by Governor General Charles Bagot , titled Report on the affairs of the Indians in Canada [34] [6] : 12–17 and referred to as the Bagot Report, is seen as the foundational document for the federal residential school system. [35] It was supported by James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin , who had been impressed by industrial schools in the West Indies , and Egerton Ryerson , who was then the Chief Superintendent of Education in Upper Canada . [6] : 15
On May 26, 1847, Ryerson wrote a letter for George Vardon, Assistant Superintendent of Indian Affairs, asserting that "the North American Indian cannot be civilized or preserved in a state of civilization (including habits of industry and sobriety) except in connection with, if not by the influence of, not only religious instruction and sentiment but of religious feelings". [36] : 3 He expressly recommended that Indigenous students be educated in a separate, denominational, English-only system with a focus on industrial training. [23] [26] [35] This letter was published in 1898 as an appendix to a larger report entitled Statistics Respecting Indian Schools . [36]
The Gradual Civilization Act of 1857 and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869 formed the foundations for this system prior to Confederation. These acts assumed the inherent superiority of French and British ways, and the need for Indigenous peoples to become French or English speakers, Christians, and farmers. At the time, many Indigenous leaders argued to have these acts overturned. [37] The Gradual Civilization Act awarded 50 acres (200,000 m 2 ) of land to any Indigenous male deemed "sufficiently advanced in the elementary branches of education" and would automatically enfranchise him, removing any tribal affiliation or treaty rights. [6] : 18 [38] With this legislation, and through the creation of residential schools, the government believed Indigenous peoples could eventually become assimilated into the general population. Individual allotments of farmland would require changes in the communal reserve system, something fiercely opposed by First Nations governments. [6] : 18–19
In January 1879, John A. Macdonald , Prime Minister of what was then post-Confederation Canada , commissioned politician Nicholas Flood Davin to write a report regarding the industrial boarding-school system in the United States. [29] : 154 [39] Now known as the Davin Report, the Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds was submitted to Ottawa on March 14, 1879, and made the case for a cooperative approach between the Canadian government and the church to implement the assimilation pursued by President of the United States , Ulysses S. Grant . [40] [39] : 1 Davin's report relied heavily on findings he acquired through consultations with government officials and representatives of the Five Civilized Tribes in Washington, DC , and church officials in Winnipeg , Manitoba. He visited only one industrial day school, in Minnesota , before submitting his findings. [29] : 154–8 In his report Davin concluded that the best way to assimilate Indigenous peoples was to start with children in a residential setting, away from their families. [29] : 157 [39] : 12
Davin's findings were supported by Vital-Justin Grandin , who felt that while the likelihood of civilizing adults was low, there was hope when it came to Indigenous children. He explained in a letter to Public Works Minister Hector-Louis Langevin that the best course of action would be to make children "lead a life different from their parents and cause them to forget the customs, habits & language of their ancestors." [29] : 159 In 1883 Parliament approved $43,000 for three industrial schools and the first, Battleford Industrial School , opened on December 1 of that year. By 1900, there were 61 schools in operation. [29] : 161
The government began purchasing church-run boarding schools in the 1920s. During this period capital costs associated with the schools were assumed by the government, leaving administrative and instructional duties to church officials. The hope was that minimizing facility expenditures would allow church administrators to provide higher quality instruction and support to the students in their care. Although the government was willing to, and did, purchase schools from the churches, many were acquired for free given that the rampant disrepair present in the buildings resulted in their having no economic value. Schools continued to be maintained by churches in instances where they failed to reach an agreement with government officials with the understanding that the government would provide support for capital costs. The understanding ultimately proved complicated due to the lack of written agreements outlining the extent and nature of that support or the approvals required to undertake expensive renovations and repairs. [29] : 240
By the 1930s government officials recognized that the residential school system was financially unsustainable and failing to meet the intended goal of training and assimilating Indigenous children into European-Canadian society. Robert Hoey , Superintendent of Welfare and Training in the Indian Affairs Branch of the federal Department of Mines and Resources, opposed the expansion of new schools, noting in 1936 that "to build educational institutions, particularly residential schools, while the money at our disposal is insufficient to keep the schools already erected in a proper state of repair, is, to me, very unsound and a practice difficult to justify." [41] : 3 He proposed the expansion of day schools, an approach to educating Indigenous children that he would continue to pursue after being promoted to director of the welfare and training branch in 1945. The proposal was resisted by the United Church, the Anglican Church, and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate , who believed that the solution to the system's failure was not restructuring but intensification. [41] : 3–5
Between 1945 and 1955, the number of First Nations students in day schools run by Indian Affairs expanded from 9,532 to 17,947. This growth in student population was accompanied by an amendment to the Indian Act in 1951 that allowed federal officials to establish agreements with provincial and territorial governments and school boards regarding the education of Indigenous students in the public school system. These changes marked the government's shift in policy from assimilation-driven education at residential schools to the integration of Indigenous students into public schools. [8] : 71 [42]
Despite the shift in policy from educational assimilation to integration, the removal of Indigenous children from their families by state officials continued through much of the 1960s and 70s. [41] : 147 The removals were the result of the 1951 addition of section 88 of the Indian Act , which allowed for the application of provincial laws to Indigenous peoples living on reserves in instances where federal laws were not in place. The change included the monitoring of child welfare . [43] [44] With no requirement for specialized training regarding the traditions or lifestyles of the communities they entered, provincial officials assessed the welfare of Indigenous children based on Euro-Canadian values that, for example, deemed traditional diets of game, fish and berries insufficient and grounds for taking children into custody. [42] This period resulted in the widespread removal of Indigenous children from their traditional communities, first termed the Sixties Scoop by Patrick Johnston, the author of the 1983 report Native Children and the Child Welfare System . Often taken without the consent of their parents or community elders, some children were placed in state-run child welfare facilities, increasingly operated in former residential schools, while others were fostered or placed up for adoption by predominantly non-Indigenous families throughout Canada and the United States. While the Indian and Northern Affairs estimates that 11,132 children were adopted between 1960 and 1990, the actual number may be as high as 20,000. [43] [45] : 182
In 1969, after years of sharing power with churches, the DIA took sole control of the residential school system. [6] [41] : 79–84 The last federally-funded residential school, Kivalliq Hall in Rankin Inlet , closed in 1997. [46] Residential schools operated in every Canadian province and territory with the exception of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island . [47] It is estimated that the number of residential schools reached its peak in the early 1930s with 80 schools and more than 17,000 enrolled students. About 150,000 children are believed to have attended a residential school over the course of the system's existence. [8] : 2–3 [48]
Some parents and families of Indigenous children resisted the residential school system throughout its existence. Children were kept from schools and, in some cases, hidden from government officials tasked with rounding up children on reserves. [49] Parents regularly advocated for increased funding for schools, including the increase of centrally located day schools to improve access to their children, and made repeated requests for improvements to the quality of education, food, and clothing being provided at the schools. Demands for answers in regards to claims of abuse were often dismissed as a ploy by parents seeking to keep their children at home, with government and school officials positioned as those who knew best. [29] : 669–674
In 1894, amendments to the Indian Act made school attendance compulsory for Indigenous children between 7 and 16 years of age. The changes included a series of exemptions regarding school location, the health of the children and their prior completion of school examinations. [29] : 254–255 It was changed to children between 6 and 15 years of age in 1908. [29] : 261 [50] The introduction of mandatory attendance was the result of pressure from missionary representatives. Reliant on student enrolment quotas to secure funding, they were struggling to attract new students due to increasingly poor school conditions. [25] : 128
The introduction of the Family Allowance Act in 1945 stipulated that school-aged children had to be enroled in school for families to qualify for the " baby bonus ", further coercing Indigenous parents into having their children attend. [25] : 170 [51]
Students in the residential school system were faced with a multitude of abuses by teachers and administrators, including sexual and physical assault. They suffered from malnourishment and harsh discipline that would not have been tolerated in any other Canadian school system. [25] [6] [52] : 14 Corporal punishment was often justified by a belief that it was the only way to save souls or punish and deter runaways – whose injuries or death sustained in their efforts to return home would become the legal responsibility of the school. [25] Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate heating, and a lack of medical care led to high rates of influenza and tuberculosis ; in one school, the death rate reached 69 percent. [14] Federal policies that tied funding to enrollment numbers led to sick children being enrolled to boost numbers, thus introducing and spreading disease. The problem of unhealthy children was further exacerbated by the conditions of the schools themselves – overcrowding and poor ventilation, water quality and sewage systems. [6] : 83–89
Until the late 1950s, when the federal government shifted to a day school integration model, residential schools were severely underfunded and often relied on the forced labour of their students to maintain their facilities, although it was presented as training for artisanal skills. The work was arduous, and severely compromised the academic and social development of the students. School books and textbooks were drawn mainly from the curricula of the provincially funded public schools for non-Indigenous students, and teachers at the residential schools were often poorly trained or prepared. [25] During this period, Canadian government scientists performed nutritional tests on students and kept some students undernourished as the control sample. [53]
Details of the mistreatment of students were published numerous times throughout the 20th century by government officials reporting on school conditions, and in the proceedings of civil cases brought forward by survivors seeking compensation for the abuse they endured. [9] [47] The conditions and impact of residential schools were also brought to light in popular culture as early as 1967, with the publication of "The Lonely Death of Chanie Wenjack " by Ian Adams in Maclean's and the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67 . In the 1990s, investigations and memoirs by former students revealed that many students at residential schools were subjected to severe physical, psychological , and sexual abuse by school staff members and by older students. Among the former students to come forward was Phil Fontaine , then Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs , who in October 1990 publicly discussed the abuse he and others suffered while attending Fort Alexander Indian Residential School. [8] : 129–130
After the government closed most of the schools in the 1960s, the work of Indigenous activists and historians led to greater awareness by the public of the damage the schools had caused, as well as to official government and church apologies, and a legal settlement. These gains were achieved through the persistent organizing and advocacy by Indigenous communities to draw attention to the residential school system's legacy of abuse, including their participation in hearings of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples . [41] : 551–554
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission list three reasons behind the federal government's decision to establish residential schools.
- Provide Aboriginal people with skills to participate in a market-based economy.
- Further political assimilation, in hope that educated students would give up their status and not return to their reserves or families.
- Schools were "engines of cultural and spiritual change" where "'savages' were to emerge as Christian 'white men'". [54] : 29
In addition to these three the Commission stated a national security element and quoted Andsell Macrae, a commissioner with Indian Affairs: "it is unlikely that any Tribe or Tribes would give trouble of a serious nature to the Government whose members had children completely under Government control." [54] : 29
The federal government sought to cut costs by adopting the residential industrial school system of the United States. Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney aspired to have the residential schools, through forced labour , be financially independent a few years after opening. The government believed through the industrial system and cheap labour costs of missionary staff it could "operate a residential school system on a nearly cost-free basis." [54] : 30–31 Students "were expected to raise or grow and prepare most of the food they ate, to make and repair much of their clothing, and to maintain the schools." Most schools did this through a system where students studied for half the day and did "vocational training" for the other half. [54] : 48 This system failed and the schools never became self-supporting. [54] : 30
By 1891, the government cut already low salaries, stopped covering operating costs, and implemented a fixed amount of funding per student. This policy drove competition and encouraged the admission of students that were deemed "too young or too sick." The chronic underfunding developed a health crisis within the schools and a financial crisis within the missionary groups. In 1911, in an attempt to alleviate the health crisis the federal government increased per capita grant funding. However, the funding did not adjust for inflation. In the 1930s, throughout the Great Depression , and World War II that grant was repeatedly reduced. In 1937, the per capita grant averaged $180 per student per year. For perspective, per-capita costs for comparable institutions included: Manitoba School for the Deaf $642, Manitoba School for Boys $550, U.S. Chilocco Indian Agricultural School $350. The Child Welfare League of America stated per capita costs for "well-run institutions" ranged between $313 and $541, Canada was paying 57.5% of the minimum figure. Changes in per capita costs did not occur until the 1950s and were seen as insignificant. In 1966, Saskatchewan residential schools per capita costs ranged from $694 and $1,193, which is 7%–36% of what other Canadian child-welfare institutions were paying ($3,300 and $9,855) and 5%–25% of what U.S. residential care was paying ($4,500 and $14,059.) [54] : 30–31
Government officials believed that since many staff members belonged to religious orders with vows of poverty or missionary organizations, pay was relatively unimportant. Thus almost all staff were poorly paid and schools had trouble recruiting and retaining staff. In 1948, C.H. Birdsall, chair of the United Church committee responsible for the Edmonton school, in regard to the lack of funding for salaries, accommodations, and equipment, stated that it was "doubtful the present work with Indian Children could properly be called education." In 1948, Sechelt school staff were paying full-time staff a salary of $1800. In the 1960s, Christie school staff were paid $50 a month. [54] : 92
The per capita grant system severely decreased the education quality. British Columbia Indian Superintendent Arthur Wellesley Vowell in response to one of his agents recommending they only approve qualified teaching staff stated that that would require more funding and that Indian Affairs did not "entertain requests for increased grants to Indian boarding and industrial schools." The pay was so low relative to provincial schools that many of the teachers lacked any teaching qualifications. [54] : 44
Federal cuts to funding during the Great Depression resulted in students paying the price. By 1937, at the Kamloops Indian Residential School , milk production among the schools dairy herds was reduced by 50%. The federal government refused to fund construction for an additional barn to increase milk production and isolate the sick animals. Even among other schools dairy herds, funding was so low that milk was separated with "skimmed milk served to the children" and the fat turned to dairy products sold to fund the schools. In 1939, the Presbyterian school in Kenora began charging students 10 cents a loaf until their Indian agent ordered the school to stop. [54] : 57–58
Parents and family members regularly travelled to the schools, often camping outside to be closer to their children. So many parents made the trip that Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed argued that the schools should be moved farther from the reserves to make visiting more difficult. [29] : 601–604 He also objected to allowing children to return home during school breaks and holidays because he believed the trips interrupted their assimilation. [55]
Visitation, for those who could make the journey, was strictly controlled by school officials in a manner similar to the procedures enforced in the prison system. In some cases schools denied parents access to their children altogether. Others required families to meet with them in the presence of school officials and speak only in English; parents who could not speak in English were unable to talk to their children. The obstacles families faced to visit their children were further exacerbated by the pass system . Introduced by Reed, without legislative authority to do so, the pass system restricted and closely monitored the movement of Indigenous peoples off reserves. [29] : 601–604 Launched in 1885 as a response to the North-West Rebellion , and later replaced by permits, the system was designed to prevent Indigenous people from leaving reserves without a pass issued by a local Indian agent. [56]
Instruction provided to students was rooted in an institutional and European approach to education. It differed dramatically from child rearing in traditional knowledge systems based on 'look, listen, and learn' models. Corporal punishment and loss of privileges characterized the residential school system, while traditional Indigenous approaches to education favour positive guidance toward desired behaviour through game-based play, story-telling, and formal ritualized ceremonies. [25] : 15–21 [57] While at school, many children had no contact with their families for up to 10 months at a time, and in some cases had no contact for years. The impact of the disconnect from their families was furthered by students being discouraged or prohibited from speaking Indigenous languages , even among themselves and outside the classroom, so that English or French would be learned and their own languages forgotten. In some schools, they were subject to physical violence for speaking their own languages or for practicing non-Christian faiths. [48] [58]
Most schools operated with the stated goal of providing students with the vocational training and social skills required to obtain employment and integrate into Canadian society after graduation. In actuality, these goals were poorly and inconsistently achieved. Many graduates were unable to land a job due to poor educational training. Returning home was equally challenging due to an unfamiliarity with their culture and, in some cases, an inability to communicate with family members using their traditional language. Instead of intellectual achievement and advancement, it was often physical appearance and dress, like that of middle class , urban teenagers, or the promotion of a Christian ethic, that was used as a sign of successful assimilation. There was no indication that school attendees achieved greater financial success than those who did not go to school. As the father of a pupil who attended Battleford Industrial School, in Saskatchewan, for five years explained: "he cannot read, speak or write English, nearly all his time having been devoted to herding and caring for cattle instead of learning a trade or being otherwise educated. Such employment he can get at home." [25] : 164–172, 194–199
Both academic research and the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee relay evidence that students were included in several scientific research experiments without their knowledge, their consent or the consent of their parents. [41] These experiments include nutrition experiments [59] which involved intentional malnourishment of children, vaccine trials for the BCG vaccine , [60] as well as studies on extrasensory perception, vitamin D diet supplements, amebicides , isoniazid , hemoglobin , bedwetting, and dermatoglyphics . [41]
Residential school deaths were common and have been linked to poorly constructed and maintained facilities. [8] : 92–101 The actual number of deaths remains unknown due to inconsistent reporting by school officials and the destruction of medical and administrative records in compliance with retention and disposition policies for government records. [8] : 92–93 Research by the TRC revealed that at least 3,201 students had died, mostly from disease. [12] [8] : 92 TRC chair Justice Murray Sinclair has suggested that the number of deaths may exceed 6,000. [10] [11] [61] The vast majority of deaths occurred before the 1950s.
The 1906 Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, submitted by chief medical officer Peter Bryce , highlighted that the "Indian population of Canada has a mortality rate of more than double that of the whole population, and in some provinces more than three times". [8] : 97–98 [62] : 275 Among the list of causes he noted the infectious disease of tuberculosis and the role residential schools played in spreading the disease by way of poor ventilation and medical screening. [8] : 97–98 [62] : 275–276
In 1907, Bryce reported on the conditions of Manitoba and North-West residential schools: "we have created a situation so dangerous to health that I was often surprised that the results were not even worse than they have been shown statistically to be." [63] : 18 In 1909, Bryce reported that, between 1894 and 1908, mortality rates at some residential schools in western Canada ranged from 30 to 60 per cent over five years (that is, five years after entry, 30 to 60 per cent of students had died, or 6 to 12 per cent per annum). [64] These statistics did not become public until 1922, when Bryce, who was no longer working for the government, published The Story of a National Crime: Being a Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians of Canada from 1904 to 1921. In particular, he alleged that the high mortality rates could have been avoided if healthy children had not been exposed to children with tuberculosis. [8] [65] [66] At the time, no antibiotic had been identified to treat the disease, and this exacerbated the impact of the illness. Streptomycin , the first effective treatment, was not introduced until 1943. [29] : 381
In 1920 and 1922, Regina physician F. A. Corbett was commissioned to visit the schools in the west of the country, and found similar results to those reported by Bryce. At the Ermineskin school in Hobbema , Alberta, he found that 50 percent of the children had tuberculosis. [6] : 98 At Sarcee Boarding School near Calgary , he noted that all 33 students were "much below even a passable standard of health" and "[a]ll but four were infected with tuberculosis". [6] : 99 In one classroom, he found 16 ill children, many near death, who were being forced to sit through lessons. [6] : 99
In 2011, reflecting on the TRC's research, Justice Murray Sinclair told The Toronto Star : "Missing children – that is the big surprise for me ... That such large numbers of children died at the schools. That the information of their deaths was not communicated back to their families." [67]
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission wrote that the policy of Indian Affairs was to refuse to return the bodies of children home due to the associated expense, and to instead require the schools to bear the cost of burials. [54] : 70 The TRC concluded that it may be impossible to ever identify the number of deaths or missing children, in part because of the practice of burying students in unmarked graves. [68] [69] [70] The work is further complicated by a pattern of poor record keeping by school and government officials, who neglected to keep reliable numbers about the number of children who died or where they were buried. [12] While most schools had cemeteries on site, their location and extent remain difficult to determine as cemeteries that were originally marked were found to have been later razed, intentionally hidden or built over. [70] [71]
The fourth volume of the TRC's final report, dedicated to missing children and unmarked burials, was developed after the original TRC members realized, in 2007, that the issue required its own working group. In 2009, the TRC requested $1.5 million in extra funding from the federal government to complete this work, but was denied. [12] The researchers concluded, after searching land near schools using satellite imagery and maps, that, "for the most part, the cemeteries that the Commission documented are abandoned, disused, and vulnerable to accidental disturbance". [72] : 1
In May 2021, remains believed to be those of 215 children were found buried on the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia , on the lands of the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc First Nation . [73] [74] The remains were located with the assistance of a ground-penetrating radar specialist and Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Chief Rosanne Casimir wrote that the deaths were believed to have been undocumented and that work was underway to determine if related records were held at the Royal British Columbia Museum . [73]
On June 23, 2021, an estimated 751 unmarked graves were found on the site of Marieval Indian Residential School in Marieval, Saskatchewan , on the lands of Cowessess First Nation . [75] [76] [77] Some of these graves predated the establishment of the residential school. [78] On June 24, 2021, Chief Cadmus Delorme of the Cowessess First Nation held a virtual press conference. From June 2 to 23 they found an estimated 751 unmarked graves. Delorme went on to state:
This is not a mass grave site, these are unmarked graves...in 1960, there may have been marks on these graves. The Catholic Church representatives removed these headstones and today they are unmarked graves... the machine has a 10 to 15 percent error...we do know there is at least 600... We cannot affirm that they are all children, but there are oral stories that there are adults in this gravesite... some may have went to the Church and from our local towns and they could have been buried here as well... We are going to put names on these unmarked graves. [79] [77] [78]
On June 30, 2021, the Lower Kootenay Band reported the discovery of 182 unmarked graves near Kootenay Indian Residential School in Cranbrook, British Columbia . [80] As of summer 2022, no identified gravesites have been excavated nor have any human remains been exhumed.
When the government revised the Indian Act in the 1940s and 1950s, some bands, along with regional and national Indigenous organizations, wanted to maintain schools in their communities. [81] Motivations for support of the schools included their role as a social service in communities that were suffering from extensive family breakdowns; the significance of the schools as employers; and the inadequacy of other opportunities for children to receive education.
In the 1960s, a major confrontation took place at the Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta. After several years of deteriorating conditions and administrative changes, parents protested against the lack of transparency at the Blue Quills Indian School in 1969. In response, the government decided to close the school, convert the building into a residence, and enrol students in a public school 5 kilometres (3 mi) away in St. Paul, Alberta . [41] : 84 The TRC report pertaining to this period states:
Fearing their children would face racial discrimination in St. Paul, parents wished to see the school transferred to a private society that would operate it both as a school and a residence. The federal government had been open to such a transfer if the First Nations organization was structured as a provincial school division. The First Nations rejected this, saying that a transfer of First Nations education to the provincial authority was a violation of Treaty rights. [41] : 84
In the summer of 1970, members of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation occupied the building and demanded the right to run it themselves. More than 1,000 people participated in the 17-day sit-in, which lasted from July 14 to 31. [41] : 89–90 Their efforts resulted in Blue Quills becoming the first Indigenous-administered school in the country. [82] It continues to operate today as University nuhelotʼįne thaiyotsʼį nistameyimâkanak Blue Quills , the first Indigenous-governed university in Canada. [83] [84] Following the success of the Blue Quills effort the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB) released the 1972 paper Indian Control of Indian Education that responded, in part, to the Canadian Government's 1969 White Paper calling for the abolishment of the land treaties and the Indian Act . The NIB paper underscored the right of Indigenous communities to locally direct how their children are educated and served as the integral reference for education policy moving forward.
Few other former residential schools have converted to independently operated community schools for Indigenous children. White Calf Collegiate in Lebret, Saskatchewan, was run by the Star Blanket Cree Nation from 1973 until its closure in 1998, after being run by the Oblates from 1884 to 1969. [85] Old Sun Community College is run by the Siksika Nation in Alberta in a building designed by architect Roland Guerney Orr. [86] [87] From 1929 to 1971 the building housed Old Sun residential school, first run by the Anglicans and taken over by the federal government in 1969. [88] It was converted to adult learning and stood as a campus of Mount Royal College from 1971 to 1978, at which point the Siksika Nation took over operations. In 1988, the Old Sun College Act was passed in the Alberta Legislature recognizing Old Sun Community College as a First Nations College. [89]
Survivors of residential schools and their families have been found to suffer from historical trauma with a lasting and adverse effect on the transmission of Indigenous culture between generations. A 2010 study led by Gwen Reimer explained historic trauma, passed on intergenerationally , as the process through which "cumulative stress and grief experienced by Aboriginal communities is translated into a collective experience of cultural disruption and a collective memory of powerlessness and loss". [90] : x This trauma has been used to explain the persistent negative social and cultural impacts of colonial rule and residential schools, including the prevalence of sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, lateral violence, mental illness and suicide among Indigenous peoples. [91] : 10–11 [92]
The 2012 national report of the First Nations Regional Health Study found that respondents who attended residential schools were more likely than those who did not to have been diagnosed with at least one chronic medical condition . [93] A sample of 127 survivors revealed that half have criminal records; 65 per cent have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder ; 21 per cent have been diagnosed with major depression; 7 percent have been diagnosed with anxiety disorder ; and 7 percent have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder . [91]
In a 2014 article, Anishinaabe psychiatry researcher Amy Bombay reviewed research that relates to the intergenerational effects. She found that, "In addition to negative effects observed among those who attended IRS, accumulating evidence suggests that the children of those who attended (IRS offspring) are also at greater risk for poor well-being." 37.2% of adults with at least one parent who attended a boarding school contemplated committing suicide in their lifetimes, compared to 25.7% of people whose parents did not attend residential boarding schools. Higher levels of depression symptoms and psychological trauma were evident among Indian residential school survivors' children. [94]
Although some schools permitted students to speak their Indigenous languages , [95] suppressing their languages and culture was a key tactic used to assimilate Indigenous children. Many students spoke the language of their families fluently when they first entered residential schools. The schools strictly prohibited the use of these languages even though many students spoke little to no English or French. [4] [96] Traditional and spiritual activities including the potlatch and Sun Dance were also banned. [97] Some survivors reported being strapped or forced to eat soap when they were caught speaking their own language. The inability to communicate was further affected by their families' inabilities to speak English or French. Upon leaving residential school some survivors felt ashamed of being Indigenous as they were made to view their traditional identities as ugly and dirty. [8] : 4, 83–87 [98] Survivors also have to deal with the effects of cultural linguicide, which is defined as loss of language which eventually leads to loss of culture. [99]
The stigma the residential school system created against elders passing Indigenous culture on to younger generations has been linked to the over-representation of Indigenous languages on the list of endangered languages in Canada . The TRC noted that most of the 90 Indigenous languages that still exist are at risk of disappearing, with great-grandparents as the only speakers of many such languages. [8] : 154 It concluded that a failure of governments and Indigenous communities to prioritize the teaching and preservation of traditional languages ensured that despite the closure of residential schools, the eradication of Indigenous culture desired by government officials and administrators would inevitably be fulfilled "through a process of systematic neglect". [8] : 155 In addition to the forceful eradication of elements of Indigenous culture, the schools trained students in the patriarchal dichotomies then common in British and Canadian society and useful to state institutions, such as the domesticization of female students through imbuing 'stay-at-home' values and the militarization of male students through soldierlike regimentation. [100]
However, Indigenous children in boarding schools were not deterred, and continued to speak and practice their language in an attempt to keep it alive. Assistant Professor in Professional Communication, Jane Griffith, said, "Predictably, nineteenth-century government texts do not reveal the strategies Indigenous peoples had for maintaining their languages in the same way Indian boarding school survivor memoir, literature, and testimony do from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This absence may exemplify how school newspapers carefully created an English-only fantasy for readers, but may also attest to the success of students' secrecy: perhaps official school documents did not report that students still knew Indigenous languages because schools were unaware of this. Government reports, if read contrapuntally, were more forthcoming in how students continued to speak their language, though they framed such resistance as failure." [99]
Boarding schools in Canada worked towards assimilation of Native students. Historians Brian Klopotek and Brenda Child explain,"Education for Indians was not mandatory in Canada until 1920, long after compulsory attendance laws were passed in the United States, although families frequently resisted sending their children to the residential schools. Many protested the lack of decent educational opportunities available, but the government took little action until after World War I, when European-Canadians first began to acknowledge discriminatory treatment towards Indians." Indigenous resistance is defined, in the words of Anishinaabe scholar-artist Leanne Simpson as "a radical and complete overturning of the nation-state's political formations." [101] During this time Native people found ways to resist this colonial endeavor.
Those that survived used their knowledge to speak back against colonialism, as historians Brian Klopotek and Brenda Child explain, "in Canada, the results of this system were more complicated than the government anticipated. Often students returned to their reserves to become leaders, while others entered the labour market and competed with Euro-American workers." The Canadian government was displeased with this; as one minister for Indian Affairs noted in 1897, "we are educating these Indians to compete industrially with our own peoples, which seems to me a very undesirable amount of public money." [101] The government, perceiving Indian education as too generous, reduced the services available to First Nations peoples beginning in 1910 and emphasized low cost schooling thereafter. [101]
Acknowledgment of the wrongs done by the residential school system began in the 1980s. [8] [9]
In 1986, the first apology for residential schools by any institution in Canada was from the United Church of Canada in Sudbury , Ontario. [102] At the 1986 31st General Council, the United Church of Canada responded to the request of Indigenous peoples that it apologize to them for its part in colonization and adopted the apology. Rev. Bob Smith stated:
We imposed our civilization as a condition of accepting the gospel. We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were. As a result, you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be. We ask you to forgive us and to walk together with us in the Spirit of Christ so that our peoples may be blessed and God's creation healed. [103] [97]
The elders present at the General Council expressly refused to accept the apology and chose to receive the apology, believing further work needed to be done. [102] In 1998, the church apologized expressly for the role it played in the residential school system. On behalf of The United Church of Canada the Right Rev. Bill Phipps stated:
I apologize for the pain and suffering that our church's involvement in the Indian Residential School system has caused. We are aware of some of the damage that this cruel and ill-conceived system of assimilation has perpetrated on Canada's First Nations peoples. For this we are truly and most humbly sorry... To those individuals who were physically, sexually, and mentally abused as students of the Indian Residential Schools in which The United Church of Canada was involved, I offer you our most sincere apology. You did nothing wrong. You were and are the victims of evil acts that cannot under any circumstances be justified or excused... We are in the midst of a long and painful journey as we reflect on the cries that we did not or would not hear, and how we have behaved as a church...we commit ourselves to work toward ensuring that we will never again use our power as a church to hurt others with attitudes of racial and spiritual superiority. We pray that you will hear the sincerity of our words today and that you will witness the living out of our apology in our actions in the future. [103]
In 1991, at the National Meeting on Indian Residential Schools in Saskatoon , Canadian bishops and leaders of religious orders that participated in the schools issued an apology stating:
We are sorry and deeply regret the pain, suffering and alienation that so many experienced. We have heard their cries of distress, feel their anguish and want to be part of the healing process ... we pledge solidarity with the aboriginal peoples in their pursuit of recognition of their basic human rights ... urge the federal government to assume its responsibility for its part in the Indian Residential Schools ... [and] urge our faith communities to become better informed and more involved in issues important to aboriginal peoples [104]
In July 1991, Douglas Crosby , then presidential of the Oblate of Canada , the missionary religious congregation that operated a majority of the Catholic residential schools in Canada, apologized on behalf of 1,200 Oblates then living in Canada, to approximately 25,000 Indigenous people at Lac Ste. Anne , Alberta, stating:
We apologize for the part we played in the cultural, ethnical, linguistic and religious imperialism that was part of the European mentality and, in a particular way, for the instances of physical and sexual abuse that occurred in these schools ... For these trespasses we wish to voice today our deepest sorrow and we ask your forgiveness and understanding. We hope that we can make up for it being part of the healing process wherever necessary. [105] [106] [97]
Crosby further pledged the need to "come again to that deep trust and solidarity that constitutes families. We recognize that the road beyond past hurt may be long and steep, but we pledge ourselves anew to journey with the Native Peoples on that road." [105] [107]
On May 16, 1993, in Idaho , Peter Hans Kolvenbach , then Superior General of the Society of Jesus , issued an apology for the actions of Jesuits in the Western missions and in the "ways the church was insensitive toward your tribal customs, language and spirituality ... The Society of Jesus is sorry for the mistakes it has made in the past". [108] [109]
In 2009, a delegation of 40 First Nations representatives from Canada and several Canadian bishops had a private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI to obtain an apology for abuses that occurred in the residential school system. Then leader of the Assembly of First Nations Grand Chief Phil Fontaine of the First Nations Summit in British Columbia, and Chief Edward John of the Tlʼaztʼen Nation were in attendance. The Indigenous delegation were funded by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada . Afterwards, the Holy See released an official expression of sorrow on the church's role in residential schools and "the deplorable conduct of some members of the Church":
His Holiness [the Pope] emphasized that acts of abuse cannot be tolerated in society. He prayed that all those affected would experience healing, and he encouraged First Nations Peoples to continue to move forward with renewed hope. [110] [111] [112]
Fontaine, a residential school survivor, later stated that he had sensed the pope's "pain and anguish" and that the acknowledgement was "important to [him] and that was what [he] was looking for". [113] In an interview with CBC News , Fontaine stated in regards to the pope's acknowledgement of the suffering of the school survivors "I think in that sense, there was that apology that we were certainly looking for." [114] [112] Many argue that Pope Benedict XVI's statement was not a full apology. [46] On June 6, 2021, Fontaine restated his thoughts on Pope Benedict XVI's statement as "reassuring" but that "I believe very strongly that there ought to be a full apology from the Holy Father. He's done so in Ireland, he's done so in Bolivia." [115]
In the 2015 Report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), Action 58 called for the pope to issue an apology similar to Pope Benedict XVI's 2010 pastoral letter to Ireland issued from the Vatican, but be delivered by the Pope on Canadian soil. [116] : 7
On May 29, 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked the current Pope Francis for a public apology to all survivors of the residential school system, rather than the expression of sorrow issued by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. [117] [118] [119] Trudeau invited the pope to issue the apology in Canada. Although no commitment for such an apology followed the meeting, he noted that the pope pointed to a lifelong commitment of supporting marginalized people and an interest in working collaboratively with Trudeau and Canadian bishops to establish a way forward. [117]
On June 10, 2021, a delegation of Indigenous people were announced to meet with the pope later in the year to discuss the legacy of residential schools. On 29 June, the delegation was scheduled to take place from December 17 to 20, 2021, to comply with COVID-19 global travel restrictions . Archbishop Richard Gagnon, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops spoke on the topic, stating "What the Pope said and did in Bolivia is what he will do in Canada." [120]
On September 24, 2021, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a formal apology for residential schools stating "We, the Catholic Bishops of Canada, gathered in Plenary this week, take this opportunity to affirm to you, the Indigenous Peoples of this land, that we acknowledge the suffering experienced in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. Many Catholic religious communities and dioceses participated in this system, which led to the suppression of Indigenous languages, culture and spirituality, failing to respect the rich history, traditions and wisdom of Indigenous Peoples. We acknowledge the grave abuses that were committed by some members of our Catholic community; physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, cultural, and sexual." [121] Assembly of First Nations Chief RoseAnne Archibald stated she felt conflicted, saying "On one hand, their unequivocal apology is welcomed," but that she was disappointed that the bishops had not issued a formal request for the pope to visit Canada in person. [122] The Catholic bishops also stated
We are fully committed to the process of healing and reconciliation. Together with the many pastoral initiatives already underway in dioceses across the country, and as a further tangible expression of this ongoing commitment, we are pledging to undertake fundraising in each region of the country to support initiatives discerned locally with Indigenous partners. Furthermore, we invite the Indigenous Peoples to journey with us into a new era of reconciliation, helping us in each of our dioceses across the country to prioritize initiatives of healing, to listen to the experience of Indigenous Peoples, especially to the survivors of Indian Residential Schools, and to educate our clergy, consecrated men and women, and lay faithful, on Indigenous cultures and spirituality. We commit ourselves to continue the work of providing documentation or records that will assist in the memorialization of those buried in unmarked graves. [121]
The bishops also stated "Pope Francis will encounter and listen to the Indigenous participants, so as to discern how he can support our common desire to renew relationships and walk together along the path of hope in the coming years" with some interpreting this visit as an important step that could lead to a formal visit to Canada by the pope. [121]
On April 1, 2022, during a meeting between a delegation of First Nations representatives and the pope at the Vatican, Pope Francis apologized for the conduct of some members of the Roman Catholic Church in the Canadian Indian residential school system. [123] Pope Francis said:
I also feel shame ... sorrow and shame for the role that a number of Catholics, particularly those with educational responsibilities, have had in all these things that wounded you, and the abuses you suffered and the lack of respect shown for your identity, your culture and even your spiritual values. For the deplorable conduct of these members of the Catholic Church, I ask for God's forgiveness and I want to say to you with all my heart, I am very sorry. And I join my brothers, the Canadian bishops, in asking your pardon. [123]
During a July 2022 penitential pilgrimage to western Canada , Pope Francis reiterated the apologies of the Catholic Church, with hundreds of Indigenous people and government officials in attendance, for its role in administrating many of the residential schools on behalf of the government and for abuse that occurred at the hand of Catholic priests and religious sisters. [18] At the Pope's apologietic address given at Maskwacis, Chief Wilton Littlechild expressed hope for the future, saying: "You [Pope Francis] have said that you come as a pilgrim, seeking to walk together with us on the pathway of truth, justice, healing, reconciliation, and hope. We gladly welcome you to join us on this journey ... we sincerely hope that our encounter this morning, and the words you share with us, will echo with true healing and real hope throughout many generations to come." [18] Murray Sinclair , the former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, found the apology "insultingly insufficient". [124] J.J. McCullough, writing in The Washington Post , stated, "it was common to complain that the Pope’s apology was not an institutional apology from the Church as a whole." [124]
I accept and I confess before God and you, our failures in the residential schools. We failed you. We failed ourselves. We failed God.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that we were part of a system which took you and your children from home and family.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that we tried to remake you in our image, taking from you your language and the signs of your identity.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that in our schools so many were abused physically, sexually, culturally and emotionally.
On behalf of the Anglican Church of Canada, I present our apology. [125]
Archbishop Michael Peers, A Step Along the Path
On August 6, 1993, at the National Native Convocation in Minaki , Ontario. Archbishop Michael Peers apologized to former residential school students on behalf of the Anglican Church of Canada . [125] Almost 30 years later, in April to May, 2022, Justin Welby , the Archbishop of Canterbury , the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England and the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, undertook a five-day visit to Canada, during which he apologized for the "terrible crime" he said the Anglican Church committed in running residential schools and for the Church of England's "grievous sins" against the Indigenous peoples of Canada. He continued, "I am so sorry that the Church participated in the attempt—the failed attempt, because you rose above it and conquered it—to dehumanise and abuse those we should have embraced as brothers and sisters." The Archbishop spent time visiting reserves, meeting with First Nations leaders and Anglicans, and listening to former residential school students. [126] [127]
On June 9, 1994, the Presbyterian Church in Canada adopted a confession at its 120th General Assembly in Toronto on June 5, recognizing its role in residential schools and seeking forgiveness. The confession was presented on October 8 during a ceremony in Winnipeg.
We ask, also, for forgiveness from Aboriginal peoples. What we have heard we acknowledge. It is our hope that those whom we have wronged with a hurt too deep for telling will accept what we have to say. With God's guidance our Church will seek opportunities to walk with Aboriginal peoples to find healing and wholeness together as God's people. [128]
In 2004, immediately before signing the first Public Safety Protocol with the Assembly of First Nations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli issued an apology on behalf of the RCMP for its role in the Indian residential school system: "We, I, as Commissioner of the RCMP, am truly sorry for what role we played in the residential school system and the abuse that took place in the residential system." [129] [130]
After the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement was accepted by Prime Minister Paul Martin 's ministry in 2005, activists called for Martin's successor, Prime Minister Stephen Harper , to apologize. The Cabinet headed by Harper refused, stating an apology was not part of the agreement. [131] [132] On May 1, 2007, Member of Parliament Gary Merasty , of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation , introduced a motion for an apology, which passed unanimously. [133]
On June 11, 2008, Harper issued a symbolic [134] [135] apology on behalf of the sitting Cabinet for past ministries' policies of assimilation. He did this in front of an audience of Indigenous delegates and in an address that was broadcast nationally on the CBC . [136] [137] The Prime Minister apologized not only for the known excesses of the residential school system, but for the creation of the system itself. Harper delivered the speech in the House of Commons; the procedural device of a committee of the whole was used so that Indigenous leaders, who were not members of parliament, could be allowed to respond to the apology on the floor of the house. [138]
Harper's apology excluded Newfoundland and Labrador on the basis that the 28th Canadian Ministry should not be held accountable for pre-Confederation actions. Residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador were located in St Anthony , Cartwright , North West River , Nain , and Makkovik . These schools were run by the International Grenfell Association and the German Moravian Missionaries. [139] The government argued that because these schools were not created under the auspices of the Indian Act, they were not true residential schools. More than 1,000 former students disagreed and filed a class action lawsuit against the government for compensation in 2007. By the time the suit was settled in 2016, almost a decade later, dozens of plaintiffs had died. Lawyers expected that up to 900 former students would be compensated. [140]
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered an apology to Innu , Inuit , and NunatuKavut former students and their families in Happy Valley-Goose Bay , Labrador . [141] [142] He acknowledged that students experienced multiple forms of abuse linking their treatment to the colonial thinking that shaped the school system. [143] Trudeau's apology was received on behalf of residential school survivors by Toby Obed, who framed the apology as a key part of the healing process that connected survivors from Newfoundland and Labrador with school attendees from across the country. [141] Members of the Innu nation were less receptive, rejecting the apology ahead of the ceremony. [144] Grand Chief Gregory Rich noted in a released statement that he was "not satisfied that Canada understands yet what it has done to Innu and what it is still doing", indicating that members felt they deserved an apology for more than their experiences at residential schools. [141] [144]
Then- Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger became, on June 18, 2015, the first politician to issue an apology for past cabinets' role in the Sixties Scoop . [145] Class action lawsuits have been brought against the Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario governments for the harm caused to victims of the large-scale adoption scheme that saw thousands of Indigenous children forcibly removed from their parents in the 1960s. [146] Indigenous leaders responded by insisting that while apologies were welcomed, action—including a federal apology, reunification of families, compensation, and counselling for victims—must accompany words for them to have real meaning. [147]
The Premier of Alberta at the time, Rachel Notley , issued an apology as a ministerial statement on June 22, 2015, in a bid to begin to address the wrongs done by the province's previous ministries to the Indigenous peoples of Alberta and the rest of Canada. [148] At the same time, Notley called on the federal government to hold an inquiry on the missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. The Premier also stated her intent for the government to build relationships with provincial leaders of Indigenous communities and sought to amend the provincial curriculum to include the history of Indigenous culture. [149]
In the Legislative Assembly of Ontario , on May 30, 2016, the serving Premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne , apologized on behalf of the Executive Council for the harm done at residential schools. [150] Affirming Ontario's commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, she acknowledged the school system as "one of the most shameful chapters in Canadian history". [151] In a 105-minute ceremony, Wynne announced that the Ontario government would spend $250 million on education initiatives and would also rename the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation . It was further announced that the first week of November would be known as Treaties Recognition Week. [152] [153]
The Manitoba Keewatinook Ininew Okimowin Tribal Council , representing 30 northern Manitoba Indigenous communities, requested on February 21, 2008, that Queen Elizabeth II apologise for the residential schools in Canada. Grand Chief of the council Sydney Garrioch sent a letter with this request to Buckingham Palace. [154]
In Winnipeg , on Canada Day , July 1, 2021, the statue of Queen Victoria in front of the Manitoba Legislative Building , and that of Queen Elizabeth II in the garden of nearby Government House , were vandalized and toppled; the head of the Queen Victoria statue was removed and thrown into the Assiniboine River . [155] [156] Following this event, associate professor of sociology at the University of Winnipeg Kimberley Ducey called for Queen Elizabeth II to apologize for the role of the British monarchy in the establishment of residential schools, [157] though sovereigns since George III have had their powers constrained by the tenets of constitutional monarchy and responsible government , [158] meaning they had no direct responsibility in residential school policy. [159] [160]
On Canada's first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation , on September 30, 2021, Elizabeth, as Queen of Canada , said she "joins with all Canadians ... to reflect on the painful history that Indigenous peoples endured in residential schools in Canada and on the work that remains to heal and to continue to build an inclusive society". [161] The same year, the Queen appointed Mary Simon to represent her as governor general ; Simon is the first Indigenous person to occupy the office. The Queen and Simon met in March 2022, after which the vicereine said to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation , "we talked about reconciliation and I did talk about the need for healing in our country and to have a better understanding and a better relationship between Indigenous people and other Canadians" and she felt the Queen was well informed on issues affecting Canada. [162]
In his first speech of his royal tour in 2022, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (Elizabeth II's eldest son and then-heir to the Canadian Crown), said that it was an "important moment, with "Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples across Canada committing to reflect honestly and openly on the past, and to forge a new relationship for the future". [163] The Prince and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall , participated in moments of reflection and prayer, first with Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland and Labrador Judy Foote and Indigenous leaders at Heart Garden [164] —which had been opened on the grounds of the provincial Government House in 2019, in memory of former residential school students—and, two days later, at the Ceremonial Circle in the Dene community of Dettah , Northwest Territories , [165] where they also participated in an opening prayer, a drumming circle, and a feeding the fire ceremony. [166] [167] Elisabeth Penashue, an elder of the Sheshatshiu Innu First Nation in Labrador, said it was "really important they hear our stories". [164]
At a reception hosted by the Governor General at Rideau Hall , in Ottawa, RoseAnne Archibald , National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations , appealed directly to the Prince for an apology from the Queen in her capacity as monarch and head of the Church of England for the wrongful acts committed in the past by the Crown and the church in relation to Indigenous peoples. (The Archbishop of Canterbury had, though, already apologized on behalf of the Church of England in April of that year. [126] ) Archibald said that the Prince "acknowledged" failures by Canadian governments in handling the relationship between the Crown and Indigenous people, which she said "really meant something". [168] Royal correspondent Sarah Campbell noted, "on this brief tour, there has been no shying away from acknowledging and highlighting the scandalous way many indigenous peoples have been treated in Canada." [127]
On October 27, 2011, University of Manitoba president David Barnard apologized to the TRC for the institution's role in educating people who operated the residential school system. The Winnipeg Free Press believed it to be the first time a Canadian university has apologized for playing a role in residential schools. [169]
On April 9, 2018, the University of British Columbia (UBC) opened the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre as a West Coast complement to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg. At the opening, UBC President Santa Ono apologized to residential school victims and dignitaries including Grand Chief Edward John and Canadian Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould . Ono apologised for UBC's training of policymakers and administrators who operated the system and stated:
On behalf of the university and all its people, I apologize to all of you who are survivors of the residential schools, to your families and communities and to all Indigenous people for the role this university played in perpetuating that system...We apologize for the actions and inaction of our predecessors and renew our commitment to working with all of you for a more just and equitable future. [170]
In the summer of 1990, the Mohawks of Kanesatake confronted the government about its failure to honour Indigenous land claims and recognize traditional Mohawk territory in Oka, Quebec . Referred to by media outlets as the Oka Crisis , the land dispute sparked a critical discussion about the Canadian government's complacency regarding relations with Indigenous communities and responses to their concerns. The action prompted then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to underscore four government responsibilities: "resolving land claims; improving the economic and social conditions on reserves; defining a new relationship between aboriginal peoples and governments; and addressing the concerns of Canada's aboriginal peoples in contemporary Canadian life." [8] : 240 The actions of the Mohawk community members led to, in part, along with objections from Indigenous leaders regarding the Meech Lake Accord , the creation of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples to examine the status of Indigenous peoples in Canada. In 1996, the Royal Commission presented a final report which first included a vision for meaningful and action-based reconciliation. [8] : 239–240 [172]
In 1975, the Anglican, Roman Catholic and United Churches, along with six other churches, formed Project North, later known as the Aboriginal Rights Coalition (ARC), with the objective of "transformation of the relationship between Canadian society and Aboriginal peoples." The campaign's objectives were:
- "The recognition of Aboriginal land and treaty rights in Canada;
- Realizing the historic rights of Aboriginal peoples as they are recognized in the Canadian constitution and upheld in the courts, including the right to self-determination
- Reversing the erosion of social rights, including rights to adequate housing, education, health care and appropriate legal systems;
- Seeking reconciliation between Aboriginal peoples, the Christian community and Canadian society;
- Clarifying the moral and spiritual basis for action towards Aboriginal and social justice in Canada;
- Opposing development and military projects that threaten Aboriginal communities and the environment; and
- Promoting Aboriginal justice within Jubilee." [173]
The churches have also engaged in reconciliation initiatives such as the Returning to Spirit: Residential School Healing and Reconciliation Program, a workshop that aims to unite Indigenous and non-Indigenous people through discussing the legacy of residential schools and fostering an environment for them to communicate and develop mutual understanding. [8] In 2014, the federal government ceased to contribute funds to Indigenous health organizations such as the AHF and the National Aboriginal Health Organization. Since then, more pressure has been placed on churches to sustain their active participation in these healing efforts. [8]
In 1992, The Anglican Church of Canada set up the Anglican Healing Fund for Healing and Reconciliation to respond to the ongoing need for healing related to residential schools. [174] [175] From 1992 to 2007, the fund funded over $8 million towards 705 projects. [175]
In October 1997, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) agreed on the establishment of the Council for Reconciliation, Solidarity and Communion for the following year. In 2007, the council became the Catholic Aboriginal Council . On November 30, 1999, the CCCB signed an agreement with the Assembly of First Nations , represented by Grand Chief Phil Fontaine . [176]
In the 2000s the United Church established the Justice and Reconciliation Fund to support healing initiatives and the Presbyterian Church has established a Healing & Reconciliation Program. [177] [178]
In January 1998, the government made a "statement of reconciliation" – including an apology to those people who were sexually or physically abused while attending residential schools – and established the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF). The foundation was provided with $350 million to fund community-based healing projects addressing the legacy of physical and sexual abuse. [179] In its 2005 budget , the Canadian government committed an additional $40 million to support the work of the AHF. [180] Federal funding for the foundation was cut in 2010 by the Stephen Harper government, leaving 134 national healing-related initiatives without an operating budget. [181] The AHF closed in 2014. Former AHF executive director Mike DeGagne has said that the loss of AHF support has created a gap in dealing with mental health crises such as suicides in the Attawapiskat First Nation . [182]
In June 2001, the government established Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada as an independent government department to manage the residential school file. In 2003, the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process was launched as part of a larger National Resolution Framework which included health supports, a commemoration component and a strategy for litigation. [183] As explained by the TRC, the ADR was designed as a "voluntary process for resolution of certain claims of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and forcible confinement, without having to go through the civil litigation process". [41] : 564 It was created by the Canadian government without consultation with Indigenous communities or former residential school students. The ADR system also made it the responsibility of the former students to prove that the abuse occurred and was intentional, resulting in former students finding the system difficult to navigate, re-traumatizing, and discriminatory. Many survivor advocacy groups and Indigenous political organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) worked to have the ADR system dissolved. [184] In 2004 the Assembly of First Nations released a report critical of the ADR underscoring, among other issues, the failure of survivors to automatically receive the full amount of compensation without subsequent ligation against the church and failure to compensate for lost family, language and culture. [41] : 565 The Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development released its own report in April 2005 finding the ADR to be "an excessively costly and inappropriately applied failure, for which the Minister and her officials are unable to raise a convincing defence". [41] : 566 Within a month of the report's release a Supreme Court of Canada decision granted school attendees the right to pursue class-action suits, which ultimately led to a government review of the compensation process. [41] : 566
On November 23, 2005, the Canadian government announced a $1.9-billion compensation package to benefit tens of thousands of former students. National Chief of the AFN, Phil Fontaine , said the package was meant to cover "decades in time, innumerable events and countless injuries to First Nations individuals and communities". [185] Justice Minister Irwin Cotler applauded the compensation decision noting that the placement of children in the residential school system was "the single most harmful, disgraceful and racist act in our history". [185] At an Ottawa news conference, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan said: "We have made good on our shared resolve to deliver what I firmly believe will be a fair and lasting resolution of the Indian school legacy." [185]
The compensation package led to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), announced on May 8, 2006, and implemented in September 2007. [186] At the time, there were about 86,000 living victims. The IRSSA included funding for the AHF, for commemoration, for health support, and for a Truth and Reconciliation program, as well as an individual Common Experience Payment (CEP). [98] Any person who could be verified as having resided at a federally run Indian residential school in Canada was entitled to a CEP. [187] The amount of compensation was based on the number of years a particular former student resided at the residential schools: $10,000 for the first year attended (from one night residing there to a full school year) plus $3,000 for every year thereafter. [188] [189] : 44
The IRSSA also included the Independent Assessment Process (IAP), a case-by-case, out-of-court resolution process designed to provide compensation for sexual, physical and emotional abuse. The IAP process was built on the ADR program and all IAP claims from former students are examined by an adjudicator. The IAP became available to all former students of residential schools on September 19, 2007. Former students who experienced abuse and wished to pursue compensation had to apply by themselves or through a lawyer of their choice to receive consideration. [190] The deadline to apply for the IAP was September 19, 2012. This gave former students of residential schools four years from the implementation date of the IRSSA to apply for the IAP. Claims involving physical and sexual abuse were compensated up to $275,000. [191] By September 30, 2016, the IAP had resolved 36,538 claims and paid $3.1 billion in compensation. [192]
The IRSSA also proposed an advance payment for former students alive and who were 65 years old and over as of May 30, 2005. The deadline for reception of the advance payment form by IRSRC was December 31, 2006. Following a legal process, including an examination of the IRSSA by the courts of the provinces and territories of Canada, an "opt-out" period occurred. During this time, the former students of residential schools could reject the agreement if they did not agree with its dispositions. This opt-out period ended on August 20, 2007, with about 350 former students opting out. The IRSSA was the largest class action settlement in Canadian history. By December 2012, a total of $1.62 billion was paid to 78,750 former students, 98 per cent of the 80,000 who were eligible. [193] In 2014, the IRSSA funds left over from CEPs were offered for educational credits for survivors and their families. [194]
In 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to travel across Canada collecting the testimonies of people affected by the residential school system. About 7,000 Indigenous people told their stories. [195] The TRC concluded in 2015 with the publication of a six volume, 4,000-plus-page report detailing the testimonies of survivors and historical documents from the time. It resulted in the establishment of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation . [196] [197]
The executive summary of the TRC concluded that the assimilation amounted to cultural genocide. [8] : 1 The ambiguity of the phrasing allowed for the interpretation that physical and biological genocide also occurred. The TRC was not authorized to conclude that physical and biological genocide occurred, as such a finding would imply a legal responsibility of the Canadian government that would be difficult to prove. As a result, the debate about whether the Canadian government also committed physical and biological genocide against Indigenous populations remains open. [198] [199]
Among the 94 Calls to Action that accompanied the conclusion of the TRC were recommendations to ensure that all Canadians are educated and made aware of the residential school system. [45] : 175–176 Justice Murray Sinclair explained that the recommendations were not aimed solely at prompting government action, but instead a collective move toward reconciliation in which all Canadians have a role to play: "Many of our elements, many of our recommendations and many of the Calls to Action are actually aimed at Canadian society." [200]
Preservation of documentation of the legacy of residential schools was also highlighted as part of the TRC's Calls to Action. Community groups and other stakeholders have variously argued for documenting or destroying evidence and testimony of residential school abuses. [201] [202] [203] On April 4, 2016, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ruled that documents pertaining to IAP settlements will be destroyed in 15 years if individual claimants do not request to have their documents archived. This decision was fought by the TRC as well as the federal government, but argued for by religious representatives. [204]
In March 2017, Lynn Beyak , a Conservative member of the Senate Standing Committee of Aboriginal Peoples, voiced disapproval of the final TRC report, saying that it had omitted the positives of the schools. [205] [206] Although Beyak's right to free speech was defended by some Conservative senators, her comments were widely criticized by members of the opposition, among them Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs , Carolyn Bennett , and leader of the New Democratic Party , Tom Mulcair . [207] The Anglican Church also raised concerns stating in a release co-signed by bishops Fred Hiltz and Mark MacDonald : "There was nothing good about children going missing and no report being filed. There was nothing good about burying children in unmarked graves far from their ancestral homes." [208] [209] In response, the Conservative Party leadership removed Beyak from the Senate committee underscoring that her comments did not align with the views of the party. [207]
Education or awareness of the residential school system or its abuses is low among Canadians. A 2020 survey suggested that nearly half of Canadians never learned about the residential schools when they were students, with 34% of those who were taught by teachers being provided a positive assessment. [210] Another poll conducted in 2021 showed that only 10% of Canadians were very familiar with the history of the residential school system and that 68% say they were unaware of the severity of abuses or completely shocked by it, and that so many children could die. [211] A majority of Canadians believe that educational provincial curricula does not include enough about residential schools, that the education level should increase, and that the framing of the residential school system has been downplayed in the education system. [211]
For many communities the buildings that formerly housed residential schools are a traumatic reminder of the system's legacy; demolition, heritage status and the possibility of incorporating sites into the healing process have been discussed. [201] [202] [203] In July 2016, it was announced that the building of the former Mohawk Institute Residential School would be converted into an educational centre with exhibits on the legacy of residential schools. Ontario's Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, David Zimmer , noted: "Its presence will always be a reminder of colonization and the racism of the residential school system; one of the darkest chapters of Canadian history." [212]
Reconciliation efforts have also been undertaken by several Canadian universities. In 2015 Lakehead University and the University of Winnipeg introduced a mandatory course requirement for all undergraduate students focused on Indigenous culture and history. [213] The same year the University of Saskatchewan hosted a two-day national forum at which Canadian university administrators, scholars and members of Indigenous communities discussed how Canadian universities can and should respond to the TRC's Calls to Action. [214] [215]
On April 1, 2017, a 17-metre (56 ft) pole, titled "Reconciliation Pole", was raised on the grounds of the University of British Columbia (UBC) Vancouver campus. Carved by Haida master carver and hereditary chief, 7idansuu ( / ʔ iː . d æ n . s uː / [216] ) (Edenshaw), James Hart , the pole tells the story of the residential school system prior to, during and after its operation. It features thousands of copper nails, used to represent the children who died in Canadian residential schools, and depictions of residential school survivors carved by artists from multiple Indigenous communities, including Canadian Inuk director Zacharias Kunuk , Maliseet artist Shane Perley-Dutcher, and Muqueam Coast Salish artist Susan Point . [217] [218]
In October 2016, Canadian singer-songwriter Gord Downie released Secret Path , a concept album about Chanie Wenjack 's escape and death. It was accompanied by a graphic novel and animated film, aired on CBC Television . Proceeds went to the University of Manitoba 's Centre for Truth and Reconciliation . Following his death in October 2017, Downie's brother Mike said he was aware of 40,000 teachers who had used the material in their classrooms, and hoped to continue this. [219] In December 2017, Downie was posthumously named Canadian Newsmaker of the Year by the Canadian Press , in part because of his work with reconciliation efforts for survivors of residential schools. [220]
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 80th call to action was for the government to designate a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation that would become a statutory holiday to honour the survivors, their families, and communities. In August 2018, the government announced it was considering three possible dates as the new national holiday. After consultation, Orange Shirt Day was selected as the holiday. [221] [222]
Orange Shirt Day pre-existed the government's efforts to make it a holiday. The day started in 2013, when at a residential school reunion, survivor Phyllis Jack Webstad told her story. She recounted how her grandmother bought her a new orange shirt to go to school in, and when she arrived at the residential school, the shirt was stripped away from her and never returned. [223] The other survivors founded the SJM Project , and on September 30, 2013—the time of the year when Indigenous children were taken away to residential schools—they encouraged students in schools in the area to wear an orange shirt in memory of the victims of the residential school system. [224] The observance of the holiday spread quickly across Canada, and in 2017 the Canadian government encouraged all Canadians to participate in the observance of Orange Shirt Day. [225] [226]
On March 21, 2019, Georgina Jolibois submitted a private member's bill to call for Orange Shirt Day to become a statutory holiday; the bill passed the House of Commons, but the next election was called before the bill could pass the Senate and become law. [227] [228] After the election, Steven Guilbeault reintroduced the bill to make Orange Shirt Day a national statutory holiday. [229] Following the discovery of the remains of 215 children on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School on May 24, 2021, Parliament agreed to pass the bill unanimously, and the bill received royal assent on June 3, 2021. [230]
During the 2022 National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill, as well as buildings across Canada, were illuminated to honour those affected by the Canadian residential school system. They were lit up in orange throughout the evening of September 30, 2022, from 7:00pm until sunrise. [231]
- ^ Indian has been used because of the historical nature of the article and the precision of the name, as with Indian hospital . [1] It was, and continues to be, used by government officials, Indigenous peoples and historians while referencing the school system. The use of the name also provides relevant context about the era in which the system was established, specifically one in which Indigenous peoples in Canada were homogeneously referred to as Indians rather than by language that distinguishes First Nations , Inuit and Métis peoples. [1] Use of Indian is limited throughout the article to proper nouns and references to government legislation.
- ^ Indigenous has been capitalized in keeping with the style guide of the Government of Canada. [2] The capitalization also aligns with the style used within the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples . In the Canadian context, Indigenous is capitalized when discussing peoples, beliefs or communities in the same way European or Canadian is used to refer to non-Indigenous topics or people. [3]
- ^ Survivor is the term used in the final report of the TRC and the Statement of apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools issued by Stephen Harper in 2008. [17]
- ^ The phrase "kill the Indian in the child" originates from a letter written by American Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt , while recounting the views of an unidentified American general who believed "that the only good Indian is a dead one," of which Pratt wrote: "In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." [29] : 137 Mark Abley writes that in a Canadian context "kill the Indian in the child" has been erroneously attributed to former deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott. [30] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system | 75 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | The Residential School System - Canada.ca | Residential schools for Indigenous children existed in Canada from the 17 th century until the late 1990s. During the 19th and 20th centuries, a formal system for the residential schooling of Indigenous children was established and expanded throughout Canada. Concerted federal government involvement in Residential Schools began in the 1880s. It is estimated that at least 150,000 First Nation, Inuit, and Métis children attended residential schools during this period. These schools were largely operated by certain churches and religious organizations and administered and funded by the federal government as a key aspect of colonialism. The system was imposed on Indigenous peoples as part of a broad set of assimilation efforts to destroy their rich cultures and identities and to suppress their histories. The accounts of residential school survivors provide critical insight into the devastating experiences children had at residential schools, and the long-term impact of these experiences not only on survivors, but also on their families and communities. Throughout the system’s history, Indigenous peoples fought against the system in many ways. The efforts of residential school survivors to tell their stories and to seek justice have been a crucial catalyst in the growing public recognition of the harm and effects of residential schools.
The first boarding schools for Indigenous children in what would become Canada were established by Roman Catholic missionaries in 17 th century colonial New France. In the first half of the 19 th century, residential schools for Indigenous children were established under British colonial rule in Upper Canada (southern Ontario). Founded on notions of racial, cultural, and spiritual superiority, these schools attempted to convert Indigenous children to Christianity and separate them from their traditional cultures.
With the colonization of Indigenous territories in the years following Confederation, the Canadian government established and expanded a formal system of residential schooling through legislation and policies with the goal of accelerating the assimilation of Indigenous peoples into settler society. The system expanded west and north, and in time government-sponsored residential schools existed in almost every province and territory in Canada, with most of the schools in the north and Quebec opening after 1950. In general, schools focused on providing instruction in trades and agriculture for boys, and in domestic tasks for girls. Residential schools operated in addition to federally-funded day schools, which were often run by religious organizations. In the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government began to pursue a policy of integration in southern Canada, whereby some First Nations children would attend schools in the provincial school system, especially for the higher grades. In the North, the government administered a system of hostels and day schools for First Nation, Inuit, and Métis children. Many Métis students were already attending provincial schools. In practice, the process of integrating students and then closing residential schools took decades, only ending in the late 1990s.
During the years that the system was in place, children were forcibly removed from their homes and, at school, were often subjected to harsh discipline, malnutrition and starvation, poor healthcare, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, neglect, and the deliberate suppression of their cultures and languages. Thousands of children died while attending residential schools, and the burial sites of many remain unknown. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada described the residential school system as a cultural genocide. The intergenerational effects of the trauma include lower levels of educational and social attainment, interpersonal violence, and broken relationships between parents and children. Residential schools undermined fundamental aspects of Indigenous cultures by separating Indigenous peoples from their traditional knowledge and ways of life, languages, family structures, and connections to the land.
From the earliest days of the schools, objections were raised by students, their families, and Indigenous leaders. They protested everything from attendance to poor conditions, mistreatment, and the inadequate quality of schooling itself. Children fought against the system by refusing to let go of their languages and identities. Some children ran away from the schools in an effort to return home. Some died in the process. In the decades when the schools were shutting down, Indigenous peoples fought for official acknowledgement of the harms inflicted by the schools. Survivors advocated for recognition and reparations, and demanded that governments and churches be held accountable for the lasting legacy of harms caused. These efforts ultimately culminated in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, apologies by the government, and the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission , which ran from 2008 to 2015.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action 79 in part called on the federal government to commemorate the history and legacy of residential schools. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and their Survivors Circle, Parks Canada, and the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada have co-developed this designation and worked collaboratively to determine the national historic significance of this important and defining event in Canadian history that continues to have a significant impact today.
-30- | https://www.canada.ca/en/parks-canada/news/2020/09/the-residential-school-system.html | 75 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | The Residential School System | By Erin Hanson (2009), with updates and revisions by Daniel P. Gamez & Alexa Manuel (September 2020). The original version of this article has been archived, but may be accessed here. To cite this article, we have recommendations at the bottom of the page.
Note on terminology: There is constant debate and reflection on the use of specific terms as umbrella categories to designate multiple Aboriginal, Indigenous, or Native peoples. For the most recent version of this article, we have decided to follow the terms Indigenous , First Nations, Métis and Inuit, or alternatively Indigenous Peoples, in the plural, following the guidelines of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples , the most widely accepted international instrument today. The term Indigenous Peoples can also be found in UBC’s Indigenous Peoples Language Guidelines .
The term residential schools refers to an extensive school system set up by the Canadian government and administered by churches that had the nominal objective of educating Indigenous children but also the more damaging and equally explicit objectives of indoctrinating them into Euro-Canadian and Christian ways of living and assimilating them into mainstream white Canadian society. The residential school system officially operated from the 1880s into the closing decades of the 20th century. The system forcibly separated children from their families for extended periods of time and forbade them to acknowledge their Indigenous heritage and culture or to speak their own languages. Children were severely punished if these, among other, strict rules were broken. Former students of residential schools have spoken of horrendous abuse at the hands of residential school staff: physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological. Residential schools provided Indigenous students with inappropriate education, often only up to lower grades, that focused mainly on prayer and manual labour in agriculture, light industry such as woodworking, and domestic work such as laundry work and sewing.
Residential schools systematically undermined Indigenous, First Nations, Métis and Inuit cultures across Canada and disrupted families for generations, severing the ties through which Indigenous culture is taught and sustained, and contributing to a general loss of language and culture. Because they were removed from their families, many students grew up without experiencing a nurturing family life and without the knowledge and skills to raise their own families. The devastating effects of the residential schools are far-reaching and continue to have a significant impact on Indigenous communities. The residential school system is widely considered a form of genocide because of the purposeful attempt from the government and church to eradicate all aspects of Indigenous cultures and lifeworlds.
From the 1990s onward, the government and the churches involved—Anglican, Presbyterian, United, and Roman Catholic—began to acknowledge their responsibility for an education scheme that was specifically designed to “kill the Indian in the child.” On June 11, 2008, the Canadian government issued a formal apology in Parliament for the damage done by the residential school system. In spite of this and other apologies, however, the effects remain.
The early origins of residential schools in Canada are found in the implementation of the mission system in the 1600s. The churches and European settlers brought with them the assumption that their own civilization was the pinnacle of human achievement. They interpreted the socio-cultural differences between themselves and Indigenous Peoples as “proof” that Canada’s first inhabitants were ignorant, savage, and—like children—in need of guidance. They felt the need to “civilize” Indigenous Peoples. Education—a federal responsibility—became the primary means to this end.
Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald commissioned journalist and politician Nicholas Flood Davin to study industrial schools for Indigenous children in the United States. Davin’s recommendation to follow the U.S. example of “aggressive civilization” led to public funding for the residential school system. “If anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young. The children must be kept constantly within the circle of civilized conditions,” Davin wrote in his 1879 Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds (Davin’s report can be read here .)
In the 1880s, in conjunction with other federal assimilation policies, the government began to establish residential schools across Canada. Authorities would frequently take children to schools far from their home communities, part of a strategy to alienate them from their families and familiar surroundings. In 1920, under the Indian Act , it became mandatory for every Indigenous child to attend a residential school and illegal for them to attend any other educational institution.
The purpose of the residential schools was to eliminate all aspects of Indigenous culture. Students had their hair cut short, they were dressed in uniforms, they were often given numbers, and their days were strictly regimented by timetables. Boys and girls were kept separate, and even siblings rarely interacted, further weakening family ties. Chief Bobby Joseph of the Indian Residential School Survivors Society recalls that he had no idea how to interact with girls and never even got to know his own sister “beyond a mere wave in the dining room.” 1 In addition, students were strictly forbidden to speak their languages—even though many children knew no other—or to practise Indigenous customs or traditions. Violations of these rules were severely punished.
Residential school students did not receive the same education as the general population in the public school system, and the schools were sorely underfunded. Teachings focused primarily on practical skills. Girls were primed for domestic service and taught to do laundry, sew, cook, and clean. Boys were taught carpentry, tinsmithing, and farming. Many students attended class part-time and worked for the school the rest of the time: girls did the housekeeping; boys, general maintenance and agriculture. This work, which was involuntary and unpaid, was presented as practical training for the students, but many of the residential schools could not run without it. With so little time spent in class, most students had only reached grade five by the time they were 18. At this point, students were sent away. Many were discouraged from pursuing further education.
Abuse at the schools was widespread: emotional and psychological abuse was constant, physical abuse was metred out as punishment, and sexual abuse was also common. Survivors recall being beaten and strapped; some students were shackled to their beds; some had needles shoved in their tongues for speaking their native languages. These abuses, along with overcrowding, poor sanitation, and severely inadequate food and health care, resulted in a shockingly high death toll. In 1907, government medical inspector P.H. Bryce reported that 24 percent of previously healthy Indigenous children across Canada were dying in residential schools. This figure does not include children who died at home, where they were frequently sent when critically ill. Bryce reported that anywhere from 47 percent (on the Peigan Reserve in Alberta) to 75 percent (from File Hills Boarding School in Saskatchewan) of students discharged from residential schools died shortly after returning home.
The extent to which the Department of Indian Affairs and church officials knew of these abuses has been debated by some. However, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) and John Milloy, among others, concluded that church and state officials were fully aware of the abuses and tragedies at the schools. Some inspectors and officials at the time expressed alarm at the horrifying death rates, yet those who spoke out and called for reform were generally met with silence and lack of support. The Department of Indian Affairs would promise to improve the schools, but the deplorable conditions persisted.
Some former students have positive memories of their time at residential schools, and certainly some might have been treated with kindness by the priests and nuns who ran the schools as best they could given the circumstances. But even these “good” experiences occurred within a system aimed at destroying Indigenous cultures and assimilating Indigenous students.
“Sister Marie Baptiste had a supply of sticks as long and thick as pool cues. When she heard me speak my language, she’d lift up her hands and bring the stick down on me. I’ve still got bumps and scars on my hands. I have to wear special gloves because the cold weather really hurts my hands. I tried very hard not to cry when I was being beaten and I can still just turn off my feelings…. And I’m lucky. Many of the men my age, they either didn’t make it, committed suicide or died violent deaths, or alcohol got them. And it wasn’t just my generation. My grandmother, who’s in her late nineties, to this day it’s too painful for her to talk about what happened to her at the school.”
– Musqueam Nation former chief George Guerin,
Kuper Island school
Stolen from our Embrace , p 62
Church and state officials of the 19th century believed that Indigenous societies were disappearing and that the only hope for Indigenous people was to convert to Christianity, do away with their cultures, and become “civilized” British subjects—in short, assimilate them. By the 1950s, the same officials were doubting the viability of such project. The devastating effects of the residential schools and the needs and life experiences of Indigenous students were becoming more widely recognized. 2 The government also acknowledged that removing children from their families was severely detrimental to the health of the individuals and the communities affected. In 1951, with the amendments to the Indian Act, the half-day work/school system was progressively abandoned, conceding power to the provinces to apprehend children, and transitioning from the school system to a ‘child welfare system’. This time is referred to as the ‘Sixties Scoop’ because of the systematic removal of Indigenous children from their families without consent from their parents or authorities.
In the 1960s the drastic overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the welfare system consolidated, and authorities would constantly place Indigenous children with white middle-class families in an attempt to acculturate them. This practice, as well as the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in ‘child welfare systems’ continues today. In 1969, the Department of Indian Affairs took exclusive control of the system, marking an end to church involvement in residential schooling. Yet the schools remained underfunded and abuse continued, and many teachers and workers continued to lack proper credentials to carry out their responsibilities. 3
In the meantime, the government decided to phase out segregation and began incorporating Indigenous students into public schools. Although these changes saw students reaching higher levels of education, problems persisted. Many Indigenous students struggled in their adjustment to public school and to a Eurocentric system where Indigenous knowledges were excluded, fostering discrimination by their non-Indigenous peers. Post-secondary education was strongly discouraged for Indigenous students because those who wanted to attend university would have been enfranchised.
The process to phase out the residential school system and other assimilation tactics was slow and not without reversals. The residential school system in Canada lasted officially for almost 150 years, and its impacts continue on to this day. As mentioned above, the system’s closure gave way to the ‘ Sixties Scoop ,’ during which thousands of Indigenous children were abducted by social services and removed from their families. The ‘Scoop’ spanned roughly the two decades it took to phase out the residential schools, but child apprehensions from Indigenous families continue to occur in disproportionate numbers today . In part, this is the legacy of compromised families and communities left by the residential schools.
Starting in 1969, residential schools in Canada began to decline in numbers . In 1970, the Department of Indian Affairs calculated fifty-six remaining schools, excluding the Northwest Territories. By 1980, the same institution reported sixteen, and one decade later, eleven. In 1996, Gordon Reserve Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, the last of its kind , was closed and demolished. By 1999, the Department of Indian Affairs registered no remaining residential schools in operation. 4
“So why is it important to understand the history of genocide in Canada? Because it’s not history. Today’s racist government laws, policies and actions have proven to be just as deadly for Indigenous peoples as the genocidal acts of the past.”
The residential school system is viewed by much of the Canadian public as part of a distant past, disassociated from today’s events. In many ways, this is a misconception. The last residential school did not close its doors until 1996, and many of the leaders, teachers, parents, and grandparents of today’s Indigenous communities are residential school Survivors. Although residential schools have closed, their effects remain ongoing for both Survivors and their descendants who now share in the intergenerational effects of transmitted personal trauma and loss of language, culture, traditional teachings, and mental/spiritual wellbeing.
According to the Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba , several generations of Indigenous Peoples were denied the development of parenting skills not only through their removal from communities and families but also from the severe lack of attention paid to the issue by school officials. 5 In addition, children were taught that their traditional ways were inferior, including their languages and cultures. The residential schools were operational through several generations of Indigenous Peoples so the process of healing from these damages will also take several generations -a process that has already begun, but has not been easy nor has it been simple.
The historic, intergenerational, and collective oppression of Indigenous Peoples continues to this day in the form of land disputes, over-incarceration, lack of housing, child apprehension, systemic poverty, marginalization and violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA peoples, and other critical issues which neither began nor ended with residential schools. Generations of oppressive government policies attempted to strip Indigenous Peoples of their identities not only through residential schools but also through other policies including but not limited to: the implementation and subsequent changes to the Indian Act; the mass removal of Indigenous children from their families into the child welfare system known as the Sixties Scoop ; and legislations allowing forced sterilizations of Indigenous Peoples in certain provinces, a practice that has continued to be reported by Indigenous women in Canada as recently as 2018 ; and currently, through the modern child welfare systems which continue to disproportionately apprehend Indigenous children into foster care in what Raven Sinclair has called the Millennium Scoop . 6
In 2019, BC ended its practice of “birth alerts” in child welfare cases, which allowed child welfare agencies and hospitals to flag mothers deemed “high risk” without their consent -a practice which disproportionately targeted Indigenous mothers and was found to be “racist and discriminatory” and a “gross violation of the rights of the child, the mother, and the community”. 7 One of the findings of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Report (MMIWG) asserts that the Canadian State “has used child welfare laws and agencies as a tool to oppress, displace, disrupt, and destroy Indigenous families, communities, and Nations. It is a tool in the genocide of Indigenous Peoples.” 8 Child welfare laws and agencies, like the residential schools, effectively aided in the removal of Indigenous children from their families and continue to aid in the genocide of Indigenous Peoples.
I have just one last thing to say. To all of the leaders of the Liberals, the Bloc and NDP, thank you, as well, for your words because now it is about our responsibilities today, the decisions that we make today and how they will affect seven generations from now.
My ancestors did the same seven generations ago and they tried hard to fight against you because they knew what was happening. They knew what was coming, but we have had so much impact from colonization and that is what we are dealing with today.
Women have taken the brunt of it all.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here at this moment in time to talk about those realities that we are dealing with today.
What is it that this government is going to do in the future to help our people? Because we are dealing with major human rights violations that have occurred to many generations: my language, my culture and my spirituality. I know that I want to transfer those to my children and my grandchildren, and their children, and so on.
What is going to be provided? That is my question. I know that is the question from all of us. That is what we would like to continue to work on, in partnership.
Nia:wen. Thank you.
—Beverley Jacobs, President, Native Women’s Association of Canada, June 11, 2008
Read the full transcript and watch the video here.
The residential schools heavily contributed to educational, social, financial and health disparities between Indigenous Peoples and the rest of Canada, and these impacts have been intergenerational. 9 Despite the efforts of the residential school system and those who created and maintained it, Indigenous Peoples largely escaped complete assimilation and continue to work to regain what was lost, while also seeking justice for years of wrongdoing; including from the Canadian government, the churches, and the individuals responsible for specific cases of abuse.
It was not until the late 1980s that the Canadian legal system began to respond to allegations of abuse brought forward by Survivors, with fewer than fifty convictions coming out of more than 38,000 claims of sexual and physical abuse submitted to the independent adjudication process. 10 Notable cases include 1988’s Mowatt v. Clarke, in which eight former students of St. George’s Indian Residential School in Lytton, B.C ., sued a priest, the government, and the Anglican Church of Canada; both the Anglican Church and the government admitted fault and agreed to a settlement. In 1995, twenty-seven Survivors from the Alberni Indian Residential School filed charges of sexual abuse against Arthur Plint while also holding Canada and the United Church vicariously liable. In addition to convicting Plint, the court held the federal government and the United Church responsible for the wrongs committed .
Meanwhile, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples had been interviewing individuals from Indigenous communities and nations across Canada about their experiences. The commission’s report, published in 1996, brought unprecedented attention to the residential school system—many non-Indigenous Canadians did not know about this chapter in Canadian history. In 1998, based on the commission’s recommendations and considering the court cases, the Canadian government publicly apologized to former students for the physical and sexual abuse they suffered in the residential schools. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation was established as a $350 million government plan to aid communities affected by the residential schools. However, some Indigenous people felt the government apology did not go far enough, since it addressed only the effects of physical and sexual abuse and not other damages caused by the residential school system.
The St. George and Alberni lawsuits set a precedent for future cases, proving that the churches and the government of Canada could be sued as an entity. As the number of cases grew, a National Class Action was filed in 2002 for compensation for all former Indian Residential school Survivors and family members in Canada. In 2005, Canada and nearly 80,000 Survivors reached the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement in which Canada committed to individual compensation for Survivors, additional funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, and the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In September 2007, while the Settlement Agreement was being put into action, the Canadian government made a motion to issue a formal apology. The motion passed unanimously. On June 11, 2008, the House of Commons gathered in a solemn ceremony to publicly apologize for the government’s involvement in the residential school system and to acknowledge the widespread impact this system has had among Indigenous Peoples. You can read the official statement and responses to it by Indigenous organizations here (scroll down to “ Choose a topic ” and select “ Apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools ”). The apology was broadcast live across Canada (watch it here ). Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper issued a ‘statement of apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools ’, noting that
“…the Government of Canada now recognizes that it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this. We now recognize that it was wrong to separate children from rich and vibrant cultures and traditions that it created a void in many lives and communities, and we apologize for having done this”.
Echoing Stephen Harper, former Chief Justice of Ontario Warren Winkler also observed that the residential school system removed children
“from their families and communities to serve the purpose of carrying out a “concerted campaign to obliterate” the “habits and associations” of “Indigenous languages, traditions and beliefs,” in order to accomplish “a radical re-socialization” aimed at instilling the children instead with the values of Euro-centric civilization” ( Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6113, le 351-10, part 1 ). 11
The federal government’s apology was met with a range of responses. Some felt that it marked a new era of positive federal government–Indigenous relations based on mutual respect, while many others felt that the apology was merely symbolic and doubted that it would change the government’s relationship with Indigenous Peoples. Although apologies and acknowledgements made by governments and churches are important steps forward in reconciliation, Indigenous leaders have argued that such gestures are not enough without supportive action . Communities and residential school survivor societies are undertaking healing initiatives and providing opportunities for survivors to talk about their experiences and move forward to create a positive future for themselves, their families, and their communities.
The Indian Residential School Survivors Society was formed in 1994 by the First Nations Summit in British Columbia and was officially incorporated in 2002 to provide support for survivors and communities in the province throughout the healing process and to educate the broader public. The Survivors Society provides crisis counselling, referrals, and healing initiatives, as well as acting as a resource for information, research, training, and workshops. It was clear that a similar organization was needed at the national level, and in 2005, the National Residential School Survivors Society was incorporated.
Books & Articles
Fournier, Suzanne and Ernie Crey. Stolen from our Embrace: The Abduction of First Nations Children and the Restoration of Indigenous Communities. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1997.
Haig-Brown, Celia. Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School . Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1998. First published by Tillicum Library, 1988.
Manitoba. Public Inquiry into the Administration and Indigenous People. “Indigenous Women.” Vol. 1, chap. 13, in Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba. Winnipeg: Public Inquiry into the Administration and Indigenous People, 1999.
This chapter of the Indigenous Justice Inquiry of Manitoba’s report on Indigenous people in the justice system examines how the residential school system has contributed to the abuse and discrimination that many Indigenous women face regularly.
Miller, J. R. Shingwauk’s Vision. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
Widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive, key texts on the residential school system, in Shingwauk’s Vision Miller has included the perspectives of government and church officials, school staff, and students to create a rich history of the residential school system from its original inception to its phasing out. Cree scholar Winona Wheeler calls Shingwauk’s Vision “the most thorough and comprehensive study of Indian residential schools in Canada to date and most noted for its good use of a wide range of Indigenous life histories and personal reminisces” (Wheeler, “Social Relations of Indigenous Oral Histories,” in Walking a Tightrope : Indigenous Peoples and their Representations, 2005. 193)
Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, Indian Residential Schools: The Nuu-Chah-Nulth Experience. Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, 1996.
Roberts, John. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples: Exploring their Past, Present, and Future. Toronto: Emond Montgomery, 2006.
Secwepemc Cultural Education Society, Behind Closed Doors: Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Penticton: Secwepemc Cultural Education Society & Theytus, 2000.
Websites
[1] Milloy, John S. A National Crime : The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986. University of Manitoba Press, 1999. 91–2; Fournier and Crey, Stolen from Our Embrace. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1997. 49.
[2] Royal Commission on Indigenous Peoples, Volume 1: Looking Forward, Looking Back. Chapter 10, “1.2 Changing Policies.” Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1996. 344-353.
[3] Milloy, John S. A National Crime : The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986. University of Manitoba Press, 1999. Xvii, 91–2.
[4] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 2 1939 to 2000. The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada . Vol. 1. 2 vols. Montreal; Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 103.
[5] Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba. 1999. The Justice System and Aboriginal People . Ch. 14 ( http://www.ajic.mb.ca/volumel/chapter14.html )
[6] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada), Marion Buller, Michèle Audette, Brian Eyolfson, and Qajaq Robinson. 2019. Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls . 104; Longman, Nickita. 2018. “Examining the Sixties Scoop and Beyond.” Discourse Magazine , 2018.
[7] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada), 355.
[8] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada), 355.
[9] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: The Legacy: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 5 . Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 3.
[10] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: The Legacy: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 5 . Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 7.
[11] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 2 1939 to 2000. The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada . Vol. 1. 2 vols. Montreal; Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 574.
MLA:
Hanson, Eric, et al.“The Residential School System.” Indigenous Foundations . First Nations and Indigenous Studies UBC, 2020. Website. [Date accessed].
Chicago:
Hanson, Eric, Daniel P. Games, and Alexa Manuel. “The Residential School System”. Indigenous Foundations. https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/residential-school-system-2020/. (accessed Month, day, year).
APA:
Hanson, E., Gamez, D., & Manuel, A. (2020, September). The Residential School System . Indigenous Foundations. https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/residential-school-system-2020/ | https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/ | 75 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | Canadian Indian residential school system | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Aboriginal residential schools" redirects here. For the residential school system in the United States, see American Indian boarding schools . For other uses, see Indian school (disambiguation) .
In Canada , the Indian residential school system [nb 1] was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples . [nb 2] The network was funded by the Canadian government 's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches . The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. [4] [5] [6] : 42 [7] Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. [8] : 2–3 By the 1930s, about 30 percent of Indigenous children were attending residential schools. [9] The number of school-related deaths remains unknown due to incomplete records. Estimates range from 3,200 to over 30,000, mostly from disease. [10] [11] [12] [13]
The system had its origins in laws enacted before Confederation , but it was primarily active from the passage of the Indian Act in 1876, under Prime Minister Alexander MacKenzie . Under Prime Minister John A. Macdonald , the government adopted the residential industrial school system of the United States, a partnership between the government and various church organizations. An amendment to the Indian Act in 1894, under Prime Minister Mackenzie Bowell , made attendance at day schools , industrial schools , or residential schools compulsory for First Nations children. Due to the remote nature of many communities, school locations meant that for some families, residential schools were the only way to comply. The schools were intentionally located at substantial distances from Indigenous communities to minimize contact between families and their children. Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed argued for schools at greater distances to reduce family visits, which he thought counteracted efforts to assimilate Indigenous children. Parental visits were further restricted by the use of a pass system designed to confine Indigenous peoples to reserves . The last federally-funded residential school, Kivalliq Hall in Rankin Inlet , closed in 1997. Schools operated in every province and territory with the exception of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island .
The residential school system harmed Indigenous children significantly by removing them from their families , depriving them of their ancestral languages , and exposing many of them to physical and sexual abuse . Conditions in the schools led to student malnutrition, starvation, and disease. [14] [15] Students were also subjected to forced enfranchisement as "assimilated" citizens that removed their legal identity as Indians. Disconnected from their families and culture and forced to speak English or French, students often graduated being unable to fit into their communities but remaining subject to racist attitudes in mainstream Canadian society. The system ultimately proved successful in disrupting the transmission of Indigenous practices and beliefs across generations. The legacy of the system has been linked to an increased prevalence of post-traumatic stress , alcoholism , substance abuse , suicide , and intergenerational trauma which persist within Indigenous communities today. [16]
Starting in the late 2000s, Canadian politicians and religious communities have begun to recognize, and issue apologies for, their respective roles in the residential school system. Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered a public apology on his behalf and that of the other federal political party leaders. On June 1, 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was established to uncover the truth about the schools. The commission gathered about 7,000 statements from residential school survivors [nb 3] through various local, regional and national events across Canada. In 2015, the TRC concluded with the establishment of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and released a report that concluded that the school system amounted to cultural genocide . Ongoing efforts since 2021 have identified thousands of probable unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools, though no human remains have been exhumed. During a penitential pilgrimage to Canada in July 2022, Pope Francis reiterated the apologies of the Catholic Church for its role, also acknowledging the system as genocide. [18] [19] In October 2022, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion calling on the federal Canadian government to recognize the residential school system as genocide. [20]
Attempts to assimilate Indigenous peoples were rooted in imperial colonialism centred around European worldviews and cultural practices, and a concept of land ownership based on the discovery doctrine . [8] : 47–50 As explained in the executive summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 's (TRC) final report: "Underlying these arguments was the belief that the colonizers were bringing civilization to savage people who could never civilize themselves ... a belief of racial and cultural superiority." [8] : 50
Assimilation efforts began as early as the 17th century with the arrival of French missionaries in New France . [21] They were resisted by Indigenous communities who were unwilling to leave their children for extended periods. [22] The establishment of day and boarding schools by groups including the Recollets , Jesuits and Ursulines was largely abandoned by the 1690s. The political instability and realities of colonial life also played a role in the decision to halt the education programs. [23] An increase in orphaned and foundling colonial children limited church resources, and colonists benefited from favourable relations with Indigenous peoples in both the fur trade and military pursuits. [24] : 3 [25] : 58–60
Educational programs were not widely attempted again by religious officials until the 1820s, prior to the introduction of state-sanctioned operations. [26] Included among them was a school established by John West , an Anglican missionary, at the Red River Colony in what is today Manitoba . [8] : 50 Protestant missionaries also opened residential schools in what is now the province of Ontario , spreading Christianity and working to encourage Indigenous peoples to adopt subsistence agriculture as a way to ensure they would not return to their original, nomadic ways of life upon graduation. [6]
Although many of these early schools were open for only a short time, efforts persisted. The Mohawk Institute Residential School , the oldest continuously operated residential school in Canada, opened in 1834 on Six Nations of the Grand River near Brantford , Ontario. Administered by the Anglican Church, the facility opened as the Mechanics' Institute, a day school for boys, in 1828 and became a boarding school four years later when it accepted its first boarders and began admitting female students. It remained in operation until June 30, 1970. [27]
The renewed interest in residential schools in the early 1800s can be linked to the decline in military hostility faced by the settlers, particularly after the War of 1812 . With the threat of invasion by American forces minimized, Indigenous communities were no longer viewed as allies but as barriers to permanent settlement. [28] [24] : 3 This change was also associated with the transfer of responsibility for interactions with Indigenous communities from military officials, familiar with and sympathetic to their customs and way of life, to civilian representatives concerned only with permanent colonial settlement. [25] : 73–5
Beginning in the late 1800s, the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) officially encouraged the growth of the residential school system as a valuable component in a wider policy of integrating Indigenous people into European Canadian society. [24] The TRC found that the schools, and the removal of children from their families, amounted to cultural genocide , a conclusion that echoed the words of historian John S. Milloy, who argued that the system's aim was to "kill the Indian in the child." [4] [5] [6] : 42 [nb 4] Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. [8] : 2–3 As the system was designed as an immersion program, Indigenous children were in many schools prohibited from, and sometimes punished for, speaking their own languages or practising their own faiths. [14] The primary stated goal was to convert Indigenous children to Christianity and acculturate them. [25] [ page needed ]
Many of the government-funded residential schools were run by churches of various denominations. Between 1867 and 1939, the number of schools operating at one time peaked at 80 in 1931. Of those schools, 44 were operated by 16 Catholic dioceses and about three dozen Catholic communities; 21 were operated by the Church of England / Anglican Church of Canada ; 13 were operated by the United Church of Canada , and 2 were operated by Presbyterians . [31] [32] [29] : 682 The approach of using established school facilities set up by missionaries was employed by the federal government for economic expedience: the government provided facilities and maintenance, while the churches provided teachers and their own lesson-planning. [33] As a result, the number of schools per denomination was less a reflection of their presence in the general population, but rather their legacy of missionary work. [29] : 683
Although education in Canada was made the jurisdiction of the provincial governments by the British North America Act , 1867 , Indigenous peoples and their treaties were under the jurisdiction of the federal government. [33] As a condition of several treaties, the federal government agreed to provide for Indigenous education. Residential schools were funded under the Indian Act by what was then the federal Department of the Interior . Adopted in 1876 as An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians , it consolidated all previous laws placing Indigenous communities, land and finances under federal control. As explained by the TRC, the act "made Indians wards of the state, unable to vote in provincial or federal elections or enter the professions if they did not surrender their status, and severely limited their freedom to participate in spiritual and cultural practices." [29] : 110
The report commissioned by Governor General Charles Bagot , titled Report on the affairs of the Indians in Canada [34] [6] : 12–17 and referred to as the Bagot Report, is seen as the foundational document for the federal residential school system. [35] It was supported by James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin , who had been impressed by industrial schools in the West Indies , and Egerton Ryerson , who was then the Chief Superintendent of Education in Upper Canada . [6] : 15
On May 26, 1847, Ryerson wrote a letter for George Vardon, Assistant Superintendent of Indian Affairs, asserting that "the North American Indian cannot be civilized or preserved in a state of civilization (including habits of industry and sobriety) except in connection with, if not by the influence of, not only religious instruction and sentiment but of religious feelings". [36] : 3 He expressly recommended that Indigenous students be educated in a separate, denominational, English-only system with a focus on industrial training. [23] [26] [35] This letter was published in 1898 as an appendix to a larger report entitled Statistics Respecting Indian Schools . [36]
The Gradual Civilization Act of 1857 and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869 formed the foundations for this system prior to Confederation. These acts assumed the inherent superiority of French and British ways, and the need for Indigenous peoples to become French or English speakers, Christians, and farmers. At the time, many Indigenous leaders argued to have these acts overturned. [37] The Gradual Civilization Act awarded 50 acres (200,000 m 2 ) of land to any Indigenous male deemed "sufficiently advanced in the elementary branches of education" and would automatically enfranchise him, removing any tribal affiliation or treaty rights. [6] : 18 [38] With this legislation, and through the creation of residential schools, the government believed Indigenous peoples could eventually become assimilated into the general population. Individual allotments of farmland would require changes in the communal reserve system, something fiercely opposed by First Nations governments. [6] : 18–19
In January 1879, John A. Macdonald , Prime Minister of what was then post-Confederation Canada , commissioned politician Nicholas Flood Davin to write a report regarding the industrial boarding-school system in the United States. [29] : 154 [39] Now known as the Davin Report, the Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds was submitted to Ottawa on March 14, 1879, and made the case for a cooperative approach between the Canadian government and the church to implement the assimilation pursued by President of the United States , Ulysses S. Grant . [40] [39] : 1 Davin's report relied heavily on findings he acquired through consultations with government officials and representatives of the Five Civilized Tribes in Washington, DC , and church officials in Winnipeg , Manitoba. He visited only one industrial day school, in Minnesota , before submitting his findings. [29] : 154–8 In his report Davin concluded that the best way to assimilate Indigenous peoples was to start with children in a residential setting, away from their families. [29] : 157 [39] : 12
Davin's findings were supported by Vital-Justin Grandin , who felt that while the likelihood of civilizing adults was low, there was hope when it came to Indigenous children. He explained in a letter to Public Works Minister Hector-Louis Langevin that the best course of action would be to make children "lead a life different from their parents and cause them to forget the customs, habits & language of their ancestors." [29] : 159 In 1883 Parliament approved $43,000 for three industrial schools and the first, Battleford Industrial School , opened on December 1 of that year. By 1900, there were 61 schools in operation. [29] : 161
The government began purchasing church-run boarding schools in the 1920s. During this period capital costs associated with the schools were assumed by the government, leaving administrative and instructional duties to church officials. The hope was that minimizing facility expenditures would allow church administrators to provide higher quality instruction and support to the students in their care. Although the government was willing to, and did, purchase schools from the churches, many were acquired for free given that the rampant disrepair present in the buildings resulted in their having no economic value. Schools continued to be maintained by churches in instances where they failed to reach an agreement with government officials with the understanding that the government would provide support for capital costs. The understanding ultimately proved complicated due to the lack of written agreements outlining the extent and nature of that support or the approvals required to undertake expensive renovations and repairs. [29] : 240
By the 1930s government officials recognized that the residential school system was financially unsustainable and failing to meet the intended goal of training and assimilating Indigenous children into European-Canadian society. Robert Hoey , Superintendent of Welfare and Training in the Indian Affairs Branch of the federal Department of Mines and Resources, opposed the expansion of new schools, noting in 1936 that "to build educational institutions, particularly residential schools, while the money at our disposal is insufficient to keep the schools already erected in a proper state of repair, is, to me, very unsound and a practice difficult to justify." [41] : 3 He proposed the expansion of day schools, an approach to educating Indigenous children that he would continue to pursue after being promoted to director of the welfare and training branch in 1945. The proposal was resisted by the United Church, the Anglican Church, and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate , who believed that the solution to the system's failure was not restructuring but intensification. [41] : 3–5
Between 1945 and 1955, the number of First Nations students in day schools run by Indian Affairs expanded from 9,532 to 17,947. This growth in student population was accompanied by an amendment to the Indian Act in 1951 that allowed federal officials to establish agreements with provincial and territorial governments and school boards regarding the education of Indigenous students in the public school system. These changes marked the government's shift in policy from assimilation-driven education at residential schools to the integration of Indigenous students into public schools. [8] : 71 [42]
Despite the shift in policy from educational assimilation to integration, the removal of Indigenous children from their families by state officials continued through much of the 1960s and 70s. [41] : 147 The removals were the result of the 1951 addition of section 88 of the Indian Act , which allowed for the application of provincial laws to Indigenous peoples living on reserves in instances where federal laws were not in place. The change included the monitoring of child welfare . [43] [44] With no requirement for specialized training regarding the traditions or lifestyles of the communities they entered, provincial officials assessed the welfare of Indigenous children based on Euro-Canadian values that, for example, deemed traditional diets of game, fish and berries insufficient and grounds for taking children into custody. [42] This period resulted in the widespread removal of Indigenous children from their traditional communities, first termed the Sixties Scoop by Patrick Johnston, the author of the 1983 report Native Children and the Child Welfare System . Often taken without the consent of their parents or community elders, some children were placed in state-run child welfare facilities, increasingly operated in former residential schools, while others were fostered or placed up for adoption by predominantly non-Indigenous families throughout Canada and the United States. While the Indian and Northern Affairs estimates that 11,132 children were adopted between 1960 and 1990, the actual number may be as high as 20,000. [43] [45] : 182
In 1969, after years of sharing power with churches, the DIA took sole control of the residential school system. [6] [41] : 79–84 The last federally-funded residential school, Kivalliq Hall in Rankin Inlet , closed in 1997. [46] Residential schools operated in every Canadian province and territory with the exception of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island . [47] It is estimated that the number of residential schools reached its peak in the early 1930s with 80 schools and more than 17,000 enrolled students. About 150,000 children are believed to have attended a residential school over the course of the system's existence. [8] : 2–3 [48]
Some parents and families of Indigenous children resisted the residential school system throughout its existence. Children were kept from schools and, in some cases, hidden from government officials tasked with rounding up children on reserves. [49] Parents regularly advocated for increased funding for schools, including the increase of centrally located day schools to improve access to their children, and made repeated requests for improvements to the quality of education, food, and clothing being provided at the schools. Demands for answers in regards to claims of abuse were often dismissed as a ploy by parents seeking to keep their children at home, with government and school officials positioned as those who knew best. [29] : 669–674
In 1894, amendments to the Indian Act made school attendance compulsory for Indigenous children between 7 and 16 years of age. The changes included a series of exemptions regarding school location, the health of the children and their prior completion of school examinations. [29] : 254–255 It was changed to children between 6 and 15 years of age in 1908. [29] : 261 [50] The introduction of mandatory attendance was the result of pressure from missionary representatives. Reliant on student enrolment quotas to secure funding, they were struggling to attract new students due to increasingly poor school conditions. [25] : 128
The introduction of the Family Allowance Act in 1945 stipulated that school-aged children had to be enroled in school for families to qualify for the " baby bonus ", further coercing Indigenous parents into having their children attend. [25] : 170 [51]
Students in the residential school system were faced with a multitude of abuses by teachers and administrators, including sexual and physical assault. They suffered from malnourishment and harsh discipline that would not have been tolerated in any other Canadian school system. [25] [6] [52] : 14 Corporal punishment was often justified by a belief that it was the only way to save souls or punish and deter runaways – whose injuries or death sustained in their efforts to return home would become the legal responsibility of the school. [25] Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate heating, and a lack of medical care led to high rates of influenza and tuberculosis ; in one school, the death rate reached 69 percent. [14] Federal policies that tied funding to enrollment numbers led to sick children being enrolled to boost numbers, thus introducing and spreading disease. The problem of unhealthy children was further exacerbated by the conditions of the schools themselves – overcrowding and poor ventilation, water quality and sewage systems. [6] : 83–89
Until the late 1950s, when the federal government shifted to a day school integration model, residential schools were severely underfunded and often relied on the forced labour of their students to maintain their facilities, although it was presented as training for artisanal skills. The work was arduous, and severely compromised the academic and social development of the students. School books and textbooks were drawn mainly from the curricula of the provincially funded public schools for non-Indigenous students, and teachers at the residential schools were often poorly trained or prepared. [25] During this period, Canadian government scientists performed nutritional tests on students and kept some students undernourished as the control sample. [53]
Details of the mistreatment of students were published numerous times throughout the 20th century by government officials reporting on school conditions, and in the proceedings of civil cases brought forward by survivors seeking compensation for the abuse they endured. [9] [47] The conditions and impact of residential schools were also brought to light in popular culture as early as 1967, with the publication of "The Lonely Death of Chanie Wenjack " by Ian Adams in Maclean's and the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67 . In the 1990s, investigations and memoirs by former students revealed that many students at residential schools were subjected to severe physical, psychological , and sexual abuse by school staff members and by older students. Among the former students to come forward was Phil Fontaine , then Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs , who in October 1990 publicly discussed the abuse he and others suffered while attending Fort Alexander Indian Residential School. [8] : 129–130
After the government closed most of the schools in the 1960s, the work of Indigenous activists and historians led to greater awareness by the public of the damage the schools had caused, as well as to official government and church apologies, and a legal settlement. These gains were achieved through the persistent organizing and advocacy by Indigenous communities to draw attention to the residential school system's legacy of abuse, including their participation in hearings of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples . [41] : 551–554
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission list three reasons behind the federal government's decision to establish residential schools.
- Provide Aboriginal people with skills to participate in a market-based economy.
- Further political assimilation, in hope that educated students would give up their status and not return to their reserves or families.
- Schools were "engines of cultural and spiritual change" where "'savages' were to emerge as Christian 'white men'". [54] : 29
In addition to these three the Commission stated a national security element and quoted Andsell Macrae, a commissioner with Indian Affairs: "it is unlikely that any Tribe or Tribes would give trouble of a serious nature to the Government whose members had children completely under Government control." [54] : 29
The federal government sought to cut costs by adopting the residential industrial school system of the United States. Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney aspired to have the residential schools, through forced labour , be financially independent a few years after opening. The government believed through the industrial system and cheap labour costs of missionary staff it could "operate a residential school system on a nearly cost-free basis." [54] : 30–31 Students "were expected to raise or grow and prepare most of the food they ate, to make and repair much of their clothing, and to maintain the schools." Most schools did this through a system where students studied for half the day and did "vocational training" for the other half. [54] : 48 This system failed and the schools never became self-supporting. [54] : 30
By 1891, the government cut already low salaries, stopped covering operating costs, and implemented a fixed amount of funding per student. This policy drove competition and encouraged the admission of students that were deemed "too young or too sick." The chronic underfunding developed a health crisis within the schools and a financial crisis within the missionary groups. In 1911, in an attempt to alleviate the health crisis the federal government increased per capita grant funding. However, the funding did not adjust for inflation. In the 1930s, throughout the Great Depression , and World War II that grant was repeatedly reduced. In 1937, the per capita grant averaged $180 per student per year. For perspective, per-capita costs for comparable institutions included: Manitoba School for the Deaf $642, Manitoba School for Boys $550, U.S. Chilocco Indian Agricultural School $350. The Child Welfare League of America stated per capita costs for "well-run institutions" ranged between $313 and $541, Canada was paying 57.5% of the minimum figure. Changes in per capita costs did not occur until the 1950s and were seen as insignificant. In 1966, Saskatchewan residential schools per capita costs ranged from $694 and $1,193, which is 7%–36% of what other Canadian child-welfare institutions were paying ($3,300 and $9,855) and 5%–25% of what U.S. residential care was paying ($4,500 and $14,059.) [54] : 30–31
Government officials believed that since many staff members belonged to religious orders with vows of poverty or missionary organizations, pay was relatively unimportant. Thus almost all staff were poorly paid and schools had trouble recruiting and retaining staff. In 1948, C.H. Birdsall, chair of the United Church committee responsible for the Edmonton school, in regard to the lack of funding for salaries, accommodations, and equipment, stated that it was "doubtful the present work with Indian Children could properly be called education." In 1948, Sechelt school staff were paying full-time staff a salary of $1800. In the 1960s, Christie school staff were paid $50 a month. [54] : 92
The per capita grant system severely decreased the education quality. British Columbia Indian Superintendent Arthur Wellesley Vowell in response to one of his agents recommending they only approve qualified teaching staff stated that that would require more funding and that Indian Affairs did not "entertain requests for increased grants to Indian boarding and industrial schools." The pay was so low relative to provincial schools that many of the teachers lacked any teaching qualifications. [54] : 44
Federal cuts to funding during the Great Depression resulted in students paying the price. By 1937, at the Kamloops Indian Residential School , milk production among the schools dairy herds was reduced by 50%. The federal government refused to fund construction for an additional barn to increase milk production and isolate the sick animals. Even among other schools dairy herds, funding was so low that milk was separated with "skimmed milk served to the children" and the fat turned to dairy products sold to fund the schools. In 1939, the Presbyterian school in Kenora began charging students 10 cents a loaf until their Indian agent ordered the school to stop. [54] : 57–58
Parents and family members regularly travelled to the schools, often camping outside to be closer to their children. So many parents made the trip that Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed argued that the schools should be moved farther from the reserves to make visiting more difficult. [29] : 601–604 He also objected to allowing children to return home during school breaks and holidays because he believed the trips interrupted their assimilation. [55]
Visitation, for those who could make the journey, was strictly controlled by school officials in a manner similar to the procedures enforced in the prison system. In some cases schools denied parents access to their children altogether. Others required families to meet with them in the presence of school officials and speak only in English; parents who could not speak in English were unable to talk to their children. The obstacles families faced to visit their children were further exacerbated by the pass system . Introduced by Reed, without legislative authority to do so, the pass system restricted and closely monitored the movement of Indigenous peoples off reserves. [29] : 601–604 Launched in 1885 as a response to the North-West Rebellion , and later replaced by permits, the system was designed to prevent Indigenous people from leaving reserves without a pass issued by a local Indian agent. [56]
Instruction provided to students was rooted in an institutional and European approach to education. It differed dramatically from child rearing in traditional knowledge systems based on 'look, listen, and learn' models. Corporal punishment and loss of privileges characterized the residential school system, while traditional Indigenous approaches to education favour positive guidance toward desired behaviour through game-based play, story-telling, and formal ritualized ceremonies. [25] : 15–21 [57] While at school, many children had no contact with their families for up to 10 months at a time, and in some cases had no contact for years. The impact of the disconnect from their families was furthered by students being discouraged or prohibited from speaking Indigenous languages , even among themselves and outside the classroom, so that English or French would be learned and their own languages forgotten. In some schools, they were subject to physical violence for speaking their own languages or for practicing non-Christian faiths. [48] [58]
Most schools operated with the stated goal of providing students with the vocational training and social skills required to obtain employment and integrate into Canadian society after graduation. In actuality, these goals were poorly and inconsistently achieved. Many graduates were unable to land a job due to poor educational training. Returning home was equally challenging due to an unfamiliarity with their culture and, in some cases, an inability to communicate with family members using their traditional language. Instead of intellectual achievement and advancement, it was often physical appearance and dress, like that of middle class , urban teenagers, or the promotion of a Christian ethic, that was used as a sign of successful assimilation. There was no indication that school attendees achieved greater financial success than those who did not go to school. As the father of a pupil who attended Battleford Industrial School, in Saskatchewan, for five years explained: "he cannot read, speak or write English, nearly all his time having been devoted to herding and caring for cattle instead of learning a trade or being otherwise educated. Such employment he can get at home." [25] : 164–172, 194–199
Both academic research and the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee relay evidence that students were included in several scientific research experiments without their knowledge, their consent or the consent of their parents. [41] These experiments include nutrition experiments [59] which involved intentional malnourishment of children, vaccine trials for the BCG vaccine , [60] as well as studies on extrasensory perception, vitamin D diet supplements, amebicides , isoniazid , hemoglobin , bedwetting, and dermatoglyphics . [41]
Residential school deaths were common and have been linked to poorly constructed and maintained facilities. [8] : 92–101 The actual number of deaths remains unknown due to inconsistent reporting by school officials and the destruction of medical and administrative records in compliance with retention and disposition policies for government records. [8] : 92–93 Research by the TRC revealed that at least 3,201 students had died, mostly from disease. [12] [8] : 92 TRC chair Justice Murray Sinclair has suggested that the number of deaths may exceed 6,000. [10] [11] [61] The vast majority of deaths occurred before the 1950s.
The 1906 Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, submitted by chief medical officer Peter Bryce , highlighted that the "Indian population of Canada has a mortality rate of more than double that of the whole population, and in some provinces more than three times". [8] : 97–98 [62] : 275 Among the list of causes he noted the infectious disease of tuberculosis and the role residential schools played in spreading the disease by way of poor ventilation and medical screening. [8] : 97–98 [62] : 275–276
In 1907, Bryce reported on the conditions of Manitoba and North-West residential schools: "we have created a situation so dangerous to health that I was often surprised that the results were not even worse than they have been shown statistically to be." [63] : 18 In 1909, Bryce reported that, between 1894 and 1908, mortality rates at some residential schools in western Canada ranged from 30 to 60 per cent over five years (that is, five years after entry, 30 to 60 per cent of students had died, or 6 to 12 per cent per annum). [64] These statistics did not become public until 1922, when Bryce, who was no longer working for the government, published The Story of a National Crime: Being a Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians of Canada from 1904 to 1921. In particular, he alleged that the high mortality rates could have been avoided if healthy children had not been exposed to children with tuberculosis. [8] [65] [66] At the time, no antibiotic had been identified to treat the disease, and this exacerbated the impact of the illness. Streptomycin , the first effective treatment, was not introduced until 1943. [29] : 381
In 1920 and 1922, Regina physician F. A. Corbett was commissioned to visit the schools in the west of the country, and found similar results to those reported by Bryce. At the Ermineskin school in Hobbema , Alberta, he found that 50 percent of the children had tuberculosis. [6] : 98 At Sarcee Boarding School near Calgary , he noted that all 33 students were "much below even a passable standard of health" and "[a]ll but four were infected with tuberculosis". [6] : 99 In one classroom, he found 16 ill children, many near death, who were being forced to sit through lessons. [6] : 99
In 2011, reflecting on the TRC's research, Justice Murray Sinclair told The Toronto Star : "Missing children – that is the big surprise for me ... That such large numbers of children died at the schools. That the information of their deaths was not communicated back to their families." [67]
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission wrote that the policy of Indian Affairs was to refuse to return the bodies of children home due to the associated expense, and to instead require the schools to bear the cost of burials. [54] : 70 The TRC concluded that it may be impossible to ever identify the number of deaths or missing children, in part because of the practice of burying students in unmarked graves. [68] [69] [70] The work is further complicated by a pattern of poor record keeping by school and government officials, who neglected to keep reliable numbers about the number of children who died or where they were buried. [12] While most schools had cemeteries on site, their location and extent remain difficult to determine as cemeteries that were originally marked were found to have been later razed, intentionally hidden or built over. [70] [71]
The fourth volume of the TRC's final report, dedicated to missing children and unmarked burials, was developed after the original TRC members realized, in 2007, that the issue required its own working group. In 2009, the TRC requested $1.5 million in extra funding from the federal government to complete this work, but was denied. [12] The researchers concluded, after searching land near schools using satellite imagery and maps, that, "for the most part, the cemeteries that the Commission documented are abandoned, disused, and vulnerable to accidental disturbance". [72] : 1
In May 2021, remains believed to be those of 215 children were found buried on the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia , on the lands of the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc First Nation . [73] [74] The remains were located with the assistance of a ground-penetrating radar specialist and Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Chief Rosanne Casimir wrote that the deaths were believed to have been undocumented and that work was underway to determine if related records were held at the Royal British Columbia Museum . [73]
On June 23, 2021, an estimated 751 unmarked graves were found on the site of Marieval Indian Residential School in Marieval, Saskatchewan , on the lands of Cowessess First Nation . [75] [76] [77] Some of these graves predated the establishment of the residential school. [78] On June 24, 2021, Chief Cadmus Delorme of the Cowessess First Nation held a virtual press conference. From June 2 to 23 they found an estimated 751 unmarked graves. Delorme went on to state:
This is not a mass grave site, these are unmarked graves...in 1960, there may have been marks on these graves. The Catholic Church representatives removed these headstones and today they are unmarked graves... the machine has a 10 to 15 percent error...we do know there is at least 600... We cannot affirm that they are all children, but there are oral stories that there are adults in this gravesite... some may have went to the Church and from our local towns and they could have been buried here as well... We are going to put names on these unmarked graves. [79] [77] [78]
On June 30, 2021, the Lower Kootenay Band reported the discovery of 182 unmarked graves near Kootenay Indian Residential School in Cranbrook, British Columbia . [80] As of summer 2022, no identified gravesites have been excavated nor have any human remains been exhumed.
When the government revised the Indian Act in the 1940s and 1950s, some bands, along with regional and national Indigenous organizations, wanted to maintain schools in their communities. [81] Motivations for support of the schools included their role as a social service in communities that were suffering from extensive family breakdowns; the significance of the schools as employers; and the inadequacy of other opportunities for children to receive education.
In the 1960s, a major confrontation took place at the Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta. After several years of deteriorating conditions and administrative changes, parents protested against the lack of transparency at the Blue Quills Indian School in 1969. In response, the government decided to close the school, convert the building into a residence, and enrol students in a public school 5 kilometres (3 mi) away in St. Paul, Alberta . [41] : 84 The TRC report pertaining to this period states:
Fearing their children would face racial discrimination in St. Paul, parents wished to see the school transferred to a private society that would operate it both as a school and a residence. The federal government had been open to such a transfer if the First Nations organization was structured as a provincial school division. The First Nations rejected this, saying that a transfer of First Nations education to the provincial authority was a violation of Treaty rights. [41] : 84
In the summer of 1970, members of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation occupied the building and demanded the right to run it themselves. More than 1,000 people participated in the 17-day sit-in, which lasted from July 14 to 31. [41] : 89–90 Their efforts resulted in Blue Quills becoming the first Indigenous-administered school in the country. [82] It continues to operate today as University nuhelotʼįne thaiyotsʼį nistameyimâkanak Blue Quills , the first Indigenous-governed university in Canada. [83] [84] Following the success of the Blue Quills effort the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB) released the 1972 paper Indian Control of Indian Education that responded, in part, to the Canadian Government's 1969 White Paper calling for the abolishment of the land treaties and the Indian Act . The NIB paper underscored the right of Indigenous communities to locally direct how their children are educated and served as the integral reference for education policy moving forward.
Few other former residential schools have converted to independently operated community schools for Indigenous children. White Calf Collegiate in Lebret, Saskatchewan, was run by the Star Blanket Cree Nation from 1973 until its closure in 1998, after being run by the Oblates from 1884 to 1969. [85] Old Sun Community College is run by the Siksika Nation in Alberta in a building designed by architect Roland Guerney Orr. [86] [87] From 1929 to 1971 the building housed Old Sun residential school, first run by the Anglicans and taken over by the federal government in 1969. [88] It was converted to adult learning and stood as a campus of Mount Royal College from 1971 to 1978, at which point the Siksika Nation took over operations. In 1988, the Old Sun College Act was passed in the Alberta Legislature recognizing Old Sun Community College as a First Nations College. [89]
Survivors of residential schools and their families have been found to suffer from historical trauma with a lasting and adverse effect on the transmission of Indigenous culture between generations. A 2010 study led by Gwen Reimer explained historic trauma, passed on intergenerationally , as the process through which "cumulative stress and grief experienced by Aboriginal communities is translated into a collective experience of cultural disruption and a collective memory of powerlessness and loss". [90] : x This trauma has been used to explain the persistent negative social and cultural impacts of colonial rule and residential schools, including the prevalence of sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, lateral violence, mental illness and suicide among Indigenous peoples. [91] : 10–11 [92]
The 2012 national report of the First Nations Regional Health Study found that respondents who attended residential schools were more likely than those who did not to have been diagnosed with at least one chronic medical condition . [93] A sample of 127 survivors revealed that half have criminal records; 65 per cent have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder ; 21 per cent have been diagnosed with major depression; 7 percent have been diagnosed with anxiety disorder ; and 7 percent have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder . [91]
In a 2014 article, Anishinaabe psychiatry researcher Amy Bombay reviewed research that relates to the intergenerational effects. She found that, "In addition to negative effects observed among those who attended IRS, accumulating evidence suggests that the children of those who attended (IRS offspring) are also at greater risk for poor well-being." 37.2% of adults with at least one parent who attended a boarding school contemplated committing suicide in their lifetimes, compared to 25.7% of people whose parents did not attend residential boarding schools. Higher levels of depression symptoms and psychological trauma were evident among Indian residential school survivors' children. [94]
Although some schools permitted students to speak their Indigenous languages , [95] suppressing their languages and culture was a key tactic used to assimilate Indigenous children. Many students spoke the language of their families fluently when they first entered residential schools. The schools strictly prohibited the use of these languages even though many students spoke little to no English or French. [4] [96] Traditional and spiritual activities including the potlatch and Sun Dance were also banned. [97] Some survivors reported being strapped or forced to eat soap when they were caught speaking their own language. The inability to communicate was further affected by their families' inabilities to speak English or French. Upon leaving residential school some survivors felt ashamed of being Indigenous as they were made to view their traditional identities as ugly and dirty. [8] : 4, 83–87 [98] Survivors also have to deal with the effects of cultural linguicide, which is defined as loss of language which eventually leads to loss of culture. [99]
The stigma the residential school system created against elders passing Indigenous culture on to younger generations has been linked to the over-representation of Indigenous languages on the list of endangered languages in Canada . The TRC noted that most of the 90 Indigenous languages that still exist are at risk of disappearing, with great-grandparents as the only speakers of many such languages. [8] : 154 It concluded that a failure of governments and Indigenous communities to prioritize the teaching and preservation of traditional languages ensured that despite the closure of residential schools, the eradication of Indigenous culture desired by government officials and administrators would inevitably be fulfilled "through a process of systematic neglect". [8] : 155 In addition to the forceful eradication of elements of Indigenous culture, the schools trained students in the patriarchal dichotomies then common in British and Canadian society and useful to state institutions, such as the domesticization of female students through imbuing 'stay-at-home' values and the militarization of male students through soldierlike regimentation. [100]
However, Indigenous children in boarding schools were not deterred, and continued to speak and practice their language in an attempt to keep it alive. Assistant Professor in Professional Communication, Jane Griffith, said, "Predictably, nineteenth-century government texts do not reveal the strategies Indigenous peoples had for maintaining their languages in the same way Indian boarding school survivor memoir, literature, and testimony do from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This absence may exemplify how school newspapers carefully created an English-only fantasy for readers, but may also attest to the success of students' secrecy: perhaps official school documents did not report that students still knew Indigenous languages because schools were unaware of this. Government reports, if read contrapuntally, were more forthcoming in how students continued to speak their language, though they framed such resistance as failure." [99]
Boarding schools in Canada worked towards assimilation of Native students. Historians Brian Klopotek and Brenda Child explain,"Education for Indians was not mandatory in Canada until 1920, long after compulsory attendance laws were passed in the United States, although families frequently resisted sending their children to the residential schools. Many protested the lack of decent educational opportunities available, but the government took little action until after World War I, when European-Canadians first began to acknowledge discriminatory treatment towards Indians." Indigenous resistance is defined, in the words of Anishinaabe scholar-artist Leanne Simpson as "a radical and complete overturning of the nation-state's political formations." [101] During this time Native people found ways to resist this colonial endeavor.
Those that survived used their knowledge to speak back against colonialism, as historians Brian Klopotek and Brenda Child explain, "in Canada, the results of this system were more complicated than the government anticipated. Often students returned to their reserves to become leaders, while others entered the labour market and competed with Euro-American workers." The Canadian government was displeased with this; as one minister for Indian Affairs noted in 1897, "we are educating these Indians to compete industrially with our own peoples, which seems to me a very undesirable amount of public money." [101] The government, perceiving Indian education as too generous, reduced the services available to First Nations peoples beginning in 1910 and emphasized low cost schooling thereafter. [101]
Acknowledgment of the wrongs done by the residential school system began in the 1980s. [8] [9]
In 1986, the first apology for residential schools by any institution in Canada was from the United Church of Canada in Sudbury , Ontario. [102] At the 1986 31st General Council, the United Church of Canada responded to the request of Indigenous peoples that it apologize to them for its part in colonization and adopted the apology. Rev. Bob Smith stated:
We imposed our civilization as a condition of accepting the gospel. We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were. As a result, you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be. We ask you to forgive us and to walk together with us in the Spirit of Christ so that our peoples may be blessed and God's creation healed. [103] [97]
The elders present at the General Council expressly refused to accept the apology and chose to receive the apology, believing further work needed to be done. [102] In 1998, the church apologized expressly for the role it played in the residential school system. On behalf of The United Church of Canada the Right Rev. Bill Phipps stated:
I apologize for the pain and suffering that our church's involvement in the Indian Residential School system has caused. We are aware of some of the damage that this cruel and ill-conceived system of assimilation has perpetrated on Canada's First Nations peoples. For this we are truly and most humbly sorry... To those individuals who were physically, sexually, and mentally abused as students of the Indian Residential Schools in which The United Church of Canada was involved, I offer you our most sincere apology. You did nothing wrong. You were and are the victims of evil acts that cannot under any circumstances be justified or excused... We are in the midst of a long and painful journey as we reflect on the cries that we did not or would not hear, and how we have behaved as a church...we commit ourselves to work toward ensuring that we will never again use our power as a church to hurt others with attitudes of racial and spiritual superiority. We pray that you will hear the sincerity of our words today and that you will witness the living out of our apology in our actions in the future. [103]
In 1991, at the National Meeting on Indian Residential Schools in Saskatoon , Canadian bishops and leaders of religious orders that participated in the schools issued an apology stating:
We are sorry and deeply regret the pain, suffering and alienation that so many experienced. We have heard their cries of distress, feel their anguish and want to be part of the healing process ... we pledge solidarity with the aboriginal peoples in their pursuit of recognition of their basic human rights ... urge the federal government to assume its responsibility for its part in the Indian Residential Schools ... [and] urge our faith communities to become better informed and more involved in issues important to aboriginal peoples [104]
In July 1991, Douglas Crosby , then presidential of the Oblate of Canada , the missionary religious congregation that operated a majority of the Catholic residential schools in Canada, apologized on behalf of 1,200 Oblates then living in Canada, to approximately 25,000 Indigenous people at Lac Ste. Anne , Alberta, stating:
We apologize for the part we played in the cultural, ethnical, linguistic and religious imperialism that was part of the European mentality and, in a particular way, for the instances of physical and sexual abuse that occurred in these schools ... For these trespasses we wish to voice today our deepest sorrow and we ask your forgiveness and understanding. We hope that we can make up for it being part of the healing process wherever necessary. [105] [106] [97]
Crosby further pledged the need to "come again to that deep trust and solidarity that constitutes families. We recognize that the road beyond past hurt may be long and steep, but we pledge ourselves anew to journey with the Native Peoples on that road." [105] [107]
On May 16, 1993, in Idaho , Peter Hans Kolvenbach , then Superior General of the Society of Jesus , issued an apology for the actions of Jesuits in the Western missions and in the "ways the church was insensitive toward your tribal customs, language and spirituality ... The Society of Jesus is sorry for the mistakes it has made in the past". [108] [109]
In 2009, a delegation of 40 First Nations representatives from Canada and several Canadian bishops had a private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI to obtain an apology for abuses that occurred in the residential school system. Then leader of the Assembly of First Nations Grand Chief Phil Fontaine of the First Nations Summit in British Columbia, and Chief Edward John of the Tlʼaztʼen Nation were in attendance. The Indigenous delegation were funded by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada . Afterwards, the Holy See released an official expression of sorrow on the church's role in residential schools and "the deplorable conduct of some members of the Church":
His Holiness [the Pope] emphasized that acts of abuse cannot be tolerated in society. He prayed that all those affected would experience healing, and he encouraged First Nations Peoples to continue to move forward with renewed hope. [110] [111] [112]
Fontaine, a residential school survivor, later stated that he had sensed the pope's "pain and anguish" and that the acknowledgement was "important to [him] and that was what [he] was looking for". [113] In an interview with CBC News , Fontaine stated in regards to the pope's acknowledgement of the suffering of the school survivors "I think in that sense, there was that apology that we were certainly looking for." [114] [112] Many argue that Pope Benedict XVI's statement was not a full apology. [46] On June 6, 2021, Fontaine restated his thoughts on Pope Benedict XVI's statement as "reassuring" but that "I believe very strongly that there ought to be a full apology from the Holy Father. He's done so in Ireland, he's done so in Bolivia." [115]
In the 2015 Report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), Action 58 called for the pope to issue an apology similar to Pope Benedict XVI's 2010 pastoral letter to Ireland issued from the Vatican, but be delivered by the Pope on Canadian soil. [116] : 7
On May 29, 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked the current Pope Francis for a public apology to all survivors of the residential school system, rather than the expression of sorrow issued by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. [117] [118] [119] Trudeau invited the pope to issue the apology in Canada. Although no commitment for such an apology followed the meeting, he noted that the pope pointed to a lifelong commitment of supporting marginalized people and an interest in working collaboratively with Trudeau and Canadian bishops to establish a way forward. [117]
On June 10, 2021, a delegation of Indigenous people were announced to meet with the pope later in the year to discuss the legacy of residential schools. On 29 June, the delegation was scheduled to take place from December 17 to 20, 2021, to comply with COVID-19 global travel restrictions . Archbishop Richard Gagnon, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops spoke on the topic, stating "What the Pope said and did in Bolivia is what he will do in Canada." [120]
On September 24, 2021, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a formal apology for residential schools stating "We, the Catholic Bishops of Canada, gathered in Plenary this week, take this opportunity to affirm to you, the Indigenous Peoples of this land, that we acknowledge the suffering experienced in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. Many Catholic religious communities and dioceses participated in this system, which led to the suppression of Indigenous languages, culture and spirituality, failing to respect the rich history, traditions and wisdom of Indigenous Peoples. We acknowledge the grave abuses that were committed by some members of our Catholic community; physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, cultural, and sexual." [121] Assembly of First Nations Chief RoseAnne Archibald stated she felt conflicted, saying "On one hand, their unequivocal apology is welcomed," but that she was disappointed that the bishops had not issued a formal request for the pope to visit Canada in person. [122] The Catholic bishops also stated
We are fully committed to the process of healing and reconciliation. Together with the many pastoral initiatives already underway in dioceses across the country, and as a further tangible expression of this ongoing commitment, we are pledging to undertake fundraising in each region of the country to support initiatives discerned locally with Indigenous partners. Furthermore, we invite the Indigenous Peoples to journey with us into a new era of reconciliation, helping us in each of our dioceses across the country to prioritize initiatives of healing, to listen to the experience of Indigenous Peoples, especially to the survivors of Indian Residential Schools, and to educate our clergy, consecrated men and women, and lay faithful, on Indigenous cultures and spirituality. We commit ourselves to continue the work of providing documentation or records that will assist in the memorialization of those buried in unmarked graves. [121]
The bishops also stated "Pope Francis will encounter and listen to the Indigenous participants, so as to discern how he can support our common desire to renew relationships and walk together along the path of hope in the coming years" with some interpreting this visit as an important step that could lead to a formal visit to Canada by the pope. [121]
On April 1, 2022, during a meeting between a delegation of First Nations representatives and the pope at the Vatican, Pope Francis apologized for the conduct of some members of the Roman Catholic Church in the Canadian Indian residential school system. [123] Pope Francis said:
I also feel shame ... sorrow and shame for the role that a number of Catholics, particularly those with educational responsibilities, have had in all these things that wounded you, and the abuses you suffered and the lack of respect shown for your identity, your culture and even your spiritual values. For the deplorable conduct of these members of the Catholic Church, I ask for God's forgiveness and I want to say to you with all my heart, I am very sorry. And I join my brothers, the Canadian bishops, in asking your pardon. [123]
During a July 2022 penitential pilgrimage to western Canada , Pope Francis reiterated the apologies of the Catholic Church, with hundreds of Indigenous people and government officials in attendance, for its role in administrating many of the residential schools on behalf of the government and for abuse that occurred at the hand of Catholic priests and religious sisters. [18] At the Pope's apologietic address given at Maskwacis, Chief Wilton Littlechild expressed hope for the future, saying: "You [Pope Francis] have said that you come as a pilgrim, seeking to walk together with us on the pathway of truth, justice, healing, reconciliation, and hope. We gladly welcome you to join us on this journey ... we sincerely hope that our encounter this morning, and the words you share with us, will echo with true healing and real hope throughout many generations to come." [18] Murray Sinclair , the former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, found the apology "insultingly insufficient". [124] J.J. McCullough, writing in The Washington Post , stated, "it was common to complain that the Pope’s apology was not an institutional apology from the Church as a whole." [124]
I accept and I confess before God and you, our failures in the residential schools. We failed you. We failed ourselves. We failed God.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that we were part of a system which took you and your children from home and family.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that we tried to remake you in our image, taking from you your language and the signs of your identity.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that in our schools so many were abused physically, sexually, culturally and emotionally.
On behalf of the Anglican Church of Canada, I present our apology. [125]
Archbishop Michael Peers, A Step Along the Path
On August 6, 1993, at the National Native Convocation in Minaki , Ontario. Archbishop Michael Peers apologized to former residential school students on behalf of the Anglican Church of Canada . [125] Almost 30 years later, in April to May, 2022, Justin Welby , the Archbishop of Canterbury , the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England and the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, undertook a five-day visit to Canada, during which he apologized for the "terrible crime" he said the Anglican Church committed in running residential schools and for the Church of England's "grievous sins" against the Indigenous peoples of Canada. He continued, "I am so sorry that the Church participated in the attempt—the failed attempt, because you rose above it and conquered it—to dehumanise and abuse those we should have embraced as brothers and sisters." The Archbishop spent time visiting reserves, meeting with First Nations leaders and Anglicans, and listening to former residential school students. [126] [127]
On June 9, 1994, the Presbyterian Church in Canada adopted a confession at its 120th General Assembly in Toronto on June 5, recognizing its role in residential schools and seeking forgiveness. The confession was presented on October 8 during a ceremony in Winnipeg.
We ask, also, for forgiveness from Aboriginal peoples. What we have heard we acknowledge. It is our hope that those whom we have wronged with a hurt too deep for telling will accept what we have to say. With God's guidance our Church will seek opportunities to walk with Aboriginal peoples to find healing and wholeness together as God's people. [128]
In 2004, immediately before signing the first Public Safety Protocol with the Assembly of First Nations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli issued an apology on behalf of the RCMP for its role in the Indian residential school system: "We, I, as Commissioner of the RCMP, am truly sorry for what role we played in the residential school system and the abuse that took place in the residential system." [129] [130]
After the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement was accepted by Prime Minister Paul Martin 's ministry in 2005, activists called for Martin's successor, Prime Minister Stephen Harper , to apologize. The Cabinet headed by Harper refused, stating an apology was not part of the agreement. [131] [132] On May 1, 2007, Member of Parliament Gary Merasty , of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation , introduced a motion for an apology, which passed unanimously. [133]
On June 11, 2008, Harper issued a symbolic [134] [135] apology on behalf of the sitting Cabinet for past ministries' policies of assimilation. He did this in front of an audience of Indigenous delegates and in an address that was broadcast nationally on the CBC . [136] [137] The Prime Minister apologized not only for the known excesses of the residential school system, but for the creation of the system itself. Harper delivered the speech in the House of Commons; the procedural device of a committee of the whole was used so that Indigenous leaders, who were not members of parliament, could be allowed to respond to the apology on the floor of the house. [138]
Harper's apology excluded Newfoundland and Labrador on the basis that the 28th Canadian Ministry should not be held accountable for pre-Confederation actions. Residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador were located in St Anthony , Cartwright , North West River , Nain , and Makkovik . These schools were run by the International Grenfell Association and the German Moravian Missionaries. [139] The government argued that because these schools were not created under the auspices of the Indian Act, they were not true residential schools. More than 1,000 former students disagreed and filed a class action lawsuit against the government for compensation in 2007. By the time the suit was settled in 2016, almost a decade later, dozens of plaintiffs had died. Lawyers expected that up to 900 former students would be compensated. [140]
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered an apology to Innu , Inuit , and NunatuKavut former students and their families in Happy Valley-Goose Bay , Labrador . [141] [142] He acknowledged that students experienced multiple forms of abuse linking their treatment to the colonial thinking that shaped the school system. [143] Trudeau's apology was received on behalf of residential school survivors by Toby Obed, who framed the apology as a key part of the healing process that connected survivors from Newfoundland and Labrador with school attendees from across the country. [141] Members of the Innu nation were less receptive, rejecting the apology ahead of the ceremony. [144] Grand Chief Gregory Rich noted in a released statement that he was "not satisfied that Canada understands yet what it has done to Innu and what it is still doing", indicating that members felt they deserved an apology for more than their experiences at residential schools. [141] [144]
Then- Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger became, on June 18, 2015, the first politician to issue an apology for past cabinets' role in the Sixties Scoop . [145] Class action lawsuits have been brought against the Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario governments for the harm caused to victims of the large-scale adoption scheme that saw thousands of Indigenous children forcibly removed from their parents in the 1960s. [146] Indigenous leaders responded by insisting that while apologies were welcomed, action—including a federal apology, reunification of families, compensation, and counselling for victims—must accompany words for them to have real meaning. [147]
The Premier of Alberta at the time, Rachel Notley , issued an apology as a ministerial statement on June 22, 2015, in a bid to begin to address the wrongs done by the province's previous ministries to the Indigenous peoples of Alberta and the rest of Canada. [148] At the same time, Notley called on the federal government to hold an inquiry on the missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. The Premier also stated her intent for the government to build relationships with provincial leaders of Indigenous communities and sought to amend the provincial curriculum to include the history of Indigenous culture. [149]
In the Legislative Assembly of Ontario , on May 30, 2016, the serving Premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne , apologized on behalf of the Executive Council for the harm done at residential schools. [150] Affirming Ontario's commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, she acknowledged the school system as "one of the most shameful chapters in Canadian history". [151] In a 105-minute ceremony, Wynne announced that the Ontario government would spend $250 million on education initiatives and would also rename the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation . It was further announced that the first week of November would be known as Treaties Recognition Week. [152] [153]
The Manitoba Keewatinook Ininew Okimowin Tribal Council , representing 30 northern Manitoba Indigenous communities, requested on February 21, 2008, that Queen Elizabeth II apologise for the residential schools in Canada. Grand Chief of the council Sydney Garrioch sent a letter with this request to Buckingham Palace. [154]
In Winnipeg , on Canada Day , July 1, 2021, the statue of Queen Victoria in front of the Manitoba Legislative Building , and that of Queen Elizabeth II in the garden of nearby Government House , were vandalized and toppled; the head of the Queen Victoria statue was removed and thrown into the Assiniboine River . [155] [156] Following this event, associate professor of sociology at the University of Winnipeg Kimberley Ducey called for Queen Elizabeth II to apologize for the role of the British monarchy in the establishment of residential schools, [157] though sovereigns since George III have had their powers constrained by the tenets of constitutional monarchy and responsible government , [158] meaning they had no direct responsibility in residential school policy. [159] [160]
On Canada's first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation , on September 30, 2021, Elizabeth, as Queen of Canada , said she "joins with all Canadians ... to reflect on the painful history that Indigenous peoples endured in residential schools in Canada and on the work that remains to heal and to continue to build an inclusive society". [161] The same year, the Queen appointed Mary Simon to represent her as governor general ; Simon is the first Indigenous person to occupy the office. The Queen and Simon met in March 2022, after which the vicereine said to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation , "we talked about reconciliation and I did talk about the need for healing in our country and to have a better understanding and a better relationship between Indigenous people and other Canadians" and she felt the Queen was well informed on issues affecting Canada. [162]
In his first speech of his royal tour in 2022, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (Elizabeth II's eldest son and then-heir to the Canadian Crown), said that it was an "important moment, with "Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples across Canada committing to reflect honestly and openly on the past, and to forge a new relationship for the future". [163] The Prince and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall , participated in moments of reflection and prayer, first with Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland and Labrador Judy Foote and Indigenous leaders at Heart Garden [164] —which had been opened on the grounds of the provincial Government House in 2019, in memory of former residential school students—and, two days later, at the Ceremonial Circle in the Dene community of Dettah , Northwest Territories , [165] where they also participated in an opening prayer, a drumming circle, and a feeding the fire ceremony. [166] [167] Elisabeth Penashue, an elder of the Sheshatshiu Innu First Nation in Labrador, said it was "really important they hear our stories". [164]
At a reception hosted by the Governor General at Rideau Hall , in Ottawa, RoseAnne Archibald , National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations , appealed directly to the Prince for an apology from the Queen in her capacity as monarch and head of the Church of England for the wrongful acts committed in the past by the Crown and the church in relation to Indigenous peoples. (The Archbishop of Canterbury had, though, already apologized on behalf of the Church of England in April of that year. [126] ) Archibald said that the Prince "acknowledged" failures by Canadian governments in handling the relationship between the Crown and Indigenous people, which she said "really meant something". [168] Royal correspondent Sarah Campbell noted, "on this brief tour, there has been no shying away from acknowledging and highlighting the scandalous way many indigenous peoples have been treated in Canada." [127]
On October 27, 2011, University of Manitoba president David Barnard apologized to the TRC for the institution's role in educating people who operated the residential school system. The Winnipeg Free Press believed it to be the first time a Canadian university has apologized for playing a role in residential schools. [169]
On April 9, 2018, the University of British Columbia (UBC) opened the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre as a West Coast complement to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg. At the opening, UBC President Santa Ono apologized to residential school victims and dignitaries including Grand Chief Edward John and Canadian Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould . Ono apologised for UBC's training of policymakers and administrators who operated the system and stated:
On behalf of the university and all its people, I apologize to all of you who are survivors of the residential schools, to your families and communities and to all Indigenous people for the role this university played in perpetuating that system...We apologize for the actions and inaction of our predecessors and renew our commitment to working with all of you for a more just and equitable future. [170]
In the summer of 1990, the Mohawks of Kanesatake confronted the government about its failure to honour Indigenous land claims and recognize traditional Mohawk territory in Oka, Quebec . Referred to by media outlets as the Oka Crisis , the land dispute sparked a critical discussion about the Canadian government's complacency regarding relations with Indigenous communities and responses to their concerns. The action prompted then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to underscore four government responsibilities: "resolving land claims; improving the economic and social conditions on reserves; defining a new relationship between aboriginal peoples and governments; and addressing the concerns of Canada's aboriginal peoples in contemporary Canadian life." [8] : 240 The actions of the Mohawk community members led to, in part, along with objections from Indigenous leaders regarding the Meech Lake Accord , the creation of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples to examine the status of Indigenous peoples in Canada. In 1996, the Royal Commission presented a final report which first included a vision for meaningful and action-based reconciliation. [8] : 239–240 [172]
In 1975, the Anglican, Roman Catholic and United Churches, along with six other churches, formed Project North, later known as the Aboriginal Rights Coalition (ARC), with the objective of "transformation of the relationship between Canadian society and Aboriginal peoples." The campaign's objectives were:
- "The recognition of Aboriginal land and treaty rights in Canada;
- Realizing the historic rights of Aboriginal peoples as they are recognized in the Canadian constitution and upheld in the courts, including the right to self-determination
- Reversing the erosion of social rights, including rights to adequate housing, education, health care and appropriate legal systems;
- Seeking reconciliation between Aboriginal peoples, the Christian community and Canadian society;
- Clarifying the moral and spiritual basis for action towards Aboriginal and social justice in Canada;
- Opposing development and military projects that threaten Aboriginal communities and the environment; and
- Promoting Aboriginal justice within Jubilee." [173]
The churches have also engaged in reconciliation initiatives such as the Returning to Spirit: Residential School Healing and Reconciliation Program, a workshop that aims to unite Indigenous and non-Indigenous people through discussing the legacy of residential schools and fostering an environment for them to communicate and develop mutual understanding. [8] In 2014, the federal government ceased to contribute funds to Indigenous health organizations such as the AHF and the National Aboriginal Health Organization. Since then, more pressure has been placed on churches to sustain their active participation in these healing efforts. [8]
In 1992, The Anglican Church of Canada set up the Anglican Healing Fund for Healing and Reconciliation to respond to the ongoing need for healing related to residential schools. [174] [175] From 1992 to 2007, the fund funded over $8 million towards 705 projects. [175]
In October 1997, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) agreed on the establishment of the Council for Reconciliation, Solidarity and Communion for the following year. In 2007, the council became the Catholic Aboriginal Council . On November 30, 1999, the CCCB signed an agreement with the Assembly of First Nations , represented by Grand Chief Phil Fontaine . [176]
In the 2000s the United Church established the Justice and Reconciliation Fund to support healing initiatives and the Presbyterian Church has established a Healing & Reconciliation Program. [177] [178]
In January 1998, the government made a "statement of reconciliation" – including an apology to those people who were sexually or physically abused while attending residential schools – and established the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF). The foundation was provided with $350 million to fund community-based healing projects addressing the legacy of physical and sexual abuse. [179] In its 2005 budget , the Canadian government committed an additional $40 million to support the work of the AHF. [180] Federal funding for the foundation was cut in 2010 by the Stephen Harper government, leaving 134 national healing-related initiatives without an operating budget. [181] The AHF closed in 2014. Former AHF executive director Mike DeGagne has said that the loss of AHF support has created a gap in dealing with mental health crises such as suicides in the Attawapiskat First Nation . [182]
In June 2001, the government established Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada as an independent government department to manage the residential school file. In 2003, the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process was launched as part of a larger National Resolution Framework which included health supports, a commemoration component and a strategy for litigation. [183] As explained by the TRC, the ADR was designed as a "voluntary process for resolution of certain claims of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and forcible confinement, without having to go through the civil litigation process". [41] : 564 It was created by the Canadian government without consultation with Indigenous communities or former residential school students. The ADR system also made it the responsibility of the former students to prove that the abuse occurred and was intentional, resulting in former students finding the system difficult to navigate, re-traumatizing, and discriminatory. Many survivor advocacy groups and Indigenous political organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) worked to have the ADR system dissolved. [184] In 2004 the Assembly of First Nations released a report critical of the ADR underscoring, among other issues, the failure of survivors to automatically receive the full amount of compensation without subsequent ligation against the church and failure to compensate for lost family, language and culture. [41] : 565 The Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development released its own report in April 2005 finding the ADR to be "an excessively costly and inappropriately applied failure, for which the Minister and her officials are unable to raise a convincing defence". [41] : 566 Within a month of the report's release a Supreme Court of Canada decision granted school attendees the right to pursue class-action suits, which ultimately led to a government review of the compensation process. [41] : 566
On November 23, 2005, the Canadian government announced a $1.9-billion compensation package to benefit tens of thousands of former students. National Chief of the AFN, Phil Fontaine , said the package was meant to cover "decades in time, innumerable events and countless injuries to First Nations individuals and communities". [185] Justice Minister Irwin Cotler applauded the compensation decision noting that the placement of children in the residential school system was "the single most harmful, disgraceful and racist act in our history". [185] At an Ottawa news conference, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan said: "We have made good on our shared resolve to deliver what I firmly believe will be a fair and lasting resolution of the Indian school legacy." [185]
The compensation package led to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), announced on May 8, 2006, and implemented in September 2007. [186] At the time, there were about 86,000 living victims. The IRSSA included funding for the AHF, for commemoration, for health support, and for a Truth and Reconciliation program, as well as an individual Common Experience Payment (CEP). [98] Any person who could be verified as having resided at a federally run Indian residential school in Canada was entitled to a CEP. [187] The amount of compensation was based on the number of years a particular former student resided at the residential schools: $10,000 for the first year attended (from one night residing there to a full school year) plus $3,000 for every year thereafter. [188] [189] : 44
The IRSSA also included the Independent Assessment Process (IAP), a case-by-case, out-of-court resolution process designed to provide compensation for sexual, physical and emotional abuse. The IAP process was built on the ADR program and all IAP claims from former students are examined by an adjudicator. The IAP became available to all former students of residential schools on September 19, 2007. Former students who experienced abuse and wished to pursue compensation had to apply by themselves or through a lawyer of their choice to receive consideration. [190] The deadline to apply for the IAP was September 19, 2012. This gave former students of residential schools four years from the implementation date of the IRSSA to apply for the IAP. Claims involving physical and sexual abuse were compensated up to $275,000. [191] By September 30, 2016, the IAP had resolved 36,538 claims and paid $3.1 billion in compensation. [192]
The IRSSA also proposed an advance payment for former students alive and who were 65 years old and over as of May 30, 2005. The deadline for reception of the advance payment form by IRSRC was December 31, 2006. Following a legal process, including an examination of the IRSSA by the courts of the provinces and territories of Canada, an "opt-out" period occurred. During this time, the former students of residential schools could reject the agreement if they did not agree with its dispositions. This opt-out period ended on August 20, 2007, with about 350 former students opting out. The IRSSA was the largest class action settlement in Canadian history. By December 2012, a total of $1.62 billion was paid to 78,750 former students, 98 per cent of the 80,000 who were eligible. [193] In 2014, the IRSSA funds left over from CEPs were offered for educational credits for survivors and their families. [194]
In 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to travel across Canada collecting the testimonies of people affected by the residential school system. About 7,000 Indigenous people told their stories. [195] The TRC concluded in 2015 with the publication of a six volume, 4,000-plus-page report detailing the testimonies of survivors and historical documents from the time. It resulted in the establishment of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation . [196] [197]
The executive summary of the TRC concluded that the assimilation amounted to cultural genocide. [8] : 1 The ambiguity of the phrasing allowed for the interpretation that physical and biological genocide also occurred. The TRC was not authorized to conclude that physical and biological genocide occurred, as such a finding would imply a legal responsibility of the Canadian government that would be difficult to prove. As a result, the debate about whether the Canadian government also committed physical and biological genocide against Indigenous populations remains open. [198] [199]
Among the 94 Calls to Action that accompanied the conclusion of the TRC were recommendations to ensure that all Canadians are educated and made aware of the residential school system. [45] : 175–176 Justice Murray Sinclair explained that the recommendations were not aimed solely at prompting government action, but instead a collective move toward reconciliation in which all Canadians have a role to play: "Many of our elements, many of our recommendations and many of the Calls to Action are actually aimed at Canadian society." [200]
Preservation of documentation of the legacy of residential schools was also highlighted as part of the TRC's Calls to Action. Community groups and other stakeholders have variously argued for documenting or destroying evidence and testimony of residential school abuses. [201] [202] [203] On April 4, 2016, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ruled that documents pertaining to IAP settlements will be destroyed in 15 years if individual claimants do not request to have their documents archived. This decision was fought by the TRC as well as the federal government, but argued for by religious representatives. [204]
In March 2017, Lynn Beyak , a Conservative member of the Senate Standing Committee of Aboriginal Peoples, voiced disapproval of the final TRC report, saying that it had omitted the positives of the schools. [205] [206] Although Beyak's right to free speech was defended by some Conservative senators, her comments were widely criticized by members of the opposition, among them Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs , Carolyn Bennett , and leader of the New Democratic Party , Tom Mulcair . [207] The Anglican Church also raised concerns stating in a release co-signed by bishops Fred Hiltz and Mark MacDonald : "There was nothing good about children going missing and no report being filed. There was nothing good about burying children in unmarked graves far from their ancestral homes." [208] [209] In response, the Conservative Party leadership removed Beyak from the Senate committee underscoring that her comments did not align with the views of the party. [207]
Education or awareness of the residential school system or its abuses is low among Canadians. A 2020 survey suggested that nearly half of Canadians never learned about the residential schools when they were students, with 34% of those who were taught by teachers being provided a positive assessment. [210] Another poll conducted in 2021 showed that only 10% of Canadians were very familiar with the history of the residential school system and that 68% say they were unaware of the severity of abuses or completely shocked by it, and that so many children could die. [211] A majority of Canadians believe that educational provincial curricula does not include enough about residential schools, that the education level should increase, and that the framing of the residential school system has been downplayed in the education system. [211]
For many communities the buildings that formerly housed residential schools are a traumatic reminder of the system's legacy; demolition, heritage status and the possibility of incorporating sites into the healing process have been discussed. [201] [202] [203] In July 2016, it was announced that the building of the former Mohawk Institute Residential School would be converted into an educational centre with exhibits on the legacy of residential schools. Ontario's Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, David Zimmer , noted: "Its presence will always be a reminder of colonization and the racism of the residential school system; one of the darkest chapters of Canadian history." [212]
Reconciliation efforts have also been undertaken by several Canadian universities. In 2015 Lakehead University and the University of Winnipeg introduced a mandatory course requirement for all undergraduate students focused on Indigenous culture and history. [213] The same year the University of Saskatchewan hosted a two-day national forum at which Canadian university administrators, scholars and members of Indigenous communities discussed how Canadian universities can and should respond to the TRC's Calls to Action. [214] [215]
On April 1, 2017, a 17-metre (56 ft) pole, titled "Reconciliation Pole", was raised on the grounds of the University of British Columbia (UBC) Vancouver campus. Carved by Haida master carver and hereditary chief, 7idansuu ( / ʔ iː . d æ n . s uː / [216] ) (Edenshaw), James Hart , the pole tells the story of the residential school system prior to, during and after its operation. It features thousands of copper nails, used to represent the children who died in Canadian residential schools, and depictions of residential school survivors carved by artists from multiple Indigenous communities, including Canadian Inuk director Zacharias Kunuk , Maliseet artist Shane Perley-Dutcher, and Muqueam Coast Salish artist Susan Point . [217] [218]
In October 2016, Canadian singer-songwriter Gord Downie released Secret Path , a concept album about Chanie Wenjack 's escape and death. It was accompanied by a graphic novel and animated film, aired on CBC Television . Proceeds went to the University of Manitoba 's Centre for Truth and Reconciliation . Following his death in October 2017, Downie's brother Mike said he was aware of 40,000 teachers who had used the material in their classrooms, and hoped to continue this. [219] In December 2017, Downie was posthumously named Canadian Newsmaker of the Year by the Canadian Press , in part because of his work with reconciliation efforts for survivors of residential schools. [220]
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 80th call to action was for the government to designate a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation that would become a statutory holiday to honour the survivors, their families, and communities. In August 2018, the government announced it was considering three possible dates as the new national holiday. After consultation, Orange Shirt Day was selected as the holiday. [221] [222]
Orange Shirt Day pre-existed the government's efforts to make it a holiday. The day started in 2013, when at a residential school reunion, survivor Phyllis Jack Webstad told her story. She recounted how her grandmother bought her a new orange shirt to go to school in, and when she arrived at the residential school, the shirt was stripped away from her and never returned. [223] The other survivors founded the SJM Project , and on September 30, 2013—the time of the year when Indigenous children were taken away to residential schools—they encouraged students in schools in the area to wear an orange shirt in memory of the victims of the residential school system. [224] The observance of the holiday spread quickly across Canada, and in 2017 the Canadian government encouraged all Canadians to participate in the observance of Orange Shirt Day. [225] [226]
On March 21, 2019, Georgina Jolibois submitted a private member's bill to call for Orange Shirt Day to become a statutory holiday; the bill passed the House of Commons, but the next election was called before the bill could pass the Senate and become law. [227] [228] After the election, Steven Guilbeault reintroduced the bill to make Orange Shirt Day a national statutory holiday. [229] Following the discovery of the remains of 215 children on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School on May 24, 2021, Parliament agreed to pass the bill unanimously, and the bill received royal assent on June 3, 2021. [230]
During the 2022 National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill, as well as buildings across Canada, were illuminated to honour those affected by the Canadian residential school system. They were lit up in orange throughout the evening of September 30, 2022, from 7:00pm until sunrise. [231]
- ^ Indian has been used because of the historical nature of the article and the precision of the name, as with Indian hospital . [1] It was, and continues to be, used by government officials, Indigenous peoples and historians while referencing the school system. The use of the name also provides relevant context about the era in which the system was established, specifically one in which Indigenous peoples in Canada were homogeneously referred to as Indians rather than by language that distinguishes First Nations , Inuit and Métis peoples. [1] Use of Indian is limited throughout the article to proper nouns and references to government legislation.
- ^ Indigenous has been capitalized in keeping with the style guide of the Government of Canada. [2] The capitalization also aligns with the style used within the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples . In the Canadian context, Indigenous is capitalized when discussing peoples, beliefs or communities in the same way European or Canadian is used to refer to non-Indigenous topics or people. [3]
- ^ Survivor is the term used in the final report of the TRC and the Statement of apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools issued by Stephen Harper in 2008. [17]
- ^ The phrase "kill the Indian in the child" originates from a letter written by American Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt , while recounting the views of an unidentified American general who believed "that the only good Indian is a dead one," of which Pratt wrote: "In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." [29] : 137 Mark Abley writes that in a Canadian context "kill the Indian in the child" has been erroneously attributed to former deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott. [30] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system | 75 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | The Residential School System | By Erin Hanson (2009), with updates and revisions by Daniel P. Gamez & Alexa Manuel (September 2020). The original version of this article has been archived, but may be accessed here. To cite this article, we have recommendations at the bottom of the page.
Note on terminology: There is constant debate and reflection on the use of specific terms as umbrella categories to designate multiple Aboriginal, Indigenous, or Native peoples. For the most recent version of this article, we have decided to follow the terms Indigenous , First Nations, Métis and Inuit, or alternatively Indigenous Peoples, in the plural, following the guidelines of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples , the most widely accepted international instrument today. The term Indigenous Peoples can also be found in UBC’s Indigenous Peoples Language Guidelines .
The term residential schools refers to an extensive school system set up by the Canadian government and administered by churches that had the nominal objective of educating Indigenous children but also the more damaging and equally explicit objectives of indoctrinating them into Euro-Canadian and Christian ways of living and assimilating them into mainstream white Canadian society. The residential school system officially operated from the 1880s into the closing decades of the 20th century. The system forcibly separated children from their families for extended periods of time and forbade them to acknowledge their Indigenous heritage and culture or to speak their own languages. Children were severely punished if these, among other, strict rules were broken. Former students of residential schools have spoken of horrendous abuse at the hands of residential school staff: physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological. Residential schools provided Indigenous students with inappropriate education, often only up to lower grades, that focused mainly on prayer and manual labour in agriculture, light industry such as woodworking, and domestic work such as laundry work and sewing.
Residential schools systematically undermined Indigenous, First Nations, Métis and Inuit cultures across Canada and disrupted families for generations, severing the ties through which Indigenous culture is taught and sustained, and contributing to a general loss of language and culture. Because they were removed from their families, many students grew up without experiencing a nurturing family life and without the knowledge and skills to raise their own families. The devastating effects of the residential schools are far-reaching and continue to have a significant impact on Indigenous communities. The residential school system is widely considered a form of genocide because of the purposeful attempt from the government and church to eradicate all aspects of Indigenous cultures and lifeworlds.
From the 1990s onward, the government and the churches involved—Anglican, Presbyterian, United, and Roman Catholic—began to acknowledge their responsibility for an education scheme that was specifically designed to “kill the Indian in the child.” On June 11, 2008, the Canadian government issued a formal apology in Parliament for the damage done by the residential school system. In spite of this and other apologies, however, the effects remain.
The early origins of residential schools in Canada are found in the implementation of the mission system in the 1600s. The churches and European settlers brought with them the assumption that their own civilization was the pinnacle of human achievement. They interpreted the socio-cultural differences between themselves and Indigenous Peoples as “proof” that Canada’s first inhabitants were ignorant, savage, and—like children—in need of guidance. They felt the need to “civilize” Indigenous Peoples. Education—a federal responsibility—became the primary means to this end.
Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald commissioned journalist and politician Nicholas Flood Davin to study industrial schools for Indigenous children in the United States. Davin’s recommendation to follow the U.S. example of “aggressive civilization” led to public funding for the residential school system. “If anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young. The children must be kept constantly within the circle of civilized conditions,” Davin wrote in his 1879 Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds (Davin’s report can be read here .)
In the 1880s, in conjunction with other federal assimilation policies, the government began to establish residential schools across Canada. Authorities would frequently take children to schools far from their home communities, part of a strategy to alienate them from their families and familiar surroundings. In 1920, under the Indian Act , it became mandatory for every Indigenous child to attend a residential school and illegal for them to attend any other educational institution.
The purpose of the residential schools was to eliminate all aspects of Indigenous culture. Students had their hair cut short, they were dressed in uniforms, they were often given numbers, and their days were strictly regimented by timetables. Boys and girls were kept separate, and even siblings rarely interacted, further weakening family ties. Chief Bobby Joseph of the Indian Residential School Survivors Society recalls that he had no idea how to interact with girls and never even got to know his own sister “beyond a mere wave in the dining room.” 1 In addition, students were strictly forbidden to speak their languages—even though many children knew no other—or to practise Indigenous customs or traditions. Violations of these rules were severely punished.
Residential school students did not receive the same education as the general population in the public school system, and the schools were sorely underfunded. Teachings focused primarily on practical skills. Girls were primed for domestic service and taught to do laundry, sew, cook, and clean. Boys were taught carpentry, tinsmithing, and farming. Many students attended class part-time and worked for the school the rest of the time: girls did the housekeeping; boys, general maintenance and agriculture. This work, which was involuntary and unpaid, was presented as practical training for the students, but many of the residential schools could not run without it. With so little time spent in class, most students had only reached grade five by the time they were 18. At this point, students were sent away. Many were discouraged from pursuing further education.
Abuse at the schools was widespread: emotional and psychological abuse was constant, physical abuse was metred out as punishment, and sexual abuse was also common. Survivors recall being beaten and strapped; some students were shackled to their beds; some had needles shoved in their tongues for speaking their native languages. These abuses, along with overcrowding, poor sanitation, and severely inadequate food and health care, resulted in a shockingly high death toll. In 1907, government medical inspector P.H. Bryce reported that 24 percent of previously healthy Indigenous children across Canada were dying in residential schools. This figure does not include children who died at home, where they were frequently sent when critically ill. Bryce reported that anywhere from 47 percent (on the Peigan Reserve in Alberta) to 75 percent (from File Hills Boarding School in Saskatchewan) of students discharged from residential schools died shortly after returning home.
The extent to which the Department of Indian Affairs and church officials knew of these abuses has been debated by some. However, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) and John Milloy, among others, concluded that church and state officials were fully aware of the abuses and tragedies at the schools. Some inspectors and officials at the time expressed alarm at the horrifying death rates, yet those who spoke out and called for reform were generally met with silence and lack of support. The Department of Indian Affairs would promise to improve the schools, but the deplorable conditions persisted.
Some former students have positive memories of their time at residential schools, and certainly some might have been treated with kindness by the priests and nuns who ran the schools as best they could given the circumstances. But even these “good” experiences occurred within a system aimed at destroying Indigenous cultures and assimilating Indigenous students.
“Sister Marie Baptiste had a supply of sticks as long and thick as pool cues. When she heard me speak my language, she’d lift up her hands and bring the stick down on me. I’ve still got bumps and scars on my hands. I have to wear special gloves because the cold weather really hurts my hands. I tried very hard not to cry when I was being beaten and I can still just turn off my feelings…. And I’m lucky. Many of the men my age, they either didn’t make it, committed suicide or died violent deaths, or alcohol got them. And it wasn’t just my generation. My grandmother, who’s in her late nineties, to this day it’s too painful for her to talk about what happened to her at the school.”
– Musqueam Nation former chief George Guerin,
Kuper Island school
Stolen from our Embrace , p 62
Church and state officials of the 19th century believed that Indigenous societies were disappearing and that the only hope for Indigenous people was to convert to Christianity, do away with their cultures, and become “civilized” British subjects—in short, assimilate them. By the 1950s, the same officials were doubting the viability of such project. The devastating effects of the residential schools and the needs and life experiences of Indigenous students were becoming more widely recognized. 2 The government also acknowledged that removing children from their families was severely detrimental to the health of the individuals and the communities affected. In 1951, with the amendments to the Indian Act, the half-day work/school system was progressively abandoned, conceding power to the provinces to apprehend children, and transitioning from the school system to a ‘child welfare system’. This time is referred to as the ‘Sixties Scoop’ because of the systematic removal of Indigenous children from their families without consent from their parents or authorities.
In the 1960s the drastic overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the welfare system consolidated, and authorities would constantly place Indigenous children with white middle-class families in an attempt to acculturate them. This practice, as well as the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in ‘child welfare systems’ continues today. In 1969, the Department of Indian Affairs took exclusive control of the system, marking an end to church involvement in residential schooling. Yet the schools remained underfunded and abuse continued, and many teachers and workers continued to lack proper credentials to carry out their responsibilities. 3
In the meantime, the government decided to phase out segregation and began incorporating Indigenous students into public schools. Although these changes saw students reaching higher levels of education, problems persisted. Many Indigenous students struggled in their adjustment to public school and to a Eurocentric system where Indigenous knowledges were excluded, fostering discrimination by their non-Indigenous peers. Post-secondary education was strongly discouraged for Indigenous students because those who wanted to attend university would have been enfranchised.
The process to phase out the residential school system and other assimilation tactics was slow and not without reversals. The residential school system in Canada lasted officially for almost 150 years, and its impacts continue on to this day. As mentioned above, the system’s closure gave way to the ‘ Sixties Scoop ,’ during which thousands of Indigenous children were abducted by social services and removed from their families. The ‘Scoop’ spanned roughly the two decades it took to phase out the residential schools, but child apprehensions from Indigenous families continue to occur in disproportionate numbers today . In part, this is the legacy of compromised families and communities left by the residential schools.
Starting in 1969, residential schools in Canada began to decline in numbers . In 1970, the Department of Indian Affairs calculated fifty-six remaining schools, excluding the Northwest Territories. By 1980, the same institution reported sixteen, and one decade later, eleven. In 1996, Gordon Reserve Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, the last of its kind , was closed and demolished. By 1999, the Department of Indian Affairs registered no remaining residential schools in operation. 4
“So why is it important to understand the history of genocide in Canada? Because it’s not history. Today’s racist government laws, policies and actions have proven to be just as deadly for Indigenous peoples as the genocidal acts of the past.”
The residential school system is viewed by much of the Canadian public as part of a distant past, disassociated from today’s events. In many ways, this is a misconception. The last residential school did not close its doors until 1996, and many of the leaders, teachers, parents, and grandparents of today’s Indigenous communities are residential school Survivors. Although residential schools have closed, their effects remain ongoing for both Survivors and their descendants who now share in the intergenerational effects of transmitted personal trauma and loss of language, culture, traditional teachings, and mental/spiritual wellbeing.
According to the Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba , several generations of Indigenous Peoples were denied the development of parenting skills not only through their removal from communities and families but also from the severe lack of attention paid to the issue by school officials. 5 In addition, children were taught that their traditional ways were inferior, including their languages and cultures. The residential schools were operational through several generations of Indigenous Peoples so the process of healing from these damages will also take several generations -a process that has already begun, but has not been easy nor has it been simple.
The historic, intergenerational, and collective oppression of Indigenous Peoples continues to this day in the form of land disputes, over-incarceration, lack of housing, child apprehension, systemic poverty, marginalization and violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA peoples, and other critical issues which neither began nor ended with residential schools. Generations of oppressive government policies attempted to strip Indigenous Peoples of their identities not only through residential schools but also through other policies including but not limited to: the implementation and subsequent changes to the Indian Act; the mass removal of Indigenous children from their families into the child welfare system known as the Sixties Scoop ; and legislations allowing forced sterilizations of Indigenous Peoples in certain provinces, a practice that has continued to be reported by Indigenous women in Canada as recently as 2018 ; and currently, through the modern child welfare systems which continue to disproportionately apprehend Indigenous children into foster care in what Raven Sinclair has called the Millennium Scoop . 6
In 2019, BC ended its practice of “birth alerts” in child welfare cases, which allowed child welfare agencies and hospitals to flag mothers deemed “high risk” without their consent -a practice which disproportionately targeted Indigenous mothers and was found to be “racist and discriminatory” and a “gross violation of the rights of the child, the mother, and the community”. 7 One of the findings of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Report (MMIWG) asserts that the Canadian State “has used child welfare laws and agencies as a tool to oppress, displace, disrupt, and destroy Indigenous families, communities, and Nations. It is a tool in the genocide of Indigenous Peoples.” 8 Child welfare laws and agencies, like the residential schools, effectively aided in the removal of Indigenous children from their families and continue to aid in the genocide of Indigenous Peoples.
I have just one last thing to say. To all of the leaders of the Liberals, the Bloc and NDP, thank you, as well, for your words because now it is about our responsibilities today, the decisions that we make today and how they will affect seven generations from now.
My ancestors did the same seven generations ago and they tried hard to fight against you because they knew what was happening. They knew what was coming, but we have had so much impact from colonization and that is what we are dealing with today.
Women have taken the brunt of it all.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here at this moment in time to talk about those realities that we are dealing with today.
What is it that this government is going to do in the future to help our people? Because we are dealing with major human rights violations that have occurred to many generations: my language, my culture and my spirituality. I know that I want to transfer those to my children and my grandchildren, and their children, and so on.
What is going to be provided? That is my question. I know that is the question from all of us. That is what we would like to continue to work on, in partnership.
Nia:wen. Thank you.
—Beverley Jacobs, President, Native Women’s Association of Canada, June 11, 2008
Read the full transcript and watch the video here.
The residential schools heavily contributed to educational, social, financial and health disparities between Indigenous Peoples and the rest of Canada, and these impacts have been intergenerational. 9 Despite the efforts of the residential school system and those who created and maintained it, Indigenous Peoples largely escaped complete assimilation and continue to work to regain what was lost, while also seeking justice for years of wrongdoing; including from the Canadian government, the churches, and the individuals responsible for specific cases of abuse.
It was not until the late 1980s that the Canadian legal system began to respond to allegations of abuse brought forward by Survivors, with fewer than fifty convictions coming out of more than 38,000 claims of sexual and physical abuse submitted to the independent adjudication process. 10 Notable cases include 1988’s Mowatt v. Clarke, in which eight former students of St. George’s Indian Residential School in Lytton, B.C ., sued a priest, the government, and the Anglican Church of Canada; both the Anglican Church and the government admitted fault and agreed to a settlement. In 1995, twenty-seven Survivors from the Alberni Indian Residential School filed charges of sexual abuse against Arthur Plint while also holding Canada and the United Church vicariously liable. In addition to convicting Plint, the court held the federal government and the United Church responsible for the wrongs committed .
Meanwhile, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples had been interviewing individuals from Indigenous communities and nations across Canada about their experiences. The commission’s report, published in 1996, brought unprecedented attention to the residential school system—many non-Indigenous Canadians did not know about this chapter in Canadian history. In 1998, based on the commission’s recommendations and considering the court cases, the Canadian government publicly apologized to former students for the physical and sexual abuse they suffered in the residential schools. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation was established as a $350 million government plan to aid communities affected by the residential schools. However, some Indigenous people felt the government apology did not go far enough, since it addressed only the effects of physical and sexual abuse and not other damages caused by the residential school system.
The St. George and Alberni lawsuits set a precedent for future cases, proving that the churches and the government of Canada could be sued as an entity. As the number of cases grew, a National Class Action was filed in 2002 for compensation for all former Indian Residential school Survivors and family members in Canada. In 2005, Canada and nearly 80,000 Survivors reached the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement in which Canada committed to individual compensation for Survivors, additional funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, and the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In September 2007, while the Settlement Agreement was being put into action, the Canadian government made a motion to issue a formal apology. The motion passed unanimously. On June 11, 2008, the House of Commons gathered in a solemn ceremony to publicly apologize for the government’s involvement in the residential school system and to acknowledge the widespread impact this system has had among Indigenous Peoples. You can read the official statement and responses to it by Indigenous organizations here (scroll down to “ Choose a topic ” and select “ Apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools ”). The apology was broadcast live across Canada (watch it here ). Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper issued a ‘statement of apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools ’, noting that
“…the Government of Canada now recognizes that it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this. We now recognize that it was wrong to separate children from rich and vibrant cultures and traditions that it created a void in many lives and communities, and we apologize for having done this”.
Echoing Stephen Harper, former Chief Justice of Ontario Warren Winkler also observed that the residential school system removed children
“from their families and communities to serve the purpose of carrying out a “concerted campaign to obliterate” the “habits and associations” of “Indigenous languages, traditions and beliefs,” in order to accomplish “a radical re-socialization” aimed at instilling the children instead with the values of Euro-centric civilization” ( Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6113, le 351-10, part 1 ). 11
The federal government’s apology was met with a range of responses. Some felt that it marked a new era of positive federal government–Indigenous relations based on mutual respect, while many others felt that the apology was merely symbolic and doubted that it would change the government’s relationship with Indigenous Peoples. Although apologies and acknowledgements made by governments and churches are important steps forward in reconciliation, Indigenous leaders have argued that such gestures are not enough without supportive action . Communities and residential school survivor societies are undertaking healing initiatives and providing opportunities for survivors to talk about their experiences and move forward to create a positive future for themselves, their families, and their communities.
The Indian Residential School Survivors Society was formed in 1994 by the First Nations Summit in British Columbia and was officially incorporated in 2002 to provide support for survivors and communities in the province throughout the healing process and to educate the broader public. The Survivors Society provides crisis counselling, referrals, and healing initiatives, as well as acting as a resource for information, research, training, and workshops. It was clear that a similar organization was needed at the national level, and in 2005, the National Residential School Survivors Society was incorporated.
Books & Articles
Fournier, Suzanne and Ernie Crey. Stolen from our Embrace: The Abduction of First Nations Children and the Restoration of Indigenous Communities. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1997.
Haig-Brown, Celia. Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School . Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1998. First published by Tillicum Library, 1988.
Manitoba. Public Inquiry into the Administration and Indigenous People. “Indigenous Women.” Vol. 1, chap. 13, in Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba. Winnipeg: Public Inquiry into the Administration and Indigenous People, 1999.
This chapter of the Indigenous Justice Inquiry of Manitoba’s report on Indigenous people in the justice system examines how the residential school system has contributed to the abuse and discrimination that many Indigenous women face regularly.
Miller, J. R. Shingwauk’s Vision. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
Widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive, key texts on the residential school system, in Shingwauk’s Vision Miller has included the perspectives of government and church officials, school staff, and students to create a rich history of the residential school system from its original inception to its phasing out. Cree scholar Winona Wheeler calls Shingwauk’s Vision “the most thorough and comprehensive study of Indian residential schools in Canada to date and most noted for its good use of a wide range of Indigenous life histories and personal reminisces” (Wheeler, “Social Relations of Indigenous Oral Histories,” in Walking a Tightrope : Indigenous Peoples and their Representations, 2005. 193)
Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, Indian Residential Schools: The Nuu-Chah-Nulth Experience. Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, 1996.
Roberts, John. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples: Exploring their Past, Present, and Future. Toronto: Emond Montgomery, 2006.
Secwepemc Cultural Education Society, Behind Closed Doors: Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Penticton: Secwepemc Cultural Education Society & Theytus, 2000.
Websites
[1] Milloy, John S. A National Crime : The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986. University of Manitoba Press, 1999. 91–2; Fournier and Crey, Stolen from Our Embrace. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1997. 49.
[2] Royal Commission on Indigenous Peoples, Volume 1: Looking Forward, Looking Back. Chapter 10, “1.2 Changing Policies.” Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1996. 344-353.
[3] Milloy, John S. A National Crime : The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986. University of Manitoba Press, 1999. Xvii, 91–2.
[4] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 2 1939 to 2000. The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada . Vol. 1. 2 vols. Montreal; Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 103.
[5] Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba. 1999. The Justice System and Aboriginal People . Ch. 14 ( http://www.ajic.mb.ca/volumel/chapter14.html )
[6] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada), Marion Buller, Michèle Audette, Brian Eyolfson, and Qajaq Robinson. 2019. Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls . 104; Longman, Nickita. 2018. “Examining the Sixties Scoop and Beyond.” Discourse Magazine , 2018.
[7] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada), 355.
[8] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada), 355.
[9] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: The Legacy: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 5 . Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 3.
[10] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: The Legacy: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 5 . Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 7.
[11] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 2 1939 to 2000. The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada . Vol. 1. 2 vols. Montreal; Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 574.
MLA:
Hanson, Eric, et al.“The Residential School System.” Indigenous Foundations . First Nations and Indigenous Studies UBC, 2020. Website. [Date accessed].
Chicago:
Hanson, Eric, Daniel P. Games, and Alexa Manuel. “The Residential School System”. Indigenous Foundations. https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/residential-school-system-2020/. (accessed Month, day, year).
APA:
Hanson, E., Gamez, D., & Manuel, A. (2020, September). The Residential School System . Indigenous Foundations. https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/residential-school-system-2020/ | https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/ | 75 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | History of Residential Schools | Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada | Residential schools operated in Canada for more than 160 years, with upwards of 150,000 children passing through their doors. Every province and territory, with the exception of Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and New Brunswick, was home to the federally funded, church-run schools. The last school closed in Saskatchewan in 1996. First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were removed, often against their will, from their families and communities and put into schools, where they were forced to abandon their traditions, cultural practices and languages. The residential school system was just one tool in a broader plan of “aggressive assimilation” and colonization of Indigenous Peoples and territories in Canada.
The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources. If every Aboriginal person had been ‘absorbed into the body politic,’ there would be no reserves, no Treaties, and no Aboriginal rights.
– Truth and Reconciliation Commission Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, p. 3
While the federal residential school system began around 1883, the origins of the residential school system can be traced to as early as the 1830s — long before Confederation in 1867 — when the Anglican Church established a residential school in Brantford, Ont. Prior to this point, churches had built schools specifically for Indigenous children since the mid-1600s. Through this early period, these mission schools were primarily located in Eastern Canada, but as missions and colonial efforts moved west of the Great Lakes, so did the schools.
The Canadian government and Canada’s churches built the residential school system as a means to solve the “Indian question” in Canada — the perceived threat and barrier posed by Indigenous Peoples to the ongoing construction of the newly forming nation of Canada. They developed a system that mimicked schools in the United States and in British colonies, where governments and colonial powers used large, boarding-style industrial schools to convert masses of Indigenous and poor children into Catholics and Protestants, and turn them into “good industrious workers.” These schools were used in Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, as well as in Sweden for Indigenous Sami children, as a way for new settlers to claim land traditionally occupied by Indigenous people. Canada adopted this model in order to enforce the adoption of European traditions, languages and lifestyles by First Nations, Métis and Inuit children.
…[I]f anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young. The children must be kept constantly within the circle of civilized conditions.”
– Nicholas Flood Davin, Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds, 1879.
I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.
– Duncan Campbell Scott, Department of Indian Affairs, 1920
Originally, the residential school system focused on industrial labour schools and farm schools. By 1900, there were 22 industrial schools and 39 residential schools in Canada. In 1931, at its peak, there were 80 schools in operation, and while most of them would be called residential schools, they often maintained industrial work through large gardens, barns, workshops and sewing rooms.
Catholic and Protestant churches provided much of the original direction on where schools would be placed and how the school system would grow. Government Indian agents and officials from a wide variety of different departments played a central role in the development and maintenance of the residential school system. Many of the first schools were built close to existing school missions.
The quality of education inside the schools and the buildings themselves was substandard through much of the history of the system. Early schools were notoriously insufficient, underfunded and mismanaged. Accounts from Survivors and staff showed that the buildings were often in a poor state and, in some cases, were even dangerous. Fires frequently ripped through the schools and several of the buildings burned down completely, only to be rebuilt later. Some northern schools ran out of tents and temporary shelters. Later schools were constructed from heavy bricks-and-mortar-style architecture in an effort to show the permanence of the government’s education policies towards Indigenous Peoples. These newer schools, while an improvement over the early schools, continued to be plagued by low-quality food, accommodation and living conditions for students.
from Amazon.ca or Chapters.Indigo.ca or contact your favourite bookseller or educational wholesaler | https://indigenouspeoplesatlasofcanada.ca/article/history-of-residential-schools/ | 75 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | Residential Schools in Canada | Residential schools were government-sponsored religious schools that were established to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture. Although the first residential facilities were established in New France , the term usually refers to schools established after 1880. Residential schools were created by Christian churches and the Canadian government as an attempt to both educate and convert Indigenous youth and to assimilate them into Canadian society. However, the schools disrupted lives and communities, causing long-term problems among Indigenous peoples. The last residential school closed in 1996. (Grollier Hall, which closed in 1997, was not a state-run residential school in that year.) Since then, former students have demanded recognition and restitution, resulting in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement in 2007 and a formal public apology by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2008. In total, an estimated 150,000 First Nation , Inuit , and Métis children attended residential schools. ( See also Inuit Experiences at Residential School and Métis Experiences at Residential School .)
This is the full-length entry about residential schools in Canada. For a plain language summary, please see Residential Schools in Canada (Plain Language Summary) .
|What were residential schools?||Residential schools were government-sponsored schools run by churches.|
|What was the purpose of residential schools?||The purpose of residential schools was to educate and convert Indigenous youth and to assimilate them into Canadian society.|
|How many students attended residential schools?||An estimated 150,000 children attended residential schools.|
|How many children died at residential schools?||An estimated 6,000 children died at residential schools (records are incomplete).|
|How many residential schools were there in Canada?|| In total, over 130 residential schools operated in Canada between 1831 and 1996. |
In 1931, there were 80 residential schools operating in Canada. This was the most at any one time.
|When did the first residential school in Canada open?||The Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, accepted its first boarding students in 1831.|
|When did the last residential school in Canada close?||The Gordon Residential School in Punnichy, Saskatchewan, closed in 1996. It was the last federally-funded residential school in Canada.|
Residential schools have a long history in Canada. The first residential facilities were developed in New France by Catholic missionaries to provide care and schooling. However, colonial governments were unable to force Indigenous people to participate in the schools, as First Nations people were largely independent and Europeans depended on them economically and militarily for survival.
However, residential schools became part of government and church policy from the 1830s on, with the creation of Anglican , Methodist, and Roman Catholic institutions in Upper Canada ( Ontario ). The oldest continually operating residential school in Canada was the Mohawk Institute in what is now Brantford, Ontario. This began as a day school for Six Nations boys, but in 1831 it started to accept boarding students. These colonial experiments set the pattern for post- Confederation policies.
Beginning in the 1870s, both the federal government and Plains Nations wanted to include schooling provisions in treaties , though for different reasons. Indigenous leaders hoped Euro-Canadian schooling would help their young to learn the skills of the newcomer society and help them make a successful transition to a world dominated by the strangers. With the passage of the British North America Act in 1867, and the implementation of the Indian Act (1876), the government was required to provide Indigenous youth with an education and to assimilate them into Canadian society.
The federal government supported schooling as a way to make First Nations economically self-sufficient. Their underlying objective was to decrease Indigenous dependence on public funds. The government therefore collaborated with Christian missionaries to encourage religious conversion and Indigenous economic self-sufficiency. This led to the development of an educational policy after 1880 that relied heavily on custodial schools. These were not the kind of schools Indigenous leaders had hoped to create.
Beginning with the establishment of three industrial schools on the prairies in 1883, and through the next half-century, the federal government and churches developed a system of residential schools that stretched across much of the country. Most of the residential schools were in the four Western provinces and the territories, but there were also significant numbers in northwestern Ontario and in northern Québec . New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island had no schools, apparently because the government assumed that Indigenous people there had been assimilated into Euro-Canadian culture.
At its height around 1930, the residential school system totalled 80 institutions. The Roman Catholic Church operated three-fifths of the schools, the Anglican Church one-quarter and the United and Presbyterian Churches the remainder. (Before 1925, the Methodist Church also operated residential schools; however, when the United Church of Canada was formed in 1925, most of the Presbyterian and all the Methodist schools became United Church schools.)
Overall, students had a negative experience at the residential schools, one that would have lasting consequences. Students were isolated and their culture was disparaged or scorned. They were removed from their homes and parents and were separated from some of their siblings, as the schools were segregated according to gender. In some cases, they were forbidden to speak their first language , even in letters home to their parents. The attempt to assimilate children began upon their arrival at the schools: their hair was cut (in the case of the boys), and they were stripped of their traditional clothes and given new uniforms. In many cases they were also given new names. Christian missionary staff spent a lot of time and attention on Christian practices, while at the same time they criticized or denigrated Indigenous spiritual traditions .
Daniel Kennedy (Ochankuga’he) described his experience at the Qu’Appelle (Lebret) residential school in his memoirs, published as Recollections of an Assiniboine Chief (1972):
In 1886, at the age of twelve years, I was lassoed, roped and taken to the Government School at Lebret. Six months after I enrolled, I discovered to my chagrin that I had lost my name and an English name had been tagged on me in exchange… “When you were brought here [the school interpreter later told me], for purposes of enrolment, you were asked to give your name and when you did, the Principal remarked that there were no letters in the alphabet to spell this little heathen’s name and no civilized tongue could pronounce it.
‘We are going to civilize him, so we will give him a civilized name,’ and that was how you acquired this brand new whiteman’s name.’” …In keeping with the promise to civilize the little pagan, they went to work and cut off my braids, which, incidentally, according to the Assiniboine traditional custom, was a token of mourning — the closer the relative, the closer the cut. After my haircut, I wondered in silence if my mother had died, as they had cut my hair close to the scalp. I looked in the mirror to see what I looked like. A Hallowe’en pumpkin stared back at me and that did it. If this was civilization, I didn’t want any part of it. I ran away from school, but I was captured and brought back. I made two more attempts, but with no better luck.
Realizing that there was no escape, I resigned myself to the task of learning the three Rs. …visualize for yourselves the difficulties encountered by an Indian boy who had never seen the inside of a house; who had lived in buffalo skin teepees in winter and summer; who grew up with a bow and arrow.
(Daniel Kennedy (Ochankuga’he), former student at Qu’Appelle residential school)
Until the late 1950s, residential schools operated on a half-day system, in which students spent half the day in the classroom and the other at work. The theory behind this was that students would learn skills that would allow them to earn a living as adults. However, the reality was that work had more to do with running the school inexpensively than with providing students with vocational training.
Tasks were separated by gender. Girls were responsible for housekeeping (cooking, cleaning, laundry, sewing), while boys were involved in carpentry, construction, general maintenance and agricultural labour. Funding was a pressing concern in the residential school system. From the 1890s until the 1950s, the government tried constantly to shift the burden of the system onto the churches and onto the students, whose labour contributed financially to the schools. By the 1940s, it was clear to many that the half-day system had failed to provide residential students with adequate education and training. However, the half-day system was not eliminated until the late 1950s, when more funding became available owing to a strong economy.
School days began early, usually with a bell that summoned students to dress and attend chapel or mass. Students then performed chores (usually referred to as “fatigue” duty) before breakfast. Breakfast, like all meals, was spartan, and eaten quickly in a refectory or dining hall. This was followed by three hours of classes or a period of work before breaking for lunch. The afternoon schedule followed a similar pattern, including either classes or work, followed by more chores before supper. Time was also set aside for recreation, usually in the afternoon or evening. Some schools had small libraries, while many schools offered organized sports as well as musical instruction, including choirs and brass bands. The evening closed with prayer, and bedtime was early. It was a highly regimented system.
On weekends there were no classes, but Sunday usually meant more time spent on religious practices. Until the 1950s, holidays for many of the students included periods of work and play at the school. Only from the 1960s on did the schools routinely send children home for holidays. Therefore, many students in the residential school system did not see their family for years.
Daily Schedule at Qu’Appelle Industrial School, 1893
(Source: Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893 , 173–74; reproduced in Canada’s Residential Schools: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [2015], vol. I, p 296)
|5.30||Pupils rise|
|6.00||Chapel [religious service]|
|6.30–7.15||Bedmaking, washing, milking and pumping|
|7.15–7.30||Inspection of pupils in the school rooms to see if they are clean and properly dressed, their condition, health & c., a note being taken of those requiring attention, if of clothes, this is done by the sister directly after dinner|
|7.30||Breakfast|
|8.00–9.00||Fatigue [chores] for small boys|
|8.00||Trade boys go to work|
|9.00–12.00||School with 15 minutes recess.|
|12.00–12.10||Prepare for dinner [lunch]|
|12.10–12.40||Dinner [lunch]|
|12.40–2.00||Recreation|
|2.00–4.00||School and Trades|
|4.45–6.00||Fatigue [chores], such as milking, carrying coal, ashes, filling tanks, wood boxes, pumping, sweeping|
|6.00–6.10||Prepare for supper|
|6.10–6.40||Supper|
|6.40–8.00||Recreation|
|8.00||Prayer and retire [to bed]|
Overall, students received a poor education at the residential schools. This was true both in terms of academic subjects and vocational training. Students had to cope with teachers who were usually ill-prepared, and curricula and materials derived from and reflecting an alien culture. Lessons were taught in English or French , languages that many of the children did not speak. In the workplace, the overseers were often harsh, and the supposed training purpose of the work was limited or absent.
The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, published in 2015, outlined several “undeniable” conclusions about the system:
- First, the federal government failed to set clear goals and standards for education at the residential schools.
- Second, the curriculum at residential schools was essentially an elementary curriculum, which reflected a belief that Indigenous people were intellectually inferior.
- Third, the government did not develop or implement a policy regarding teacher qualification.
- Fourth, the teaching staff was, in general, underqualified, overworked and poorly paid.
- Fifth, the curriculum (which emphasized the “four Rs” — reading, writing, arithmetic and religion) was not only basic but also largely irrelevant to the students’ needs, experiences or interests.
- Sixth, students left school without the skills they needed to either succeed in their home communities or in the “broader labour market.” Moreover, many of them left without completing their education.
In short, the education and vocational training provided by residential schools was inadequate.
Moreover, the attempted assimilation of Indigenous students left them disoriented and insecure, with the feeling that they belonged to neither Indigenous nor settler society.
John Tootoosis, who attended the Delmas boarding school (also known as the Thunderchild school) in Saskatchewan, was blunt in his assessment of the residential school system:
[W]hen an Indian comes out of these places it is like being put between two walls in a room and left hanging in the middle. On one side are all the things he learned from his people and their way of life that was being wiped out, and on the other side are the whiteman’s ways which he could never fully understand since he never had the right amount of education and could not be part of it. There he is, hanging in the middle of two cultures and he is not a whiteman and he is not an Indian.
They washed away practically everything from our minds, all the things an Indian needed to help himself, to think the way a human person should in order to survive.
(John Tootoosis, former student at Delmas school)
Many students suffered abuse at residential schools. Impatience and correction often led to excessive punishment, including physical abuse . In some cases, children were heavily beaten, chained or confined.
Some of the staff were sexual predators, and many students were sexually abused . When allegations of sexual abuse were brought forward — by students, parents or staff — the response by government and church officials was, at best, inadequate. The police were seldom contacted, and, even if government or church officials decided that the complaint had merit, the response was often simply to fire the perpetrator. At other times, they allowed the abuser to keep teaching.
According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), at least 3,200 Indigenous children died in the overcrowded residential schools. Due to poor record-keeping by the churches and federal government, it is unlikely that we will ever know the total loss of life at residential schools. However, according to TRC Chair, Justice Murray Sinclair , the number may be more than 6,000.
Underfed and malnourished, the students were particularly vulnerable to diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza (including the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918–19). Food was low in quantity and poor in quality, in large part due to concerns about cost. Faced with limited funding, schools were instructed to observe “the strictest economy… in all particulars.” In general, school menus seem to have been both monotonous and nutritionally inadequate. According to Basil Johnston, who attended the residential school in Spanish, Ontario, he was served “mush, mush, mush, sometimes lumpy, sometimes watery, with monotonous regularity every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.”
Menu for the Qu’Appelle, North-West Territories, Industrial School, 1893
(Source: Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893 , 174; as quoted in Canada’s Residential Schools: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [2015], vol. I, p. 491)
|Breakfast|| Four days in the week porridge of oatmeal or cornmeal with either milk or syrup, this is served with hot tea and bread; the working pupils, and those not in robust health, receive butter in addition. |
On three days all the pupils receive butter and cheese with their bread instead of porridge, this is served with hot tea.
|Dinner [lunch]||Soup, meat or fish, vegetables and bread ad libitum [i.e., not regulated]. For dessert, rice or stewed apples, or stewed rhubarb or syrup, or bread and milk, with cold water to drink, excepting to the weak children, and those working outside, who get hot tea.|
|Supper||Meat for the working pupils, hashed meat and vegetables for the rest, bread ad libitum and dessert similar to that named for dinner, hot tea.|
Moreover, research by food historian Ian Mosby (published in 2013) revealed that students at some residential schools in the 1940s and 1950s were subjected to nutritional experiments without their consent or the consent of their parents. These studies were approved by various federal government departments and conducted by leading nutrition experts. They included restricting some students’ access to essential nutrients and dental care in order to assess the effect of improvements made to the diet of other students. Overall, the experiments do not seem to have resulted in any long-term benefits.
Nutritional deficiencies and overcrowding led to regular outbreaks of diseases at the schools. Tuberculosis and influenza were the major killers, but students were also affected by outbreaks of smallpox , measles, typhoid, diphtheria, pneumonia and whooping cough. In the winter of 1926–27, for example, 13 children died from a combination of measles and whooping cough at the Lytton school. Louise Moine, who attended the Qu’Appelle school in the North-West Territories, remembered one year in the early 20th century when tuberculosis was “on the rampage”:
There was a death every month on the girls’ side and some of the boys went also. We were always taken to see the girls who had died. The Sisters invariably had them dressed in light blue and they always looked so peaceful and angelic. We were led to believe that their souls had gone to heaven, and this would somehow lessen the grief and sadness we felt in the loss of one of our little schoolmates. There would be a Requiem Mass in the chapel. We would all escort the body, which was lying in a simple handmade coffin, to the graveyard which was located close to the R.C. [Roman Catholic] Church in the village.
(Louise Moine, former student at Qu’Appelle residential school)
Although medical experts such as Dr. Peter Bryce, Dr. James Lafferty, Dr. O.I. Grain and Dr. E.L. Stone recommended measures to improve health and medical treatment, these were not implemented by the government, largely due to concerns about cost and opposition by the churches.
The schools could have helped children to reduce their vulnerability to tuberculosis by providing them with sanitary, well-ventilated living quarters, an adequate diet, warm clothing, and sufficient rest. Rather, the residential schools regularly failed to provide the healthy living conditions, nutritious food, sufficient clothing, and physical regime that would prevent students from getting sick in the first place, and would allow those who were infected a fighting chance at recovery.
( Canada’s Residential Schools: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [2015], vol. I, p. 451)
Indigenous students and parents resisted and protested the harsh regime in place at most residential schools. Some children refused to co-operate and sabotaged the operations of the kitchen or classroom, stole food and supplies, or ran away (as did Chanie Wenjack in 1966). At least 25 fires were set by students as a form of protest. Their parents and political leaders protested the schools' harsh conditions and pedagogical shortcomings, though their objections were mostly ignored.
By the 1940s it was obvious to both the government and most missionary bodies that the schools were ineffective, and Indigenous protests helped to secure a change in policy. In 1969, the system was taken over by the Department of Indian Affairs , ending church involvement. The government decided to phase out the schools, but this met with resistance from the Catholic Church , which felt that segregated education was the best approach for Indigenous children. Some Indigenous communities also resisted closure of the schools, arguing either that denominational schools should remain open or that the schools should be transferred to their own control. By 1986, most schools had either been closed or turned over to local bands. Ten years later, Gordon Residential School in Punnichy, Saskatchewan , finally closed its doors.
In May of 2021, Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation in British Columbia hired a team of specialists to conduct ground-penetrating radar searches on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. They detected ground disturbances, and later concluded that these were 200 “possible burials” at the site.
In operation by the Catholic Church from 1890 to 1969, the Kamloops Indian Residential School reported having up to 500 children registered each year, according to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR). The 2008 TRC was told that only 50 deaths had occurred at the institution. The school officially closed in 1978 after the federal government took over control in 1969.
There have been findings using ground penetrating technologies at few residential school sites due to the sensitive process and impact on communities. It is presumed that historical records pertaining to deaths at the institutions are flawed due to some Catholic orders withholding statistics on the institutions. As a result, similar findings, such as those at the Kamloops Indian Residential School could occur in the future.
Indigenous communities, often with church support, and since 1998 with government financial assistance, have been carrying out the difficult work of supporting their members with the long-term impact of residential schools, including family breakdowns, violence and aimlessness. Beginning in the late 1990s, former students demanded that government and churches publicly acknowledge their role in the schools and provide compensation for their suffering.
In 2005, the federal government established a $1.9 billion compensation package for the survivors of abuse at residential schools. In 2007, the federal government and the churches that had operated the schools agreed to provide financial compensation to former students under the Residential Schools Settlement Agreement .
On 11 June 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper , on behalf of the Government of Canada, offered an apology to all former students of residential schools in Canada. The apology openly recognized that the assimilation policy on which the schools were established was "wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country." The apology recognized the profoundly damaging and lasting impact the schools had on Indigenous culture, heritage and language and was one of the steps that the government has taken to forge a new relationship with Indigenous peoples in Canada.
Harper’s apology and the compensation packages offered by the federal government excluded survivors of residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador . Since Canada did not establish or operate residential schools in that province (Newfoundland was not part of Canada at the time the schools began operating), the federal government argued that it was not responsible for compensating former students. After survivors launched a class-action lawsuit against the government, a settlement of $50 million was reached on 10 May 2016. The settlement was approved by Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court Justice Robert Stack on 28 September 2016.On 24 November 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized to survivors of residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador.
In 2020, the federal government announced it is designating two former residential schools — Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia and Portage La Prairie Residential School in Manitoba — as national historic sites. The government is also recognizing the residential school system as an event of historic significance in Canada. ( See also Reconciliation in Canada .)
On 3 June 2021, the federal government recognized every 30 September annually as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The day honours the survivors of residential schools as well as their families. Another commemorative day, Orange Shirt Day, is also held every year on 30 September. Orange Shirt Day began in 2013 and was inspired by residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad. On her first day of school, Webstad wore an orange shirt that was taken from her by the school authorities and never given back. Orange shirts are worn to commemorate all those children who had their culture taken from them.
In September 2021, Queen Elizabeth II commemorated Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation by saying, "I join with all Canadians on this first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to reflect on the painful history that Indigenous peoples endured in residential schools in Canada, and on the work that remains to heal and to continue to build an inclusive society.” As Canada’s head of state, the Queen is being asked to formerly apologize for the Crown’s role in the operation of residential schools.
Pope Francis formally apologized for the Catholic Church’s involvement in residential schools in March 2022. The Pope asked forgiveness “for the deplorable conduct of those members of the Catholic Church” who were involved in the residential school system. A delegation of Indigenous peoples who went to Rome to speak with the Pope heard the historic apology in person. Cassidy Caron, the leader of the Métis National Council said that “an apology is one step forward, but there is more work to be done.” In July 2022, the Pope travelled to Canada and offered an apology on Canadian soil. He said, “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples.” The Pope acknowledged that his apology is only a step toward making amends and that an investigation must be conducted into the events of the past. Many have called on the church for financial compensation as well as other forms of reconciliation, including the return of Indigenous artifacts, the release of school records, and the overturning of the Doctrine of Discovery.
Did You Know?
Historica Canada , using data supplied by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba , has created a map (see below) of all residential schools in Canada. Part of a larger effort by Historica Canada called the Residential Schools Awareness Program, the map includes the location, name, religious denomination, opening and closing dates, and any other names by which the schools were known.
On 30 September 2019, the names of 2800 children who died in residential schools in Canada were released by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in a ceremony in Gatineau , Quebec ( see Truth and Reconciliation Commission ). The ceremony was the culmination of years of archival research of government and church records dealing with Indigenous children in 80 schools across the country, with records going back as far as the 1890s. According to archivists, another 1600 children who died in residential schools remain unnamed, and researchers continue to pore over records to discover their identities.
The names and schools of the children were displayed on a huge 47-metre long, blood-red cloth banner. Tia-o-qui-aht First Nation Elder Dr. Barney Williams, a residential school survivor and member of the Indian Residential School Survivor Committee (an advisory body to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission), believes that the ceremony was important to ensure that the children who died are not forgotten: “Today is a special day not only for myself but for thousands of others, like me, across the country to finally bring recognition and honour to our school chums, to our cousins, our nephews, to our nieces that were forgotten.” To Elder Williams, the unveiling of the 2800 names was a “heartwarming” and “very emotional” moment for himself and thousands of Indigenous families across Canada. | https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools | 75 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | Residential School History | For a period of more than 150 years , First Nations, Inuit and Métis Nation children were taken from their families and communities to attend schools which were often located far from their homes. More than 150,000 children attended Indian Residential Schools. Many never returned.
The first church-run Indian Residential School was opened in 1831. By the 1880s, the federal government had adopted an official policy of funding residential schools across Canada. The explicit intent was to separate these children from their families and cultures. In 1920, the Indian Act made attendance at Indian Residential Schools compulsory for Treaty-status children between the ages of 7 and 15.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) concluded that residential schools were “a systematic, government- sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples.” The TRC characterized this intent as “cultural genocide.”
The schools were often underfunded and overcrowded. The quality of education was substandard. Children were harshly punished for speaking their own languages. Staff were not held accountable for how they treated the children.
We know that thousands of students suffered physical and sexual abuse at residential schools. All suffered from loneliness and a longing to be home with their families.
The schools hurt the children. The schools also hurt their families and their communities. Children were deprived of healthy examples of love and respect. The distinct cultures, traditions, languages, and knowledge systems of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples were eroded by forced assimilation.
The damages inflicted by Residential Schools continue to this day.
For a great many Survivors, talking about their experiences in residential schools means reliving the traumas they experienced. For years, many told no one about what they had endured.
In 1996, the landmark Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples drew attention to the lasting harm that was done by the residential schools. A growing number of Survivors and their descendants came forward to tell their stories and demand action.
Through their courage and persistence, an eventual legal settlement was reached between Survivors, the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit representatives and the defendants, the federal government and the churches responsible for the operation of the school. The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement included:
- A commitment to a public apology . On June 11, 2008 then Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal Statement of Apology on behalf of Canada. The Apology stated that, “There is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian residential schools system to ever again prevail.”
- Financial compensation to Residential School Survivors including a lump sum Common Experience Payment, the Independent Assessment Process for the most serious forms of individual abuse, and a Commemoration Fund.
- The creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to inform all Canadians about what happened in the Residential Schools by witnessing and documenting the truth of Survivors, families, communities and anyone personally affected by the Schools. The TRC issued an extensive report on the history of residential schools as well as Calls to Action and Principles of Reconciliation .
It is important to acknowledge that the Settlement Agreement was not comprehensive. The Métis Nation Survivors were not part of the Settlement Agreement. A separate settlement was reached with Survivors from Newfoundland and Labrador in 2016. A settlement agreement with Survivors of federal Indian Day Schools was not reached until 2019.
The NCTR is carrying on key aspects of the TRC’s work, including safeguarding and adding to the archive of Survivor statements and other records and building a registry of the thousands of children known to have died in residential schools.
In September 2020, Parks Canada announced that Residential Schools had been designated an event of national historical significance. Such designations mark aspects of Canadian history, whether positive or negative, that have had a lasting impact on shaping Canadian society.
The Canadian Parliament passed legislation, Bill C-5, to create a national day of commemoration to honour residential school Survivors and promote understanding of residential school history. The TRC called for such commemoration in its Calls to Action (Call to Action 80). The first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation took place September 30, 2021.
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Bezhig miigwan calls upon us to see each Survivor coming to the NCTR as a single eagle feather and to show those Survivors the same respect and attention an eagle feather deserves. It also teaches we are all in this together — we are all one, connected, and it is vital to work together to achieve reconciliation.
Chancellor’s Hall, 177 Dysart Road,
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg | https://nctr.ca/education/teaching-resources/residential-school-history/ | 75 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | Canadian Indian residential school system | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Aboriginal residential schools" redirects here. For the residential school system in the United States, see American Indian boarding schools . For other uses, see Indian school (disambiguation) .
In Canada , the Indian residential school system [nb 1] was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples . [nb 2] The network was funded by the Canadian government 's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches . The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. [4] [5] [6] : 42 [7] Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. [8] : 2–3 By the 1930s, about 30 percent of Indigenous children were attending residential schools. [9] The number of school-related deaths remains unknown due to incomplete records. Estimates range from 3,200 to over 30,000, mostly from disease. [10] [11] [12] [13]
The system had its origins in laws enacted before Confederation , but it was primarily active from the passage of the Indian Act in 1876, under Prime Minister Alexander MacKenzie . Under Prime Minister John A. Macdonald , the government adopted the residential industrial school system of the United States, a partnership between the government and various church organizations. An amendment to the Indian Act in 1894, under Prime Minister Mackenzie Bowell , made attendance at day schools , industrial schools , or residential schools compulsory for First Nations children. Due to the remote nature of many communities, school locations meant that for some families, residential schools were the only way to comply. The schools were intentionally located at substantial distances from Indigenous communities to minimize contact between families and their children. Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed argued for schools at greater distances to reduce family visits, which he thought counteracted efforts to assimilate Indigenous children. Parental visits were further restricted by the use of a pass system designed to confine Indigenous peoples to reserves . The last federally-funded residential school, Kivalliq Hall in Rankin Inlet , closed in 1997. Schools operated in every province and territory with the exception of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island .
The residential school system harmed Indigenous children significantly by removing them from their families , depriving them of their ancestral languages , and exposing many of them to physical and sexual abuse . Conditions in the schools led to student malnutrition, starvation, and disease. [14] [15] Students were also subjected to forced enfranchisement as "assimilated" citizens that removed their legal identity as Indians. Disconnected from their families and culture and forced to speak English or French, students often graduated being unable to fit into their communities but remaining subject to racist attitudes in mainstream Canadian society. The system ultimately proved successful in disrupting the transmission of Indigenous practices and beliefs across generations. The legacy of the system has been linked to an increased prevalence of post-traumatic stress , alcoholism , substance abuse , suicide , and intergenerational trauma which persist within Indigenous communities today. [16]
Starting in the late 2000s, Canadian politicians and religious communities have begun to recognize, and issue apologies for, their respective roles in the residential school system. Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered a public apology on his behalf and that of the other federal political party leaders. On June 1, 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was established to uncover the truth about the schools. The commission gathered about 7,000 statements from residential school survivors [nb 3] through various local, regional and national events across Canada. In 2015, the TRC concluded with the establishment of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and released a report that concluded that the school system amounted to cultural genocide . Ongoing efforts since 2021 have identified thousands of probable unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools, though no human remains have been exhumed. During a penitential pilgrimage to Canada in July 2022, Pope Francis reiterated the apologies of the Catholic Church for its role, also acknowledging the system as genocide. [18] [19] In October 2022, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion calling on the federal Canadian government to recognize the residential school system as genocide. [20]
Attempts to assimilate Indigenous peoples were rooted in imperial colonialism centred around European worldviews and cultural practices, and a concept of land ownership based on the discovery doctrine . [8] : 47–50 As explained in the executive summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 's (TRC) final report: "Underlying these arguments was the belief that the colonizers were bringing civilization to savage people who could never civilize themselves ... a belief of racial and cultural superiority." [8] : 50
Assimilation efforts began as early as the 17th century with the arrival of French missionaries in New France . [21] They were resisted by Indigenous communities who were unwilling to leave their children for extended periods. [22] The establishment of day and boarding schools by groups including the Recollets , Jesuits and Ursulines was largely abandoned by the 1690s. The political instability and realities of colonial life also played a role in the decision to halt the education programs. [23] An increase in orphaned and foundling colonial children limited church resources, and colonists benefited from favourable relations with Indigenous peoples in both the fur trade and military pursuits. [24] : 3 [25] : 58–60
Educational programs were not widely attempted again by religious officials until the 1820s, prior to the introduction of state-sanctioned operations. [26] Included among them was a school established by John West , an Anglican missionary, at the Red River Colony in what is today Manitoba . [8] : 50 Protestant missionaries also opened residential schools in what is now the province of Ontario , spreading Christianity and working to encourage Indigenous peoples to adopt subsistence agriculture as a way to ensure they would not return to their original, nomadic ways of life upon graduation. [6]
Although many of these early schools were open for only a short time, efforts persisted. The Mohawk Institute Residential School , the oldest continuously operated residential school in Canada, opened in 1834 on Six Nations of the Grand River near Brantford , Ontario. Administered by the Anglican Church, the facility opened as the Mechanics' Institute, a day school for boys, in 1828 and became a boarding school four years later when it accepted its first boarders and began admitting female students. It remained in operation until June 30, 1970. [27]
The renewed interest in residential schools in the early 1800s can be linked to the decline in military hostility faced by the settlers, particularly after the War of 1812 . With the threat of invasion by American forces minimized, Indigenous communities were no longer viewed as allies but as barriers to permanent settlement. [28] [24] : 3 This change was also associated with the transfer of responsibility for interactions with Indigenous communities from military officials, familiar with and sympathetic to their customs and way of life, to civilian representatives concerned only with permanent colonial settlement. [25] : 73–5
Beginning in the late 1800s, the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) officially encouraged the growth of the residential school system as a valuable component in a wider policy of integrating Indigenous people into European Canadian society. [24] The TRC found that the schools, and the removal of children from their families, amounted to cultural genocide , a conclusion that echoed the words of historian John S. Milloy, who argued that the system's aim was to "kill the Indian in the child." [4] [5] [6] : 42 [nb 4] Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. [8] : 2–3 As the system was designed as an immersion program, Indigenous children were in many schools prohibited from, and sometimes punished for, speaking their own languages or practising their own faiths. [14] The primary stated goal was to convert Indigenous children to Christianity and acculturate them. [25] [ page needed ]
Many of the government-funded residential schools were run by churches of various denominations. Between 1867 and 1939, the number of schools operating at one time peaked at 80 in 1931. Of those schools, 44 were operated by 16 Catholic dioceses and about three dozen Catholic communities; 21 were operated by the Church of England / Anglican Church of Canada ; 13 were operated by the United Church of Canada , and 2 were operated by Presbyterians . [31] [32] [29] : 682 The approach of using established school facilities set up by missionaries was employed by the federal government for economic expedience: the government provided facilities and maintenance, while the churches provided teachers and their own lesson-planning. [33] As a result, the number of schools per denomination was less a reflection of their presence in the general population, but rather their legacy of missionary work. [29] : 683
Although education in Canada was made the jurisdiction of the provincial governments by the British North America Act , 1867 , Indigenous peoples and their treaties were under the jurisdiction of the federal government. [33] As a condition of several treaties, the federal government agreed to provide for Indigenous education. Residential schools were funded under the Indian Act by what was then the federal Department of the Interior . Adopted in 1876 as An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians , it consolidated all previous laws placing Indigenous communities, land and finances under federal control. As explained by the TRC, the act "made Indians wards of the state, unable to vote in provincial or federal elections or enter the professions if they did not surrender their status, and severely limited their freedom to participate in spiritual and cultural practices." [29] : 110
The report commissioned by Governor General Charles Bagot , titled Report on the affairs of the Indians in Canada [34] [6] : 12–17 and referred to as the Bagot Report, is seen as the foundational document for the federal residential school system. [35] It was supported by James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin , who had been impressed by industrial schools in the West Indies , and Egerton Ryerson , who was then the Chief Superintendent of Education in Upper Canada . [6] : 15
On May 26, 1847, Ryerson wrote a letter for George Vardon, Assistant Superintendent of Indian Affairs, asserting that "the North American Indian cannot be civilized or preserved in a state of civilization (including habits of industry and sobriety) except in connection with, if not by the influence of, not only religious instruction and sentiment but of religious feelings". [36] : 3 He expressly recommended that Indigenous students be educated in a separate, denominational, English-only system with a focus on industrial training. [23] [26] [35] This letter was published in 1898 as an appendix to a larger report entitled Statistics Respecting Indian Schools . [36]
The Gradual Civilization Act of 1857 and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869 formed the foundations for this system prior to Confederation. These acts assumed the inherent superiority of French and British ways, and the need for Indigenous peoples to become French or English speakers, Christians, and farmers. At the time, many Indigenous leaders argued to have these acts overturned. [37] The Gradual Civilization Act awarded 50 acres (200,000 m 2 ) of land to any Indigenous male deemed "sufficiently advanced in the elementary branches of education" and would automatically enfranchise him, removing any tribal affiliation or treaty rights. [6] : 18 [38] With this legislation, and through the creation of residential schools, the government believed Indigenous peoples could eventually become assimilated into the general population. Individual allotments of farmland would require changes in the communal reserve system, something fiercely opposed by First Nations governments. [6] : 18–19
In January 1879, John A. Macdonald , Prime Minister of what was then post-Confederation Canada , commissioned politician Nicholas Flood Davin to write a report regarding the industrial boarding-school system in the United States. [29] : 154 [39] Now known as the Davin Report, the Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds was submitted to Ottawa on March 14, 1879, and made the case for a cooperative approach between the Canadian government and the church to implement the assimilation pursued by President of the United States , Ulysses S. Grant . [40] [39] : 1 Davin's report relied heavily on findings he acquired through consultations with government officials and representatives of the Five Civilized Tribes in Washington, DC , and church officials in Winnipeg , Manitoba. He visited only one industrial day school, in Minnesota , before submitting his findings. [29] : 154–8 In his report Davin concluded that the best way to assimilate Indigenous peoples was to start with children in a residential setting, away from their families. [29] : 157 [39] : 12
Davin's findings were supported by Vital-Justin Grandin , who felt that while the likelihood of civilizing adults was low, there was hope when it came to Indigenous children. He explained in a letter to Public Works Minister Hector-Louis Langevin that the best course of action would be to make children "lead a life different from their parents and cause them to forget the customs, habits & language of their ancestors." [29] : 159 In 1883 Parliament approved $43,000 for three industrial schools and the first, Battleford Industrial School , opened on December 1 of that year. By 1900, there were 61 schools in operation. [29] : 161
The government began purchasing church-run boarding schools in the 1920s. During this period capital costs associated with the schools were assumed by the government, leaving administrative and instructional duties to church officials. The hope was that minimizing facility expenditures would allow church administrators to provide higher quality instruction and support to the students in their care. Although the government was willing to, and did, purchase schools from the churches, many were acquired for free given that the rampant disrepair present in the buildings resulted in their having no economic value. Schools continued to be maintained by churches in instances where they failed to reach an agreement with government officials with the understanding that the government would provide support for capital costs. The understanding ultimately proved complicated due to the lack of written agreements outlining the extent and nature of that support or the approvals required to undertake expensive renovations and repairs. [29] : 240
By the 1930s government officials recognized that the residential school system was financially unsustainable and failing to meet the intended goal of training and assimilating Indigenous children into European-Canadian society. Robert Hoey , Superintendent of Welfare and Training in the Indian Affairs Branch of the federal Department of Mines and Resources, opposed the expansion of new schools, noting in 1936 that "to build educational institutions, particularly residential schools, while the money at our disposal is insufficient to keep the schools already erected in a proper state of repair, is, to me, very unsound and a practice difficult to justify." [41] : 3 He proposed the expansion of day schools, an approach to educating Indigenous children that he would continue to pursue after being promoted to director of the welfare and training branch in 1945. The proposal was resisted by the United Church, the Anglican Church, and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate , who believed that the solution to the system's failure was not restructuring but intensification. [41] : 3–5
Between 1945 and 1955, the number of First Nations students in day schools run by Indian Affairs expanded from 9,532 to 17,947. This growth in student population was accompanied by an amendment to the Indian Act in 1951 that allowed federal officials to establish agreements with provincial and territorial governments and school boards regarding the education of Indigenous students in the public school system. These changes marked the government's shift in policy from assimilation-driven education at residential schools to the integration of Indigenous students into public schools. [8] : 71 [42]
Despite the shift in policy from educational assimilation to integration, the removal of Indigenous children from their families by state officials continued through much of the 1960s and 70s. [41] : 147 The removals were the result of the 1951 addition of section 88 of the Indian Act , which allowed for the application of provincial laws to Indigenous peoples living on reserves in instances where federal laws were not in place. The change included the monitoring of child welfare . [43] [44] With no requirement for specialized training regarding the traditions or lifestyles of the communities they entered, provincial officials assessed the welfare of Indigenous children based on Euro-Canadian values that, for example, deemed traditional diets of game, fish and berries insufficient and grounds for taking children into custody. [42] This period resulted in the widespread removal of Indigenous children from their traditional communities, first termed the Sixties Scoop by Patrick Johnston, the author of the 1983 report Native Children and the Child Welfare System . Often taken without the consent of their parents or community elders, some children were placed in state-run child welfare facilities, increasingly operated in former residential schools, while others were fostered or placed up for adoption by predominantly non-Indigenous families throughout Canada and the United States. While the Indian and Northern Affairs estimates that 11,132 children were adopted between 1960 and 1990, the actual number may be as high as 20,000. [43] [45] : 182
In 1969, after years of sharing power with churches, the DIA took sole control of the residential school system. [6] [41] : 79–84 The last federally-funded residential school, Kivalliq Hall in Rankin Inlet , closed in 1997. [46] Residential schools operated in every Canadian province and territory with the exception of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island . [47] It is estimated that the number of residential schools reached its peak in the early 1930s with 80 schools and more than 17,000 enrolled students. About 150,000 children are believed to have attended a residential school over the course of the system's existence. [8] : 2–3 [48]
Some parents and families of Indigenous children resisted the residential school system throughout its existence. Children were kept from schools and, in some cases, hidden from government officials tasked with rounding up children on reserves. [49] Parents regularly advocated for increased funding for schools, including the increase of centrally located day schools to improve access to their children, and made repeated requests for improvements to the quality of education, food, and clothing being provided at the schools. Demands for answers in regards to claims of abuse were often dismissed as a ploy by parents seeking to keep their children at home, with government and school officials positioned as those who knew best. [29] : 669–674
In 1894, amendments to the Indian Act made school attendance compulsory for Indigenous children between 7 and 16 years of age. The changes included a series of exemptions regarding school location, the health of the children and their prior completion of school examinations. [29] : 254–255 It was changed to children between 6 and 15 years of age in 1908. [29] : 261 [50] The introduction of mandatory attendance was the result of pressure from missionary representatives. Reliant on student enrolment quotas to secure funding, they were struggling to attract new students due to increasingly poor school conditions. [25] : 128
The introduction of the Family Allowance Act in 1945 stipulated that school-aged children had to be enroled in school for families to qualify for the " baby bonus ", further coercing Indigenous parents into having their children attend. [25] : 170 [51]
Students in the residential school system were faced with a multitude of abuses by teachers and administrators, including sexual and physical assault. They suffered from malnourishment and harsh discipline that would not have been tolerated in any other Canadian school system. [25] [6] [52] : 14 Corporal punishment was often justified by a belief that it was the only way to save souls or punish and deter runaways – whose injuries or death sustained in their efforts to return home would become the legal responsibility of the school. [25] Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate heating, and a lack of medical care led to high rates of influenza and tuberculosis ; in one school, the death rate reached 69 percent. [14] Federal policies that tied funding to enrollment numbers led to sick children being enrolled to boost numbers, thus introducing and spreading disease. The problem of unhealthy children was further exacerbated by the conditions of the schools themselves – overcrowding and poor ventilation, water quality and sewage systems. [6] : 83–89
Until the late 1950s, when the federal government shifted to a day school integration model, residential schools were severely underfunded and often relied on the forced labour of their students to maintain their facilities, although it was presented as training for artisanal skills. The work was arduous, and severely compromised the academic and social development of the students. School books and textbooks were drawn mainly from the curricula of the provincially funded public schools for non-Indigenous students, and teachers at the residential schools were often poorly trained or prepared. [25] During this period, Canadian government scientists performed nutritional tests on students and kept some students undernourished as the control sample. [53]
Details of the mistreatment of students were published numerous times throughout the 20th century by government officials reporting on school conditions, and in the proceedings of civil cases brought forward by survivors seeking compensation for the abuse they endured. [9] [47] The conditions and impact of residential schools were also brought to light in popular culture as early as 1967, with the publication of "The Lonely Death of Chanie Wenjack " by Ian Adams in Maclean's and the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67 . In the 1990s, investigations and memoirs by former students revealed that many students at residential schools were subjected to severe physical, psychological , and sexual abuse by school staff members and by older students. Among the former students to come forward was Phil Fontaine , then Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs , who in October 1990 publicly discussed the abuse he and others suffered while attending Fort Alexander Indian Residential School. [8] : 129–130
After the government closed most of the schools in the 1960s, the work of Indigenous activists and historians led to greater awareness by the public of the damage the schools had caused, as well as to official government and church apologies, and a legal settlement. These gains were achieved through the persistent organizing and advocacy by Indigenous communities to draw attention to the residential school system's legacy of abuse, including their participation in hearings of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples . [41] : 551–554
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission list three reasons behind the federal government's decision to establish residential schools.
- Provide Aboriginal people with skills to participate in a market-based economy.
- Further political assimilation, in hope that educated students would give up their status and not return to their reserves or families.
- Schools were "engines of cultural and spiritual change" where "'savages' were to emerge as Christian 'white men'". [54] : 29
In addition to these three the Commission stated a national security element and quoted Andsell Macrae, a commissioner with Indian Affairs: "it is unlikely that any Tribe or Tribes would give trouble of a serious nature to the Government whose members had children completely under Government control." [54] : 29
The federal government sought to cut costs by adopting the residential industrial school system of the United States. Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney aspired to have the residential schools, through forced labour , be financially independent a few years after opening. The government believed through the industrial system and cheap labour costs of missionary staff it could "operate a residential school system on a nearly cost-free basis." [54] : 30–31 Students "were expected to raise or grow and prepare most of the food they ate, to make and repair much of their clothing, and to maintain the schools." Most schools did this through a system where students studied for half the day and did "vocational training" for the other half. [54] : 48 This system failed and the schools never became self-supporting. [54] : 30
By 1891, the government cut already low salaries, stopped covering operating costs, and implemented a fixed amount of funding per student. This policy drove competition and encouraged the admission of students that were deemed "too young or too sick." The chronic underfunding developed a health crisis within the schools and a financial crisis within the missionary groups. In 1911, in an attempt to alleviate the health crisis the federal government increased per capita grant funding. However, the funding did not adjust for inflation. In the 1930s, throughout the Great Depression , and World War II that grant was repeatedly reduced. In 1937, the per capita grant averaged $180 per student per year. For perspective, per-capita costs for comparable institutions included: Manitoba School for the Deaf $642, Manitoba School for Boys $550, U.S. Chilocco Indian Agricultural School $350. The Child Welfare League of America stated per capita costs for "well-run institutions" ranged between $313 and $541, Canada was paying 57.5% of the minimum figure. Changes in per capita costs did not occur until the 1950s and were seen as insignificant. In 1966, Saskatchewan residential schools per capita costs ranged from $694 and $1,193, which is 7%–36% of what other Canadian child-welfare institutions were paying ($3,300 and $9,855) and 5%–25% of what U.S. residential care was paying ($4,500 and $14,059.) [54] : 30–31
Government officials believed that since many staff members belonged to religious orders with vows of poverty or missionary organizations, pay was relatively unimportant. Thus almost all staff were poorly paid and schools had trouble recruiting and retaining staff. In 1948, C.H. Birdsall, chair of the United Church committee responsible for the Edmonton school, in regard to the lack of funding for salaries, accommodations, and equipment, stated that it was "doubtful the present work with Indian Children could properly be called education." In 1948, Sechelt school staff were paying full-time staff a salary of $1800. In the 1960s, Christie school staff were paid $50 a month. [54] : 92
The per capita grant system severely decreased the education quality. British Columbia Indian Superintendent Arthur Wellesley Vowell in response to one of his agents recommending they only approve qualified teaching staff stated that that would require more funding and that Indian Affairs did not "entertain requests for increased grants to Indian boarding and industrial schools." The pay was so low relative to provincial schools that many of the teachers lacked any teaching qualifications. [54] : 44
Federal cuts to funding during the Great Depression resulted in students paying the price. By 1937, at the Kamloops Indian Residential School , milk production among the schools dairy herds was reduced by 50%. The federal government refused to fund construction for an additional barn to increase milk production and isolate the sick animals. Even among other schools dairy herds, funding was so low that milk was separated with "skimmed milk served to the children" and the fat turned to dairy products sold to fund the schools. In 1939, the Presbyterian school in Kenora began charging students 10 cents a loaf until their Indian agent ordered the school to stop. [54] : 57–58
Parents and family members regularly travelled to the schools, often camping outside to be closer to their children. So many parents made the trip that Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed argued that the schools should be moved farther from the reserves to make visiting more difficult. [29] : 601–604 He also objected to allowing children to return home during school breaks and holidays because he believed the trips interrupted their assimilation. [55]
Visitation, for those who could make the journey, was strictly controlled by school officials in a manner similar to the procedures enforced in the prison system. In some cases schools denied parents access to their children altogether. Others required families to meet with them in the presence of school officials and speak only in English; parents who could not speak in English were unable to talk to their children. The obstacles families faced to visit their children were further exacerbated by the pass system . Introduced by Reed, without legislative authority to do so, the pass system restricted and closely monitored the movement of Indigenous peoples off reserves. [29] : 601–604 Launched in 1885 as a response to the North-West Rebellion , and later replaced by permits, the system was designed to prevent Indigenous people from leaving reserves without a pass issued by a local Indian agent. [56]
Instruction provided to students was rooted in an institutional and European approach to education. It differed dramatically from child rearing in traditional knowledge systems based on 'look, listen, and learn' models. Corporal punishment and loss of privileges characterized the residential school system, while traditional Indigenous approaches to education favour positive guidance toward desired behaviour through game-based play, story-telling, and formal ritualized ceremonies. [25] : 15–21 [57] While at school, many children had no contact with their families for up to 10 months at a time, and in some cases had no contact for years. The impact of the disconnect from their families was furthered by students being discouraged or prohibited from speaking Indigenous languages , even among themselves and outside the classroom, so that English or French would be learned and their own languages forgotten. In some schools, they were subject to physical violence for speaking their own languages or for practicing non-Christian faiths. [48] [58]
Most schools operated with the stated goal of providing students with the vocational training and social skills required to obtain employment and integrate into Canadian society after graduation. In actuality, these goals were poorly and inconsistently achieved. Many graduates were unable to land a job due to poor educational training. Returning home was equally challenging due to an unfamiliarity with their culture and, in some cases, an inability to communicate with family members using their traditional language. Instead of intellectual achievement and advancement, it was often physical appearance and dress, like that of middle class , urban teenagers, or the promotion of a Christian ethic, that was used as a sign of successful assimilation. There was no indication that school attendees achieved greater financial success than those who did not go to school. As the father of a pupil who attended Battleford Industrial School, in Saskatchewan, for five years explained: "he cannot read, speak or write English, nearly all his time having been devoted to herding and caring for cattle instead of learning a trade or being otherwise educated. Such employment he can get at home." [25] : 164–172, 194–199
Both academic research and the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee relay evidence that students were included in several scientific research experiments without their knowledge, their consent or the consent of their parents. [41] These experiments include nutrition experiments [59] which involved intentional malnourishment of children, vaccine trials for the BCG vaccine , [60] as well as studies on extrasensory perception, vitamin D diet supplements, amebicides , isoniazid , hemoglobin , bedwetting, and dermatoglyphics . [41]
Residential school deaths were common and have been linked to poorly constructed and maintained facilities. [8] : 92–101 The actual number of deaths remains unknown due to inconsistent reporting by school officials and the destruction of medical and administrative records in compliance with retention and disposition policies for government records. [8] : 92–93 Research by the TRC revealed that at least 3,201 students had died, mostly from disease. [12] [8] : 92 TRC chair Justice Murray Sinclair has suggested that the number of deaths may exceed 6,000. [10] [11] [61] The vast majority of deaths occurred before the 1950s.
The 1906 Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, submitted by chief medical officer Peter Bryce , highlighted that the "Indian population of Canada has a mortality rate of more than double that of the whole population, and in some provinces more than three times". [8] : 97–98 [62] : 275 Among the list of causes he noted the infectious disease of tuberculosis and the role residential schools played in spreading the disease by way of poor ventilation and medical screening. [8] : 97–98 [62] : 275–276
In 1907, Bryce reported on the conditions of Manitoba and North-West residential schools: "we have created a situation so dangerous to health that I was often surprised that the results were not even worse than they have been shown statistically to be." [63] : 18 In 1909, Bryce reported that, between 1894 and 1908, mortality rates at some residential schools in western Canada ranged from 30 to 60 per cent over five years (that is, five years after entry, 30 to 60 per cent of students had died, or 6 to 12 per cent per annum). [64] These statistics did not become public until 1922, when Bryce, who was no longer working for the government, published The Story of a National Crime: Being a Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians of Canada from 1904 to 1921. In particular, he alleged that the high mortality rates could have been avoided if healthy children had not been exposed to children with tuberculosis. [8] [65] [66] At the time, no antibiotic had been identified to treat the disease, and this exacerbated the impact of the illness. Streptomycin , the first effective treatment, was not introduced until 1943. [29] : 381
In 1920 and 1922, Regina physician F. A. Corbett was commissioned to visit the schools in the west of the country, and found similar results to those reported by Bryce. At the Ermineskin school in Hobbema , Alberta, he found that 50 percent of the children had tuberculosis. [6] : 98 At Sarcee Boarding School near Calgary , he noted that all 33 students were "much below even a passable standard of health" and "[a]ll but four were infected with tuberculosis". [6] : 99 In one classroom, he found 16 ill children, many near death, who were being forced to sit through lessons. [6] : 99
In 2011, reflecting on the TRC's research, Justice Murray Sinclair told The Toronto Star : "Missing children – that is the big surprise for me ... That such large numbers of children died at the schools. That the information of their deaths was not communicated back to their families." [67]
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission wrote that the policy of Indian Affairs was to refuse to return the bodies of children home due to the associated expense, and to instead require the schools to bear the cost of burials. [54] : 70 The TRC concluded that it may be impossible to ever identify the number of deaths or missing children, in part because of the practice of burying students in unmarked graves. [68] [69] [70] The work is further complicated by a pattern of poor record keeping by school and government officials, who neglected to keep reliable numbers about the number of children who died or where they were buried. [12] While most schools had cemeteries on site, their location and extent remain difficult to determine as cemeteries that were originally marked were found to have been later razed, intentionally hidden or built over. [70] [71]
The fourth volume of the TRC's final report, dedicated to missing children and unmarked burials, was developed after the original TRC members realized, in 2007, that the issue required its own working group. In 2009, the TRC requested $1.5 million in extra funding from the federal government to complete this work, but was denied. [12] The researchers concluded, after searching land near schools using satellite imagery and maps, that, "for the most part, the cemeteries that the Commission documented are abandoned, disused, and vulnerable to accidental disturbance". [72] : 1
In May 2021, remains believed to be those of 215 children were found buried on the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia , on the lands of the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc First Nation . [73] [74] The remains were located with the assistance of a ground-penetrating radar specialist and Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Chief Rosanne Casimir wrote that the deaths were believed to have been undocumented and that work was underway to determine if related records were held at the Royal British Columbia Museum . [73]
On June 23, 2021, an estimated 751 unmarked graves were found on the site of Marieval Indian Residential School in Marieval, Saskatchewan , on the lands of Cowessess First Nation . [75] [76] [77] Some of these graves predated the establishment of the residential school. [78] On June 24, 2021, Chief Cadmus Delorme of the Cowessess First Nation held a virtual press conference. From June 2 to 23 they found an estimated 751 unmarked graves. Delorme went on to state:
This is not a mass grave site, these are unmarked graves...in 1960, there may have been marks on these graves. The Catholic Church representatives removed these headstones and today they are unmarked graves... the machine has a 10 to 15 percent error...we do know there is at least 600... We cannot affirm that they are all children, but there are oral stories that there are adults in this gravesite... some may have went to the Church and from our local towns and they could have been buried here as well... We are going to put names on these unmarked graves. [79] [77] [78]
On June 30, 2021, the Lower Kootenay Band reported the discovery of 182 unmarked graves near Kootenay Indian Residential School in Cranbrook, British Columbia . [80] As of summer 2022, no identified gravesites have been excavated nor have any human remains been exhumed.
When the government revised the Indian Act in the 1940s and 1950s, some bands, along with regional and national Indigenous organizations, wanted to maintain schools in their communities. [81] Motivations for support of the schools included their role as a social service in communities that were suffering from extensive family breakdowns; the significance of the schools as employers; and the inadequacy of other opportunities for children to receive education.
In the 1960s, a major confrontation took place at the Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta. After several years of deteriorating conditions and administrative changes, parents protested against the lack of transparency at the Blue Quills Indian School in 1969. In response, the government decided to close the school, convert the building into a residence, and enrol students in a public school 5 kilometres (3 mi) away in St. Paul, Alberta . [41] : 84 The TRC report pertaining to this period states:
Fearing their children would face racial discrimination in St. Paul, parents wished to see the school transferred to a private society that would operate it both as a school and a residence. The federal government had been open to such a transfer if the First Nations organization was structured as a provincial school division. The First Nations rejected this, saying that a transfer of First Nations education to the provincial authority was a violation of Treaty rights. [41] : 84
In the summer of 1970, members of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation occupied the building and demanded the right to run it themselves. More than 1,000 people participated in the 17-day sit-in, which lasted from July 14 to 31. [41] : 89–90 Their efforts resulted in Blue Quills becoming the first Indigenous-administered school in the country. [82] It continues to operate today as University nuhelotʼįne thaiyotsʼį nistameyimâkanak Blue Quills , the first Indigenous-governed university in Canada. [83] [84] Following the success of the Blue Quills effort the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB) released the 1972 paper Indian Control of Indian Education that responded, in part, to the Canadian Government's 1969 White Paper calling for the abolishment of the land treaties and the Indian Act . The NIB paper underscored the right of Indigenous communities to locally direct how their children are educated and served as the integral reference for education policy moving forward.
Few other former residential schools have converted to independently operated community schools for Indigenous children. White Calf Collegiate in Lebret, Saskatchewan, was run by the Star Blanket Cree Nation from 1973 until its closure in 1998, after being run by the Oblates from 1884 to 1969. [85] Old Sun Community College is run by the Siksika Nation in Alberta in a building designed by architect Roland Guerney Orr. [86] [87] From 1929 to 1971 the building housed Old Sun residential school, first run by the Anglicans and taken over by the federal government in 1969. [88] It was converted to adult learning and stood as a campus of Mount Royal College from 1971 to 1978, at which point the Siksika Nation took over operations. In 1988, the Old Sun College Act was passed in the Alberta Legislature recognizing Old Sun Community College as a First Nations College. [89]
Survivors of residential schools and their families have been found to suffer from historical trauma with a lasting and adverse effect on the transmission of Indigenous culture between generations. A 2010 study led by Gwen Reimer explained historic trauma, passed on intergenerationally , as the process through which "cumulative stress and grief experienced by Aboriginal communities is translated into a collective experience of cultural disruption and a collective memory of powerlessness and loss". [90] : x This trauma has been used to explain the persistent negative social and cultural impacts of colonial rule and residential schools, including the prevalence of sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, lateral violence, mental illness and suicide among Indigenous peoples. [91] : 10–11 [92]
The 2012 national report of the First Nations Regional Health Study found that respondents who attended residential schools were more likely than those who did not to have been diagnosed with at least one chronic medical condition . [93] A sample of 127 survivors revealed that half have criminal records; 65 per cent have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder ; 21 per cent have been diagnosed with major depression; 7 percent have been diagnosed with anxiety disorder ; and 7 percent have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder . [91]
In a 2014 article, Anishinaabe psychiatry researcher Amy Bombay reviewed research that relates to the intergenerational effects. She found that, "In addition to negative effects observed among those who attended IRS, accumulating evidence suggests that the children of those who attended (IRS offspring) are also at greater risk for poor well-being." 37.2% of adults with at least one parent who attended a boarding school contemplated committing suicide in their lifetimes, compared to 25.7% of people whose parents did not attend residential boarding schools. Higher levels of depression symptoms and psychological trauma were evident among Indian residential school survivors' children. [94]
Although some schools permitted students to speak their Indigenous languages , [95] suppressing their languages and culture was a key tactic used to assimilate Indigenous children. Many students spoke the language of their families fluently when they first entered residential schools. The schools strictly prohibited the use of these languages even though many students spoke little to no English or French. [4] [96] Traditional and spiritual activities including the potlatch and Sun Dance were also banned. [97] Some survivors reported being strapped or forced to eat soap when they were caught speaking their own language. The inability to communicate was further affected by their families' inabilities to speak English or French. Upon leaving residential school some survivors felt ashamed of being Indigenous as they were made to view their traditional identities as ugly and dirty. [8] : 4, 83–87 [98] Survivors also have to deal with the effects of cultural linguicide, which is defined as loss of language which eventually leads to loss of culture. [99]
The stigma the residential school system created against elders passing Indigenous culture on to younger generations has been linked to the over-representation of Indigenous languages on the list of endangered languages in Canada . The TRC noted that most of the 90 Indigenous languages that still exist are at risk of disappearing, with great-grandparents as the only speakers of many such languages. [8] : 154 It concluded that a failure of governments and Indigenous communities to prioritize the teaching and preservation of traditional languages ensured that despite the closure of residential schools, the eradication of Indigenous culture desired by government officials and administrators would inevitably be fulfilled "through a process of systematic neglect". [8] : 155 In addition to the forceful eradication of elements of Indigenous culture, the schools trained students in the patriarchal dichotomies then common in British and Canadian society and useful to state institutions, such as the domesticization of female students through imbuing 'stay-at-home' values and the militarization of male students through soldierlike regimentation. [100]
However, Indigenous children in boarding schools were not deterred, and continued to speak and practice their language in an attempt to keep it alive. Assistant Professor in Professional Communication, Jane Griffith, said, "Predictably, nineteenth-century government texts do not reveal the strategies Indigenous peoples had for maintaining their languages in the same way Indian boarding school survivor memoir, literature, and testimony do from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This absence may exemplify how school newspapers carefully created an English-only fantasy for readers, but may also attest to the success of students' secrecy: perhaps official school documents did not report that students still knew Indigenous languages because schools were unaware of this. Government reports, if read contrapuntally, were more forthcoming in how students continued to speak their language, though they framed such resistance as failure." [99]
Boarding schools in Canada worked towards assimilation of Native students. Historians Brian Klopotek and Brenda Child explain,"Education for Indians was not mandatory in Canada until 1920, long after compulsory attendance laws were passed in the United States, although families frequently resisted sending their children to the residential schools. Many protested the lack of decent educational opportunities available, but the government took little action until after World War I, when European-Canadians first began to acknowledge discriminatory treatment towards Indians." Indigenous resistance is defined, in the words of Anishinaabe scholar-artist Leanne Simpson as "a radical and complete overturning of the nation-state's political formations." [101] During this time Native people found ways to resist this colonial endeavor.
Those that survived used their knowledge to speak back against colonialism, as historians Brian Klopotek and Brenda Child explain, "in Canada, the results of this system were more complicated than the government anticipated. Often students returned to their reserves to become leaders, while others entered the labour market and competed with Euro-American workers." The Canadian government was displeased with this; as one minister for Indian Affairs noted in 1897, "we are educating these Indians to compete industrially with our own peoples, which seems to me a very undesirable amount of public money." [101] The government, perceiving Indian education as too generous, reduced the services available to First Nations peoples beginning in 1910 and emphasized low cost schooling thereafter. [101]
Acknowledgment of the wrongs done by the residential school system began in the 1980s. [8] [9]
In 1986, the first apology for residential schools by any institution in Canada was from the United Church of Canada in Sudbury , Ontario. [102] At the 1986 31st General Council, the United Church of Canada responded to the request of Indigenous peoples that it apologize to them for its part in colonization and adopted the apology. Rev. Bob Smith stated:
We imposed our civilization as a condition of accepting the gospel. We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were. As a result, you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be. We ask you to forgive us and to walk together with us in the Spirit of Christ so that our peoples may be blessed and God's creation healed. [103] [97]
The elders present at the General Council expressly refused to accept the apology and chose to receive the apology, believing further work needed to be done. [102] In 1998, the church apologized expressly for the role it played in the residential school system. On behalf of The United Church of Canada the Right Rev. Bill Phipps stated:
I apologize for the pain and suffering that our church's involvement in the Indian Residential School system has caused. We are aware of some of the damage that this cruel and ill-conceived system of assimilation has perpetrated on Canada's First Nations peoples. For this we are truly and most humbly sorry... To those individuals who were physically, sexually, and mentally abused as students of the Indian Residential Schools in which The United Church of Canada was involved, I offer you our most sincere apology. You did nothing wrong. You were and are the victims of evil acts that cannot under any circumstances be justified or excused... We are in the midst of a long and painful journey as we reflect on the cries that we did not or would not hear, and how we have behaved as a church...we commit ourselves to work toward ensuring that we will never again use our power as a church to hurt others with attitudes of racial and spiritual superiority. We pray that you will hear the sincerity of our words today and that you will witness the living out of our apology in our actions in the future. [103]
In 1991, at the National Meeting on Indian Residential Schools in Saskatoon , Canadian bishops and leaders of religious orders that participated in the schools issued an apology stating:
We are sorry and deeply regret the pain, suffering and alienation that so many experienced. We have heard their cries of distress, feel their anguish and want to be part of the healing process ... we pledge solidarity with the aboriginal peoples in their pursuit of recognition of their basic human rights ... urge the federal government to assume its responsibility for its part in the Indian Residential Schools ... [and] urge our faith communities to become better informed and more involved in issues important to aboriginal peoples [104]
In July 1991, Douglas Crosby , then presidential of the Oblate of Canada , the missionary religious congregation that operated a majority of the Catholic residential schools in Canada, apologized on behalf of 1,200 Oblates then living in Canada, to approximately 25,000 Indigenous people at Lac Ste. Anne , Alberta, stating:
We apologize for the part we played in the cultural, ethnical, linguistic and religious imperialism that was part of the European mentality and, in a particular way, for the instances of physical and sexual abuse that occurred in these schools ... For these trespasses we wish to voice today our deepest sorrow and we ask your forgiveness and understanding. We hope that we can make up for it being part of the healing process wherever necessary. [105] [106] [97]
Crosby further pledged the need to "come again to that deep trust and solidarity that constitutes families. We recognize that the road beyond past hurt may be long and steep, but we pledge ourselves anew to journey with the Native Peoples on that road." [105] [107]
On May 16, 1993, in Idaho , Peter Hans Kolvenbach , then Superior General of the Society of Jesus , issued an apology for the actions of Jesuits in the Western missions and in the "ways the church was insensitive toward your tribal customs, language and spirituality ... The Society of Jesus is sorry for the mistakes it has made in the past". [108] [109]
In 2009, a delegation of 40 First Nations representatives from Canada and several Canadian bishops had a private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI to obtain an apology for abuses that occurred in the residential school system. Then leader of the Assembly of First Nations Grand Chief Phil Fontaine of the First Nations Summit in British Columbia, and Chief Edward John of the Tlʼaztʼen Nation were in attendance. The Indigenous delegation were funded by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada . Afterwards, the Holy See released an official expression of sorrow on the church's role in residential schools and "the deplorable conduct of some members of the Church":
His Holiness [the Pope] emphasized that acts of abuse cannot be tolerated in society. He prayed that all those affected would experience healing, and he encouraged First Nations Peoples to continue to move forward with renewed hope. [110] [111] [112]
Fontaine, a residential school survivor, later stated that he had sensed the pope's "pain and anguish" and that the acknowledgement was "important to [him] and that was what [he] was looking for". [113] In an interview with CBC News , Fontaine stated in regards to the pope's acknowledgement of the suffering of the school survivors "I think in that sense, there was that apology that we were certainly looking for." [114] [112] Many argue that Pope Benedict XVI's statement was not a full apology. [46] On June 6, 2021, Fontaine restated his thoughts on Pope Benedict XVI's statement as "reassuring" but that "I believe very strongly that there ought to be a full apology from the Holy Father. He's done so in Ireland, he's done so in Bolivia." [115]
In the 2015 Report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), Action 58 called for the pope to issue an apology similar to Pope Benedict XVI's 2010 pastoral letter to Ireland issued from the Vatican, but be delivered by the Pope on Canadian soil. [116] : 7
On May 29, 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked the current Pope Francis for a public apology to all survivors of the residential school system, rather than the expression of sorrow issued by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. [117] [118] [119] Trudeau invited the pope to issue the apology in Canada. Although no commitment for such an apology followed the meeting, he noted that the pope pointed to a lifelong commitment of supporting marginalized people and an interest in working collaboratively with Trudeau and Canadian bishops to establish a way forward. [117]
On June 10, 2021, a delegation of Indigenous people were announced to meet with the pope later in the year to discuss the legacy of residential schools. On 29 June, the delegation was scheduled to take place from December 17 to 20, 2021, to comply with COVID-19 global travel restrictions . Archbishop Richard Gagnon, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops spoke on the topic, stating "What the Pope said and did in Bolivia is what he will do in Canada." [120]
On September 24, 2021, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a formal apology for residential schools stating "We, the Catholic Bishops of Canada, gathered in Plenary this week, take this opportunity to affirm to you, the Indigenous Peoples of this land, that we acknowledge the suffering experienced in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. Many Catholic religious communities and dioceses participated in this system, which led to the suppression of Indigenous languages, culture and spirituality, failing to respect the rich history, traditions and wisdom of Indigenous Peoples. We acknowledge the grave abuses that were committed by some members of our Catholic community; physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, cultural, and sexual." [121] Assembly of First Nations Chief RoseAnne Archibald stated she felt conflicted, saying "On one hand, their unequivocal apology is welcomed," but that she was disappointed that the bishops had not issued a formal request for the pope to visit Canada in person. [122] The Catholic bishops also stated
We are fully committed to the process of healing and reconciliation. Together with the many pastoral initiatives already underway in dioceses across the country, and as a further tangible expression of this ongoing commitment, we are pledging to undertake fundraising in each region of the country to support initiatives discerned locally with Indigenous partners. Furthermore, we invite the Indigenous Peoples to journey with us into a new era of reconciliation, helping us in each of our dioceses across the country to prioritize initiatives of healing, to listen to the experience of Indigenous Peoples, especially to the survivors of Indian Residential Schools, and to educate our clergy, consecrated men and women, and lay faithful, on Indigenous cultures and spirituality. We commit ourselves to continue the work of providing documentation or records that will assist in the memorialization of those buried in unmarked graves. [121]
The bishops also stated "Pope Francis will encounter and listen to the Indigenous participants, so as to discern how he can support our common desire to renew relationships and walk together along the path of hope in the coming years" with some interpreting this visit as an important step that could lead to a formal visit to Canada by the pope. [121]
On April 1, 2022, during a meeting between a delegation of First Nations representatives and the pope at the Vatican, Pope Francis apologized for the conduct of some members of the Roman Catholic Church in the Canadian Indian residential school system. [123] Pope Francis said:
I also feel shame ... sorrow and shame for the role that a number of Catholics, particularly those with educational responsibilities, have had in all these things that wounded you, and the abuses you suffered and the lack of respect shown for your identity, your culture and even your spiritual values. For the deplorable conduct of these members of the Catholic Church, I ask for God's forgiveness and I want to say to you with all my heart, I am very sorry. And I join my brothers, the Canadian bishops, in asking your pardon. [123]
During a July 2022 penitential pilgrimage to western Canada , Pope Francis reiterated the apologies of the Catholic Church, with hundreds of Indigenous people and government officials in attendance, for its role in administrating many of the residential schools on behalf of the government and for abuse that occurred at the hand of Catholic priests and religious sisters. [18] At the Pope's apologietic address given at Maskwacis, Chief Wilton Littlechild expressed hope for the future, saying: "You [Pope Francis] have said that you come as a pilgrim, seeking to walk together with us on the pathway of truth, justice, healing, reconciliation, and hope. We gladly welcome you to join us on this journey ... we sincerely hope that our encounter this morning, and the words you share with us, will echo with true healing and real hope throughout many generations to come." [18] Murray Sinclair , the former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, found the apology "insultingly insufficient". [124] J.J. McCullough, writing in The Washington Post , stated, "it was common to complain that the Pope’s apology was not an institutional apology from the Church as a whole." [124]
I accept and I confess before God and you, our failures in the residential schools. We failed you. We failed ourselves. We failed God.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that we were part of a system which took you and your children from home and family.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that we tried to remake you in our image, taking from you your language and the signs of your identity.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that in our schools so many were abused physically, sexually, culturally and emotionally.
On behalf of the Anglican Church of Canada, I present our apology. [125]
Archbishop Michael Peers, A Step Along the Path
On August 6, 1993, at the National Native Convocation in Minaki , Ontario. Archbishop Michael Peers apologized to former residential school students on behalf of the Anglican Church of Canada . [125] Almost 30 years later, in April to May, 2022, Justin Welby , the Archbishop of Canterbury , the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England and the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, undertook a five-day visit to Canada, during which he apologized for the "terrible crime" he said the Anglican Church committed in running residential schools and for the Church of England's "grievous sins" against the Indigenous peoples of Canada. He continued, "I am so sorry that the Church participated in the attempt—the failed attempt, because you rose above it and conquered it—to dehumanise and abuse those we should have embraced as brothers and sisters." The Archbishop spent time visiting reserves, meeting with First Nations leaders and Anglicans, and listening to former residential school students. [126] [127]
On June 9, 1994, the Presbyterian Church in Canada adopted a confession at its 120th General Assembly in Toronto on June 5, recognizing its role in residential schools and seeking forgiveness. The confession was presented on October 8 during a ceremony in Winnipeg.
We ask, also, for forgiveness from Aboriginal peoples. What we have heard we acknowledge. It is our hope that those whom we have wronged with a hurt too deep for telling will accept what we have to say. With God's guidance our Church will seek opportunities to walk with Aboriginal peoples to find healing and wholeness together as God's people. [128]
In 2004, immediately before signing the first Public Safety Protocol with the Assembly of First Nations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli issued an apology on behalf of the RCMP for its role in the Indian residential school system: "We, I, as Commissioner of the RCMP, am truly sorry for what role we played in the residential school system and the abuse that took place in the residential system." [129] [130]
After the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement was accepted by Prime Minister Paul Martin 's ministry in 2005, activists called for Martin's successor, Prime Minister Stephen Harper , to apologize. The Cabinet headed by Harper refused, stating an apology was not part of the agreement. [131] [132] On May 1, 2007, Member of Parliament Gary Merasty , of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation , introduced a motion for an apology, which passed unanimously. [133]
On June 11, 2008, Harper issued a symbolic [134] [135] apology on behalf of the sitting Cabinet for past ministries' policies of assimilation. He did this in front of an audience of Indigenous delegates and in an address that was broadcast nationally on the CBC . [136] [137] The Prime Minister apologized not only for the known excesses of the residential school system, but for the creation of the system itself. Harper delivered the speech in the House of Commons; the procedural device of a committee of the whole was used so that Indigenous leaders, who were not members of parliament, could be allowed to respond to the apology on the floor of the house. [138]
Harper's apology excluded Newfoundland and Labrador on the basis that the 28th Canadian Ministry should not be held accountable for pre-Confederation actions. Residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador were located in St Anthony , Cartwright , North West River , Nain , and Makkovik . These schools were run by the International Grenfell Association and the German Moravian Missionaries. [139] The government argued that because these schools were not created under the auspices of the Indian Act, they were not true residential schools. More than 1,000 former students disagreed and filed a class action lawsuit against the government for compensation in 2007. By the time the suit was settled in 2016, almost a decade later, dozens of plaintiffs had died. Lawyers expected that up to 900 former students would be compensated. [140]
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered an apology to Innu , Inuit , and NunatuKavut former students and their families in Happy Valley-Goose Bay , Labrador . [141] [142] He acknowledged that students experienced multiple forms of abuse linking their treatment to the colonial thinking that shaped the school system. [143] Trudeau's apology was received on behalf of residential school survivors by Toby Obed, who framed the apology as a key part of the healing process that connected survivors from Newfoundland and Labrador with school attendees from across the country. [141] Members of the Innu nation were less receptive, rejecting the apology ahead of the ceremony. [144] Grand Chief Gregory Rich noted in a released statement that he was "not satisfied that Canada understands yet what it has done to Innu and what it is still doing", indicating that members felt they deserved an apology for more than their experiences at residential schools. [141] [144]
Then- Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger became, on June 18, 2015, the first politician to issue an apology for past cabinets' role in the Sixties Scoop . [145] Class action lawsuits have been brought against the Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario governments for the harm caused to victims of the large-scale adoption scheme that saw thousands of Indigenous children forcibly removed from their parents in the 1960s. [146] Indigenous leaders responded by insisting that while apologies were welcomed, action—including a federal apology, reunification of families, compensation, and counselling for victims—must accompany words for them to have real meaning. [147]
The Premier of Alberta at the time, Rachel Notley , issued an apology as a ministerial statement on June 22, 2015, in a bid to begin to address the wrongs done by the province's previous ministries to the Indigenous peoples of Alberta and the rest of Canada. [148] At the same time, Notley called on the federal government to hold an inquiry on the missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. The Premier also stated her intent for the government to build relationships with provincial leaders of Indigenous communities and sought to amend the provincial curriculum to include the history of Indigenous culture. [149]
In the Legislative Assembly of Ontario , on May 30, 2016, the serving Premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne , apologized on behalf of the Executive Council for the harm done at residential schools. [150] Affirming Ontario's commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, she acknowledged the school system as "one of the most shameful chapters in Canadian history". [151] In a 105-minute ceremony, Wynne announced that the Ontario government would spend $250 million on education initiatives and would also rename the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation . It was further announced that the first week of November would be known as Treaties Recognition Week. [152] [153]
The Manitoba Keewatinook Ininew Okimowin Tribal Council , representing 30 northern Manitoba Indigenous communities, requested on February 21, 2008, that Queen Elizabeth II apologise for the residential schools in Canada. Grand Chief of the council Sydney Garrioch sent a letter with this request to Buckingham Palace. [154]
In Winnipeg , on Canada Day , July 1, 2021, the statue of Queen Victoria in front of the Manitoba Legislative Building , and that of Queen Elizabeth II in the garden of nearby Government House , were vandalized and toppled; the head of the Queen Victoria statue was removed and thrown into the Assiniboine River . [155] [156] Following this event, associate professor of sociology at the University of Winnipeg Kimberley Ducey called for Queen Elizabeth II to apologize for the role of the British monarchy in the establishment of residential schools, [157] though sovereigns since George III have had their powers constrained by the tenets of constitutional monarchy and responsible government , [158] meaning they had no direct responsibility in residential school policy. [159] [160]
On Canada's first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation , on September 30, 2021, Elizabeth, as Queen of Canada , said she "joins with all Canadians ... to reflect on the painful history that Indigenous peoples endured in residential schools in Canada and on the work that remains to heal and to continue to build an inclusive society". [161] The same year, the Queen appointed Mary Simon to represent her as governor general ; Simon is the first Indigenous person to occupy the office. The Queen and Simon met in March 2022, after which the vicereine said to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation , "we talked about reconciliation and I did talk about the need for healing in our country and to have a better understanding and a better relationship between Indigenous people and other Canadians" and she felt the Queen was well informed on issues affecting Canada. [162]
In his first speech of his royal tour in 2022, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (Elizabeth II's eldest son and then-heir to the Canadian Crown), said that it was an "important moment, with "Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples across Canada committing to reflect honestly and openly on the past, and to forge a new relationship for the future". [163] The Prince and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall , participated in moments of reflection and prayer, first with Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland and Labrador Judy Foote and Indigenous leaders at Heart Garden [164] —which had been opened on the grounds of the provincial Government House in 2019, in memory of former residential school students—and, two days later, at the Ceremonial Circle in the Dene community of Dettah , Northwest Territories , [165] where they also participated in an opening prayer, a drumming circle, and a feeding the fire ceremony. [166] [167] Elisabeth Penashue, an elder of the Sheshatshiu Innu First Nation in Labrador, said it was "really important they hear our stories". [164]
At a reception hosted by the Governor General at Rideau Hall , in Ottawa, RoseAnne Archibald , National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations , appealed directly to the Prince for an apology from the Queen in her capacity as monarch and head of the Church of England for the wrongful acts committed in the past by the Crown and the church in relation to Indigenous peoples. (The Archbishop of Canterbury had, though, already apologized on behalf of the Church of England in April of that year. [126] ) Archibald said that the Prince "acknowledged" failures by Canadian governments in handling the relationship between the Crown and Indigenous people, which she said "really meant something". [168] Royal correspondent Sarah Campbell noted, "on this brief tour, there has been no shying away from acknowledging and highlighting the scandalous way many indigenous peoples have been treated in Canada." [127]
On October 27, 2011, University of Manitoba president David Barnard apologized to the TRC for the institution's role in educating people who operated the residential school system. The Winnipeg Free Press believed it to be the first time a Canadian university has apologized for playing a role in residential schools. [169]
On April 9, 2018, the University of British Columbia (UBC) opened the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre as a West Coast complement to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg. At the opening, UBC President Santa Ono apologized to residential school victims and dignitaries including Grand Chief Edward John and Canadian Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould . Ono apologised for UBC's training of policymakers and administrators who operated the system and stated:
On behalf of the university and all its people, I apologize to all of you who are survivors of the residential schools, to your families and communities and to all Indigenous people for the role this university played in perpetuating that system...We apologize for the actions and inaction of our predecessors and renew our commitment to working with all of you for a more just and equitable future. [170]
In the summer of 1990, the Mohawks of Kanesatake confronted the government about its failure to honour Indigenous land claims and recognize traditional Mohawk territory in Oka, Quebec . Referred to by media outlets as the Oka Crisis , the land dispute sparked a critical discussion about the Canadian government's complacency regarding relations with Indigenous communities and responses to their concerns. The action prompted then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to underscore four government responsibilities: "resolving land claims; improving the economic and social conditions on reserves; defining a new relationship between aboriginal peoples and governments; and addressing the concerns of Canada's aboriginal peoples in contemporary Canadian life." [8] : 240 The actions of the Mohawk community members led to, in part, along with objections from Indigenous leaders regarding the Meech Lake Accord , the creation of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples to examine the status of Indigenous peoples in Canada. In 1996, the Royal Commission presented a final report which first included a vision for meaningful and action-based reconciliation. [8] : 239–240 [172]
In 1975, the Anglican, Roman Catholic and United Churches, along with six other churches, formed Project North, later known as the Aboriginal Rights Coalition (ARC), with the objective of "transformation of the relationship between Canadian society and Aboriginal peoples." The campaign's objectives were:
- "The recognition of Aboriginal land and treaty rights in Canada;
- Realizing the historic rights of Aboriginal peoples as they are recognized in the Canadian constitution and upheld in the courts, including the right to self-determination
- Reversing the erosion of social rights, including rights to adequate housing, education, health care and appropriate legal systems;
- Seeking reconciliation between Aboriginal peoples, the Christian community and Canadian society;
- Clarifying the moral and spiritual basis for action towards Aboriginal and social justice in Canada;
- Opposing development and military projects that threaten Aboriginal communities and the environment; and
- Promoting Aboriginal justice within Jubilee." [173]
The churches have also engaged in reconciliation initiatives such as the Returning to Spirit: Residential School Healing and Reconciliation Program, a workshop that aims to unite Indigenous and non-Indigenous people through discussing the legacy of residential schools and fostering an environment for them to communicate and develop mutual understanding. [8] In 2014, the federal government ceased to contribute funds to Indigenous health organizations such as the AHF and the National Aboriginal Health Organization. Since then, more pressure has been placed on churches to sustain their active participation in these healing efforts. [8]
In 1992, The Anglican Church of Canada set up the Anglican Healing Fund for Healing and Reconciliation to respond to the ongoing need for healing related to residential schools. [174] [175] From 1992 to 2007, the fund funded over $8 million towards 705 projects. [175]
In October 1997, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) agreed on the establishment of the Council for Reconciliation, Solidarity and Communion for the following year. In 2007, the council became the Catholic Aboriginal Council . On November 30, 1999, the CCCB signed an agreement with the Assembly of First Nations , represented by Grand Chief Phil Fontaine . [176]
In the 2000s the United Church established the Justice and Reconciliation Fund to support healing initiatives and the Presbyterian Church has established a Healing & Reconciliation Program. [177] [178]
In January 1998, the government made a "statement of reconciliation" – including an apology to those people who were sexually or physically abused while attending residential schools – and established the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF). The foundation was provided with $350 million to fund community-based healing projects addressing the legacy of physical and sexual abuse. [179] In its 2005 budget , the Canadian government committed an additional $40 million to support the work of the AHF. [180] Federal funding for the foundation was cut in 2010 by the Stephen Harper government, leaving 134 national healing-related initiatives without an operating budget. [181] The AHF closed in 2014. Former AHF executive director Mike DeGagne has said that the loss of AHF support has created a gap in dealing with mental health crises such as suicides in the Attawapiskat First Nation . [182]
In June 2001, the government established Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada as an independent government department to manage the residential school file. In 2003, the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process was launched as part of a larger National Resolution Framework which included health supports, a commemoration component and a strategy for litigation. [183] As explained by the TRC, the ADR was designed as a "voluntary process for resolution of certain claims of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and forcible confinement, without having to go through the civil litigation process". [41] : 564 It was created by the Canadian government without consultation with Indigenous communities or former residential school students. The ADR system also made it the responsibility of the former students to prove that the abuse occurred and was intentional, resulting in former students finding the system difficult to navigate, re-traumatizing, and discriminatory. Many survivor advocacy groups and Indigenous political organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) worked to have the ADR system dissolved. [184] In 2004 the Assembly of First Nations released a report critical of the ADR underscoring, among other issues, the failure of survivors to automatically receive the full amount of compensation without subsequent ligation against the church and failure to compensate for lost family, language and culture. [41] : 565 The Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development released its own report in April 2005 finding the ADR to be "an excessively costly and inappropriately applied failure, for which the Minister and her officials are unable to raise a convincing defence". [41] : 566 Within a month of the report's release a Supreme Court of Canada decision granted school attendees the right to pursue class-action suits, which ultimately led to a government review of the compensation process. [41] : 566
On November 23, 2005, the Canadian government announced a $1.9-billion compensation package to benefit tens of thousands of former students. National Chief of the AFN, Phil Fontaine , said the package was meant to cover "decades in time, innumerable events and countless injuries to First Nations individuals and communities". [185] Justice Minister Irwin Cotler applauded the compensation decision noting that the placement of children in the residential school system was "the single most harmful, disgraceful and racist act in our history". [185] At an Ottawa news conference, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan said: "We have made good on our shared resolve to deliver what I firmly believe will be a fair and lasting resolution of the Indian school legacy." [185]
The compensation package led to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), announced on May 8, 2006, and implemented in September 2007. [186] At the time, there were about 86,000 living victims. The IRSSA included funding for the AHF, for commemoration, for health support, and for a Truth and Reconciliation program, as well as an individual Common Experience Payment (CEP). [98] Any person who could be verified as having resided at a federally run Indian residential school in Canada was entitled to a CEP. [187] The amount of compensation was based on the number of years a particular former student resided at the residential schools: $10,000 for the first year attended (from one night residing there to a full school year) plus $3,000 for every year thereafter. [188] [189] : 44
The IRSSA also included the Independent Assessment Process (IAP), a case-by-case, out-of-court resolution process designed to provide compensation for sexual, physical and emotional abuse. The IAP process was built on the ADR program and all IAP claims from former students are examined by an adjudicator. The IAP became available to all former students of residential schools on September 19, 2007. Former students who experienced abuse and wished to pursue compensation had to apply by themselves or through a lawyer of their choice to receive consideration. [190] The deadline to apply for the IAP was September 19, 2012. This gave former students of residential schools four years from the implementation date of the IRSSA to apply for the IAP. Claims involving physical and sexual abuse were compensated up to $275,000. [191] By September 30, 2016, the IAP had resolved 36,538 claims and paid $3.1 billion in compensation. [192]
The IRSSA also proposed an advance payment for former students alive and who were 65 years old and over as of May 30, 2005. The deadline for reception of the advance payment form by IRSRC was December 31, 2006. Following a legal process, including an examination of the IRSSA by the courts of the provinces and territories of Canada, an "opt-out" period occurred. During this time, the former students of residential schools could reject the agreement if they did not agree with its dispositions. This opt-out period ended on August 20, 2007, with about 350 former students opting out. The IRSSA was the largest class action settlement in Canadian history. By December 2012, a total of $1.62 billion was paid to 78,750 former students, 98 per cent of the 80,000 who were eligible. [193] In 2014, the IRSSA funds left over from CEPs were offered for educational credits for survivors and their families. [194]
In 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to travel across Canada collecting the testimonies of people affected by the residential school system. About 7,000 Indigenous people told their stories. [195] The TRC concluded in 2015 with the publication of a six volume, 4,000-plus-page report detailing the testimonies of survivors and historical documents from the time. It resulted in the establishment of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation . [196] [197]
The executive summary of the TRC concluded that the assimilation amounted to cultural genocide. [8] : 1 The ambiguity of the phrasing allowed for the interpretation that physical and biological genocide also occurred. The TRC was not authorized to conclude that physical and biological genocide occurred, as such a finding would imply a legal responsibility of the Canadian government that would be difficult to prove. As a result, the debate about whether the Canadian government also committed physical and biological genocide against Indigenous populations remains open. [198] [199]
Among the 94 Calls to Action that accompanied the conclusion of the TRC were recommendations to ensure that all Canadians are educated and made aware of the residential school system. [45] : 175–176 Justice Murray Sinclair explained that the recommendations were not aimed solely at prompting government action, but instead a collective move toward reconciliation in which all Canadians have a role to play: "Many of our elements, many of our recommendations and many of the Calls to Action are actually aimed at Canadian society." [200]
Preservation of documentation of the legacy of residential schools was also highlighted as part of the TRC's Calls to Action. Community groups and other stakeholders have variously argued for documenting or destroying evidence and testimony of residential school abuses. [201] [202] [203] On April 4, 2016, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ruled that documents pertaining to IAP settlements will be destroyed in 15 years if individual claimants do not request to have their documents archived. This decision was fought by the TRC as well as the federal government, but argued for by religious representatives. [204]
In March 2017, Lynn Beyak , a Conservative member of the Senate Standing Committee of Aboriginal Peoples, voiced disapproval of the final TRC report, saying that it had omitted the positives of the schools. [205] [206] Although Beyak's right to free speech was defended by some Conservative senators, her comments were widely criticized by members of the opposition, among them Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs , Carolyn Bennett , and leader of the New Democratic Party , Tom Mulcair . [207] The Anglican Church also raised concerns stating in a release co-signed by bishops Fred Hiltz and Mark MacDonald : "There was nothing good about children going missing and no report being filed. There was nothing good about burying children in unmarked graves far from their ancestral homes." [208] [209] In response, the Conservative Party leadership removed Beyak from the Senate committee underscoring that her comments did not align with the views of the party. [207]
Education or awareness of the residential school system or its abuses is low among Canadians. A 2020 survey suggested that nearly half of Canadians never learned about the residential schools when they were students, with 34% of those who were taught by teachers being provided a positive assessment. [210] Another poll conducted in 2021 showed that only 10% of Canadians were very familiar with the history of the residential school system and that 68% say they were unaware of the severity of abuses or completely shocked by it, and that so many children could die. [211] A majority of Canadians believe that educational provincial curricula does not include enough about residential schools, that the education level should increase, and that the framing of the residential school system has been downplayed in the education system. [211]
For many communities the buildings that formerly housed residential schools are a traumatic reminder of the system's legacy; demolition, heritage status and the possibility of incorporating sites into the healing process have been discussed. [201] [202] [203] In July 2016, it was announced that the building of the former Mohawk Institute Residential School would be converted into an educational centre with exhibits on the legacy of residential schools. Ontario's Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, David Zimmer , noted: "Its presence will always be a reminder of colonization and the racism of the residential school system; one of the darkest chapters of Canadian history." [212]
Reconciliation efforts have also been undertaken by several Canadian universities. In 2015 Lakehead University and the University of Winnipeg introduced a mandatory course requirement for all undergraduate students focused on Indigenous culture and history. [213] The same year the University of Saskatchewan hosted a two-day national forum at which Canadian university administrators, scholars and members of Indigenous communities discussed how Canadian universities can and should respond to the TRC's Calls to Action. [214] [215]
On April 1, 2017, a 17-metre (56 ft) pole, titled "Reconciliation Pole", was raised on the grounds of the University of British Columbia (UBC) Vancouver campus. Carved by Haida master carver and hereditary chief, 7idansuu ( / ʔ iː . d æ n . s uː / [216] ) (Edenshaw), James Hart , the pole tells the story of the residential school system prior to, during and after its operation. It features thousands of copper nails, used to represent the children who died in Canadian residential schools, and depictions of residential school survivors carved by artists from multiple Indigenous communities, including Canadian Inuk director Zacharias Kunuk , Maliseet artist Shane Perley-Dutcher, and Muqueam Coast Salish artist Susan Point . [217] [218]
In October 2016, Canadian singer-songwriter Gord Downie released Secret Path , a concept album about Chanie Wenjack 's escape and death. It was accompanied by a graphic novel and animated film, aired on CBC Television . Proceeds went to the University of Manitoba 's Centre for Truth and Reconciliation . Following his death in October 2017, Downie's brother Mike said he was aware of 40,000 teachers who had used the material in their classrooms, and hoped to continue this. [219] In December 2017, Downie was posthumously named Canadian Newsmaker of the Year by the Canadian Press , in part because of his work with reconciliation efforts for survivors of residential schools. [220]
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 80th call to action was for the government to designate a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation that would become a statutory holiday to honour the survivors, their families, and communities. In August 2018, the government announced it was considering three possible dates as the new national holiday. After consultation, Orange Shirt Day was selected as the holiday. [221] [222]
Orange Shirt Day pre-existed the government's efforts to make it a holiday. The day started in 2013, when at a residential school reunion, survivor Phyllis Jack Webstad told her story. She recounted how her grandmother bought her a new orange shirt to go to school in, and when she arrived at the residential school, the shirt was stripped away from her and never returned. [223] The other survivors founded the SJM Project , and on September 30, 2013—the time of the year when Indigenous children were taken away to residential schools—they encouraged students in schools in the area to wear an orange shirt in memory of the victims of the residential school system. [224] The observance of the holiday spread quickly across Canada, and in 2017 the Canadian government encouraged all Canadians to participate in the observance of Orange Shirt Day. [225] [226]
On March 21, 2019, Georgina Jolibois submitted a private member's bill to call for Orange Shirt Day to become a statutory holiday; the bill passed the House of Commons, but the next election was called before the bill could pass the Senate and become law. [227] [228] After the election, Steven Guilbeault reintroduced the bill to make Orange Shirt Day a national statutory holiday. [229] Following the discovery of the remains of 215 children on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School on May 24, 2021, Parliament agreed to pass the bill unanimously, and the bill received royal assent on June 3, 2021. [230]
During the 2022 National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill, as well as buildings across Canada, were illuminated to honour those affected by the Canadian residential school system. They were lit up in orange throughout the evening of September 30, 2022, from 7:00pm until sunrise. [231]
- ^ Indian has been used because of the historical nature of the article and the precision of the name, as with Indian hospital . [1] It was, and continues to be, used by government officials, Indigenous peoples and historians while referencing the school system. The use of the name also provides relevant context about the era in which the system was established, specifically one in which Indigenous peoples in Canada were homogeneously referred to as Indians rather than by language that distinguishes First Nations , Inuit and Métis peoples. [1] Use of Indian is limited throughout the article to proper nouns and references to government legislation.
- ^ Indigenous has been capitalized in keeping with the style guide of the Government of Canada. [2] The capitalization also aligns with the style used within the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples . In the Canadian context, Indigenous is capitalized when discussing peoples, beliefs or communities in the same way European or Canadian is used to refer to non-Indigenous topics or people. [3]
- ^ Survivor is the term used in the final report of the TRC and the Statement of apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools issued by Stephen Harper in 2008. [17]
- ^ The phrase "kill the Indian in the child" originates from a letter written by American Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt , while recounting the views of an unidentified American general who believed "that the only good Indian is a dead one," of which Pratt wrote: "In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." [29] : 137 Mark Abley writes that in a Canadian context "kill the Indian in the child" has been erroneously attributed to former deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott. [30] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system | 75 |
when were residential schools first established in canada | Residential School History | For a period of more than 150 years , First Nations, Inuit and Métis Nation children were taken from their families and communities to attend schools which were often located far from their homes. More than 150,000 children attended Indian Residential Schools. Many never returned.
The first church-run Indian Residential School was opened in 1831. By the 1880s, the federal government had adopted an official policy of funding residential schools across Canada. The explicit intent was to separate these children from their families and cultures. In 1920, the Indian Act made attendance at Indian Residential Schools compulsory for Treaty-status children between the ages of 7 and 15.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) concluded that residential schools were “a systematic, government- sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples.” The TRC characterized this intent as “cultural genocide.”
The schools were often underfunded and overcrowded. The quality of education was substandard. Children were harshly punished for speaking their own languages. Staff were not held accountable for how they treated the children.
We know that thousands of students suffered physical and sexual abuse at residential schools. All suffered from loneliness and a longing to be home with their families.
The schools hurt the children. The schools also hurt their families and their communities. Children were deprived of healthy examples of love and respect. The distinct cultures, traditions, languages, and knowledge systems of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples were eroded by forced assimilation.
The damages inflicted by Residential Schools continue to this day.
For a great many Survivors, talking about their experiences in residential schools means reliving the traumas they experienced. For years, many told no one about what they had endured.
In 1996, the landmark Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples drew attention to the lasting harm that was done by the residential schools. A growing number of Survivors and their descendants came forward to tell their stories and demand action.
Through their courage and persistence, an eventual legal settlement was reached between Survivors, the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit representatives and the defendants, the federal government and the churches responsible for the operation of the school. The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement included:
- A commitment to a public apology . On June 11, 2008 then Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal Statement of Apology on behalf of Canada. The Apology stated that, “There is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian residential schools system to ever again prevail.”
- Financial compensation to Residential School Survivors including a lump sum Common Experience Payment, the Independent Assessment Process for the most serious forms of individual abuse, and a Commemoration Fund.
- The creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to inform all Canadians about what happened in the Residential Schools by witnessing and documenting the truth of Survivors, families, communities and anyone personally affected by the Schools. The TRC issued an extensive report on the history of residential schools as well as Calls to Action and Principles of Reconciliation .
It is important to acknowledge that the Settlement Agreement was not comprehensive. The Métis Nation Survivors were not part of the Settlement Agreement. A separate settlement was reached with Survivors from Newfoundland and Labrador in 2016. A settlement agreement with Survivors of federal Indian Day Schools was not reached until 2019.
The NCTR is carrying on key aspects of the TRC’s work, including safeguarding and adding to the archive of Survivor statements and other records and building a registry of the thousands of children known to have died in residential schools.
In September 2020, Parks Canada announced that Residential Schools had been designated an event of national historical significance. Such designations mark aspects of Canadian history, whether positive or negative, that have had a lasting impact on shaping Canadian society.
The Canadian Parliament passed legislation, Bill C-5, to create a national day of commemoration to honour residential school Survivors and promote understanding of residential school history. The TRC called for such commemoration in its Calls to Action (Call to Action 80). The first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation took place September 30, 2021.
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Bezhig miigwan calls upon us to see each Survivor coming to the NCTR as a single eagle feather and to show those Survivors the same respect and attention an eagle feather deserves. It also teaches we are all in this together — we are all one, connected, and it is vital to work together to achieve reconciliation.
Chancellor’s Hall, 177 Dysart Road,
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg | https://nctr.ca/education/teaching-resources/residential-school-history/ | 75 |
what is the longest made field goal in nfl history | What is the longest field goal in NFL history? | Jul 31, 2022
/
he 2022 NFL season has big shoes to fill in the kicking department.
T
By Week 3 of last season, Justin Tucker etched his name in the record books with a game-winning 66-yard field goal to lift the Baltimore Ravens over the Detroit Lions, passing kicker Matt Prater’s eight-year record in the process.
Just one week prior, Prater nailed a 62-yarder of his own for the Arizona Cardinals, good for top 10 in the NFL.
With preseason coming to a close, all eyes shift to the new season and potential history-making moments.
With Tucker and Prater both back in pads this season, there’s a good chance fans will be treated to some record-breaking kicks. Or perhaps a new face will emerge to land on the leaderboard.
Here’s a look at where Tucker’s kick stacks up against the previous records and what fans can expect in the 2022 season:
Justin Tucker holds the distinction after launching his game-winning kick at Ford Field last season. He broke the record previously held by Matt Prater, who drilled a 64-yard attempt with the Denver Broncos to end the first half in a 2013 contest against the Tennessee Titans.
While Tucker had the benefit of playing inside a dome in Detroit, Prater’s kick came at Mile High in Denver. The elevation causes lower air density, which leads to further distances on throws, punts and kicks.
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Tucker’s kick set an NFL record, but it is still well short of the NCAA record. On Oct. 16, 1976, Abilene Christian’s Ove Johansson uncorked a 69-yard field goal against East Texas State.
With the kick, Johansson broke a collegiate record that had stood for less than 20 minutes. Across the state, Texas A&M’s Tony Franklin hit a then-record-breaking 64-yarder against Baylor at 2:20 p.m. CT. Johansson’s kick went through around 2:40 p.m. CT.
The longest field goal attempt in NFL history would have clobbered both Tucker’s record and Johansson’s.
Oakland Raiders head coach Lane Kiffin opted to send out Sebastian Janikowski for a 74-yard kick at the end of the first half of a 2008 game against the San Diego Chargers instead of giving quarterback JaMarcus Russell a chance to throw a Hail Mary. From his own 34-yard line, Janikowski booted a kick that went right of the goal posts and failed to reach the end zone.
Tucker holds the top spot, while Prater was relegated to second on the podium.
There are six kickers tied for third with 63-yarders and four kickers tied for ninth all-time with 62-yarders.
1. Justin Tucker, 66 yards (Ravens at Lions, 2021)
2. Matt Prater, 64 yards (Broncos vs. Titans, 2013)
T-3. Brett Maher, 63 yards (Cowboys vs. Eagles, 2019)
T-3. Sebastian Janikowski, 63 yards (Raiders at Broncos, 2011)
T-3. Graham Gano, 63 yards (Panthers vs. Giants, 2018)
T-3. Jason Elam, 63 yards (Broncos vs. Jaguars, 1998)
T-3. David Akers, 63 yards (49ers at Packers, 2012)
T-3. Tom Dempsey, 63 yards (Saints vs. Lions, 1970)
T-9. Matt Prater, 62 yards (Cardinals vs. Vikings, 2021)
T-9. Brett Maher, 62 yards (Cowboys at Jets, 2019)
T-9. Brett Maher, 62 yards (Cowboys vs. Eagles, 2018)
T-9. Stephen Gostkowski, 62 yards (Patriots vs. Raiders, 2017)
T-9. Matt Bryant, 62 yards (Buccaneers vs. Eagles, 2006)
One common thread between these kicks, aside from astonishing distance, is that they all came at the end of a half. While at other points in the game it might make sense to punt from such a distance, the expiring clock has led to more coaches taking a chance with their kickers to put some points on the board. Of these 13 kicks, three were game-winners and 10 came at the end of the first half.
Only four of the NFL’s 62-plus-yard kicks were made inside domes. The other nine occurred at outside venues, including three in Denver and one in Mexico City, where Gostkowski also benefited from some elevation.
Prater might have lost his record to Tucker, but he showed just how strong his leg still is in Week 2 against the Minnesota Vikings when he capped off a chaotic first half by nailing a 62-yarder at State Farm Stadium.
Tucker and Prater obviously return as the kicking veterans, but they’ve got some close competition coming up behind.
Brandon McManus of the Chicago Bears and Ka’imi Fairbairn of the Houston Texans each made career-long 61-yard field goals last season. Trailing McManus and Fairbairn are Jake Elliott and Evan McPherson who each made 58-yard attempts.
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McPherson, the youngest of the bunch at 23, went viral for his clutch gene that sent the Cincinnati Bengals to the AFC Championship for the first time in over three decades. With a long career ahead of him, McPherson could pose a serious threat to Tucker’s record. | https://www.nbcsports.com/washington/commanders/what-longest-field-goal-nfl-history | 76 |
what is the longest made field goal in nfl history | The longest field goals in NFL history, updated after Justin Tucker’s 66-yard game-winner | Justin Tucker now has the longest field goal in NFL history.
Two kickers attempted to break the NFL record for the longest field goal ever in Week 3 of the 2021 NFL season. One attempt ended in disaster, while the other sailed through the uprights and now sits at the top of the league’s record books.
Arizona Cardinals kicker Matt Prater attempted a 68-yard field goal just before halftime against the Jacksonville Jaguars . Prater’s kick was short, and Jacksonville’s Jamal Agnew fielded the kick and returned it 109 yards for a touchdown. Nathan Vasher did it first . Agnew’s return tied the record for the longest touchdown in league history, a distinction he now shares with Cordarrelle Patterson and Antonio Cromartie. Cromartie’s score also came off fielding a missed field goal.
Shortly after, the Baltimore Ravens lined up for a 66-yard field goal in the final seconds while down two points against the Detroit Lions . Justin Tucker knocked it through for the win. Tucker now holds the record for the longest field goal in NFL history.
Here’s a list of the longest field goals the NFL has ever seen.
Prater did it himself in Week 2 of the 2021 NFL season:
Brett Mower hit twice from 62 yards out for the Dallas Cowboys in 2018 and 2019. Stephen Gostkowski of the New England Patriots hit a 62-yarder in 2017, and Matt Bryant of the hit a 62-yarder in 2006 for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers .
Maher hit a 63-yarder for the Cowboys in 2019. He’s 3-for-3 in his career from at least 60 yards.
Sebastian Janikowski of the Raiders in 2011, Graham Gano of the Panthers in 2018, Jason Elam of the Broncos in 1998, Tom Dempsey of the Saints in 1970 and David Akers of the 49ers in 2012 all also hit from 63 yards out.
Not only is Tucker’s kick the longest in league history, he also made it as time expired to give his team the win. What an incredible moment.
Off the crossbar and in. It was meant to be.
Tucker is 16-for-16 on field goals in his career in the final minute of regulation . There were some amazing reactions in Detroit as the kick sailed through.
And it was set in 1976! By Abilene Christian!
The longest field goal attempt in league history is still held by Janikowski at 76 yards . He didn’t even come close. | https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2021/9/27/22695783/nfl-longest-field-goals-justin-tucker-66-yards | 76 |
what is the longest made field goal in nfl history | 10 longest field goals in NFL history | In 2021, Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker etched his name into the record books by kicking the longest field goal in NFL history, keeping the Detroit Lions winless for another week.
Tucker’s kick broke the previous field-goal record set in 2013, but there have been several 60-plus-yard kicks in the league’s storied history.
In reverse order, here are the longest FGs in NFL history. And swipe down to the bottom for a bonus – the longest college football field goal and the longest field goal in playoff history.
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There are a total of six 62-yard kicks that have been made in NFL history. Brett Maher has two of them. Most recently, Harrison Butker hit a 62-yard FG in Week 6 of the 2022 season. Stephen Gostkowski’s 62-yard field goal in 2017 came at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, which is 7,280 feet above sea level. The longtime Patriots special teamer’s previous longest kick was 57 yards.
Though he played for five different teams throughout his career, Matt Bryant will never forget the time he nailed a 62-yard game-winning kick with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2006. Although it looked to be about a mile away as he lined up, Bryant put just the right amount of mustard on the ball to send it through the uprights.
Playing their NFC East rivals, the Dallas Cowboys lined up just before halftime to launch a 63-yard bomb from Brett Maher. The NBC broadcast revealed the kick actually would have been good from 66 yards at AT&T Stadium, which would have been the longest field goal in NFL history. While many other longest field goals have come at Mile High, this one occurred indoors at Jerry World, and it even provides hope for a longer kick someday, being that it would have gone through at a longer distance.
Graham Gano may be making kicks for the New York Giants these days, but once upon a time, not so long ago, he upset their fans in dramatic fashion. With the wind gusting to the east at roughly six miles per hour, Gano lined up for a 63-yard boot with just one second on the clock. Once the ball took flight, it took a wicked curve, but only enough to land in the corner pocket of the kicking net. It was a thing of beauty.
David Akers made a lot of fantastic kicks in his 16-year NFL career, but none were longer than his 63-yard bounce off the Lambeau Field crossbars in 2012. The San Francisco 49ers would go on to lose in the Super Bowl at the end of the season, but this kick in Week 1 was a great way to start the year for the lefty kicker.
The only kicker to ever be taken in the first round of an NFL Draft, Sebastian “Seabass” Janikowski, was built differently. Literally. The 6-foot-1 inch, 260-pound Polish native knew how to put some oomph on a ball. While he only made one Pro Bowl in his 18-year career, Seabass left a lasting impression. Perhaps the left-footed special teams savant’s most notable kick was his 63-yard smash at Mile High in 2011.
Jason Elam was a great NFL kicker who made three Pro Bowls and is a two-time Super Bowl champion. Playing nearly his entire 17-year career with the Denver Broncos , he had several opportunities to make history. On October 25, 1998, Elam did just that, hitting a 63-yard kick at Mile High Stadium, 5,200 feet above sea level. It was the first kick to tie Tom Dempsey’s long-held record.
Fittingly landing at No. 3, there are three very notable factors that separate what Tom Dempsey did back in 1970 from the rest of the pack.
First, Dempsey was born without toes on his right foot. Because of this, Dempsey wore a custom-built flat-front kicking boot that is now located in Canton, Ohio , at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Nowadays, there’s a Tom Dempsey rule in place ensuring any shoe worn by a player with an artificial limb must have a kicking surface resembling a normal kicking shoe.
Second, Dempsey’s kicking approach is completely different than anything you’ll see in American football today. Back then, it was more common for kickers to line up a few steps directly behind the ball instead of the methods used today, where they approach the ball from an angle.
The final obvious difference is the goalposts. In 1974, the NFL moved the goalposts from being smack dab in the middle of the end zone entrance to being behind the scoring area, out of the field of play.
As far as whether Dempsey held any sort of competitive advantage on the game-winning kick thanks to his custom shoe, he doesn’t buy into such theories . Neither did ESPN’s Sport Science, who conducted studies on the matter years ago. Dempsey’s make remains an incredible feat and possibly the greatest kick of all time.
On December 8, 2013, kicker Matt Prater had one of his finest days. As a member of the Broncos at the time, Prater was taking on the Tennessee Titans in Denver at Mile High. Just before halftime, Hall-of-Fame quarterback Peyton Manning got the Broncos in Prater’s scoring position, which on this historic day, was at Tennessee’s 46-yard line.
Of course, kicking in the altitude where the air is thin will help a football sail to new heights, but it shouldn’t take away from Prater’s accomplishment of what once was the all-time field goal record. After all, the Broncos play at least eight games at home each season, which gives kickers a chance to break the rule any time they please. That is, if they’ve got the leg.
Prater’s kick broke a record held for 43 years, but it’s no longer the longest FG in NFL history.
A tough 0-2 start for the 2021 Detroit Lions got even tougher when Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker connected on a 66-yard field goal kick as time expired for the win. Tucker’s kick set a new record for the longest field goal in NFL history.
There’s a good chance Tucker’s kick remains as the NFL field goal record for a number of years. Many have tried, but none have come close. Thanks to Tucker, now the next time someone asks, “What’s the longest field goal in NFL history?” many football fans will have an answer.
Although all NFL kicks are spectacular, they still don’t match the longest college field goal set by Abilene Christian’s Ove Johansson in 1976 of a whopping 69 yards.
Graham Gano, who already owns a piece of history with one of the longest field goals ever, is also a part of the playoff record books. Kicking for the Carolina Panthers in 2017, Gano took the field before halftime against the New Orleans Saints. Before time expired, Gano drilled a 58-yard kick to tie the record for the longest field goal in postseason history.
Gano’s kick tied Miami Dolphins kicker Pete Stoyanovich, who hit a 58-yard field goal on the first play of the second quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs. Just behind Gano and Stoyanovich are three kickers (Mike Nugent, Wil Lutz, Greg Zuerlein) who have hit 57-yard field goals in the NFL playoffs.
As for the longest field goal in Super Bowl history, the record belongs to now-retired former Buffalo Bills kicker Steve Christie. Back in 1994, Christie made a 54-yard field goal in XXVIII at the Georgia Dome.
Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker holds the record for the longest kick of the 2022-23 NFL season, nailing a 62-yard boot at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Week 6 against the Buffalo Bills.
Butker’s boot is the longest kick in Kansas City Chiefs franchise history. Third-year kicker Matthew Wright held the previous record, which he actually set just a week before Butker topped it. Wright’s kick was a 59-yard blast, but obviously, now Butker’s the lone record-holder among Chiefs kickers regarding kicks from distance.
Poll ends in 3 days • Vote below
- Panthers - Bryce Young
- Texans - CJ Stroud
- Colts - Anthony Richardson
521 votes | https://sportsnaut.com/longest-field-goal-in-nfl-history/ | 76 |
what is the longest made field goal in nfl history | What are the longest field goal kicks in NFL history? | The 2022 NFL season is upon us, and at a time when every point matters, field goals take on an added significance. Last season, Baltimore Ravens’ kicker Justin Tucker converted the longest field goal in NFL history at 66 yards. Trailing 17-16 to the Detroit Lions in Week 3, Tucker successfully kicked a field goal that bounced off the cross bar and through the uprights to give the Ravens the victory as time expired.
Tucker’s kick broke the previous record that was set back in 2013. Cardinals kicker Matt Prater was the previous record holder with a kick of 64 yards against the Tennessee Titans. Prater, who played for the Denver Broncos at the time, converted the kick at the end of the first half to pull the Broncos within one point heading into the locker room.
The next field goal record is 63 yards and it has been achieved six different times in NFL history, most recently by Brett Maher in 2019 when the Cowboys were hosting the Philadelphia Eagles. In his three NFL seasons, Maher has kicked one 63-yard field goal and two 62-yarders. The first kick in NFL history of 63 yards happened in 1970 when Tom Dempsey of New Orleans sent a 63-yard kick through the uprights.
There are another five kickers throughout NFL history who have converted a kick of 62 yards. Earlier this season, Prater kicked a 62-yard kick against the Minnesota Vikings that had room to spare. The field goal was kicked from the center of the Cardinals’ mid-field logo and put Arizona up, 24-23, at halftime. With two of the kicking records in NFL history, Prater has established himself as a kicking legend in the NFL.
66 yards – Justin Tucker, Detroit vs. Baltimore, Sept. 26, 2021
64 yards – Matt Prater, Denver vs. Tennessee, Dec. 8, 2013
63 yards – Tom Dempsey, New Orleans vs. Detroit, Nov. 8, 1970
Jason Elam, Denver vs. Jacksonville, Oct. 25, 1998
Sebastian Janikowski, Oakland vs. Denver, Sept. 12, 2011
David Akers, San Francisco vs. Green Bay, Sept. 9, 2012
Graham Gano, Carolina vs. N.Y. Giants, Oct. 7, 2018
Brett Maher, Dallas vs. Philadelphia, Oct. 20, 2019
62 yards – Matt Prater, Arizona vs. Minnesota, Sept. 19, 2021
Matt Bryant, Tampa Bay vs. Philadelphia, Oct. 22, 2006
Stephen Gostkowski, New England vs. Oakland, Nov. 19, 2017
Brett Maher, Dallas vs. Philadelphia, Dec. 9, 2018 (OT)
Brett Maher, Dallas vs. N.Y. Jets, Oct. 13, 2019
The longest field goals in playoff history do not quite match those of the regular season, but they are not far off. The longest kick in the postseason is 58 yards and two kickers have achieved the feat: Pete Stoyanovich of the Chiefs in the team’s 1990 Wild Card game against the Dolphins and Graham Gano of the Panthers before halftime of the team’s Wild Card game vs. the Saints.
58 yards – Pete Stoyanovich, AFC-FR: Miami vs. Kansas City, 1990
Graham Gano, NFC-FR: Carolina vs. New Orleans, 2017
57 yards – Mike Nugent, AFC-FR: Cincinnati vs. Indianapolis, 2014
Wil Lutz, NFC-FR: New Orleans vs. Carolina, 2017
Greg Zuerlein, NFC: L.A. Rams vs. New Orleans, 2018
56 yards – Mason Crosby, NFC-D: Green Bay vs. Dallas, 2016
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HOUSTON—Two big stories here when I landed from Vegas:
- Drafting a franchise quarterback.
- Paying franchise-quarterback draft capital to draft a defensive end.
There’s no other way to put it: After picking C.J. Stroud second overall, the Texans traded up nine slots, from 12 to three in the first round, to take Alabama defensive end Will Anderson . Houston GM Nick Caserio traded 12 and 34 this year and first- and third-round picks next year to just barely squeeze the trade into the NFL’s 10-minute window for the third pick. As I explain in the next item about Arizona’s draft, Houston could be picking very early next year—which will put a white hot spotlight of pressure on Anderson.
Caserio told me at NRG Stadium that Stroud was clearly the team’s target at two. He’d had some discussions with Cards GM Monti Ossenfort about possibly moving from 12 to three. “Then,” Caserio said, “it happened pretty quickly when they were on the clock.”
The deal got done and all parties notified, he said, with “close to a minute” left. So the Texans got a player they hope will be their franchise QB, and they got the best defensive player on their board. That is one heck of a night’s work. The price, of course, is denuding the 2024 draft when the Texans might wish they had two first-round picks and four in the first three rounds—instead of now just one first-round pick, one second- and no thirds.
But – and there is a big but – you should have been at the Texans’ facility in the basement of NRG Stadium late Friday afternoon, when Stroud and Anderson put on a show of humility and team-firstness that had to make Texans fans so weary of losing (a league-worst 11-38-1 in the last three years) happy for the first time since the Wild Card win over Buffalo three years ago.
Stroud and Anderson came with their families and made it clear they were all-in on going to a losing team after years of nothing but winning in college. Afterward, Stroud told me: “That’s what life is about, working to build something good. That’s what I’m here to help this team do. I’m ready for it.”
The Texans have asked Stroud to let the S-2 Test controversy go, but he got a couple last licks in on it. A player who played the way Stroud did—particularly in putting up 41 points in his superb final college game in the playoff against Georgia—is not a player who can’t process, or can’t ID a defense. I understand using every tool in the bag to analyze players before the draft, and I’d check out why Stroud scored low on the test. But to think it’s a good indicator of future failure—I mean, watch the games he’s played.
We stood in a hallway just off the Texans’ locker room for 12 minutes and I asked him about what he’s learned from the last three months.
“Humility is something I’m not afraid of,” Stroud said. “It’s something I’m accustomed to. This was all probably just a humble moment God wanted me to go through.
“ A lot of people haven’t played the sport, and I mean critics are gonna critique. For me I know the film speaks for itself. Everything that I’ve done in college, I’ve been very consistent. I think I’ve been one of the most consistent players in college football for the last two years. If you turn on the tape, you can see, you can answer the questions. But those who don’t understand tape might want to go to other things and analyze other things. They’re more than welcome to do such. But the people who are making the choices and the picks, they knew what I can do. They understood the IQ that I do have.
“I have a great memory when it comes to football,” Stroud added. “I feel like there’s different ways to be geniuses. You don’t just have to be book smart. You can be analytics smart. You can be numbers smart. You can be football smart. I really think that there’s different types of ways to be smart. That’s something that I pride myself on. And I am book smart. I did have over a 3.0 in college. I had over a 3.0 in high school. I know that I can think. I can process very, very fast. The film, you can see me going from first option to second and then back to one and then to three to four if I have to. I can check down. I can use my feet.
“But, you know, everything happens for a reason. I’m not upset. I’m actually blessed, I’m super blessed to be a Texan. Number two overall pick in the NFL draft, man. A little kid from the [California] Inland Empire. All smiles, man. I ain’t tripping about this.”
Good attitude to have. But at the same time, I could feel it: C.J. Stroud will remember this pre-draft process. And for the Texans, that bit of motivation will be a very good thing.
HENDERSON, Nev.—Just before noon on Thursday, hours before the start of the NFL Draft, Raiders coach Josh McDaniels popped into GM Dave Ziegler ’s office for one last bit of strategy talk. The team’s draft board had been set with finality Wednesday, after three months of debate. The Raiders, after conversations with teams above them about trading up from number seven in the first round, decided to stay in their slot, barring a surprise.
“What we need is for three quarterbacks to go before we pick,” McDaniels said.
It seemed logical, with Carolina going Bryce Young at number one and then Houston at two and Indianapolis at four and Seattle at five all in the QB market. But nothing in this draft after Carolina was a sure thing. All McDaniels and Ziegler knew was that these four non-QBs sat at the top of their board a short spiral away, graded closely:
But as Ziegler and McDaniels hashed it out, and McDaniels talked about the latest intel he’d heard about the top six (“I hope I’ll have something coming in on Houston at two, but Nick’s tight,” he said, referring to Texans GM/CIA agent Nick Caserio ), they realized they were just like the rest of America: They doubted Houston would pick a quarterback at two, they didn’t know which GM was fixing to pay a ransom to trade up with Arizona at three, they didn’t know which quarterback Indianapolis would choose at four, and they didn’t know if Seattle would go QB or best defensive weapon at five.
No surprise, all this mystery. This is the modern draft, where lips are no longer loose, where mock drafts are a mockery of reality. It sounds counterintuitive, but in the hours before the NFL Draft, the people running drafts for $6 billion franchises didn’t know much more than the rest of us. Ziegler and McDaniels did know by staying put—and they would get a phone call that surprised and tempted them minutes before their pick—they were not in control of their fate. They needed help. The Raiders needed two teams post-Carolina to pick passers in the next five picks. Likely. Not certain.
At 4:43 p.m. Pacific Time, Ziegler was on his way into the draft room, a large square conference room on the third floor of the Raiders’ facility six miles west of the Vegas Strip. He stopped by the floor-to-ceiling photograph of the man who lords over this franchise 12 years after his death, and Ziegler patted the photograph of Al Davis .
“Goosebumps,” Ziegler said. “I feel his presence every day.”
Then Ziegler—47, in gray suit, black Oxford shirt, no tie, white and black sneakers—entered the draft room, where 13 scouts, personnel people, one coach and one owner would plot the immediate future of Al Davis’ team. At 4:59 p.m., 11 minutes before the draft kicked off, owner Mark Davis slipped into the room, in his white satin Raiders jacket and stonewashed faded jeans.
“Gameday, baby!” Son of Al announced to the room.
Gameday, as Mark Davis said. “We’re still undefeated!” Davis said as Roger Goodell kicked off the draft. One wall taken up entirely with the draft board, ranking the players by position from top to bottom, on magnetic cards, the old-school way. One wall, controlled by pro personnel director Dwayne Joseph , with pick-by-pick order and team-by-team needs that change with every pick. One wall, which McDaniels, Ziegler, assistant GM Champ Kelly and Davis face, with three things: a big TV tuned to the draft, computerized pick-by-pick directly from the league, so it’s faster than what you see on TV, and a constantly updated list of trade discussions with draft-trade charts showing trade proposals broken down by a value chart.
Kelly, Ziegler (cell phone to his ear at least half of the evening), McDaniels, Davis, left to right in front of the room, in swivel chairs, able to look ahead at trade possibilities or back at the state of the draft board. Ziegler flitted from senior personnel adviser Shaun Herock to McDaniels to Davis to Kelly to director of football analytics David Christoff to senior national scouts DuJuan Daniels, Andy Dengler and Lenny McGill , having mostly hushed conversations.
5:18 p.m. PT: Panthers picked Young. “This is where the draft starts,” Ziegler, stating the obvious, said.
Four minutes later, the tinny voice from draft headquarters said, “Houston has made its pick. Arizona now on the clock.” All eyes turn to the board where the pick will show up first. C.J. Stroud , QB, Ohio State popped onto the screen. “Oooooh,” someone in the room said. Seven minutes passed. Arizona traded down to 12 with Houston. Big compensation: For this pick and a fourth- this year, the Texans gave the Colts the 12 th and 33 rd overall picks this year and their first- and third-round picks next year.
5:32 p.m.: Will Anderson to Houston at three. One Vegas target down.
5:33 p.m.: Ziegler on his cell, briefly. Ziegler to McDaniels in a hushed tone: “Arizona wants to trade back up.”
Ziegler and McDaniels stared at the trade-value board in the back of the room, analyzing trade possibilities—the values, plus or minus for the Raiders, based on the numerical values Ziegler assigns to each pick:
1-7 down to 1-12
Potential Counters
+177 ARI sends 2-33, LV gives back 4 th (109)
+68 ARI sends 2-33 and 6-213, LV gives back 3-100 and 4-109
+30 ARI sends 2-33, LV gives back 3-70
At 5:37 p.m., Anthony Richardson , the Florida quarterback, got picked by the Colts. The third quarterback was off the board. McDaniels beamed. He and Ziegler slapped hands. Now the Raiders were sure to get one of their four guys.
5:42 p.m.: Cards GM Monti Ossenfort called Ziegler. Hushed discussion, presumably exchanging potential offers for the pick. Then Ziegler and McDaniels huddled. Having the 12 th and 33 rd overall picks, to go along with the Raiders’ 38 th choice, would be tempting. “We could get [Oklahoma tackle Anton] Harrison at 12,” McDaniels said. The Raiders loved Harrison—not as much as Johnson, but enough maybe to lose the fourth non-QB they love in order to pick up the 33 rd pick. They mulled.
The phone went cold for a few minutes. Seemed obvious Ossenfort wanted Paris Johnson . He had to be dealing with Detroit, trying to get ahead of Vegas to ensure getting Johnson. Smart move by Ossenfort, choosing not to close a deal for the seventh pick and instead dealing for the sixth–ensuring that the Cards would get the tackle they wanted.
5:47 p.m.: Witherspoon to Seattle at five. Detroit up. No action on Ziegler’s phone. Not surprising. Arizona was targeting Johnson.
5:50 p.m.: Tinny voice from Draft HQ: “Detroit has traded its pick to Arizona. Arizona is on the clock.” For Vegas, there goes day-one starting right tackle Paris Johnson.
5:54 p.m. Paris Johnson to Arizona. “Las Vegas is on the clock,” tinny voice says.
So no real drama. The plan was preordained. There was no real debate now, no discussion about moving. Only this:
5:58 p.m.: “Tyree, this is coach McDaniels. We’re gonna turn the pick in here, and you’re gonna be a Raider.”
In a lull in front of the room, McDaniels said quietly: “Our board was right. We needed three quarterbacks to go, and we’re so happy we got one of the four non-quarterbacks who were our top-rated guys on the board. Look, we gotta rush the passer. We gotta go get [ Patrick] Mahomes and [ Justin] Herbert . That’s four games a year for the next few years against these great young quarterbacks. And the AFC is full of these great young quarterbacks. This is a great outcome for us.”
This is the draft. The Raiders needed long-term help opposite Maxx Crosby (edge player Chandler Jones is 33), and Anderson or Wilson would have been great. Witherspoon would have been great to add to a needy secondary. Johnson would have been great to bookend Kolton Miller . It’s capricious. The choice wasn’t up to Ziegler; other teams decided for him. But the vibe in the room, the smiles, showed this staff loves Wilson, even with the foot injury that made him an iffy candidate to some teams.
In his office 20 minutes later, McDaniels waited to be connected to Wilson to converse. “I mean, hallelujah,” McDaniels said. “His motivation, his drive, how he handles adversity … off the charts. We value the TAP test (a test in the pre-draft process that measures mental toughness, drive and composure under pressure), and Tyree got one of the highest grades on it, a Green plus-plus. He’ll fit in great here.”
McDaniels’ football ops guy, Tom Jones , walked in with a phone. Wilson. “Tyree, welcome to the nation,” McDaniels said. “Dude, I am so excited you’re a Raider. I know you’re gonna help us win a lot of games. So, just wanted to touch base on a few things. You’re gonna talk to the media here in a bit. Wanted to give you a few points. Be humble, which you are. Stay away from predictions—that way, you won’t have to eat them later. Don’t talk about timelines with your foot. You don’t want your draft story to be all about your foot. Now, you got a fan base that’s second to none. They’re gonna love you. Just express how excited you—which I know you are.”
Back in the Raiders draft room, after pick 19, Ziegler said, “Josh, you wanna look at trades?” On the board were four players with similar grades: Georgia defensive end Nolan Smith , Maryland corner Deonte Banks , Harrison the Oklahoma tackle, and Arkansas linebacker Drew Sanders . Close to them: Notre Dame tight end Michael Mayer .
But there wasn’t much enthusiasm to deal after Banks and Harrison went off the board. Ziegler made a couple of calls about moving up to fill a hole left by the trade of tight end Darren Waller with Mayer, but never got far—or appeared enthusiastic to do it.
7:36 p.m.: Crosby sent a video message to Wilson, and in the draft room, Ziegler had it and he showed it to McDaniels and Davis on his phone. The tenor of the message: Congrats, Tyree. Now, time to go work, son. “Love it,” McDaniels said.
There are lulls in all drafts, and after Banks and Harrison went at 24 and 27, this was the Raider lull. Davis kept things interesting. When the TV showed a crestfallen Will Levis , undrafted, still in the green room in Kansas City, he said: “Someone should tell him careers are not made on draft day. Tell him this happened to Aaron Rodgers too.” And when he looked up and saw speedy Jalin Hyatt , the wide receiver, still on the board with a high Raider grade, Davis said to McDaniels: “Too bad we don’t have a need at receiver. Can he run?”
“Like the wind,” McDaniels said.
Davis started laughing, like he could sense Ziegler and McDaniels did not want him to start lobbying for the best speed receiver in the draft.
“It’s part of my DNA,” Davis said. “I see a fast receiver, I want him. I can’t help it.” Spoken like his father’s son.
As the round wound down, quietly, I asked Davis what he thought of Ziegler and McDaniels, the ex-Pats, entering year two of their regime. “I like ‘em,” he said. “When we hired them, everybody thought we were trying to re-create the Patriots. That wasn’t it. I was trying to find two great football men. Now, this is their chance to build something. They’re young, they love football, and I’m thrilled with them. It’s a huge weekend for them.
“My dad’s drafts were different—a lot more tense.”
“The tense conversations were already had,” McDaniels said later. “We had them in the last six weeks. We ended up with the board where we all felt it needed to be.”
8:30 p.m.: Two picks left, including Kansas City at 31. Mayer on the mind in the draft room. “If KC comes back to us,” Ziegler said, “wanna do it?”
“Yes,” said McDaniels.
“Best tight end in the draft,” Kelly said.
Short conversation with KC. “Not gonna work,” Ziegler said. KC would have given 31 and 217 (sixth round) for 38 and 70, a net on the points chart of minus-147. “Too many players we like,” Ziegler said. (Ziegler, on Friday, traded from 38 to 35 with the Colts to snag Mayer, the tight end Vegas wanted above all.)
An hour after the round ended, McDaniels and Ziegler unwound in the draft room. Wilson underwent surgery by the top athletic foot surgeon in the field, Dr. Robert Anderson, to repair a fracture last Nov. 21. Six weeks ago, Anderson sent a letter to each team, saying Wilson has responded “extremely well” to surgery. The Raiders expect Wilson to be ready to play this season on schedule. “Our doctors ultimately felt like it was something that we were going to be okay with,” Ziegler said. “If we wouldn’t have felt comfortable with it, we wouldn’t have [picked Wilson].”
In all, the needy Raiders, trying to rebound from a few years of failed top picks, got two likely starters out of the draft—Wilson and Mayer. After that, it’s up in the air, as all drafts are. The Raiders got their presumptive backup to Jimmy Garoppolo , Aidan O’Connell , in the middle of the fourth round—about two rounds earlier than the consensus of where he deserved to go. They got a speed cornerback, Banks’ teammate Jakorian Bennett , with pick 104, and the Raiders hope he plays early.
Mel Kiper, for one, liked the first two picks but the others, not so much. After the top two, Kiper said, “I don’t see value with the rest of this class.”
That’s why they play the games. In three years, we’ll see if Ziegler picked right in the NFL’s 88 th draft. | https://sports.nbcsports.com/2022/10/04/what-are-the-longest-field-goal-in-nfl-history/ | 76 |
what is the longest made field goal in nfl history | 10 longest field goals in NFL history | In 2021, Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker etched his name into the record books by kicking the longest field goal in NFL history, keeping the Detroit Lions winless for another week.
Tucker’s kick broke the previous field-goal record set in 2013, but there have been several 60-plus-yard kicks in the league’s storied history.
In reverse order, here are the longest FGs in NFL history. And swipe down to the bottom for a bonus – the longest college football field goal and the longest field goal in playoff history.
NFL Network Analyst Marc Ross discusses his career and the latest NFL headlines
00:00
/
24:35
Video Carousel - Carousel #16636 - 16668
There are a total of six 62-yard kicks that have been made in NFL history. Brett Maher has two of them. Most recently, Harrison Butker hit a 62-yard FG in Week 6 of the 2022 season. Stephen Gostkowski’s 62-yard field goal in 2017 came at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, which is 7,280 feet above sea level. The longtime Patriots special teamer’s previous longest kick was 57 yards.
Though he played for five different teams throughout his career, Matt Bryant will never forget the time he nailed a 62-yard game-winning kick with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2006. Although it looked to be about a mile away as he lined up, Bryant put just the right amount of mustard on the ball to send it through the uprights.
Playing their NFC East rivals, the Dallas Cowboys lined up just before halftime to launch a 63-yard bomb from Brett Maher. The NBC broadcast revealed the kick actually would have been good from 66 yards at AT&T Stadium, which would have been the longest field goal in NFL history. While many other longest field goals have come at Mile High, this one occurred indoors at Jerry World, and it even provides hope for a longer kick someday, being that it would have gone through at a longer distance.
Graham Gano may be making kicks for the New York Giants these days, but once upon a time, not so long ago, he upset their fans in dramatic fashion. With the wind gusting to the east at roughly six miles per hour, Gano lined up for a 63-yard boot with just one second on the clock. Once the ball took flight, it took a wicked curve, but only enough to land in the corner pocket of the kicking net. It was a thing of beauty.
David Akers made a lot of fantastic kicks in his 16-year NFL career, but none were longer than his 63-yard bounce off the Lambeau Field crossbars in 2012. The San Francisco 49ers would go on to lose in the Super Bowl at the end of the season, but this kick in Week 1 was a great way to start the year for the lefty kicker.
The only kicker to ever be taken in the first round of an NFL Draft, Sebastian “Seabass” Janikowski, was built differently. Literally. The 6-foot-1 inch, 260-pound Polish native knew how to put some oomph on a ball. While he only made one Pro Bowl in his 18-year career, Seabass left a lasting impression. Perhaps the left-footed special teams savant’s most notable kick was his 63-yard smash at Mile High in 2011.
Jason Elam was a great NFL kicker who made three Pro Bowls and is a two-time Super Bowl champion. Playing nearly his entire 17-year career with the Denver Broncos , he had several opportunities to make history. On October 25, 1998, Elam did just that, hitting a 63-yard kick at Mile High Stadium, 5,200 feet above sea level. It was the first kick to tie Tom Dempsey’s long-held record.
Fittingly landing at No. 3, there are three very notable factors that separate what Tom Dempsey did back in 1970 from the rest of the pack.
First, Dempsey was born without toes on his right foot. Because of this, Dempsey wore a custom-built flat-front kicking boot that is now located in Canton, Ohio , at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Nowadays, there’s a Tom Dempsey rule in place ensuring any shoe worn by a player with an artificial limb must have a kicking surface resembling a normal kicking shoe.
Second, Dempsey’s kicking approach is completely different than anything you’ll see in American football today. Back then, it was more common for kickers to line up a few steps directly behind the ball instead of the methods used today, where they approach the ball from an angle.
The final obvious difference is the goalposts. In 1974, the NFL moved the goalposts from being smack dab in the middle of the end zone entrance to being behind the scoring area, out of the field of play.
As far as whether Dempsey held any sort of competitive advantage on the game-winning kick thanks to his custom shoe, he doesn’t buy into such theories . Neither did ESPN’s Sport Science, who conducted studies on the matter years ago. Dempsey’s make remains an incredible feat and possibly the greatest kick of all time.
On December 8, 2013, kicker Matt Prater had one of his finest days. As a member of the Broncos at the time, Prater was taking on the Tennessee Titans in Denver at Mile High. Just before halftime, Hall-of-Fame quarterback Peyton Manning got the Broncos in Prater’s scoring position, which on this historic day, was at Tennessee’s 46-yard line.
Of course, kicking in the altitude where the air is thin will help a football sail to new heights, but it shouldn’t take away from Prater’s accomplishment of what once was the all-time field goal record. After all, the Broncos play at least eight games at home each season, which gives kickers a chance to break the rule any time they please. That is, if they’ve got the leg.
Prater’s kick broke a record held for 43 years, but it’s no longer the longest FG in NFL history.
A tough 0-2 start for the 2021 Detroit Lions got even tougher when Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker connected on a 66-yard field goal kick as time expired for the win. Tucker’s kick set a new record for the longest field goal in NFL history.
There’s a good chance Tucker’s kick remains as the NFL field goal record for a number of years. Many have tried, but none have come close. Thanks to Tucker, now the next time someone asks, “What’s the longest field goal in NFL history?” many football fans will have an answer.
Although all NFL kicks are spectacular, they still don’t match the longest college field goal set by Abilene Christian’s Ove Johansson in 1976 of a whopping 69 yards.
Graham Gano, who already owns a piece of history with one of the longest field goals ever, is also a part of the playoff record books. Kicking for the Carolina Panthers in 2017, Gano took the field before halftime against the New Orleans Saints. Before time expired, Gano drilled a 58-yard kick to tie the record for the longest field goal in postseason history.
Gano’s kick tied Miami Dolphins kicker Pete Stoyanovich, who hit a 58-yard field goal on the first play of the second quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs. Just behind Gano and Stoyanovich are three kickers (Mike Nugent, Wil Lutz, Greg Zuerlein) who have hit 57-yard field goals in the NFL playoffs.
As for the longest field goal in Super Bowl history, the record belongs to now-retired former Buffalo Bills kicker Steve Christie. Back in 1994, Christie made a 54-yard field goal in XXVIII at the Georgia Dome.
Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker holds the record for the longest kick of the 2022-23 NFL season, nailing a 62-yard boot at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Week 6 against the Buffalo Bills.
Butker’s boot is the longest kick in Kansas City Chiefs franchise history. Third-year kicker Matthew Wright held the previous record, which he actually set just a week before Butker topped it. Wright’s kick was a 59-yard blast, but obviously, now Butker’s the lone record-holder among Chiefs kickers regarding kicks from distance.
Poll ends in 3 days • Vote below
- Panthers - Bryce Young
- Texans - CJ Stroud
- Colts - Anthony Richardson
521 votes | https://sportsnaut.com/longest-field-goal-in-nfl-history/ | 76 |
what is the longest made field goal in nfl history | Can't-Miss Play: Tucker hits 66-yard field goal to win the game | Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker's game-winning, 66-yard field goal is the longest field goal in NFL history.
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what is the longest made field goal in nfl history | 10 longest field goals in NFL history | In 2021, Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker etched his name into the record books by kicking the longest field goal in NFL history, keeping the Detroit Lions winless for another week.
Tucker’s kick broke the previous field-goal record set in 2013, but there have been several 60-plus-yard kicks in the league’s storied history.
In reverse order, here are the longest FGs in NFL history. And swipe down to the bottom for a bonus – the longest college football field goal and the longest field goal in playoff history.
NFL Network Analyst Marc Ross discusses his career and the latest NFL headlines
00:00
/
24:35
Video Carousel - Carousel #16636 - 16668
There are a total of six 62-yard kicks that have been made in NFL history. Brett Maher has two of them. Most recently, Harrison Butker hit a 62-yard FG in Week 6 of the 2022 season. Stephen Gostkowski’s 62-yard field goal in 2017 came at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, which is 7,280 feet above sea level. The longtime Patriots special teamer’s previous longest kick was 57 yards.
Though he played for five different teams throughout his career, Matt Bryant will never forget the time he nailed a 62-yard game-winning kick with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2006. Although it looked to be about a mile away as he lined up, Bryant put just the right amount of mustard on the ball to send it through the uprights.
Playing their NFC East rivals, the Dallas Cowboys lined up just before halftime to launch a 63-yard bomb from Brett Maher. The NBC broadcast revealed the kick actually would have been good from 66 yards at AT&T Stadium, which would have been the longest field goal in NFL history. While many other longest field goals have come at Mile High, this one occurred indoors at Jerry World, and it even provides hope for a longer kick someday, being that it would have gone through at a longer distance.
Graham Gano may be making kicks for the New York Giants these days, but once upon a time, not so long ago, he upset their fans in dramatic fashion. With the wind gusting to the east at roughly six miles per hour, Gano lined up for a 63-yard boot with just one second on the clock. Once the ball took flight, it took a wicked curve, but only enough to land in the corner pocket of the kicking net. It was a thing of beauty.
David Akers made a lot of fantastic kicks in his 16-year NFL career, but none were longer than his 63-yard bounce off the Lambeau Field crossbars in 2012. The San Francisco 49ers would go on to lose in the Super Bowl at the end of the season, but this kick in Week 1 was a great way to start the year for the lefty kicker.
The only kicker to ever be taken in the first round of an NFL Draft, Sebastian “Seabass” Janikowski, was built differently. Literally. The 6-foot-1 inch, 260-pound Polish native knew how to put some oomph on a ball. While he only made one Pro Bowl in his 18-year career, Seabass left a lasting impression. Perhaps the left-footed special teams savant’s most notable kick was his 63-yard smash at Mile High in 2011.
Jason Elam was a great NFL kicker who made three Pro Bowls and is a two-time Super Bowl champion. Playing nearly his entire 17-year career with the Denver Broncos , he had several opportunities to make history. On October 25, 1998, Elam did just that, hitting a 63-yard kick at Mile High Stadium, 5,200 feet above sea level. It was the first kick to tie Tom Dempsey’s long-held record.
Fittingly landing at No. 3, there are three very notable factors that separate what Tom Dempsey did back in 1970 from the rest of the pack.
First, Dempsey was born without toes on his right foot. Because of this, Dempsey wore a custom-built flat-front kicking boot that is now located in Canton, Ohio , at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Nowadays, there’s a Tom Dempsey rule in place ensuring any shoe worn by a player with an artificial limb must have a kicking surface resembling a normal kicking shoe.
Second, Dempsey’s kicking approach is completely different than anything you’ll see in American football today. Back then, it was more common for kickers to line up a few steps directly behind the ball instead of the methods used today, where they approach the ball from an angle.
The final obvious difference is the goalposts. In 1974, the NFL moved the goalposts from being smack dab in the middle of the end zone entrance to being behind the scoring area, out of the field of play.
As far as whether Dempsey held any sort of competitive advantage on the game-winning kick thanks to his custom shoe, he doesn’t buy into such theories . Neither did ESPN’s Sport Science, who conducted studies on the matter years ago. Dempsey’s make remains an incredible feat and possibly the greatest kick of all time.
On December 8, 2013, kicker Matt Prater had one of his finest days. As a member of the Broncos at the time, Prater was taking on the Tennessee Titans in Denver at Mile High. Just before halftime, Hall-of-Fame quarterback Peyton Manning got the Broncos in Prater’s scoring position, which on this historic day, was at Tennessee’s 46-yard line.
Of course, kicking in the altitude where the air is thin will help a football sail to new heights, but it shouldn’t take away from Prater’s accomplishment of what once was the all-time field goal record. After all, the Broncos play at least eight games at home each season, which gives kickers a chance to break the rule any time they please. That is, if they’ve got the leg.
Prater’s kick broke a record held for 43 years, but it’s no longer the longest FG in NFL history.
A tough 0-2 start for the 2021 Detroit Lions got even tougher when Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker connected on a 66-yard field goal kick as time expired for the win. Tucker’s kick set a new record for the longest field goal in NFL history.
There’s a good chance Tucker’s kick remains as the NFL field goal record for a number of years. Many have tried, but none have come close. Thanks to Tucker, now the next time someone asks, “What’s the longest field goal in NFL history?” many football fans will have an answer.
Although all NFL kicks are spectacular, they still don’t match the longest college field goal set by Abilene Christian’s Ove Johansson in 1976 of a whopping 69 yards.
Graham Gano, who already owns a piece of history with one of the longest field goals ever, is also a part of the playoff record books. Kicking for the Carolina Panthers in 2017, Gano took the field before halftime against the New Orleans Saints. Before time expired, Gano drilled a 58-yard kick to tie the record for the longest field goal in postseason history.
Gano’s kick tied Miami Dolphins kicker Pete Stoyanovich, who hit a 58-yard field goal on the first play of the second quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs. Just behind Gano and Stoyanovich are three kickers (Mike Nugent, Wil Lutz, Greg Zuerlein) who have hit 57-yard field goals in the NFL playoffs.
As for the longest field goal in Super Bowl history, the record belongs to now-retired former Buffalo Bills kicker Steve Christie. Back in 1994, Christie made a 54-yard field goal in XXVIII at the Georgia Dome.
Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker holds the record for the longest kick of the 2022-23 NFL season, nailing a 62-yard boot at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Week 6 against the Buffalo Bills.
Butker’s boot is the longest kick in Kansas City Chiefs franchise history. Third-year kicker Matthew Wright held the previous record, which he actually set just a week before Butker topped it. Wright’s kick was a 59-yard blast, but obviously, now Butker’s the lone record-holder among Chiefs kickers regarding kicks from distance.
Poll ends in 3 days • Vote below
- Panthers - Bryce Young
- Texans - CJ Stroud
- Colts - Anthony Richardson
521 votes | https://sportsnaut.com/longest-field-goal-in-nfl-history/ | 76 |
what is the longest made field goal in nfl history | NFL Field Goal Record: What is the longest field goal in NFL history? | The field goal record was actually set very recently
- SAM
A new NFL season is kicking off and, even if it's not the most impressive part of the game, field goal kicking will be as important as ever in many games in terms of determining who wins and who loses.
Having a good field goal kicker can make a huge difference, especially if they can nail a long-range NFL kick.
Here, we'll take a look at the records for the longest field goal in NFL history , which was actually set in the 2021 season.
Kickers are getting better and better, as sports science evolves and as the profession becomes more respectable and, let's face it, as it becomes better paid than it ever has been before.
As such, we've seen many impressive kicks in recent times and in 2021 we witnessed the longest field goal in NFL history.
The Baltimore Ravens ' Justin Tucker was responsible for this feat, kicking the longest field goal in NFL history from 66 yards away.
It was an extra special moment, as his kick won the game, with the Ravens having trailed the Detroit Lions 17-16 with just three seconds to play. Thanks to Tucker 's blast, which went in after bouncing off the bar, the Ravens won that game 19-17.
Obviously, Justin Tucker 's feat sparked wild celebrations among the Baltimore Ravens players, who were excited to have won the game but also to have witnessed history.
Tucker later explained that he'd tried a long-range blast in warm-ups, but that he hadn't been able to complete one then.
MORE in MARCA | https://www.marca.com/en/nfl/2022/09/10/631c41a4e2704ea23e8b45ca.html | 76 |
an account much abbreviated of the destruction of the indies sparknotes | A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary | Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” by Bartolome de Las Casas. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics.
Dominican Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas’s A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies is a primary source on the genocide of indigenous peoples during Spanish colonization of the Americas. This account of Las Casas, who spent much of his life in the New World, specifically spans the years 1509-1542, with some reference to the years between 1542 and 1552, when the book was published. The text mostly details events that occurred in present-day South America, around the islands of the Greater Antilles.
The text, originally composed in 1542, was written for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Spain and initially sent to Prince Philip II of Spain to deliver to the emperor upon publication. The book takes a strong stance against atrocities committed by the Spanish. It argues for the necessity of new legislation to protect the indigenous people of the New World from atrocity and enslavement, as well as the cessation of granting royal licenses to new groups of colonists to commit similar atrocities. Primarily an argumentative text, A Short Account does not have a cohesive narrative . It does, however, move through the decades of Spanish conquest both chronologically and geographically, detailing acts on one island or region per chapter.
Las Casas does not use a legislative or logical style to make his arguments but primarily attempts to evoke his reader’s pity for the peoples of the Americas, whom he represents as both innocent and helpless. Much of the text is therefore comprised of descriptions of atrocity the Spanish committed on indigenous communities. In each chapter Las Casas details the devastation of the islands’ populations and landscapes by the Spanish. A Dominican friar, Las Casas writes from a Christian worldview and consistently refers to the godlessness of the colonists’ action, the clear idolatry of their greed, and the divine retribution coming for Spain.
Though a relevant historical account of Spanish colonial action, the text is rhetorical and therefore cannot be read as completely true. Las Casas often embellishes death tolls and is selective in the narratives of colonialism he presents. For example, Las Casas omits the impact of disease on the indigenous population to better support his arguments against the barbarity of Spanish atrocities. Despite the text’s clear rhetorical aims, it remains an important and early primary source on the process of genocide and a stirring account of ethical objection to atrocity. By depicting the peoples of the Americas not as savages but as intellectually, morally, linguistically, and infrastructurally developed people, the text also serves as an important early source in postcolonial theory.
Study Guide! | https://www.supersummary.com/short-account-destruction-indies/summary/ | 77 |
an account much abbreviated of the destruction of the indies sparknotes | A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|Author||Bartolomé de las Casas|
|Original title||La Brevísima relación|
|Country||Spanish Empire|
|Language||Spanish|
Publication date
|1552 [1]|
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies [2] [3] ( Spanish : Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias ) is an account written by the Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas in 1542 (published in 1552) about the mistreatment of and atrocities committed against the indigenous peoples of the Americas in colonial times and sent to then Prince Philip II of Spain . [1]
Bartolomé de las Casas explains in the prologue that his fifty years of experience in Spanish colonies in the Indies granted him both moral legitimacy and accountability for writing this account. [4] In 1516, Las Casas was granted the title of Protector of the Indians by Cardinal Cisneros after he submitted a report on their population decline due to harsh labor and mistreatment by colonial officials. [5] During the time when Las Casas served as the Protector of the Indians, several clerics from the Order of Saint Jerome attempted to reform systems which used the native populace as laborers. However, Las Casas found their attempts insufficient to protect the welfare of the Indians, and returned to Spain to appeal to the Spanish monarch in 1517. [6]
From 1517 to 1540, Las Casas traveled back and forth between Spain and Spanish colonies in Latin America numerous times, struggling to find a common ground between Spanish authorities and his own attempts to improve the conditions of Indian subjects in Spanish dominions. [4] One of purposes of his travels was to continue to protest Spanish colonial mistreatment of Indians.
In 1542, after Las Casas first wrote the chronicle later known as A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies , during the hearings ordered by Charles V of Spain to resolve issues of forceful conversion and colonial exploitation of Indians, Las Casas presented the account before the members of the Council of the Indies as proof of atrocities committed upon Indians by colonial authorities. [6]
It was written for Prince Philip II of Spain . Las Casas appeals to the Prince's pathos throughout his account. One of the stated purposes for writing the account is his fear of Spain coming under divine punishment and his concern for the souls of the Native peoples. [4] The account is one of the first attempts by a Spanish writer of the colonial era to depict examples of unfair treatment that indigenous people endured in the early stages of the Spanish conquest of the Greater Antilles , particularly the island of Hispaniola . [4] De las Casas noticed that no matter where he visited, the Spanish were committing the same crimes. On the island of Hispaniola, the Spanish were herding people into a straw building and setting fire to it, burning the occupants alive. [8] In addition, "they sent the Males to the Mines to dig and bring away the Gold, which is an intolerable labor; but the Women they made use of to Manure and Till the ground, which is a toil most irksome even to Men of the strongest and most robust constitutions, allowing them no other food but Herbage, and such kind of unsubstantial nutriment, so that the Nursing Women's Milk was exsiccated and so dryed up, that the young Infants lately brought forth, all perished." [4] On Puerto Rico and Jamaica , he saw the Spanish, "with the same purpose and design they proposed to themselves in the Isle of Hispaniola, perpetrating innumerable Robberies and Villanies as before." and that "These two Isles containing six hundred thousand at least, though at this day there are scarce two hundred men to be found in either of them." [4] De las Casas also notes that what the Spanish were doing drove many natives to commit suicide. On Cuba , "By the ferocity of one Spanish Tyrant (whom I knew) above Two Hundred Indians hang'd themselves of their own accord; and a multitude of People perished by this kind of Death" and "Six Thousand Children and upward were murder'd, because they had lost their Parents who labour'd in the Mines." [4]
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies marks a significant moment in the way 21st century colonial Latin American historians would address world history. [9] By comparing what historians know today about colonial Latin America, with the descriptions and recommendations given by De Las Casas in A Short Account , they are able to understand more about Europeans biases, prejudices, and outlook on the colonization of the Americas. De Las Casas' A Short Account , was a revised history of the conquest, in the way that he includes facts that would aid him in his argument. [9] Political scientist Diego von Vacano argued De Las Casas' A Short Account , revealed the ways 16th century scholars used rhetoric to lobby for changes during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. [9] In his earlier writings De Las Casas advocated the defense of indigenous peoples by recommending the use of African slaves as an alternative to indigenous people, but later repudiated the suggestion and condemned both the enslavement of indigenous people and Africans. De Las Casas supported the overall Spanish colonial experiment in the Americas, while condemning the abuse of the indigenous people. [ citation needed ]
De Las Casas used the term "New World" to look at the Americas and Western hemisphere and did not use the term or idea of the "ancient world" as a way to describe Spain, Europe and the Eastern hemisphere. [9] This linguistic shift marked a transition in historical text and thought by moving away from the medieval view of geography and world history to a more modern view. [9] De Las Casas addressed the new population in the Americas and introduced it in a political way in addressing the Spanish King. [9] De Las Casas introduced and presented the people of the Americas in the context of the Spanish empire. [9]
De Las Casas is also noted as one of the first writers and thinkers to racialize the indigenous people of the Americas. [9] In his attempt to defend the indigenous people, he argues that they are part of the human race by describing their bodies, skin color, language and culture. [9] In A Short Account , De Las Casas racialized the indigenous people and created a new understanding for them in the context and hierarchy of European ideas of race. [9]
His account was responsible for the passage of the new Spanish colonial laws known as the New Laws of 1542 , which abolished native slavery for the first time in European colonial history and led to the Valladolid debate . [ citation needed ] This text was used as a way to convince the King of Spain of the cruelties caused by the Spanish Conquistadors. [10] As such, he did not focus on or mention the effects of disease as a cause of suffering for the native people. [10] Instead, De Las Casas focused on the suffering caused by the Spanish conquistadors so that the King would address the conquistadors' behavior. [10]
The account was republished in 1620, by Jan Evertszoon Cloppenburch , alongside the book Origin and progress of the disturbances in the Netherlands by Dutch historian Johannes Gysius . [1] The book was frequently reprinted, alone or in combination with other works, in the Netherlands and in other countries struggling against the power of Spain in Europe and the Americas. [1] The title in English, German, Dutch, and most languages, was manipulated to farther insist on the detrimental consequences of the Spanish conquest. [ citation needed ] The images described by Las Casas were later depicted by Theodor de Bry in copper plate engravings that contributed to the Spanish Black Legend .
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies has been acclaimed by scholars for its rhetorical effect. De Las Casas juxtaposes the inhumane mistreatment of the Spanish conquistadors with the inherent goodness of the indigenous people in an exaggerated manner in his strategy of persuasion. De Las Casas revised and re-edited this book in order to make his best argument in favor of the indigenous people. [9] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_Account_of_the_Destruction_of_the_Indies | 77 |
an account much abbreviated of the destruction of the indies sparknotes | A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary | Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” by Bartolome de Las Casas. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics.
Dominican Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas’s A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies is a primary source on the genocide of indigenous peoples during Spanish colonization of the Americas. This account of Las Casas, who spent much of his life in the New World, specifically spans the years 1509-1542, with some reference to the years between 1542 and 1552, when the book was published. The text mostly details events that occurred in present-day South America, around the islands of the Greater Antilles.
The text, originally composed in 1542, was written for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Spain and initially sent to Prince Philip II of Spain to deliver to the emperor upon publication. The book takes a strong stance against atrocities committed by the Spanish. It argues for the necessity of new legislation to protect the indigenous people of the New World from atrocity and enslavement, as well as the cessation of granting royal licenses to new groups of colonists to commit similar atrocities. Primarily an argumentative text, A Short Account does not have a cohesive narrative . It does, however, move through the decades of Spanish conquest both chronologically and geographically, detailing acts on one island or region per chapter.
Las Casas does not use a legislative or logical style to make his arguments but primarily attempts to evoke his reader’s pity for the peoples of the Americas, whom he represents as both innocent and helpless. Much of the text is therefore comprised of descriptions of atrocity the Spanish committed on indigenous communities. In each chapter Las Casas details the devastation of the islands’ populations and landscapes by the Spanish. A Dominican friar, Las Casas writes from a Christian worldview and consistently refers to the godlessness of the colonists’ action, the clear idolatry of their greed, and the divine retribution coming for Spain.
Though a relevant historical account of Spanish colonial action, the text is rhetorical and therefore cannot be read as completely true. Las Casas often embellishes death tolls and is selective in the narratives of colonialism he presents. For example, Las Casas omits the impact of disease on the indigenous population to better support his arguments against the barbarity of Spanish atrocities. Despite the text’s clear rhetorical aims, it remains an important and early primary source on the process of genocide and a stirring account of ethical objection to atrocity. By depicting the peoples of the Americas not as savages but as intellectually, morally, linguistically, and infrastructurally developed people, the text also serves as an important early source in postcolonial theory.
Study Guide! | https://www.supersummary.com/short-account-destruction-indies/summary/ | 77 |
an account much abbreviated of the destruction of the indies sparknotes | A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|Author||Bartolomé de las Casas|
|Original title||La Brevísima relación|
|Country||Spanish Empire|
|Language||Spanish|
Publication date
|1552 [1]|
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies [2] [3] ( Spanish : Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias ) is an account written by the Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas in 1542 (published in 1552) about the mistreatment of and atrocities committed against the indigenous peoples of the Americas in colonial times and sent to then Prince Philip II of Spain . [1]
Bartolomé de las Casas explains in the prologue that his fifty years of experience in Spanish colonies in the Indies granted him both moral legitimacy and accountability for writing this account. [4] In 1516, Las Casas was granted the title of Protector of the Indians by Cardinal Cisneros after he submitted a report on their population decline due to harsh labor and mistreatment by colonial officials. [5] During the time when Las Casas served as the Protector of the Indians, several clerics from the Order of Saint Jerome attempted to reform systems which used the native populace as laborers. However, Las Casas found their attempts insufficient to protect the welfare of the Indians, and returned to Spain to appeal to the Spanish monarch in 1517. [6]
From 1517 to 1540, Las Casas traveled back and forth between Spain and Spanish colonies in Latin America numerous times, struggling to find a common ground between Spanish authorities and his own attempts to improve the conditions of Indian subjects in Spanish dominions. [4] One of purposes of his travels was to continue to protest Spanish colonial mistreatment of Indians.
In 1542, after Las Casas first wrote the chronicle later known as A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies , during the hearings ordered by Charles V of Spain to resolve issues of forceful conversion and colonial exploitation of Indians, Las Casas presented the account before the members of the Council of the Indies as proof of atrocities committed upon Indians by colonial authorities. [6]
It was written for Prince Philip II of Spain . Las Casas appeals to the Prince's pathos throughout his account. One of the stated purposes for writing the account is his fear of Spain coming under divine punishment and his concern for the souls of the Native peoples. [4] The account is one of the first attempts by a Spanish writer of the colonial era to depict examples of unfair treatment that indigenous people endured in the early stages of the Spanish conquest of the Greater Antilles , particularly the island of Hispaniola . [4] De las Casas noticed that no matter where he visited, the Spanish were committing the same crimes. On the island of Hispaniola, the Spanish were herding people into a straw building and setting fire to it, burning the occupants alive. [8] In addition, "they sent the Males to the Mines to dig and bring away the Gold, which is an intolerable labor; but the Women they made use of to Manure and Till the ground, which is a toil most irksome even to Men of the strongest and most robust constitutions, allowing them no other food but Herbage, and such kind of unsubstantial nutriment, so that the Nursing Women's Milk was exsiccated and so dryed up, that the young Infants lately brought forth, all perished." [4] On Puerto Rico and Jamaica , he saw the Spanish, "with the same purpose and design they proposed to themselves in the Isle of Hispaniola, perpetrating innumerable Robberies and Villanies as before." and that "These two Isles containing six hundred thousand at least, though at this day there are scarce two hundred men to be found in either of them." [4] De las Casas also notes that what the Spanish were doing drove many natives to commit suicide. On Cuba , "By the ferocity of one Spanish Tyrant (whom I knew) above Two Hundred Indians hang'd themselves of their own accord; and a multitude of People perished by this kind of Death" and "Six Thousand Children and upward were murder'd, because they had lost their Parents who labour'd in the Mines." [4]
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies marks a significant moment in the way 21st century colonial Latin American historians would address world history. [9] By comparing what historians know today about colonial Latin America, with the descriptions and recommendations given by De Las Casas in A Short Account , they are able to understand more about Europeans biases, prejudices, and outlook on the colonization of the Americas. De Las Casas' A Short Account , was a revised history of the conquest, in the way that he includes facts that would aid him in his argument. [9] Political scientist Diego von Vacano argued De Las Casas' A Short Account , revealed the ways 16th century scholars used rhetoric to lobby for changes during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. [9] In his earlier writings De Las Casas advocated the defense of indigenous peoples by recommending the use of African slaves as an alternative to indigenous people, but later repudiated the suggestion and condemned both the enslavement of indigenous people and Africans. De Las Casas supported the overall Spanish colonial experiment in the Americas, while condemning the abuse of the indigenous people. [ citation needed ]
De Las Casas used the term "New World" to look at the Americas and Western hemisphere and did not use the term or idea of the "ancient world" as a way to describe Spain, Europe and the Eastern hemisphere. [9] This linguistic shift marked a transition in historical text and thought by moving away from the medieval view of geography and world history to a more modern view. [9] De Las Casas addressed the new population in the Americas and introduced it in a political way in addressing the Spanish King. [9] De Las Casas introduced and presented the people of the Americas in the context of the Spanish empire. [9]
De Las Casas is also noted as one of the first writers and thinkers to racialize the indigenous people of the Americas. [9] In his attempt to defend the indigenous people, he argues that they are part of the human race by describing their bodies, skin color, language and culture. [9] In A Short Account , De Las Casas racialized the indigenous people and created a new understanding for them in the context and hierarchy of European ideas of race. [9]
His account was responsible for the passage of the new Spanish colonial laws known as the New Laws of 1542 , which abolished native slavery for the first time in European colonial history and led to the Valladolid debate . [ citation needed ] This text was used as a way to convince the King of Spain of the cruelties caused by the Spanish Conquistadors. [10] As such, he did not focus on or mention the effects of disease as a cause of suffering for the native people. [10] Instead, De Las Casas focused on the suffering caused by the Spanish conquistadors so that the King would address the conquistadors' behavior. [10]
The account was republished in 1620, by Jan Evertszoon Cloppenburch , alongside the book Origin and progress of the disturbances in the Netherlands by Dutch historian Johannes Gysius . [1] The book was frequently reprinted, alone or in combination with other works, in the Netherlands and in other countries struggling against the power of Spain in Europe and the Americas. [1] The title in English, German, Dutch, and most languages, was manipulated to farther insist on the detrimental consequences of the Spanish conquest. [ citation needed ] The images described by Las Casas were later depicted by Theodor de Bry in copper plate engravings that contributed to the Spanish Black Legend .
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies has been acclaimed by scholars for its rhetorical effect. De Las Casas juxtaposes the inhumane mistreatment of the Spanish conquistadors with the inherent goodness of the indigenous people in an exaggerated manner in his strategy of persuasion. De Las Casas revised and re-edited this book in order to make his best argument in favor of the indigenous people. [9] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_Account_of_the_Destruction_of_the_Indies | 77 |
an account much abbreviated of the destruction of the indies sparknotes | Bartolomé de Las Casas' Account of the Destruction of the Indies - Bill of Rights Institute | Note: This lesson is adapted from materials contained in the Bill of Rights Institute’s U.S. History resource entitled Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: A History of the American Experiment.
Note: This lesson is adapted from materials contained in the Bill of Rights Institute’s U.S. History resource entitled Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: A History of the American Experiment. This free online resource covers 1491 to the present day, is aligned to the College Boards AP U.S. history framework, and is available for use this school year. To learn more and to receive updates, visit our website .
Bartolomé de Las Casas was a Dominican priest who was one of the first Spanish settlers in the New World. After participating in the conquest of Cuba, Las Casas freed his own slaves and spoke out against Spanish cruelties and injustices in the empire. He argued for the equal humanity and natural rights of the Native Americans. Las Casas worked for the conversion of Native Americans to Christianity and for their better treatment. Pope Paul III agreed and issued an edict in 1537 banning the enslavement of Native Americans. The Spanish crown also agreed and banned in the 1542 New Laws the enslavement of Native American. In 1550, the crown abolished the encomienda system, which had allowed the Spanish to seize Native Americans’ lands and force their labor. In 1552, Las Casas published a shocking account of Spanish cruelties, A Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies . He blamed the depopulation of the Native American populations on Spanish brutality rather than on the spread of disease. This gave rise to the Black Legend, a legend that Protestant nations such as England and the Netherlands used as propaganda to denounce the imperial system of Catholic Spain and promote their own means of settlement, which they viewed as more peaceful and benevolent.
|Definition||Text|
| abominable (adj): hateful, detestable |
infernal (adj): wretched, detestable
|As for the vast mainland, which is ten times larger than all Spain, even including Aragon and Portugal, containing more land than the distance between Seville and Jerusalem, or more than two thousand leagues, we are sure that our Spaniards, with their cruel and abominable acts, have devastated the land and exterminated the rational people who fully inhabited it. We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifteen million.|
| extirpate (v): to destroy, eradicate |
servitude (n): slavery, bondage
|The common ways mainly employed by the Spaniards who call themselves Christian and who have gone there to extirpate those pitiful nations and wipe them off the earth is by unjustly waging cruel and bloody wars. Then, when they have slain all those who fought for their lives or to escape the tortures they would have to endure, that is to say, when they have slain all the native rulers and young men (since the Spaniards usually spare only the women and children, who are subjected to the hardest and bitterest servitude ever suffered by man or beast), they enslave any survivors. With these infernal methods of tyranny they debase and weaken countless numbers of those pitiful Indian nations.|
|felicitous (adj): well-chosen||Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits. It should be kept in mind that their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies. And also, those lands are so rich and felicitous , the native peoples so meek and patient, so easy to subject, that our Spaniards have no more consideration for them than beasts. And I say this from my own knowledge of the acts I witnessed. But I should not say “than beasts” for, thanks be to God, they have treated beasts with some respect; I should say instead like excrement on the public squares. And thus they have deprived the Indians of their lives and souls, for the millions I mentioned have died without the Faith and without the benefit of the sacraments. This is a well-known and proven fact which even the tyrant Governors, themselves killers, know and admit. And never have the Indians in all the Indies committed any act against the Spanish Christians, until those Christians have first and many times committed countless cruel aggressions against them or against neighboring nations. For in the beginning the Indians regarded the Spaniards as angels from Heaven. Only after the Spaniards had used violence against them, killing, robbing, torturing, did the Indians ever rise up against them.|
- Who was Bartolomé de Las Casas?
- Who was his audience?
- What was his primary concern regarding Spanish settlement of the Americas?
- Is Las Casas a reliable source for this topic? Explain.
- After reading the title, what do you think was the goal of his document?
- How does Las Casas describe the actions of the Spanish? How does he describe the Native Americans?
- How do the Spanish treat Native Americans, according to this passage?
- Why does Las Casas say the Spanish conquistadors are so cruel? What are their vices?
- Why did the Spanish conquistadors go to the New World?
- Why was there conflict in the Spanish Empire and within Christendom over the treatment of the Native Americans?
- Were Las Casas’s claims about the numbers of Native Americans killed accurate? Explain your answer.
- How might point of view affect bias in this source? | https://billofrightsinstitute.org/e-lessons/bartolome-de-las-casas-account-of-the-destruction-of-the-indies | 77 |
an account much abbreviated of the destruction of the indies sparknotes | A Short Description of the Destruction of the Indies | by Bartolomé de Las Casas
- 1542
How to treat the indigenous people became an issue as soon as the Spanish arrived in the Western Hemisphere. In a letter written soon after his first voyage , Christopher Columbus explained how he dealt with the natives and revealed his and Spain’s religious motive for exploring what he conceived to be, in explicitly religious terms (see Christopher Columbus to Doña Juana de Torres, 1500 ) a New World. In addition to the converts to Catholicism that Columbus mentions, the Spanish sought gold. What means were allowable in pursuit of these ends? By what authority did the Spanish make claims on the native people and their land? The Requerimiento provided the official answer to these questions.
Whatever Spanish justifications, the Spanish conquistadores or conquerors proved brutal and rapacious as the conquest continued. The authorities in Madrid did not approve. For example, laws regulating conduct in the conquest were promulgated in 1513 and 1542 (the latter partially repealed in 1545 because of opposition). They relieved Christopher Columbus of command over land he had discovered in part because of his brutality toward both Spanish settlers and the indigenous people. Columbus complained of the injustice of his removal (see Christopher Columbus to Doña Juana de Torres, 1500 ), by emphasizing that the New World was not like Spain but was an uncivilized lawless territory. Francisco de Vitoria, on the contrary, (see De Indis ) sought to mitigate the harshness of the conquest by arguing that law – civil, natural and divine – should prevail everywhere. He argued for limits on what could legitimately be done to the indigenous people. In doing so, he helped develop just war theory. Despite de Vitoria’s arguments, distance from Madrid, limited means of communication, and the need for colonial wealth reduced the ability and willingness of Spain’s monarchs to control what was done in their name thousands of miles away from their palaces. Bartolomé de las Casas ( A Short Description of the Destruction of the Indies , 1542) describes the consequences of the Spanish conquest. Las Casas participated in the conquest he recounts; he was also in Cuba during the conquest of that island. He eventually became a Dominican friar and worked for the rest of his life to protect the indigenous people of the Americas
. . . The Fifth Kingdom 1 was Hiquey, over which Queen Hiquanama, an elderly Princess, whom the Spaniards Crucified, presided and governed. I saw an infinite number of these people burned, and dismembered, and racked with various torments, and of those who survived these matchless evils who were then enslaved. But because so much might be said concerning the killing and destruction of these people, as cannot without great difficulty be written (nor do I conceive that one part of 1,000 that is here contained can be fully displayed) I will only add one remark more about the previously mentioned wars, and declare upon my conscience, that notwithstanding all the above-named injustice, profligate enormities and other crimes which I omit, (though sufficiently known to me) the Indians did not, nor was it in their power to, give [ the Spaniards ] any cause for these crimes, any more than the pious religious living in a well-regulated Monastery could give a sacrilegious villain any reason to deprive them of their goods and life. No was there any cause for the Spaniards to enslave in perpetuity those who survived the initial massacre. I really believe and am satisfied by certain undeniable conjectures, that at the very time when all these outrages were committed in this Isle, the Indians were not so much guilty of one single mortal sin of commission against the Spaniards, that might deserve from anyone such revenge. And as for those sins, the punishment of which God reserves to himself, such as the immoderate desire of revenge, hatred, envy or inward rancor of spirit, to which [ the Indians ] might be led against such capital enemies as the Spaniards, I judge that very few of [ the Indians ] can justly be accused of them; for their impetuosity and vigor, I know, to be inferior to that of children of ten or twelve years of age. And I can assure you, that the Indians had every just cause to wage war against the Spaniards, and the Spaniards on the contrary never waged a just war against them, but only what was more injurious and groundless than any undertaken by the worst of Tyrants. This was true of all their actions in America.
The wars being over, and the inhabitants all swept away, the Spaniards divided among themselves the young men, women, and children, one taking thirty, another forty, to this man one hundred were given, to the other two hundred. The more one was in favor with the domineering tyrant (whom they styled Governor), the more slaves he got, under the pretense, and on the condition, that he should instruct the slave in the Catholic religion. Yet, those Spaniards to whom the Indians were given were themselves for the most part idiotic, cruel, avaricious, and infected with all sorts of vices. And this was the great care they had of [ the Indians ]: they sent the men to the mines to dig for gold, which is an intolerable labor; the women they turned to tilling and manuring the ground, which is drudgery even to men of the strongest and most robust constitutions. They gave them nothing else to eat but wild grasses and other such insubstantial nutriment, so that the milk of nursing women dried up, which meant that recently born infants all died. Since the females were separated from and did not live with the men, there were no new births among them. The men died in the mines, starved and oppressed with labor, and the women perished in the fields, broken from the same evils and calamities. Thus, the infinite number of inhabitants that formerly peopled this island were exterminated and dwindled away to nothing. They were compelled to carry burdens of eighty or one hundred pound weight a hundred or two hundred miles. They had to carry the Spaniards on their shoulders in a carriage or a kind of bed woven by the Indians. In truth they made use of them as beasts to carry baggage on their journeys, so much so that it frequently happened that the shoulders and backs of the Indians were deeply marked with sores, just as happens with animals that carry heavy burdens. It would take a long time, and many reams of paper to describe the slashes with whips, blows with staves, beatings and curses, and all the other torments they suffered during these backbreaking journeys, and even then it would only create horror and dismay in the reader.
But it is true that the desolation of these islands began only with the death of the most Serene Queen Isabella, about the year 1504. Before that time very few of the provinces situated in that island [ Hispaniola ] were oppressed or spoiled with unjust wars, or violated with general devastation as they were afterwards. Most if not all these things were concealed and masked from the Queen’s knowledge (whom I hope God hath crowned with Eternal Glory) for she was transported with fervent and wonderful zeal, in fact, almost Divine desire for the salvation and preservation of these people, as we have seen with our own eyes and cannot easily forget.
Take this also for a general rule, that no matter which coast in the Americas the Spaniards were landed on, they carried out the same cruelties, slaughters, tyrannies and detestable oppressions on the most innocent Indian nations. The more time they spent in the Americas the more they diverted themselves with new ways of tormenting the Indians, improving in barbarism and cruelty. As a consequence, God, incensed at them, allowed them to fall into complete wickedness.
Footnotes | https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/a-short-description-of-the-destruction-of-the-indies/ | 77 |
an account much abbreviated of the destruction of the indies sparknotes | A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary | Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” by Bartolome de Las Casas. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics.
Dominican Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas’s A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies is a primary source on the genocide of indigenous peoples during Spanish colonization of the Americas. This account of Las Casas, who spent much of his life in the New World, specifically spans the years 1509-1542, with some reference to the years between 1542 and 1552, when the book was published. The text mostly details events that occurred in present-day South America, around the islands of the Greater Antilles.
The text, originally composed in 1542, was written for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Spain and initially sent to Prince Philip II of Spain to deliver to the emperor upon publication. The book takes a strong stance against atrocities committed by the Spanish. It argues for the necessity of new legislation to protect the indigenous people of the New World from atrocity and enslavement, as well as the cessation of granting royal licenses to new groups of colonists to commit similar atrocities. Primarily an argumentative text, A Short Account does not have a cohesive narrative . It does, however, move through the decades of Spanish conquest both chronologically and geographically, detailing acts on one island or region per chapter.
Las Casas does not use a legislative or logical style to make his arguments but primarily attempts to evoke his reader’s pity for the peoples of the Americas, whom he represents as both innocent and helpless. Much of the text is therefore comprised of descriptions of atrocity the Spanish committed on indigenous communities. In each chapter Las Casas details the devastation of the islands’ populations and landscapes by the Spanish. A Dominican friar, Las Casas writes from a Christian worldview and consistently refers to the godlessness of the colonists’ action, the clear idolatry of their greed, and the divine retribution coming for Spain.
Though a relevant historical account of Spanish colonial action, the text is rhetorical and therefore cannot be read as completely true. Las Casas often embellishes death tolls and is selective in the narratives of colonialism he presents. For example, Las Casas omits the impact of disease on the indigenous population to better support his arguments against the barbarity of Spanish atrocities. Despite the text’s clear rhetorical aims, it remains an important and early primary source on the process of genocide and a stirring account of ethical objection to atrocity. By depicting the peoples of the Americas not as savages but as intellectually, morally, linguistically, and infrastructurally developed people, the text also serves as an important early source in postcolonial theory.
Study Guide! | https://www.supersummary.com/short-account-destruction-indies/summary/ | 77 |
an account much abbreviated of the destruction of the indies sparknotes | An Account, Much Abbreviated, of the Destruction of the Indies | And Related Texts
Bartolomé De Las Casas
Edited, with Introduction, by Franklin W. Knight,
Translated by Andrew Hurley
2003 - 192 pp.
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|Cloth||978-0-87220-626-7|
$39.00
|Paper||978-0-87220-625-0|
$15.00
|Examination||978-0-87220-625-0|
$2.00
eBook available for $12.50. Click HERE for more information.
Fifty years after the arrival of Columbus, at the height of Spain’s conquest of the West Indies, Spanish bishop and colonist Bartolomé de Las Casas dedicated his Brevísima Relación de la Destruición de las Indias to Philip II of Spain. An impassioned plea on behalf of the native peoples of the West Indies, the Brevísima Relación catalogues in horrific detail atrocities it attributes to the king’s colonists in the New World. The result is a withering indictment of the conquerors that has cast a 500-year shadow over the subsequent history of that world and the European colonization of it.
Andrew Hurley’s daring new translation dramatically foreshortens that five hundred years by reversing the usual priority of a translation; rather than bring the Brevísima Relación to the reader, it brings the reader to the Brevísima Relación—not as it is, but as it might have been, had it been originally written in English. The translator thus allows himself no words or devices unavailable in English by 1560, and in so doing reveals the prophetic voice, urgency and clarity of the work, qualities often obscured in modern translations. An Introduction by Franklin Knight, notes, a map, and a judicious set of Related Readings offer further aids to a fresh appreciation of this foundational historical and literary work of the New World and European engagement with it.
Reviews:
“This is a splendid new translation of Brevísima Relación, the famous denunciation of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, written by Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas (1483-1566). . . . The Hackett edition of Brevísima Relación . . . has a lot to offer to undergraduates. . . . Knight’s introduction to the text makes in fact for a compelling read. . . . Together with Knight’s ample annotations, which refer students to the most up-to-date secondary literature, it makes for a wonderful introduction to the history of Europe’s expansion into the Western Hemisphere.”
—Martine van Ittersum, Journal of Early Modern History
“Las Casas comes alive in this version. The translator turns Las Casas’ rough and rambling style, which has thwarted previous translators, into the Biblical tirade that Las Casas intended; the rambling becomes rumbling with these sonorous word choices. This will doubtless become the standard translation of the Brevísima Relación.”
—David Frye, University of Michigan
“This is by far the best modern edition of the classic account of Las Casas. An excellent Introduction provides the background of the friar and the debates he engendered. Of equal value are the appendices with the royal legislation for protection of the conquered Amerindians, that are the true legacy of his polemical treatises. Excerpts from eyewitnesses of the conquest of Mexico provide students with food for thought and discussion. This is an excellent classroom edition that should be widely used.”
—Noble David Cook, author of Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650
“The translation is quite good and makes Las Casas more approachable for undergraduates. The inclusion of the New Laws and the Laws of Burgos is also a welcomed addition. Sepúlveda’s piece is the perfect contrast.”
—David Carey, University of Southern Maine
Contents:
Introduction; Map; A Note on the Text and the Translation; Select Bibliography.
AN ACCOUNT, MUCH ABBREVIATED, OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE INDIES:
Argument of the Present Epitome.
Presentation.
An Introduction to the Relation.
On the Island Hispaniola.
On the Kingdoms That Once Were to Be Found upon the Island of Hispaniola.
On the Two Islands of San Juan and Jamaica.
On the Island of Cuba.
On Terra Firma.
On the Province of Nicaragua.
On New Spain, I.
On New Spain, II.
On the Province and Kingdom of Guatimala.
Of New Spain and Pánuco and Jalisco hius.
On the Kingdom of Yucatán.
On the Province of Santa Marta.
On the Province of Cartagena.
On the Coast of Pearls and on Paria and the Island of Trinidad.
Of the River Yuyapari.
On the Kingdom of Venezuela.
On the Province of Terra Firma in the Part Called Florida.
On the Río de la Plata, or the River of Plate.
On the Great Kingdoms and Great Provinces of Perú.
On the New Kingdom of Granada.
Testament.
SELECTIONS FROM:
The Laws of Burgos (1512–1513).
New Laws of the Indies.
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, A Treatise on the Just Causes for War against the Indians.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The True History of the Conquest of Mexico.
Hernán Cortés, Cartas de relación.
Table of Weights and Measures Used in the Text.
Glossary of Political and Military Terms Used in the Text.
Index
About the Authors:
Franklin Knight is Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University, and the author of The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (Oxford) and Slave Societies of the Caribbean (Macmillan).
Andrew Hurley is Professor of English, University of Puerto Rico, and the award-winning translator of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction including the Collected Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges (Viking) and several novels by Reinaldo Arenas.
Related Products | https://hackettpublishing.com/an-account-much-abbreviated-of-the-destruction-of-the-indies | 77 |
where does call.me by your name take place | Call Me by Your Name (film) | Call Me by Your Name (Italian: Chiamami col tuo nome ) is a 2017 coming-of-age romantic drama film directed by Luca Guadagnino . Its screenplay, by James Ivory , who also co-produced, is based on the 2007 novel of the same title by André Aciman . The film is the final instalment in Guadagnino's thematic "Desire" trilogy, after I Am Love (2009), and A Bigger Splash (2015). Set in 1983 in northern Italy, Call Me by Your Name chronicles the romantic relationship between a 17-year-old, Elio Perlman ( Timothée Chalamet ), and Oliver ( Armie Hammer ), a 24-year-old graduate-student assistant to Elio's father Samuel ( Michael Stuhlbarg ), an archaeology professor. The film also stars actresses Amira Casar , Esther Garrel , and Victoire Du Bois .
|Call Me by Your Name|
|Directed by||Luca Guadagnino|
|Screenplay by||James Ivory|
|Based on|| Call Me by Your Name |
by André Aciman
|Produced by|
|Starring|
|Cinematography||Sayombhu Mukdeeprom|
|Edited by||Walter Fasano|
Production
companies
|Distributed by|
Release dates
Running time
|132 minutes [1]|
|Countries|
|Languages|
|Budget||$3.5 million [5]|
|Box office||$43.1 million [6]|
Development began in 2007 when producers Peter Spears and Howard Rosenman optioned the rights to Aciman's novel. Ivory had been chosen to co-direct with Guadagnino, but stepped down in 2016. Guadagnino had joined the project as a location scout , and eventually became sole director and co-producer. Call Me by Your Name was financed by several international companies, and its principal photography took place mainly in the city and comune of Crema, Lombardy , between May and June 2016. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom used 35 mm film , as opposed to employing digital cinematography . The filmmakers spent weeks decorating Villa Albergoni , one of the main shooting locations. Guadagnino curated the film's soundtrack , which features two original songs by American singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens .
Sony Pictures Classics acquired distribution rights to Call Me by Your Name before its premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2017. The film began a limited release in the United States on November 24, 2017, and went on general release on January 19, 2018. It received widespread critical acclaim, particularly for Ivory's screenplay, Guadagnino's direction, Mukdeeprom's cinematography, and the performances of Chalamet, Hammer, and Stuhlbarg. The film garnered a number of accolades , including many for its screenplay, direction, acting, and music. It received four nominations at the 90th Academy Awards , including Best Picture and Best Actor for 22-year-old Chalamet (the third-youngest nominee in the category), and winning for Best Adapted Screenplay . The screenplay also won at the 23rd Critics' Choice Awards , 71st British Academy Film Awards , and the 70th Writers Guild of America Awards .
In the summer of 1983, Elio Perlman, a 17-year-old Jewish Italo-French boy, lives with his parents in rural Northern Italy . Elio's father, a professor of archaeology, invites a 24-year-old Jewish American graduate student, Oliver, to live with the family over the summer and help with his academic paperwork. Elio, an introspective bibliophile and a musician, initially thinks he has little in common with Oliver, who appears confident and carefree. Elio spends much of the summer reading, playing piano, and hanging out with his childhood friends, Chiara and Marzia. During a volleyball match, Oliver touches Elio's back but Elio brushes it off. However, Elio later finds himself jealous upon seeing Oliver pursue Chiara.
Elio and Oliver spend more time together, going for long walks into town, and accompanying Elio's father on an archaeological trip. Elio is increasingly drawn to Oliver, even sneaking to Oliver's room to smell his clothing. Elio eventually confesses his feelings to Oliver, who tells him they cannot discuss such things. Later, in a secluded spot, the two kiss for the first time. Oliver is reluctant to take things further, and they do not speak for several days.
Elio goes on a date with Marzia and the two have sex. Elio leaves a note for Oliver to end their silence. Oliver writes back, asking Elio to meet him at midnight. Elio agrees and they sleep together for the first time. Afterward, Oliver says to Elio, "Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine". The morning after, Elio is briefly conflicted about their encounter and takes out his sexual frustration by masturbating with a peach. When Oliver finds him, Elio cries about how little time he and Oliver have left together. Marzia confronts Elio after not hearing from him for three days. He responds coldly, hurting her.
As the end of Oliver's stay approaches, Elio's parents, who appear to be aware of the bond between the two, recommend that he and Oliver visit Bergamo together before Oliver returns to the U.S. They spend three romantic days together. Elio, heartbroken after Oliver's departure, calls his mother and asks her to pick him up from the train station and take him home. Marzia is sympathetic to Elio's feelings and says she wants to remain friends. Elio's father, observing his deep sadness, tells him he was aware of his relationship with Oliver and urges Elio to learn from his grief and grow instead of pushing aside his feelings and moving on too quickly.
During Hanukkah , Oliver calls Elio's family to tell them he is engaged to be married to a woman he has been seeing for a few years. An upset Elio calls Oliver by his name and Oliver responds with his; Oliver also says that he remembers everything. After the call, Elio sits down by the fireplace and stares into the flames, tearfully reflecting, as his parents and staff prepare the holiday dinner.
Call Me by Your Name is the final installment in a thematic trilogy Guadagnino calls his "Desire" trilogy; the other two parts were I Am Love (2009) and A Bigger Splash (2015). [9] [10] Guadagnino described his approach to the film as "lighthearted and simple", [11] [12] marking a departure from his previous work, which has been called "highly stylised [and] dazzling". [13] Guadagnino considers Call Me by Your Name a "homage to the fathers of my life: my own father, and my cinematic ones", referring to the filmmakers Jean Renoir , Jacques Rivette , Éric Rohmer , and Bernardo Bertolucci , who he says inspired him. [14]
Guadagnino has described Call Me by Your Name as a family-oriented film for the purpose of "transmission of knowledge and hope that people of different generations come to see the film together." [15] He saw it not as a "gay" movie but as a film about "the beauty of the newborn idea of desire, unbiased and uncynical", reflecting his motto of living "with a sense of joie de vivre ". [11] [12] "We should always be very earnest with one's feelings, instead of hiding them or shielding ourselves," he said. [9] He considered it an "uplifting film" about "being who you want to be and finding yourself into the gaze of the other in his or her otherness." [16]
The director tried to avoid the flaws he had seen in most coming-of-age films , where growth is often portrayed as being a result of resolving preconceived dilemmas such as an enforced choice between two lovers. [17] He also wanted the story to follow two people "in the moment", rather than focus on an antagonist or a tragedy [12] —an approach inspired by À nos amours (1983), directed by Maurice Pialat . [17] [18] As someone who considers sex in film a representation of the characters' behavior and identity, [19] Guadagnino was not interested in including explicit sex scenes in the film. [20] He explained his intention: "I wanted the audience to completely rely on the emotional travel of these people and feel first love... It was important to me to create this powerful universality, because the whole idea of the movie is that the other person makes you beautiful—enlightens you, elevates you." [20]
Alongside a sexual coming of age motif, the movie also touches upon the novel's theme [21] of Elio discovering and connecting to his Jewish identity through the openly Jewish Oliver and as a contrast with his own family being, as his mother puts it, "Jews of discretion". [22] The common Jewish identity is a part of what draws Elio and Oliver together and is represented visually on screen through the Star of David necklace that Oliver initially wears and Elio is drawn to. [23] The theme of sexual self-discovery is paralleled with the Jewish theme in the movie, since in both cases, Elio starts out more secretive about these parts of himself and transitions to a place of greater self-acceptance, both journeys connected to Oliver's role in his life. There is a hint in the movie that Oliver might have gifted his own Star of David necklace to Elio shortly before they parted ways in the train station. [24] Elio's own necklace can be clearly seen during the conversation from which the movie (as the novel) borrows its title thanks to its visually central placement during this scene.
Two of the film's producers, Peter Spears and Howard Rosenman , saw a galley proof of André Aciman 's debut novel Call Me by Your Name in 2007 and " optioned " the screen rights before its publication. [25] Rosenman first heard about the book through a friend after acting in Milk (2008) and described it as "divine". [26] Spears, moved by the novel and believing it deserved a cinematic adaptation, received his first credit as a producer from his work on the film. [27] They invited their friend James Ivory to work as an executive producer on the film adaptation. [28] Spears and Rosenman began production in 2008, [29] but the project was soon trapped in " development hell ". [30] The producers met with three sets of directors and writers—among them Gabriele Muccino , Ferzan Özpetek , and Sam Taylor-Johnson [31] —but could not find anyone who would commit to the project. [25] [32] Scheduling filming in Italy during the summer also proved difficult. [25] [32]
The producers contacted Guadagnino, their first choice to direct, but he declined, citing a busy schedule. [10] [29] However, as Guadagnino lived in northern Italy, he was initially hired as a location consultant instead. [17] [33] Guadagnino later suggested that he co-direct the film with Ivory, but no contractual agreement was put in place. [11] [30] Ivory accepted the offer to co-direct on the condition that he would also write the film; [30] he spent "about nine months" on the screenplay. [28] [34] Guadagnino, who has described the novel as "a Proustian book about remembering the past and indulging in the melancholy of lost things", [18] collaborated on the adaptation with Ivory and Walter Fasano . [11] [15] Screenwriting took place at Ivory's house, Guadagnino's kitchen table in Crema , and sometimes in New York City. [35] Ivory rarely met Guadagnino during the process, since the director was busy making A Bigger Splash (2015). [34]
The screenplay was completed in late 2015. [34] Aciman approved it and commended the adaptation as "direct ... real and persuasive", adding "they've done better than the book". [25] The completed screenplay was vital in securing funding for the film. [28] [30] Among the financiers were the production companies La Cinéfacture (France), Frenesy Film Company (Italy, owned by Guadagnino), M.Y.R.A. Entertainment (United States), RT Features (Brazil), and Water's End Productions (United States). The project was also supported by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism . [15] [36] [37] The backers deemed the production's initial cost estimates "too expensive", [38] so the production budget was reduced from $12 million to $3.4 million and the filming schedule was cut from 12 to 5 weeks. [37] [39]
Ivory stepped down from a directorial role in 2016, leaving Guadagnino to direct the film alone. [10] [11] According to Ivory, financiers from Memento Films International did not want two directors involved with the project because they "thought it would be awkward ... It might take longer, it would look terrible if we got in fights on the set, and so on." [28] [34] Guadagnino said Ivory's version would have likely been "a much more costly [and] different film" that would have been too expensive to make. [17] [33] Ivory became the sole-credited screenwriter [40] and later sold the rights to the screenplay to Guadagnino's company. [28] [34] Call Me by Your Name was Ivory's first produced screenplay since Le Divorce (2003) and the only narrative feature he has written but not directed. [40] He remained involved with other aspects of the production. [40] Guadagnino dedicated the film to his late friend Bill Paxton , who came to visit the set in Crema before his death in February 2017. [ citation needed ]
The film differs from its source material in several ways. The novel is written in flashback, from Elio's perspective. The filmmakers set the movie entirely in 1983 to help the audience understand the characters, believing that this approach would allow them to remain true to the spirit of the book. [29] [18] The setting was changed from Bordighera to the countryside of Crema, where Guadagnino lives. [b] The town square selected for filming differed from the one Aciman had pictured in his novel, which in his vision was "far smaller and stood high on a hill overlooking a windswept Mediterranean ". [43] The arid climate and "spookily deserted" landscape in Crema suggested to him that the film would not correspond to the novel. [43] The director also changed the year of the events from 1987 to 1983. In his words, Guadagnino chose "the year—in Italy at least—where the '70s are killed, when everything that was great about the '70s is definitely shut down," but also a time when the characters could be "in a way untouched by the corruption of the '80s—in the U.S., [Ronald] Reagan, and in the UK, [Margaret] Thatcher". [35] [41]
Guadagnino was tempted to remove the scene in which Elio masturbates into a pitted peach, finding it too explicit. [25] [44] Chalamet was also nervous about the scene, [45] describing it as "a metamorphosis of some of the strongest ideas in the movie" and the key to illuminating the character's "overabundant sexual energy". [29] [46] Both Guadagnino and Chalamet believed it was implausible to masturbate with a peach, but each independently tested the method. To their surprise, it worked, so Guadagnino shot the scene and ultimately included it in the film. [47] A scene featuring Elio and Oliver dancing enthusiastically to The Psychedelic Furs song " Love My Way " in a small bar is not drawn from the book. It was inspired by Jonathan Demme 's Something Wild (1986), and Guadagnino's experience of dancing by himself when he was young. [25] [48] Ivory altered Mr. Perlman's profession from a classics scholar to "an art historian/archeologist type", [29] [42] a decision that Aciman described as "perfect" and "more visual, [...] more exciting, as opposed to what a scholar does at his desk". [42]
When he was revising Ivory's draft of the script, Guadagnino removed the voice-over narration and much of the nudity. [18] [33] He said that explicit nudity was "absolutely irrelevant" to his vision for the film, [49] and that he did not like the idea of having the main character tell the story retrospectively, stating that "it kills the surprise". [18] Towards the end of the novel, the two protagonists visit Rome, a trip which lasts an entire chapter and introduces new characters in multiple locations. [34] [40] Because of the film's limited budget, Ivory and the producers wrote several variations, one of which was to leave the lead characters alone in the family's house. [34] Ultimately, the filmmakers settled on another trip—to Bergamo , rather than Rome—where the characters spend much of their time alone together in a hotel room. [34] In his original script, Ivory depicted Elio's parents discussing HIV/AIDS in two scenes, [50] and Elio decorating a Christmas tree in his family's home in the final scene. [51] [40] Ivory had to reduce the length of Mr. Perlman's speech but was committed to keeping it in the script. [52] Aciman said in an interview with Moment that, while keeping intervention with the script at a minimum, he suggested to Ivory to keep dialogue prior to Perlman's speech to a minimum so as not to "steal the surprise and the suspense that happens" as it unfolds. [53] Ivory described the scene in which Elio conveys his feelings to Oliver as one of the moments that captures the "euphoric passion and nervousness" of their first love. [54] Aciman was surprised by Guadagnino's final scene where Elio is seen crying by the fireplace; [43] he wrote of the film adaptation:
Cinema can be an entirely magical medium. What I do as a writer, and what Guadagnino does as a film director, is more than speak two different languages. What I do is chisel a statue down to its finest, most elusive details. What a film director does is make the statue move. [43]
Many of the changes to Ivory's screenplay were made during the filming; the screenwriter was not present at the shooting set. [51] In May 2016, Ivory said that he and Guadagnino discussed how to film the scenes involving nudity, but the director later dropped them. [50] In Ivory's view, some of the director's statements to the press had misrepresented the film's omission of nudity as a "conscious aesthetic decision", even though they had never discussed removing nudity from the screenplay. [50] Ivory said, "When people are wandering around before or after making love, and they're decorously covered with sheets, it’s always seemed phoney to me." [50] By contrast, Ivory cited scenes from his earlier film Maurice (1987)—a gay romantic drama that includes male nudity—as "a more natural way of doing things than to hide them, or to do what Luca did, which is to pan the camera out of the window toward some trees." [50] Guadagnino said that he understood Ivory's position, but that it was clear that there were "no limitations on what we wanted to do." [49]
In 2015, Shia LaBeouf and Greta Scacchi were reportedly set to be cast in the film. [55] In September 2016, Ivory confirmed they were no longer involved in the project. Ivory said he got along with LaBeouf, who had read for the film in New York City, but the production company later felt the actor was unsuitable after his "various troubles". Ivory thought Scacchi and LaBeouf read well together and could have made it into the film, but the company disagreed. [56]
Guadagnino was impressed by Armie Hammer 's performance in The Social Network (2010), [11] [47] describing him as a "sophisticated actor, with a great range". [11] Hammer almost turned down the role of Oliver after reading the draft script because it contained nudity, saying, "There's a lot of stuff here that I've never done on film before. But there's no way I can't do this [film], mostly because it scares me so much." [57] [58] Hammer had previously played gay characters in J. Edgar (2011) and Final Portrait (2017). [44] [59]
In 2013, Swardstrom—Spears' husband and agent—introduced Chalamet to Guadagnino, [11] [19] who immediately felt the actor had "the ambition, the intelligence, the sensitivity, the naivety, and the artistry" to play Elio. [18] Chalamet had already read Aciman's novel and described it as "a window into a young person". [45] His character, 17-year-old Elio, is fluent in three languages: English, French and Italian. [37] Upon his arrival in Italy, Chalamet—who already spoke French fluently and had played piano and guitar for years [29] [37] [60] —prepared for his role with a schedule of daily lessons in Italian, gym workouts three times a week, [29] and by working with composer Roberto Solci. [29] [37]
Michael Stuhlbarg , who was cast as Elio's father, Mr. Perlman, [57] [61] did not read the book until he had already joined the production. [62] He found the script moving and described Mr. Perlman as having a "sense of generosity and love and understanding". [63] Esther Garrel was contacted by Guadagnino when he was in Paris for the promotion of A Bigger Splash . [64] Garrel was cast as Marzia without any formal audition, and she chose not to read the book before shooting. [64] Towards the end of the film, Marzia asks Elio, "Friend for life?"—a line taken from J'entends plus la guitare (1991), directed by the actress's father, Philippe Garrel . [38] "I like the idea of talking virtually with Philippe Garrel through her," Guadagnino said. [38] During shooting, Garrel spoke French with Chalamet on set and watched the American sitcom Friends with English subtitles to improve her English. [64]
Guadagnino chose Amira Casar , whom he had known for twenty years, for the role of Elio's mother Annella. [38] [61] In an interview with French magazine Télérama , Guadagnino expressed his admiration of Casar's "sense of transgression" and called her "the most audacious" in European art cinema . [c] [38] Casting director Stella Savino met Vanda Capriolo when she was bicycling in the countryside. Capriolo, who was not an actor, was chosen to play Mafalda, the Perlmans' maid. [48] [65] Aciman and Spears also appear briefly in cameo roles as Mounir and Isaac, an openly gay couple who attend a dinner party. [29] [42] Aciman was asked to be in the movie after actors became unavailable. "It was a last-minute decision," Spears recalled, "André turns out to be a phenomenal actor! So comfortable, not nervous at all. His wife was sitting there and said, 'I had no idea!'" [66] In dialogue, the characters switch between English, French, Italian, [67] and in one scene Annella reads a German translation of 16th-century French literature . [68]
Hammer and Chalamet both signed contracts prohibiting the film from showing them with full-frontal nudity. Ivory, whose original screenplay contained nudity, was dismayed by the decision. He criticized what he saw as an "American" attitude, saying, "Nobody seems to care that much or be shocked about a totally naked woman. It's the men." [30] [33] Guadagnino picked actors based on their performances and chemistry rather than on their sexuality. [20] He said, "The idea that you have to cast only someone who has a certain set of skills, and worse, a certain gender identity in any role: that's oppressive to me." [10]
The main location set for the Perlmans' residence was Villa Albergoni , an uninhabited 17th-century mansion in Moscazzano . [29] [69] Guadagnino wanted to buy the house but could not afford it, so he made a film there instead. [37] [70] A landscape designer was hired to construct an orchard in the mansion's garden. [65] A pergola was built on the patio, and apricot and peach trees were placed in the garden. [69] [71]
Guadagnino did not want the film to be a period piece and tried to resist making a film that would reflect "our idea of the 80s". His goal was an accurate recreation of the period that was invisible to the viewer." [17] The crew, including production designer Samuel Deshors and set decorators Sandro Piccarozzi and Violante Visconti di Modrone, styled the house with furniture and objects inspired by the characters. [29] [70] Much of the furniture, including dishes and glassware from the 1950s, belonged to Guadagnino and Visconti di Modrone's parents. Di Modrone, a grandniece of Luchino Visconti from the famous Visconti family said, "That made it cozy and personal ... I wanted to give it the sense of time passing by". [72] Many paintings, maps, and mirrors influenced by Asian art came from an antiques shop in Milan. [71] [72] The books seen in the background were all published before 1982. [65] The swimming pool used in the film was based on a watering trough common in the area. [29] [72]
The filmmakers set up faded political billboards in public places to reflect the Italian general election in 1983 [65] and re-created a newsstand full of magazines of that time. [65] Residents of Crema helped the production team with their research, inviting them into their homes and providing pictures from the 1980s. [17] [73] Chen Li, the film's graphic designer, created a handwritten typeface for the film's title sequence of photocopied images of statues alongside items on Mr. Perlman's desk. [65]
Costume designer Giulia Piersanti avoided using period costumes; instead, she wanted to provide "a sense of insouciant adolescent sensuality, summer heat and sexual awakening" to the characters. [72] The costumes, which were influenced by the French films Pauline at the Beach (1983), A Tale of Springtime (1990) and A Summer's Tale (1996), [72] included some pieces made by Piersanti's team. [65] For the Perlmans' wardrobe, Piersanti took inspiration from her parents' photograph albums. For Oliver's "sexy, healthy American" image, Piersanti referred to "some of Bruce Weber 's earliest photographs". [72] Oliver's clothes change throughout the film as "he's more able to free himself". [65] Aiming to emphasize Elio's confident style, she chose several Lacoste costumes and a distinctive, New Romantic -looking shirt in the final scene. [17] [72] For Elio's other costumes, Piersanti picked some items from her husband's closet, including the polo shirt and Fido Dido T-shirt. [72]
Principal photography began on May 9, 2016, and wrapped in June 2016, [74] [75] lasting around 33 days. [65] [76] The film was shot primarily in Crema and the surrounding province of Cremona . [11] [14] [77] [78] An unusual series of rainstorms coincided with the shooting schedule, with heavy rain on 28 of the shooting days. [27] [76] Scenes set in the nearby villages Pandino and Moscazzano were filmed between May 17 and 19, and shooting in Crema began on June 1. [79] [80] [81] Additional outdoor scenes were shot on December 4, 2016. [82] [83] The City of Crema invested € 18,000 in the film, including a publicity campaign costing €7,500. [84] [85]
The arch of Torrazzo at Crema Cathedral and several historical locations in the streets of Crema and Pandino were chosen during production. [69] [79] Businesses requested compensation for financial losses caused by the closure, which was scheduled for May 30 and 31. [86] Two days' filming at the cathedral were postponed due to the rainy weather. [87] Filming also took place in the Lodigiano area near Crespiatica and in two small towns near Crema, Montodine and Ripalta . [69] [29] [82] The archaeological discovery scene was filmed at the Grottoes of Catullus in Sirmione on the Brescian shores of Lake Garda . [69] The trip to Bergamo was filmed at the exterior of multiple historical buildings, including Bergamo Cathedral , the Santa Maria Maggiore , the courtyard of Liceo Classico Paolo Sarpi in Piazza Rosate and the University of Sciences, Letters and Arts [ it ] . [69] The train station scenes were filmed at Pizzighettone . [88] Because of security concerns, the production team was only granted permission to film at the Cascate del Serio in Valbondione for half an hour. [69] [77] [89]
Before and during filming, the actors lived in Crema and were able to experience small-town life. [29] Guadagnino engaged with the cast and filmmakers and often cooked for them and showed films at his house. [25] Hammer and Chalamet, who did not have to do a screen test together, [18] [90] met for the first time during production in Crema. [29] [75] Before filming began, they spent a month together, watching TV and going to local restaurants. [9] [58] [75] "We'd hang out with each other all the time, because we were pretty much the only Americans there, and we were able to defend one another and really get to know one another," Chalamet said. [60] During the first two days of production, Guadagnino read the script with the cast. [35] The first scene that Hammer and Chalamet rehearsed was the kissing scene, [26] [90] and they spent several days filming nude. [91] "I've never been so intimately involved with a director before. Luca was able to look at me and completely undress me," Hammer said. [47]
- Selected filming locations
The South portal of Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo ()
The Station of Pizzighettone ()
Guadagnino shot the film in chronological order, [35] [92] which allowed the filmmakers to "witness the onscreen maturity of both protagonist and actor", according to Fasano. [93] The scene in which Mr. Perlman delivers an emotional speech to Elio was filmed on the penultimate day of filming. [9] [35] Stuhlbarg spent months preparing for the scene, [9] [63] which Guadagnino wanted to make "as simple as possible" by shooting fewer takes and "let[ting] the actors be." [16] The scene took three takes to film and Stuhlbarg was "on three different levels of getting emotional". [93] Garrel enjoyed filming her sex scene with Chalamet, which she described as filled with "joy and simplicity". [64] Chalamet was listening to "Visions of Gideon", one of the original songs written by Sufjan Stevens for the film, in an earpiece while filming the final sequence; [94] [95] the director asked him to perform three variations of the scene, one per take. [96] The camera was set in the fireplace with nobody behind it. "It was bit of an acting experiment," Chalamet said. [48] During this scene, the title of the film was shown for the first time, rather than in the opening sequence.
At the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, [88] a memorial to the victims of the battle of the Piave in Pandino, [43] the filmmakers laid a long camera dolly track to film the scene where Elio tells Oliver of his feelings for him in a single long take . This provided the flexibility and "flow of emotion" a cut scene could not. [97] During the dancing sequence, Hammer had to perform to a click track in front of 50 off-camera extras with the music turned down so the dialogue could be recorded. [48] [58] In preparation for the scene, Guadagnino arranged for Hammer to practice with a dance coach. [48] Hammer said that it was "the worst scene" he had ever filmed. [98] Choreographer Paolo Rocchi, who was contacted by the Frenesy Film Company in June 2016, described the routine as "awkward and realistic". [99] Rosenman considered the scene one of the most emotional moments; he said "It embodied and encapsulated, for me, what teenage love is all about, what desire is all about." [26]
Sayombhu Mukdeeprom , who had previously collaborated with Guadagnino on Ferdinando Cito Filomarino's Antonia (2015), served as the director of photography . [19] [100] He had read Aciman's novel before receiving the script and walked around filming locations to "get a feeling for everything ... to see the color, to see how the light changed during the day, and input it into my data". [101] Mukdeeprom had to use artificial lighting to capture the Northern Italian summer atmosphere, [11] compensating for heavy rains that lasted throughout the shoot. [19] [76] While filming the confrontation scene between Oliver and Elio, Mukdeeprom cried in a corner of the room after they finished the first take, overwhelmed by a feeling of profound empathy for the actors. [11] The film was shot using 35 mm celluloid film and a single lens, [102] a decision influenced by the work of David Cronenberg to "solidif[y] the point of view" [12] and make "the tension of the performance come off the screen"—even if it meant increasing the production budget above the cost of shooting in digital. [102] Guadagnino praised Jean-Pierre Laforce, the film's sound designer and mixer , for his "wonderful" and "pivotal" contributions. Guadagnino, who had previously worked with Laforce on A Bigger Splash , said he was "able to create a sort of Cathedral of sound without overwhelming the movie." [16]
Fasano collaborated with Guadagnino during the post-production. [103] [37] They had worked together for 25 years since Guadagnino's debut feature The Protagonists (1999). [37] Fasano described working with Guadagnino as "atypical [and] very demanding, but it's a great experience." [103] Post-production took only a month, between June and July [11] —the fastest they had ever edited. [75] Fasano cited the films of Bernardo Bertolucci and the "fast and unexplained" storytelling in Pialat's À nos amours as inspiration. [103]
Their first cut of the film ran three hours and 20 minutes long. [103] [104] Fasano described it as his favorite saying it made him "lose [him]self in the story and the images." [103] The final cut lasts two hours and 10 minutes with a shooting ratio of 25:1. [103]
Several notable changes were made, or almost made, near the end of post-production. The monologue sequence with Elio's father once had piano playing beneath it. The scene where the two protagonists bike to a courtyard almost failed to make the final cut after one of the producers said it was inconsequential. [93] Hammer revealed that some scenes were digitally altered to fix wardrobe malfunctions caused by his short shorts. [105] [106] Guadagnino has discussed several scenes that did not make the final cut. There was a "well-acted" scene where Elio and Oliver were "teasing one another" under a lime tree, which the director felt was "too precious". [44] A scene where Elio's parents make love in the bedroom while Elio and Oliver are kissing under the moonlight in the garden was also cut. [44] The latter scene was shown at a screening in Castiglioncello in June 2018, which also included a deleted scene of Elio inviting Oliver to tour the village. [107]
Guadagnino selected the music for Call Me by Your Name himself. [29] He wanted to find an "emotional narrator to the film" through music, in a "less heavy, less present, and more enveloping" way than voice and text. [35] The films Barry Lyndon (1975), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and The Age of Innocence (1993) inspired him. [35] Guadagnino wanted the film's music to be connected to Elio, a young pianist who enjoys transcribing and adapting piano pieces and uses music to deepen his relationship with Oliver. [18] Music is used in the film to reflect the period setting, the characters' family life and their level of education, and "the kind of canon they would be a part of". [18] Guadagnino also researched which pop songs had been played frequently on local radio stations that summer. [18] [108]
Impressed by the lyricism of American songwriter Sufjan Stevens , [19] Guadagnino asked him to record an original song for Call Me by Your Name and to narrate the film from the perspective of Elio at an older age. [19] [94] Stevens declined the voiceover role [94] but contributed three songs to the soundtrack: " Mystery of Love ", " Visions of Gideon ", and a remix by Doveman of his song " Futile Devices " from The Age of Adz (2010). [18] Stevens was inspired by the film's script, the novel and conversations with Guadagnino about the characters. [19] He submitted the songs a few days before filming began. Surprised by the result, Guadagnino listened to them on-set with the actors and editor Walter Fasano. [29] [75] Because it had been pre-recorded, Chalamet was able to listen to "Visions of Gideon" on an earpiece during filming of the movie's 4-minute final shot, a static closeup of his face. He said that "Sufjan's song was playing in my ear so I could mirror the structure." [109] The project marked the first time Stevens had written songs explicitly for a feature-film soundtrack. [110] [111] Next to the music of Stevens, a number of classical music pieces and pop songs of the 1980s are included in the soundtrack.
A soundtrack album was released in digital formats by Madison Gate Records and Sony Classical on November 3, 2017, [112] and in physical formats on November 17, 2017. [113] It features songs by: Stevens, The Psychedelic Furs , Franco Battiato , Loredana Bertè , Bandolero , Giorgio Moroder , Joe Esposito , and F. R. David , as well as music by John Adams , Erik Satie , Ryuichi Sakamoto , Bach , and Ravel . [114] As of February 1, 2018, the soundtrack has sold 9,000 copies and had 29 million on-demand audio streams of its tracks in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan . [115]
Call Me by Your Name had its world premiere on January 22, 2017, at the Sundance Film Festival . [116] [117] International sales were handled by Memento Films International, a French company, which screened a promo reel at the American Film Market in November 2016. [36] [118] Shortly before the film's Sundance premiere, Sony Pictures Classics acquired worldwide distribution rights for $6 million. [119] The deal was negotiated by WME Global and UTA Independent Film Group. [120] The film was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 13, 2017; [61] the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2017; [11] [75] [121] and the New York Film Festival on October 3, 2017. [122] At the Beijing International Film Festival , it was originally scheduled for April 2018, but was removed from the official program with no explanation; Patrick Brzeski of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the decision reflected the government's "consistent stance of intolerance toward gay content". [123] [124] That year, the film was honored at the Crema Film Festival: Aciman met the public on June 23, and Garrel joined the screening at the Crema Cathedral on June 30. [125]
Call Me by Your Name opened in limited release in the United Kingdom on October 27, 2017, [14] and the United States on November 24, 2017. [6] It expanded from four to thirty locations in the U.S. on December 15, 2017, [126] then to 114 theaters on December 22. [127] It screened in 174 theaters in January 2018, [128] before going into wide release in 815 theaters a few days before the Oscar nomination announcement ceremony on January 19, 2018. [129] [130] On Oscars weekend, the film screened in 914 theaters, its widest release in the U.S. [131]
Warner Bros. Entertainment theatrically released the film in Italy on January 25, 2018, though home media distribution in Italy is distributed through Sony Pictures Home Entertainment as well. [132] [133] [134] Special screenings and a public meet-and-greet with Guadagnino, Hammer and Chalamet took place in Crema between January 27 and 30. [134] [135] [136] The film opened in Brazil on January 18 [137] and in France on February 28. [138] In March 2018, a distributor in Tunisia reported that the Ministry of Culture had banned the film as an "attack on liberties" because of its subject matter. [139] [140] In Ireland, it became the longest-running film shown at the Light House Cinema in early June 2018, after a 30-week run. [141] In the Philippines, the film was screened accompanied by a live performance of its soundtrack by the Manila Symphony Orchestra on October 28. [142]
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures theatrically released the film in Taiwan on January 12, 2018 under the Buena Vista International label. [143]
Sony Pictures Classics released an official poster for Call Me by Your Name on July 27, 2017. [144] The first theatrical trailer was released on August 1, 2017. [145] [146] On October 11, 2017, Sony Pictures Classics released a teaser titled "Dance Party" to celebrate National Coming Out Day . [147] The 42-second clip, consisting of a single take of Hammer and Chalamet dancing to "Love My Way" in a bar, became a meme on Twitter. [148] [149] [150] Because of its use in the clip, "Love My Way" gained popularity on music-streaming websites. It rose 13% on on-demand streams during the two months before the film's release. In the week ending November 30, 2017, the song collected 177,000 on-demand streams, its biggest streaming week in the U.S. [151]
Reaction to the advertisement on social media was somewhat negative, largely because of Sony Pictures' misleading use of an image of Chalamet and Garrel instead of a focus on the protagonists' relationship. [152] Daniel Megarry of Gay Times described it as "an attempt to ' straight-wash ' the movie's predominant same-sex romance". [153] Benjamin Lee of The Guardian called the ad a "disastrous attempt to push Oscar-buzzed Call Me by Your Name as a straight love story", and said the advert "belies an industry awkwardly denying queerness ". [154] Sony Pictures Classics later aired several commercial spots to promote the film during its U.S.-wide expansion on January 19, 2018. [129] To promote the film in South Korea, Sony Pictures released several never-before-seen set photos and pastel promotional posters illustrated by Son Eunkyoung in March 2018. [155] [156]
A pirated copy of an awards-screener DVD of Call Me by Your Name , along with copies of Last Flag Flying and fellow Oscar nominees I, Tonya and Lady Bird , were leaked onto file-sharing websites by the hacker group Hive-CM8 on December 24, 2017. [157] [158] [159] The film was officially released for digital download on February 27, 2018. [160] It was released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 13, 2018, with two bonus featurettes ("In Conversation with Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg & Luca Guadagnino" and "Snapshots of Italy: The Making of Call Me by Your Name "), an audio commentary track by Chalamet and Stuhlbarg, and the music video for "Mystery of Love". [98] [160] [161] The film made $2,100,758 in DVD sales and $1,856,909 in Blu-ray sales in the United States, for a total of $3,957,667 in home media sales. [162] In the United Kingdom, the DVD charted at number seven and the Blu-ray at number four on Top 100 sales for both formats. [163] [164]
Call Me by Your Name grossed $18.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $23.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $41.9 million against a production budget of $3.4 million. [6] The film was Sony Pictures Classics' third-highest-grossing release of 2017. [165]
In the United States, Call Me by Your Name began its limited run on November 24, 2017, at The Paris Theater and Union Square Theatre in New York City, and the ArcLight Hollywood and Landmark Theater in Los Angeles. [166] The film made $404,874 in its opening weekend—a per-theater average of $101,219. [167] [168] It was the highest average of 2017—the biggest since the opening of La La Land the previous December [169] —and had the best per-screen opening for a gay romance film since Brokeback Mountain (2005). [167] [170] In its second weekend, the film grossed $281,288, [171] [172] with an "excellent" per-screen average of $70,320. [173] [174] The film expanded to nine theaters in its third weekend, grossing $291,101 for a "solid" $32,345 per-theater average. [175] It earned $491,933 from 30 theaters in its fourth weekend, averaging $16,398. [126] The film expanded to 114 theaters in its fifth week and grossed $850,736, averaging $7,463 per screen. [127] It crossed $6 million in its seventh weekend, earning $758,726 from 115 locations. [176] It grossed $715,559 from 174 theaters in its eighth weekend, averaging $4,185 per screen. [128]
In the film's nationwide release week—its ninth weekend overall—the film grossed $1.4 million from 815 theaters, an under-performance compared to "some of its competition with similar theater counts," according to Deadline Hollywood . [129] [130] The following weekend, after the announcement of its four Oscar nominations, the film's revenues dropped 6 percent to $1.3 million. [177] [178] With a total gross revenue of $9,370,359 by the week of January 23, 2018, Call Me by Your Name was the second-lowest-grossing film among that year's Best Picture nominees. [179] However, the online ticketing company Fandango reported that the film had experienced a 56 percent increase in ticket sales through its service since its Best Picture nomination was announced. [5] Regarding the film's "lagging" box-office performance, Tom Brueggemann of IndieWire commented that Sony Picture Classic "has done an able job so far", and said "at some point the film and the reaction to it is something no distributor can overcome". [180] It grossed $919,926, averaging $1,006, from 914 theaters during the Oscar weekend, [131] and went on to earn $304,228 from 309 theaters in its sixteenth weekend. [181]
Call Me by Your Name opened at number seven in Italy with €781,000 and obtained the best per-theater average of the week. [182] It made €49,170 on February 6 and reached €2 million by the end of the week. [183] It re-entered at number 10 on March 13 by making another €13,731 at the box office. [184] as of July 6, 2018, the film had grossed $3,925,137 in Italy. [162] It attracted 17,152 viewers in France on its first day of screening, with an "excellent" per-theater average of 184 entries. [185] It went on to attract 108,500 viewers in the opening weekend, earning 1,167 viewings—the second-best average that week [186] —and 238,124 viewers in its third weekend. [187] as of April 17, 2018, the film had grossed $2,652,781 in France. [162] In the United Kingdom, the film earned £ 231,995 ($306,000) from 112 screens in its opening weekend, [188] including £4,000 from previews. [189] After ten days, it had made £568,000 ($745,000), [190] before reaching the $1 million mark (£767,000) in its third weekend. [191] [192] as of May 21, 2018, the film had grossed $2,372,382 in the United Kingdom. [162]
At its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Call Me by Your Name received a standing ovation. [193] When it screened at Alice Tully Hall as part of the New York Film Festival, it received a ten-minute ovation, the longest in the festival's history. [41] [194] On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes , the film has an approval rating of 94% based on 363 reviews, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, " Call Me by Your Name offers a melancholy, powerfully affecting portrait of first love, empathetically acted by Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer." [195] It was the best-reviewed limited release and the second-best-reviewed romance film of 2017 on the site. [196] [197] On Metacritic , the film has an average weighted score of 94 out of 100, based on 53 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". [198] It was the year's fifth-best rated film on Metacritic. [199]
Writing for The Hollywood Reporter , Boyd van Hoeij described Call Me by Your Name as an "extremely sensual ... intimate and piercingly honest" adaptation of Aciman's novel and called Chalamet's performance "the true breakout of the film". [201] Peter Debruge of Variety believed the film "advances the canon of gay cinema" by portraying "a story of first love ... that transcends the same-sex dynamic of its central couple". He compared Guadagnino's "sensual" direction with the films of Pedro Almodóvar and François Ozon , and put Call Me by Your Name "on par with the best of their work". [117] David Ehrlich of IndieWire also praised Guadagnino's directing, which he said helped the film "match the artistry and empathy" of Carol (2015) and Moonlight (2016). [200] Sam Adams of the BBC wrote that Stuhlbarg's performance "puts a frame around the movie's painting and opens up avenues we may not have thought to explore", and called it "one of his finest" to date. He extolled the film as one of "many movies that have so successfully appealed to both the intellectual and the erotic since the heydays of Patrice Chéreau and André Téchiné ". [202]
Ty Burr of The Boston Globe gave the film three-and-a-half stars, commended the director for "broaden[ing] his embrace of humanity while hitting new heights of cinematic bliss" and said that the film "may be a fantasy but it's one that's lovely and wise." [203] David Morgan of CBS praised the cinematography, production design and costuming for "making a summer in the 1980s palpably alive again." He found Stuhlbarg's character "the most forward-thinking parent in movie history". [204] Richard Lawson wrote that Guadagnino's adaptation "was made with real love, with good intentions, with a clarity of heart and purposeful, unpretentious intellect" and hailed it as a "modern gay classic" in his Vanity Fair review. [205] Chicago Tribune ' s Michael Phillips was pleased by the "wonderfully paradoxical" visual interests from the director and said Stevens's songs "work like magic on your sympathies regarding Elio's emotional awakening." He praised Hammer's performance as "some of the most easy-breathing and relaxed best work of his career." [206]
The Economist noted the tension "between pain and pleasure" in the film and praised Chalamet, saying that he "evokes so many shades of humanity, portraying a path of youthful self-discovery that is more raw, unhinged, and ultimately honest than many actors could manage". [207] Kate Taylor of The Globe and Mail , who gave the film two-and-a-half stars, also enjoyed Chalamet's effort in capturing "first love and its inevitable heartbreak" and said the "multilingual, almost-pre-AIDS idyll does not stretch credulity ... but it can try the patience". [208] Ken Eisner of The Georgia Straight said that "Guadagnino's lyrical excesses ... can alternate wildly between the poetically incisive and the indulgently preposterous." [209] In a negative review, Kyle Turner of Paste wrote, "The details of the film are too small for anyone, perhaps particularly a queer person, to see," a visual distance that "suggests that the film, in the beginning, is as terrified as Elio initially is. It never gets over that hesitation." [210] Armond White of Out called the movie "craven commercialism" and a "super-bourgeois fantasy" that "exploit[s] the queer audience's romantic needs by packaging them and falsifying them." [211]
The film's depiction of a sexual relationship with an age disparity between the characters Elio and Oliver drew commentary and criticism—especially in the United States, where the lowest legal age of consent is higher than in Italy . [212] The 17-year-old Elio was portrayed by Chalamet, who was 21 at the time of filming, while the 24-year-old Oliver was played by Hammer, then 31. [212] Queer Eye host Karamo Brown , criticized the movie as glorifying sexual assault and said, "it looks like a grown man having sex with a little boy." [213] Author Cheyenne Montgomery said she was disturbed that one of the protagonists is portrayed as a boy and the other as a man, saying, "Elio is portrayed very much as a child: He shaves peach fuzz off of his face, he cuddles with his parents, his lines are often kind of bratty and childlike, and he's being played as a sexy romantic partner to a character who's very much being portrayed as an adult." [214] Physicians Renee Sorrentino and Jack Turban wrote in Psychiatric Times :
This film is about sexual predation. Oliver looks much older than his reported age of 24 while Elio looks like a very young 17-year-old. The power disparity in the relationship is clear. Elio is fragile and sexually naive. Oliver is experienced and directive in the relationship. ... Is it appropriate for a 24-year-old experienced in drinking to have sex with an inebriated and vomiting 17-year-old? [215]
A feature in The Advocate , an LGBT-interest magazine, drew attention to other narrative films depicting heterosexual relationships with similar or greater age gaps, such as between the teenaged Scarlett and the 33-year-old Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind . [216]
The National Board of Review and the American Film Institute selected Call Me by Your Name as one of the top 10 films of the year. [217] [218] At the 90th Academy Awards , it was nominated for Best Picture , Best Actor (Chalamet), Best Original Song ("Mystery of Love"), and Best Adapted Screenplay , winning the last. [219] [220] Chalamet became the third-youngest Best Actor nominee and the youngest nominee since 1939 , and Ivory became the oldest winner in any competitive category. [221] The film received four nominations at the 71st British Academy Film Awards , including Best Film and Best Direction , and won Best Adapted Screenplay for Ivory. [222] [223] At the 75th Golden Globe Awards , it was nominated for Best Motion Picture – Drama , Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for Chalamet and Best Supporting Actor for Hammer. [224]
In a series of articles regarding the best of the 2010s in film , IndieWire ranked Call Me by Your Name as the 18th best film of the decade and Chalamet's performance as the 39th best acting performance. [234] [235] Consequence of Sound ranked the film as the 23rd best of the decade, [236] Rolling Stone ranked it 40th [237] and Little White Lies ranked it 47th. [238]
The film has gained a large international fan base. During the film's festival run, people crossed borders and oceans to be among the first to see the film. In 2018, a book was published by Barb Mirell, who collected stories from fans around the world about what the film meant to them. [239] By early 2018 the film had attracted a following in China among heterosexual women, who perceived it as a Western " boys' love " romance, evidenced by its popularity on the Chinese social network and media database Douban . [240]
After an Italian fan published coordinates of the filming locations, visiting Crema has become something akin to a religious pilgrimage for fans of the film. The city of Crema now offers official tours. [241]
Guadagnino has deliberated over the idea of a sequel since the film's premiere at Sundance, when he said he realized the characters "could go beyond the boundaries of the film." [44] In October 2017, he said he hoped to make a sequel in 2020 that might be in the style of François Truffaut 's The Adventures of Antoine Doinel series, telling the story of Oliver and Elio as they age. "If I paired the age of Elio in the film with the age of Timothée, in three years' time, Timothée will be 25, as would Elio by the time the second story was set", he said. [242] [243] In the novel, Elio and Oliver reunite 15 years later when Oliver is married. Guadagnino said that in the sequel, "I don't think Elio is necessarily going to become a gay man. He hasn't found his place yet ... I believe that he would start an intense relationship with Marzia again." [244]
Guadagnino has expressed interest in the politics of the 1990s, saying, "It is the time of the fall of Communism and the start of the new world order and so-called ' end of history ' that Francis Fukuyama established then ... the beginning of the [Silvio] Berlusconi era in Italy and it would mean dealing with the [first Gulf War ] of Iraq." [244] [245] In November 2017, Guadagnino shared his intention to make a series of five films, in which the audience could "see those actors grow older, embodying those characters." [44] A month later, he was reported to have begun writing a script for a sequel that would reveal more about Oliver and resemble Michael Apted 's Up series . [246] [247] Hammer and Chalamet have expressed interest in appearing in a sequel, [248] but Ivory appears to be dismissive, saying about the idea of sequels, "that's fine, good. But I don't know how they're going to get a 40-year-old [Chalamet]!" [40]
In January 2018, Guadagnino revealed the sequel will be set "right after the fall of Berlin Wall and that great shift that was the end of ... the USSR ", [16] and that the first scene in the film could depict Elio watching Paul Vecchiali 's Once More (1988)—the first French film to deal with AIDS—in a movie theater. [249] In March 2018, Guadagnino confirmed he will work with Aciman on the sequel, which will take place "five or six years afterwards" with "a different tone" than the first film. [250] He also said that Hammer and Chalamet would reprise their roles with a different backdrop, where they "go around the world". [250] Hammer said he was pitched the script by Guadagnino, saying: "it's not a finished script, but he's got all the ideas for it". [251] In April 2018, Aciman said in an interview for The Sydney Morning Herald that he and Guadagnino were "not sure" about the sequel, saying "[Guadagnino] has quite a few projects in line and so do I. So we are flirting with each other about the sequel but I don't know if we are very serious." [252] In July 2018, Stuhlbarg said that Guadagnino and Aciman were excited about the project and that the director was "serious" about it. He expressed enthusiasm to reprise his role in the sequel, saying "I think it would have to be some kind of unique thing from what it was, but I would absolutely be game for trying." [253] Two months later, Hammer said of the sequel in an interview for Variety : "It will happen because there are already people working on it and trying to make it happen." [254]
In an interview for Time in October 2018, Chalamet compared the sequel to Richard Linklater 's Boyhood (2014) and said that Hammer, Aciman and Guadagnino were all intended to return for the next film. [255] That same month, Guadagnino revealed that he has asked Dakota Johnson , a frequent collaborator of his, to play Oliver's wife in the sequel. He described her character as "a New England kind of hoochie woman" who might also have children with Oliver. [256] He said that the film would be "a new chapter in a chronicle" about the characters, rather than a sequel, [257] and it might take some time to develop due to the busy schedule, saying "I have not been able to luxuriate in anything but the promotion of Suspiria ... I didn't have space of mind and the real, actual time to put ideas on the table and think of things." [257] "The only problem is the title," he said; "It cannot be Call Me by Your Name Two ". [256] [258] At the SCAD Savannah Film Festival in October, Hammer said that Guadagnino had laid out a potential plot for the sequel and it might be a few years away, saying "[Guadagnino] wants to wait so that we age a bit more so that gap makes sense, kind of like a Linklater thing." [259] In an interview with Dazed in November, the director said about the sequel, "It's a delicate flower that is blooming very slowly. And so I think it's not the time to collect it and put it into a vase." [260]
In November 2018, Ivory confirmed that he wouldn't return for the sequel and said that Aciman thought "it was not a good idea". [261] Less than a week later, Aciman, however, said he was in fact writing a sequel to Call Me by Your Name . [262] [263] The novel, titled Find Me , was officially confirmed on March 20, 2019, and was released on October 29 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux . [264] Also in March 2019, Hammer revealed that the film isn't formally in the works, and he hasn't had explicit conversations with either Chalamet or Guadagnino about it. He also felt the potential sequel might not match the expectation, saying "It felt like a really perfect storm of so many things, that if we do make a second one, I think we're setting ourselves up for disappointment. I don't know that anything will match up to the first ... I'm like, 'That was such a special thing, why don't we just leave it alone?'" [265]
In March 2020, Guadagnino confirmed a sequel film in an interview with Italian newspaper la Repubblica . In the interview he also confirmed that the full cast of the original film, including Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer will be returning. He also stated in the interview that he was due to meet with an unnamed American writer to discuss the sequel, however it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic . [266] In a GQ interview in September, Hammer was asked again about the film's progress and said, "I've been talking to [Guadagnino], but we haven't got into it. I haven't even read the book. I know Luca hasn't got a full script yet, although he knows what he wants to do with the story, so I don't know how similar or dissimilar it will be to Find Me the novel. I know if we end up doing it, it’s more important for me to focus on Luca’s vision than to focus on Find Me ." [267]
A series of allegations against Hammer of emotional abuse and cannibalistic fetishism in early 2021 – resulting in Hammer's removal from nearly all upcoming projects – have raised doubts about the prospects of a sequel, [268] but actor Michael Stuhlbarg hopes that the film will still be made. [269] In May 2021, Guadagnino suggested in an interview with Deadline that a sequel was no longer in his priorities. [270] In the interview, he hinted that, beyond the complications related to Hammer's scandal, Chalamet and himself would be busy with other films in the near future which has led him to put the sequel project aside.
- ^ Mr. Perlman's first name is not given in the film's credits or in the source novel. In an interview, Stuhlbarg said his character was referred to as Samuel or Sam during production, and the character is called "Sammy" once in the film. [7]
- ^ Liguria and Sanremo were once depicted as the main setting in the book. [29] [41] Aciman, however, declared that the novel takes place in Bordighera, saying "I didn't want to name it in the book, but it's known. I go back to Bordighera all the time". [42] During his time as a location consultant, Guadagnino suggested Liguria as the main setting to the producers. [38]
- ^ In the original French, "le cinéma d'art [et] d'essai européen," a term encompassing independent and arthouse films . | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_Me_By_Your_Name_(film) | 78 |
where does call.me by your name take place | Filming Locations for Call Me By Your Name (2017), in Italy. | Luca Guadagnino ’s sun-drenched coming-of-age romance saw veteran film-maker James Ivory (of the Merchant - Ivory directorial team responsible for so many quintessentially British films including A Room With A View , Howards End and The Remains Of The Day ) finally win an Oscar, for his adaptation of André Aciman ’s novel.
It’s set in 1983 in the far north of Italy , and filmed around Crema , Moscazzano and Bergamo in Lombardy .
The main setting is the estate of the Perlman family. It looks mouth-wateringly inviting, but this time I’m afraid I’m not able to say: “and you can stay here…”. The villa is not a hotel or a guest-house but a private home and it’s surrounded by high walls.
It’s the Villa Albergoni, 3, Via Montodine , just south of Via Roma, in Moscazzano , a village about five miles south of Crema. The villa was put up for sale in 2018 for an asking price of €1.7 million. There’s little to see from the street, apart from the entrance, but if you missed the chance to buy it, you can comfort yourself knowing that it wasn’t such a bargain – there are really no peach trees on the estate and that plunge pool was added just for the film.
In fact, the villa was specially decorated for the film by Violante Visconti di Modrone , a relative of Luchino Visconti , coincidentally director of Death In Venice , a ravishingly beautiful film of homoerotic longings from a very different era.
When Perlman Sr ( Michael Stuhlbarg ), an academic specialising in classical antiquity, invites American research assistant Oliver ( Armie Hammer ) to stay at the villa or a few weeks, there’s initially resentment from his 17-year-old son, Elio ( Timothée Chalamet ), who’s obliged to give up his bedroom to the interloper.
Nevertheless, Elio dutifully takes Oliver into the nearest town to open a bank account for his stay.
Call Me by Your Name film location: Oliver and Elio meet up in Crema: Crema, Lombardy, Italy | Photograph: iStockphoto / clodio
The town is Crema , and it’s in the Piazza del Duomo in front of Crema Cathedral that, over drinks, Oliver asks what it is people do around here. As you may guess from the carefully angled shots, there’s not really a bar here.
The next time they cycle into town, it’s to Moscazzano , and Piazza Gambazocchi , where Elio watches as the charming Oliver joins a game of cards with the locals. And this bar is real – it’s Bar Belvedere, Piazza Gambazocchi, 7 .
Although tentative signals are exchanged between Elio and Oliver, they prove elusive and ambiguous. When the beats of the Psychedelic Furs impel Oliver to a flamboyant turn on the dancefloor at an alfresco disco party, Elio slips of with his kind-of-girlfriend Marzia ( Esther Garrel ) for a late-night swim.
They travel quite a way for it. The spot is Laghetto dei Riflessi , a small quarry lake in the Palata Menasciutto Nature Reserve , just to the southwest of Ricengo , though this is about three miles north of Crema.
Perlman Sr invites Oliver and Elio to join him on a trip to an archaeological site on Lake Garda , where precious artefacts are being recovered from the waters.
Call Me by Your Name film location: visiting the archaeological site' villa: Grottoes of Catullus, Sirmione, Lake Garda, Italy | Photograph: Shutterstock / Gherzak
This is Sirmione , a promontory at the southern tip of the lake. The brick columns and stone ruins here are Grottoes of Catullus , ruins of a Roman villa dating from about the time BC was turning into AD.
The awkwardness between Elio and Oliver is defused when Elio bravely declares a truce and the three go off for a sunset dip at nearby Spiaggia Giamaica ( Jamaica Beach ).
A turning point comes when Elio is read the story of a Knight who’s unable to declare his love for a Princess and is faced with the stark choice “Speak or die”.
As he strolls around the toweringly heroic WWI Memorial on Piazza Vittorio Emanuele III in Pandino , a few miles northwest of Crema, Elio chooses to speak, though Oliver quickly shuts the conversation down.
Despite the rebuff, Elio takes Oliver to his special place, where he goes to read and where the water running down from the mountains is freezing. This is Fontanile Quarantina , a quiet nature reserve near Capralba , northeast of Pandino. Elio’s dogged persistence pays off and in the meadow here there’s the first physical expression of their feelings. Again, it’s the cautious Oliver who pulls back.
On the way home, the pair stops at Cascina San Giorgio , on the tiny open space on Via Bosco at the southern end of Corte Palasio on SP124 – southwest of Crema toward Lodi, where they ask for a drink of water and are somewhat taken aback by the picture of Il Duce.
Feeling he’s given way to temptation, Oliver chooses to distance himself and the frustrated Elio turns to Marzia, meeting up with her opposite Crema 's Duomo in the colonnade running along the west side of Piazza Duomo at Via XX Settembre .
Elio eventually leaves a note for Oliver and their midnight meeting ends in the way it was always intended to, with a slow pan away to the window….
In Crema , the next day, Oliver – who seems inordinately sensitive about their age difference – apologises for “what happened last night”. In front of the newsagent at the southwest corner of Piazza Duomo , Elio is quick to reassure him.
So much time has passed that by now, Oliver’s time in Italy is nearly up. He’s off to spend a couple of days in Bergamo , a city about 30 miles north of Crema, before returning to the USA.
Everyone agrees it’s a good idea for Elio to accompany him, and they leave by coach from Piazza XXV Aprile , in front of the Baroque Chiesa di Montodine ( Church of Montodine ) in Montodine , a small town east of Moscazzano.
Now the floodgates have been opened, the two enjoy a crazily exhilarating few days in and around the city.
Call Me by Your Name film location: the towering waterfall in the mountains: Serio Waterfall Valbondione, Italy | Photograph: Shutterstock / Matteo Ceruti
The breathtaking waterfall among the mountains is actually much further north. It’s Le Cascate del Serio , about two miles northeast of Valbondione , and the highest waterfall in Italy . The falls are formed by three main steps on the Serio River , 166, 74 and 75 metres tall, altogether resulting in a drop of 315 m
Don’t expect to find that spectacular cascade all the time. A dam above the falls regulates the flow, releasing water for less than an hour, only four or five times a year. Plan ahead.
In Bergamo itself, the pensione at which Elio and Oliver stay was the, sadly now closed, Hotel Agnello d'Oro, Via Gombito, 22 , at Via San Pancrazio. Keep an eye on it – surely such a beautiful location overlooking Fontana del Gombito just northeast of the cathedral is not going to stay vacant for long.
The two enjoy one deliriously drunken night in the Piazza Padre Reginaldo Giuliani , in front of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore where, once again Oliver succumbs to the lure of the Psychedelic Furs while poor Elio throws up.
It’s all over too quickly and Oliver has to leave. The most understatedly heartwrenching train farewell since David Lean ’s Brief Encounter , is supposedly at the station of 'Clusone', but is actually Pizzighettone , much further south and closer to Crema.
Elio is given a ride home by his mother and it’s in front of Bar Belvedere in Moscazzano that he has a reconciliation with Marzia who turns out to be remarkably understanding, agreeing they should stay friends forever.
The final shot sees Chalamet honourably joining the ranks of actors including Bob Hoskins ( The Long Good Friday ) and Michael Redgrave ( The Go-Between ) who been given the unenviable task of carrying the emotional weight of the film’s ending with one long, final close-up.
Visit: Italy
Flights: Milan–Malpensa Airport , 21010 Ferno VA ( tel: 39.02.232323 )
Visit: the Palata Menasciutto Nature Reserve , Via Fiume Serio, 26010 Ripalta Nuova CR
Visit: Fontanile Quarantina , 26010 Capralba, CR | https://www.movie-locations.com/movies/c/Call-Me-By-Your-Name.php | 78 |
where does call.me by your name take place | Call Me By Your Name Locations in Italy (Full List + Map!) | Almost Ginger | This post may contain affiliate links. Please read the disclaimer here .
Call Me By Your Name makes “somewhere in Northern Italy” look like a utopian fantasy land. Where you own a villa in the countryside, enjoy peaches from your orchard and spend your days swimming in rivers and cycling through piazzas. Oh, and you are free to love and be loved by whomever you choose without shame or judgement. Personally, I’d drop reality and flee to the Call Me By Your Name locations in a heartbeat if I could.
Sadly, it’s just a movie adapted from a wonderful book. Call Me By Your Name (2017) stars Timothée Chalamet as Elio, a precocious 17-year-old who spends summers with his parent’s at their villa in Northern Italy. Armie Hammer is Oliver, his father’s 24-year-old grad student intern and the object of Elio’s affections. Over one summer in the 1980s, they learn what it means to desire someone and lose them and feel heartbreak in the process.
No word of a lie, Call Me By Your Name is one of my top four movies of all time. I adore this film. In part, because of the incredible and authentic Call Me By Your Name filming locations around the city of Crema in the Lombardy region of Italy. Are you ready to join the Perlmans at their idyllic Italian abode and wherever else they roam? After you, my friend!
All anyone cares about is where the house from Call Me By Your Name is! Well, the very first filming location is the Call Me By Your Name house. It is the main setting for the entire movie and where most of the scenes unfold.
As the movie opens, Elio is preparing to vacate his bedroom so Oliver can take it over while the young Marzia giggles on his bed. But so many other vital scenes happen at the Call Me By Your Name house location, which is Palazzo Albergoni in Moscazzano . They all eat breakfast and dinner at the table outside, the orchard where the apricots grow are out there too. And the piano where Elio must perform for guests sits in the living room while his father and Oliver work tirelessly in the organised mess that is Samuel Perlman’s office. Oh, and the attic where Elio “listens to the radio” is here, too.
The house from Call Me By Your Name is grand (it’s a palazzo for crying out loud and dates back to the 16th century) but worn. Director Luca Guadagnino wanted it to look like Annella Perlman inherited the villa from a distant relative but they hadn’t the funds to revert the decor to its former glory. It’s such a shame that this villa is a private residence and, due to the high walls and gate, you simply cannot get a good look. I believe the owners put the house on the market shortly after the film’s release so they no doubt made a pretty penny from that sale.
Oliver wants to open a bank account (in the book, they are more explicit about the fact he’s an avid poker player) so Elio offers to accompany him into Crema and lends him a bicycle. We see them ride down Via Montodine which is mere metres away from the front entrance of the Perlman’s villa and turn right onto Via Roma .
Next, there’s a jump cut and the lads are now cycling north of Crema instead of south down Via Cremosano . It looks like a cycling path in the middle of the open countryside and it pretty much is. If I’m right, they are cycling towards the western end of the road travelling east.
Later in the film, after Elio admits his feelings for Oliver in Pandino , they cycle on this road again. They stop next to a group of road signs over a small stream, and I’ve pinned the exact location where they stop on the map at the top of this blog post.
They’ve arrived in Crema ! This is one of the more prolific Call Me By Your Name filming locations aside from the villa. We see them cycling around the corner from Via Patrini and turn left onto Via Federico Pesadori .
Oliver asks, “what does one do around here?” while he and Elio are sat at one of the tables outside a café. He’s been in Italy for one day and he’s already bored?! They sit with the Arco del Torrazzo looming on their left and the Duomo on their right, which makes sense because they are located in Piazza del Duomo in Crema .
I’m not sure if it is still there, but identical table and chairs were set up in this piazza so you could take a photo as Oliver and Elio did in this scene. Yes, really!
After Samuel Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) gives Oliver the nerdiest entomology test regarding the history of the word “apricot”, Elio and Oliver walk down a street near the villa. They are walking down Via Roma which becomes Piazza Gambazocchi towards Casa Parrocchiale di Moscazzano with pretty pink and yellow buildings on their left.
Oliver walks into a bar to the right of the fur coat shop called P ellicceria Fratelli Spoldi and you can even see the shop’s sign in the background. If there was a bar there, I don’t think there is anymore. It looks like an empty building.
Towards the end of the film, Annella parks up in front of the church to no doubt get cigarettes from this “bar” that 100% looks fake. This is the scene where Elio makes up with Marzia.
The next few scenes all take place at the villa, the main Call Me By Your Name filming location. They eat, swim, transcribe music, play volleyball, and whatever else kids got up to in those days. So, the next new location is the disco where “Love My Way” by the Psychedelic Furs plays while Elio busts some moves. The dance floor is around the back of Circolo Arci San Bernardino , an arts centre in Crema .
After the dance, Elio and Marzia head for a midnight dip in a small lake called Laghetto dei Riflessi in Ricengo . Elio also goes back to this same spot after they return from Sirmione, but he appears to have missed Marzia.
Later in the film after Elio and Oliver kiss and Elio has his nosebleed, Elio swims at this lake with friends as Oliver rushes into town to avoid Chiara. And even later in the film after Elio meets up with Marzia in Crema, they return to the grass next to this lake and finally have sex. Elio and Oliver head to this lake shortly after they have sex. Is this lake the Italian equivalent of a Lover’s Lane?!
Samuel, Oliver, and Elio leave the villa after one of Samuel’s colleagues alerts him to a statue they have just found chilling at the bottom of Lake Garda . When they arrive, they are at the Archaeological site of Grotte di Catullo in Sirmione , a town on Lake Garda. The ruins are from a huge Roman villa, and Elio walks next to an old wall of Roman columns.
Samuel, his colleague Dr Roseburg, Oliver and Elio head down to the shoreline to see the piece of antiquity they discovered. It is Jamaica Beach on the tippy top of Sirmione. It is rather small so you should have no problems finding the exact Call Me By Your Name shooting location.
They hang out at the house for a while before venturing somewhere new on their bike rides. It is during those scenes where Annella translates a book the family is reading and utters one of the most iconic quotes in the film.
Is it better to speak or die? – Tale X from The Heptameron
The lads ride into a town that people often refer to as the Call Me By Your Name village. It is Pandino , a small town northwest of Crema. They ride down Via Castello , past Pandino Castle . Oliver goes into Bar Castello for cigarettes and then he admires the Monumento ai Caduti in the centre of the piazza, which is in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele III . In the film, the monument is for the people who died in the Battle of Piave but I don’t think that is what the monument commemorates in real life.
This is where Elio admits to Oliver how he feels. Oliver reacts by picking up copies of his book manuscript at 5 Piazza Vittorio Emanuele III .
Later in the film, there is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it insight into Elio’s dreams when he is asleep at the hotel in Bergamo. These are the shots that have a thermal imaging look about them. He imagines him and Oliver actually standing on the monument and jumping off it.
Elio and Oliver stop at the corner of SP124 and Via Bosco in the small town of Corte Palasio. Elio asks Oliver if he is thirsty, and he approaches a woman sat outside a huge house with an arched doorway and trees outside. They cycle off the way they came, behind the yellow house.
They continue cycling down a gravel track just north of Via Capralba which does not look like it is made for cars, just bikes and walking. The lads go back down this road when they leave, too.
Elio takes Oliver to Fontanile Quarantina Nature Reserve in Capralba which is just towards the end of the dirt track. There, the boys find a secluded small lake surrounded by trees. Elio calls this his secret spot, and it is a pretty special Call Me By Your Name place because it is here where Elio and Oliver share their first kiss. The first “winter” establishing shot is at this location, too.
Leaving the nature reserve, they cycle down Strada dei Boschi in Moscazzano on their way back to the villa. They pass an old farm building, which is located exactly where I’ve pinned it on the map at the top of this blog post.
Elio is feeling neglected by Oliver, so he falls back into Marzia’s arms. We have another Call Me By Your Name Crema location, as he agrees to meet her in the archway that separates Piazza del Duomo and Via XX Settembre in Crema . They turn left down Via Marazzi which is a dark, covered alley.
Marzia and Elio end up in Piazza Premoli in Crema , and the sun has now set so we can assume that Marzia has been awkwardly chatting and filling silences for quite a while. They stop in the archway of Palazzo Premoli in this piazza.
This is one of the last Call Me By Your Name locations in Crema . Elio follows Oliver to the town on his bike and spots him leaving La Provincia newsagent, though it is now closed. They turn left and walk down the tiny sidestreet next to this shop. The lads stop in front of an arched doorway.
Oliver must go back to America, but first, he needs to visit the University in Bergamo and Elio is joining him. The Prof and Mrs Perlman say goodbye to the boys at their bus stop in Piazza XXV Aprile in Montodine . There is actually a bus stop here in real life.
The first Call Me By Your Name filming location we see on their trip is the establishing shot of the shaky camera travelling along the Rifugio Antonio Curò hiking route as if from the point of view of a cyclist. Sufjan Stevens’s song ‘Mystery of Love’ plays over this shot.
The boys hike out to Cascate del Serio in Valbondione , the tallest waterfall in Italy and one of the tallest in Europe. You can reach it by following hiking trails.
After a day of hiking, Oliver and Elio check into their hotel room in Bergamo , which is the Agnello D’Oro hotel. Sadly, this hotel is now permanently closed.
Later that night, Oliver and Elio sing and dance in the street and appear to be a bit tipsy. Oliver puts on a show for Elio in a back alley and they weirdly roll down a wall, which is on the corner of Piazza Rosate and Via Rosate .
Oliver hears an Italian couple blasting ‘Love My Way’ from their car radio in a car park on Via Simone Mayr and just has to dance with the girl. They dance in front of the lion statue-guarded back door of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo .
Elio is 17-years-old and probably less experienced at binge drinking than Oliver, so he throws up. Oliver carries him down the stairs on Passeggiiata Cà Longa and onto Piazza Duomo . This is where, yup, you guessed it, the Duomo of Bergamo is. They kiss here too which is a bit gross considering Elio literally just threw up.
Oliver gets on a train at Pizzighettone Station and he has to say goodbye to Elio. It’s heartbreaking. Elio asks his mum to come and pick him up. He tells her he is at Clusone station, but in reality, it isn’t.
Elio is beside himself on the drive back from Clusone, and his mother attempts to comfort him as she drives and smokes, too. They are driving along Via Caprotti in Ripalta . In the film, they are surrounded by metres-tall cornfields but even if you cannot see the corn, the wooden telephone wires are unmistakable.
And those are all the Call Me By Your Name locations in Italy! Do you love the film too and have you visited any filming locations? Let me know in the comments below! | https://almostginger.com/call-me-by-your-name-locations/ | 78 |
where does call.me by your name take place | Where 'Call Me By Your Name' was filmed in Italy | Getty Images
Following news that a sequel novel is set to released in autumn 2019, discover the real Italian locations where the beautiful, critically-acclaimed original love story was shot
22 March 2019
Though the Oscars didn’t recognise it as they should have, 2017’s
Call Me By Your Name was a thing of beauty, from the physical form of its stars Timothée Chalamet (Elio) and Armie Hammer (Oliver) and the women around them to the emotional power of its tale of first love and self-realisation. Most beautiful of all, though, was the Italian countryside and architecture that fills almost every scene.
Rex Features
Director Luca Guadagnino has a track record of placing locations at the centre of his work. In his previous film, 2015’s
A Bigger Splash , the Italian island of Pantelleria pretty much drove the plot, drawing his characters into a series of drastic actions. This time, the effect is just as powerful but altogether more beatific. Director Luca Guadagnino, Timothee Chalamet and Arnie Hammer during filming of Call Me By Your Name, Rex Features Piazza del Duomo, Crema, Italy, Alamy Guadagnino is a little cagey about the details, giving us just the on-screen line that the story takes place ‘somewhere in Northern Italy’. He does tell all in the end titles, though, so perhaps his reservation is that this is home territory for him. André Aciman’s source novel was set on the coast, but the director moved the action to Lombardy, chiefly the town of Crema, an hour from Milan and close to where he lives. ‘It is quintessentially Italian without being an idea of Italy,’ he explained. ‘It’s just Italy.’ Rex Features Of course, ‘just Italy’ is just gorgeous. The 17th-century mansion where Elio lives with his family, the Villa Albergoni, is just south in Moscazzano and sadly not open to visitors. Console yourself that this means you’ll never have to find out that both the peach trees and plunge pool that play central roles were faked up. Advertisement Piazza del Duomo, Crema, Lombardy, Italy, Alamy Crema is worth the pilgrimage, though, with classically eye-catching high-walled streets and a 14th-century cathedral overlooking markets, boutiques and restaurants. Rex Features The colonnaded square where Elio and Oliver cycle and sit for a first conversation is the Piazza del Duomo, although the bar itself doesn’t exist. Sirmione, Italy, Getty Images To the north-west is Pandino, site of the striking war memorial in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, where Elio begins to declare his feelings to Oliver, and the Gothic-style Castello Visconteo beyond, where visitors are free to look around the outside. For wild swimming, stay north of Crema for the Laghetto dei Riflessi, where Elio takes his friend Marzia (Esther Garrel) after dancing to The Psychedelic Furs at the village discoteca, or to Fontanile Quarantina, a park near Capralba further north-west, where he and Oliver swim after a long cycle ride.
Rex Features
You’ll find more refreshment in the film’s most familiar location,
Lake Garda, where they visit Sirmione at the southern end of the lake with Elio’s father, who’s working on an archaeological dig, the first-century Roman villa Grotte di Catullo. The trio’s sunset dip takes place at nearby Spiaggia Giamaica, aka Jamaica Beach. | https://www.cntraveller.com/gallery/where-was-call-me-by-your-name-filmed | 78 |
where does call.me by your name take place | A Guide to the Enchanting Northern Italian Setting of Call Me by Your Name | “Somewhere in Northern Italy.” Those are the words scrawled across the opening credits of Call Me by Your Name , the film now up for three Golden Globes . It’s just a vague hint at a setting—enough to give geographical context for what’s to come, but not enough to take away from the dreamy timelessness of the film’s central romance once it finally arrives. Somewhere in Northern Italy, yes, but really just somewhere in the mind, in the heart.
Still, Call Me by Your Name ’s sun-dappled version of Northern Italy, with its verdant gardens, grand architecture, and misty swimming ponds, is sure to ignite a certain ache in viewers—and not just an ache for an all-consuming romance long gone or for a breathless future dalliance. The ache might just as well be for something simpler and more attainable: an idyllic summer sojourn to the Italian countryside, perhaps. After all, a great love affair is not something one can easily manifest, but a paradisiacal vacation? All that requires is a bit of planning. And anyway, as the actor Armie Hammer (who plays Oliver) recently told NPR , a beautiful time spent “somewhere” is capable of making its own indelible mark, too. “This [was] my new summer romance—going to Italy, shooting the movie . . . this was that summer for me that I knew was going to end and did not want it to.”
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Below, a brief guide to orchestrating your own sabbatical somewhere in Northern Italy. The romance, unfortunately, may not be guaranteed—but one should always hope.
Where to Go
Though the book on which the film is based takes place in the Mediterranean seaside region of Liguria, director Luca Guadagnino set his version in the inland region of Lombardy, an area he knows well. For years he has made his home near the small Lombardian town of Crema, less than an hour outside of Milan , and it is in the neighboring countryside where much of the film unfurls. “Crema has a sense of timelessness that I like, but I also think that it is quintessentially Italian without being an idea of Italy,” the director has explained . “It’s just Italy. A lot of these Hollywood movies made in Italy look as fake as a chocolate coin. It’s a danger I don’t want to risk. For me it’s important you make the thing that looks the most correct and the most real.”
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Guadagnino’s Crema also makes a good base from which to explore the piazzas, duomos, and sweeping landscapes seen in the film: Cremona, a picturesque village 45 minutes southwest; Lake Garda, the sister lake to Como an hour and a half northwest (where the scene of the archaeological dig occurs); and the northern town of Bergamo, where Oliver and Elio spend the final days of their affair. The majestic Serio Waterfalls —the highest in the country and the second highest in all of Europe—where the couple hikes together near the end of the film, are located just outside of Bergamo.
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Where to Stay
“I love the place and I knew the house,” Guadagnino told Another Magazine of the semi-decrepit 17th-century Villa Albergoni , where the fictional Perlman family summers. “In fact I wanted to buy the house, but I couldn’t afford it. But I knew that I could do something meaningful there, so I made a film instead.” While the villa is privately owned and much of the decor and furnishing were sourced especially for filming, there are other, equally grand places to stay. One such option is the three-bedroom Fiesco Villa , a historic family home built in the 1900s. For a slightly more provincial experience, rent a restored stone barn with a swimming pool and vine-covered terrace surrounded by 124 acres of fields and woods near Piacenza to the south of Cremona.
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What to Eat
Don’t expect to find vast orchards of peaches and apricots in Lombardy. Though they play a pivotal part in the book and film, they are not truly native to the region. Like the rich, eye candy mix of antique decor that decorates the film version of Villa Albergoni, the lush fruit trees that form the backdrop of the outdoor dining pergola were created for the film, set designer Violante Visconti di Modrone explained to The New York Times : “We stuck some real, ripe peaches to the trees, but the others were props.”
Still, the region is an agricultural center—rice, corn, grapes, and cows—and its singular cuisine has little to do with the pasta, tomatoes, and olive oil for which the rest of the country is famed. Instead, expect risotto and polenta in Lombardy, plus lots of butter and meat alongside local cheeses like Taleggio, Gorgonzola, and Grana Padano. The most memorable place to sample all of the above (and more) might just be Cremona’s Lago Scuro , a working dairy and organic farm housed on a sprawling medieval manor surrounded by hazelnut, oak, and magnolia trees. The farm also hosts guests to stay the night in its bed-and-breakfast—perfect, because you’ll likely fall in love with its enchanting setting, too. | https://www.vogue.com/article/call-me-by-your-name-guide-to-northern-italy | 78 |
where does call.me by your name take place | Call Me by Your Name (film) | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|Call Me by Your Name|
|Directed by||Luca Guadagnino|
|Screenplay by||James Ivory|
|Based on|| Call Me by Your Name |
by André Aciman
|Produced by|
|Starring|
|Cinematography||Sayombhu Mukdeeprom|
|Edited by||Walter Fasano|
Production
companies
|Distributed by|
Release dates
Running time
|132 minutes [1]|
|Countries|
|Languages|
|Budget||$3.5 million [5]|
|Box office||$43.1 million [6]|
Call Me by Your Name (Italian: Chiamami col tuo nome ) is a 2017 coming-of-age romantic drama film directed by Luca Guadagnino . Its screenplay, by James Ivory , who also co-produced, is based on the 2007 novel of the same title by André Aciman . The film is the final instalment in Guadagnino's thematic "Desire" trilogy, after I Am Love (2009), and A Bigger Splash (2015). Set in 1983 in northern Italy, Call Me by Your Name chronicles the romantic relationship between a 17-year-old, Elio Perlman ( Timothée Chalamet ), and Oliver ( Armie Hammer ), a 24-year-old graduate-student assistant to Elio's father Samuel ( Michael Stuhlbarg ), an archaeology professor. The film also stars actresses Amira Casar , Esther Garrel , and Victoire Du Bois .
Development began in 2007 when producers Peter Spears and Howard Rosenman optioned the rights to Aciman's novel. Ivory had been chosen to co-direct with Guadagnino, but stepped down in 2016. Guadagnino had joined the project as a location scout , and eventually became sole director and co-producer. Call Me by Your Name was financed by several international companies, and its principal photography took place mainly in the city and comune of Crema, Lombardy , between May and June 2016. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom used 35 mm film , as opposed to employing digital cinematography . The filmmakers spent weeks decorating Villa Albergoni , one of the main shooting locations. Guadagnino curated the film's soundtrack , which features two original songs by American singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens .
Sony Pictures Classics acquired distribution rights to Call Me by Your Name before its premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2017. The film began a limited release in the United States on November 24, 2017, and went on general release on January 19, 2018. It received widespread critical acclaim, particularly for Ivory's screenplay, Guadagnino's direction, Mukdeeprom's cinematography, and the performances of Chalamet, Hammer, and Stuhlbarg. The film garnered a number of accolades , including many for its screenplay, direction, acting, and music. It received four nominations at the 90th Academy Awards , including Best Picture and Best Actor for 22-year-old Chalamet (the third-youngest nominee in the category), and winning for Best Adapted Screenplay . The screenplay also won at the 23rd Critics' Choice Awards , 71st British Academy Film Awards , and the 70th Writers Guild of America Awards .
In the summer of 1983, Elio Perlman, a 17-year-old Jewish Italo-French boy, lives with his parents in rural Northern Italy . Elio's father, a professor of archaeology, invites a 24-year-old Jewish American graduate student, Oliver, to live with the family over the summer and help with his academic paperwork. Elio, an introspective bibliophile and a musician, initially thinks he has little in common with Oliver, who appears confident and carefree. Elio spends much of the summer reading, playing piano, and hanging out with his childhood friends, Chiara and Marzia. During a volleyball match, Oliver touches Elio's back but Elio brushes it off. However, Elio later finds himself jealous upon seeing Oliver pursue Chiara.
Elio and Oliver spend more time together, going for long walks into town, and accompanying Elio's father on an archaeological trip. Elio is increasingly drawn to Oliver, even sneaking to Oliver's room to smell his clothing. Elio eventually confesses his feelings to Oliver, who tells him they cannot discuss such things. Later, in a secluded spot, the two kiss for the first time. Oliver is reluctant to take things further, and they do not speak for several days.
Elio goes on a date with Marzia and the two have sex. Elio leaves a note for Oliver to end their silence. Oliver writes back, asking Elio to meet him at midnight. Elio agrees and they sleep together for the first time. Afterward, Oliver says to Elio, "Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine". The morning after, Elio is briefly conflicted about their encounter and takes out his sexual frustration by masturbating with a peach. When Oliver finds him, Elio cries about how little time he and Oliver have left together. Marzia confronts Elio after not hearing from him for three days. He responds coldly, hurting her.
As the end of Oliver's stay approaches, Elio's parents, who appear to be aware of the bond between the two, recommend that he and Oliver visit Bergamo together before Oliver returns to the U.S. They spend three romantic days together. Elio, heartbroken after Oliver's departure, calls his mother and asks her to pick him up from the train station and take him home. Marzia is sympathetic to Elio's feelings and says she wants to remain friends. Elio's father, observing his deep sadness, tells him he was aware of his relationship with Oliver and urges Elio to learn from his grief and grow instead of pushing aside his feelings and moving on too quickly.
During Hanukkah , Oliver calls Elio's family to tell them he is engaged to be married to a woman he has been seeing for a few years. An upset Elio calls Oliver by his name and Oliver responds with his; Oliver also says that he remembers everything. After the call, Elio sits down by the fireplace and stares into the flames, tearfully reflecting, as his parents and staff prepare the holiday dinner.
Call Me by Your Name is the final installment in a thematic trilogy Guadagnino calls his "Desire" trilogy; the other two parts were I Am Love (2009) and A Bigger Splash (2015). [9] [10] Guadagnino described his approach to the film as "lighthearted and simple", [11] [12] marking a departure from his previous work, which has been called "highly stylised [and] dazzling". [13] Guadagnino considers Call Me by Your Name a "homage to the fathers of my life: my own father, and my cinematic ones", referring to the filmmakers Jean Renoir , Jacques Rivette , Éric Rohmer , and Bernardo Bertolucci , who he says inspired him. [14]
Guadagnino has described Call Me by Your Name as a family-oriented film for the purpose of "transmission of knowledge and hope that people of different generations come to see the film together." [15] He saw it not as a "gay" movie but as a film about "the beauty of the newborn idea of desire, unbiased and uncynical", reflecting his motto of living "with a sense of joie de vivre ". [11] [12] "We should always be very earnest with one's feelings, instead of hiding them or shielding ourselves," he said. [9] He considered it an "uplifting film" about "being who you want to be and finding yourself into the gaze of the other in his or her otherness." [16]
The director tried to avoid the flaws he had seen in most coming-of-age films , where growth is often portrayed as being a result of resolving preconceived dilemmas such as an enforced choice between two lovers. [17] He also wanted the story to follow two people "in the moment", rather than focus on an antagonist or a tragedy [12] —an approach inspired by À nos amours (1983), directed by Maurice Pialat . [17] [18] As someone who considers sex in film a representation of the characters' behavior and identity, [19] Guadagnino was not interested in including explicit sex scenes in the film. [20] He explained his intention: "I wanted the audience to completely rely on the emotional travel of these people and feel first love... It was important to me to create this powerful universality, because the whole idea of the movie is that the other person makes you beautiful—enlightens you, elevates you." [20]
Alongside a sexual coming of age motif, the movie also touches upon the novel's theme [21] of Elio discovering and connecting to his Jewish identity through the openly Jewish Oliver and as a contrast with his own family being, as his mother puts it, "Jews of discretion". [22] The common Jewish identity is a part of what draws Elio and Oliver together and is represented visually on screen through the Star of David necklace that Oliver initially wears and Elio is drawn to. [23] The theme of sexual self-discovery is paralleled with the Jewish theme in the movie, since in both cases, Elio starts out more secretive about these parts of himself and transitions to a place of greater self-acceptance, both journeys connected to Oliver's role in his life. There is a hint in the movie that Oliver might have gifted his own Star of David necklace to Elio shortly before they parted ways in the train station. [24] Elio's own necklace can be clearly seen during the conversation from which the movie (as the novel) borrows its title thanks to its visually central placement during this scene.
Two of the film's producers, Peter Spears and Howard Rosenman , saw a galley proof of André Aciman 's debut novel Call Me by Your Name in 2007 and " optioned " the screen rights before its publication. [25] Rosenman first heard about the book through a friend after acting in Milk (2008) and described it as "divine". [26] Spears, moved by the novel and believing it deserved a cinematic adaptation, received his first credit as a producer from his work on the film. [27] They invited their friend James Ivory to work as an executive producer on the film adaptation. [28] Spears and Rosenman began production in 2008, [29] but the project was soon trapped in " development hell ". [30] The producers met with three sets of directors and writers—among them Gabriele Muccino , Ferzan Özpetek , and Sam Taylor-Johnson [31] —but could not find anyone who would commit to the project. [25] [32] Scheduling filming in Italy during the summer also proved difficult. [25] [32]
The producers contacted Guadagnino, their first choice to direct, but he declined, citing a busy schedule. [10] [29] However, as Guadagnino lived in northern Italy, he was initially hired as a location consultant instead. [17] [33] Guadagnino later suggested that he co-direct the film with Ivory, but no contractual agreement was put in place. [11] [30] Ivory accepted the offer to co-direct on the condition that he would also write the film; [30] he spent "about nine months" on the screenplay. [28] [34] Guadagnino, who has described the novel as "a Proustian book about remembering the past and indulging in the melancholy of lost things", [18] collaborated on the adaptation with Ivory and Walter Fasano . [11] [15] Screenwriting took place at Ivory's house, Guadagnino's kitchen table in Crema , and sometimes in New York City. [35] Ivory rarely met Guadagnino during the process, since the director was busy making A Bigger Splash (2015). [34]
The screenplay was completed in late 2015. [34] Aciman approved it and commended the adaptation as "direct ... real and persuasive", adding "they've done better than the book". [25] The completed screenplay was vital in securing funding for the film. [28] [30] Among the financiers were the production companies La Cinéfacture (France), Frenesy Film Company (Italy, owned by Guadagnino), M.Y.R.A. Entertainment (United States), RT Features (Brazil), and Water's End Productions (United States). The project was also supported by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism . [15] [36] [37] The backers deemed the production's initial cost estimates "too expensive", [38] so the production budget was reduced from $12 million to $3.4 million and the filming schedule was cut from 12 to 5 weeks. [37] [39]
Ivory stepped down from a directorial role in 2016, leaving Guadagnino to direct the film alone. [10] [11] According to Ivory, financiers from Memento Films International did not want two directors involved with the project because they "thought it would be awkward ... It might take longer, it would look terrible if we got in fights on the set, and so on." [28] [34] Guadagnino said Ivory's version would have likely been "a much more costly [and] different film" that would have been too expensive to make. [17] [33] Ivory became the sole-credited screenwriter [40] and later sold the rights to the screenplay to Guadagnino's company. [28] [34] Call Me by Your Name was Ivory's first produced screenplay since Le Divorce (2003) and the only narrative feature he has written but not directed. [40] He remained involved with other aspects of the production. [40] Guadagnino dedicated the film to his late friend Bill Paxton , who came to visit the set in Crema before his death in February 2017. [ citation needed ]
The film differs from its source material in several ways. The novel is written in flashback, from Elio's perspective. The filmmakers set the movie entirely in 1983 to help the audience understand the characters, believing that this approach would allow them to remain true to the spirit of the book. [29] [18] The setting was changed from Bordighera to the countryside of Crema, where Guadagnino lives. [b] The town square selected for filming differed from the one Aciman had pictured in his novel, which in his vision was "far smaller and stood high on a hill overlooking a windswept Mediterranean ". [43] The arid climate and "spookily deserted" landscape in Crema suggested to him that the film would not correspond to the novel. [43] The director also changed the year of the events from 1987 to 1983. In his words, Guadagnino chose "the year—in Italy at least—where the '70s are killed, when everything that was great about the '70s is definitely shut down," but also a time when the characters could be "in a way untouched by the corruption of the '80s—in the U.S., [Ronald] Reagan, and in the UK, [Margaret] Thatcher". [35] [41]
Guadagnino was tempted to remove the scene in which Elio masturbates into a pitted peach, finding it too explicit. [25] [44] Chalamet was also nervous about the scene, [45] describing it as "a metamorphosis of some of the strongest ideas in the movie" and the key to illuminating the character's "overabundant sexual energy". [29] [46] Both Guadagnino and Chalamet believed it was implausible to masturbate with a peach, but each independently tested the method. To their surprise, it worked, so Guadagnino shot the scene and ultimately included it in the film. [47] A scene featuring Elio and Oliver dancing enthusiastically to The Psychedelic Furs song " Love My Way " in a small bar is not drawn from the book. It was inspired by Jonathan Demme 's Something Wild (1986), and Guadagnino's experience of dancing by himself when he was young. [25] [48] Ivory altered Mr. Perlman's profession from a classics scholar to "an art historian/archeologist type", [29] [42] a decision that Aciman described as "perfect" and "more visual, [...] more exciting, as opposed to what a scholar does at his desk". [42]
When he was revising Ivory's draft of the script, Guadagnino removed the voice-over narration and much of the nudity. [18] [33] He said that explicit nudity was "absolutely irrelevant" to his vision for the film, [49] and that he did not like the idea of having the main character tell the story retrospectively, stating that "it kills the surprise". [18] Towards the end of the novel, the two protagonists visit Rome, a trip which lasts an entire chapter and introduces new characters in multiple locations. [34] [40] Because of the film's limited budget, Ivory and the producers wrote several variations, one of which was to leave the lead characters alone in the family's house. [34] Ultimately, the filmmakers settled on another trip—to Bergamo , rather than Rome—where the characters spend much of their time alone together in a hotel room. [34] In his original script, Ivory depicted Elio's parents discussing HIV/AIDS in two scenes, [50] and Elio decorating a Christmas tree in his family's home in the final scene. [51] [40] Ivory had to reduce the length of Mr. Perlman's speech but was committed to keeping it in the script. [52] Aciman said in an interview with Moment that, while keeping intervention with the script at a minimum, he suggested to Ivory to keep dialogue prior to Perlman's speech to a minimum so as not to "steal the surprise and the suspense that happens" as it unfolds. [53] Ivory described the scene in which Elio conveys his feelings to Oliver as one of the moments that captures the "euphoric passion and nervousness" of their first love. [54] Aciman was surprised by Guadagnino's final scene where Elio is seen crying by the fireplace; [43] he wrote of the film adaptation:
Cinema can be an entirely magical medium. What I do as a writer, and what Guadagnino does as a film director, is more than speak two different languages. What I do is chisel a statue down to its finest, most elusive details. What a film director does is make the statue move. [43]
Many of the changes to Ivory's screenplay were made during the filming; the screenwriter was not present at the shooting set. [51] In May 2016, Ivory said that he and Guadagnino discussed how to film the scenes involving nudity, but the director later dropped them. [50] In Ivory's view, some of the director's statements to the press had misrepresented the film's omission of nudity as a "conscious aesthetic decision", even though they had never discussed removing nudity from the screenplay. [50] Ivory said, "When people are wandering around before or after making love, and they're decorously covered with sheets, it’s always seemed phoney to me." [50] By contrast, Ivory cited scenes from his earlier film Maurice (1987)—a gay romantic drama that includes male nudity—as "a more natural way of doing things than to hide them, or to do what Luca did, which is to pan the camera out of the window toward some trees." [50] Guadagnino said that he understood Ivory's position, but that it was clear that there were "no limitations on what we wanted to do." [49]
In 2015, Shia LaBeouf and Greta Scacchi were reportedly set to be cast in the film. [55] In September 2016, Ivory confirmed they were no longer involved in the project. Ivory said he got along with LaBeouf, who had read for the film in New York City, but the production company later felt the actor was unsuitable after his "various troubles". Ivory thought Scacchi and LaBeouf read well together and could have made it into the film, but the company disagreed. [56]
Guadagnino was impressed by Armie Hammer 's performance in The Social Network (2010), [11] [47] describing him as a "sophisticated actor, with a great range". [11] Hammer almost turned down the role of Oliver after reading the draft script because it contained nudity, saying, "There's a lot of stuff here that I've never done on film before. But there's no way I can't do this [film], mostly because it scares me so much." [57] [58] Hammer had previously played gay characters in J. Edgar (2011) and Final Portrait (2017). [44] [59]
In 2013, Swardstrom—Spears' husband and agent—introduced Chalamet to Guadagnino, [11] [19] who immediately felt the actor had "the ambition, the intelligence, the sensitivity, the naivety, and the artistry" to play Elio. [18] Chalamet had already read Aciman's novel and described it as "a window into a young person". [45] His character, 17-year-old Elio, is fluent in three languages: English, French and Italian. [37] Upon his arrival in Italy, Chalamet—who already spoke French fluently and had played piano and guitar for years [29] [37] [60] —prepared for his role with a schedule of daily lessons in Italian, gym workouts three times a week, [29] and by working with composer Roberto Solci. [29] [37]
Michael Stuhlbarg , who was cast as Elio's father, Mr. Perlman, [57] [61] did not read the book until he had already joined the production. [62] He found the script moving and described Mr. Perlman as having a "sense of generosity and love and understanding". [63] Esther Garrel was contacted by Guadagnino when he was in Paris for the promotion of A Bigger Splash . [64] Garrel was cast as Marzia without any formal audition, and she chose not to read the book before shooting. [64] Towards the end of the film, Marzia asks Elio, "Friend for life?"—a line taken from J'entends plus la guitare (1991), directed by the actress's father, Philippe Garrel . [38] "I like the idea of talking virtually with Philippe Garrel through her," Guadagnino said. [38] During shooting, Garrel spoke French with Chalamet on set and watched the American sitcom Friends with English subtitles to improve her English. [64]
Guadagnino chose Amira Casar , whom he had known for twenty years, for the role of Elio's mother Annella. [38] [61] In an interview with French magazine Télérama , Guadagnino expressed his admiration of Casar's "sense of transgression" and called her "the most audacious" in European art cinema . [c] [38] Casting director Stella Savino met Vanda Capriolo when she was bicycling in the countryside. Capriolo, who was not an actor, was chosen to play Mafalda, the Perlmans' maid. [48] [65] Aciman and Spears also appear briefly in cameo roles as Mounir and Isaac, an openly gay couple who attend a dinner party. [29] [42] Aciman was asked to be in the movie after actors became unavailable. "It was a last-minute decision," Spears recalled, "André turns out to be a phenomenal actor! So comfortable, not nervous at all. His wife was sitting there and said, 'I had no idea!'" [66] In dialogue, the characters switch between English, French, Italian, [67] and in one scene Annella reads a German translation of 16th-century French literature . [68]
Hammer and Chalamet both signed contracts prohibiting the film from showing them with full-frontal nudity. Ivory, whose original screenplay contained nudity, was dismayed by the decision. He criticized what he saw as an "American" attitude, saying, "Nobody seems to care that much or be shocked about a totally naked woman. It's the men." [30] [33] Guadagnino picked actors based on their performances and chemistry rather than on their sexuality. [20] He said, "The idea that you have to cast only someone who has a certain set of skills, and worse, a certain gender identity in any role: that's oppressive to me." [10]
The main location set for the Perlmans' residence was Villa Albergoni , an uninhabited 17th-century mansion in Moscazzano . [29] [69] Guadagnino wanted to buy the house but could not afford it, so he made a film there instead. [37] [70] A landscape designer was hired to construct an orchard in the mansion's garden. [65] A pergola was built on the patio, and apricot and peach trees were placed in the garden. [69] [71]
Guadagnino did not want the film to be a period piece and tried to resist making a film that would reflect "our idea of the 80s". His goal was an accurate recreation of the period that was invisible to the viewer." [17] The crew, including production designer Samuel Deshors and set decorators Sandro Piccarozzi and Violante Visconti di Modrone, styled the house with furniture and objects inspired by the characters. [29] [70] Much of the furniture, including dishes and glassware from the 1950s, belonged to Guadagnino and Visconti di Modrone's parents. Di Modrone, a grandniece of Luchino Visconti from the famous Visconti family said, "That made it cozy and personal ... I wanted to give it the sense of time passing by". [72] Many paintings, maps, and mirrors influenced by Asian art came from an antiques shop in Milan. [71] [72] The books seen in the background were all published before 1982. [65] The swimming pool used in the film was based on a watering trough common in the area. [29] [72]
The filmmakers set up faded political billboards in public places to reflect the Italian general election in 1983 [65] and re-created a newsstand full of magazines of that time. [65] Residents of Crema helped the production team with their research, inviting them into their homes and providing pictures from the 1980s. [17] [73] Chen Li, the film's graphic designer, created a handwritten typeface for the film's title sequence of photocopied images of statues alongside items on Mr. Perlman's desk. [65]
Costume designer Giulia Piersanti avoided using period costumes; instead, she wanted to provide "a sense of insouciant adolescent sensuality, summer heat and sexual awakening" to the characters. [72] The costumes, which were influenced by the French films Pauline at the Beach (1983), A Tale of Springtime (1990) and A Summer's Tale (1996), [72] included some pieces made by Piersanti's team. [65] For the Perlmans' wardrobe, Piersanti took inspiration from her parents' photograph albums. For Oliver's "sexy, healthy American" image, Piersanti referred to "some of Bruce Weber 's earliest photographs". [72] Oliver's clothes change throughout the film as "he's more able to free himself". [65] Aiming to emphasize Elio's confident style, she chose several Lacoste costumes and a distinctive, New Romantic -looking shirt in the final scene. [17] [72] For Elio's other costumes, Piersanti picked some items from her husband's closet, including the polo shirt and Fido Dido T-shirt. [72]
Principal photography began on May 9, 2016, and wrapped in June 2016, [74] [75] lasting around 33 days. [65] [76] The film was shot primarily in Crema and the surrounding province of Cremona . [11] [14] [77] [78] An unusual series of rainstorms coincided with the shooting schedule, with heavy rain on 28 of the shooting days. [27] [76] Scenes set in the nearby villages Pandino and Moscazzano were filmed between May 17 and 19, and shooting in Crema began on June 1. [79] [80] [81] Additional outdoor scenes were shot on December 4, 2016. [82] [83] The City of Crema invested € 18,000 in the film, including a publicity campaign costing €7,500. [84] [85]
The arch of Torrazzo at Crema Cathedral and several historical locations in the streets of Crema and Pandino were chosen during production. [69] [79] Businesses requested compensation for financial losses caused by the closure, which was scheduled for May 30 and 31. [86] Two days' filming at the cathedral were postponed due to the rainy weather. [87] Filming also took place in the Lodigiano area near Crespiatica and in two small towns near Crema, Montodine and Ripalta . [69] [29] [82] The archaeological discovery scene was filmed at the Grottoes of Catullus in Sirmione on the Brescian shores of Lake Garda . [69] The trip to Bergamo was filmed at the exterior of multiple historical buildings, including Bergamo Cathedral , the Santa Maria Maggiore , the courtyard of Liceo Classico Paolo Sarpi in Piazza Rosate and the University of Sciences, Letters and Arts [ it ] . [69] The train station scenes were filmed at Pizzighettone . [88] Because of security concerns, the production team was only granted permission to film at the Cascate del Serio in Valbondione for half an hour. [69] [77] [89]
Before and during filming, the actors lived in Crema and were able to experience small-town life. [29] Guadagnino engaged with the cast and filmmakers and often cooked for them and showed films at his house. [25] Hammer and Chalamet, who did not have to do a screen test together, [18] [90] met for the first time during production in Crema. [29] [75] Before filming began, they spent a month together, watching TV and going to local restaurants. [9] [58] [75] "We'd hang out with each other all the time, because we were pretty much the only Americans there, and we were able to defend one another and really get to know one another," Chalamet said. [60] During the first two days of production, Guadagnino read the script with the cast. [35] The first scene that Hammer and Chalamet rehearsed was the kissing scene, [26] [90] and they spent several days filming nude. [91] "I've never been so intimately involved with a director before. Luca was able to look at me and completely undress me," Hammer said. [47]
- Selected filming locations
The South portal of Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo (
)
The Station of Pizzighettone (
)
Guadagnino shot the film in chronological order, [35] [92] which allowed the filmmakers to "witness the onscreen maturity of both protagonist and actor", according to Fasano. [93] The scene in which Mr. Perlman delivers an emotional speech to Elio was filmed on the penultimate day of filming. [9] [35] Stuhlbarg spent months preparing for the scene, [9] [63] which Guadagnino wanted to make "as simple as possible" by shooting fewer takes and "let[ting] the actors be." [16] The scene took three takes to film and Stuhlbarg was "on three different levels of getting emotional". [93] Garrel enjoyed filming her sex scene with Chalamet, which she described as filled with "joy and simplicity". [64] Chalamet was listening to "Visions of Gideon", one of the original songs written by Sufjan Stevens for the film, in an earpiece while filming the final sequence; [94] [95] the director asked him to perform three variations of the scene, one per take. [96] The camera was set in the fireplace with nobody behind it. "It was bit of an acting experiment," Chalamet said. [48] During this scene, the title of the film was shown for the first time, rather than in the opening sequence.
At the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, [88] a memorial to the victims of the battle of the Piave in Pandino, [43] the filmmakers laid a long camera dolly track to film the scene where Elio tells Oliver of his feelings for him in a single long take . This provided the flexibility and "flow of emotion" a cut scene could not. [97] During the dancing sequence, Hammer had to perform to a click track in front of 50 off-camera extras with the music turned down so the dialogue could be recorded. [48] [58] In preparation for the scene, Guadagnino arranged for Hammer to practice with a dance coach. [48] Hammer said that it was "the worst scene" he had ever filmed. [98] Choreographer Paolo Rocchi, who was contacted by the Frenesy Film Company in June 2016, described the routine as "awkward and realistic". [99] Rosenman considered the scene one of the most emotional moments; he said "It embodied and encapsulated, for me, what teenage love is all about, what desire is all about." [26]
Sayombhu Mukdeeprom , who had previously collaborated with Guadagnino on Ferdinando Cito Filomarino's Antonia (2015), served as the director of photography . [19] [100] He had read Aciman's novel before receiving the script and walked around filming locations to "get a feeling for everything ... to see the color, to see how the light changed during the day, and input it into my data". [101] Mukdeeprom had to use artificial lighting to capture the Northern Italian summer atmosphere, [11] compensating for heavy rains that lasted throughout the shoot. [19] [76] While filming the confrontation scene between Oliver and Elio, Mukdeeprom cried in a corner of the room after they finished the first take, overwhelmed by a feeling of profound empathy for the actors. [11] The film was shot using 35 mm celluloid film and a single lens, [102] a decision influenced by the work of David Cronenberg to "solidif[y] the point of view" [12] and make "the tension of the performance come off the screen"—even if it meant increasing the production budget above the cost of shooting in digital. [102] Guadagnino praised Jean-Pierre Laforce, the film's sound designer and mixer , for his "wonderful" and "pivotal" contributions. Guadagnino, who had previously worked with Laforce on A Bigger Splash , said he was "able to create a sort of Cathedral of sound without overwhelming the movie." [16]
Fasano collaborated with Guadagnino during the post-production. [103] [37] They had worked together for 25 years since Guadagnino's debut feature The Protagonists (1999). [37] Fasano described working with Guadagnino as "atypical [and] very demanding, but it's a great experience." [103] Post-production took only a month, between June and July [11] —the fastest they had ever edited. [75] Fasano cited the films of Bernardo Bertolucci and the "fast and unexplained" storytelling in Pialat's À nos amours as inspiration. [103]
Their first cut of the film ran three hours and 20 minutes long. [103] [104] Fasano described it as his favorite saying it made him "lose [him]self in the story and the images." [103] The final cut lasts two hours and 10 minutes with a shooting ratio of 25:1. [103]
Several notable changes were made, or almost made, near the end of post-production. The monologue sequence with Elio's father once had piano playing beneath it. The scene where the two protagonists bike to a courtyard almost failed to make the final cut after one of the producers said it was inconsequential. [93] Hammer revealed that some scenes were digitally altered to fix wardrobe malfunctions caused by his short shorts. [105] [106] Guadagnino has discussed several scenes that did not make the final cut. There was a "well-acted" scene where Elio and Oliver were "teasing one another" under a lime tree, which the director felt was "too precious". [44] A scene where Elio's parents make love in the bedroom while Elio and Oliver are kissing under the moonlight in the garden was also cut. [44] The latter scene was shown at a screening in Castiglioncello in June 2018, which also included a deleted scene of Elio inviting Oliver to tour the village. [107]
Guadagnino selected the music for Call Me by Your Name himself. [29] He wanted to find an "emotional narrator to the film" through music, in a "less heavy, less present, and more enveloping" way than voice and text. [35] The films Barry Lyndon (1975), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and The Age of Innocence (1993) inspired him. [35] Guadagnino wanted the film's music to be connected to Elio, a young pianist who enjoys transcribing and adapting piano pieces and uses music to deepen his relationship with Oliver. [18] Music is used in the film to reflect the period setting, the characters' family life and their level of education, and "the kind of canon they would be a part of". [18] Guadagnino also researched which pop songs had been played frequently on local radio stations that summer. [18] [108]
Impressed by the lyricism of American songwriter Sufjan Stevens , [19] Guadagnino asked him to record an original song for Call Me by Your Name and to narrate the film from the perspective of Elio at an older age. [19] [94] Stevens declined the voiceover role [94] but contributed three songs to the soundtrack: " Mystery of Love ", " Visions of Gideon ", and a remix by Doveman of his song " Futile Devices " from The Age of Adz (2010). [18] Stevens was inspired by the film's script, the novel and conversations with Guadagnino about the characters. [19] He submitted the songs a few days before filming began. Surprised by the result, Guadagnino listened to them on-set with the actors and editor Walter Fasano. [29] [75] Because it had been pre-recorded, Chalamet was able to listen to "Visions of Gideon" on an earpiece during filming of the movie's 4-minute final shot, a static closeup of his face. He said that "Sufjan's song was playing in my ear so I could mirror the structure." [109] The project marked the first time Stevens had written songs explicitly for a feature-film soundtrack. [110] [111] Next to the music of Stevens, a number of classical music pieces and pop songs of the 1980s are included in the soundtrack.
A soundtrack album was released in digital formats by Madison Gate Records and Sony Classical on November 3, 2017, [112] and in physical formats on November 17, 2017. [113] It features songs by: Stevens, The Psychedelic Furs , Franco Battiato , Loredana Bertè , Bandolero , Giorgio Moroder , Joe Esposito , and F. R. David , as well as music by John Adams , Erik Satie , Ryuichi Sakamoto , Bach , and Ravel . [114] As of February 1, 2018, the soundtrack has sold 9,000 copies and had 29 million on-demand audio streams of its tracks in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan . [115]
Call Me by Your Name had its world premiere on January 22, 2017, at the Sundance Film Festival . [116] [117] International sales were handled by Memento Films International, a French company, which screened a promo reel at the American Film Market in November 2016. [36] [118] Shortly before the film's Sundance premiere, Sony Pictures Classics acquired worldwide distribution rights for $6 million. [119] The deal was negotiated by WME Global and UTA Independent Film Group. [120] The film was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 13, 2017; [61] the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2017; [11] [75] [121] and the New York Film Festival on October 3, 2017. [122] At the Beijing International Film Festival , it was originally scheduled for April 2018, but was removed from the official program with no explanation; Patrick Brzeski of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the decision reflected the government's "consistent stance of intolerance toward gay content". [123] [124] That year, the film was honored at the Crema Film Festival: Aciman met the public on June 23, and Garrel joined the screening at the Crema Cathedral on June 30. [125]
Call Me by Your Name opened in limited release in the United Kingdom on October 27, 2017, [14] and the United States on November 24, 2017. [6] It expanded from four to thirty locations in the U.S. on December 15, 2017, [126] then to 114 theaters on December 22. [127] It screened in 174 theaters in January 2018, [128] before going into wide release in 815 theaters a few days before the Oscar nomination announcement ceremony on January 19, 2018. [129] [130] On Oscars weekend, the film screened in 914 theaters, its widest release in the U.S. [131]
Warner Bros. Entertainment theatrically released the film in Italy on January 25, 2018, though home media distribution in Italy is distributed through Sony Pictures Home Entertainment as well. [132] [133] [134] Special screenings and a public meet-and-greet with Guadagnino, Hammer and Chalamet took place in Crema between January 27 and 30. [134] [135] [136] The film opened in Brazil on January 18 [137] and in France on February 28. [138] In March 2018, a distributor in Tunisia reported that the Ministry of Culture had banned the film as an "attack on liberties" because of its subject matter. [139] [140] In Ireland, it became the longest-running film shown at the Light House Cinema in early June 2018, after a 30-week run. [141] In the Philippines, the film was screened accompanied by a live performance of its soundtrack by the Manila Symphony Orchestra on October 28. [142]
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures theatrically released the film in Taiwan on January 12, 2018 under the Buena Vista International label. [143]
Sony Pictures Classics released an official poster for Call Me by Your Name on July 27, 2017. [144] The first theatrical trailer was released on August 1, 2017. [145] [146] On October 11, 2017, Sony Pictures Classics released a teaser titled "Dance Party" to celebrate National Coming Out Day . [147] The 42-second clip, consisting of a single take of Hammer and Chalamet dancing to "Love My Way" in a bar, became a meme on Twitter. [148] [149] [150] Because of its use in the clip, "Love My Way" gained popularity on music-streaming websites. It rose 13% on on-demand streams during the two months before the film's release. In the week ending November 30, 2017, the song collected 177,000 on-demand streams, its biggest streaming week in the U.S. [151]
Reaction to the advertisement on social media was somewhat negative, largely because of Sony Pictures' misleading use of an image of Chalamet and Garrel instead of a focus on the protagonists' relationship. [152] Daniel Megarry of Gay Times described it as "an attempt to ' straight-wash ' the movie's predominant same-sex romance". [153] Benjamin Lee of The Guardian called the ad a "disastrous attempt to push Oscar-buzzed Call Me by Your Name as a straight love story", and said the advert "belies an industry awkwardly denying queerness ". [154] Sony Pictures Classics later aired several commercial spots to promote the film during its U.S.-wide expansion on January 19, 2018. [129] To promote the film in South Korea, Sony Pictures released several never-before-seen set photos and pastel promotional posters illustrated by Son Eunkyoung in March 2018. [155] [156]
A pirated copy of an awards-screener DVD of Call Me by Your Name , along with copies of Last Flag Flying and fellow Oscar nominees I, Tonya and Lady Bird , were leaked onto file-sharing websites by the hacker group Hive-CM8 on December 24, 2017. [157] [158] [159] The film was officially released for digital download on February 27, 2018. [160] It was released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 13, 2018, with two bonus featurettes ("In Conversation with Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg & Luca Guadagnino" and "Snapshots of Italy: The Making of Call Me by Your Name "), an audio commentary track by Chalamet and Stuhlbarg, and the music video for "Mystery of Love". [98] [160] [161] The film made $2,100,758 in DVD sales and $1,856,909 in Blu-ray sales in the United States, for a total of $3,957,667 in home media sales. [162] In the United Kingdom, the DVD charted at number seven and the Blu-ray at number four on Top 100 sales for both formats. [163] [164]
Call Me by Your Name grossed $18.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $23.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $41.9 million against a production budget of $3.4 million. [6] The film was Sony Pictures Classics' third-highest-grossing release of 2017. [165]
In the United States, Call Me by Your Name began its limited run on November 24, 2017, at The Paris Theater and Union Square Theatre in New York City, and the ArcLight Hollywood and Landmark Theater in Los Angeles. [166] The film made $404,874 in its opening weekend—a per-theater average of $101,219. [167] [168] It was the highest average of 2017—the biggest since the opening of La La Land the previous December [169] —and had the best per-screen opening for a gay romance film since Brokeback Mountain (2005). [167] [170] In its second weekend, the film grossed $281,288, [171] [172] with an "excellent" per-screen average of $70,320. [173] [174] The film expanded to nine theaters in its third weekend, grossing $291,101 for a "solid" $32,345 per-theater average. [175] It earned $491,933 from 30 theaters in its fourth weekend, averaging $16,398. [126] The film expanded to 114 theaters in its fifth week and grossed $850,736, averaging $7,463 per screen. [127] It crossed $6 million in its seventh weekend, earning $758,726 from 115 locations. [176] It grossed $715,559 from 174 theaters in its eighth weekend, averaging $4,185 per screen. [128]
In the film's nationwide release week—its ninth weekend overall—the film grossed $1.4 million from 815 theaters, an under-performance compared to "some of its competition with similar theater counts," according to Deadline Hollywood . [129] [130] The following weekend, after the announcement of its four Oscar nominations, the film's revenues dropped 6 percent to $1.3 million. [177] [178] With a total gross revenue of $9,370,359 by the week of January 23, 2018, Call Me by Your Name was the second-lowest-grossing film among that year's Best Picture nominees. [179] However, the online ticketing company Fandango reported that the film had experienced a 56 percent increase in ticket sales through its service since its Best Picture nomination was announced. [5] Regarding the film's "lagging" box-office performance, Tom Brueggemann of IndieWire commented that Sony Picture Classic "has done an able job so far", and said "at some point the film and the reaction to it is something no distributor can overcome". [180] It grossed $919,926, averaging $1,006, from 914 theaters during the Oscar weekend, [131] and went on to earn $304,228 from 309 theaters in its sixteenth weekend. [181]
Call Me by Your Name opened at number seven in Italy with €781,000 and obtained the best per-theater average of the week. [182] It made €49,170 on February 6 and reached €2 million by the end of the week. [183] It re-entered at number 10 on March 13 by making another €13,731 at the box office. [184] as of July 6, 2018, the film had grossed $3,925,137 in Italy. [162] It attracted 17,152 viewers in France on its first day of screening, with an "excellent" per-theater average of 184 entries. [185] It went on to attract 108,500 viewers in the opening weekend, earning 1,167 viewings—the second-best average that week [186] —and 238,124 viewers in its third weekend. [187] as of April 17, 2018, the film had grossed $2,652,781 in France. [162] In the United Kingdom, the film earned £ 231,995 ($306,000) from 112 screens in its opening weekend, [188] including £4,000 from previews. [189] After ten days, it had made £568,000 ($745,000), [190] before reaching the $1 million mark (£767,000) in its third weekend. [191] [192] as of May 21, 2018, the film had grossed $2,372,382 in the United Kingdom. [162]
At its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Call Me by Your Name received a standing ovation. [193] When it screened at Alice Tully Hall as part of the New York Film Festival, it received a ten-minute ovation, the longest in the festival's history. [41] [194] On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes , the film has an approval rating of 94% based on 363 reviews, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, " Call Me by Your Name offers a melancholy, powerfully affecting portrait of first love, empathetically acted by Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer." [195] It was the best-reviewed limited release and the second-best-reviewed romance film of 2017 on the site. [196] [197] On Metacritic , the film has an average weighted score of 94 out of 100, based on 53 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". [198] It was the year's fifth-best rated film on Metacritic. [199]
Writing for The Hollywood Reporter , Boyd van Hoeij described Call Me by Your Name as an "extremely sensual ... intimate and piercingly honest" adaptation of Aciman's novel and called Chalamet's performance "the true breakout of the film". [201] Peter Debruge of Variety believed the film "advances the canon of gay cinema" by portraying "a story of first love ... that transcends the same-sex dynamic of its central couple". He compared Guadagnino's "sensual" direction with the films of Pedro Almodóvar and François Ozon , and put Call Me by Your Name "on par with the best of their work". [117] David Ehrlich of IndieWire also praised Guadagnino's directing, which he said helped the film "match the artistry and empathy" of Carol (2015) and Moonlight (2016). [200] Sam Adams of the BBC wrote that Stuhlbarg's performance "puts a frame around the movie's painting and opens up avenues we may not have thought to explore", and called it "one of his finest" to date. He extolled the film as one of "many movies that have so successfully appealed to both the intellectual and the erotic since the heydays of Patrice Chéreau and André Téchiné ". [202]
Ty Burr of The Boston Globe gave the film three-and-a-half stars, commended the director for "broaden[ing] his embrace of humanity while hitting new heights of cinematic bliss" and said that the film "may be a fantasy but it's one that's lovely and wise." [203] David Morgan of CBS praised the cinematography, production design and costuming for "making a summer in the 1980s palpably alive again." He found Stuhlbarg's character "the most forward-thinking parent in movie history". [204] Richard Lawson wrote that Guadagnino's adaptation "was made with real love, with good intentions, with a clarity of heart and purposeful, unpretentious intellect" and hailed it as a "modern gay classic" in his Vanity Fair review. [205] Chicago Tribune ' s Michael Phillips was pleased by the "wonderfully paradoxical" visual interests from the director and said Stevens's songs "work like magic on your sympathies regarding Elio's emotional awakening." He praised Hammer's performance as "some of the most easy-breathing and relaxed best work of his career." [206]
The Economist noted the tension "between pain and pleasure" in the film and praised Chalamet, saying that he "evokes so many shades of humanity, portraying a path of youthful self-discovery that is more raw, unhinged, and ultimately honest than many actors could manage". [207] Kate Taylor of The Globe and Mail , who gave the film two-and-a-half stars, also enjoyed Chalamet's effort in capturing "first love and its inevitable heartbreak" and said the "multilingual, almost-pre-AIDS idyll does not stretch credulity ... but it can try the patience". [208] Ken Eisner of The Georgia Straight said that "Guadagnino's lyrical excesses ... can alternate wildly between the poetically incisive and the indulgently preposterous." [209] In a negative review, Kyle Turner of Paste wrote, "The details of the film are too small for anyone, perhaps particularly a queer person, to see," a visual distance that "suggests that the film, in the beginning, is as terrified as Elio initially is. It never gets over that hesitation." [210] Armond White of Out called the movie "craven commercialism" and a "super-bourgeois fantasy" that "exploit[s] the queer audience's romantic needs by packaging them and falsifying them." [211]
The film's depiction of a sexual relationship with an age disparity between the characters Elio and Oliver drew commentary and criticism—especially in the United States, where the lowest legal age of consent is higher than in Italy . [212] The 17-year-old Elio was portrayed by Chalamet, who was 21 at the time of filming, while the 24-year-old Oliver was played by Hammer, then 31. [212] Queer Eye host Karamo Brown , criticized the movie as glorifying sexual assault and said, "it looks like a grown man having sex with a little boy." [213] Author Cheyenne Montgomery said she was disturbed that one of the protagonists is portrayed as a boy and the other as a man, saying, "Elio is portrayed very much as a child: He shaves peach fuzz off of his face, he cuddles with his parents, his lines are often kind of bratty and childlike, and he's being played as a sexy romantic partner to a character who's very much being portrayed as an adult." [214] Physicians Renee Sorrentino and Jack Turban wrote in Psychiatric Times :
This film is about sexual predation. Oliver looks much older than his reported age of 24 while Elio looks like a very young 17-year-old. The power disparity in the relationship is clear. Elio is fragile and sexually naive. Oliver is experienced and directive in the relationship. ... Is it appropriate for a 24-year-old experienced in drinking to have sex with an inebriated and vomiting 17-year-old? [215]
A feature in The Advocate , an LGBT-interest magazine, drew attention to other narrative films depicting heterosexual relationships with similar or greater age gaps, such as between the teenaged Scarlett and the 33-year-old Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind . [216]
The National Board of Review and the American Film Institute selected Call Me by Your Name as one of the top 10 films of the year. [217] [218] At the 90th Academy Awards , it was nominated for Best Picture , Best Actor (Chalamet), Best Original Song ("Mystery of Love"), and Best Adapted Screenplay , winning the last. [219] [220] Chalamet became the third-youngest Best Actor nominee and the youngest nominee since 1939 , and Ivory became the oldest winner in any competitive category. [221] The film received four nominations at the 71st British Academy Film Awards , including Best Film and Best Direction , and won Best Adapted Screenplay for Ivory. [222] [223] At the 75th Golden Globe Awards , it was nominated for Best Motion Picture – Drama , Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for Chalamet and Best Supporting Actor for Hammer. [224]
In a series of articles regarding the best of the 2010s in film , IndieWire ranked Call Me by Your Name as the 18th best film of the decade and Chalamet's performance as the 39th best acting performance. [234] [235] Consequence of Sound ranked the film as the 23rd best of the decade, [236] Rolling Stone ranked it 40th [237] and Little White Lies ranked it 47th. [238]
The film has gained a large international fan base. During the film's festival run, people crossed borders and oceans to be among the first to see the film. In 2018, a book was published by Barb Mirell, who collected stories from fans around the world about what the film meant to them. [239] By early 2018 the film had attracted a following in China among heterosexual women, who perceived it as a Western " boys' love " romance, evidenced by its popularity on the Chinese social network and media database Douban . [240]
After an Italian fan published coordinates of the filming locations, visiting Crema has become something akin to a religious pilgrimage for fans of the film. The city of Crema now offers official tours. [241]
Guadagnino has deliberated over the idea of a sequel since the film's premiere at Sundance, when he said he realized the characters "could go beyond the boundaries of the film." [44] In October 2017, he said he hoped to make a sequel in 2020 that might be in the style of François Truffaut 's The Adventures of Antoine Doinel series, telling the story of Oliver and Elio as they age. "If I paired the age of Elio in the film with the age of Timothée, in three years' time, Timothée will be 25, as would Elio by the time the second story was set", he said. [242] [243] In the novel, Elio and Oliver reunite 15 years later when Oliver is married. Guadagnino said that in the sequel, "I don't think Elio is necessarily going to become a gay man. He hasn't found his place yet ... I believe that he would start an intense relationship with Marzia again." [244]
Guadagnino has expressed interest in the politics of the 1990s, saying, "It is the time of the fall of Communism and the start of the new world order and so-called ' end of history ' that Francis Fukuyama established then ... the beginning of the [Silvio] Berlusconi era in Italy and it would mean dealing with the [first Gulf War ] of Iraq." [244] [245] In November 2017, Guadagnino shared his intention to make a series of five films, in which the audience could "see those actors grow older, embodying those characters." [44] A month later, he was reported to have begun writing a script for a sequel that would reveal more about Oliver and resemble Michael Apted 's Up series . [246] [247] Hammer and Chalamet have expressed interest in appearing in a sequel, [248] but Ivory appears to be dismissive, saying about the idea of sequels, "that's fine, good. But I don't know how they're going to get a 40-year-old [Chalamet]!" [40]
In January 2018, Guadagnino revealed the sequel will be set "right after the fall of Berlin Wall and that great shift that was the end of ... the USSR ", [16] and that the first scene in the film could depict Elio watching Paul Vecchiali 's Once More (1988)—the first French film to deal with AIDS—in a movie theater. [249] In March 2018, Guadagnino confirmed he will work with Aciman on the sequel, which will take place "five or six years afterwards" with "a different tone" than the first film. [250] He also said that Hammer and Chalamet would reprise their roles with a different backdrop, where they "go around the world". [250] Hammer said he was pitched the script by Guadagnino, saying: "it's not a finished script, but he's got all the ideas for it". [251] In April 2018, Aciman said in an interview for The Sydney Morning Herald that he and Guadagnino were "not sure" about the sequel, saying "[Guadagnino] has quite a few projects in line and so do I. So we are flirting with each other about the sequel but I don't know if we are very serious." [252] In July 2018, Stuhlbarg said that Guadagnino and Aciman were excited about the project and that the director was "serious" about it. He expressed enthusiasm to reprise his role in the sequel, saying "I think it would have to be some kind of unique thing from what it was, but I would absolutely be game for trying." [253] Two months later, Hammer said of the sequel in an interview for Variety : "It will happen because there are already people working on it and trying to make it happen." [254]
In an interview for Time in October 2018, Chalamet compared the sequel to Richard Linklater 's Boyhood (2014) and said that Hammer, Aciman and Guadagnino were all intended to return for the next film. [255] That same month, Guadagnino revealed that he has asked Dakota Johnson , a frequent collaborator of his, to play Oliver's wife in the sequel. He described her character as "a New England kind of hoochie woman" who might also have children with Oliver. [256] He said that the film would be "a new chapter in a chronicle" about the characters, rather than a sequel, [257] and it might take some time to develop due to the busy schedule, saying "I have not been able to luxuriate in anything but the promotion of Suspiria ... I didn't have space of mind and the real, actual time to put ideas on the table and think of things." [257] "The only problem is the title," he said; "It cannot be Call Me by Your Name Two ". [256] [258] At the SCAD Savannah Film Festival in October, Hammer said that Guadagnino had laid out a potential plot for the sequel and it might be a few years away, saying "[Guadagnino] wants to wait so that we age a bit more so that gap makes sense, kind of like a Linklater thing." [259] In an interview with Dazed in November, the director said about the sequel, "It's a delicate flower that is blooming very slowly. And so I think it's not the time to collect it and put it into a vase." [260]
In November 2018, Ivory confirmed that he wouldn't return for the sequel and said that Aciman thought "it was not a good idea". [261] Less than a week later, Aciman, however, said he was in fact writing a sequel to Call Me by Your Name . [262] [263] The novel, titled Find Me , was officially confirmed on March 20, 2019, and was released on October 29 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux . [264] Also in March 2019, Hammer revealed that the film isn't formally in the works, and he hasn't had explicit conversations with either Chalamet or Guadagnino about it. He also felt the potential sequel might not match the expectation, saying "It felt like a really perfect storm of so many things, that if we do make a second one, I think we're setting ourselves up for disappointment. I don't know that anything will match up to the first ... I'm like, 'That was such a special thing, why don't we just leave it alone?'" [265]
In March 2020, Guadagnino confirmed a sequel film in an interview with Italian newspaper la Repubblica . In the interview he also confirmed that the full cast of the original film, including Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer will be returning. He also stated in the interview that he was due to meet with an unnamed American writer to discuss the sequel, however it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic . [266] In a GQ interview in September, Hammer was asked again about the film's progress and said, "I've been talking to [Guadagnino], but we haven't got into it. I haven't even read the book. I know Luca hasn't got a full script yet, although he knows what he wants to do with the story, so I don't know how similar or dissimilar it will be to Find Me the novel. I know if we end up doing it, it’s more important for me to focus on Luca’s vision than to focus on Find Me ." [267]
A series of allegations against Hammer of emotional abuse and cannibalistic fetishism in early 2021 – resulting in Hammer's removal from nearly all upcoming projects – have raised doubts about the prospects of a sequel, [268] but actor Michael Stuhlbarg hopes that the film will still be made. [269] In May 2021, Guadagnino suggested in an interview with Deadline that a sequel was no longer in his priorities. [270] In the interview, he hinted that, beyond the complications related to Hammer's scandal, Chalamet and himself would be busy with other films in the near future which has led him to put the sequel project aside.
- ^ Mr. Perlman's first name is not given in the film's credits or in the source novel. In an interview, Stuhlbarg said his character was referred to as Samuel or Sam during production, and the character is called "Sammy" once in the film. [7]
- ^ Liguria and Sanremo were once depicted as the main setting in the book. [29] [41] Aciman, however, declared that the novel takes place in Bordighera, saying "I didn't want to name it in the book, but it's known. I go back to Bordighera all the time". [42] During his time as a location consultant, Guadagnino suggested Liguria as the main setting to the producers. [38]
- ^ In the original French, "le cinéma d'art [et] d'essai européen," a term encompassing independent and arthouse films . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_Me_by_Your_Name_(film) | 78 |
where does call.me by your name take place | Call Me by Your Name (film) | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|Call Me by Your Name|
|Directed by||Luca Guadagnino|
|Screenplay by||James Ivory|
|Based on|| Call Me by Your Name |
by André Aciman
|Produced by|
|Starring|
|Cinematography||Sayombhu Mukdeeprom|
|Edited by||Walter Fasano|
Production
companies
|Distributed by|
Release dates
Running time
|132 minutes [1]|
|Countries|
|Languages|
|Budget||$3.5 million [5]|
|Box office||$43.1 million [6]|
Call Me by Your Name (Italian: Chiamami col tuo nome ) is a 2017 coming-of-age romantic drama film directed by Luca Guadagnino . Its screenplay, by James Ivory , who also co-produced, is based on the 2007 novel of the same title by André Aciman . The film is the final instalment in Guadagnino's thematic "Desire" trilogy, after I Am Love (2009), and A Bigger Splash (2015). Set in 1983 in northern Italy, Call Me by Your Name chronicles the romantic relationship between a 17-year-old, Elio Perlman ( Timothée Chalamet ), and Oliver ( Armie Hammer ), a 24-year-old graduate-student assistant to Elio's father Samuel ( Michael Stuhlbarg ), an archaeology professor. The film also stars actresses Amira Casar , Esther Garrel , and Victoire Du Bois .
Development began in 2007 when producers Peter Spears and Howard Rosenman optioned the rights to Aciman's novel. Ivory had been chosen to co-direct with Guadagnino, but stepped down in 2016. Guadagnino had joined the project as a location scout , and eventually became sole director and co-producer. Call Me by Your Name was financed by several international companies, and its principal photography took place mainly in the city and comune of Crema, Lombardy , between May and June 2016. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom used 35 mm film , as opposed to employing digital cinematography . The filmmakers spent weeks decorating Villa Albergoni , one of the main shooting locations. Guadagnino curated the film's soundtrack , which features two original songs by American singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens .
Sony Pictures Classics acquired distribution rights to Call Me by Your Name before its premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2017. The film began a limited release in the United States on November 24, 2017, and went on general release on January 19, 2018. It received widespread critical acclaim, particularly for Ivory's screenplay, Guadagnino's direction, Mukdeeprom's cinematography, and the performances of Chalamet, Hammer, and Stuhlbarg. The film garnered a number of accolades , including many for its screenplay, direction, acting, and music. It received four nominations at the 90th Academy Awards , including Best Picture and Best Actor for 22-year-old Chalamet (the third-youngest nominee in the category), and winning for Best Adapted Screenplay . The screenplay also won at the 23rd Critics' Choice Awards , 71st British Academy Film Awards , and the 70th Writers Guild of America Awards .
In the summer of 1983, Elio Perlman, a 17-year-old Jewish Italo-French boy, lives with his parents in rural Northern Italy . Elio's father, a professor of archaeology, invites a 24-year-old Jewish American graduate student, Oliver, to live with the family over the summer and help with his academic paperwork. Elio, an introspective bibliophile and a musician, initially thinks he has little in common with Oliver, who appears confident and carefree. Elio spends much of the summer reading, playing piano, and hanging out with his childhood friends, Chiara and Marzia. During a volleyball match, Oliver touches Elio's back but Elio brushes it off. However, Elio later finds himself jealous upon seeing Oliver pursue Chiara.
Elio and Oliver spend more time together, going for long walks into town, and accompanying Elio's father on an archaeological trip. Elio is increasingly drawn to Oliver, even sneaking to Oliver's room to smell his clothing. Elio eventually confesses his feelings to Oliver, who tells him they cannot discuss such things. Later, in a secluded spot, the two kiss for the first time. Oliver is reluctant to take things further, and they do not speak for several days.
Elio goes on a date with Marzia and the two have sex. Elio leaves a note for Oliver to end their silence. Oliver writes back, asking Elio to meet him at midnight. Elio agrees and they sleep together for the first time. Afterward, Oliver says to Elio, "Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine". The morning after, Elio is briefly conflicted about their encounter and takes out his sexual frustration by masturbating with a peach. When Oliver finds him, Elio cries about how little time he and Oliver have left together. Marzia confronts Elio after not hearing from him for three days. He responds coldly, hurting her.
As the end of Oliver's stay approaches, Elio's parents, who appear to be aware of the bond between the two, recommend that he and Oliver visit Bergamo together before Oliver returns to the U.S. They spend three romantic days together. Elio, heartbroken after Oliver's departure, calls his mother and asks her to pick him up from the train station and take him home. Marzia is sympathetic to Elio's feelings and says she wants to remain friends. Elio's father, observing his deep sadness, tells him he was aware of his relationship with Oliver and urges Elio to learn from his grief and grow instead of pushing aside his feelings and moving on too quickly.
During Hanukkah , Oliver calls Elio's family to tell them he is engaged to be married to a woman he has been seeing for a few years. An upset Elio calls Oliver by his name and Oliver responds with his; Oliver also says that he remembers everything. After the call, Elio sits down by the fireplace and stares into the flames, tearfully reflecting, as his parents and staff prepare the holiday dinner.
Call Me by Your Name is the final installment in a thematic trilogy Guadagnino calls his "Desire" trilogy; the other two parts were I Am Love (2009) and A Bigger Splash (2015). [9] [10] Guadagnino described his approach to the film as "lighthearted and simple", [11] [12] marking a departure from his previous work, which has been called "highly stylised [and] dazzling". [13] Guadagnino considers Call Me by Your Name a "homage to the fathers of my life: my own father, and my cinematic ones", referring to the filmmakers Jean Renoir , Jacques Rivette , Éric Rohmer , and Bernardo Bertolucci , who he says inspired him. [14]
Guadagnino has described Call Me by Your Name as a family-oriented film for the purpose of "transmission of knowledge and hope that people of different generations come to see the film together." [15] He saw it not as a "gay" movie but as a film about "the beauty of the newborn idea of desire, unbiased and uncynical", reflecting his motto of living "with a sense of joie de vivre ". [11] [12] "We should always be very earnest with one's feelings, instead of hiding them or shielding ourselves," he said. [9] He considered it an "uplifting film" about "being who you want to be and finding yourself into the gaze of the other in his or her otherness." [16]
The director tried to avoid the flaws he had seen in most coming-of-age films , where growth is often portrayed as being a result of resolving preconceived dilemmas such as an enforced choice between two lovers. [17] He also wanted the story to follow two people "in the moment", rather than focus on an antagonist or a tragedy [12] —an approach inspired by À nos amours (1983), directed by Maurice Pialat . [17] [18] As someone who considers sex in film a representation of the characters' behavior and identity, [19] Guadagnino was not interested in including explicit sex scenes in the film. [20] He explained his intention: "I wanted the audience to completely rely on the emotional travel of these people and feel first love... It was important to me to create this powerful universality, because the whole idea of the movie is that the other person makes you beautiful—enlightens you, elevates you." [20]
Alongside a sexual coming of age motif, the movie also touches upon the novel's theme [21] of Elio discovering and connecting to his Jewish identity through the openly Jewish Oliver and as a contrast with his own family being, as his mother puts it, "Jews of discretion". [22] The common Jewish identity is a part of what draws Elio and Oliver together and is represented visually on screen through the Star of David necklace that Oliver initially wears and Elio is drawn to. [23] The theme of sexual self-discovery is paralleled with the Jewish theme in the movie, since in both cases, Elio starts out more secretive about these parts of himself and transitions to a place of greater self-acceptance, both journeys connected to Oliver's role in his life. There is a hint in the movie that Oliver might have gifted his own Star of David necklace to Elio shortly before they parted ways in the train station. [24] Elio's own necklace can be clearly seen during the conversation from which the movie (as the novel) borrows its title thanks to its visually central placement during this scene.
Two of the film's producers, Peter Spears and Howard Rosenman , saw a galley proof of André Aciman 's debut novel Call Me by Your Name in 2007 and " optioned " the screen rights before its publication. [25] Rosenman first heard about the book through a friend after acting in Milk (2008) and described it as "divine". [26] Spears, moved by the novel and believing it deserved a cinematic adaptation, received his first credit as a producer from his work on the film. [27] They invited their friend James Ivory to work as an executive producer on the film adaptation. [28] Spears and Rosenman began production in 2008, [29] but the project was soon trapped in " development hell ". [30] The producers met with three sets of directors and writers—among them Gabriele Muccino , Ferzan Özpetek , and Sam Taylor-Johnson [31] —but could not find anyone who would commit to the project. [25] [32] Scheduling filming in Italy during the summer also proved difficult. [25] [32]
The producers contacted Guadagnino, their first choice to direct, but he declined, citing a busy schedule. [10] [29] However, as Guadagnino lived in northern Italy, he was initially hired as a location consultant instead. [17] [33] Guadagnino later suggested that he co-direct the film with Ivory, but no contractual agreement was put in place. [11] [30] Ivory accepted the offer to co-direct on the condition that he would also write the film; [30] he spent "about nine months" on the screenplay. [28] [34] Guadagnino, who has described the novel as "a Proustian book about remembering the past and indulging in the melancholy of lost things", [18] collaborated on the adaptation with Ivory and Walter Fasano . [11] [15] Screenwriting took place at Ivory's house, Guadagnino's kitchen table in Crema , and sometimes in New York City. [35] Ivory rarely met Guadagnino during the process, since the director was busy making A Bigger Splash (2015). [34]
The screenplay was completed in late 2015. [34] Aciman approved it and commended the adaptation as "direct ... real and persuasive", adding "they've done better than the book". [25] The completed screenplay was vital in securing funding for the film. [28] [30] Among the financiers were the production companies La Cinéfacture (France), Frenesy Film Company (Italy, owned by Guadagnino), M.Y.R.A. Entertainment (United States), RT Features (Brazil), and Water's End Productions (United States). The project was also supported by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism . [15] [36] [37] The backers deemed the production's initial cost estimates "too expensive", [38] so the production budget was reduced from $12 million to $3.4 million and the filming schedule was cut from 12 to 5 weeks. [37] [39]
Ivory stepped down from a directorial role in 2016, leaving Guadagnino to direct the film alone. [10] [11] According to Ivory, financiers from Memento Films International did not want two directors involved with the project because they "thought it would be awkward ... It might take longer, it would look terrible if we got in fights on the set, and so on." [28] [34] Guadagnino said Ivory's version would have likely been "a much more costly [and] different film" that would have been too expensive to make. [17] [33] Ivory became the sole-credited screenwriter [40] and later sold the rights to the screenplay to Guadagnino's company. [28] [34] Call Me by Your Name was Ivory's first produced screenplay since Le Divorce (2003) and the only narrative feature he has written but not directed. [40] He remained involved with other aspects of the production. [40] Guadagnino dedicated the film to his late friend Bill Paxton , who came to visit the set in Crema before his death in February 2017. [ citation needed ]
The film differs from its source material in several ways. The novel is written in flashback, from Elio's perspective. The filmmakers set the movie entirely in 1983 to help the audience understand the characters, believing that this approach would allow them to remain true to the spirit of the book. [29] [18] The setting was changed from Bordighera to the countryside of Crema, where Guadagnino lives. [b] The town square selected for filming differed from the one Aciman had pictured in his novel, which in his vision was "far smaller and stood high on a hill overlooking a windswept Mediterranean ". [43] The arid climate and "spookily deserted" landscape in Crema suggested to him that the film would not correspond to the novel. [43] The director also changed the year of the events from 1987 to 1983. In his words, Guadagnino chose "the year—in Italy at least—where the '70s are killed, when everything that was great about the '70s is definitely shut down," but also a time when the characters could be "in a way untouched by the corruption of the '80s—in the U.S., [Ronald] Reagan, and in the UK, [Margaret] Thatcher". [35] [41]
Guadagnino was tempted to remove the scene in which Elio masturbates into a pitted peach, finding it too explicit. [25] [44] Chalamet was also nervous about the scene, [45] describing it as "a metamorphosis of some of the strongest ideas in the movie" and the key to illuminating the character's "overabundant sexual energy". [29] [46] Both Guadagnino and Chalamet believed it was implausible to masturbate with a peach, but each independently tested the method. To their surprise, it worked, so Guadagnino shot the scene and ultimately included it in the film. [47] A scene featuring Elio and Oliver dancing enthusiastically to The Psychedelic Furs song " Love My Way " in a small bar is not drawn from the book. It was inspired by Jonathan Demme 's Something Wild (1986), and Guadagnino's experience of dancing by himself when he was young. [25] [48] Ivory altered Mr. Perlman's profession from a classics scholar to "an art historian/archeologist type", [29] [42] a decision that Aciman described as "perfect" and "more visual, [...] more exciting, as opposed to what a scholar does at his desk". [42]
When he was revising Ivory's draft of the script, Guadagnino removed the voice-over narration and much of the nudity. [18] [33] He said that explicit nudity was "absolutely irrelevant" to his vision for the film, [49] and that he did not like the idea of having the main character tell the story retrospectively, stating that "it kills the surprise". [18] Towards the end of the novel, the two protagonists visit Rome, a trip which lasts an entire chapter and introduces new characters in multiple locations. [34] [40] Because of the film's limited budget, Ivory and the producers wrote several variations, one of which was to leave the lead characters alone in the family's house. [34] Ultimately, the filmmakers settled on another trip—to Bergamo , rather than Rome—where the characters spend much of their time alone together in a hotel room. [34] In his original script, Ivory depicted Elio's parents discussing HIV/AIDS in two scenes, [50] and Elio decorating a Christmas tree in his family's home in the final scene. [51] [40] Ivory had to reduce the length of Mr. Perlman's speech but was committed to keeping it in the script. [52] Aciman said in an interview with Moment that, while keeping intervention with the script at a minimum, he suggested to Ivory to keep dialogue prior to Perlman's speech to a minimum so as not to "steal the surprise and the suspense that happens" as it unfolds. [53] Ivory described the scene in which Elio conveys his feelings to Oliver as one of the moments that captures the "euphoric passion and nervousness" of their first love. [54] Aciman was surprised by Guadagnino's final scene where Elio is seen crying by the fireplace; [43] he wrote of the film adaptation:
Cinema can be an entirely magical medium. What I do as a writer, and what Guadagnino does as a film director, is more than speak two different languages. What I do is chisel a statue down to its finest, most elusive details. What a film director does is make the statue move. [43]
Many of the changes to Ivory's screenplay were made during the filming; the screenwriter was not present at the shooting set. [51] In May 2016, Ivory said that he and Guadagnino discussed how to film the scenes involving nudity, but the director later dropped them. [50] In Ivory's view, some of the director's statements to the press had misrepresented the film's omission of nudity as a "conscious aesthetic decision", even though they had never discussed removing nudity from the screenplay. [50] Ivory said, "When people are wandering around before or after making love, and they're decorously covered with sheets, it’s always seemed phoney to me." [50] By contrast, Ivory cited scenes from his earlier film Maurice (1987)—a gay romantic drama that includes male nudity—as "a more natural way of doing things than to hide them, or to do what Luca did, which is to pan the camera out of the window toward some trees." [50] Guadagnino said that he understood Ivory's position, but that it was clear that there were "no limitations on what we wanted to do." [49]
In 2015, Shia LaBeouf and Greta Scacchi were reportedly set to be cast in the film. [55] In September 2016, Ivory confirmed they were no longer involved in the project. Ivory said he got along with LaBeouf, who had read for the film in New York City, but the production company later felt the actor was unsuitable after his "various troubles". Ivory thought Scacchi and LaBeouf read well together and could have made it into the film, but the company disagreed. [56]
Guadagnino was impressed by Armie Hammer 's performance in The Social Network (2010), [11] [47] describing him as a "sophisticated actor, with a great range". [11] Hammer almost turned down the role of Oliver after reading the draft script because it contained nudity, saying, "There's a lot of stuff here that I've never done on film before. But there's no way I can't do this [film], mostly because it scares me so much." [57] [58] Hammer had previously played gay characters in J. Edgar (2011) and Final Portrait (2017). [44] [59]
In 2013, Swardstrom—Spears' husband and agent—introduced Chalamet to Guadagnino, [11] [19] who immediately felt the actor had "the ambition, the intelligence, the sensitivity, the naivety, and the artistry" to play Elio. [18] Chalamet had already read Aciman's novel and described it as "a window into a young person". [45] His character, 17-year-old Elio, is fluent in three languages: English, French and Italian. [37] Upon his arrival in Italy, Chalamet—who already spoke French fluently and had played piano and guitar for years [29] [37] [60] —prepared for his role with a schedule of daily lessons in Italian, gym workouts three times a week, [29] and by working with composer Roberto Solci. [29] [37]
Michael Stuhlbarg , who was cast as Elio's father, Mr. Perlman, [57] [61] did not read the book until he had already joined the production. [62] He found the script moving and described Mr. Perlman as having a "sense of generosity and love and understanding". [63] Esther Garrel was contacted by Guadagnino when he was in Paris for the promotion of A Bigger Splash . [64] Garrel was cast as Marzia without any formal audition, and she chose not to read the book before shooting. [64] Towards the end of the film, Marzia asks Elio, "Friend for life?"—a line taken from J'entends plus la guitare (1991), directed by the actress's father, Philippe Garrel . [38] "I like the idea of talking virtually with Philippe Garrel through her," Guadagnino said. [38] During shooting, Garrel spoke French with Chalamet on set and watched the American sitcom Friends with English subtitles to improve her English. [64]
Guadagnino chose Amira Casar , whom he had known for twenty years, for the role of Elio's mother Annella. [38] [61] In an interview with French magazine Télérama , Guadagnino expressed his admiration of Casar's "sense of transgression" and called her "the most audacious" in European art cinema . [c] [38] Casting director Stella Savino met Vanda Capriolo when she was bicycling in the countryside. Capriolo, who was not an actor, was chosen to play Mafalda, the Perlmans' maid. [48] [65] Aciman and Spears also appear briefly in cameo roles as Mounir and Isaac, an openly gay couple who attend a dinner party. [29] [42] Aciman was asked to be in the movie after actors became unavailable. "It was a last-minute decision," Spears recalled, "André turns out to be a phenomenal actor! So comfortable, not nervous at all. His wife was sitting there and said, 'I had no idea!'" [66] In dialogue, the characters switch between English, French, Italian, [67] and in one scene Annella reads a German translation of 16th-century French literature . [68]
Hammer and Chalamet both signed contracts prohibiting the film from showing them with full-frontal nudity. Ivory, whose original screenplay contained nudity, was dismayed by the decision. He criticized what he saw as an "American" attitude, saying, "Nobody seems to care that much or be shocked about a totally naked woman. It's the men." [30] [33] Guadagnino picked actors based on their performances and chemistry rather than on their sexuality. [20] He said, "The idea that you have to cast only someone who has a certain set of skills, and worse, a certain gender identity in any role: that's oppressive to me." [10]
The main location set for the Perlmans' residence was Villa Albergoni , an uninhabited 17th-century mansion in Moscazzano . [29] [69] Guadagnino wanted to buy the house but could not afford it, so he made a film there instead. [37] [70] A landscape designer was hired to construct an orchard in the mansion's garden. [65] A pergola was built on the patio, and apricot and peach trees were placed in the garden. [69] [71]
Guadagnino did not want the film to be a period piece and tried to resist making a film that would reflect "our idea of the 80s". His goal was an accurate recreation of the period that was invisible to the viewer." [17] The crew, including production designer Samuel Deshors and set decorators Sandro Piccarozzi and Violante Visconti di Modrone, styled the house with furniture and objects inspired by the characters. [29] [70] Much of the furniture, including dishes and glassware from the 1950s, belonged to Guadagnino and Visconti di Modrone's parents. Di Modrone, a grandniece of Luchino Visconti from the famous Visconti family said, "That made it cozy and personal ... I wanted to give it the sense of time passing by". [72] Many paintings, maps, and mirrors influenced by Asian art came from an antiques shop in Milan. [71] [72] The books seen in the background were all published before 1982. [65] The swimming pool used in the film was based on a watering trough common in the area. [29] [72]
The filmmakers set up faded political billboards in public places to reflect the Italian general election in 1983 [65] and re-created a newsstand full of magazines of that time. [65] Residents of Crema helped the production team with their research, inviting them into their homes and providing pictures from the 1980s. [17] [73] Chen Li, the film's graphic designer, created a handwritten typeface for the film's title sequence of photocopied images of statues alongside items on Mr. Perlman's desk. [65]
Costume designer Giulia Piersanti avoided using period costumes; instead, she wanted to provide "a sense of insouciant adolescent sensuality, summer heat and sexual awakening" to the characters. [72] The costumes, which were influenced by the French films Pauline at the Beach (1983), A Tale of Springtime (1990) and A Summer's Tale (1996), [72] included some pieces made by Piersanti's team. [65] For the Perlmans' wardrobe, Piersanti took inspiration from her parents' photograph albums. For Oliver's "sexy, healthy American" image, Piersanti referred to "some of Bruce Weber 's earliest photographs". [72] Oliver's clothes change throughout the film as "he's more able to free himself". [65] Aiming to emphasize Elio's confident style, she chose several Lacoste costumes and a distinctive, New Romantic -looking shirt in the final scene. [17] [72] For Elio's other costumes, Piersanti picked some items from her husband's closet, including the polo shirt and Fido Dido T-shirt. [72]
Principal photography began on May 9, 2016, and wrapped in June 2016, [74] [75] lasting around 33 days. [65] [76] The film was shot primarily in Crema and the surrounding province of Cremona . [11] [14] [77] [78] An unusual series of rainstorms coincided with the shooting schedule, with heavy rain on 28 of the shooting days. [27] [76] Scenes set in the nearby villages Pandino and Moscazzano were filmed between May 17 and 19, and shooting in Crema began on June 1. [79] [80] [81] Additional outdoor scenes were shot on December 4, 2016. [82] [83] The City of Crema invested € 18,000 in the film, including a publicity campaign costing €7,500. [84] [85]
The arch of Torrazzo at Crema Cathedral and several historical locations in the streets of Crema and Pandino were chosen during production. [69] [79] Businesses requested compensation for financial losses caused by the closure, which was scheduled for May 30 and 31. [86] Two days' filming at the cathedral were postponed due to the rainy weather. [87] Filming also took place in the Lodigiano area near Crespiatica and in two small towns near Crema, Montodine and Ripalta . [69] [29] [82] The archaeological discovery scene was filmed at the Grottoes of Catullus in Sirmione on the Brescian shores of Lake Garda . [69] The trip to Bergamo was filmed at the exterior of multiple historical buildings, including Bergamo Cathedral , the Santa Maria Maggiore , the courtyard of Liceo Classico Paolo Sarpi in Piazza Rosate and the University of Sciences, Letters and Arts [ it ] . [69] The train station scenes were filmed at Pizzighettone . [88] Because of security concerns, the production team was only granted permission to film at the Cascate del Serio in Valbondione for half an hour. [69] [77] [89]
Before and during filming, the actors lived in Crema and were able to experience small-town life. [29] Guadagnino engaged with the cast and filmmakers and often cooked for them and showed films at his house. [25] Hammer and Chalamet, who did not have to do a screen test together, [18] [90] met for the first time during production in Crema. [29] [75] Before filming began, they spent a month together, watching TV and going to local restaurants. [9] [58] [75] "We'd hang out with each other all the time, because we were pretty much the only Americans there, and we were able to defend one another and really get to know one another," Chalamet said. [60] During the first two days of production, Guadagnino read the script with the cast. [35] The first scene that Hammer and Chalamet rehearsed was the kissing scene, [26] [90] and they spent several days filming nude. [91] "I've never been so intimately involved with a director before. Luca was able to look at me and completely undress me," Hammer said. [47]
- Selected filming locations
The South portal of Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo (
)
The Station of Pizzighettone (
)
Guadagnino shot the film in chronological order, [35] [92] which allowed the filmmakers to "witness the onscreen maturity of both protagonist and actor", according to Fasano. [93] The scene in which Mr. Perlman delivers an emotional speech to Elio was filmed on the penultimate day of filming. [9] [35] Stuhlbarg spent months preparing for the scene, [9] [63] which Guadagnino wanted to make "as simple as possible" by shooting fewer takes and "let[ting] the actors be." [16] The scene took three takes to film and Stuhlbarg was "on three different levels of getting emotional". [93] Garrel enjoyed filming her sex scene with Chalamet, which she described as filled with "joy and simplicity". [64] Chalamet was listening to "Visions of Gideon", one of the original songs written by Sufjan Stevens for the film, in an earpiece while filming the final sequence; [94] [95] the director asked him to perform three variations of the scene, one per take. [96] The camera was set in the fireplace with nobody behind it. "It was bit of an acting experiment," Chalamet said. [48] During this scene, the title of the film was shown for the first time, rather than in the opening sequence.
At the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, [88] a memorial to the victims of the battle of the Piave in Pandino, [43] the filmmakers laid a long camera dolly track to film the scene where Elio tells Oliver of his feelings for him in a single long take . This provided the flexibility and "flow of emotion" a cut scene could not. [97] During the dancing sequence, Hammer had to perform to a click track in front of 50 off-camera extras with the music turned down so the dialogue could be recorded. [48] [58] In preparation for the scene, Guadagnino arranged for Hammer to practice with a dance coach. [48] Hammer said that it was "the worst scene" he had ever filmed. [98] Choreographer Paolo Rocchi, who was contacted by the Frenesy Film Company in June 2016, described the routine as "awkward and realistic". [99] Rosenman considered the scene one of the most emotional moments; he said "It embodied and encapsulated, for me, what teenage love is all about, what desire is all about." [26]
Sayombhu Mukdeeprom , who had previously collaborated with Guadagnino on Ferdinando Cito Filomarino's Antonia (2015), served as the director of photography . [19] [100] He had read Aciman's novel before receiving the script and walked around filming locations to "get a feeling for everything ... to see the color, to see how the light changed during the day, and input it into my data". [101] Mukdeeprom had to use artificial lighting to capture the Northern Italian summer atmosphere, [11] compensating for heavy rains that lasted throughout the shoot. [19] [76] While filming the confrontation scene between Oliver and Elio, Mukdeeprom cried in a corner of the room after they finished the first take, overwhelmed by a feeling of profound empathy for the actors. [11] The film was shot using 35 mm celluloid film and a single lens, [102] a decision influenced by the work of David Cronenberg to "solidif[y] the point of view" [12] and make "the tension of the performance come off the screen"—even if it meant increasing the production budget above the cost of shooting in digital. [102] Guadagnino praised Jean-Pierre Laforce, the film's sound designer and mixer , for his "wonderful" and "pivotal" contributions. Guadagnino, who had previously worked with Laforce on A Bigger Splash , said he was "able to create a sort of Cathedral of sound without overwhelming the movie." [16]
Fasano collaborated with Guadagnino during the post-production. [103] [37] They had worked together for 25 years since Guadagnino's debut feature The Protagonists (1999). [37] Fasano described working with Guadagnino as "atypical [and] very demanding, but it's a great experience." [103] Post-production took only a month, between June and July [11] —the fastest they had ever edited. [75] Fasano cited the films of Bernardo Bertolucci and the "fast and unexplained" storytelling in Pialat's À nos amours as inspiration. [103]
Their first cut of the film ran three hours and 20 minutes long. [103] [104] Fasano described it as his favorite saying it made him "lose [him]self in the story and the images." [103] The final cut lasts two hours and 10 minutes with a shooting ratio of 25:1. [103]
Several notable changes were made, or almost made, near the end of post-production. The monologue sequence with Elio's father once had piano playing beneath it. The scene where the two protagonists bike to a courtyard almost failed to make the final cut after one of the producers said it was inconsequential. [93] Hammer revealed that some scenes were digitally altered to fix wardrobe malfunctions caused by his short shorts. [105] [106] Guadagnino has discussed several scenes that did not make the final cut. There was a "well-acted" scene where Elio and Oliver were "teasing one another" under a lime tree, which the director felt was "too precious". [44] A scene where Elio's parents make love in the bedroom while Elio and Oliver are kissing under the moonlight in the garden was also cut. [44] The latter scene was shown at a screening in Castiglioncello in June 2018, which also included a deleted scene of Elio inviting Oliver to tour the village. [107]
Guadagnino selected the music for Call Me by Your Name himself. [29] He wanted to find an "emotional narrator to the film" through music, in a "less heavy, less present, and more enveloping" way than voice and text. [35] The films Barry Lyndon (1975), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and The Age of Innocence (1993) inspired him. [35] Guadagnino wanted the film's music to be connected to Elio, a young pianist who enjoys transcribing and adapting piano pieces and uses music to deepen his relationship with Oliver. [18] Music is used in the film to reflect the period setting, the characters' family life and their level of education, and "the kind of canon they would be a part of". [18] Guadagnino also researched which pop songs had been played frequently on local radio stations that summer. [18] [108]
Impressed by the lyricism of American songwriter Sufjan Stevens , [19] Guadagnino asked him to record an original song for Call Me by Your Name and to narrate the film from the perspective of Elio at an older age. [19] [94] Stevens declined the voiceover role [94] but contributed three songs to the soundtrack: " Mystery of Love ", " Visions of Gideon ", and a remix by Doveman of his song " Futile Devices " from The Age of Adz (2010). [18] Stevens was inspired by the film's script, the novel and conversations with Guadagnino about the characters. [19] He submitted the songs a few days before filming began. Surprised by the result, Guadagnino listened to them on-set with the actors and editor Walter Fasano. [29] [75] Because it had been pre-recorded, Chalamet was able to listen to "Visions of Gideon" on an earpiece during filming of the movie's 4-minute final shot, a static closeup of his face. He said that "Sufjan's song was playing in my ear so I could mirror the structure." [109] The project marked the first time Stevens had written songs explicitly for a feature-film soundtrack. [110] [111] Next to the music of Stevens, a number of classical music pieces and pop songs of the 1980s are included in the soundtrack.
A soundtrack album was released in digital formats by Madison Gate Records and Sony Classical on November 3, 2017, [112] and in physical formats on November 17, 2017. [113] It features songs by: Stevens, The Psychedelic Furs , Franco Battiato , Loredana Bertè , Bandolero , Giorgio Moroder , Joe Esposito , and F. R. David , as well as music by John Adams , Erik Satie , Ryuichi Sakamoto , Bach , and Ravel . [114] As of February 1, 2018, the soundtrack has sold 9,000 copies and had 29 million on-demand audio streams of its tracks in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan . [115]
Call Me by Your Name had its world premiere on January 22, 2017, at the Sundance Film Festival . [116] [117] International sales were handled by Memento Films International, a French company, which screened a promo reel at the American Film Market in November 2016. [36] [118] Shortly before the film's Sundance premiere, Sony Pictures Classics acquired worldwide distribution rights for $6 million. [119] The deal was negotiated by WME Global and UTA Independent Film Group. [120] The film was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 13, 2017; [61] the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2017; [11] [75] [121] and the New York Film Festival on October 3, 2017. [122] At the Beijing International Film Festival , it was originally scheduled for April 2018, but was removed from the official program with no explanation; Patrick Brzeski of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the decision reflected the government's "consistent stance of intolerance toward gay content". [123] [124] That year, the film was honored at the Crema Film Festival: Aciman met the public on June 23, and Garrel joined the screening at the Crema Cathedral on June 30. [125]
Call Me by Your Name opened in limited release in the United Kingdom on October 27, 2017, [14] and the United States on November 24, 2017. [6] It expanded from four to thirty locations in the U.S. on December 15, 2017, [126] then to 114 theaters on December 22. [127] It screened in 174 theaters in January 2018, [128] before going into wide release in 815 theaters a few days before the Oscar nomination announcement ceremony on January 19, 2018. [129] [130] On Oscars weekend, the film screened in 914 theaters, its widest release in the U.S. [131]
Warner Bros. Entertainment theatrically released the film in Italy on January 25, 2018, though home media distribution in Italy is distributed through Sony Pictures Home Entertainment as well. [132] [133] [134] Special screenings and a public meet-and-greet with Guadagnino, Hammer and Chalamet took place in Crema between January 27 and 30. [134] [135] [136] The film opened in Brazil on January 18 [137] and in France on February 28. [138] In March 2018, a distributor in Tunisia reported that the Ministry of Culture had banned the film as an "attack on liberties" because of its subject matter. [139] [140] In Ireland, it became the longest-running film shown at the Light House Cinema in early June 2018, after a 30-week run. [141] In the Philippines, the film was screened accompanied by a live performance of its soundtrack by the Manila Symphony Orchestra on October 28. [142]
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures theatrically released the film in Taiwan on January 12, 2018 under the Buena Vista International label. [143]
Sony Pictures Classics released an official poster for Call Me by Your Name on July 27, 2017. [144] The first theatrical trailer was released on August 1, 2017. [145] [146] On October 11, 2017, Sony Pictures Classics released a teaser titled "Dance Party" to celebrate National Coming Out Day . [147] The 42-second clip, consisting of a single take of Hammer and Chalamet dancing to "Love My Way" in a bar, became a meme on Twitter. [148] [149] [150] Because of its use in the clip, "Love My Way" gained popularity on music-streaming websites. It rose 13% on on-demand streams during the two months before the film's release. In the week ending November 30, 2017, the song collected 177,000 on-demand streams, its biggest streaming week in the U.S. [151]
Reaction to the advertisement on social media was somewhat negative, largely because of Sony Pictures' misleading use of an image of Chalamet and Garrel instead of a focus on the protagonists' relationship. [152] Daniel Megarry of Gay Times described it as "an attempt to ' straight-wash ' the movie's predominant same-sex romance". [153] Benjamin Lee of The Guardian called the ad a "disastrous attempt to push Oscar-buzzed Call Me by Your Name as a straight love story", and said the advert "belies an industry awkwardly denying queerness ". [154] Sony Pictures Classics later aired several commercial spots to promote the film during its U.S.-wide expansion on January 19, 2018. [129] To promote the film in South Korea, Sony Pictures released several never-before-seen set photos and pastel promotional posters illustrated by Son Eunkyoung in March 2018. [155] [156]
A pirated copy of an awards-screener DVD of Call Me by Your Name , along with copies of Last Flag Flying and fellow Oscar nominees I, Tonya and Lady Bird , were leaked onto file-sharing websites by the hacker group Hive-CM8 on December 24, 2017. [157] [158] [159] The film was officially released for digital download on February 27, 2018. [160] It was released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 13, 2018, with two bonus featurettes ("In Conversation with Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg & Luca Guadagnino" and "Snapshots of Italy: The Making of Call Me by Your Name "), an audio commentary track by Chalamet and Stuhlbarg, and the music video for "Mystery of Love". [98] [160] [161] The film made $2,100,758 in DVD sales and $1,856,909 in Blu-ray sales in the United States, for a total of $3,957,667 in home media sales. [162] In the United Kingdom, the DVD charted at number seven and the Blu-ray at number four on Top 100 sales for both formats. [163] [164]
Call Me by Your Name grossed $18.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $23.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $41.9 million against a production budget of $3.4 million. [6] The film was Sony Pictures Classics' third-highest-grossing release of 2017. [165]
In the United States, Call Me by Your Name began its limited run on November 24, 2017, at The Paris Theater and Union Square Theatre in New York City, and the ArcLight Hollywood and Landmark Theater in Los Angeles. [166] The film made $404,874 in its opening weekend—a per-theater average of $101,219. [167] [168] It was the highest average of 2017—the biggest since the opening of La La Land the previous December [169] —and had the best per-screen opening for a gay romance film since Brokeback Mountain (2005). [167] [170] In its second weekend, the film grossed $281,288, [171] [172] with an "excellent" per-screen average of $70,320. [173] [174] The film expanded to nine theaters in its third weekend, grossing $291,101 for a "solid" $32,345 per-theater average. [175] It earned $491,933 from 30 theaters in its fourth weekend, averaging $16,398. [126] The film expanded to 114 theaters in its fifth week and grossed $850,736, averaging $7,463 per screen. [127] It crossed $6 million in its seventh weekend, earning $758,726 from 115 locations. [176] It grossed $715,559 from 174 theaters in its eighth weekend, averaging $4,185 per screen. [128]
In the film's nationwide release week—its ninth weekend overall—the film grossed $1.4 million from 815 theaters, an under-performance compared to "some of its competition with similar theater counts," according to Deadline Hollywood . [129] [130] The following weekend, after the announcement of its four Oscar nominations, the film's revenues dropped 6 percent to $1.3 million. [177] [178] With a total gross revenue of $9,370,359 by the week of January 23, 2018, Call Me by Your Name was the second-lowest-grossing film among that year's Best Picture nominees. [179] However, the online ticketing company Fandango reported that the film had experienced a 56 percent increase in ticket sales through its service since its Best Picture nomination was announced. [5] Regarding the film's "lagging" box-office performance, Tom Brueggemann of IndieWire commented that Sony Picture Classic "has done an able job so far", and said "at some point the film and the reaction to it is something no distributor can overcome". [180] It grossed $919,926, averaging $1,006, from 914 theaters during the Oscar weekend, [131] and went on to earn $304,228 from 309 theaters in its sixteenth weekend. [181]
Call Me by Your Name opened at number seven in Italy with €781,000 and obtained the best per-theater average of the week. [182] It made €49,170 on February 6 and reached €2 million by the end of the week. [183] It re-entered at number 10 on March 13 by making another €13,731 at the box office. [184] as of July 6, 2018, the film had grossed $3,925,137 in Italy. [162] It attracted 17,152 viewers in France on its first day of screening, with an "excellent" per-theater average of 184 entries. [185] It went on to attract 108,500 viewers in the opening weekend, earning 1,167 viewings—the second-best average that week [186] —and 238,124 viewers in its third weekend. [187] as of April 17, 2018, the film had grossed $2,652,781 in France. [162] In the United Kingdom, the film earned £ 231,995 ($306,000) from 112 screens in its opening weekend, [188] including £4,000 from previews. [189] After ten days, it had made £568,000 ($745,000), [190] before reaching the $1 million mark (£767,000) in its third weekend. [191] [192] as of May 21, 2018, the film had grossed $2,372,382 in the United Kingdom. [162]
At its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Call Me by Your Name received a standing ovation. [193] When it screened at Alice Tully Hall as part of the New York Film Festival, it received a ten-minute ovation, the longest in the festival's history. [41] [194] On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes , the film has an approval rating of 94% based on 363 reviews, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, " Call Me by Your Name offers a melancholy, powerfully affecting portrait of first love, empathetically acted by Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer." [195] It was the best-reviewed limited release and the second-best-reviewed romance film of 2017 on the site. [196] [197] On Metacritic , the film has an average weighted score of 94 out of 100, based on 53 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". [198] It was the year's fifth-best rated film on Metacritic. [199]
Writing for The Hollywood Reporter , Boyd van Hoeij described Call Me by Your Name as an "extremely sensual ... intimate and piercingly honest" adaptation of Aciman's novel and called Chalamet's performance "the true breakout of the film". [201] Peter Debruge of Variety believed the film "advances the canon of gay cinema" by portraying "a story of first love ... that transcends the same-sex dynamic of its central couple". He compared Guadagnino's "sensual" direction with the films of Pedro Almodóvar and François Ozon , and put Call Me by Your Name "on par with the best of their work". [117] David Ehrlich of IndieWire also praised Guadagnino's directing, which he said helped the film "match the artistry and empathy" of Carol (2015) and Moonlight (2016). [200] Sam Adams of the BBC wrote that Stuhlbarg's performance "puts a frame around the movie's painting and opens up avenues we may not have thought to explore", and called it "one of his finest" to date. He extolled the film as one of "many movies that have so successfully appealed to both the intellectual and the erotic since the heydays of Patrice Chéreau and André Téchiné ". [202]
Ty Burr of The Boston Globe gave the film three-and-a-half stars, commended the director for "broaden[ing] his embrace of humanity while hitting new heights of cinematic bliss" and said that the film "may be a fantasy but it's one that's lovely and wise." [203] David Morgan of CBS praised the cinematography, production design and costuming for "making a summer in the 1980s palpably alive again." He found Stuhlbarg's character "the most forward-thinking parent in movie history". [204] Richard Lawson wrote that Guadagnino's adaptation "was made with real love, with good intentions, with a clarity of heart and purposeful, unpretentious intellect" and hailed it as a "modern gay classic" in his Vanity Fair review. [205] Chicago Tribune ' s Michael Phillips was pleased by the "wonderfully paradoxical" visual interests from the director and said Stevens's songs "work like magic on your sympathies regarding Elio's emotional awakening." He praised Hammer's performance as "some of the most easy-breathing and relaxed best work of his career." [206]
The Economist noted the tension "between pain and pleasure" in the film and praised Chalamet, saying that he "evokes so many shades of humanity, portraying a path of youthful self-discovery that is more raw, unhinged, and ultimately honest than many actors could manage". [207] Kate Taylor of The Globe and Mail , who gave the film two-and-a-half stars, also enjoyed Chalamet's effort in capturing "first love and its inevitable heartbreak" and said the "multilingual, almost-pre-AIDS idyll does not stretch credulity ... but it can try the patience". [208] Ken Eisner of The Georgia Straight said that "Guadagnino's lyrical excesses ... can alternate wildly between the poetically incisive and the indulgently preposterous." [209] In a negative review, Kyle Turner of Paste wrote, "The details of the film are too small for anyone, perhaps particularly a queer person, to see," a visual distance that "suggests that the film, in the beginning, is as terrified as Elio initially is. It never gets over that hesitation." [210] Armond White of Out called the movie "craven commercialism" and a "super-bourgeois fantasy" that "exploit[s] the queer audience's romantic needs by packaging them and falsifying them." [211]
The film's depiction of a sexual relationship with an age disparity between the characters Elio and Oliver drew commentary and criticism—especially in the United States, where the lowest legal age of consent is higher than in Italy . [212] The 17-year-old Elio was portrayed by Chalamet, who was 21 at the time of filming, while the 24-year-old Oliver was played by Hammer, then 31. [212] Queer Eye host Karamo Brown , criticized the movie as glorifying sexual assault and said, "it looks like a grown man having sex with a little boy." [213] Author Cheyenne Montgomery said she was disturbed that one of the protagonists is portrayed as a boy and the other as a man, saying, "Elio is portrayed very much as a child: He shaves peach fuzz off of his face, he cuddles with his parents, his lines are often kind of bratty and childlike, and he's being played as a sexy romantic partner to a character who's very much being portrayed as an adult." [214] Physicians Renee Sorrentino and Jack Turban wrote in Psychiatric Times :
This film is about sexual predation. Oliver looks much older than his reported age of 24 while Elio looks like a very young 17-year-old. The power disparity in the relationship is clear. Elio is fragile and sexually naive. Oliver is experienced and directive in the relationship. ... Is it appropriate for a 24-year-old experienced in drinking to have sex with an inebriated and vomiting 17-year-old? [215]
A feature in The Advocate , an LGBT-interest magazine, drew attention to other narrative films depicting heterosexual relationships with similar or greater age gaps, such as between the teenaged Scarlett and the 33-year-old Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind . [216]
The National Board of Review and the American Film Institute selected Call Me by Your Name as one of the top 10 films of the year. [217] [218] At the 90th Academy Awards , it was nominated for Best Picture , Best Actor (Chalamet), Best Original Song ("Mystery of Love"), and Best Adapted Screenplay , winning the last. [219] [220] Chalamet became the third-youngest Best Actor nominee and the youngest nominee since 1939 , and Ivory became the oldest winner in any competitive category. [221] The film received four nominations at the 71st British Academy Film Awards , including Best Film and Best Direction , and won Best Adapted Screenplay for Ivory. [222] [223] At the 75th Golden Globe Awards , it was nominated for Best Motion Picture – Drama , Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for Chalamet and Best Supporting Actor for Hammer. [224]
In a series of articles regarding the best of the 2010s in film , IndieWire ranked Call Me by Your Name as the 18th best film of the decade and Chalamet's performance as the 39th best acting performance. [234] [235] Consequence of Sound ranked the film as the 23rd best of the decade, [236] Rolling Stone ranked it 40th [237] and Little White Lies ranked it 47th. [238]
The film has gained a large international fan base. During the film's festival run, people crossed borders and oceans to be among the first to see the film. In 2018, a book was published by Barb Mirell, who collected stories from fans around the world about what the film meant to them. [239] By early 2018 the film had attracted a following in China among heterosexual women, who perceived it as a Western " boys' love " romance, evidenced by its popularity on the Chinese social network and media database Douban . [240]
After an Italian fan published coordinates of the filming locations, visiting Crema has become something akin to a religious pilgrimage for fans of the film. The city of Crema now offers official tours. [241]
Guadagnino has deliberated over the idea of a sequel since the film's premiere at Sundance, when he said he realized the characters "could go beyond the boundaries of the film." [44] In October 2017, he said he hoped to make a sequel in 2020 that might be in the style of François Truffaut 's The Adventures of Antoine Doinel series, telling the story of Oliver and Elio as they age. "If I paired the age of Elio in the film with the age of Timothée, in three years' time, Timothée will be 25, as would Elio by the time the second story was set", he said. [242] [243] In the novel, Elio and Oliver reunite 15 years later when Oliver is married. Guadagnino said that in the sequel, "I don't think Elio is necessarily going to become a gay man. He hasn't found his place yet ... I believe that he would start an intense relationship with Marzia again." [244]
Guadagnino has expressed interest in the politics of the 1990s, saying, "It is the time of the fall of Communism and the start of the new world order and so-called ' end of history ' that Francis Fukuyama established then ... the beginning of the [Silvio] Berlusconi era in Italy and it would mean dealing with the [first Gulf War ] of Iraq." [244] [245] In November 2017, Guadagnino shared his intention to make a series of five films, in which the audience could "see those actors grow older, embodying those characters." [44] A month later, he was reported to have begun writing a script for a sequel that would reveal more about Oliver and resemble Michael Apted 's Up series . [246] [247] Hammer and Chalamet have expressed interest in appearing in a sequel, [248] but Ivory appears to be dismissive, saying about the idea of sequels, "that's fine, good. But I don't know how they're going to get a 40-year-old [Chalamet]!" [40]
In January 2018, Guadagnino revealed the sequel will be set "right after the fall of Berlin Wall and that great shift that was the end of ... the USSR ", [16] and that the first scene in the film could depict Elio watching Paul Vecchiali 's Once More (1988)—the first French film to deal with AIDS—in a movie theater. [249] In March 2018, Guadagnino confirmed he will work with Aciman on the sequel, which will take place "five or six years afterwards" with "a different tone" than the first film. [250] He also said that Hammer and Chalamet would reprise their roles with a different backdrop, where they "go around the world". [250] Hammer said he was pitched the script by Guadagnino, saying: "it's not a finished script, but he's got all the ideas for it". [251] In April 2018, Aciman said in an interview for The Sydney Morning Herald that he and Guadagnino were "not sure" about the sequel, saying "[Guadagnino] has quite a few projects in line and so do I. So we are flirting with each other about the sequel but I don't know if we are very serious." [252] In July 2018, Stuhlbarg said that Guadagnino and Aciman were excited about the project and that the director was "serious" about it. He expressed enthusiasm to reprise his role in the sequel, saying "I think it would have to be some kind of unique thing from what it was, but I would absolutely be game for trying." [253] Two months later, Hammer said of the sequel in an interview for Variety : "It will happen because there are already people working on it and trying to make it happen." [254]
In an interview for Time in October 2018, Chalamet compared the sequel to Richard Linklater 's Boyhood (2014) and said that Hammer, Aciman and Guadagnino were all intended to return for the next film. [255] That same month, Guadagnino revealed that he has asked Dakota Johnson , a frequent collaborator of his, to play Oliver's wife in the sequel. He described her character as "a New England kind of hoochie woman" who might also have children with Oliver. [256] He said that the film would be "a new chapter in a chronicle" about the characters, rather than a sequel, [257] and it might take some time to develop due to the busy schedule, saying "I have not been able to luxuriate in anything but the promotion of Suspiria ... I didn't have space of mind and the real, actual time to put ideas on the table and think of things." [257] "The only problem is the title," he said; "It cannot be Call Me by Your Name Two ". [256] [258] At the SCAD Savannah Film Festival in October, Hammer said that Guadagnino had laid out a potential plot for the sequel and it might be a few years away, saying "[Guadagnino] wants to wait so that we age a bit more so that gap makes sense, kind of like a Linklater thing." [259] In an interview with Dazed in November, the director said about the sequel, "It's a delicate flower that is blooming very slowly. And so I think it's not the time to collect it and put it into a vase." [260]
In November 2018, Ivory confirmed that he wouldn't return for the sequel and said that Aciman thought "it was not a good idea". [261] Less than a week later, Aciman, however, said he was in fact writing a sequel to Call Me by Your Name . [262] [263] The novel, titled Find Me , was officially confirmed on March 20, 2019, and was released on October 29 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux . [264] Also in March 2019, Hammer revealed that the film isn't formally in the works, and he hasn't had explicit conversations with either Chalamet or Guadagnino about it. He also felt the potential sequel might not match the expectation, saying "It felt like a really perfect storm of so many things, that if we do make a second one, I think we're setting ourselves up for disappointment. I don't know that anything will match up to the first ... I'm like, 'That was such a special thing, why don't we just leave it alone?'" [265]
In March 2020, Guadagnino confirmed a sequel film in an interview with Italian newspaper la Repubblica . In the interview he also confirmed that the full cast of the original film, including Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer will be returning. He also stated in the interview that he was due to meet with an unnamed American writer to discuss the sequel, however it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic . [266] In a GQ interview in September, Hammer was asked again about the film's progress and said, "I've been talking to [Guadagnino], but we haven't got into it. I haven't even read the book. I know Luca hasn't got a full script yet, although he knows what he wants to do with the story, so I don't know how similar or dissimilar it will be to Find Me the novel. I know if we end up doing it, it’s more important for me to focus on Luca’s vision than to focus on Find Me ." [267]
A series of allegations against Hammer of emotional abuse and cannibalistic fetishism in early 2021 – resulting in Hammer's removal from nearly all upcoming projects – have raised doubts about the prospects of a sequel, [268] but actor Michael Stuhlbarg hopes that the film will still be made. [269] In May 2021, Guadagnino suggested in an interview with Deadline that a sequel was no longer in his priorities. [270] In the interview, he hinted that, beyond the complications related to Hammer's scandal, Chalamet and himself would be busy with other films in the near future which has led him to put the sequel project aside.
- ^ Mr. Perlman's first name is not given in the film's credits or in the source novel. In an interview, Stuhlbarg said his character was referred to as Samuel or Sam during production, and the character is called "Sammy" once in the film. [7]
- ^ Liguria and Sanremo were once depicted as the main setting in the book. [29] [41] Aciman, however, declared that the novel takes place in Bordighera, saying "I didn't want to name it in the book, but it's known. I go back to Bordighera all the time". [42] During his time as a location consultant, Guadagnino suggested Liguria as the main setting to the producers. [38]
- ^ In the original French, "le cinéma d'art [et] d'essai européen," a term encompassing independent and arthouse films . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_Me_by_Your_Name_(film) | 78 |
where does call.me by your name take place | Filming Locations for Call Me By Your Name (2017), in Italy. | Luca Guadagnino ’s sun-drenched coming-of-age romance saw veteran film-maker James Ivory (of the Merchant - Ivory directorial team responsible for so many quintessentially British films including A Room With A View , Howards End and The Remains Of The Day ) finally win an Oscar, for his adaptation of André Aciman ’s novel.
It’s set in 1983 in the far north of Italy , and filmed around Crema , Moscazzano and Bergamo in Lombardy .
The main setting is the estate of the Perlman family. It looks mouth-wateringly inviting, but this time I’m afraid I’m not able to say: “and you can stay here…”. The villa is not a hotel or a guest-house but a private home and it’s surrounded by high walls.
It’s the Villa Albergoni, 3, Via Montodine , just south of Via Roma, in Moscazzano , a village about five miles south of Crema. The villa was put up for sale in 2018 for an asking price of €1.7 million. There’s little to see from the street, apart from the entrance, but if you missed the chance to buy it, you can comfort yourself knowing that it wasn’t such a bargain – there are really no peach trees on the estate and that plunge pool was added just for the film.
In fact, the villa was specially decorated for the film by Violante Visconti di Modrone , a relative of Luchino Visconti , coincidentally director of Death In Venice , a ravishingly beautiful film of homoerotic longings from a very different era.
When Perlman Sr ( Michael Stuhlbarg ), an academic specialising in classical antiquity, invites American research assistant Oliver ( Armie Hammer ) to stay at the villa or a few weeks, there’s initially resentment from his 17-year-old son, Elio ( Timothée Chalamet ), who’s obliged to give up his bedroom to the interloper.
Nevertheless, Elio dutifully takes Oliver into the nearest town to open a bank account for his stay.
Call Me by Your Name film location: Oliver and Elio meet up in Crema: Crema, Lombardy, Italy | Photograph: iStockphoto / clodio
The town is Crema , and it’s in the Piazza del Duomo in front of Crema Cathedral that, over drinks, Oliver asks what it is people do around here. As you may guess from the carefully angled shots, there’s not really a bar here.
The next time they cycle into town, it’s to Moscazzano , and Piazza Gambazocchi , where Elio watches as the charming Oliver joins a game of cards with the locals. And this bar is real – it’s Bar Belvedere, Piazza Gambazocchi, 7 .
Although tentative signals are exchanged between Elio and Oliver, they prove elusive and ambiguous. When the beats of the Psychedelic Furs impel Oliver to a flamboyant turn on the dancefloor at an alfresco disco party, Elio slips of with his kind-of-girlfriend Marzia ( Esther Garrel ) for a late-night swim.
They travel quite a way for it. The spot is Laghetto dei Riflessi , a small quarry lake in the Palata Menasciutto Nature Reserve , just to the southwest of Ricengo , though this is about three miles north of Crema.
Perlman Sr invites Oliver and Elio to join him on a trip to an archaeological site on Lake Garda , where precious artefacts are being recovered from the waters.
Call Me by Your Name film location: visiting the archaeological site' villa: Grottoes of Catullus, Sirmione, Lake Garda, Italy | Photograph: Shutterstock / Gherzak
This is Sirmione , a promontory at the southern tip of the lake. The brick columns and stone ruins here are Grottoes of Catullus , ruins of a Roman villa dating from about the time BC was turning into AD.
The awkwardness between Elio and Oliver is defused when Elio bravely declares a truce and the three go off for a sunset dip at nearby Spiaggia Giamaica ( Jamaica Beach ).
A turning point comes when Elio is read the story of a Knight who’s unable to declare his love for a Princess and is faced with the stark choice “Speak or die”.
As he strolls around the toweringly heroic WWI Memorial on Piazza Vittorio Emanuele III in Pandino , a few miles northwest of Crema, Elio chooses to speak, though Oliver quickly shuts the conversation down.
Despite the rebuff, Elio takes Oliver to his special place, where he goes to read and where the water running down from the mountains is freezing. This is Fontanile Quarantina , a quiet nature reserve near Capralba , northeast of Pandino. Elio’s dogged persistence pays off and in the meadow here there’s the first physical expression of their feelings. Again, it’s the cautious Oliver who pulls back.
On the way home, the pair stops at Cascina San Giorgio , on the tiny open space on Via Bosco at the southern end of Corte Palasio on SP124 – southwest of Crema toward Lodi, where they ask for a drink of water and are somewhat taken aback by the picture of Il Duce.
Feeling he’s given way to temptation, Oliver chooses to distance himself and the frustrated Elio turns to Marzia, meeting up with her opposite Crema 's Duomo in the colonnade running along the west side of Piazza Duomo at Via XX Settembre .
Elio eventually leaves a note for Oliver and their midnight meeting ends in the way it was always intended to, with a slow pan away to the window….
In Crema , the next day, Oliver – who seems inordinately sensitive about their age difference – apologises for “what happened last night”. In front of the newsagent at the southwest corner of Piazza Duomo , Elio is quick to reassure him.
So much time has passed that by now, Oliver’s time in Italy is nearly up. He’s off to spend a couple of days in Bergamo , a city about 30 miles north of Crema, before returning to the USA.
Everyone agrees it’s a good idea for Elio to accompany him, and they leave by coach from Piazza XXV Aprile , in front of the Baroque Chiesa di Montodine ( Church of Montodine ) in Montodine , a small town east of Moscazzano.
Now the floodgates have been opened, the two enjoy a crazily exhilarating few days in and around the city.
Call Me by Your Name film location: the towering waterfall in the mountains: Serio Waterfall Valbondione, Italy | Photograph: Shutterstock / Matteo Ceruti
The breathtaking waterfall among the mountains is actually much further north. It’s Le Cascate del Serio , about two miles northeast of Valbondione , and the highest waterfall in Italy . The falls are formed by three main steps on the Serio River , 166, 74 and 75 metres tall, altogether resulting in a drop of 315 m
Don’t expect to find that spectacular cascade all the time. A dam above the falls regulates the flow, releasing water for less than an hour, only four or five times a year. Plan ahead.
In Bergamo itself, the pensione at which Elio and Oliver stay was the, sadly now closed, Hotel Agnello d'Oro, Via Gombito, 22 , at Via San Pancrazio. Keep an eye on it – surely such a beautiful location overlooking Fontana del Gombito just northeast of the cathedral is not going to stay vacant for long.
The two enjoy one deliriously drunken night in the Piazza Padre Reginaldo Giuliani , in front of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore where, once again Oliver succumbs to the lure of the Psychedelic Furs while poor Elio throws up.
It’s all over too quickly and Oliver has to leave. The most understatedly heartwrenching train farewell since David Lean ’s Brief Encounter , is supposedly at the station of 'Clusone', but is actually Pizzighettone , much further south and closer to Crema.
Elio is given a ride home by his mother and it’s in front of Bar Belvedere in Moscazzano that he has a reconciliation with Marzia who turns out to be remarkably understanding, agreeing they should stay friends forever.
The final shot sees Chalamet honourably joining the ranks of actors including Bob Hoskins ( The Long Good Friday ) and Michael Redgrave ( The Go-Between ) who been given the unenviable task of carrying the emotional weight of the film’s ending with one long, final close-up.
Visit: Italy
Flights: Milan–Malpensa Airport , 21010 Ferno VA ( tel: 39.02.232323 )
Visit: the Palata Menasciutto Nature Reserve , Via Fiume Serio, 26010 Ripalta Nuova CR
Visit: Fontanile Quarantina , 26010 Capralba, CR | https://www.movie-locations.com/movies/c/Call-Me-By-Your-Name.php | 78 |
where does call.me by your name take place | Where Was “Call Me By Your Name” Filmed? - Peerspace | Love the modern heart-wrenching romance and are wondering: where was “Call Me By Your Name” filmed? Then you’ve come to the right place! Today, we’re retracing the steps of Elio and Oliver as they took their love affair across the Italian countryside. We’ll also share with you some behind-the-scenes facts and which filming locations you can visit for yourself.
For the creators or filmmakers out there trying to match that “Call Me By Your Name”-vibe, stay with us until the end. We’ll also share how you can find your own incredible filming locations on Peerspace . Let’s go ahead and visit Italy and explore some of the most memorable locations from this romantic romp!
Based on a novel of the same name by author André Aciman, “Call Me By Your Name” is a 2017 coming-of-age story that stars Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer. It follows the love affair of a teenager with his father’s young research assistant on a trip through Northern Italy.
The film received quite a lot of critical acclaim and was nominated for four Academy Awards. Taking home the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, the movie has remained a favorite to many since its release.
There is no doubt that the setting of Northern Italy can be attributed to some of the success and praise the film received. There is so much gorgeous scenery and Italian landmarks that are sure to make you ask: where was “Call Me By Your Name” filmed?
Peerspace makes it easy to book incredible spaces by the hour. Enjoy the largest location library and hassle-free bookings today.
Italian director Luca Guadagnino has made other movies of his, like 2015’s “A Bigger Splash,” in Italy. However, with most of the lead actors being from places outside of the country, you may still be wondering: where was “Call Me By Your Name” filmed?
According to IMDB , all of the filming locations from the movie were in Italy. The northern Italian province Lombardy, home to Milan and other fashion hubs was used for the entirety of the film. Other films made in the region include Guadagnino’s 2018 horror remake “Suspiria” and the recent high-fashion drama “House of Gucci.”
The story starts with Chalemet’s character Elio staying with his family in a beautiful villa during his father’s archeological expedition. The home is stunning and sure to make you ask: where was “Call Me By Your Name” filmed?
Movie-Locations.com reports that this is the Villa Albergoni, located in Moscazzano. Unfortunately, this is a private home surrounded by four walls, so you won’t really get a chance to see it up close. The privately owned villa was reportedly listed for sale at 1.7 million Euro in 2018.
Apparently, there aren’t actually any peach trees on the property, and the pool was added just for the movie, so it sounds like we aren’t missing too much by not getting to visit!
One of the memorable scenes from the movie involves Elio and Oliver riding their bikes to an outdoor bar in front of a cathedral. The stunning architecture and picturesque scenes are sure to inspire the question: where was “Call Me By Your Name” filmed?
According to Vogue , this was shot in the city of Crema at the Piazza del Duomo. Guadagnino is reported to have said that the city is “quintessentially Italian without being an idea of Italy.”
They also report that nearby the Piazza del Duomo is the alleyway where Elio meets his girlfriend, Marzia.
Elio’s father is working on an archeological dig on the shore of a beautiful blue lake that fans of the movie are sure to want to see for themselves. Conde Nast Traveler says that this is Lake Garda in Sirmione.
The dig is being done at a first-century Roman villa named Grotte di Catullo, which gives us a scene between Elio, Oliver, and Elio’s father as they examine artifacts from the site.
Also shot at the lake is the picturesque swim at sunset that they take. This was done at Spiaggia Giamaica or Jamaica Beach.
Adore Timothée Chalamet? Then be sure to also discover his filming locations in “ Don’t Look Up” !
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Fans of “Call Me By Your Name” are lucky to have so many beautiful locations to visit from their favorite film.
One of the locations that you surely shouldn’t miss is the Cascate del Serio in Valbondione. Italy Magazine reports that this is the highest waterfall in Italy and the one that the characters visit towards the end of their time together.
They also mention that nearby Bergamo is where Elio and Oliver spend their last days together on a recommendation from Elio’s parents.
The film ends with heartbreak, and the two must say goodbye. In a scene that surely didn’t leave many dry eyes, the two must depart at a train station which Elio tells his mother is Clusone. However, according to Movie-Locations.com , this is actually Pizzighettone – which is much closer to the city of Crema than Bergamo.
Once you’ve put away the tissues and are ready to make your own “Call Me By Your Name”-inspired content, you’re going to need filming locations. As anybody who has tried to do their own location scouting can tell you, it can be very difficult to find a quality, affordable filming locations as an average creator.
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This is just the start of what Peerspace has to offer you when you use them for your next location scout. Take a look for yourself. We think that you’ll find the perfect spot to make the next great tale of summer love affairs. | https://www.peerspace.com/resources/where-was-call-me-by-your-name-filmed/ | 78 |
where does call.me by your name take place | Filming Locations for Call Me By Your Name (2017), in Italy. | Luca Guadagnino ’s sun-drenched coming-of-age romance saw veteran film-maker James Ivory (of the Merchant - Ivory directorial team responsible for so many quintessentially British films including A Room With A View , Howards End and The Remains Of The Day ) finally win an Oscar, for his adaptation of André Aciman ’s novel.
It’s set in 1983 in the far north of Italy , and filmed around Crema , Moscazzano and Bergamo in Lombardy .
The main setting is the estate of the Perlman family. It looks mouth-wateringly inviting, but this time I’m afraid I’m not able to say: “and you can stay here…”. The villa is not a hotel or a guest-house but a private home and it’s surrounded by high walls.
It’s the Villa Albergoni, 3, Via Montodine , just south of Via Roma, in Moscazzano , a village about five miles south of Crema. The villa was put up for sale in 2018 for an asking price of €1.7 million. There’s little to see from the street, apart from the entrance, but if you missed the chance to buy it, you can comfort yourself knowing that it wasn’t such a bargain – there are really no peach trees on the estate and that plunge pool was added just for the film.
In fact, the villa was specially decorated for the film by Violante Visconti di Modrone , a relative of Luchino Visconti , coincidentally director of Death In Venice , a ravishingly beautiful film of homoerotic longings from a very different era.
When Perlman Sr ( Michael Stuhlbarg ), an academic specialising in classical antiquity, invites American research assistant Oliver ( Armie Hammer ) to stay at the villa or a few weeks, there’s initially resentment from his 17-year-old son, Elio ( Timothée Chalamet ), who’s obliged to give up his bedroom to the interloper.
Nevertheless, Elio dutifully takes Oliver into the nearest town to open a bank account for his stay.
Call Me by Your Name film location: Oliver and Elio meet up in Crema: Crema, Lombardy, Italy | Photograph: iStockphoto / clodio
The town is Crema , and it’s in the Piazza del Duomo in front of Crema Cathedral that, over drinks, Oliver asks what it is people do around here. As you may guess from the carefully angled shots, there’s not really a bar here.
The next time they cycle into town, it’s to Moscazzano , and Piazza Gambazocchi , where Elio watches as the charming Oliver joins a game of cards with the locals. And this bar is real – it’s Bar Belvedere, Piazza Gambazocchi, 7 .
Although tentative signals are exchanged between Elio and Oliver, they prove elusive and ambiguous. When the beats of the Psychedelic Furs impel Oliver to a flamboyant turn on the dancefloor at an alfresco disco party, Elio slips of with his kind-of-girlfriend Marzia ( Esther Garrel ) for a late-night swim.
They travel quite a way for it. The spot is Laghetto dei Riflessi , a small quarry lake in the Palata Menasciutto Nature Reserve , just to the southwest of Ricengo , though this is about three miles north of Crema.
Perlman Sr invites Oliver and Elio to join him on a trip to an archaeological site on Lake Garda , where precious artefacts are being recovered from the waters.
Call Me by Your Name film location: visiting the archaeological site' villa: Grottoes of Catullus, Sirmione, Lake Garda, Italy | Photograph: Shutterstock / Gherzak
This is Sirmione , a promontory at the southern tip of the lake. The brick columns and stone ruins here are Grottoes of Catullus , ruins of a Roman villa dating from about the time BC was turning into AD.
The awkwardness between Elio and Oliver is defused when Elio bravely declares a truce and the three go off for a sunset dip at nearby Spiaggia Giamaica ( Jamaica Beach ).
A turning point comes when Elio is read the story of a Knight who’s unable to declare his love for a Princess and is faced with the stark choice “Speak or die”.
As he strolls around the toweringly heroic WWI Memorial on Piazza Vittorio Emanuele III in Pandino , a few miles northwest of Crema, Elio chooses to speak, though Oliver quickly shuts the conversation down.
Despite the rebuff, Elio takes Oliver to his special place, where he goes to read and where the water running down from the mountains is freezing. This is Fontanile Quarantina , a quiet nature reserve near Capralba , northeast of Pandino. Elio’s dogged persistence pays off and in the meadow here there’s the first physical expression of their feelings. Again, it’s the cautious Oliver who pulls back.
On the way home, the pair stops at Cascina San Giorgio , on the tiny open space on Via Bosco at the southern end of Corte Palasio on SP124 – southwest of Crema toward Lodi, where they ask for a drink of water and are somewhat taken aback by the picture of Il Duce.
Feeling he’s given way to temptation, Oliver chooses to distance himself and the frustrated Elio turns to Marzia, meeting up with her opposite Crema 's Duomo in the colonnade running along the west side of Piazza Duomo at Via XX Settembre .
Elio eventually leaves a note for Oliver and their midnight meeting ends in the way it was always intended to, with a slow pan away to the window….
In Crema , the next day, Oliver – who seems inordinately sensitive about their age difference – apologises for “what happened last night”. In front of the newsagent at the southwest corner of Piazza Duomo , Elio is quick to reassure him.
So much time has passed that by now, Oliver’s time in Italy is nearly up. He’s off to spend a couple of days in Bergamo , a city about 30 miles north of Crema, before returning to the USA.
Everyone agrees it’s a good idea for Elio to accompany him, and they leave by coach from Piazza XXV Aprile , in front of the Baroque Chiesa di Montodine ( Church of Montodine ) in Montodine , a small town east of Moscazzano.
Now the floodgates have been opened, the two enjoy a crazily exhilarating few days in and around the city.
Call Me by Your Name film location: the towering waterfall in the mountains: Serio Waterfall Valbondione, Italy | Photograph: Shutterstock / Matteo Ceruti
The breathtaking waterfall among the mountains is actually much further north. It’s Le Cascate del Serio , about two miles northeast of Valbondione , and the highest waterfall in Italy . The falls are formed by three main steps on the Serio River , 166, 74 and 75 metres tall, altogether resulting in a drop of 315 m
Don’t expect to find that spectacular cascade all the time. A dam above the falls regulates the flow, releasing water for less than an hour, only four or five times a year. Plan ahead.
In Bergamo itself, the pensione at which Elio and Oliver stay was the, sadly now closed, Hotel Agnello d'Oro, Via Gombito, 22 , at Via San Pancrazio. Keep an eye on it – surely such a beautiful location overlooking Fontana del Gombito just northeast of the cathedral is not going to stay vacant for long.
The two enjoy one deliriously drunken night in the Piazza Padre Reginaldo Giuliani , in front of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore where, once again Oliver succumbs to the lure of the Psychedelic Furs while poor Elio throws up.
It’s all over too quickly and Oliver has to leave. The most understatedly heartwrenching train farewell since David Lean ’s Brief Encounter , is supposedly at the station of 'Clusone', but is actually Pizzighettone , much further south and closer to Crema.
Elio is given a ride home by his mother and it’s in front of Bar Belvedere in Moscazzano that he has a reconciliation with Marzia who turns out to be remarkably understanding, agreeing they should stay friends forever.
The final shot sees Chalamet honourably joining the ranks of actors including Bob Hoskins ( The Long Good Friday ) and Michael Redgrave ( The Go-Between ) who been given the unenviable task of carrying the emotional weight of the film’s ending with one long, final close-up.
Visit: Italy
Flights: Milan–Malpensa Airport , 21010 Ferno VA ( tel: 39.02.232323 )
Visit: the Palata Menasciutto Nature Reserve , Via Fiume Serio, 26010 Ripalta Nuova CR
Visit: Fontanile Quarantina , 26010 Capralba, CR | https://www.movie-locations.com/movies/c/Call-Me-By-Your-Name.php | 78 |
where does call.me by your name take place | Call Me by Your Name is an erotic film in every sense of the word. It’s also a masterpiece. | Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer star in a lush story of first love and desire.
Alissa Wilkinson covers film and culture for Vox. Alissa is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics.
It is not easy to put Call Me b y Your Name into words. Luca Guadagnino’s new film, which adapts André Aciman’s 2007 novel about a precocious 17-year-old who falls in lust and love with his father’s 24-year-old graduate student, is remarkable for how it turns literature into pure cinema, all emotion and image and heady sensation.
You could call Call Me b y Your Name an erotic film, then — and it absolutely, undeniably is. But I mean it in a way that’s broader than our modern narrow usage of the term: not just sex but also love, which is bigger and more frightening. Eros is a name for a kind of love that’s equal parts passion and torment, a kind of irrational heart fire that opens a gate into something longer-lasting. But it’s love that also feels, in the moment, like hurtling headlong off a cliff.
I can’t remember a film that better captures that kind of madness and heightened attention to not just the object of desire but also the world at large. Nor can I recall a movie that more directly appeals to all of the audience’s senses to make them feel what’s happening onscreen. It’s undoubtedly a gay love story, though it’s less about coming out than coming of age. Call Me b y Your Name is a lush, heady experience for the body, but it’s also an arousal for the soul.
Set “somewhere in northern Italy” in the summer of 1983, Call Me b y Your Name lingers over six sun-soaked weeks in which everything shifts for Elio ( Timothée Chalamet ). Cocky and preternaturally sophisticated — but with a hint of the insecure teenager still hanging around him — Elio joins his doting, unconventional parents ( Michael Stuhlbarg and Amira Casar ) at their comfortable ramshackle Italian villa, where they prepare to welcome their annual guest, the latest in a series of graduate students who spend the summer working with Elio’s father, a classics professor.
This summer that student is handsome, confident Oliver ( Armie Hammer ), who has a way of taking up space: He’s very tall, for sure, but his very presence seems to fill the spaces he’s in, whether it’s on the court in a casual volleyball game, at a local bar, or dancing in a crowd on the town square. Whereas Elio affects a studied aloofness, Oliver plunges into everything, clumsily destroying one soft-boiled egg at breakfast the first morning, then downing another while murmuring his appreciation, a man of ravenous desire only sometimes held back by a veneer of gentility. He refuses another: “I know myself,” he says. “If I have a second, I’m gonna have a third, and then a fourth, and then you’ll just have to roll me out of here.”
Elio looks on in wonder as this happens, both disgusted and fascinated by Oliver, who barrels out of rooms hollering, “Later!” Oliver’s frank American confidence is an inverse of Elio’s quieter impishness. The two couldn’t be more different.
The chemistry between Hammer and Chalamet, and their performances, sells the relationship completely. (They’re true starmaking turns for both actors, along with Stuhlbarg in a brief but key scene.) But the spark between them takes a while to fan into a flame, especially since Elio has taken up with a French girl named Marzia ( Esther Garrel ) who’s in town for the summer. Oliver and Elio’s relationship starts out combative, with Elio navigating whatever’s happening inside of him by feigning disinterest, playing coy, and watching Oliver from afar while taunting him up close. Eventually they become friends. But one evening his mother reads from a 16th-century French romance, in which a knight yearning for a princess with whom he’s formed a friendship wonders, “Is it better to speak or to die?” And Elio decides he has to speak.
We know (and Oliver and Elio and Elio’s parents know) that this can’t last forever, but in capturing the burn, Guadagnino makes us feel Elio’s desire, and thus his devastation. Every image practically drips with longing: a live fish someone’s caught in the river, pages flapping in the hot breeze, water pouring from a tap into a stone pool, a table spread with breakfast preparations, the smoldering end of a cigarette. And, of course, the bodies of beautiful young people, which seem to have very little shielding them from the hot Italian sun.
In this film, as in earlier ones like A Bigger Splash and I Am Love , Guadagnino’s sensual attention to the textures and smells and intimate noises of Italian life builds out a cinematic world that encompasses his characters but is much greater than them. (It’s no accident that Heraclitus’s The Cosmic Fragments , philosophical texts about the world rather than just man, makes a brief but pointed appearance.) The score mingles all kinds of music together — notably, John Adams’s “Hallelujah Junction,” the Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way,” and two original songs by Sufjan Stevens — and it feels like this movie is sparkling, as if you’re watching it in 4D. It’s intoxicating.
It’s also pointedly Edenic, capturing a paradise that will inevitably be lost — but how pregnant with weighty joy and fullness the paradise is in the meantime; the inevitable loss seems only to heighten this. In A Bigger Splash , paradise falls when the snake of jealousy winds its way into the bliss; in Call Me b y Your Name , it’s the simple, inevitable parting mandated by the ways that age and culture and station will keep Elio and Oliver apart.
The name of the film, and a pivotal moment in it, comes from Oliver pleading in a whisper to Elio, after they’ve finally slept together, for him to “call me by your name, and I’ll call you by mine.”
It feels like an odd request at first, until you remember an idea that surfaces in Plato’s Symposium : that in Greek mythology, humans were created as four-armed, four-legged, two-faced creatures, but split apart by Zeus and condemned to spend life searching for their other halves. In the Symposium ’s rendering, whether one searches for a female or male half has to do with the nature of your original being, and there are various means through which two halves who find each other might live in companionship.
But “when one of them meets with his other half,” it continues, “the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment.” This is the highest form of love — “the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another.” This is, in other words, an origin story for what we moderns might call soulmates, and it hums through Call Me b y Your Name like electricity.
Ancient sculptures of figures who, as Elio’s father puts it, “dare you desire them” recur throughout the movie, strengthening the allusion to the ancients. And it mixes the pagan with the idea of a Garden of Eden — when Elio and Oliver spend their first night together, it’s certainly explicit at first, but then the camera pans out the window to rest on a tree. And a piece of juicy, luscious fruit shows up in a key, unforgettable scene that weaves together the natures of desire and guilt.
But unlike the story of the Garden of Eden, there’s nothing like sin in Call Me b y Your Name ’s vocabulary — or at least, nothing puritanical. (One assumes, watching the film, that a puritanical thought has never entered Guadagnino’s head.) This isn’t a film about wrongdoing and punishment; it is about love, loss, and piercing joy in the context of a gay romance.
Elio’s father, speaking to him near the end of the story, lays out the movie’s sense of what’s right and what’s wrong: “Our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once,” he says. “And before you know it, your heart’s worn out. And as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now, there’s sorrow, pain. Don’t kill it, and with it the joy you’ve felt.” It is worth wading into desire, the movie suggests; it’s the only way to be alive, both in the good parts and the painful ones.
The way Call Me b y Your Name intermingles lust and love, desire and selflessness, flesh and soul is fully in service of Eros, but it isn’t just about sex, though that’s certainly a big part of it. It’s also trying to make us feel a mingling of souls that have found each other, and evoke the exhilaration of that meeting. It summons an erotic orientation toward the world with all its power, and then pours it onto the audience. It is, undoubtedly, Guadagnino’s masterpiece.
Call Me by Your Name opens in theaters on November 22. | https://www.vox.com/2017/11/21/16552862/call-me-by-your-name-review-timothee-chalamet-armie-hammer | 78 |
when did political science become an academic discipline | Political Science - The Discipline Of Political Science - Scientists, Research, Scientific, and Politics | The beginning of American political science as an organized discipline can be dated to December 30, 1903, when John Burgess, Frank Goodnow, Westel W. Willoughby, and others founded the American Political Science Association (APSA). The association's journal, the American Political Science Review ( APSR ), followed in 1906. Even though most schools still lacked separate political science departments, the appearance of the APSA, and thereafter its journal, legitimated professional commitment to political science as a coherent area of study. The APSA gave political scientists, in and out of the university, a sense of common purpose, and the APSR offered an outlet for original research and scholarly exposure.
As the discipline was established, political scientists increasingly incorporated political knowledge as their peculiar domain. Political scientists, after "authorizing" themselves through the creation of a discipline, began cordoning off political research as their area of study. The study of politics started to become a professional pursuit, sanctioned by a professional association. This trend toward professionalism in the field of political research became more clear during the behavioral revolution's move to "pure" science. With behavioralism, the discipline settled on a scientific identity, an identity that has changed little since its inception. Behavioralism, though, has its roots in the "science of politics movement," which began in the 1920s.
Political scientists believed that a scientific, disciplinary, and professional identity (that is, acceptance as "legitimate" producers of knowledge) depended on a common and useful methodology to separate trained "political scientists" from methodologically untrained amateurs. Scientific method would allow political scientists to arrive at objective, value-free truth (or truths) about a certain aspect of (usually) American politics in order to aid a modernizing polity in a purely technical way. There could be no normative goals in a value-free science. Political scientists, in other words, should not seek to express what ought to be done. Instead, their goal must be simply to explain the political world.
In the early 1900s, Arthur F. Bentley offered a tool for empirical, value-free social research in his work, The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures. Although Bentley was not an academic by trade, he did influence subsequent generations of political scientists, especially those within the behavioralist tradition. In The Process of Government, Bentley wanted to move away from the traditional notions of scientific explanation in society. He considered political science, with its nineteenth-century reliance on formalist studies of institutions, to be dead. The "barren formalism" of political science needed to be touched up with the "glow of humanity" by studying social actors themselves "for what they are" and "for what they represent" (Bentley, pp. 163–164). According to Bentley, the "raw material" for the scientific study of government cannot be found in one person. It must always be located in "something doing," in the activity of groups, in "the dispersal of one grouping of forces by another grouping." And while these groups do consist of thinking and feeling persons, the social scientist knows "nothing of 'ideas' and 'feelings' except through the medium of actions" (p. 175–176). Government is a process that is forever in flux, and, as such, it can never be described by law books, law, essays, addresses, or constitutional conventions.
Bentley argued that social science, then, should be empirical, measurable, progressive, and concerned with the interaction and activity of a complex and overlapping system of social, political, and economic groupings. Such a social science could, in Bentley's view, be objective and, as such, achieve "knowledge." Most of these aspects are evident again, in the science of politics movement of the 1920s and 1930s and in the behavioral political science that conquered the discipline by the late 1950s. The empirical, measurable, "progressive," and quantified behavioralist tradition gave political science the "scientific" identity it had sought since Bentley's era.
The new era in political science that followed World War I, like most new eras in the discipline, repudiated the previous era of political science. Progressive political science was condemned as invalid and partisan, not scientific enough. The new era sought even more detached, scientific, methodical, and therapeutic reforms for what was perceived to be a democracy in crisis. According to post–World War I political scientists, the United States' "liberal democracy" emerged badly shaken from the war. Political scientists had supported the war "for the usual reasons—it was supposed to end European autocracy and thus end war" (Seidelman and Harpham, p. 102). Instead, emboldened and effective fascist and communist governments in Europe strengthened their abilities to motivate their populaces to act in accordance with government interests. Post–World War I political scientists in America noticed a peculiar lack of any such motivational ability in the United States, and their wrath fell on their immediate predecessors. In their view, reform-minded progressive political scientists had not adequately and systematically located receptive reform publics, and their superficial and hasty analyses and proposals had consequently failed to be effective.
In light of this, political scientists of the new era saw the need for scholarly renovation. They renewed their dedication to establishing scientific inquiry in the hope that "scientific knowledge would emerge and contribute to improving the quality of public life in America" (Ricci, p. 77). The professional identity of the political scientist became that of political "healer," and political knowledge, implemented in the governmental system, was to be constructed toward this end. Political scientists such as Charles E. Merriam and Harold D. Lasswell saw themselves as social engineers whose purpose was the "rational" supervision of political actors tasked with ordering and controlling a logical and brave new political society. Merriam and Lasswell simply wanted to install a professional identity for political scientists based on a science that was organized to aid the liberal democratic state. As such, political knowledge was to be organized for the same purpose. This is part of the reason why such a formulation of science caught on in the discipline. It was constructed to correspond to the technical needs of society, and therefore it became the accepted identity for political scientists. But after World War II, this identity began to crumble. Behavioralists wanted to purify scientific political knowledge.
According to Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, numerous factors emerged to help establish behavioralism as a force in political science: Political scientists perceived that they were not considered legitimate scientists and consequently had problems securing research grants; they believed that the other social sciences (particularly psychology) were making broad advances while political science lagged behind; the reformist, normative nature of the discipline was generally considered speculative and unscientific; research technology (including survey techniques, statistical computations, and computers) became much more refined and available; and they pursued a "pure" science that operated on the presupposition that democracy is the best system of government because of its open and scientific qualities. In short, post–World War II political scientists sought to define the science of politics from the standpoint that science should be pure. The science of politics should be interested only in explaining the workings of American democracy in order to understand the American system better.
Postwar political scientists believed that political crises remained because pre–World War II political scientists had allowed their reformist aims to occlude their understanding of politics. Many postwar political scientists wanted to embark on the pure scientific project of analyzing the workings of the American system without tainting the analysis with speculative notions of reform. These were the first self-conscious attempts to push normative political theory to the margins of the discipline. The assumption that American democracy is the best political system in the world expels the normative determination of value from the discipline's activities. A pure science, after all, cannot consider such a claim. Rather, it must presuppose its end as it determines how best to reach or enhance it.
Somit and Tanenhaus have combined the various strands of behavioralism into what they term the "behavioral creed":
- Political science should search rigorously for regularities in political behavior in order to facilitate prediction and explanation.
- Political science should concern itself with empirical political phenomena, that is, with the behavior of individuals and political groups.
- Data should be quantifiable in order to aid predictive capabilities.
- Research should be theory driven; in other words, research should begin with a theory that yields empirically testable hypotheses.
- Political scientists should avoid applied (reform-minded) research in favor of pure scientific research.
- Values such as democracy, equality, and freedom cannot be scientifically established and should thus be avoided unless they can somehow be made empirically testable.
- Political science should become more interdisciplinary, at least at the behavioral level.
- Political science should place more emphasis on methodology and make better use of multivariate analysis, sample surveys, mathematical models, and simulation.
Behavioralists were intent on building a scientific community that was centered on behavioral inquiry. They could do this by further institutionalizing political knowledge. Therefore, the research skills that behavioral inquiry required served to exclude those who did not possess the proper training and to solidify the scientific identity of political scientists.
One example of behavioral inquiry can be found in the work of David B. Truman, who is probably best known for his book The Governmental Process, first published in 1951, which revived Bentley's group process theory of government. Truman's argument, although less polemical, closely resembles Bentley's and is offered in response to the expanding role of interest groups in American politics and the public's growing fear of their influence. The Governmental Process, by Truman's own account, contributed to the "political behavior movement" in political science by increasing "the analytical strength and usefulness of the discipline" (pp. xix–xx). It also triggered the growth of the study of interest groups in the United States and abroad. Like Bentley's work, The Governmental Process offers a tool for analysis: a theory to drive systematic behavioral research. It contains many "testable hypotheses" ranging from the political orientations of groups to the internal politics of the group process to the influence of groups on the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, and elections.
Truman's basic argument revolves around the notion that because every individual attempts to become an accepted participant in a group or a set of groups, it makes sense to study political behavior in terms of groups and group interactions. He argues that "the patterns of action and attitude among individuals will differ from one another in large measure according to the clusters of group affiliations that the individuals have" (p. 16). Individuals define themselves based on the opportunities that groups afford. In Truman's words, "It appears … that the group experiences and affiliations of an individual are the primary, though not the exclusive, means by which the individual knows, interprets, and reacts to the society in which he [sic] exists" (p. 21). Like Merriam, Truman believed that society had become sufficiently complex to necessitate an interdependent approach to the analysis of political behavior and government. In other words, any social or political action involves a complicated series of interactions, particularly at the group level, that affect individuals and the government. With this in mind, the purpose of Truman's book was to analyze rigorously both the operations of representative government in the United States and the character of groups' relationships with the governing process. He does not desire progressive reform; his research seeks "pure" explanation.
Another behavioralist, Heinz Eulau, openly criticized the reformist ("utopian") political science of the pre–World War II era. In his 1969 book, Behavioralism in Political Science, Eulau argued that science can function only "in an environment that permits freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech" (p. 12). American liberal democracy allows such freedoms and thus is most suitable for scientific work. Political science can never undermine liberal democracy, as David M. Ricci reported that pre–World War II political scientists feared. Political scientists assumed, then, that American democracy must be alive and well as they pursued the new, nonreformist, scientific goal of analyzing and explaining the ways in which the American political system functioned.
The dominance of the behavioral approach to studying politics was seen in the field of international relations as well, which tended to personify states and study their "behavior." This approach has been seen most clearly in realist and neorealist research in international politics. The field of comparative politics was also affected by the behavioral shift, as its practitioners abandoned the field's legal-institutional approach in favor of a more quantitative analysis. Instead of simply explaining the similarities of and the differences between political institutions across culture and context, behaviorally inclined comparative politics scholars sought to ground such institutional differences and similarities in "universal" terms of political behavior. The field of normative political theory was largely immune to the behavioral revolution and operated as a critic from without, which ultimately served to marginalize it from the accepted approach of the discipline. Postbehavioralism altered this situation in some important ways. All of the various subfields of study were opened to other methodological approaches, and political theory moved in a bit from the margins. Still, the scientific mood was not fundamentally altered.
In 1967 the Caucus for a New Political Science was organized as a response to behavioral hegemony. Behavioral discourse, pro and con, dominated the discipline's mainstream by the mid-1960s in terms of method, language, and research focus. Members of the caucus lamented the limited scope of behavioral inquiry. Behavioralism, they argued, neglected too many possible points of view; it was too "parochial." The caucus desired a more open and expansive discipline. In 1969 David Easton responded to the aims of the caucus in his presidential address to the APSA. Easton coined the term postbehavioralism and made relevance and action its watchwords. Postbehavioralists, Easton argued, wanted to make political science more relevant to and active in society.
Ultimately, new areas of research were opened up within the discipline (for instance, the Vietnam War, race relations, poverty, and women's rights), and the well-populated, university-centered discipline became specialized. Political scientists increasingly carved up special areas of the discipline for themselves, each area with a special language and technique that made intercommunication difficult and often without purpose. These subfields rapidly grew into self-contained entities within the field of political science.
During this era of fragmentation, antibehavioral forces found new voices. Research that was distinctly anti-or nonbehavioral found legitimacy as the discipline's professional identity evolved away from its behavioral parochialism. The discipline became more tolerant of various perspectives on politics and political science during the postbehavioral era. The intellectual "community" that behavioralism constructed in the discipline of political science collapsed during the 1970s, the decade that witnessed the fragmentation of the discipline's research agenda. This transpired for at least three reasons: (1) the Caucus for a New Political Science's effectiveness at forcing the field to open up to more research interests; (2) the population explosion that occurred in the discipline following World War II, which increased the competition for recognition among political scientists; and (3) a related mood of openness that prevailed in the discipline following the closed and parochial behavioral era.
Because political scientists were generally required to publish in order to advance the accumulation of knowledge that "scientific communities" need, and because the range of suitable research topics was limited during the behavioral era while the population of the discipline was rapidly increasing, the discipline was quickly saturated. Political scientists sought new areas of expertise and the discipline opened up, allowing for the creation of many new subfields. The topics covered by these new subfields were so diverse by 1977 that Nelson Polsby, the managing editor of the APSR at the time, "conceded that no editor could 'judge the quality of manuscripts over the full range of concerns that political scientists write about'" (quoted in Ricci, pp. 222–223).
The discipline has become so complicated that even political scientists are unable to comprehend completely or become comfortable with its entire range of research. So much material is published in increasingly narrow fields that political scholars find it difficult to keep up with their own subfields, much less understand and integrate other subfields. Specialties and subspecialties continually emerge, and a broader base of expertise results. Each subfield churns out vast quantities of literature, and the literature from each subfield, taken together, is more than any one researcher can master. Nevertheless, one researcher can become an "expert" in the work of one subfield. Therefore, the discipline does not consist of "experts" in political knowledge (a central tenet of the APSA); it consists of "experts" in certain aspects of political knowledge. But while political scientists from different subfields find communication difficult, the notion of a common purpose (the construction of a body of political knowledge) remains.
In the early twenty-first century, however, the claim to this common purpose has come under some scrutiny by a new movement within the discipline called "Perestroika." The Perestroika movement, begun anonymously in 2000, calls attention to two problems in the discipline: its lack of inclusiveness and its increasingly mathematical approach. In many ways, this movement revives the thinking behind the Caucus for a New Political Science movement in its concern for the apparent irrelevance of the discipline in the wider political context and its criticism of an increasingly quantitative orientation within the discipline. Those active in the Perestroika movement consistently point to the growing preponderance of rational choice approaches to studying politics, which, in their view, are becoming hegemonic within the discipline as departments re-populate themselves with scholars using rational choice methodologies in their research. While the Perestroika movement has witnessed some success (such as the founding of a new journal that promises to be more methodologically inclusive), it is not at all clear that it will succeed in altering the increasingly quantitative orientation of the discipline. | https://science.jrank.org/pages/10774/Political-Science-Discipline-Political-Science.html | 79 |
when did political science become an academic discipline | Political science | Fields, History, Theories, & Facts | Written by Michael G. Roskin
Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: • Article History
Confucius
political science , the systematic study of governance by the application of empirical and generally scientific methods of analysis. As traditionally defined and studied, political science examines the state and its organs and institutions. The contemporary discipline , however, is considerably broader than this, encompassing studies of all the societal, cultural, and psychological factors that mutually influence the operation of government and the body politic .
Although political science borrows heavily from the other social sciences , it is distinguished from them by its focus on power —defined as the ability of one political actor to get another actor to do what it wants—at the international, national, and local levels. Political science is generally used in the singular, but in French and Spanish the plural ( sciences politiques and ciencias políticas , respectively) is used, perhaps a reflection of the discipline’s eclectic nature. Although political science overlaps considerably with political philosophy , the two fields are distinct. Political philosophy is concerned primarily with political ideas and values, such as rights, justice , freedom, and political obligation (whether people should or should not obey political authority); it is normative in its approach (i.e., it is concerned with what ought to be rather than with what is) and rationalistic in its method. In contrast, political science studies institutions and behaviour, favours the descriptive over the normative, and develops theories or draws conclusions based on empirical observations, which are expressed in quantitative terms where possible.
Although political science, like all modern sciences, involves empirical investigation, it generally does not produce precise measurements and predictions. This has led some scholars to question whether the discipline can be accurately described as a science. However, if the term science applies to any body of systematically organized knowledge based on facts ascertained by empirical methods and described by as much measurement as the material allows, then political science is a science, like the other social disciplines . In the 1960s the American historian of science Thomas S. Kuhn argued that political science was “pre-paradigmatic,” not yet having developed basic research paradigms , such as the periodic table that defines chemistry . It is likely that political science never will develop a single, universal paradigm or theory, and attempts to do so have seldom lasted more than a generation, making political science a discipline of many trends but few classics.
Modern university departments of political science (alternatively called government or politics at some institutions) are often divided into several fields, each of which contains various subfields.
- Domestic politics is generally the most common field of study; its subfields include public opinion , elections , national government , and state, local, or regional government.
- Comparative politics focuses on politics within countries (often grouped into world regions) and analyzes similarities and differences between countries.
- International relations considers the political relationships and interactions between countries, including the causes of war , the formation of foreign policy , international political economy , and the structures that increase or decrease the policy options available to governments. International relations is organized as a separate department in some universities.
- Political theory includes classical political philosophy and contemporary theoretical perspectives (e.g., constructivism, critical theory, and postmodernism).
- Public administration studies the role of the bureaucracy . It is the field most oriented toward practical applications within political science and is often organized as a separate department that prepares students for careers in the civil service .
- Public law studies constitutions , legal systems, civil rights , and criminal justice (now increasingly its own discipline).
- Public policy examines the passage and implementation of all types of government policies, particularly those related to civil rights, defense, health, education , economic growth , urban renewal , regional development, and environmental protection.
Analyses of politics appeared in ancient cultures in works by various thinkers, including Confucius (551–479 bce ) in China and Kautilya (flourished 300 bce ) in India. Writings by the historian Ibn Khaldūn (1332–1406) in North Africa have greatly influenced the study of politics in the Arabic-speaking world. But the fullest explication of politics has been in the West. Some have identified Plato (428/427–348/347 bce ), whose ideal of a stable republic still yields insights and metaphors , as the first political scientist, though most consider Aristotle (384–322 bce ), who introduced empirical observation into the study of politics, to be the discipline’s true founder.
Aristotle’s students gathered descriptions of 158 Greek city-states , which Aristotle used to formulate his famous sixfold typology of political systems . He distinguished political systems by the number of persons ruling (one, few, or many) and by whether the form was legitimate (rulers governing in the interests of all) or corrupt (rulers governing in their own interests). Legitimate systems included monarchy (rule by one), aristocracy (rule by the few), and polity (rule by the many), while corresponding corrupt forms were tyranny , oligarchy , and democracy . Aristotle considered democracy to be the worst form of government, though in his classification it meant mob rule . The best form of government, a polity, was, in contemporary terms, akin to an efficient, stable democracy. Aristotle presciently noted that a polity functions best if the middle class is large, a point confirmed by modern empirical findings. Aristotle’s classification endured for centuries and is still helpful in understanding political systems.
Plato and Aristotle focused on perfecting the polis ( city-state ), a tiny political entity, which for the Greeks meant both society and political system. The conquest of the Mediterranean world and beyond by Aristotle’s pupil Alexander the Great (336–323 bce ) and, after his death, the division of his empire among his generals brought large new political forms, in which society and political system came to be seen as separate entities. This shift required a new understanding of politics. Hellenistic thinkers, especially the Stoics , asserted the existence of a natural law that applied to all human beings equally; this idea became the foundation of Roman legalism and Christian notions of equality ( see Stoicism ). Thus, the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 bce ), who was strongly influenced by the Stoics , was noteworthy for his belief that all human beings, regardless of their wealth or citizenship, possessed an equal moral worth.
Early Christian thinkers, such as St. Augustine (354–430), emphasized the dual loyalty of Christians to both God and temporal rulers, with the clear implication that the “heavenly city” is more important and durable than the earthly one. With this came an otherworldly disdain for politics. For eight centuries knowledge of Aristotle was lost to Europe but preserved by Arab philosophers such as al-Fārābī (c. 878–c. 950) and Averroës (1126–1198). Translations of Aristotle in Spain under the Moors revitalized European thought after about 1200. St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/25–1274) Christianized Aristotle’s Politics to lend it moral purpose. Aquinas took from Aristotle the idea that humans are both rational and social, that states occur naturally, and that government can improve humans spiritually. Thus, Aquinas favoured monarchy but despised tyranny, arguing that kingly authority should be limited by law and used for the common good . The Italian poet and philosopher Dante (1265–1321) argued in De monarchia (c. 1313; On Monarchy ) for a single world government. At the same time, the philosopher Marsilius of Padua (c. 1280–c. 1343), in Defensor Pacis (1324; “Defender of the Peace”), introduced secularization by elevating the state over the church as the originator of laws. For this, as well as for proposing that legislators be elected, Marsilius ranks as an important modernizer.
The first modern political scientist was the Italian writer Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). His infamous work The Prince (1531), a treatise originally dedicated to Florence’s ruler, Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici , presented amoral advice to actual and would-be princes on the best means of acquiring and holding on to political power. Machiavelli’s political philosophy , which completed the secularization of politics begun by Marsilius, was based on reason rather than religion. An early Italian patriot, Machiavelli believed that Italy could be unified and its foreign occupiers expelled only by ruthless and single-minded princes who rejected any moral constraints on their power. Machiavelli introduced the modern idea of power—how to get it and how to use it—as the crux of politics, a viewpoint shared by today’s international relations “realists,” rational choice theorists, and others. Machiavelli thus ranks alongside Aristotle as a founder of political science .
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) also placed power at the centre of his political analysis. In Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651), completed near the end of the English Civil Wars (1642–51), Hobbes outlined, without reference to an all-powerful God, how humans, endowed with a natural right to self-preservation but living in an anarchic state of nature , would be driven by fear of violent death to form a civil society and submit to a single sovereign authority (a monarch) to ensure their peace and security through a social contract —an actual or hypothetical agreement between citizens and their rulers that defines the rights and duties of each. English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), who also witnessed the turmoil of an English civil war—the Glorious Revolution (1688–89)—argued in his influential Two Treatises on Civil Government (1690) that people form governments through a social contract to preserve their inalienable natural rights to “life, liberty, and property.” He further maintained that any government that fails to secure the natural rights of its citizens may properly be overthrown. Locke’s views were a powerful force in the intellectual life of 18th-century colonial America and constituted the philosophical basis of the American Declaration of Independence (1776), many of whose drafters, particularly Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), were well acquainted with Locke’s writings.
If Hobbes was the conservative of the “contractualists” and Locke the liberal, then the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) was the radical. Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762) constructs a civil society in which the separate wills of individuals are combined to govern as the “general will” ( volonté générale ) of the collective that overrides individual wills, “forcing a man to be free.” Rousseau’s radical vision was embraced by French revolutionaries and later by totalitarians, who distorted many of his philosophical lessons.
Montesquieu (1689–1755), a more pragmatic French philosopher, contributed to modern comparative politics with his The Spirit of Laws (1748). Montesquieu’s sojourn in England convinced him that English liberties were based on the separation and balance of power between Parliament and the monarchy, a principle later embraced by the framers of the Constitution of the United States ( see separation of powers ; checks and balances ). Montesquieu also produced an innovative analysis of governance that assigned to each form of government an animating principle—for example, republics are based on virtue, monarchies on honour, and despotisms on fear. Montesquieu’s analysis concluded that a country’s form of government is determined not by the locus of political power but by how the government enacts public policy.
The Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–90) is considered the founder of classical economic liberalism . In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), he argued that the role of the state should be restricted primarily to enforcing contracts in a free market . In contrast, the classical conservatism of the English parliamentarian Edmund Burke (1729–97) maintained that established values and institutions were essential elements of all societies and that revolutions that sought to destroy such values (e.g., the French Revolution ) delivered people to irrational impulses and to tyranny. Burke thus introduced an important psychological or cultural insight: that political systems are living organisms that grow over centuries and that depend on a sense of legitimacy that is gradually built up among their subjects.
The early development of political science was also influenced by law . The French political philosopher Jean Bodin (1530–96) articulated a theory of sovereignty that viewed the state as the ultimate source of law in a given territory. Bodin’s work, which was undertaken as the modern state was first developing, provided a justification of the legitimacy of national governments, one fiercely defended to this day. Many political scientists, especially in international relations, find Bodin’s notion of sovereignty useful for expressing the legitimacy and equality of states. | https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-science | 79 |
when did political science become an academic discipline | Political science | Fields, History, Theories, & Facts | Written by Michael G. Roskin
Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: • Article History
Confucius
political science , the systematic study of governance by the application of empirical and generally scientific methods of analysis. As traditionally defined and studied, political science examines the state and its organs and institutions. The contemporary discipline , however, is considerably broader than this, encompassing studies of all the societal, cultural, and psychological factors that mutually influence the operation of government and the body politic .
Although political science borrows heavily from the other social sciences , it is distinguished from them by its focus on power —defined as the ability of one political actor to get another actor to do what it wants—at the international, national, and local levels. Political science is generally used in the singular, but in French and Spanish the plural ( sciences politiques and ciencias políticas , respectively) is used, perhaps a reflection of the discipline’s eclectic nature. Although political science overlaps considerably with political philosophy , the two fields are distinct. Political philosophy is concerned primarily with political ideas and values, such as rights, justice , freedom, and political obligation (whether people should or should not obey political authority); it is normative in its approach (i.e., it is concerned with what ought to be rather than with what is) and rationalistic in its method. In contrast, political science studies institutions and behaviour, favours the descriptive over the normative, and develops theories or draws conclusions based on empirical observations, which are expressed in quantitative terms where possible.
Although political science, like all modern sciences, involves empirical investigation, it generally does not produce precise measurements and predictions. This has led some scholars to question whether the discipline can be accurately described as a science. However, if the term science applies to any body of systematically organized knowledge based on facts ascertained by empirical methods and described by as much measurement as the material allows, then political science is a science, like the other social disciplines . In the 1960s the American historian of science Thomas S. Kuhn argued that political science was “pre-paradigmatic,” not yet having developed basic research paradigms , such as the periodic table that defines chemistry . It is likely that political science never will develop a single, universal paradigm or theory, and attempts to do so have seldom lasted more than a generation, making political science a discipline of many trends but few classics.
Modern university departments of political science (alternatively called government or politics at some institutions) are often divided into several fields, each of which contains various subfields.
- Domestic politics is generally the most common field of study; its subfields include public opinion , elections , national government , and state, local, or regional government.
- Comparative politics focuses on politics within countries (often grouped into world regions) and analyzes similarities and differences between countries.
- International relations considers the political relationships and interactions between countries, including the causes of war , the formation of foreign policy , international political economy , and the structures that increase or decrease the policy options available to governments. International relations is organized as a separate department in some universities.
- Political theory includes classical political philosophy and contemporary theoretical perspectives (e.g., constructivism, critical theory, and postmodernism).
- Public administration studies the role of the bureaucracy . It is the field most oriented toward practical applications within political science and is often organized as a separate department that prepares students for careers in the civil service .
- Public law studies constitutions , legal systems, civil rights , and criminal justice (now increasingly its own discipline).
- Public policy examines the passage and implementation of all types of government policies, particularly those related to civil rights, defense, health, education , economic growth , urban renewal , regional development, and environmental protection.
Analyses of politics appeared in ancient cultures in works by various thinkers, including Confucius (551–479 bce ) in China and Kautilya (flourished 300 bce ) in India. Writings by the historian Ibn Khaldūn (1332–1406) in North Africa have greatly influenced the study of politics in the Arabic-speaking world. But the fullest explication of politics has been in the West. Some have identified Plato (428/427–348/347 bce ), whose ideal of a stable republic still yields insights and metaphors , as the first political scientist, though most consider Aristotle (384–322 bce ), who introduced empirical observation into the study of politics, to be the discipline’s true founder.
Aristotle’s students gathered descriptions of 158 Greek city-states , which Aristotle used to formulate his famous sixfold typology of political systems . He distinguished political systems by the number of persons ruling (one, few, or many) and by whether the form was legitimate (rulers governing in the interests of all) or corrupt (rulers governing in their own interests). Legitimate systems included monarchy (rule by one), aristocracy (rule by the few), and polity (rule by the many), while corresponding corrupt forms were tyranny , oligarchy , and democracy . Aristotle considered democracy to be the worst form of government, though in his classification it meant mob rule . The best form of government, a polity, was, in contemporary terms, akin to an efficient, stable democracy. Aristotle presciently noted that a polity functions best if the middle class is large, a point confirmed by modern empirical findings. Aristotle’s classification endured for centuries and is still helpful in understanding political systems.
Plato and Aristotle focused on perfecting the polis ( city-state ), a tiny political entity, which for the Greeks meant both society and political system. The conquest of the Mediterranean world and beyond by Aristotle’s pupil Alexander the Great (336–323 bce ) and, after his death, the division of his empire among his generals brought large new political forms, in which society and political system came to be seen as separate entities. This shift required a new understanding of politics. Hellenistic thinkers, especially the Stoics , asserted the existence of a natural law that applied to all human beings equally; this idea became the foundation of Roman legalism and Christian notions of equality ( see Stoicism ). Thus, the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 bce ), who was strongly influenced by the Stoics , was noteworthy for his belief that all human beings, regardless of their wealth or citizenship, possessed an equal moral worth.
Early Christian thinkers, such as St. Augustine (354–430), emphasized the dual loyalty of Christians to both God and temporal rulers, with the clear implication that the “heavenly city” is more important and durable than the earthly one. With this came an otherworldly disdain for politics. For eight centuries knowledge of Aristotle was lost to Europe but preserved by Arab philosophers such as al-Fārābī (c. 878–c. 950) and Averroës (1126–1198). Translations of Aristotle in Spain under the Moors revitalized European thought after about 1200. St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/25–1274) Christianized Aristotle’s Politics to lend it moral purpose. Aquinas took from Aristotle the idea that humans are both rational and social, that states occur naturally, and that government can improve humans spiritually. Thus, Aquinas favoured monarchy but despised tyranny, arguing that kingly authority should be limited by law and used for the common good . The Italian poet and philosopher Dante (1265–1321) argued in De monarchia (c. 1313; On Monarchy ) for a single world government. At the same time, the philosopher Marsilius of Padua (c. 1280–c. 1343), in Defensor Pacis (1324; “Defender of the Peace”), introduced secularization by elevating the state over the church as the originator of laws. For this, as well as for proposing that legislators be elected, Marsilius ranks as an important modernizer.
The first modern political scientist was the Italian writer Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). His infamous work The Prince (1531), a treatise originally dedicated to Florence’s ruler, Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici , presented amoral advice to actual and would-be princes on the best means of acquiring and holding on to political power. Machiavelli’s political philosophy , which completed the secularization of politics begun by Marsilius, was based on reason rather than religion. An early Italian patriot, Machiavelli believed that Italy could be unified and its foreign occupiers expelled only by ruthless and single-minded princes who rejected any moral constraints on their power. Machiavelli introduced the modern idea of power—how to get it and how to use it—as the crux of politics, a viewpoint shared by today’s international relations “realists,” rational choice theorists, and others. Machiavelli thus ranks alongside Aristotle as a founder of political science .
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) also placed power at the centre of his political analysis. In Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651), completed near the end of the English Civil Wars (1642–51), Hobbes outlined, without reference to an all-powerful God, how humans, endowed with a natural right to self-preservation but living in an anarchic state of nature , would be driven by fear of violent death to form a civil society and submit to a single sovereign authority (a monarch) to ensure their peace and security through a social contract —an actual or hypothetical agreement between citizens and their rulers that defines the rights and duties of each. English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), who also witnessed the turmoil of an English civil war—the Glorious Revolution (1688–89)—argued in his influential Two Treatises on Civil Government (1690) that people form governments through a social contract to preserve their inalienable natural rights to “life, liberty, and property.” He further maintained that any government that fails to secure the natural rights of its citizens may properly be overthrown. Locke’s views were a powerful force in the intellectual life of 18th-century colonial America and constituted the philosophical basis of the American Declaration of Independence (1776), many of whose drafters, particularly Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), were well acquainted with Locke’s writings.
If Hobbes was the conservative of the “contractualists” and Locke the liberal, then the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) was the radical. Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762) constructs a civil society in which the separate wills of individuals are combined to govern as the “general will” ( volonté générale ) of the collective that overrides individual wills, “forcing a man to be free.” Rousseau’s radical vision was embraced by French revolutionaries and later by totalitarians, who distorted many of his philosophical lessons.
Montesquieu (1689–1755), a more pragmatic French philosopher, contributed to modern comparative politics with his The Spirit of Laws (1748). Montesquieu’s sojourn in England convinced him that English liberties were based on the separation and balance of power between Parliament and the monarchy, a principle later embraced by the framers of the Constitution of the United States ( see separation of powers ; checks and balances ). Montesquieu also produced an innovative analysis of governance that assigned to each form of government an animating principle—for example, republics are based on virtue, monarchies on honour, and despotisms on fear. Montesquieu’s analysis concluded that a country’s form of government is determined not by the locus of political power but by how the government enacts public policy.
The Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–90) is considered the founder of classical economic liberalism . In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), he argued that the role of the state should be restricted primarily to enforcing contracts in a free market . In contrast, the classical conservatism of the English parliamentarian Edmund Burke (1729–97) maintained that established values and institutions were essential elements of all societies and that revolutions that sought to destroy such values (e.g., the French Revolution ) delivered people to irrational impulses and to tyranny. Burke thus introduced an important psychological or cultural insight: that political systems are living organisms that grow over centuries and that depend on a sense of legitimacy that is gradually built up among their subjects.
The early development of political science was also influenced by law . The French political philosopher Jean Bodin (1530–96) articulated a theory of sovereignty that viewed the state as the ultimate source of law in a given territory. Bodin’s work, which was undertaken as the modern state was first developing, provided a justification of the legitimacy of national governments, one fiercely defended to this day. Many political scientists, especially in international relations, find Bodin’s notion of sovereignty useful for expressing the legitimacy and equality of states. | https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-science | 79 |
when did political science become an academic discipline | History of political science - Wikipedia | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
While the term "political science" as a separate field is a rather late arrival in terms of social sciences , analyzing political power and the effects that it had on history has been occurring for centuries. However, the term "political science" was not always distinguished from political philosophy , and the modern discipline has a clear set of antecedents including moral philosophy , political economy , political theology , history , and other fields concerned with normative determinations of what ought to be and with deducing the characteristics and functions of the ideal state . Political science as a whole occurs all of the world in certain disciplines, but can also be lacking in other specific aspects of the term.
The antecedents of Western politics can be traced back to the Socratic political philosophers, such as Aristotle ("The Father of Political Science") (384–322 BC). Aristotle was one of the first people to give a working definition of political science. He believed that it was a powerful branch of science, and that it held special authority over other branches, such as military science. [1] Political philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle began to analyze political thought in a way that placed more significance on the scientific aspect of political science, which was contrary to how it was portrayed by the Greek philosophers that came before them. Prior to Plato, the main commentary on politics came from poets, historians, and famous playwrights of the day. [2]
During the most prosperous time for the Roman Empire there were both men documenting the history as it happened, employing their own point of view, but also men who were implementing the politics of the day and influencing the history as it happened. Some of the main historians included Polybius , Livy and Plutarch . These men focused not only on documenting the rise of the Roman Empire, but also on the rise and fall of other nations. [3] The men implementing the political policies as they saw fit includes leaders such as Julius Caesar and Cicero. While Caesar was a dictator who kept a tight grip on his people in order to protect his power, he did carry out reforms that would go on to benefit the people. [4] At that point in time, political science was the process of understanding the impact of governing bodies and how rulers chose to enforce laws, as well as the history of specific countries as a whole. [5] Nearly a thousand years elapsed, from the foundation of the city of Rome in 753 BC to the fall of the Western Roman Empire or the beginning of the Middle Ages . In the interim, there is a manifest translation of Hellenic culture into the Roman sphere. Eventually both Greek gods and Greek philosophy were taken by the Romans. The Greek philosophy known as Stoicism was implemented as Roman law. The Stoic was committed to preserving proper hierarchical roles and duties in the state so that the state as a whole would remain stable. Among the best known Roman Stoics were philosopher Seneca and the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Seneca, a wealthy Roman patrician, is often criticized by some modern commentators/historians for failing to adequately live by his own precepts. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius , on the other hand, can be best thought of as the philosophical reflections of an emperor divided between his philosophical aspirations and the duty he felt to defend the Roman Empire from its external enemies through his various military campaigns. According to Polybius, Roman institutions were the backbone of the empire but Goldman Law is the medulla . [6]
With the fall of the Western Roman Empire , there arose a more diffuse arena for political studies. The rise of monotheism and, particularly for the Western tradition, Christianity, brought to light a new space for politics and political action. Works such as Augustine of Hippo 's The City of God synthesized current philosophies and political traditions with those of Christianity, redefining the borders between what was religious and what was political. During the Middle Ages , the study of politics was widespread in the churches and courts. Most of the political questions surrounding the relationship between church and state were clarified and contested in this period.
During the Italian Renaissance , Niccolò Machiavelli established the emphasis of modern political science on direct empirical observation of political institutions and actors. In his treatise, The Prince , Machiavelli posits a realist viewpoint, arguing that even evil means should be considered if they help to acquire and maintain a ruler's state. Machiavelli therefore also argues against the use of idealistic models in politics, and has been described as the father of the "politics model" of political science. [7] Machiavelli takes a different tone in his lesser known work, the Discourses of Livy. In this work he expounds on the virtues of republicanism and what it means to be a good citizen. However, some similar themes from The Prince can even be found in the Discourses as well. [8] Later, the expansion of the scientific paradigm during the Enlightenment further pushed the study of politics beyond normative determinations.
The works of the French philosophers Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot to name a few are paragon for political analysis, social science, social and political critic. Their influence leading to the French revolution has been enormous in the development of modern democracy throughout the world.
Like Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes , well known for his theory of the social contract , believed that a strong central power, such as a monarchy, was necessary to rule the innate selfishness of the individual but neither of them believed in the divine right of kings . John Locke , on the other hand, who gave us Two Treatises of Government and who did not believe in the divine right of kings either, sided with Aquinas and stood against both Machiavelli and Hobbes by accepting Aristotle's dictum that man seeks to be happy in a state of social harmony as a social animal. Unlike Aquinas' preponderant view on the salvation of the soul from original sin, Locke believed man comes into this world with a mind that is basically a tabula rasa . According to Locke, an absolute ruler as proposed by Hobbes is unnecessary, for natural law is based on reason and equality, seeking peace and survival for man.
The new Western philosophical foundations that emerged from the pursuit of reason during the Enlightenment era helped pave the way for policies that emphasized a need for a separation of church and state. Principles similar to those that dominated the material sciences could be applied to society as a whole, originating the social sciences . Politics could be studied in a laboratory as it were, the social milieu . In 1787, Alexander Hamilton wrote: "...The science of politics like most other sciences has received great improvement." ( The Federalist Papers Number 9 and 51). Both the marquis d'Argenson and the abbé de Saint-Pierre described politics as a science; d'Argenson was a philosopher and de Saint-Pierre an allied reformer of the enlightenment . [9]
Other important figures in American politics who participated in the Enlightenment were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson .
The Darwinian models of evolution and natural selection exerted considerable influence in the late 19th century. Society seemed to be evolving ever upward, a belief that was shattered by World War I.
"History is past politics and politics present history" was the motto of the first generation of American political scientists, 1882-1900. The motto had been coined by the Oxford professor Edward Augustus Freeman , and was enshrined on the wall of the seminar room at Johns Hopkins University where the first large-scale training of America and political scientists began. [10] The founding professors of the field included Westel Woodbury Willoughby , Herbert Baxter Adams at Johns Hopkins, John Burgess and William Dunning at Columbia, Woodrow Wilson at Princeton, and Albert Bushnell Hart at Harvard. Their graduate seminars had a thick historical cast, which typically reflected their experience in German University seminars. However, succeeding generations of scholars progressively cut back on the history and deliberate fashion. The second generation wanted to model itself on the physical sciences. [11]
In the Progressive Era in the United States (1890s-1920s), political science became not only a prestigious university curriculum but also an applied science that was welcomed as a way to apply expertise to the problems of governance. Among the most prominent applied political scientists were Woodrow Wilson , [12] Charles A. Beard , and Charles E. Merriam . Many cities and states set up research bureaus to apply the latest results. [13] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_political_science | 79 |
when did political science become an academic discipline | Political science - Wikipedia | This article is about the field of study. For other uses, see Political Science (disambiguation) .
"Poli sci" redirects here. For other uses, see Poli sci (disambiguation) .
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Political science is the scientific study of politics . It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political institutions, political thought and behavior, and associated constitutions and laws . [1]
Modern political science can generally be divided into the three subdisciplines of comparative politics , international relations , and political theory . [2] Other notable subdisciplines are public policy and administration , domestic politics and government , political economy , and political methodology . [3] Furthermore, political science is related to, and draws upon, the fields of economics , law , sociology , history , philosophy , human geography , political anthropology , and psychology .
Political science is methodologically diverse and appropriates many methods originating in psychology, social research , and political philosophy. Approaches include positivism , interpretivism , rational choice theory , behaviouralism , structuralism , post-structuralism , realism , institutionalism , and pluralism . Political science, as one of the social sciences, uses methods and techniques that relate to the kinds of inquires sought: primary sources , such as historical documents and official records, and secondary sources , such as scholarly journal articles, survey research , statistical analysis , case studies , experimental research, and model building.
As a social political science, contemporary political science started to take shape in the latter half of the 19th century and began to separate itself from political philosophy and history. [4] Into the late 19th century, it was still uncommon that political science was considered a distinct field from history. [4] The term "political science" was not always distinguished from political philosophy, and the modern discipline has a clear set of antecedents including also moral philosophy, political economy, political theology , history, and other fields concerned with normative determinations of what ought to be and with deducing the characteristics and functions of the ideal state.
The advent of political science as a university discipline was marked by the creation of university departments and chairs with the title of political science arising in the late 19th century. The designation "political scientist" is commonly used to denote someone with a doctorate or master's degree in the field. [5] Integrating political studies of the past into a unified discipline is ongoing, and the history of political science has provided a rich field for the growth of both normative and positive political science, with each part of the discipline sharing some historical predecessors. The American Political Science Association and the American Political Science Review were founded in 1903 and 1906, respectively, in an effort to distinguish the study of politics from economics and other social phenomena. APSA membership rose from 204 in 1904 to 1,462 in 1915. [4] APSA members played a key role in setting up political science departments that were distinct from history, philosophy, law, sociology, and economics. [4]
The journal Political Science Quarterly was established in 1886 by the Academy of Political Science. In the inaugural issue of Political Science Quarterly , Munroe Smith defined political science as "the science of the state. Taken in this sense, it includes the organization and functions of the state, and the relation of states one to another." [6]
As part of a UNESCO initiative to promote political science in the late 1940s, the International Political Science Association was founded in 1949, as well as national associations in France in 1949, Britain in 1950, and West Germany in 1951. [4]
In the 1950s and the 1960s, a behavioral revolution stressing the systematic and rigorously scientific study of individual and group behavior swept the discipline. A focus on studying political behavior, rather than institutions or interpretation of legal texts, characterized early behavioral political science, including work by Robert Dahl , Philip Converse , and in the collaboration between sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld and public opinion scholar Bernard Berelson .
The late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed a takeoff in the use of deductive, game-theoretic formal modelling techniques aimed at generating a more analytical corpus of knowledge in the discipline. This period saw a surge of research that borrowed theory and methods from economics to study political institutions, such as the United States Congress, as well as political behavior, such as voting. William H. Riker and his colleagues and students at the University of Rochester were the main proponents of this shift.
Despite considerable research progress in the discipline based on all the kinds of scholarship discussed above, it has been observed that progress toward systematic theory has been modest and uneven. [7]
In 2000, the Perestroika Movement in political science was introduced as a reaction against what supporters of the movement called the mathematicization of political science. Those who identified with the movement argued for a plurality of methodologies and approaches in political science and for more relevance of the discipline to those outside of it. [8]
Some evolutionary psychology theories argue that humans have evolved a highly developed set of psychological mechanisms for dealing with politics. However, these mechanisms evolved for dealing with the small group politics that characterized the ancestral environment and not the much larger political structures in today's world. This is argued to explain many important features and systematic cognitive biases of current politics. [9]
Political science is a social study concerning the allocation and transfer of power in decision making , the roles and systems of governance including governments and international organizations , political behaviour, and public policies . It measures the success of governance and specific policies by examining many factors, including stability , justice , material wealth , peace , and public health . Some political scientists seek to advance positive theses (which attempt to describe how things are, as opposed to how they should be) by analysing politics; others advance normative theses, such as by making specific policy recommendations. The study of politics and policies can be closely connected—for example, in comparative analyses of which types of political institutions tend to produce certain types of policies. [10] Political science provides analysis and predictions about political and governmental issues. [11] Political scientists examine the processes, systems and political dynamics of countries and regions of the world, often to raise public awareness or to influence specific governments. [11]
Political scientists may provide the frameworks from which journalists, special interest groups, politicians, and the electorate analyze issues. According to Chaturvedy,
Political scientists may serve as advisers to specific politicians, or even run for office as politicians themselves. Political scientists can be found working in governments, in political parties, or as civil servants. They may be involved with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or political movements. In a variety of capacities, people educated and trained in political science can add value and expertise to corporations . Private enterprises such as think tanks , research institutes, polling and public relations firms often employ political scientists. [12]
Political scientists may study political phenomena within one specific country; for example, they may study just the politics of the United States [13] or just the politics of China. [14]
Political scientists look at a variety of data, including constitutions, elections , public opinion , and public policy , foreign policy , legislatures, and judiciaries. Political scientists will often focus on the politics of their own country; for example, a political scientist from Indonesia may become an expert in the politics of Indonesia. [15]
The theory of political transitions, [16] and the methods of analyzing and anticipating [17] crises, [18] form an important part of political science. Several general indicators of crises and methods were proposed for anticipating critical transitions. [19] Among them, one statistical indicator of crisis, a simultaneous increase of variance and correlations in large groups, was proposed for crisis anticipation and may be successfully used in various areas. [20] Its applicability for early diagnosis of political crises was demonstrated by the analysis of the prolonged stress period preceding the 2014 Ukrainian economic and political crisis. There was a simultaneous increase in the total correlation between the 19 major public fears in the Ukrainian society (by about 64%) and in their statistical dispersion (by 29%) during the pre-crisis years. [21] A feature shared by certain major revolutions is that they were not predicted. The theory of apparent inevitability of crises and revolutions was also developed. [22]
The study of major crises, both political crises and external crises that can affect politics, is not limited to attempts to predict regime transitions or major changes in political institutions. Political scientists also study how governments handle unexpected disasters, and how voters in democracies react to their governments' preparations for and responses to crises. [23]
Many political scientists conduct research in the areas described below: [24]
- Political philosophy : Concerned with the foundations of political community and institutions, while focusing on human nature and the moral purposes of political association.
- Political methodology : Studies the philosophical bases of social science, political science, empirical research design and analysis.
- Comparative politics : Compares contemporary political systems and discovers general laws and theories.
- International relations : Concerned with developing an understanding of why states and non-state international actors interact.
- Public Policy and Administration (encompassing both Public Policy and Public Administration ): studies the implementation of public policy , administration of government establishment ( public governance ), management of non-profit establishment ( nonprofit governance ), and prepares civil servants , especially those in administrative positions for working in the public sector , voluntary sector , some industries in the private sector dealing with government relations and regulatory affairs , and those working as think tank researchers. As a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" whose fundamental goal is to "advance management and policies so that government can function." Some of the various definitions which have been offered for the term are: "the management of public programs"; the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day"; and "the study of government decision making, the analysis of the policies themselves, the various inputs that have produced them, and the inputs necessary to produce alternative policies."
- Program evaluation : a systematic method for collecting, analyzing, and using information to answer questions about projects, policies, and programs, [25] particularly about their effectiveness and efficiency. In both the public and private sectors, stakeholders often want to know whether the programs they are funding, implementing, voting for, receiving, or objecting to are producing the intended effect. While program evaluation first focuses on this definition, important considerations often include how much the program costs per participant, how the program could be improved, whether the program is worthwhile, whether there are better alternatives, whether there are unintended outcomes, and whether the program goals are appropriate and useful. [26]
- Policy analysis : a technique used in public administration to enable civil servants, activists, and others to examine and evaluate the available options to implement the goals of laws and elected officials.
Some political science departments also classify methodology as well as scholarship on the domestic politics of a particular country as distinct fields. In the United States, American politics is often treated as a separate subfield. In contrast to this traditional classification, some academic departments organize scholarship into thematic categories, including political philosophy, political behaviour (including public opinion , collective action , and identity ), and political institutions (including legislatures and international organizations ). Political science conferences and journals often emphasize scholarship in more specific categories. The American Political Science Association, for example, has 42 organized sections that address various methods and topics of political inquiry. [27]
Political science is methodologically diverse; political scientists approach the study of politics from a host of different ontological orientations and with a variety of different tools. Because political science is essentially a study of human behaviour , in all aspects of politics , observations in controlled environments are often challenging to reproduce or duplicate, though experimental methods are increasingly common (see experimental political science ). [28] Citing this difficulty, former American Political Science Association President Lawrence Lowell once said "We are limited by the impossibility of experiment. Politics is an observational, not an experimental science." [17] Because of this, political scientists have historically observed political elites, institutions, and individual or group behaviour in order to identify patterns, draw generalizations, and build theories of politics.
Like all social sciences, political science faces the difficulty of observing human actors that can only be partially observed and who have the capacity for making conscious choices, unlike other subjects, such as non-human organisms in biology , minerals in geoscience , chemical elements in chemistry , stars in astronomy , or particles in physics . Despite the complexities, contemporary political science has progressed by adopting a variety of methods and theoretical approaches to understanding politics, and methodological pluralism is a defining feature of contemporary political science.
Empirical political science methods include the use of field experiments, [29] surveys and survey experiments, [30] case studies, [31] process tracing, [32] [33] historical and institutional analysis, [34] ethnography, [35] participant observation, [36] and interview research. [37]
Political scientists also use and develop theoretical tools like game theory and agent-based models to study a host of political systems and situations. [38]
Political theorists approach theories of political phenomena with a similar diversity of positions and tools, including feminist political theory , historical analysis associated with the Cambridge school , and Straussian approaches .
Political science may overlap with topics of study that are the traditional focuses of other social sciences—for example, when sociological norms or psychological biases are connected to political phenomena. In these cases, political science may either inherit their methods of study or develop a contrasting approach. [39] For example, Lisa Wedeen has argued that political science's approach to the idea of culture, originating with Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba and exemplified by authors like Samuel P. Huntington , could benefit from aligning more closely with the study of culture in anthropology. [39] In turn, methodologies that are developed within political science may influence how researchers in other fields, like public health, conceive of and approach political processes and policies. [40]
Political science, possibly like the social sciences as a whole, can be described "as a discipline which lives on the fault line between the 'two cultures' in the academy, the sciences and the humanities ." [41] Thus, in most American colleges, especially liberal arts colleges it would be located within the school or college of arts and sciences , if no separate college of arts and sciences exist or if the college or university prefers that it be in a separate constituent college or academic department, political science may be a separate department housed as part of a division or school of humanities or liberal arts [42] while at some universities, especially research universities and in particular those that have a strong cooperation between research, undergraduate, and graduate faculty with a stronger more applied emphasis in public administration, political science would be taught by the university's public policy school . Whereas classical political philosophy is primarily defined by a concern for Hellenic and Enlightenment thought, political scientists are also marked by a great concern for " modernity " and the contemporary nation state , along with the study of classical thought, and as such share more terminology with sociologists (e.g., structure and agency ).
Most United States colleges and universities offer BA programs in political science. MA or MAT and PhD or EdD programs are common at larger universities. The term political science is more popular in North America than elsewhere; other institutions, especially those outside the United States, see political science as part of a broader discipline of political studies, politics, or government. While political science implies the use of the scientific method , political studies implies a broader approach, although the naming of degree courses does not necessarily reflect their content. [ citation needed ] Separate programs (often professional degrees) in international relations , public policy , and public administration , are not uncommon at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, although most but not all undergraduate level education in these sub-fields are generally found in academic concentration within a political science academic major . Master's-level programs in public administration are professional degrees covering public policy along with other applied subjects; they are often seen as more linked to politics than any other discipline, which may be reflected by being housed in that department. [43]
The main national honor society for college and university students of government and politics in the United States is Pi Sigma Alpha , while Pi Alpha Alpha is a national honor society specifically designated for public administration .
There are different genres of writings in political sciences; including but not limited to: [44]
- Argument essays and research papers
- Political theory writing
- Responses to articles, texts, events thoughts and reflective papers
The most common piece of writing in political sciences are research papers, which investigate an original research question. [45]
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when did political science become an academic discipline | Political science - 19th-century roots of contemporary political science | Contemporary political science traces its roots primarily to the 19th century, when the rapid growth of the natural sciences stimulated enthusiasm for the creation of a new social science . Capturing this fervour of scientific optimism was Antoine-Louis-Claude, Comte Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836), who in the 1790s coined the term idéologie (“ideology”) for his “science of ideas,” which, he believed, could perfect society. Also pivotal to the empirical movement was the French utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), a founder of Christian socialism , who in 1813 suggested that morals and politics could become “ positive ” sciences—that is, disciplines whose authority would rest not upon subjective preconceptions but upon objective evidence. Saint-Simon collaborated with the French mathematician and philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857), considered by many to be the founder of sociology , on the publication of the Plan of the Scientific Operations Necessary for the Reorganization of Society (1822), which claimed that politics would become a social physics and discover scientific laws of social progress. Although “Comtean positivism,” with its enthusiasm for the scientific study of society and its emphasis on using the results of such studies for social improvement, is still very much alive in psychology , contemporary political science shows only traces of Comte’s optimism.
The scientific approach to politics developed during the 19th century along two distinct lines that still divide the discipline . In the 1830s the French historian and politician Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) brilliantly analyzed democracy in America , concluding that it worked because Americans had developed “the art of association” and were egalitarian group formers. Tocqueville’s emphasis on cultural values contrasted sharply with the views of the German socialist theorists Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95), who advanced a materialistic and economic theory of the state as an instrument of domination by the classes that own the means of production. According to Marx and Engels, prevailing values and culture simply reflect the tastes and needs of ruling elites; the state, they charged, is merely “the steering committee of the bourgeoisie .” Asserting what they considered to be an immutable scientific law of history , they argued that the state would soon be overthrown by the industrial working class (the proletariat ), who would institute socialism , a just and egalitarian form of governance ( see also communism ).
The first separate school of political science was established in 1872 in France as the École Libre des Sciences Politiques (now the Institut d’Études Politiques). In 1895 the London School of Economics and Political Science was founded in England, and the first chair of politics was established at the University of Oxford in 1912.
Some of the most important developments in political science since it became a distinct academic discipline have occurred in the United States. Politics had long been studied in American universities, but usually as part of the curricula of law, philosophy , or economics . Political science as a separate discipline in universities in the United States dates from 1880, when John W. Burgess, after studying at the École Libre in Paris, established a school of political science at Columbia University in New York City . Although political science faculties grew unevenly after 1900, by the 1920s most major institutions had established new departments, variously named political science, government, or politics.
Political science in the United States in the last quarter of the 19th century was influenced by the experience of numerous scholars who had done graduate work at German universities, where the discipline was taught as Staatswissenschaft (“science of the state”) in an ordered, structured, and analytic organization of concepts, definitions, comparisons, and inferences . This highly formalistic and institutional approach, which focused on constitutions, dominated American political science until World War II . The work of American political scientists represented an effort to establish an autonomous discipline, separate from history, moral philosophy , and political economy . Among the new scholars were Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), who would be elected president of the United States in 1912, and Frank Goodnow , a Columbia University professor of administrative law and, later, president of Johns Hopkins University , who was among the first to study municipal governments. Their writing showed an awareness of new intellectual currents, such as the theory of evolution. Inspired by the work of Charles Darwin (1809–82), Wilson and others led a transformation of American political science from the study of static institutions to the study of social facts, more truly in the positivist temper, less in the analytic tradition, and more oriented toward realism.
Arthur F. Bentley ’s The Process of Government , little noticed at the time of its publication in 1908, greatly influenced the development of political science from the 1930s to the 1950s. Bentley rejected statist abstractions in favour of observable facts and identified groups and their interactions as the basis of political life. Group activity, he argued, determined legislation, administration, and adjudication. In emphasizing behaviour and process, Bentley sounded themes that later became central to political science. In particular, his insistence that “all social movements are brought about by group interaction” is the defining feature of contemporary pluralist and interest-group approaches.
Although Bentley’s effort to develop an objective, value-free analysis of politics had no initial consequence, other movements toward this goal enjoyed more immediate success. The principal impetus came from the University of Chicago , where what became known as the Chicago school developed in the mid-1920s and thereafter. The leading figure in this movement was Charles E. Merriam, whose New Aspects of Politics (1925) argued for a reconstruction of method in political analysis, urged the greater use of statistics in the aid of empirical observation and measurement, and postulated that “intelligent social control”—a concept reminiscent of the old Comtean positivism —might emerge from the converging interests of politics, medicine , psychiatry, and psychology. Because Merriam’s basic political datum at this stage was “ attitude ,” he relied largely on the insights of psychology for a better understanding of politics. An important empirical work of the Chicago school was Merriam and Harold F. Gosnell’s Non-voting, Causes and Methods of Control (1924), which used sampling methods and survey data and is illustrative of the type of research that came to dominate political science after World War II. Merriam’s approach was not entirely new; in 1908 the British political scientist Graham Wallas (1858–1932) had argued in Human Nature in Politics that a new political science should favour the quantification of psychological elements (human nature), including nonrational and subconscious inferences, a view similarly expressed in Public Opinion (1922) by the American journalist and political scientist Walter Lippmann (1889–1974).
Harold Lasswell (1902–78), a member of the Chicago group, carried the psychological approach to Yale University , where he had a commanding influence. His Psychopathology and Politics (1930) and Power and Personality (1948) fused categories of Freudian psychology with considerations of power. Many political scientists attempted to use Freudian psychology to analyze politics, but none succeeded in establishing it as a firm basis of political science, because it depended too much on subjective insights and often could not be verified empirically. Lasswell, for example, viewed politicians as unbalanced people with an inordinate need for power, whereas “normal” people had no compulsion for political office. Although intuitively insightful, this notion is difficult—if not impossible—to prove scientifically.
Merriam’s Political Power (1934) and Lasswell’s classic Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936)—the title of which articulated the basic definition of politics—gave a central place to the phenomenon of power in the empirical study of politics. Merriam discussed how power comes into being, how it becomes “authority” (which he equated with power), the techniques of power holders, the defenses of those over whom power is wielded, and the dissipation of power. Lasswell focused on “influence and the influential,” laying the basis for subsequent “elite” theories of politics. Although the various members of the Chicago school ostensibly sought to develop political science as a value-free discipline, it had two central predilections: it accepted democratic values, and it attempted to improve the operation of democratic systems. Power approaches also became central in the burgeoning field of international relations , particularly after World War II. Hans Morgenthau (1904–80), a German refugee and analyst of world politics, argued succinctly in Politics Among Nations (1948) that “all politics is a struggle for power.”
The totalitarian dictatorships that developed in Europe and Asia in the 1920s and ’30s and the onset of World War II turned political science, particularly in the United States, away from its focus on institutions, law, and procedures. The constitution of Germany’s post-World War I Weimar Republic had been an excellent model, but it failed in practice because too few Germans were then committed supporters of democracy . Likewise, the Soviet Union’s 1936 constitution appeared democratic but in reality was merely an attempt to mask the brutal dictatorship of Joseph Stalin . Works of this period focused on the role of elites , political parties, and interest groups , on legislative and bureaucratic processes, and especially on how voters in democracies make their electoral choices. This new interest in actual political behaviour became known as “ behavioralism ,” a term borrowed from psychology’s behaviourism . Whereas most earlier thinkers had focused on the “top” of the political system—its institutions—behavioralists instead explored the “bottom,” especially that which could be quantified. The result was that much of political science became political sociology.
Since the time of Marx and Engels, political scientists have continued to debate the relative importance of culture and economic structures in determining human behaviour and the organization of society. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Italian economists Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941) and Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) echoed Marx’s analysis that society was ruled by elites, but they considered this both permanent and natural. They were joined by the German-born Italian political sociologist and economist Robert Michels (1876–1936), whose “iron law of oligarchy” declared rule by the few to be inevitable. Mosca, Pareto, and Michels all agreed that the overthrow of the existing “political class” would simply result in its replacement by another, a view that was supported in the mid-20th century by Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas (1911–95) in his The New Class (1957). Pareto also contributed the idea (which he borrowed from economics) that society is a system tending toward equilibrium: like an economic system , a society that becomes out of balance will tend to correct itself by developing new institutions and laws or by redistributing power. This approach was adopted by much of academic political science after World War II and was later developed by “systems” theory.
In the early 20th century, the Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922) treated the state as a fusion of organic and cultural elements determined by geography. Kjellén is credited with coining the term geopolitics ( geopolitik ), which acquired a sinister connotation in the years after World War I , when German expansionists appealed to geopolitical arguments in support of the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler . Although geopolitics still exerts a considerable influence on political science, particularly in the areas of international relations and foreign policy , the discipline of political geography developed into a distinct subfield of geography rather than of political science.
The German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), who rejected Marx and embraced Tocqueville’s emphasis on culture and values, was perhaps the most influential figure in political science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Marx had proposed that capitalism gave rise to Protestantism: the merchants and princes of northern Europe developed commerce to such an extent that Roman Catholic restrictions had to be discarded. Weber rejected this idea, claiming that Protestantism triggered capitalism: the Calvinist idea of predestination led individuals to try to prove, by amassing capital, that they were predestined for heaven ( see Calvinism ). Weber’s theory of the Protestant ethic is still disputed , but not the fact that religion and culture powerfully influence economic and political development.
Weber understood that the social sciences could not simply mimic the natural sciences, because humans attach widely varying meanings and loyalties to their leaders and institutions. It is not simply facts that matter but how people perceive, interpret, and react to these facts; this makes causality in the social sciences far more complex than in the natural sciences. To be objective, therefore, the social scientist must take into account human subjectivity.
Weber discerned three types of authority: traditional (as in monarchies), charismatic (a concept he developed to refer to the personal drawing power of revolutionary leaders), and rational-legal (characteristic of modern societies). Weber coined the term bureaucracy , and he was the first to study bureaucracies systematically. His theories, which focused on culture as a chief source of economic growth and democracy , still find support among contemporary political scientists, and he must be ranked equally as one of the founders of both modern sociology and modern political science.
Other scholars also contributed to the growth of political science in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In The English Constitution (1867), the English economist and political analyst Walter Bagehot (1826–77), who was also an editor of The Economist , famously distinguished between Britain’s “dignified” offices (e.g., the monarch) and its “efficient” offices (e.g., the prime minister). James Bryce (1838–1922), who taught civil law at the University of Oxford , produced one of the earliest and most influential studies of the U.S. political system in The American Commonwealth (1888). The Belorussian political scientist Moisey Ostrogorsky (1854–1919), who was educated at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques in Paris, pioneered the study of parties, elections , and public opinion in Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties (originally written in French; 1902), which focused on the United States and Britain. In Paris, André Siegfried, teaching at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques and the Collège de France , introduced the use of maps to demonstrate the influence of geography on politics. At first few Britons turned to behavioralism and quantification, instead continuing in their inclination toward political philosophy . In contrast, the Swedish scholar Herbert Tingsten (1896–1973), in his seminal Political Behaviour: Studies in Election Statistics (1937), developed the connections between social groups and their voting tendencies. Before World War II the large areas of the world that were colonies or dictatorships made few important contributions to the growth of political science.
Perhaps the most important irreversible change in political science after World War II was that the scope of the discipline was expanded to include the study of politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—areas that had been largely ignored in favour of Europe and North America . This trend was encouraged by the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for influence over the political development of newly independent countries. The scholarship produced in these countries, however, remained largely derivative of developments in Europe and the United States. Researchers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America , often in partnership with European and American colleagues, produced significant studies on decolonization, ideology , federalism , corruption, and political instability. In Latin America a Marxist-oriented view called dependency theory was popular from the 1960s to the ’80s. Greatly influencing the study of international relations in the United States and Europe as well as in developing countries, dependency theorists argued that Latin America’s problems were rooted in its subservient economic and political relationship to the United States and western Europe. More recently, Latin American political scientists, influenced by methods developed in American universities, undertook empirical studies of the sources of democracy and instability, such as Arturo Valenzuela’s The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (1978). African, Asian, and Latin American political scientists also made important contributions as teachers on the faculties of American and European universities.
Outside the United States, where political science initially was less quantitative, there were several outstanding works. Like Lasswell, the German philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–69) and others adopted Freudian insights in their pioneering study The Authoritarian Personality (1950), which used a 29-item questionnaire to detect the susceptibility of individuals to fascist beliefs. The French political scientist Maurice Duverger’s Political Parties (1951) is still highly regarded, not only for its classification of parties but also for its linking of party systems with electoral systems. Duverger argued that single-member-district electoral systems that require only a plurality to win election tend to produce two-party systems, whereas proportional-representation systems tend to produce multiparty systems; this generalization was later called “Duverger’s law.” The French sociologist Michel Crozier’s The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (1964) found that Weber’s idealized bureaucracy is quite messy, political, and varied. Each bureaucracy is a political subculture; what is rational and routine in one bureau may be quite different in another. Crozier thus influenced the subsequent “bureaucratic politics” approach of the 1970s. | https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-science/19th-century-roots-of-contemporary-political-science | 79 |
when did political science become an academic discipline | A History of Political Science | 9 Radical historicism encourages us to disaggregate the institutions of a discipline and thereby to portray them as the contingent products of debates that often include ideas that come from other disciplines. It encourages us, therefore, to deploy traditions as our aggregate concepts. Although these traditions might parallel the institutions of a discipline, they also might parallel specific subfields or cut across subfields and disciplinary boundaries. Radical historicism also casts doubt on accounts of ideational change that concentrate on debates about topics or objects – for example, politics, states, or globalization – that allegedly arise outside of particular traditions and of which scholars acquire better and better knowledge. It encourages us, instead, to understand traditions as changing as and when their exponents respond to inter-subjective dilemmas that arise within the context of particular traditions.
19 Developmental historicism dominated the human sciences during the late nineteenth century precisely because it could bring together conjectural Whig histories, theories of evolution, and accounts of the unfolding of divine providence.
Developmental historicists told narratives of continuity. They believed in the gradual triumph of the principles of nationality and freedom. As a result, they understood history and politics as continuous with one another. On the one side, they understand politics by locating it within a historical narrative. On the other side, they understood history by locating it in relation to a larger whole, the content and meaning of which derived from contemporary notions of nationality and freedom.
Generally, developmental historicists approached the study of politics through national histories that told of gradual changes in ideas, institutions, and practices of freedom as these triumphed over those of tyranny. Even when developmental historicists pointed to threats to freedom, they still conceived of its triumph as ensured by an evolutionary process; progress was built into the order of things. Developmental historicists grounded their national histories on an appeal to principles that appeared in time either as foundational facts or as unfolding ideals. The most important principles were the nation state and democratic liberty. Indeed, they thought that these principles went together in that democratic liberty arose in organic communities that had reached their highest form in the nation state. Americans drew on German historicism to argue that, as John Burgess wrote, ‘the national state is the consummation of political history’.
Developmental historicism inspired national histories that expressed racialist themes in terms of civilizations. A civilization embodied principles that provided a basis for continuity as well as for gradual change in response to new circumstances. In the British case, this national history emphasized that rule was in accord with precedent and convention, rather than a written constitution, and that these precedents and conventions protected civil liberty and local government. The constitutional settlement of 1689 represented the moment when it became clear that the monarch had to obtain the consent of Parliament to raise taxes or make laws. Local government meant that there was no place for a centralized and powerful bureaucracy or police. Ancient institutions, such as the monarchy and House of Lords, had adapted to rising democratic demands. This gradual evolution had produced a balanced constitution that allowed for popular participation and respected civil liberties even while it retained checks on excessive power and its miss-use. In the American case, the founding of the republic could appear as the continuation of a Teutonic past inherited from Britain or as the creation of a new utopia. Either way, the American people expressed themselves in the revolution and the Constitution, thereby giving legitimacy to the offices of state. Thereafter American history had exhibited the development of the spirit and institutions of this founding from the local to the centre – often with the Civil War appearing as the final act of unification – and from a limited republic to the more democratic eras of Jefferson and Jackson.
29 Political scientists used the narratives and techniques of developmental historicism to describe and explain political practices, to edify the public, and to guide policymakers. Generally, they saw themselves as historians as well as social scientists. In America, William Dunning helped to create the political science curriculum at Columbia University, and he was, at the time of his death, president-elect of the APSA. He was also a founding member of the American Historical Association who served as its president, and he was one of the best-known historians of the reconstruction era of his time. His works on political science deployed an inductive historical method to trace the unfolding of political ideas and their expression in national institutions. In Britain, when John Seeley introduced the inductive study of politics at Cambridge University, it was as part of the History Tripos. The study of politics at Oxford was also part of the History School until the 1920s and the creation of Modern Greats – philosophy, politics, and economics.
A separate discipline of political science arose only when developmental historicism lost its hold on the scholarly imagination. The decline of developmental historicism mirrors the crisis of historicism among German intellectuals.
30 German scholars worried that historicism was self-defeating and unable to support viable concepts of truth or ethics. More generally, the decline of developmental historicism overlaps with the rise of new modernist ideas in the late nineteenth century. Modernists in the sciences as well as the arts began to evoke discrete units, submerged desires, and experiments, rather than continuity, rationality, and progress. Arguably, however, modernism took off in large part because people could not reconcile developmental historicism with their experience of the First World War. The senselessness of the War destroyed people’s faith in continuity, progress, and reason. In America and Britain, moreover, the Teutonic principle became associated with Germanic absolutism.
The First World War undermined the faith in progress and reason that informed developmental historicism. Although images and ideals of progress still appeared after the War, progress was increasingly seen as a contingent victory of human activity rather than an inevitable feature of history.
31 Some scholars suggested that future progress would depend on the creation of new sciences that could resolve the distinctive social problems of the modern world. The First World War strengthened calls for new social sciences even as it weakened the old developmental historicism.
It was in this context that many of the social sciences, including political science, arose as distinct disciplines. These new social sciences typically based themselves on an epistemology that I will call modernist empiricism. Modernist empiricism was atomistic and analytic. It broke up the continuities and gradual change of developmental narratives by dividing the world into discrete and discontinuous units. It then sought to make sense of these units by means of impersonal mathematical rules or formal analytic schemas. It used ahistorical calculations and typologies to define its narratives, or even to replace narrative forms of analysis and explanation. Certainly, modernist empiricists introduced new analytic frameworks for comparison. As early as 1921, Herman Finer added to his study of comparative government an analytic index of topics designed to enable readers to compare similar institutions across states.
The First World War also challenged the principle of the nation state conceived as an expression of an organic unity, which, when expressed in popular sovereignty, was the basis of liberty. Even if political scientists still viewed the state positively as the expression of a general will or a common good, they typically did so in relation to a society that was itself legitimately pluralistic. Ernest Barker and A. D. Lindsay adapted the idealist tradition, for example, in ways that gave greater credence to pluralism. This changing concept of the state led political scientists to distinguish their discipline from law and ethics. Political scientists looked past what they now condemned as constitutional pieties to study what they now believed was the real back and forth of contemporary politics.
35 These proposals were, of course, to derive from the findings of their new empirical science of politics at least as much as from legal and moral principles. Indeed, the very concept of the state sometimes gave way to that of government. Government lacked the old associations with law, reason, and progress. It was a more neutral term, referring either to the aggregation of diverse interests and attitudes in a society or to the institutions that articulated, managed, and responded to these interests and attitudes.
Modernist empiricists brought atomistic and analytic modes of inquiry to bear on the study of government. They created a political science that focussed on issues of psychology and process at least as much as history, law, and philosophy. For a start, whereas developmental historicists had conceived of action as conduct infused with reason and morals, modernist empiricists thought of it as behaviour to be examined either independently of any assumptions about mind or else in terms of theories about hidden depths of the mind that often overwhelmed reason and morals. Even when developmental historicists such as Bryce suggested that political science concerned mental habits, they situated these mental habits in the context of historical narratives about organic communities whose evolution realized principles of nationality and liberty. In contrast, modernist empiricists such as Charles Merriam and Graham Wallas used surveys and statistics, often informed by an analytic psychology, to reveal atomistic attitudes and opinions.
In addition, whereas developmental historicists had thought about politics in terms of moral narratives and constitutional principles, modernist empiricists did so in terms of interests, processes, and functions. Modernist empiricists drew on a diffuse functionalism developed in the other emerging social sciences, particularly sociology and anthropology. Of course, we can read aspects of functionalist reasoning back into nineteenth-century theorists such as Herbert Spencer. However, it was only in the early twentieth century that Bronislaw Malinowski, A. R. Radcliffe Brown, and others defined functional explanations as scientific in contrast to historical ones.
36 The functionalists attempted to explain social facts by reference to the contributions they made to the social order as a whole. Sometimes they explored the relationships between elements of the social whole in a way that may seem contrary to the atomization that characterized modernist empiricism. However, the functionalists generally conceived of the social whole as an abstract, or even universal, framework that made possible comparison and classification of atomized units across diverse societies. Functionalism thus overlapped with a systems approach to organizations in a way that promised to provide a transhistorical context for atomistic and analytic studies of behaviour and processes.
Obviously, we should not draw too sharp a rupture between modernist empiricism and developmental historicism. On the one side, Wallas had notoriously little immediate impact on British political science, while Merriam’s supporters spent much of the 1930s lamenting the limited use of quantitative methods in American political science. On the other side, Whig narratives still dropped off the pens of Bryce and younger scholars such as Barker, while Charles Beard’s historical studies of American politics remained the bestselling political science texts of the time and the standard textbooks in many universities. When political scientists remained committed to older narratives, however, they often sounded nostalgic. Novelists and poets, such as E. M. Forster and John Betjeman, just as much as political scientists such as Barker, wrote in ways that suggested the world to which they referred was a thing of the past.
37 The nineteenth century’s expansive confidence in continuity, reason, and progress was no more.
Modernist empiricists introduced analytic and atomistic modes of inquiry, and new focuses on behaviour and processes. In Britain, Wallas stands out as a particularly forceful advocate of the new political science. He denounced older approaches to politics for being out of touch with political reality. He championed a political science based on quantitative techniques and a scientific psychology of habit, emotion, and non-rational inference. Even if we forget about Wallas, modernist empiricism wrought a shift in the study of the British state. The rise of atomization and analysis transformed the Whig historiography of the developmental historicists into the Westminster model. In the nineteenth century, British scholars had understood the state in terms of a historical narrative. The new political scientists approached the British state as a set of institutions that they could analyse and classify in comparison with other states. In their view, Britain was a unitary state characterized by parliamentary sovereignty, cabinet government, party control of the executive, and a loyal opposition. Ironically, however, at the same time as the new political scientists relegated the Whig narrative to background for the Westminster model, so the new focuses on behaviour and process highlighted aspects of British politics that did not fit well with this model. Political scientists noted a decline in the independence of Members of Parliament, the influence of unelected officials, and the activities of pressure groups and the media. The history of British political science is, in many ways, one of successive attempts to locate new data and new concerns in relation to a Westminster model that is the legacy of the developmental historicism of the nineteenth century.
The impact of modernist empiricism was even greater in America, perhaps partly because history had less cultural authority there. Even before the First World War, A. Lawrence Lowell used his mathematical training to undertake a statistical study of party voting in Britain and America.
41 All of this survey research precluded historical or comparative approaches if only because neither the past nor other countries could offer similar data.
Modernist empiricists did not entirely reject history. Rather, they gave history a different and smaller place in the study of politics and so debates about public policy. Political scientists used history more as a source of data than as grounds for explaining those data. Their explanations relied less on narrative and more on atomization, classification, statistical correlations, and even the identification of functions within a system. History continued to attract attention, especially among political theorists. However, political scientists increasingly shunned original historical research, relying instead on syntheses of existing scholarship to provide the background to their studies of the behaviour and processes of contemporary politics. Beard even defended history by arguing that it was a source of data. The more aggressive Merriam argued that history was a barrier to the rise of a proper science of politics.
As political scientists created a discipline apart from history, law, and philosophy, so they began to create their own institutions. Arguably, the transatlantic flow of ideas continued mainly to be from Europe to America throughout the interwar years. When Americans championed behaviouralism and pluralism, they drew inspiration from British scholars such as Wallas and Harold Laski. The American discipline also received European immigrants.
42 Carl Friedrich, a student of Alfred Weber, joined Harvard’s department of political science in the 1920s and helped to consolidate its pre-eminence. Soon after a number of émigrés from the Nazi regime, such as Leo Strauss, Hans Morgenthau, and Karl Deutsch, became powerful intellectual presences within American political science.
Even if the intellectual initiative remained with Europe, American scholars pioneered the institutions of political science as an autonomous discipline. American political scientists were growing in confidence and becoming more independent of the academic metropoles of Britain, France, and Germany. They blazed a new disciplinary path. In 1903, they founded the world’s first national political science association, the APSA, which in 1906 created a journal, the American Political Science Review . APSA had rapid and noteworthy success in attracting members. An initial growth spurt took it from a membership of 204 in 1904 to 1,462 just over a decade later in 1915, and membership subsequently doubled during the interwar decades to cross the 3,000 mark by the early 1940s.
The rise of modernist modes of explanation occurred alongside a shift in the topics of interest to political scientists. Although these trends reinforced one another, they had distinct roots, and they did not always go together. In the early twentieth century, developmental historicists were already looking past topics associated with institutional history, constitutional law, and the philosophical theory of the state. They too believed that these old agendas reflected a pre-democratic Europe and so were inadequate for the mass-based politics that had developed with the extension of the suffrage. Scholars argued that the study of modern democratic politics had to cover mass-based political parties and public opinion as well as formal institutions and laws. James Bryce’s The American Commonwealth devoted hundreds of pages to accounts of how parties and public opinion actually worked.
Other new topics began to draw attention from political scientists in the interwar years. Bryce and Lowell had introduced topics associated with mass-suffrage societies, but they still thought of democracy in terms of the sovereignty of a collective will. In the interwar years, a new pluralism challenged such concepts of democracy and the state. Once again, the changes involved transatlantic exchanges. Although American pluralism later developed a distinctive hue, its rise owed much to British scholars and especially Harold Laski, who spent several years lecturing at Harvard and Yale. Laski brought the term ‘pluralism’ and British debates about sovereignty into the American academy.
55 Psychology and sociology had pioneered the use of an array of quantitative methods. Post-war political scientists relied on transfers from these disciplines. The exemplary studies that suggested that quantitative techniques could produce valuable results in political science came not only from Almond, Key, and other products of Chicago, but also from scholars trained and even employed in psychology and sociology, including, respectively, Philip Converse and S. M. Lipset.
Survey research is the paradigmatic example of quantification. Much of the early work was interdisciplinary. Paul Lazarsfeld trained as a mathematician before turning to sociology and founding the Bureau of Applied Social Research. Lazarsfeld led the group that wrote The People’s Choice , a pioneering statistical analysis of voters in the elections of 1940 and 1944.
Modernists studied new topics using new techniques, but they did not thereby challenge older notions of theory. Although political scientists no longer conceived of history as progressive and rational, they still understood ‘theory’ to be scholarship focussed on historical ideas and their impact on institutional development. Political theorists themselves spent more time studying, teaching, and writing about texts from earlier times than they did attempting to produce novel theories. Other political scientists generally held a low-key empiricist notion of science as fact gathering and objective reporting, and this view of science did not lead political scientists to question the standing of historical research. Political scientists certainly did not see political theory as an obstacle to a scientific discipline. On the contrary, they thought that political theory played a useful supplementary role; it provided historical accounts of both the concepts they used and the institutions they studied. In the interwar years, leading scholars often thus combined modernist studies of institutions and behaviour with historical studies of ideas. Ernest Barker in Britain and Friedrich in America wrote comparative institutional studies, histories of ideas, and translations of canonical texts.
Nonetheless, when modernists explored new topics, they raised issues that would eventually raise questions about what theory should be. The studies of the new topics lacked clear ties to political theory. The study of pressure groups developed, for example, less as an illumination of a new pluralist theory of democracy than as a critical analysis of obstacles to the realization of democracy conceived in older terms as the expression of a collective will. By 1940, the gap between empirical work and theory was becoming a locus of anxiety within the American discipline. Benjamin Lippincott in particular charged his fellow political scientists with atheoretical empiricism.
Although American political scientists shared a growing dissatisfaction with the relation of theory to empirics, they offered a plethora of different solutions. They all wanted a ‘creative thinker’ to ‘give meaning to the painstaking research that, while indispensable, is still not enough’; but they disagreed profoundly about what such creative thinking involved.
63 Some political scientists were content with the existing order. Others thought that political science remained both too historicist and too instrumentalist. Émigré scholars, such as Hans Morgenthau and Leo Strauss, argued against relying on science and technology. They drew inspiration from canonical texts in which they found more realistic and more ethical approaches. Yet others argued, on the contrary, that the discipline should detach itself from old styles of theorizing. They wanted the discipline to develop new theories more suited to the contemporary age.
Modernists in particular often called for new theories to make sense of the data they were creating by bringing new techniques to bear on new topics. When the Committee on Political Behavior announced that the ‘development of theory’ was one of its core concerns, it had in mind this type of theory.
Although Easton echoed familiar diagnoses, his prescription was more clearly positivist. Easton and other behaviouralists adopted a positivist concept of a ‘general theory’ that used a clearly defined set of axioms to deduce generalizations that could be evaluated against empirical data. They envisaged a systematic political science that would advance through the cumulative interplay of theoretical innovation and empirical research. A general systems theory would give rise to predictions about political behaviour. Empirical political scientists would test these predictions in ways that would lead to changes in the theory. It is important to recognize that this positivism was not the naïve atheoretical enterprise its critics suggest. On the contrary, it was an attempt to build a new type of theory; it was an attempt to elucidate and direct empirical studies by means of a universal, deductive, predictive, and verifiable theory.
This positivism stood out from the earlier calls for new theories in political science. It involved a far more radical reimagining of what theory should and, more emphatically, should not be. Positivists often provided only sketchy accounts of criteria by which they proposed to judge the scientific merits of different theories. They were clear, however, that positive theories would bear little resemblance to older historical, legal, and philosophical ones, or to the reformist pragmatism that had been widespread in political science in the first half of the century. Their positivism separated the scientific merit of a theory from its normative role. Their theories did not aim to produce good social and policy outcomes. They aspired to be ethically neutral and empirically sound.
Positivists developed particularly ambitious agendas in the subfield of comparative politics. This subfield expanded dramatically in size, scope, prestige, and funding in the post-war years. America was engaged in the Cold War, competing for the allegiance of the new nations emerging from decolonization in Africa and Asia. In the interwar years, when Friedrich and Finer had created new analytic frameworks for comparative study, they had grounded their categories in the historical experiences of Europe and America. By 1954, when the Social Science Research Council set up a Committee on Comparative Politics, chaired by Almond, the developing world was becoming at least as important. The Committee brought together scholars who aspired to remake their subfield by forging a general positive theory that would cover all countries. More specifically, they hoped to combine functionalism and systems theory to create a general theory pitched at the macro-societal level.
By 1960, most of the social sciences were entangled with a positivist concept of science. Positivism undoubtedly appealed to social scientists in part because it legitimized their claims to expertise. Although economists played the largest role in directing the expansion of state activity after the Second World War, other social scientists could advance their claims to play a similar role by presenting their field as positivist during what was a time of optimism about technocratic reform. Indeed, because state funding for social science favoured scientism and policy relevance, social scientists were more likely to get employment, grants, and promotions if they presented themselves as being loosely positivist.
The rise of positivist social science led to a further denigration of history and narrative. Yet, positivism challenged modernism almost as much as it did developmental historicism. For a start, positivists typically defended a more demanding concept of science than that of inductive rigour. They exhorted political scientists critically to examine and improve their methods, and they associated such improvement almost exclusively with the new statistical techniques of data analysis. Although quantification is not a necessary companion of methodological sophistication, the positivists often seemed to think otherwise. More importantly, positivists defended a new concept of theory as both general and deductive. Consequently, they denigrated the inductive correlations and classifications of modernists as mere lower-level generalizations that needed incorporating in a universal theory such as systems theory or structural functionalism.
72 Although modernists had used functionalist explanations, positivists consciously crafted functionalist theories and concepts at a sufficiently abstract level to suggest that they had general applicability.
We should not be surprised, therefore, that several prominent modernists expressed grave doubts about positivist agendas. Leading figures of the elder generation voiced concerns about the universal and deductive nature of positivist theory. Friedrich responded to an early report from the Committee on Comparative Politics by arguing that comparative politics should focus on problems that were historically specific to certain states at certain points in time. He suggested that the subfield would lose contact with such problems if it pursued ‘excessive abstraction’.
Once we disaggregate behaviouralism into new topics, techniques, and theories, we are better able to track its history. All too often, the history of political science or even the social sciences more generally appears to be one of the diffusion of, and resistance to, an American agenda. These histories are misleading. We have already seen that modernism, including behavioural topics, developed partly through transnational flows from Europe to America. We should not be surprised, therefore, that behavioural topics flourished in Europe as well as America. British scholars between the wars explored all the main behavioural topics apart from pressure groups. Research into British pressure groups arose only in the 1950s, some thirty years after it did in America. It is true that empirical work on behavioural topics was less extensive in Britain than in America, but that contrast reflected the size of the discipline in the two countries. In 1950, when the British Political Studies Association was founded, it had about 100 members, whereas APSA had over 4,000 members in the 1940s.
As quantification was a more clearly American trend, it made slow headway in Europe. But it is important to distinguish here between different quantitative techniques and the extent to which they already had a place in European social science. For example, British survey research long predated American behaviouralism. At the end of the nineteenth century, Charles Booth, Henry Mayhew, and Seebohm Rowntree conducted surveys of urban poverty.
85 This section uses the example of international relations to highlight two other general points. First, the general characteristics of modernism spread in very uneven and different forms across subfields. Although international relations was made by modernism, its topics, techniques, and theories all show the effects of thinking about states as actors on the global stage. Second, much of political science concerned itself with events and policies at least as much as with the broad scientific and theoretical agendas outlined in the previous section . Although international relations had debates between historicists, modernists, and positivists, its main arguments for much of the twentieth century pitted liberals against realists in America and liberals against Marxists in Europe.
In the early twentieth century, political scientists broke with history, law, and philosophy because they believed that these older topics reflected a pre-democratic Europe rather than the mass-based politics that had developed following the extension of the suffrage. International relations scholars rarely echoed this concern. Their world was still one in which states pursued diplomacy, managed conflicts, and fought wars. Nonetheless, the experience of the First World War had an equally dramatic impact on the study of international relations. For much of the nineteenth century, liberal scholars and politicians typically believed that history was progressing towards some sort of perpetual peace. Many of them believed that the nation state was a noble expression of the human spirit, and as the peoples of the world formed self-governing states, so there would be few remaining sources of conflict. States would manage and resolve any remaining conflicts through the balance of power and international law. The First World War overturned this complacent liberalism. It suggested that nation states were aggressive; they pursued imperial expansion and so came into conflict with one another. It suggested that politicians and voters were all too ready to tread jingoistic paths to war.
Scholars of international relations shifted to different topics less because of a concern with the distinctive conditions of modern society than because of a renewed fear of wars. This fear meant that they too turned away from the state. Whereas they had thought of the state as the highest form of political development, they now often blamed it for wars. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson argued, in his seminal book, The International Anarchy , that ‘whenever and wherever the anarchy of armed states exists, war does become inevitable’.
86 International relations scholars reacted to this vision in two overlapping but distinct ways. On the one hand, scholars rejected old idealist and ethical concepts of the state. They looked instead to concepts that caught the kind of competition and ‘power politics’ that states seemed to practice on the international stage. Some explored the nature, sources, and uses of power itself. In so far as they understood power as a descriptive term, they began to offer a more ‘realistic’ account of politics. On the other hand, liberals continued to believe in the normative ideals of managing power and promoting peace. They thus treated this realism as a spur to develop policy agendas based on international law and international institutions.
In international relations, the dominant topics of the interwar years were less behavioural ones than those associated with the rise of realist analysis and liberal aspirations. These topics proved far less amenable to survey research than did, for example, voting behaviour and political culture. Quantification first appeared in international relations, therefore, as a stylized approach to data. International relations experts began to quantify the study of war. They classified and counted past events in an attempt to answer key questions about the causes of war and peace, victory and defeat, and so on. Quincy Wright pioneered such work in the interwar years when he worked at Chicago.
87 Later, in 1963, J. David Singer set up the Correlates of War Project at the University of Michigan.
The new topics in international relations largely transcended the theoretical controversies that occupied other subfields of political science. Modernists sometimes turned from history to atomization, formal classifications, functionalist tropes, and even correlations, as in Wright’s study of war. Generally, however, modernists loosened the ties of international relations to history without binding it to either new techniques or new theories. Many of them continued to treat international relations as a practical craft at least as much as a theoretically driven science. International relations scholarship drew on a range of somewhat incompatible theories and agendas in order to steer national policy and promote international institutions. Much international relations scholarship was, therefore, a lightly revised version of the classical internationalism of the nineteenth century. Internationalists designed institutions to regulate the relations of states, advance peace, and forge a new world order.
89 After the First World War, this internationalism inspired both the League of Nations and the attempt to implant liberal democratic regimes in the new states of Central and Eastern Europe.
Some international relations scholars saw the rise of fascism and the outbreak of the Second World War less as challenges to their craft than as further evidence of its overwhelming importance. Liberal internationalists continued to focus on cooperative institutions, agencies, and laws.
90 Many of them acknowledged that the League of Nations had glaringly failed to provide a forum for the peaceful resolution of disputes, and they moved away from its reliance on conference diplomacy and on collective security based on unanimity. They turned instead to international organizations that gave privileged status to key states, as did the United Nations Security Council, or to special agencies with clearly defined functional roles.
When international relations scholars turned to modernist theories, such as functionalism, they were, therefore, reacting to policy agendas at least as much as scientific ones. The failure of the League of Nations encouraged them to explore federalism, functionalism, and planning theory. Some federalists argued that problems such as war and global inequality needed more dramatic actions than those proposed by classic internationalists. They called for the progressive creation of a world state by treaty. They feared a war between the super powers might result in a world state imposed by force.
While liberal internationalists thus updated their policy agendas, other international relations scholars argued forcefully that the rise of fascism and the outbreak of the Second World War showed that these old policy agendas were bankrupt. Throughout political science, émigrés from Nazi Germany took aim at both nihilism and scientism. Generally, they thought that fascism required a staunch moral response and they feared that technocratic modernists lacked the backbone to provide that response. They recognized the brutality of political power, and they thought the best way to restrain it was by appealing to tried and tested forms of order such as natural right or the balance of power.
Hans Morgenthau and other ‘classical realists’ brought this sensibility to the study of international relations. Morgenthau was born into a Jewish family in Coburg, Germany, in 1904.
98 He studied law and politics in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, and Geneva. He fled Germany in 1937 and eventually made it over to the United States. Thereafter he taught at Brooklyn College, the University of Kansas City, the University of Chicago, City College of New York, and the New School for Social Research. Under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Schmitt, and Max Weber, he reacted against nineteenth- and twentieth-century versions of liberal progressivism. In doing so, he blurred the distinctions I have been making between developmental historicism, modernism, and positivism. In his view, they were all too optimistic and, specifically, too ready to believe in their visions of science and its ability to remake the world. He argued instead for a realist theory that emphasized self-interest and power.
Morgenthau defined his realism by six key principles. Politics is governed by laws based on facts about human nature. Politicians pursue their interests and more particularly power. The nature of interest and power varies across contexts. All moral goals have to be adapted to allow for this pursuit of power. Politicians should act prudently in the national interest rather than, say, identifying their goals with morality itself. And politics should not be reduced to ethics or law.
99 Although this realism includes all kinds of ambiguities and confusions, it offers a clear account of international relations. Politics is about power. International relations scholars should study the ways in which power operates. Politicians should pursue the national interest, recognizing that others will do likewise. Idealist visions and technocratic policies are more likely to lead to misunderstanding and even war than to do good since they neglect power. Peace arises from a stable and clearheaded balance among the interests of various states.
Clearly Morgenthau’s realism was less a vision of a scientific discipline than an account of human nature and a policy agenda. One can imagine historicists, modernists, positivists, and others all debating its validity. Somewhat confusingly, however, Morgenthau pitched his account of politics and especially his policy agenda against the idea of a science of politics. He contrasted a realist belief in the universal laws of human nature and power politics with a positivist belief in a cumulative science based on sociological theories, testable hypotheses, and empirical rigour. He suggested that international relations scholars look at history to trace the concrete ways in which power operated. Similarly, he contrasted a realist belief in prudent policies adapted to changing configurations of power with a positivist belief in technocratic expertise. He suggested that international policymaking should be risk averse statecraft pursuing national interests and peace.
This classical realism dominated the American study of international relations through the 1950s and 1960s. Kenneth W. Thompson, Morgenthau’s former student, became a powerful figure at the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1954, Morgenthau used Rockefeller funding to convene the American Committee on the Theory of International Politics. The Theory Conference fended off trends in the rest of the social sciences. Most participants shared the vision of international relations as a field defined by a distinctive domain – the pursuit of power by states – that was impermeable to scientific rationalism.
100 Morgenthau, and other classical realists, including W. T. R. Fox, George F. Kennan, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Nitze, and Arnold Wolfers, proved extremely influential both in the academy and as policy advisers.
International relations scholarship thus saw relatively little of the positivism associated with functionalism and systems theory. There were notable exceptions, of course: Morton Kaplan’s System and Process in International Politics , Karl Deutsch’s work on The Nerves of Government , and in Britain John Burton’s idiosyncratic International Relations: A General Theory .
107 Waltz treated states as unitary actors but not necessarily as rational ones.
Nonetheless, Waltz’s followers did begin to explain the behaviour of states by reference to, in older realist terms, the pursuit of interests or, in newer economic terms, the maximization of utility. Neorealism thus became tied not to the statecraft of Morgenthau and his peers but, rather, to a more positivist theory. This rational choice theory came from economics and it differed significantly from sociology theories of functions and systems. For a start, rational choice theory tried to base itself on axioms, stated in a formal language, and then deductively to derive conclusions from those axioms. In addition, the axioms of rational choice were generally associated with explicit micro-level assumptions about the rationality of individuals or at times of states. Within the study of international relations, rational choice, game theory, and bargaining theory initially flourished in studies of foreign policymaking, interstate bargaining, and interstate cooperation. Later, precisely because the policy agendas of realism and liberalism have no intrinsic connection to particular visions of a scientific agenda, other rational choice scholars, including Robert Keohane, began to use similar theoretical ideas to explore institutions. These ‘neoliberal institutionalists’ might have adopted rational choice theory instead of the legalism and functionalism of earlier liberal internationalists, but they still sought to resurrect liberal institutionalism as a counterpoint to neorealism.
Liberal internationalism continued to gain adherents even during the ascendency of classical realism. Plenty of liberals continued to study and promote international organizations and laws, dismissing a reduction of politics to interests and power. This liberalism, like realism, is less a vision of a scientific discipline than an account of politics combined with a policy agenda. One can again imagine historicists, modernists, positivists, and others all debating its validity. Nonetheless, just as the neorealists loosely tied their realism to rational choice theory, so from the late 1970s onwards liberals loosely associated their agenda with sociological theories of regimes, institutions, and norms. These liberals did not appeal to sociological theories and concepts as part of a positivist agenda to create a general theory. They were modernists fending off the challenge of both rational choice and realism by appealing to mid-level theories of norms and identities as alternatives to a general theory of interests and power.
In the mid-1970s, John Ruggie introduced the concept of a ‘regime’ to refer to the ‘mutual expectations, generally agreed-to rules, regulations and plans in accordance with which organizational energies and financial commitments are allocated’.
The English School developed a liberal internationalism focussed on diplomatic relations and moral norms among a society of states. Unsurprisingly, they therefore provided readymade allies for Ruggie and the social constructivists in their battles with neorealists and rational choice theory. Equally, however, there were important differences between these groupings. British scholars of international relations increasingly defined themselves in contrast to their American counterparts not only methodologically but also politically. Many of them opposed not only rational choice but also American foreign policy. When Bull contrasted his classical approach with a scientific approach, he noted, without endorsing, the extent to which British observers objected to the political uses of American scholarship, particularly in nuclear strategy and the conduct of limited wars.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, British scholars were more interested in Marxism, critical theory, and normative agendas, all of which typically opposed American policy, than they were in theoretical debates with rational choice theorists. For a start, the ‘inter-paradigm debate’ pitted the English School against Marxists. The Marxists rejected ideas of international society in favour of analyses of capitalism as a ‘world system’.
125 Imagine that rational choice theorists created a formal model that perfectly fitted some empirical phenomena, say, for example, the behaviour of legislators in the US Congress. Rational choice theorists would be likely to say that the empirical phenomena were evidence of the validity of the model and indeed of rational choice theory. In contrast, if we allow for the creative role of the social sciences, we have to allow that the model might fit only because the relevant actors have adopted the kind of self-interested posture that rational choice theory ascribes to them. That is to say, we have to allow that the model and rational choice theory might not be straightforwardly correct but rather a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. In this section, I discuss the history of political science since the 1970s, paying particular attention to its relationship to changing policy agendas. My point is that political scientists do not just describe and explain the world; they also make it.
Modernism transformed the concept of the state and encouraged its expansion. When modernists rejected historical narratives, they challenged the concept of the state as arising out of a nation bound by a common language, culture, and past. Furthermore, when modernists turned from a focus on the state to topics such as political parties and interest groups, they studied these sub-state institutions in terms of cross-cultural synchronic regularities rather than a shared culture or history. They thus increasingly portrayed the state as fragmented into factional interests associated with different classes and parties. In doing so, they threatened the idea that representative democracy was a way of electing and holding to account politicians who would act in accord with the common good of a pre-political nation. Representative democracy could seem, therefore, to be in danger of losing much of its legitimacy.
However, modernism also opened up new ways of making and legitimating public policy in representative democracies. Crucially, modernism inspired a new belief in formal expertise. Public policy could thus seem legitimate if it were based on the formal knowledge of modernist social science itself. Elected representatives no longer needed to express a national character and common good. They could define policy goals and check the activity of experts. Social scientists, professionals, and generalist civil servants could use their expertise to devise rational scientific policies in accord with these goals. Modernist social science thus helped to create the conditions for the administrative state. States became far more hands-on in their conduct of economic policy and in taking responsibility for their citizens’ welfare. New governmental departments focussed on education, health, industry, and social welfare proved greedy for technocratic knowledge from the modernist social sciences.
We have already met the two leading forms of modernist expertise that fed into the administrative state. Although both of them stand in contrast to developmental historicism, they instantiate different formal concepts of rationality tied to different forms of explanation.
126 On the one hand, the economic concept of rationality privileges utility maximization; it arose with neoclassical theory and spread to rational choice. On the other hand, the sociological concept of rationality privileges appropriateness in relation to social norms; it arose with functionalism and spread to network theory and communitarianism.
Neoclassical economics instantiates a modernist concept of rationality that emphasizes atomization, deduction, and synchronic analysis. Economic rationality is a property of individual decisions and actions; it is not tied to norms, practices, or societies apart from when these are being judged as effective or ineffective ways of aggregating individual choices. In addition, economic rationality is postulated as an axiom on the basis of which to construct deductive models; it is not deployed as a principle by which to interpret facts discovered through inductive empirical research. Finally, the models derived from the axioms of economic rationality are applied to general patterns irrespective of time and space; they do not trace the particular evolution of individuals, practices, or societies. Although modernism set the scene for the economic concept of rationality, the concept took its specific content from utility maximization. In neoclassical economics, individuals act in order to maximize their personal utility, where utility is defined as a measure of the satisfaction gained from a commodity or other outcome.
The most prominent alternatives to the economic concept of rationality are a cluster of sociological ones, all of which replace instrumentality with appropriateness. Sociological rationality is about acting in accord with appropriate social norms to fulfil established roles in systems, processes, institutions, or practices. Some sociologists, including Emile Durkheim and Pierre Bourdieu, argue that even modern individuals are best conceived not as instrumental actors but as followers of social norms and roles. Others, including Max Weber and Herbert Marcuse, express fears about the spread of selfish, acquisitive, and instrumental norms in modern societies. These two strands of modernist sociology can come together in broad condemnations of modernity, capitalism, or consumerism for spreading selfish and instrumental norms that wreck older forms of solidarity and community.
In the post-war era, political science had a symbiotic relationship with the state. Political science provided the state with expertise, and the state funded political science through the rapid expansion of public universities and generous research grants. Unsurprisingly, large parts of political science developed institutions and agendas that reflected the state’s priorities. In America, for example, the Vietnam War led the federal government to increase research funding on comparative politics, developing states, and rural insurgencies. Universities responded by expanding their political science departments and creating research units based on area studies. Comparative politics became probably the most prestigious and certainly the largest of the discipline’s subfields. Scholars generated numerous accounts of modernization, often tying them at least loosely to systems theory and functionalism.
Political science’s relationship to the state changed during the 1970s with the rise of neoliberalism. The state tried to roll back its research funding and soon introduced novel assessment exercises to direct its spending on higher education. The state also began to look to different types of knowledge, drawing more from business schools, promoting hi-tech, and even within the social sciences, privileging American politics and public policy over comparative politics and international relations, and privileging economic approaches over sociological theories. Unsurprisingly, political science departments have adapted to these new priorities, cutting back on faculty in comparative politics, and especially area studies, and promoting the fields now favoured by the state. It would be a mistake, however, to see the changes solely in terms of the state’s impact on social science. Social scientists provided political actors with the theories they used both to narrate the crisis of the state and to develop neoliberal and other policy agendas.
Large parts of the history of political science in the late twentieth century consist of modernism turning on itself. This history also appears in the theories and reforms with which people conceived of the crisis of the state and responded to it. Although these theories and reforms challenged the expertise embedded in the post-war state, they did not challenge the more general idea of applying modernist expertise to social life. Rather, political scientists and policy actors turned to alternative forms of modernist expertise. Analytically, we can distinguish once again two forms of expertise, each of which inspired a wave of public sector reforms. The first wave of reforms echoed the economic concept of rationality; neoliberalism promoted the new public management and contracting-out. The second wave echoed the sociological concept of rationality; the third way promoted joined-up governance, networks, and partnerships.
Oversimplifications will abound in any attempt to differentiate the plethora of ideas that fed into narratives about the crisis of the state in the late twentieth century. Nonetheless, one way of approaching these narratives is as products of the two leading forms of modernist expertise. Some narratives of the crisis of the state challenged bureaucracy, corporatism, and social welfare by drawing on the economic concept of rationality. Neoclassical micro-level assumptions informed, for example, narratives that tried to show fiscal crises were a pathology built into the welfare state. These narratives went as follows.
128 Citizens, being rational actors, try to maximize their short-term interests, privileging welfare policies that are of benefit to them as individuals over the long-term, cumulative, and shared effects of rising state expenditure. Similarly, politicians, being rational actors, try to maximize their short-term electoral interests, promoting policies that will gain the votes of these rational citizens rather than pursuing fiscal responsibility. Narrow political considerations thereby trump economic imperatives. Groups of voters demand more and more welfare benefits, and politicians constantly pass welfare legislation on behalf of these voters. A growing proportion of the national product goes on welfare, making fiscal crises inevitable. These narratives of state overload and state crisis pointed to a clear solution – fiscal austerity, monetary control, and a rolling back of the state.
I will use the term ‘neoliberal’ broadly to refer to these economic narratives and the reforms they inspired.
129 Neoliberals compared the state’s top-down, hierarchical organization with the decentralized, competitive structure of the market. They argued that the market was superior. They concluded that when possible markets or quasi-markets should replace bureaucracy. A quest for efficiency led them to call on the state to transfer organizations and activities to the private sector. Organizations could be transferred by privatization, that is, the transfer of state assets to the private sector through flotations or management buyouts. Activities could be transferred by means of contracting out, that is, the state could pay a private sector organization to undertake tasks on its behalf.
Neoliberalism drew heavily on strands of neoclassical economics such as monetarism. In addition, however, it drew on broad approaches to social science, notably rational choice theory, which themselves drew inspiration from neoclassical economics. Rational choice theory first developed during the 1950s and 1960s, but with the exception of William Riker and the department he led at Rochester, it had little impact on political science.
130 It was only as the sociological theories of the behavioural era lost favour that rational choice theory arose to offer both an appealing account of why they had failed and a proposed way forward. On the one hand, because rational choice drew on the modernist vision of theory, it could inherit the mantle of ‘science’ from the behaviouralists. But, on the other hand, because it drew on economic rather than sociological modernism, it could escape the sense of theoretical failure that had come to surround behaviouralism and instead promote a new road to scientific knowledge.
Rational choice deployed the economic concept of rationality in ways that set it apart from other approaches to political science. For a start, rational choice relied on explicit micro-level assumptions about individuals. Rational choice theorists complained that the macro-level claims of earlier sociological theories were divorced from an account of individual choices and their unintended collective consequences. In addition, rational choice turned these micro-level assumptions into positive axioms, often stated in a formal language, from which it could use the techniques of deductive logic to prove conclusions. Although some sociological theorists had extolled deductive reasoning, they had not made their arguments ‘positive’ or ‘formal’ in the sense that rational choice theorists gave to these terms, so rational choice theorists could criticize sociological reasoning as loose and indeterminate. Some scholars of American politics adopted rational choice, with its rigorous deductive logic and formal modelling techniques, as early as the 1960s. However, the use of formal models only really took off in the mid- and late 1970s. Rational choice theorists then used the concept of a structure-induced equilibrium to include institutional arrangements in models.
Neoliberal states relied on rational choice as well as economic theories. One clear example is the public sector reforms associated with the new public management. Neoliberals believed that the discipline of the market validated the management practices of the private sector. They redefined public officials as managers or service providers, and they redefined citizens as consumers or service users. In doing so, neoliberals drew on rational choice analyses of principal–agent theory. Neoclassical economists first developed principal–agent theory to analyse the problem of delegated discretion in the private sector.
Many political scientists are sceptical that ideas play a causal role in public policy. They might object that the previous paragraph points to similarities between ideas and reforms without providing any evidence that the ideas helped to produce the reforms. It is worth saying, therefore, that my claim is not that particular politicians read academic articles, reflect on them, and draw inspiration from them. My claim is that social science feeds into the work of think tanks, policy advisers, and even high journalism, thereby becoming part of a climate of opinion that sets a policy agenda. We have clear evidence of this process.
New Zealand was arguably the first state to adopt the new public management, and its reforms certainly inspired other states. The New Zealand reforms arose from a small group of politicians, advisers, civil servants, and lobbyists associated with the Labour government of 1984–90. A Treasury document of 1987 clearly outlined their theoretical grounding in the ideas I have just discussed.
While some narratives of the crisis of the state embedded the economic concept of rationality, others drew on a sociological modernism. These narratives implied that the state had to change in response to international and domestic pressures. The international pressures arose because the increased mobility of capital made it more difficult for states to direct economic activity. The state could not go it alone but, rather, had to pursue coordination and regulation across borders. Industries that had operated in the domain of the state had become transnational in their activities. The growing role of transnational corporations raised problems of coordination and questions of jurisdiction. There was a gap between the national operation of regulatory structures and an increasingly international economy. The domestic pressures arose because the state confronted rising demands from citizens unhappy with both its handling of the economy and its unresponsiveness. Many states were saddled with large debts. Globalization provoked anxieties about competitiveness and wages. Sections of the public worried that the state had lost control. Equally, state actors often found that they were subject to varied and even contradictory demands from the public. Voters wanted better services and lower taxes. They wanted a more effective state but also a more transparent and accountable one. They wanted decisive leaders and yet more popular participation.
I will use the term ‘third way’ broadly to refer to reforms inspired by these sociological narratives of the crisis of the state.
139 The third way bought into aspects of the neoliberal critique of hierarchical organization, but it had at most a circumscribed faith in the market, seeing markets as socially embedded institutions that depended on the states and societies within which they operate. The third way suggested that in most circumstances networks offered a better source of efficiency and effectiveness. This view encouraged states not only to promote networks and partnerships but also to bring organizations together in joined-up or whole-of-government approaches to policy problems.
The third way drew heavily on social science theories, notably the new institutionalism, that arose as sociological responses to the challenge of first positivism and then rational choice. These theories are some of the most confused and confusing within political science. This confusion is a result of their highly ambiguous relationship to human agency and historical explanation. On the one hand, they try to fend off positivism and rational choice by defending the importance of agency, history, and context. On the other hand, they remain trapped within a modernism that pushes them to reject agency, history, and context in favour of formal explanations that at least gesture towards reified norms and institutions. Because the new institutionalists and their ilk are unaware of their own historical inheritance, they cannot resolve the ambiguities and confusions that beset their concepts and theories.
Some modernist empiricists responded to positivism by redefining their approach in terms of a comparative, historical, and sociological study of states. The state thus became the foci for a diverse range of substantive agendas, including comparative political economy, the political development of America, and the study of revolutions.
140 This agenda appears most importantly in the Committee on States and Social Structures set up by the Social Science Research Council in the early 1980s with Peter Evans and Theda Skocpol as chairs and Albert Hirschman, Peter Katzenstein, Ira Katznelson, Stephen Krasner, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Charles Tilly as its members. These political scientists complained, first, that behaviouralist attempts to replace the concept of the state with that of ‘the political system’ had resulted in a reductionism that neglected the potential autonomy of the state. Paradoxically, they thus tied modernist empiricism to neostatism when in fact it had arisen as political scientists tried to get behind constitutional pieties to examine actual behaviour and processes. They complained, second, that behaviouralist attempts to deduce universally valid hypotheses from general theories resulted in a lack of sensitivity to different social and historical contexts. Paradoxically, they thus associated modernist empiricism with a resistance to ahistorical claims when in fact it had arisen as social scientists introduced atomization, analysis, correlation, and classification as alternatives to the narratives of the developmental historicists.
Modernist empiricists redefined their approach yet again at the close of the twentieth century in response to the rise of rational choice theory. Rational choice theory replicated many of the features of behaviouralism that had challenged modernist empiricism; it too offered an abstract general theory from which to deduce other theories or hypotheses that could be applied and tested empirically. However, rational choice theory replaced the behaviouralists’ focus on systems with one on micro-level foundations. It thus posed forcefully the question: what micro-theory could make sense of neostatism – and modernist empiricism more generally – with its dependence on analytic induction, variables, classifications, and correlations?
Neostatists and other modernist empiricists responded to the challenge of rational choice theory by rearticulating their approach as a ‘new institutionalism’. However, because Riker and others already were calling for a new analysis of institutions based on rational choice theory itself,
144 They almost never analyse institutions in terms of a micro-theory of contingent and competing beliefs and actions, for, if they did so, they would undermine the possibility of treating institutions as stable objects that can be known through correlations and classifications.
When modernist empiricists inspired by sociological theories of rationality studied neoliberal reforms of the public sector, they were often highly critical. They argued that the reforms exasperated problems of coordination and steering, and they promoted networks and joined-up government as solutions to these problems.
145 Advocates of networks distinguish them from hierarchies as well as markets. Old institutionalists believed that hierarchies made it easier to tackle many social problems by dividing them into smaller tasks, each of which could then be performed by a specialized unit. New institutionalists argue that this hierarchic approach to problem-solving no longer suits today’s world. They claim that policymakers confront ‘wicked problems’ that are not amenable to division and specialization; these problems require networks not hierarchies.
The concept of a ‘wicked problem’ arose as part of an amorphous modernist empiricism associated with the new institutionalism, organization theory, and functionalism.
146 Social democrats often adopted it to counter neoliberalism. Wicked problems are usually defined in terms such as the following: a problem of more or less unique nature; the lack of any definitive formulation of such a problem; the existence of multiple explanations for it; the absence of a test to decide the value of any response to it; all responses to it being better or worse rather than true or false; and each response to it having important consequences such that there is no real chance to learn by trial and error. Typically these features strongly imply that wicked problems are interrelated. For example, a particular wicked problem might be explained in terms of its relationship to others, or any response to it might impact others. Classic examples of wicked problems include pressing issues of governance such as security, the environment, and urban blight.
New institutionalists usually accept neoliberal arguments about the inflexible and unresponsive nature of hierarchies, but instead of promoting markets, they appeal to networks as a suitably flexible and responsive alternative based on recognition that social actors operate in structured relationships. They argue that efficiency and effectiveness derive from stable relationships characterized by trust, social participation, and voluntary associations. In their view, while hierarchies can provide a context for trust and stability, the time for hierarchies has passed. Hierarchies do not suit the new knowledge-driven global economy. This new world increasingly throws up wicked problems that require networks and joined-up governance. A new institutionalism, with its sociological concept of rationality, thus inspired a second wave of reforms, including Australia’s whole-of-government agenda, New Labour’s ‘Third Way’, post-9/11 security policy in the United States, and international attempts to deal with failed states.
We have seen that in the late twentieth century, political science inspired two waves of public sector reform. One promoted market technologies derived from neoclassical economics. The other promoted the different technologies of networks, partnership, and inclusion, all derived from sociological theories of institutions and systems. Contemporary governance characteristically relies on a mixture of technologies. It is all too easy to postulate a monolithic neoliberalism characterized by market technologies, the individualization of the self, or the erosion of the public sphere. In practice, however, the contemporary state is messy, lacking any such centre. It draws on diverse market, institutionalist, and other technologies. I do not want to imply that these technologies work as advertised. On the contrary, as public servants and citizens draw on local traditions that bare little relation to academic social science, so they act in ways that intentionally or unintentionally transform and thwart these technologies.
Although these technologies rarely work, they continue to influence public policy. Here we might identify at least three other technologies that now coexist with the markets and networks already discussed. Each illustrates the way in which policy technologies arise out of interdisciplinary spaces where political science draws on theories from other social sciences.
Evidence-based approaches spread from health sciences and healthcare. Typically, they rely on either large data sets or more usually randomized control trials to establish that some treatment or drug has a high probability of success even if there is no particular causal theory explaining why it does so. Since the 2010s, these approaches have spread to all sorts of policy fields. Policymakers identify interventions, anticipate outcomes, and specify ways of measuring those outcomes. They randomly assign the policy intervention to target groups while also monitoring designated control groups. They are thus able to compare the changes in the target group with a control group that did not experience the intervention. Advocates describe the approach as ‘test, learn, adapt’.
Nudge technologies arose out of behavioural economics. This behavioural economics tries to correct for the simplicities of the economic concept of rationality by drawing on psychological accounts of ways in which people are characteristically irrational. It seeks to modify economics by, for example, allowing that people characteristically put more emphasis on the short term and less on the long term than they should if they were strictly rational in economic terms. Nudge theorists suggest that governments should use people’s heuristics and other irrationalities to steer them towards the choices the government wants them to make.
149 Governments might, for example, create short-term incentives to nudge people to make long-term investments in their private old age pensions.
Finally, the concept of resilience arises out of engineering and ecology. Engineers have long accepted that buildings and systems are subject to errors and shocks that can lead them to fail. Resilience is the ability of a building or system to absorb errors and shocks without totally failing. Engineers often design and maintain infrastructure in ways that promote such resilience. Ecologists extended the concept of resilience from these physical systems to biological ones. Ecosystems should be resilient or self-reliant in that they can adapt and survive. Other social scientists further extended the concept to both local communities and individuals. Resilient communities are able to use their own assets, rather than government assistance, to respond to disasters and generally to improve their own social and economic conditions. Resilient individuals are, similarly, those who have the resources to recover from physical, mental, or economic adversity. In recent years, government and voluntary organizations have adopted policies seeking to build resilience among vulnerable communities and people.
153 Political theory had been the nearest thing to a common core in the discipline. Now it was the locus of hostility – whether conservative, radical, or some confused blend of them – to the discipline’s scientific pretensions.
Since the 1960s, innovations in political theory have often had interdisciplinary roots in either philosophy or history. Some of these innovations seemed to rebuild political theory on modernist principles. For a start, some historians of political thought argued that to understand a text one had to place it in its particular historical context. In their view, canonical texts address historical debates, not perennial problems that remain relevant to us. Some historians, including Quentin Skinner, echoed modernism in arguing that we have to adopt a proper method in order to secure facts against which then to evaluate rival theories and interpretations.
155 Political philosophy could thus seem to be a type of applied ethics. In this view, political philosophy discusses the ends we should adopt and political science discusses how best to realize these ends.
Other innovations in political theory were more clearly opposed to modernist political science. Although we should be wary of imposing commonalities on the relevant theorists, most were historicists. Typically, they reasserted historicism but without the developmentalism that was so widespread in the nineteenth century. Their historicism inspired a shared scepticism towards typologies, correlations, and models, suggesting that modernist social science did not attend sufficiently to history. To be more specific, their historicism suggested that typologies, correlations, and models are objectifications that hide the historicity of both the objects they depict and the modes by which they do so. Equally, their historicism rejected developmental narratives with their principles of reason, character, and progress, turning instead to a novel stress on dispersal, difference, and discontinuity.
This reassertion of historicism occurred in both the history of political thought and political philosophy. Among historians of political thought, Skinner himself seems to have stopped associating himself with his earlier modernist claims about methods and facts. Recently, he has even begun to describe his histories as genealogies.
161 Winch argued that the social sciences were not properly sciences at all; they aimed at understanding, unpacking webs of meaning, rather than at causal explanation.
Most of the political theorists discussed so far made their careers in history or philosophy departments. Nonetheless, their historicism proved congenial to theorists in political science departments looking to develop a critical perspective on the rest of the discipline. Hanna Pitkin was, for example, a colleague of Wolin’s at Berkeley. She drew on Wittgenstein to offer a historicist critique of political science akin to those already discussed.
162 It should perhaps come as little surprise, therefore, to find that the political theorists who have written critical histories of political science – the forerunners of this Element, if you will – have often been Pitkin’s students or students of her students: Jack Gunnell, Terry Ball, James Farr, Emily Hauptmann, and more recently, Robert Adcock.
On offer, then, are two contrasting approaches to political science: one modernist and broadly formal, the other historicist and broadly interpretive. Modernists seek stable and formal concepts, categories, and typologies. They try to operationalize these concepts in comparisons, correlations, and models. Sometimes they, or people influenced by them, translate their findings into scientific expertise on policy issues. In contrast, historicists seek to recover the intentionality of actions. They try to understand beliefs and desires by locating them in webs of belief, intellectual traditions, and cultural contexts. Sometimes they, or people influenced by them, draw on their understanding to engage people in dialogue and discussion. In this Element, I have told the history of the former approach in theoretical terms taken from the latter.
Someone might reasonably ask: how can we decide between these two contrasting approaches? Actually, as modernism and historicism contain contrasting approaches within themselves, the more general question is, how can we decide among any number of approaches – behaviouralism, rational choice, institutionalism, realism, historicism, and yet others?
To conclude, I want to suggest that part of the answer to this question is that we can assess approaches to political science by reference to the history of political science. Obviously, I do not mean that the history of political science has an inherent rationality such that the allegedly best approach comes to dominate it. Instead, I mean that we can ask how capable each of these approaches is of providing a historical account of itself and its rivals. Because these approaches play a role in constructing their privileged facts and their explanatory logics, they are loosely incommensurable: any attempt to justify an approach by reference to its privileged facts and explanations looks perilously circular. The evaluation of these approaches requires us to compare them by reference to a shared subject matter. Political scientists might find just such subject matter in the history of the discipline.
Crucially, because approaches to political science are effectively approaches to human life, they present themselves at least implicitly as being capable of analysing and explaining the history of the discipline. If behaviouralism, rational choice, institutionalism, realism, and historicism are valid approaches to human action, presumably they also apply to those actions and practices that constitute political science. Each approach needs to show that it works with respect to the part of human life that is the history of political science. Furthermore, when these approaches narrate the history of the discipline, they engage one another in a way that generates something like a shared subject matter: a rational choice history of political science has to explain the rise and content of institutionalism, an institutionalist history of the discipline has to explain the rise and content of rational choice, and so on.
Some readers might think the idea of modernist histories of the discipline is faintly absurd. Certainly, if rational choice theorists narrated the history of rational choice to suggest it was a product of strategic actors promoting their own interests, they would give us little reason to think rational choice is true. Similarly, if institutionalists narrated institutionalism as a product of path dependency and critical junctures, we would surely take that as a reason to doubt the validity of the approach. What do these absurdities imply? On the one hand, they surely imply that historicism is a far more viable theory of human life and so politics than are these modernisms. On the other hand, they suggest that modernists might defend their approaches not as true theories that capture reality but, rather, as admitted simplifications that help us to generate beneficial knowledge.
Today, modernists often present their approaches as just such simplifications. Rational choice theorists defend their models as heuristics. | https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/history-of-political-science/F1FADCBCCCCB95BB3B8DF694A0A805F3 | 79 |
when did political science become an academic discipline | Political Science - The Discipline Of Political Science - Scientists, Research, Scientific, and Politics | The beginning of American political science as an organized discipline can be dated to December 30, 1903, when John Burgess, Frank Goodnow, Westel W. Willoughby, and others founded the American Political Science Association (APSA). The association's journal, the American Political Science Review ( APSR ), followed in 1906. Even though most schools still lacked separate political science departments, the appearance of the APSA, and thereafter its journal, legitimated professional commitment to political science as a coherent area of study. The APSA gave political scientists, in and out of the university, a sense of common purpose, and the APSR offered an outlet for original research and scholarly exposure.
As the discipline was established, political scientists increasingly incorporated political knowledge as their peculiar domain. Political scientists, after "authorizing" themselves through the creation of a discipline, began cordoning off political research as their area of study. The study of politics started to become a professional pursuit, sanctioned by a professional association. This trend toward professionalism in the field of political research became more clear during the behavioral revolution's move to "pure" science. With behavioralism, the discipline settled on a scientific identity, an identity that has changed little since its inception. Behavioralism, though, has its roots in the "science of politics movement," which began in the 1920s.
Political scientists believed that a scientific, disciplinary, and professional identity (that is, acceptance as "legitimate" producers of knowledge) depended on a common and useful methodology to separate trained "political scientists" from methodologically untrained amateurs. Scientific method would allow political scientists to arrive at objective, value-free truth (or truths) about a certain aspect of (usually) American politics in order to aid a modernizing polity in a purely technical way. There could be no normative goals in a value-free science. Political scientists, in other words, should not seek to express what ought to be done. Instead, their goal must be simply to explain the political world.
In the early 1900s, Arthur F. Bentley offered a tool for empirical, value-free social research in his work, The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures. Although Bentley was not an academic by trade, he did influence subsequent generations of political scientists, especially those within the behavioralist tradition. In The Process of Government, Bentley wanted to move away from the traditional notions of scientific explanation in society. He considered political science, with its nineteenth-century reliance on formalist studies of institutions, to be dead. The "barren formalism" of political science needed to be touched up with the "glow of humanity" by studying social actors themselves "for what they are" and "for what they represent" (Bentley, pp. 163–164). According to Bentley, the "raw material" for the scientific study of government cannot be found in one person. It must always be located in "something doing," in the activity of groups, in "the dispersal of one grouping of forces by another grouping." And while these groups do consist of thinking and feeling persons, the social scientist knows "nothing of 'ideas' and 'feelings' except through the medium of actions" (p. 175–176). Government is a process that is forever in flux, and, as such, it can never be described by law books, law, essays, addresses, or constitutional conventions.
Bentley argued that social science, then, should be empirical, measurable, progressive, and concerned with the interaction and activity of a complex and overlapping system of social, political, and economic groupings. Such a social science could, in Bentley's view, be objective and, as such, achieve "knowledge." Most of these aspects are evident again, in the science of politics movement of the 1920s and 1930s and in the behavioral political science that conquered the discipline by the late 1950s. The empirical, measurable, "progressive," and quantified behavioralist tradition gave political science the "scientific" identity it had sought since Bentley's era.
The new era in political science that followed World War I, like most new eras in the discipline, repudiated the previous era of political science. Progressive political science was condemned as invalid and partisan, not scientific enough. The new era sought even more detached, scientific, methodical, and therapeutic reforms for what was perceived to be a democracy in crisis. According to post–World War I political scientists, the United States' "liberal democracy" emerged badly shaken from the war. Political scientists had supported the war "for the usual reasons—it was supposed to end European autocracy and thus end war" (Seidelman and Harpham, p. 102). Instead, emboldened and effective fascist and communist governments in Europe strengthened their abilities to motivate their populaces to act in accordance with government interests. Post–World War I political scientists in America noticed a peculiar lack of any such motivational ability in the United States, and their wrath fell on their immediate predecessors. In their view, reform-minded progressive political scientists had not adequately and systematically located receptive reform publics, and their superficial and hasty analyses and proposals had consequently failed to be effective.
In light of this, political scientists of the new era saw the need for scholarly renovation. They renewed their dedication to establishing scientific inquiry in the hope that "scientific knowledge would emerge and contribute to improving the quality of public life in America" (Ricci, p. 77). The professional identity of the political scientist became that of political "healer," and political knowledge, implemented in the governmental system, was to be constructed toward this end. Political scientists such as Charles E. Merriam and Harold D. Lasswell saw themselves as social engineers whose purpose was the "rational" supervision of political actors tasked with ordering and controlling a logical and brave new political society. Merriam and Lasswell simply wanted to install a professional identity for political scientists based on a science that was organized to aid the liberal democratic state. As such, political knowledge was to be organized for the same purpose. This is part of the reason why such a formulation of science caught on in the discipline. It was constructed to correspond to the technical needs of society, and therefore it became the accepted identity for political scientists. But after World War II, this identity began to crumble. Behavioralists wanted to purify scientific political knowledge.
According to Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, numerous factors emerged to help establish behavioralism as a force in political science: Political scientists perceived that they were not considered legitimate scientists and consequently had problems securing research grants; they believed that the other social sciences (particularly psychology) were making broad advances while political science lagged behind; the reformist, normative nature of the discipline was generally considered speculative and unscientific; research technology (including survey techniques, statistical computations, and computers) became much more refined and available; and they pursued a "pure" science that operated on the presupposition that democracy is the best system of government because of its open and scientific qualities. In short, post–World War II political scientists sought to define the science of politics from the standpoint that science should be pure. The science of politics should be interested only in explaining the workings of American democracy in order to understand the American system better.
Postwar political scientists believed that political crises remained because pre–World War II political scientists had allowed their reformist aims to occlude their understanding of politics. Many postwar political scientists wanted to embark on the pure scientific project of analyzing the workings of the American system without tainting the analysis with speculative notions of reform. These were the first self-conscious attempts to push normative political theory to the margins of the discipline. The assumption that American democracy is the best political system in the world expels the normative determination of value from the discipline's activities. A pure science, after all, cannot consider such a claim. Rather, it must presuppose its end as it determines how best to reach or enhance it.
Somit and Tanenhaus have combined the various strands of behavioralism into what they term the "behavioral creed":
- Political science should search rigorously for regularities in political behavior in order to facilitate prediction and explanation.
- Political science should concern itself with empirical political phenomena, that is, with the behavior of individuals and political groups.
- Data should be quantifiable in order to aid predictive capabilities.
- Research should be theory driven; in other words, research should begin with a theory that yields empirically testable hypotheses.
- Political scientists should avoid applied (reform-minded) research in favor of pure scientific research.
- Values such as democracy, equality, and freedom cannot be scientifically established and should thus be avoided unless they can somehow be made empirically testable.
- Political science should become more interdisciplinary, at least at the behavioral level.
- Political science should place more emphasis on methodology and make better use of multivariate analysis, sample surveys, mathematical models, and simulation.
Behavioralists were intent on building a scientific community that was centered on behavioral inquiry. They could do this by further institutionalizing political knowledge. Therefore, the research skills that behavioral inquiry required served to exclude those who did not possess the proper training and to solidify the scientific identity of political scientists.
One example of behavioral inquiry can be found in the work of David B. Truman, who is probably best known for his book The Governmental Process, first published in 1951, which revived Bentley's group process theory of government. Truman's argument, although less polemical, closely resembles Bentley's and is offered in response to the expanding role of interest groups in American politics and the public's growing fear of their influence. The Governmental Process, by Truman's own account, contributed to the "political behavior movement" in political science by increasing "the analytical strength and usefulness of the discipline" (pp. xix–xx). It also triggered the growth of the study of interest groups in the United States and abroad. Like Bentley's work, The Governmental Process offers a tool for analysis: a theory to drive systematic behavioral research. It contains many "testable hypotheses" ranging from the political orientations of groups to the internal politics of the group process to the influence of groups on the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, and elections.
Truman's basic argument revolves around the notion that because every individual attempts to become an accepted participant in a group or a set of groups, it makes sense to study political behavior in terms of groups and group interactions. He argues that "the patterns of action and attitude among individuals will differ from one another in large measure according to the clusters of group affiliations that the individuals have" (p. 16). Individuals define themselves based on the opportunities that groups afford. In Truman's words, "It appears … that the group experiences and affiliations of an individual are the primary, though not the exclusive, means by which the individual knows, interprets, and reacts to the society in which he [sic] exists" (p. 21). Like Merriam, Truman believed that society had become sufficiently complex to necessitate an interdependent approach to the analysis of political behavior and government. In other words, any social or political action involves a complicated series of interactions, particularly at the group level, that affect individuals and the government. With this in mind, the purpose of Truman's book was to analyze rigorously both the operations of representative government in the United States and the character of groups' relationships with the governing process. He does not desire progressive reform; his research seeks "pure" explanation.
Another behavioralist, Heinz Eulau, openly criticized the reformist ("utopian") political science of the pre–World War II era. In his 1969 book, Behavioralism in Political Science, Eulau argued that science can function only "in an environment that permits freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech" (p. 12). American liberal democracy allows such freedoms and thus is most suitable for scientific work. Political science can never undermine liberal democracy, as David M. Ricci reported that pre–World War II political scientists feared. Political scientists assumed, then, that American democracy must be alive and well as they pursued the new, nonreformist, scientific goal of analyzing and explaining the ways in which the American political system functioned.
The dominance of the behavioral approach to studying politics was seen in the field of international relations as well, which tended to personify states and study their "behavior." This approach has been seen most clearly in realist and neorealist research in international politics. The field of comparative politics was also affected by the behavioral shift, as its practitioners abandoned the field's legal-institutional approach in favor of a more quantitative analysis. Instead of simply explaining the similarities of and the differences between political institutions across culture and context, behaviorally inclined comparative politics scholars sought to ground such institutional differences and similarities in "universal" terms of political behavior. The field of normative political theory was largely immune to the behavioral revolution and operated as a critic from without, which ultimately served to marginalize it from the accepted approach of the discipline. Postbehavioralism altered this situation in some important ways. All of the various subfields of study were opened to other methodological approaches, and political theory moved in a bit from the margins. Still, the scientific mood was not fundamentally altered.
In 1967 the Caucus for a New Political Science was organized as a response to behavioral hegemony. Behavioral discourse, pro and con, dominated the discipline's mainstream by the mid-1960s in terms of method, language, and research focus. Members of the caucus lamented the limited scope of behavioral inquiry. Behavioralism, they argued, neglected too many possible points of view; it was too "parochial." The caucus desired a more open and expansive discipline. In 1969 David Easton responded to the aims of the caucus in his presidential address to the APSA. Easton coined the term postbehavioralism and made relevance and action its watchwords. Postbehavioralists, Easton argued, wanted to make political science more relevant to and active in society.
Ultimately, new areas of research were opened up within the discipline (for instance, the Vietnam War, race relations, poverty, and women's rights), and the well-populated, university-centered discipline became specialized. Political scientists increasingly carved up special areas of the discipline for themselves, each area with a special language and technique that made intercommunication difficult and often without purpose. These subfields rapidly grew into self-contained entities within the field of political science.
During this era of fragmentation, antibehavioral forces found new voices. Research that was distinctly anti-or nonbehavioral found legitimacy as the discipline's professional identity evolved away from its behavioral parochialism. The discipline became more tolerant of various perspectives on politics and political science during the postbehavioral era. The intellectual "community" that behavioralism constructed in the discipline of political science collapsed during the 1970s, the decade that witnessed the fragmentation of the discipline's research agenda. This transpired for at least three reasons: (1) the Caucus for a New Political Science's effectiveness at forcing the field to open up to more research interests; (2) the population explosion that occurred in the discipline following World War II, which increased the competition for recognition among political scientists; and (3) a related mood of openness that prevailed in the discipline following the closed and parochial behavioral era.
Because political scientists were generally required to publish in order to advance the accumulation of knowledge that "scientific communities" need, and because the range of suitable research topics was limited during the behavioral era while the population of the discipline was rapidly increasing, the discipline was quickly saturated. Political scientists sought new areas of expertise and the discipline opened up, allowing for the creation of many new subfields. The topics covered by these new subfields were so diverse by 1977 that Nelson Polsby, the managing editor of the APSR at the time, "conceded that no editor could 'judge the quality of manuscripts over the full range of concerns that political scientists write about'" (quoted in Ricci, pp. 222–223).
The discipline has become so complicated that even political scientists are unable to comprehend completely or become comfortable with its entire range of research. So much material is published in increasingly narrow fields that political scholars find it difficult to keep up with their own subfields, much less understand and integrate other subfields. Specialties and subspecialties continually emerge, and a broader base of expertise results. Each subfield churns out vast quantities of literature, and the literature from each subfield, taken together, is more than any one researcher can master. Nevertheless, one researcher can become an "expert" in the work of one subfield. Therefore, the discipline does not consist of "experts" in political knowledge (a central tenet of the APSA); it consists of "experts" in certain aspects of political knowledge. But while political scientists from different subfields find communication difficult, the notion of a common purpose (the construction of a body of political knowledge) remains.
In the early twenty-first century, however, the claim to this common purpose has come under some scrutiny by a new movement within the discipline called "Perestroika." The Perestroika movement, begun anonymously in 2000, calls attention to two problems in the discipline: its lack of inclusiveness and its increasingly mathematical approach. In many ways, this movement revives the thinking behind the Caucus for a New Political Science movement in its concern for the apparent irrelevance of the discipline in the wider political context and its criticism of an increasingly quantitative orientation within the discipline. Those active in the Perestroika movement consistently point to the growing preponderance of rational choice approaches to studying politics, which, in their view, are becoming hegemonic within the discipline as departments re-populate themselves with scholars using rational choice methodologies in their research. While the Perestroika movement has witnessed some success (such as the founding of a new journal that promises to be more methodologically inclusive), it is not at all clear that it will succeed in altering the increasingly quantitative orientation of the discipline. | https://science.jrank.org/pages/10774/Political-Science-Discipline-Political-Science.html | 79 |
when did political science become an academic discipline | Political science - 19th-century roots of contemporary political science | Contemporary political science traces its roots primarily to the 19th century, when the rapid growth of the natural sciences stimulated enthusiasm for the creation of a new social science . Capturing this fervour of scientific optimism was Antoine-Louis-Claude, Comte Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836), who in the 1790s coined the term idéologie (“ideology”) for his “science of ideas,” which, he believed, could perfect society. Also pivotal to the empirical movement was the French utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), a founder of Christian socialism , who in 1813 suggested that morals and politics could become “ positive ” sciences—that is, disciplines whose authority would rest not upon subjective preconceptions but upon objective evidence. Saint-Simon collaborated with the French mathematician and philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857), considered by many to be the founder of sociology , on the publication of the Plan of the Scientific Operations Necessary for the Reorganization of Society (1822), which claimed that politics would become a social physics and discover scientific laws of social progress. Although “Comtean positivism,” with its enthusiasm for the scientific study of society and its emphasis on using the results of such studies for social improvement, is still very much alive in psychology , contemporary political science shows only traces of Comte’s optimism.
The scientific approach to politics developed during the 19th century along two distinct lines that still divide the discipline . In the 1830s the French historian and politician Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) brilliantly analyzed democracy in America , concluding that it worked because Americans had developed “the art of association” and were egalitarian group formers. Tocqueville’s emphasis on cultural values contrasted sharply with the views of the German socialist theorists Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95), who advanced a materialistic and economic theory of the state as an instrument of domination by the classes that own the means of production. According to Marx and Engels, prevailing values and culture simply reflect the tastes and needs of ruling elites; the state, they charged, is merely “the steering committee of the bourgeoisie .” Asserting what they considered to be an immutable scientific law of history , they argued that the state would soon be overthrown by the industrial working class (the proletariat ), who would institute socialism , a just and egalitarian form of governance ( see also communism ).
The first separate school of political science was established in 1872 in France as the École Libre des Sciences Politiques (now the Institut d’Études Politiques). In 1895 the London School of Economics and Political Science was founded in England, and the first chair of politics was established at the University of Oxford in 1912.
Some of the most important developments in political science since it became a distinct academic discipline have occurred in the United States. Politics had long been studied in American universities, but usually as part of the curricula of law, philosophy , or economics . Political science as a separate discipline in universities in the United States dates from 1880, when John W. Burgess, after studying at the École Libre in Paris, established a school of political science at Columbia University in New York City . Although political science faculties grew unevenly after 1900, by the 1920s most major institutions had established new departments, variously named political science, government, or politics.
Political science in the United States in the last quarter of the 19th century was influenced by the experience of numerous scholars who had done graduate work at German universities, where the discipline was taught as Staatswissenschaft (“science of the state”) in an ordered, structured, and analytic organization of concepts, definitions, comparisons, and inferences . This highly formalistic and institutional approach, which focused on constitutions, dominated American political science until World War II . The work of American political scientists represented an effort to establish an autonomous discipline, separate from history, moral philosophy , and political economy . Among the new scholars were Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), who would be elected president of the United States in 1912, and Frank Goodnow , a Columbia University professor of administrative law and, later, president of Johns Hopkins University , who was among the first to study municipal governments. Their writing showed an awareness of new intellectual currents, such as the theory of evolution. Inspired by the work of Charles Darwin (1809–82), Wilson and others led a transformation of American political science from the study of static institutions to the study of social facts, more truly in the positivist temper, less in the analytic tradition, and more oriented toward realism.
Arthur F. Bentley ’s The Process of Government , little noticed at the time of its publication in 1908, greatly influenced the development of political science from the 1930s to the 1950s. Bentley rejected statist abstractions in favour of observable facts and identified groups and their interactions as the basis of political life. Group activity, he argued, determined legislation, administration, and adjudication. In emphasizing behaviour and process, Bentley sounded themes that later became central to political science. In particular, his insistence that “all social movements are brought about by group interaction” is the defining feature of contemporary pluralist and interest-group approaches.
Although Bentley’s effort to develop an objective, value-free analysis of politics had no initial consequence, other movements toward this goal enjoyed more immediate success. The principal impetus came from the University of Chicago , where what became known as the Chicago school developed in the mid-1920s and thereafter. The leading figure in this movement was Charles E. Merriam, whose New Aspects of Politics (1925) argued for a reconstruction of method in political analysis, urged the greater use of statistics in the aid of empirical observation and measurement, and postulated that “intelligent social control”—a concept reminiscent of the old Comtean positivism —might emerge from the converging interests of politics, medicine , psychiatry, and psychology. Because Merriam’s basic political datum at this stage was “ attitude ,” he relied largely on the insights of psychology for a better understanding of politics. An important empirical work of the Chicago school was Merriam and Harold F. Gosnell’s Non-voting, Causes and Methods of Control (1924), which used sampling methods and survey data and is illustrative of the type of research that came to dominate political science after World War II. Merriam’s approach was not entirely new; in 1908 the British political scientist Graham Wallas (1858–1932) had argued in Human Nature in Politics that a new political science should favour the quantification of psychological elements (human nature), including nonrational and subconscious inferences, a view similarly expressed in Public Opinion (1922) by the American journalist and political scientist Walter Lippmann (1889–1974).
Harold Lasswell (1902–78), a member of the Chicago group, carried the psychological approach to Yale University , where he had a commanding influence. His Psychopathology and Politics (1930) and Power and Personality (1948) fused categories of Freudian psychology with considerations of power. Many political scientists attempted to use Freudian psychology to analyze politics, but none succeeded in establishing it as a firm basis of political science, because it depended too much on subjective insights and often could not be verified empirically. Lasswell, for example, viewed politicians as unbalanced people with an inordinate need for power, whereas “normal” people had no compulsion for political office. Although intuitively insightful, this notion is difficult—if not impossible—to prove scientifically.
Merriam’s Political Power (1934) and Lasswell’s classic Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936)—the title of which articulated the basic definition of politics—gave a central place to the phenomenon of power in the empirical study of politics. Merriam discussed how power comes into being, how it becomes “authority” (which he equated with power), the techniques of power holders, the defenses of those over whom power is wielded, and the dissipation of power. Lasswell focused on “influence and the influential,” laying the basis for subsequent “elite” theories of politics. Although the various members of the Chicago school ostensibly sought to develop political science as a value-free discipline, it had two central predilections: it accepted democratic values, and it attempted to improve the operation of democratic systems. Power approaches also became central in the burgeoning field of international relations , particularly after World War II. Hans Morgenthau (1904–80), a German refugee and analyst of world politics, argued succinctly in Politics Among Nations (1948) that “all politics is a struggle for power.”
The totalitarian dictatorships that developed in Europe and Asia in the 1920s and ’30s and the onset of World War II turned political science, particularly in the United States, away from its focus on institutions, law, and procedures. The constitution of Germany’s post-World War I Weimar Republic had been an excellent model, but it failed in practice because too few Germans were then committed supporters of democracy . Likewise, the Soviet Union’s 1936 constitution appeared democratic but in reality was merely an attempt to mask the brutal dictatorship of Joseph Stalin . Works of this period focused on the role of elites , political parties, and interest groups , on legislative and bureaucratic processes, and especially on how voters in democracies make their electoral choices. This new interest in actual political behaviour became known as “ behavioralism ,” a term borrowed from psychology’s behaviourism . Whereas most earlier thinkers had focused on the “top” of the political system—its institutions—behavioralists instead explored the “bottom,” especially that which could be quantified. The result was that much of political science became political sociology.
Since the time of Marx and Engels, political scientists have continued to debate the relative importance of culture and economic structures in determining human behaviour and the organization of society. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Italian economists Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941) and Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) echoed Marx’s analysis that society was ruled by elites, but they considered this both permanent and natural. They were joined by the German-born Italian political sociologist and economist Robert Michels (1876–1936), whose “iron law of oligarchy” declared rule by the few to be inevitable. Mosca, Pareto, and Michels all agreed that the overthrow of the existing “political class” would simply result in its replacement by another, a view that was supported in the mid-20th century by Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas (1911–95) in his The New Class (1957). Pareto also contributed the idea (which he borrowed from economics) that society is a system tending toward equilibrium: like an economic system , a society that becomes out of balance will tend to correct itself by developing new institutions and laws or by redistributing power. This approach was adopted by much of academic political science after World War II and was later developed by “systems” theory.
In the early 20th century, the Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922) treated the state as a fusion of organic and cultural elements determined by geography. Kjellén is credited with coining the term geopolitics ( geopolitik ), which acquired a sinister connotation in the years after World War I , when German expansionists appealed to geopolitical arguments in support of the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler . Although geopolitics still exerts a considerable influence on political science, particularly in the areas of international relations and foreign policy , the discipline of political geography developed into a distinct subfield of geography rather than of political science.
The German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), who rejected Marx and embraced Tocqueville’s emphasis on culture and values, was perhaps the most influential figure in political science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Marx had proposed that capitalism gave rise to Protestantism: the merchants and princes of northern Europe developed commerce to such an extent that Roman Catholic restrictions had to be discarded. Weber rejected this idea, claiming that Protestantism triggered capitalism: the Calvinist idea of predestination led individuals to try to prove, by amassing capital, that they were predestined for heaven ( see Calvinism ). Weber’s theory of the Protestant ethic is still disputed , but not the fact that religion and culture powerfully influence economic and political development.
Weber understood that the social sciences could not simply mimic the natural sciences, because humans attach widely varying meanings and loyalties to their leaders and institutions. It is not simply facts that matter but how people perceive, interpret, and react to these facts; this makes causality in the social sciences far more complex than in the natural sciences. To be objective, therefore, the social scientist must take into account human subjectivity.
Weber discerned three types of authority: traditional (as in monarchies), charismatic (a concept he developed to refer to the personal drawing power of revolutionary leaders), and rational-legal (characteristic of modern societies). Weber coined the term bureaucracy , and he was the first to study bureaucracies systematically. His theories, which focused on culture as a chief source of economic growth and democracy , still find support among contemporary political scientists, and he must be ranked equally as one of the founders of both modern sociology and modern political science.
Other scholars also contributed to the growth of political science in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In The English Constitution (1867), the English economist and political analyst Walter Bagehot (1826–77), who was also an editor of The Economist , famously distinguished between Britain’s “dignified” offices (e.g., the monarch) and its “efficient” offices (e.g., the prime minister). James Bryce (1838–1922), who taught civil law at the University of Oxford , produced one of the earliest and most influential studies of the U.S. political system in The American Commonwealth (1888). The Belorussian political scientist Moisey Ostrogorsky (1854–1919), who was educated at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques in Paris, pioneered the study of parties, elections , and public opinion in Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties (originally written in French; 1902), which focused on the United States and Britain. In Paris, André Siegfried, teaching at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques and the Collège de France , introduced the use of maps to demonstrate the influence of geography on politics. At first few Britons turned to behavioralism and quantification, instead continuing in their inclination toward political philosophy . In contrast, the Swedish scholar Herbert Tingsten (1896–1973), in his seminal Political Behaviour: Studies in Election Statistics (1937), developed the connections between social groups and their voting tendencies. Before World War II the large areas of the world that were colonies or dictatorships made few important contributions to the growth of political science.
Perhaps the most important irreversible change in political science after World War II was that the scope of the discipline was expanded to include the study of politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—areas that had been largely ignored in favour of Europe and North America . This trend was encouraged by the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for influence over the political development of newly independent countries. The scholarship produced in these countries, however, remained largely derivative of developments in Europe and the United States. Researchers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America , often in partnership with European and American colleagues, produced significant studies on decolonization, ideology , federalism , corruption, and political instability. In Latin America a Marxist-oriented view called dependency theory was popular from the 1960s to the ’80s. Greatly influencing the study of international relations in the United States and Europe as well as in developing countries, dependency theorists argued that Latin America’s problems were rooted in its subservient economic and political relationship to the United States and western Europe. More recently, Latin American political scientists, influenced by methods developed in American universities, undertook empirical studies of the sources of democracy and instability, such as Arturo Valenzuela’s The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (1978). African, Asian, and Latin American political scientists also made important contributions as teachers on the faculties of American and European universities.
Outside the United States, where political science initially was less quantitative, there were several outstanding works. Like Lasswell, the German philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–69) and others adopted Freudian insights in their pioneering study The Authoritarian Personality (1950), which used a 29-item questionnaire to detect the susceptibility of individuals to fascist beliefs. The French political scientist Maurice Duverger’s Political Parties (1951) is still highly regarded, not only for its classification of parties but also for its linking of party systems with electoral systems. Duverger argued that single-member-district electoral systems that require only a plurality to win election tend to produce two-party systems, whereas proportional-representation systems tend to produce multiparty systems; this generalization was later called “Duverger’s law.” The French sociologist Michel Crozier’s The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (1964) found that Weber’s idealized bureaucracy is quite messy, political, and varied. Each bureaucracy is a political subculture; what is rational and routine in one bureau may be quite different in another. Crozier thus influenced the subsequent “bureaucratic politics” approach of the 1970s. | https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-science/19th-century-roots-of-contemporary-political-science | 79 |
when does the maywheather vs mcgregor fight start | How to stream the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight | When does it start? How can you watch it? We have everything you need to know right here.
Jason Cipriani
3 min read
Quintuple champion boxer Floyd Mayweather and UFC Lightweight Champion Conor McGregor are set to enter the ring on Saturday night, August 26. The pay-per-view event kicks off at 6 p.m. PT (9 p.m. ET, 2 a.m. Sunday UK) in Las Vegas for what's expected to be the most watched fight... ever.
The fight is only available in the US to those who pay the nearly $100 pay-per-view fee. But there are a bunch of ways to do that.
If you feel confident enough to place a bet on Saturday night's fight, check out our guide to betting and what the odds mean .
If we know for sure, we'd bet big . At this point, McGregor is the underdog, but with these big-time fights, anything can happen. The experts at CBS Sports put together a helpful roundup of their staff picks, predictions and odds for Saturday night's fight .
Fox Sports will stream the weigh-in on Friday, Aug. 25, at 4 p.m. PT (7 p.m. ET, midnight UK), as well as an hour-long show prior to the fights starting on Saturday night. The first two hours of early boxing bouts will also be streamed by Fox Sports. All of which are free.
To watch the Fox live stream, you'll need to install the Fox Sports Go app on an Android or iOS device, or on an Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV, Xbox One and Roku. Additionally, FoxSportsGo.com will stream the prefight festivities.
You don't have to have cable to stream the fight. Two options -- CBS and UFC -- will let you stream the fight on any device, including your computer, phone, tablet, TV or streaming box.
One option for streaming the fight is to purchase it directly from the UFC . This lets you stream the fight through your computer, phone, Apple TV and many more streaming devices , including the Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV, Android phones or Roku.
Sling TV subscribers can purchase the fight from within the app under the Rentals tab, or by visiting your Sling account page . Sling notes the fight cannot be purchased on an Apple device, but can be viewed on any device after it's purchased.
The PlayStation Store will stream the fight directly to your PlayStation 4. You can purchase the fight on your console through the store or by visiting this page .
Breaking from the traditional means of purchasing directly from a cable or satellite provider, CBS will also make the fight available to stream on the Showtime PPV website as well as its iOS and Apple TV apps. (Disclaimer: CBS is CNET's parent company.)
For those who want to stream the fight on a computer, you can visit ShowtimePPV.com and purchase access for $99.95. Keep in mind, if you purchase through the website you will only have access to the fight on a computer -- and not on your mobile device or Apple TV, unless you use AirPlay or another mirroring option.
Showtime PPV is also available through the Apple TV, iPhone and iPad . Just be sure to purchase the fight on the device you plan to watch it on.
As an added bonus for those who pay to stream the fight, you will also have access to a free trial of Showtime and CBS All Access.
Viewers in Great Britain also have a streaming option: The fight will cost £19.95 through Sky Sports .
Whether or not you end up streaming the fight, follow these Twitter accounts for the best play-by-plays and insider looks.
Update, Aug. 25: This post has been updated with additional ways to stream the fight.
Tech Culture : From film and television to social media and games, here's your place for the lighter side of tech.
Special Reports : All of CNET's most in-depth features in one easy spot.
- More From CNET | https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/mayweather-mcgregor-how-to-stream-fight-time-odds/ | 80 |
when does the maywheather vs mcgregor fight start | How to stream the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight | When does it start? How can you watch it? We have everything you need to know right here.
Jason Cipriani
3 min read
Quintuple champion boxer Floyd Mayweather and UFC Lightweight Champion Conor McGregor are set to enter the ring on Saturday night, August 26. The pay-per-view event kicks off at 6 p.m. PT (9 p.m. ET, 2 a.m. Sunday UK) in Las Vegas for what's expected to be the most watched fight... ever.
The fight is only available in the US to those who pay the nearly $100 pay-per-view fee. But there are a bunch of ways to do that.
If you feel confident enough to place a bet on Saturday night's fight, check out our guide to betting and what the odds mean .
If we know for sure, we'd bet big . At this point, McGregor is the underdog, but with these big-time fights, anything can happen. The experts at CBS Sports put together a helpful roundup of their staff picks, predictions and odds for Saturday night's fight .
Fox Sports will stream the weigh-in on Friday, Aug. 25, at 4 p.m. PT (7 p.m. ET, midnight UK), as well as an hour-long show prior to the fights starting on Saturday night. The first two hours of early boxing bouts will also be streamed by Fox Sports. All of which are free.
To watch the Fox live stream, you'll need to install the Fox Sports Go app on an Android or iOS device, or on an Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV, Xbox One and Roku. Additionally, FoxSportsGo.com will stream the prefight festivities.
You don't have to have cable to stream the fight. Two options -- CBS and UFC -- will let you stream the fight on any device, including your computer, phone, tablet, TV or streaming box.
One option for streaming the fight is to purchase it directly from the UFC . This lets you stream the fight through your computer, phone, Apple TV and many more streaming devices , including the Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV, Android phones or Roku.
Sling TV subscribers can purchase the fight from within the app under the Rentals tab, or by visiting your Sling account page . Sling notes the fight cannot be purchased on an Apple device, but can be viewed on any device after it's purchased.
The PlayStation Store will stream the fight directly to your PlayStation 4. You can purchase the fight on your console through the store or by visiting this page .
Breaking from the traditional means of purchasing directly from a cable or satellite provider, CBS will also make the fight available to stream on the Showtime PPV website as well as its iOS and Apple TV apps. (Disclaimer: CBS is CNET's parent company.)
For those who want to stream the fight on a computer, you can visit ShowtimePPV.com and purchase access for $99.95. Keep in mind, if you purchase through the website you will only have access to the fight on a computer -- and not on your mobile device or Apple TV, unless you use AirPlay or another mirroring option.
Showtime PPV is also available through the Apple TV, iPhone and iPad . Just be sure to purchase the fight on the device you plan to watch it on.
As an added bonus for those who pay to stream the fight, you will also have access to a free trial of Showtime and CBS All Access.
Viewers in Great Britain also have a streaming option: The fight will cost £19.95 through Sky Sports .
Whether or not you end up streaming the fight, follow these Twitter accounts for the best play-by-plays and insider looks.
Update, Aug. 25: This post has been updated with additional ways to stream the fight.
Tech Culture : From film and television to social media and games, here's your place for the lighter side of tech.
Special Reports : All of CNET's most in-depth features in one easy spot.
- More From CNET | https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/mayweather-mcgregor-how-to-stream-fight-time-odds/ | 80 |
when does the maywheather vs mcgregor fight start | How to stream the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight | When does it start? How can you watch it? We have everything you need to know right here.
Jason Cipriani
3 min read
Quintuple champion boxer Floyd Mayweather and UFC Lightweight Champion Conor McGregor are set to enter the ring on Saturday night, August 26. The pay-per-view event kicks off at 6 p.m. PT (9 p.m. ET, 2 a.m. Sunday UK) in Las Vegas for what's expected to be the most watched fight... ever.
The fight is only available in the US to those who pay the nearly $100 pay-per-view fee. But there are a bunch of ways to do that.
If you feel confident enough to place a bet on Saturday night's fight, check out our guide to betting and what the odds mean .
If we know for sure, we'd bet big . At this point, McGregor is the underdog, but with these big-time fights, anything can happen. The experts at CBS Sports put together a helpful roundup of their staff picks, predictions and odds for Saturday night's fight .
Fox Sports will stream the weigh-in on Friday, Aug. 25, at 4 p.m. PT (7 p.m. ET, midnight UK), as well as an hour-long show prior to the fights starting on Saturday night. The first two hours of early boxing bouts will also be streamed by Fox Sports. All of which are free.
To watch the Fox live stream, you'll need to install the Fox Sports Go app on an Android or iOS device, or on an Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV, Xbox One and Roku. Additionally, FoxSportsGo.com will stream the prefight festivities.
You don't have to have cable to stream the fight. Two options -- CBS and UFC -- will let you stream the fight on any device, including your computer, phone, tablet, TV or streaming box.
One option for streaming the fight is to purchase it directly from the UFC . This lets you stream the fight through your computer, phone, Apple TV and many more streaming devices , including the Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV, Android phones or Roku.
Sling TV subscribers can purchase the fight from within the app under the Rentals tab, or by visiting your Sling account page . Sling notes the fight cannot be purchased on an Apple device, but can be viewed on any device after it's purchased.
The PlayStation Store will stream the fight directly to your PlayStation 4. You can purchase the fight on your console through the store or by visiting this page .
Breaking from the traditional means of purchasing directly from a cable or satellite provider, CBS will also make the fight available to stream on the Showtime PPV website as well as its iOS and Apple TV apps. (Disclaimer: CBS is CNET's parent company.)
For those who want to stream the fight on a computer, you can visit ShowtimePPV.com and purchase access for $99.95. Keep in mind, if you purchase through the website you will only have access to the fight on a computer -- and not on your mobile device or Apple TV, unless you use AirPlay or another mirroring option.
Showtime PPV is also available through the Apple TV, iPhone and iPad . Just be sure to purchase the fight on the device you plan to watch it on.
As an added bonus for those who pay to stream the fight, you will also have access to a free trial of Showtime and CBS All Access.
Viewers in Great Britain also have a streaming option: The fight will cost £19.95 through Sky Sports .
Whether or not you end up streaming the fight, follow these Twitter accounts for the best play-by-plays and insider looks.
Update, Aug. 25: This post has been updated with additional ways to stream the fight.
Tech Culture : From film and television to social media and games, here's your place for the lighter side of tech.
Special Reports : All of CNET's most in-depth features in one easy spot.
- More From CNET | https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/mayweather-mcgregor-how-to-stream-fight-time-odds/ | 80 |
when does the maywheather vs mcgregor fight start | Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor | |Boxer||Floyd Mayweather Jr.||Conor McGregor|
|Nickname||Money||The Notorious|
|Hometown||Grand Rapids, Michigan , U.S.||Crumlin , Dublin , Ireland|
|Pre-fight record||49–0 (26 KO)|| 0–0 ( Professional boxing ) |
21–3 (18 KO) ( MMA )
|Age||40||29|
|Height||5 ft 8 in (173 cm)||5 ft 9 in (175 cm)|
|Weight||149 + 1 ⁄ 2 lb (68 kg)||153 lb (69 kg)|
|Style||Orthodox||Southpaw|
|Recognition||5-division world champion||2-division world champion in the UFC|
Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor , billed as The Money Fight [2] [3] [4] and The Biggest Fight in Combat Sports History , [5] was a professional boxing match between undefeated eleven-time five-division boxing world champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. and two-division mixed martial arts (MMA) world champion and, at the time, UFC Lightweight Champion Conor McGregor . The fight took place at T-Mobile Arena in Paradise, Nevada , on August 26, 2017, at the light middleweight limit (154 lbs; 69.9 kg). It was scheduled for twelve rounds and recorded the second highest pay-per-view buy rate in history, behind Mayweather vs. Pacquiao. [6]
Mayweather extended his professional boxing undefeated streak to 50 victories and 0 defeats (50–0), surpassing the 49–0 record of Hall of Famer Rocky Marciano , after defeating McGregor by technical knockout (TKO) in the 10th round. [7] Mayweather's guaranteed disclosed paycheck was $100 million and McGregor's guaranteed disclosed paycheck was $30 million. [8] [9] However, the purse for the two fighters was expected to be substantially higher for each, with Mayweather reportedly earning $280 million from the fight and McGregor earning $130 million. [10] [11] [12]
During his successful UFC mixed martial arts career McGregor maintained an interest in boxing and entertained the idea of a "money fight" with Mayweather. [13] UFC president Dana White dismissed the rumors of a fight with Mayweather on The Dan Patrick Show , stating that Mayweather would have to contact him since McGregor was under contract with the UFC. [14] White even went as far as stating, "Here's what I think the chances are [of the fight happening]: About the same of me being the backup quarterback for Brady on Sunday," referring to Super Bowl LI . [15] In January 2017, it was reported that the two parties had entered an "exploratory phase" in negotiating a potential match between Mayweather and McGregor. On The Herd with Colin Cowherd , White openly offered to pay Mayweather $25 million to hold the proposed bout during a UFC event. He also predicted that pay-per-view viewership of the hypothetical bout could possibly rival Mayweather vs. Pacquiao . [16]
On March 7, 2017, Mayweather called upon McGregor to "sign the paper" and "make it happen", arguing that "if Conor McGregor really wants this fight to happen, stop blowing smoke up everybody's ass." [17] On March 10, 2017, Mayweather stated that only a fight with McGregor would make him come out of retirement. [18] On March 16, 2017, Dana White backpedaled on his stance against a Mayweather–McGregor bout and said that he would not deprive McGregor of a massive payday. [19] [20] On May 18, 2017, McGregor reportedly agreed to all of Mayweather's updated terms and signed the contract. [21] The official confirmation of the fight was made on June 14. [22] An international press tour was held from July 11–14. [23]
In July 2017, IBF junior lightweight champion Gervonta Davis was reported to be going to participate in a co-main event. [24] Earlier in 2017 McGregor called Mayweather a Malteser with eyeballs. [25] On July 19, additional undercard details were released. [26] By that time, three names had been confirmed on the undercard, including British amateur boxer Savannah Marshall , who signed up earlier in the year with Mayweather Promotions , and Badou Jack , who stepped up to fight at light heavyweight. [27] On July 26, 2017, it was announced that former welterweight titleholder Shawn Porter would be headlining the preliminary card, facing Thomas Dulorme . [28] [29] On August 17, Porter pulled out of the fight due to personal reasons, including a death in the family. He was replaced by Cuban boxer Yordenis Ugás . [30] On July 29, it was reported that Gervonta Davis would defend his IBF junior lightweight title against former WBO champion Roman 'Rocky' Martinez . [31] Martínez was dropped due to not having enough time to make the 130 pound [59 kg] limit. [32] Instead Davis has been rescheduled to fight unbeaten prospect Francisco Fonseca . [33] On August 9, 2017, it was announced that Nathan Cleverly would defend his WBA light heavyweight title against Money Team fighter Badou Jack . [34]
A mural was painted in McGregor's Dublin training facility, Straight Blast Gym, depicting McGregor hitting Mayweather with a left-handed punch. [35]
|Main Card (PPV)|
|Weight class||Method||Round||Time||Notes|
|Light middleweight (154 lbs.)||Floyd Mayweather Jr.||def.||Conor McGregor||TKO||10||1:05|
|Junior lightweight (130 lbs.)||Gervonta Davis||def.||Francisco Fonseca||KO||8||0:39||[a]|
|Light heavyweight (175 lbs.)||Badou Jack||def.||Nathan Cleverly||TKO||5||2:47||[b]|
|Cruiserweight (200 lbs.)||Andrew Tabiti||def.||Steve Cunningham||Decision (unanimous) (97–93, 100–90, 100–90)||10||[c]|
|Preliminary Card (Fox prelims)|
|Welterweight (147 lbs.)||Yordenis Ugás||def.||Thomas Dulorme||Decision (unanimous) (94–91, 93–92, 93–92)||10|
|Welterweight (147 lbs.)||Juan Heraldez||def.||Jose Miguel Borrego||Decision (unanimous) (98–96, 97–92, 97–92)||10|
|Preliminary Card (Unaired)|
|Super middleweight (168 lbs.)||Antonio Hernandez||def.||Kevin Newman||Decision (unanimous)||6|
|Super middleweight (168 lbs.)||Savannah Marshall||def.||Sydney LeBlanc||Decision (unanimous) (40–36, 40–36, 40–36)||4|
- ^ For vacant IBF junior lightweight title (only Fonseca is eligible to win the title)
- ^ For WBA (Regular) light heavyweight title
- ^ For vacant USBA cruiserweight title
In the United States, the fight was televised via Showtime pay-per-view , available through both traditional television providers and various digital services, including the Showtime PPV website and apps, and UFC.tv. Fathom Events organized public screenings at venues such as movie theaters. [36] [37] [38] On July 10, 2017, it was announced that pricing for the PPV in the U.S. would mirror that of Mayweather vs. Pacquiao, being set at US$89.95 (with an additional $10 charge for high definition ). [39]
The fight was called by Showtime's lead commentary team of Mauro Ranallo (play-by-play), Al Bernstein (color), and Paulie Malignaggi (color), along with ringside reporter Jim Gray . [40] Showtime produced a four-part documentary series, All Access: Mayweather vs. McGregor , focusing on the preparations for the fight. [41] Fox Sports (the television rightsholder of the UFC) provided shoulder programming for the fight, including coverage of the press tour on UFC Tonight , as well as a pre-show and preliminary card on Fox and Fox Deportes . [39]
Due to the high demand, a large number of television providers, as well as UFC.tv, experienced technical issues with their carriage of the PPV, including errors, buffering and low video quality. The main event was delayed by an hour from its projected start time in order to address these problems. Following the fight, a class-action lawsuit was proposed in Oregon against Showtime Networks for unlawful trading practices and unjust enrichment , alleging that the network knowingly advertised a level of quality it was unable to deliver with the amount of bandwidth it allocated for the PPV stream. [42] [43] Showtime and the UFC stated that they were investigating their respective customer complaints, and would issue refunds on a case-by-case basis. [44]
|Country||Broadcaster|
Sky Sports Box Office held broadcasting rights to the fight in McGregor's native Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Although it was initially believed that the price would match that of the U.S. PPV, the price was set at €24.95 (£19.95). [45] The fight was called for Sky Sports by lead commentator, Adam Smith alongside Carl Froch and British MMA fighter and UFC analyst, Dan Hardy . [46] British radio rights were held by the BBC , with Mike Costello and Steve Bunce on commentary for BBC Radio 5 Live . [47]
In Hispanic America , the fight aired on Fox Premium Action. [48] In Brazil, the event aired on Globosat -owned Combate. [49]
As with Mayweather vs. Pacquiao , it was expected that many viewers would seek unauthorized streams of the fight due to the high cost of the PPV. Showtime successfully received a preliminary injunction against the registrant of a group of 44 websites who planned to illegally stream the fight in violation of its copyrights , and all parties in active concert or participation with them. [50] [51]
It was estimated that nearly 2.93 million viewers illegally streamed the fight, on video streaming websites and social media channels such as Facebook , YouTube and Periscope . [52] [53]
Mayweather was expected to earn at least $100 million, increasing up to four times that amount upon the event achieving all its metrics. [54] McGregor was expected to earn $75 million, but both men signed non-disclosure agreements barring them from publicly communicating the financial details. [55] According to the Nevada State Athletic Commission , Mayweather would earn a guaranteed purse of $100 million and McGregor was guaranteed $30 million. [56]
In a Q&A session in Glasgow in September 2017, McGregor revealed, had he been disqualified , he would have been fined $10 million. The referee also warned him, had he lifted a leg, he would have not been warned and got a straight point deduction. [57]
After the fight Conor McGregor revealed that he earned around $100 million in total. [58] [59]
Guaranteed Base Purses [60]
- Gervonta Davis ($600,000) vs. Francisco Fonseca ($35,000)
- Nathan Cleverly ($100,000) vs. Badou Jack ($750,000)
- Andrew Tabiti ($100,000) vs. Steve Cunningham ($100,000)
- Thomas Dulorme ($75,000) vs. Yordenis Ugás ($50,000)
- Juan Heraldez ($12,500) vs. Jose Borrego ($5000)
- Kevin Newman ($7500) vs. Antonio Hernandez ($7000)
- Savannah Marshall ($5000) vs. Sydney LeBlanc ($3500)
On August 23, 2017, the WBC revealed that the inaugural "Money Belt" would be on the line; it is made from Italian-made alligator leather and encrusted with 3.3 pounds (1.5 kg) of 24-karat gold , 3,360 diamonds , 600 sapphires , and 300 emeralds . [61]
On August 16, 2017, the officials were named for the fight: [62]
- Referee: Robert Byrd
- Judges: Burt Clements, Dave Moretti, and Guido Cavalleri
Both athletes initially agreed to box in 10-ounce (285 g) gloves per Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) rules which require 10-ounce (285 g) gloves for boxing matches contracted over 147 pounds [67 kg] (the fight is contracted at 154 pounds [70 kg]). [63] McGregor, accustomed to wearing 4-ounce (113 g) gloves in his UFC fights, [64] wanted 8-ounce (225 g) gloves for the fight. Mayweather agreed, and both athletes submitted formal requests to box in 8-ounce (225 g) gloves, which was granted by the NSAC. [63]
Experts expected that more money would be bet on the fight than any other boxing match in history; estimates ranged up to $85 million in bets. [65] [66] There were six separate $1 million bets on Mayweather in Las Vegas bookmakers, but a large majority of bets overall were on the underdog, McGregor. [66]
Nevada State Athletic Commission announced the live gate for the event was $55,414,865.79 from 13,094 tickets sold and 137 complimentary tickets given out. This was far less than the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight which grossed $72,198,500 from a paid attendance of 16,219 in 2015, despite claims from Ellerbe and Mayweather that it did more than $80 million. [67]
Showtime Sports’ Stephen Espinoza told the LA Times the fight was expected to generate around 4.4 million domestic buys, which would fall just short of the 4.6 million record which was set by Mayweather-Pacquiao . [68] On December 14, 2017, Showtime officially announced 4.3 million domestic buys, making it the 2nd highest buy rate in pay-per-view history. [69]
Sky Sports initially estimated the fight garnered over a million PPV buys in the UK and grossed in excess of £20 million, which would've surpassed the record set in April 2017 when Anthony Joshua defeated Wladimir Klitschko in front of 90,000 at the Wembley Stadium . This would've also meant the fight generated more buys in the UK than Mayweather-Pacquiao which took place in 2015. [70] Figures later revealed by the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board showed the Mayweather–McGregor fight drew 874,000 PPV buys in the UK. [71]
At the weigh-in, Mayweather tipped the scales at 149.5 lbs, with McGregor at 153 lbs. [72] On the night of the fight, McGregor weighed nearly 20 lbs heavier than Mayweather. [73] [74] Mayweather and McGregor entered the ring following the Irish and American national anthems; the Irish singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Imelda May performed on behalf of Conor McGregor , [75] followed by the American singer-songwriter and actor Demi Lovato , who was personally chosen by Mayweather. [76]
Mayweather was expected to dominate the fight early but McGregor started strong and was ahead on one judge's card for the first few rounds, due in part to Mayweather using the rope-a-dope technique in the early stages. Because of this, the fight looked closer than it actually was due to McGregor dominating the first 3 rounds and Mayweather turning his back to him most of the time. Mayweather eventually abandoned his usual stick-and-move style in order to knock McGregor out. [77] As the fight progressed, McGregor began to fatigue heavily. In Round 9, Mayweather landed a series of punches to McGregor's face, and the onslaught continued into Round 10, when referee Robert Byrd eventually called the fight in favor of Mayweather after McGregor failed to defend himself. [78]
After the match Mayweather stated that he had expected McGregor to be a fast starter and had allowed him to deliver his heavy blows early. [79] [80] McGregor on the other hand was disappointed by what he saw as an early stoppage, but respected the referee's decision. Former boxers such as George Foreman and Evander Holyfield expressed their impression regarding McGregor's boxing skills and the competitiveness of the fight, [81] [82] with Foreman claiming that experts who criticized the fight "should apologize. It was competitive". [83] Mike Tyson gave McGregor an "A grade" for his performance, stating he was impressed. [84] The fight was lauded for its entertaining and exciting nature, especially when compared to Mayweather's most recent bouts. [85]
Mayweather announced in his post-fight interview that he had fought his final boxing match and would officially retire from the sport. Mayweather stated "Any guy that's calling me out? Forget it," putting an end to his boxing career. [86] McGregor said in his post-fight interview that he would be willing to box again and that he would return to mixed martial arts and the UFC. [ citation needed ]
Gervonta Davis failed to make weight at the August 25 weigh in, forcing the IBF to strip him of his title. The title was declared vacant, but would still be on the line for Francisco Fonseca if he secured victory. [87] Davis would go on to win by KO in the eighth round. Nathan Cleverly lost his WBA light heavyweight title to Badou Jack in a one-sided bout which ended when the referee stopped the fight in the fifth. [88] Cleverly retired from boxing after the fight. [89]
- ^ Eligon, John; Mather, Victor (August 26, 2017). "Mayweather vs. McGregor: Highlights From Every Round" . The New York Times . Archived from the original on August 27, 2017 . Retrieved August 27, 2017 .
- ^ Mazique, Brian (July 17, 2017). "Conor McGregor Reportedly Knocked Out In Sparring For 'Money Fight' With Floyd Mayweather Jr" . Forbes . Archived from the original on July 30, 2017 . Retrieved August 12, 2017 .
- ^ "Circus begins: Here's how Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather kicked off 'Money Fight' tour" . MMA Junkie . USA Today. July 11, 2017. Archived from the original on September 24, 2021 . Retrieved September 24, 2021 .
- ^ Jay, Phil (January 31, 2017). "Floyd Mayweather v Conor McGregor – The Money Fight" . World Boxing News . Archived from the original on September 24, 2021 . Retrieved September 24, 2021 . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Mayweather_Jr._vs._Conor_McGregor | 80 |
when does the maywheather vs mcgregor fight start | Mayweather vs. McGregor finally started after midnight ET | Due to pay per view and streaming issues, Mayweather vs. McGregor started a bit late.
By Adam Stites Updated
Update : Due to issues with PPV and streams , a realistic estimate for the opening bell is a little after midnight ET. If you’re ponying up $99.99 to watch, you should probably make sure you’re tuned in a little early, just in case.
The pay-per-view for the much anticipated fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor begins at 9 p.m. ET, but the main event that everyone is waiting to see won’t happen for at least a couple hours.
Instead, there are a few undercard fights on the pay-per-view before Mayweather puts his 49-0 record on the line against the UFC’s lightweight champion.
What time the main event actually begins depends on the length of those contests and how much time it takes to get through the pomp and circumstance of such a big event.
Even after the walk outs, there will first be performances of the national anthems of the United States and Ireland by Demi Lovato and Imelda May , respectively, before the first round begins.
But don’t expect to see Mayweather and McGregor even walk to the ring until at least 11:15 p.m. ET.
There are only three preliminary matches to get through after the pay-per-view starts, but pay-per-view issues forced delays, so you may have to wait up until midnight ET to see the battle for “The Money Belt.” | https://www.sbnation.com/2017/8/26/16209540/floyd-mayweather-conor-mcgregor-start-time-begin-ppv | 80 |
when does the maywheather vs mcgregor fight start | How to watch Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor: Start time, live stream and latest odds | By Justin Bey
/ CBS News
The highly anticipated boxing match between the undefeated pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather and UFC champion Conor McGregor is finally here. Here's everything you need to know before they face off on Saturday night.
The fight will air on Saturday, August 26, at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT, 2 a.m. Sunday GMT). It will be broadcast on Showtime pay-per-view live from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
You can order the event on TV , online and through Showtime's mobile application . The fight will cost you $89.95 for standard definition and $99.95 for high definition. (Showtime is a division of CBS.)
Mayweather (49-0, 26 KOs) is the favorite (-375) over McGregor (+285) who is making his pro-boxing debut, according to Bovada .
Fifty million people are expected to watch the fight Saturday. ESPN projects that it will make $606 million.
On Thursday, MGM and William Hill's Nevada sportsbooks received massive bets on Mayweather, ESPN reports.
At MGM, bettors placed $1 million on Mayweather. The bet would payout $182,000 if he wins. A customer at William Hill's Nevada placed a $1.2 million bet in cash. If Mayweather wins, the customer would win $240,000.
The Mayweather-McGregor fight is expected to be the most heavily bet on boxing match in history , and by the time it begins, it could pass the $60 million in action that the Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight saw in 2015.
"Everyone keeps on talking about the 49-0 and 50-0 but the only numbers that count is these numbers," Mayweather said, while making a hand gesture for money, in an interview with CBSN ahead of the fight. "The number that I'm gonna make is f----ing unbelievable."
Meanwhile, McGregor says his lack of experience shouldn't be underestimated.
"I've been lacing up the gloves my entire existence," McGregor said Friday night, according to the Associated Press. "Of course, we will come with a different approach than people are used to, we will paint many pictures inside the ring. It's not going to end well for Floyd. It's not going to end well for all the people who are doubting me and are so convinced that this is what it is." | https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-watch-floyd-mayweather-vs-conor-mcgregor-fight-start-time-live-stream-odds/ | 80 |
who wrote i will always love you dolly parton | I Will Always Love You | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the Dolly Parton song also recorded by Whitney Houston. For other uses, see I Will Always Love You (disambiguation) .
" I Will Always Love You " is a song written and originally recorded in 1973 by American singer-songwriter Dolly Parton . Written as a farewell to her business partner and mentor Porter Wagoner , expressing Parton's decision to pursue a solo career, [1] the country single was released in 1974. The song was a commercial success for Parton, twice reaching the top spot of Billboard Hot Country Songs : first in June 1974, then again in October 1982, with a re-recording for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas soundtrack .
Whitney Houston recorded a soul - ballad arrangement of the song for the 1992 film The Bodyguard . Houston's version peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for a then-record-breaking 14 weeks. [2] The single was certified diamond by the RIAA , making Houston's first diamond single, the third female artist who had both a diamond single and a diamond album, [3] and becoming the best-selling single by a woman in the U.S. [4] [5] [6] [7] The song was a global success, topping the charts in almost all countries. With over 20 million copies sold, it became the best-selling single of all time by a female solo artist. [8] [9] Houston won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1994 for "I Will Always Love You". [10]
The song has been recorded by many other artists including Linda Ronstadt , [11] John Doe , [12] Amber Riley , LeAnn Rimes , [13] and Sarah Washington , whose dance version reached number 12 on the UK Singles Chart . I Will Always Love You has been recognized by BMI for over ten million broadcast performances. [14]
Problems playing this file? See media help .
Country music singer-songwriter Dolly Parton wrote the song in 1973 for her one-time partner and mentor Porter Wagoner , from whom she was separating professionally after a seven-year partnership. [15] [16] She recorded it in RCA Studio B in Nashville on June 12, 1973. [17]
Author Curtis W. Ellison stated that the song "speaks about the breakup of a relationship between a man and a woman that does not descend into unremitting domestic turmoil, but instead envisions parting with respect – because of the initiative of the woman". [18] The country love track is set in a time signature of common time with a tempo of 66 beats per minute . (Larghetto/Adagio) [19] Although Parton found much success with the song, many people are unaware of its origin; during an interview, Parton's manager Danny Nozel said that "one thing we found out from American Idol is that most people don't know that Dolly Parton wrote [the track]". [20] During an interview on The Bobby Bones Show , Dolly Parton revealed that she wrote her signature song "Jolene" on the same day that she wrote "I Will Always Love You." [21] [22]
Several times (long before Whitney Houston recorded the song), Dolly Parton suggested to singer Patti LaBelle that she record "I Will Always Love You" because she felt LaBelle could have sung it so well. However, LaBelle admitted she kept putting off the opportunity to do so and later deeply regretted it after she heard Whitney Houston's rendition. [23]
"I Will Always Love You" was issued on March 18, 1974, as the second single from Parton's thirteenth solo studio album, Jolene (1974). During its original release in 1974, "I Will Always Love You" reached number four in Canada on the Canadian RPM Country Tracks chart and peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, becoming one of the best selling singles of 1974. [24]
When the 1974 recording of the song reached number one on the country charts, Elvis Presley indicated that he wanted to record the song. Parton was interested until Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker , told her that it was standard procedure for the songwriter to sign over half of the publishing rights to any song Elvis recorded. [25] Parton refused. She recalls:
I said, 'I'm really sorry,' and I cried all night. I mean, it was like the worst thing. You know, it's like, Oh, my God… Elvis Presley.' And other people were saying, 'You're nuts. It's Elvis Presley.' …I said, 'I can't do that. Something in my heart says, 'Don't do that. And I just didn't do it… He would have killed it. But anyway, so he didn't. Then when Whitney [Houston's version] came out, I made enough money to buy Graceland . [26]
The song won Parton Female Vocalist of the Year at the 1975 CMA Awards .
In Curtis W. Ellison's book, Country Music Culture: From Hard Times to Heaven (1995), he stated: "In the early 1990s, when ambiguity in romantic relationships accompanies changing expectations for both men and women, this song demonstrates Dolly Parton's appeal as a songwriter in the pop music market." [18] Ken Knight, author of The Midnight Show: Late Night Cable-TV "Guy-Flicks" of the '80s (2008), commented that Parton is the only singer who can sing "I Will Always Love You" and "make it memorable". [27] Writer Paul Simpson criticized the singer, stating that the track was only written to "soften the blow" of Parton and Wagoner's split. [28]
- "I Will Always Love You" – 2:53
- "Lonely Comin' Down" – 3:09
Parton re-recorded the song for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , released July 12, 1982, as the first single from the soundtrack album . The single eventually hit number one on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, earning Parton a rare distinction: reaching the number one position twice with the same song.
Billboard gave a positive review which said, "The first single from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas isn't the sort of brassy main theme normally used to launch a major movie musical: here Parton reinterprets one of her earliest exercises in pure pop writing, and while older fans may be divided over the breathier, more stylized reading she offers here, the song itself is still a lovely ballad with a soaring chorus." [32]
Cashbox also reviewed the single favorably, saying that "hoisted over a building arrangement, Parton's vocals have never been more convincing or moving. The single choice from her Hollywood flick, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , the tune is sentiment wrapped in an appropriate package replete with strings, oboe and harp in addition to a delicate rhythm section." [33]
|Chart (1982)|| Peak |
position
|Australia ( Kent Music Report ) [34]||72|
|Belgium ( Ultratop 50 Flanders) [35]||4|
|Canada Top Singles ( RPM ) [29]||8|
|Canada Adult Contemporary ( RPM ) [36]||1|
|Canada Country Tracks ( RPM ) [29]||1|
|Netherlands ( Single Top 100 ) [37]||2|
|Sweden ( Sverigetopplistan ) [38]||45|
|US Billboard Hot 100 [39]||53|
|US Adult Contemporary ( Billboard ) [40]||17|
|US Hot Country Songs ( Billboard ) [41]||1|
|Region||Certification||Certified units /sales|
|Australia ( ARIA ) [42]||Gold||35,000|
|United Kingdom ( BPI ) [43]||Silver||200,000|
|United States ( RIAA ) [44]||Platinum||1,000,000|
|Streaming|
|Sweden ( GLF ) [45]||Gold||4,000,000|
Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
Parton recorded "I Will Always Love You" in 1995 as a duet with Vince Gill for her album, Something Special . Following an August 26 performance of the duet at the Grand Ole Opry which aired on TNN , radio stations began giving the duet unsolicited airplay, causing it to debut on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart at number 53. After a performance at the 29th Annual CMA Awards , the song was officially released as a single in November 1995, peaking at number 15. This marked the third time Parton had a top 20 hit with the song. The song was nominated at the 38th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals and was named Vocal Event of the Year at the 30th Annual CMA Awards.
Adapted from the album liner notes.
- Assa Dormi – concertmaster
- Paul Franklin – steel
- Vince Gill – duet vocals
- Owen Hale – drums
- David Hungate – bass
- Brent Mason – guitar
- Terry McMillan – percussion
- Dale Oehler – string arrangements, conductor
- Dolly Parton – lead vocals
- Matt Rollings – piano
- Brent Rowan – guitar
In 1992, American singer Whitney Houston recorded a new arrangement of "I Will Always Love You" for the soundtrack to The Bodyguard , her film debut. The song has a saxophone solo by Kirk Whalum . She was originally to record Jimmy Ruffin 's " What Becomes of the Brokenhearted " as the lead single from The Bodyguard . However, when it was discovered the song was to be used for Fried Green Tomatoes , Houston requested a different song. It was her co-star Kevin Costner who suggested "I Will Always Love You", playing her Linda Ronstadt 's 1975 version from her album Prisoner in Disguise . [50] [51] Producer David Foster and Houston re-arranged the song as a soul ballad. [48] Her record company did not feel a song with an a cappella introduction would be as successful; however, Houston and Costner insisted on retaining it. When Parton heard that Houston was using Ronstadt's recording as a template, she called Foster to give him the final verse, which was missing from the Ronstadt recording, as she felt it was important to the song. Houston's rendition of the song was issued as the soundtrack's leading single on November 3, 1992, by Arista Records .
Houston's recording is not the only version of the song featured in the film. In a scene where she dances with Costner, a version by John Doe can be heard playing on a jukebox.
Houston's version appears at No. 8 on NME ' s Greatest No 1 Singles in History list. [52] In 2004, Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" placed at number 65 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. [53] It was also ranked at number 22 on The Guardian ' s list of Britain's favorite 100 songs, published in May 2002. [54] As of January 2013, Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling single by a female artist of all time [55] as well as one of the best-selling singles of all time. [56]
In February 2014, the song placed at number six on Billboard ' s list of the Top 50 'Love' Songs of All Time. [57] A live performance was included on the 1999 release Divas Live '99 , and a 1994 performance of the song was included on the 2014 CD/DVD release of Whitney Houston Live: Her Greatest Performances . [58]
Houston's cover of "I Will Always Love You" received widespread acclaim from music critics, being now regarded as one of her "signature'' songs. Larry Flick of Billboard wrote that the song is "bolstered by a remarkably restrained (and ultimately effective) vocal by Houston. She builds to dramatic, heartfelt conclusion that makes sense, given the unusually slow-building created by producer David Foster ." [59] Randy Clark of Cashbox noted that "the unstoppable voice and unquestionable talent of Whitney Houston will no doubt come roaring back onto the charts with this cover". [60] Amy Linden of Entertainment Weekly said it "is artistically satisfying and uncharacteristically hip for the MOR songbird." [61] John Martinucci of Gavin Report asserted that Houston "delivers a powerful rendition that reminds us of her natural abilities as a singer with or without musical accompaniment." [62] Chris Willman of the Los Angeles Times commented that the singer "has the goods to deliver on the tune's haunting beauty and resists overpowering it – until the finale, when the key change and stratospheric notes drain all the heart-rending sadness out of the song and make it sound like just another anthem of survival." [63] Stephen Holden of The New York Times called it a "magnificent rendition", commenting,
Houston transforms a plaintive country ballad into a towering pop-gospel assertion of lasting devotion to a departing lover. Her voice breaking and tensing, she treats the song as a series of emotional bursts in a steady climb toward a final full-out declamation. Along the way, her virtuosic gospel embellishments enhance the emotion and never seem merely ornamental. [64]
Peter Stanton of Smash Hits commented, "A slow intro moulds into a crescendo of huggy-kissy-smoochiness that could melt the heart of the yeti of Northern Siberia." [65] Writing for USA Today on November 17, 1992, James T. Jones IV labeled it a "tour-de-force", and added "[Houston] gives a 3 1 ⁄ 2 -star [out of four] performance. Where Dolly Parton's original 'I Will Always Love You' was plaintive and tear-stained, Houston's is gospel-infused and dramatic." [66]
The single spent 14 weeks at the top of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 , which at the time was a record. [67] [68] It became Houston's longest run atop the chart, surpassing her previous record of three weeks with " Greatest Love of All " in 1986. It is also the longest running number-one single from a soundtrack album.
It debuted at number 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, and became Houston's tenth number-one entry two weeks later. It also dominated other Billboard charts, spending 14 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 Single Sales chart, and 11 weeks at number one on its Hot 100 Airplay chart. The song remained at number one on the Mainstream Top 40 chart for nine consecutive weeks. It was Houston's first single on the chart and her first number one. The song also remained at number one for five weeks on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks , and for 11 weeks on the Hot R&B Singles chart becoming the longest running number one on the R&B charts at the time; it remained in the top 40 for 24 weeks. [69] [70] [71] It became Arista Records ' biggest hit. The song was number one on the Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, and R&B chart simultaneously for a record-equaling five weeks; Ray Charles' " I Can't Stop Loving You " in 1962 achieved the same feat on the same charts. [72]
The song stayed at number one in the U.S. throughout January and February 1993, making it the first time Billboard did not rank a new number-one single until March of the new year. Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was also the year-end number one single of 1993 in the US. [73] Similarly, in the UK, Houston's version was ranked the number-one single of 1992, and then made the countdown again in 1993 where it was ranked number nine, marking the first time any musical act had the same single ranked in the top ten of the year-end review two years in a row. [74] In Australia, it was the number 17 single of 1992 and the number two song of 1993. [75] [76]
Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was also a massive international hit, topping the singles charts in almost every country, including the Eurochart Hot 100 Singles , where it spent 13 weeks at the top. The single ruled the summit position for ten weeks in Australia, [77] five weeks in Austria, [78] seven weeks for Belgium, [79] eight weeks in France, [80] six weeks in Germany, [81] eight weeks in Ireland, [82] six weeks in the Netherlands, [83] fourteen weeks in New Zealand, [84] nine weeks in Norway, [85] one week in Spain and Uruguay, six weeks in Sweden, [86] eight weeks in Switzerland, [87] and ten weeks in the UK. [88] The song reached the number one spot in the UK in 1992. Houston's ten-week reign in the UK was the longest run at the top by a solo female artist in the history of the British singles chart, until it was overtaken by Tones & I in 2019. [89] [90] [91] It was the year-end number one song for in three countries – the U.S., Canada and the UK.
Houston's single sold approximately 400,000 copies in its second week at the top of the charts, making it the best-selling song in a single week surpassing Bryan Adams ' " (Everything I Do) I Do It for You ". It broke its own record in the following three weeks, peaking at 632,000 copies in the week ending on December 27, 1992. The January 9, 1993, issue of Billboard reported it had broken its own record for most copies sold in a single week for any song in the Nielsen SoundScan era. This record was broken by Elton John 's " Candle in the Wind 1997 / Something About the Way You Look Tonight ", which sold 3.4 million in the final week of September 1997. [92] "I Will Always Love You" was certified four times Platinum in the U.S. for shipments of over 4 million copies by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on January 12, 1993, making Houston the first female artist with a single to reach that level in RIAA history. [4] [93] According to Nielsen SoundScan , as of 2009, the single had sold 4,591,000 copies, and had become the second best-selling physical single in the US. [6] [94] On January 12, 2022, the single was certified Diamond by the RIAA for selling 10 million equivalent sales units from sales and streams, becoming the second-eldest song in history to do so after Queen 's " Bohemian Rhapsody " and the third song overall in the 20th century to do so, preceded by "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Mariah Carey 's 1994 Christmas single, " All I Want for Christmas is You ". [95] With this accomplishment, Houston became only the third female artist to have a diamond single and album after Carey and Taylor Swift . [95]
In the UK, the single sold over 1,550,000 copies, becoming the tenth best-selling single of the 1990s, and was certified two times Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on January 1, 1993. [96] [97] [98] In 1992 alone the single had sold 960,000 copies in United Kingdom. [99] In 1993 the single sold 395,000 copies in United Kingdom. [100] It was certified Platinum for shipments of over 500,000 copies by the Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI) in Germany. [101] In Japan, "I Will Always Love You" sold over 810,000 copies, staying for 27 weeks on the chart, and became the best-selling single by a foreign female artist at the time, despite not topping the charts. [102] [103]
Only a few hours after Houston's death on February 11, 2012, "I Will Always Love You" topped the U.S. iTunes charts. Also, in the week following her death, the single returned to the Billboard Hot 100 after almost twenty years, debuting at number seven, and becoming a posthumous top-ten single for Houston, the first one since 2001. The song eventually peaked at number three (two spots shy of repeating the feat achieved by Chubby Checker when " The Twist " returned to the top position after previously falling off the chart). [104] It debuted on the Billboard Hot Digital Singles Chart at number three on the chart dated February 25, 2012, with over 195,000 copies downloaded. [105] In the UK, the song charted at number ten the week of Houston's death. [106]
"I Will Always Love You" won the 1994 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance , Houston's third win in the latter category after earlier wins in 1986 and 1988. During the Grammy Award telecast, the Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female award was presented to Houston by composer Dolly Parton and David Foster. The single topped the 1993 Billboard Hot 100 and Hot R&B Singles year-end charts simultaneously, becoming the first single by a female artist and the second overall to achieve that feat behind Prince 's " When Doves Cry " in 1984. In addition, it received Favorite Pop/Rock Single and Favorite Soul/R&B Single awards at the 21st American Music Awards , which was the first record by a solo female artist to win both categories, and the third overall in AMA history behind " Endless Love " by Lionel Richie & Diana Ross in 1982 and " Beat It " by Michael Jackson in 1984. "I Will Always Love You" won two Japan Gold Disc Awards in 1993 for International Song of the Year, and a 1994 International Song of the Year Special Award for Japanese sales of over one million units. [107]
In 2015, "I Will Always Love You" was named the No. 1 Song of the Rock Era in the book The Top 500 Songs of the Rock Era: 1955–2015 . [108]
In 2020, "I Will Always Love You" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". [109]
In 2021, "I Will Always Love You" was listed at number 94 on the updated list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time . [110]
|Year||Awards ceremony||Award description(s)||Results|
|1993||The 19th People's Choice Awards||Favorite New Music Video [111]||Won|
|The 7th Soul Train Music Awards||Best R&B/Soul Single, Female [112]||Won|
|The 7th Japan Gold Disc Awards||Song of the Year (International) [113]||Won|
|The 2nd MTV Movie Awards||Best Song from a Movie [114] [115]||Won|
|The 4th Billboard Music Awards||#1 Hot 100 Single (Hot 100 Single of the Year) [116] [117]||Won|
|#1 Hot R&B Single (R&B Single of the Year) [116] [117]||Won|
|Special Award: Single Most Weeks at No. 1 (14 weeks) [116] [117]||Won|
|No. 1 World Single [116] [117]||Won|
|No. 1 Hot 100 Singles Sales [116]||Won|
|No. 1 Hot R&B Singles Sales [116]||Won|
|1994||The 21st American Music Awards||Favorite Pop/Rock Single [118]||Won|
|Favorite Soul/R&B Single [118]||Won|
|36th Grammy Awards||Record of the Year [119]||Won|
|Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female [119]||Won|
|The 8th Soul Train Music Awards||Best R&B Song of the Year [120] [121]||Won|
|The 8th Japan Gold Disc Awards||Special Award [113]||Won|
After Houston's recording became a hit in 1992, the tabloid press began reporting on a 'feud' between the two performers, stemming from Parton allegedly reneging on an agreement that she would not perform the song for a number of months while Houston's version was on the charts, so as not to compete with Houston's recording. However, both Parton and Houston dismissed any rumors, speaking glowingly of one another in interviews. [122] [123] Houston praised Parton for writing a beautiful song. In return, Parton thanked Houston for bringing her song to a wider audience and increasing the amount of royalties in the process. Parton also gave a live interview, confirming this.
When Houston won the Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female award at the 36th Annual Grammy Awards for her recording, Parton (along with David Foster ) presented the award.
In a statement to Billboard mourning Houston's death in February 2012, Parton said:
Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston. I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.' [124]
The single's music video is credited to Alan Smithee ( Nick Brandt removed his name due to the way Clive Davis re-edited the video), and produced by Rob Newman. It begins with the performance of the song Houston gives at the end of The Bodyguard . The video then cuts to the singer in a dark blue suit sitting in an empty theater with the spotlight shining on her, singing of her love, and when she starts her dramatic vocal finale, the theater changes into open camp surrounded by snow, which is meant to be at Fallen Leaf Lake, California, where The Bodyguard ' s boat scene was filmed. The video is interspersed with scenes from the film and gives the viewer the experience of reliving the moments with Houston. At the time of the video's shooting the singer was pregnant with her daughter Bobbi Kristina, so she is shown only sitting in the theater scenes. [125] On October 24, 2020, the video for "I Will Always Love You" reached one billion views on YouTube. It is the first music video of the 20th century by a solo artist to reach the milestone. Later in that year the 4k video was released.
- A "I Will Always Love You" – 4:31
- A "I Will Always Love You" – 4:31
|Region||Certification||Certified units /sales|
|Australia ( ARIA ) [214]||4× Platinum||280,000 ^|
|Austria ( IFPI Austria) [215]||Gold||25,000 *|
|Denmark ( IFPI Danmark ) [216]||Platinum||90,000|
|France ( SNEP ) [217]||Gold||250,000 *|
|Germany ( BVMI ) [218]||Platinum||500,000 ^|
|Italy ( FIMI ) [219]||Platinum||50,000|
| Japan ( RIAJ ) [220] |
Physical single
|5× Platinum||500,000 ^|
| Japan ( RIAJ ) [221] |
Digital single
|Platinum||250,000 *|
|Mexico ( AMPROFON ) [222]||Gold||30,000 *|
|Netherlands ( NVPI ) [223]||Platinum||75,000 ^|
|New Zealand ( RMNZ ) [224]||Platinum||10,000 *|
|Norway ( IFPI Norway) [225]||Platinum||60,000|
|Sweden ( GLF ) [226]||Platinum||50,000 ^|
|United Kingdom ( BPI ) [227]||2× Platinum||1,670,000 [202]|
|United States ( RIAA ) [228]||Diamond||10,000,000|
* Sales figures based on certification alone.
Jennifer Hudson performed the song in front of Houston, who received The BET Honors Award for Entertainer Lifetime Achievement spanning over 25 years in the industry. The 2010 BET Honors Awards was held at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. and aired on February 1, 2010.
Since Houston's death in 2012, many other artists have performed tributes to the late singer's version of the song, including on February 12, 2012, when Hudson performed the song as a tribute during the 54th Annual Grammy Awards , the day after Houston's death, alongside images of musicians who had died in 2011 and 2012, including Amy Winehouse and Etta James . The song was played at Houston's funeral as her casket was brought out of the church. Parton complimented Hudson on her performance, saying,
I was brought to tears again last night, as I'm sure many were, when Jennifer Hudson sang "I Will Always Love You" on the Grammys in memory of Whitney. Like everybody else, I am still in shock. But I know that Whitney will live forever in all the great music that she left behind. I will always have a very special piece of her in the song we shared together and had the good fortune to share with the world. Rest in peace, Whitney. Again, we will always love you. [229] [230]
The song title also served as the epitaph on Houston's gravestone. [231] In 2012, following Whitney Houston's death, American singer Beyoncé performed a tribute to Houston during her revue Revel Presents: Beyoncé Live in Atlantic City , New Jersey at the Revel resort. [232] [233] She began the performance of her song " Halo " singing the first verse of "I Will Always Love You" a cappella. [233] [234] Later, in 2013, during her The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour , Beyoncé also sang the opening lines of "I Will Always Love You" prior to the performance of "Halo" as the final song of the tour. [235] At the 2017 Commencement of the University of Southern California, Will Ferrell sang "I Will Always Love You" to the graduating class. [236]
British singer Sarah Washington released a dance- cover of "I Will Always Love You" in August 1993. It became her highest-charting hit, reaching number three in Spain, number 12 in the UK, number 15 in Ireland, and number 32 in Sweden. On the Eurochart Hot 100 , it peaked at number 44 in September 1993. It was released on Almighty Records , which described Washington as "an eager young hopeful" and cited her "sensational studio performance" as being key to the ultimate success of the track, also giving credit to London radio station 95.8 Capital FM and its heavy rotation of the song. [238] A black-and-white music video was produced to promote the single. In 2006, Almighty Records released an 11-mixes package of "I Will Always Love You".
Larry Flick from Billboard commented, "There are no less than nine dance music covers of the Whitney Houston megahit "I Will Always Love You". So far, only Sarah Washington's hi-NRG rendering on Almighty Records is worth a spin." [239] In his weekly UK chart commentary, James Masterton wrote, "If anything this new version adds a little more to the song, and at least proves it had genuine soul to start with. Top 10 for sure." [240] Alan Jones from Music Week gave it four out of five, complimenting "a sinewy garage groove with a powerful vocal from the Donna Summer school of disco divas." [241] James Hamilton from the RM Dance Update described it as a " I Will Survive -ish" remake. [242]
- CD single (Dance Mix), UK (1993)
- "I Will Always Love You" (The Dolly Mix) – 6:20
- "I Will Always Love You" (7" Edit) – 5:25
- "I Will Always Love You" (Mighty Mix) – 7:26
- "Body Heat" – 4:38
- CD single (Dance Mix), Scandinavia (1993)
- "I Will Always Love You" (7" Edit) – 5:27
- "I Will Always Love You" (12" Original Mix) – 7:27
- CD single (Dance Mix), Australia (1993)
- "I Will Always Love You" (7" Edit)
- "I Will Always Love You" (12" Original Mix)
- "I Will Always Love You" (Luv'd Up Mix)
- "Body Heat"
|Chart (1993)|| Peak |
position
|Europe ( Eurochart Hot 100 ) [243]||44|
|Ireland ( IRMA ) [244]||15|
|Spain ( AFYVE ) [245]||3|
|Sweden ( Sverigetopplistan ) [246]||32|
|UK Singles ( OCC ) [247]||12|
|UK Dance ( Music Week ) [248]||11|
In 2002, English pop singer Rik Waller took his own version of "I Will Always Love You" into the top ten of the UK Singles Chart , peaking at number 6. [249] It was his debut single and the first released from his debut studio album From Now... , after his taking part in the Pop Idol series.
"I Will Always Love You" was covered by American actress and singer Kristin Chenoweth as a duet with Dolly Parton. It was released on August 9, 2019, [250] as the first single [251] [252] from Chenoweth's album, For the Girls .
Chenoweth reflected on recording "I Will Always Love You" with ET Online, saying "it is a song I've loved since I was a child." She went on to say, "I used to think, 'One day I'm gonna sing that song.' Little did I know that I'd get to sing it with the queen herself." [253]
The song found further chart success as part of the " Forever Country " medley, created in 2016 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Country Music Association Awards. The medley also features " Take Me Home, Country Roads " and " On the Road Again ". Parton performs on the medley, along with 29 other country music artists. The medley debuted at number one on the Billboard US Hot Country Songs chart and number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on October 8, 2016. [254] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Always_Love_You | 81 |
who wrote i will always love you dolly parton | I Will Always Love You | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the Dolly Parton song also recorded by Whitney Houston. For other uses, see I Will Always Love You (disambiguation) .
" I Will Always Love You " is a song written and originally recorded in 1973 by American singer-songwriter Dolly Parton . Written as a farewell to her business partner and mentor Porter Wagoner , expressing Parton's decision to pursue a solo career, [1] the country single was released in 1974. The song was a commercial success for Parton, twice reaching the top spot of Billboard Hot Country Songs : first in June 1974, then again in October 1982, with a re-recording for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas soundtrack .
Whitney Houston recorded a soul - ballad arrangement of the song for the 1992 film The Bodyguard . Houston's version peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for a then-record-breaking 14 weeks. [2] The single was certified diamond by the RIAA , making Houston's first diamond single, the third female artist who had both a diamond single and a diamond album, [3] and becoming the best-selling single by a woman in the U.S. [4] [5] [6] [7] The song was a global success, topping the charts in almost all countries. With over 20 million copies sold, it became the best-selling single of all time by a female solo artist. [8] [9] Houston won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1994 for "I Will Always Love You". [10]
The song has been recorded by many other artists including Linda Ronstadt , [11] John Doe , [12] Amber Riley , LeAnn Rimes , [13] and Sarah Washington , whose dance version reached number 12 on the UK Singles Chart . I Will Always Love You has been recognized by BMI for over ten million broadcast performances. [14]
Problems playing this file? See media help .
Country music singer-songwriter Dolly Parton wrote the song in 1973 for her one-time partner and mentor Porter Wagoner , from whom she was separating professionally after a seven-year partnership. [15] [16] She recorded it in RCA Studio B in Nashville on June 12, 1973. [17]
Author Curtis W. Ellison stated that the song "speaks about the breakup of a relationship between a man and a woman that does not descend into unremitting domestic turmoil, but instead envisions parting with respect – because of the initiative of the woman". [18] The country love track is set in a time signature of common time with a tempo of 66 beats per minute . (Larghetto/Adagio) [19] Although Parton found much success with the song, many people are unaware of its origin; during an interview, Parton's manager Danny Nozel said that "one thing we found out from American Idol is that most people don't know that Dolly Parton wrote [the track]". [20] During an interview on The Bobby Bones Show , Dolly Parton revealed that she wrote her signature song "Jolene" on the same day that she wrote "I Will Always Love You." [21] [22]
Several times (long before Whitney Houston recorded the song), Dolly Parton suggested to singer Patti LaBelle that she record "I Will Always Love You" because she felt LaBelle could have sung it so well. However, LaBelle admitted she kept putting off the opportunity to do so and later deeply regretted it after she heard Whitney Houston's rendition. [23]
"I Will Always Love You" was issued on March 18, 1974, as the second single from Parton's thirteenth solo studio album, Jolene (1974). During its original release in 1974, "I Will Always Love You" reached number four in Canada on the Canadian RPM Country Tracks chart and peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, becoming one of the best selling singles of 1974. [24]
When the 1974 recording of the song reached number one on the country charts, Elvis Presley indicated that he wanted to record the song. Parton was interested until Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker , told her that it was standard procedure for the songwriter to sign over half of the publishing rights to any song Elvis recorded. [25] Parton refused. She recalls:
I said, 'I'm really sorry,' and I cried all night. I mean, it was like the worst thing. You know, it's like, Oh, my God… Elvis Presley.' And other people were saying, 'You're nuts. It's Elvis Presley.' …I said, 'I can't do that. Something in my heart says, 'Don't do that. And I just didn't do it… He would have killed it. But anyway, so he didn't. Then when Whitney [Houston's version] came out, I made enough money to buy Graceland . [26]
The song won Parton Female Vocalist of the Year at the 1975 CMA Awards .
In Curtis W. Ellison's book, Country Music Culture: From Hard Times to Heaven (1995), he stated: "In the early 1990s, when ambiguity in romantic relationships accompanies changing expectations for both men and women, this song demonstrates Dolly Parton's appeal as a songwriter in the pop music market." [18] Ken Knight, author of The Midnight Show: Late Night Cable-TV "Guy-Flicks" of the '80s (2008), commented that Parton is the only singer who can sing "I Will Always Love You" and "make it memorable". [27] Writer Paul Simpson criticized the singer, stating that the track was only written to "soften the blow" of Parton and Wagoner's split. [28]
- "I Will Always Love You" – 2:53
- "Lonely Comin' Down" – 3:09
Parton re-recorded the song for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , released July 12, 1982, as the first single from the soundtrack album . The single eventually hit number one on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, earning Parton a rare distinction: reaching the number one position twice with the same song.
Billboard gave a positive review which said, "The first single from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas isn't the sort of brassy main theme normally used to launch a major movie musical: here Parton reinterprets one of her earliest exercises in pure pop writing, and while older fans may be divided over the breathier, more stylized reading she offers here, the song itself is still a lovely ballad with a soaring chorus." [32]
Cashbox also reviewed the single favorably, saying that "hoisted over a building arrangement, Parton's vocals have never been more convincing or moving. The single choice from her Hollywood flick, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , the tune is sentiment wrapped in an appropriate package replete with strings, oboe and harp in addition to a delicate rhythm section." [33]
|Chart (1982)|| Peak |
position
|Australia ( Kent Music Report ) [34]||72|
|Belgium ( Ultratop 50 Flanders) [35]||4|
|Canada Top Singles ( RPM ) [29]||8|
|Canada Adult Contemporary ( RPM ) [36]||1|
|Canada Country Tracks ( RPM ) [29]||1|
|Netherlands ( Single Top 100 ) [37]||2|
|Sweden ( Sverigetopplistan ) [38]||45|
|US Billboard Hot 100 [39]||53|
|US Adult Contemporary ( Billboard ) [40]||17|
|US Hot Country Songs ( Billboard ) [41]||1|
|Region||Certification||Certified units /sales|
|Australia ( ARIA ) [42]||Gold||35,000|
|United Kingdom ( BPI ) [43]||Silver||200,000|
|United States ( RIAA ) [44]||Platinum||1,000,000|
|Streaming|
|Sweden ( GLF ) [45]||Gold||4,000,000|
Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
Parton recorded "I Will Always Love You" in 1995 as a duet with Vince Gill for her album, Something Special . Following an August 26 performance of the duet at the Grand Ole Opry which aired on TNN , radio stations began giving the duet unsolicited airplay, causing it to debut on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart at number 53. After a performance at the 29th Annual CMA Awards , the song was officially released as a single in November 1995, peaking at number 15. This marked the third time Parton had a top 20 hit with the song. The song was nominated at the 38th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals and was named Vocal Event of the Year at the 30th Annual CMA Awards.
Adapted from the album liner notes.
- Assa Dormi – concertmaster
- Paul Franklin – steel
- Vince Gill – duet vocals
- Owen Hale – drums
- David Hungate – bass
- Brent Mason – guitar
- Terry McMillan – percussion
- Dale Oehler – string arrangements, conductor
- Dolly Parton – lead vocals
- Matt Rollings – piano
- Brent Rowan – guitar
In 1992, American singer Whitney Houston recorded a new arrangement of "I Will Always Love You" for the soundtrack to The Bodyguard , her film debut. The song has a saxophone solo by Kirk Whalum . She was originally to record Jimmy Ruffin 's " What Becomes of the Brokenhearted " as the lead single from The Bodyguard . However, when it was discovered the song was to be used for Fried Green Tomatoes , Houston requested a different song. It was her co-star Kevin Costner who suggested "I Will Always Love You", playing her Linda Ronstadt 's 1975 version from her album Prisoner in Disguise . [50] [51] Producer David Foster and Houston re-arranged the song as a soul ballad. [48] Her record company did not feel a song with an a cappella introduction would be as successful; however, Houston and Costner insisted on retaining it. When Parton heard that Houston was using Ronstadt's recording as a template, she called Foster to give him the final verse, which was missing from the Ronstadt recording, as she felt it was important to the song. Houston's rendition of the song was issued as the soundtrack's leading single on November 3, 1992, by Arista Records .
Houston's recording is not the only version of the song featured in the film. In a scene where she dances with Costner, a version by John Doe can be heard playing on a jukebox.
Houston's version appears at No. 8 on NME ' s Greatest No 1 Singles in History list. [52] In 2004, Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" placed at number 65 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. [53] It was also ranked at number 22 on The Guardian ' s list of Britain's favorite 100 songs, published in May 2002. [54] As of January 2013, Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling single by a female artist of all time [55] as well as one of the best-selling singles of all time. [56]
In February 2014, the song placed at number six on Billboard ' s list of the Top 50 'Love' Songs of All Time. [57] A live performance was included on the 1999 release Divas Live '99 , and a 1994 performance of the song was included on the 2014 CD/DVD release of Whitney Houston Live: Her Greatest Performances . [58]
Houston's cover of "I Will Always Love You" received widespread acclaim from music critics, being now regarded as one of her "signature'' songs. Larry Flick of Billboard wrote that the song is "bolstered by a remarkably restrained (and ultimately effective) vocal by Houston. She builds to dramatic, heartfelt conclusion that makes sense, given the unusually slow-building created by producer David Foster ." [59] Randy Clark of Cashbox noted that "the unstoppable voice and unquestionable talent of Whitney Houston will no doubt come roaring back onto the charts with this cover". [60] Amy Linden of Entertainment Weekly said it "is artistically satisfying and uncharacteristically hip for the MOR songbird." [61] John Martinucci of Gavin Report asserted that Houston "delivers a powerful rendition that reminds us of her natural abilities as a singer with or without musical accompaniment." [62] Chris Willman of the Los Angeles Times commented that the singer "has the goods to deliver on the tune's haunting beauty and resists overpowering it – until the finale, when the key change and stratospheric notes drain all the heart-rending sadness out of the song and make it sound like just another anthem of survival." [63] Stephen Holden of The New York Times called it a "magnificent rendition", commenting,
Houston transforms a plaintive country ballad into a towering pop-gospel assertion of lasting devotion to a departing lover. Her voice breaking and tensing, she treats the song as a series of emotional bursts in a steady climb toward a final full-out declamation. Along the way, her virtuosic gospel embellishments enhance the emotion and never seem merely ornamental. [64]
Peter Stanton of Smash Hits commented, "A slow intro moulds into a crescendo of huggy-kissy-smoochiness that could melt the heart of the yeti of Northern Siberia." [65] Writing for USA Today on November 17, 1992, James T. Jones IV labeled it a "tour-de-force", and added "[Houston] gives a 3 1 ⁄ 2 -star [out of four] performance. Where Dolly Parton's original 'I Will Always Love You' was plaintive and tear-stained, Houston's is gospel-infused and dramatic." [66]
The single spent 14 weeks at the top of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 , which at the time was a record. [67] [68] It became Houston's longest run atop the chart, surpassing her previous record of three weeks with " Greatest Love of All " in 1986. It is also the longest running number-one single from a soundtrack album.
It debuted at number 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, and became Houston's tenth number-one entry two weeks later. It also dominated other Billboard charts, spending 14 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 Single Sales chart, and 11 weeks at number one on its Hot 100 Airplay chart. The song remained at number one on the Mainstream Top 40 chart for nine consecutive weeks. It was Houston's first single on the chart and her first number one. The song also remained at number one for five weeks on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks , and for 11 weeks on the Hot R&B Singles chart becoming the longest running number one on the R&B charts at the time; it remained in the top 40 for 24 weeks. [69] [70] [71] It became Arista Records ' biggest hit. The song was number one on the Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, and R&B chart simultaneously for a record-equaling five weeks; Ray Charles' " I Can't Stop Loving You " in 1962 achieved the same feat on the same charts. [72]
The song stayed at number one in the U.S. throughout January and February 1993, making it the first time Billboard did not rank a new number-one single until March of the new year. Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was also the year-end number one single of 1993 in the US. [73] Similarly, in the UK, Houston's version was ranked the number-one single of 1992, and then made the countdown again in 1993 where it was ranked number nine, marking the first time any musical act had the same single ranked in the top ten of the year-end review two years in a row. [74] In Australia, it was the number 17 single of 1992 and the number two song of 1993. [75] [76]
Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was also a massive international hit, topping the singles charts in almost every country, including the Eurochart Hot 100 Singles , where it spent 13 weeks at the top. The single ruled the summit position for ten weeks in Australia, [77] five weeks in Austria, [78] seven weeks for Belgium, [79] eight weeks in France, [80] six weeks in Germany, [81] eight weeks in Ireland, [82] six weeks in the Netherlands, [83] fourteen weeks in New Zealand, [84] nine weeks in Norway, [85] one week in Spain and Uruguay, six weeks in Sweden, [86] eight weeks in Switzerland, [87] and ten weeks in the UK. [88] The song reached the number one spot in the UK in 1992. Houston's ten-week reign in the UK was the longest run at the top by a solo female artist in the history of the British singles chart, until it was overtaken by Tones & I in 2019. [89] [90] [91] It was the year-end number one song for in three countries – the U.S., Canada and the UK.
Houston's single sold approximately 400,000 copies in its second week at the top of the charts, making it the best-selling song in a single week surpassing Bryan Adams ' " (Everything I Do) I Do It for You ". It broke its own record in the following three weeks, peaking at 632,000 copies in the week ending on December 27, 1992. The January 9, 1993, issue of Billboard reported it had broken its own record for most copies sold in a single week for any song in the Nielsen SoundScan era. This record was broken by Elton John 's " Candle in the Wind 1997 / Something About the Way You Look Tonight ", which sold 3.4 million in the final week of September 1997. [92] "I Will Always Love You" was certified four times Platinum in the U.S. for shipments of over 4 million copies by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on January 12, 1993, making Houston the first female artist with a single to reach that level in RIAA history. [4] [93] According to Nielsen SoundScan , as of 2009, the single had sold 4,591,000 copies, and had become the second best-selling physical single in the US. [6] [94] On January 12, 2022, the single was certified Diamond by the RIAA for selling 10 million equivalent sales units from sales and streams, becoming the second-eldest song in history to do so after Queen 's " Bohemian Rhapsody " and the third song overall in the 20th century to do so, preceded by "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Mariah Carey 's 1994 Christmas single, " All I Want for Christmas is You ". [95] With this accomplishment, Houston became only the third female artist to have a diamond single and album after Carey and Taylor Swift . [95]
In the UK, the single sold over 1,550,000 copies, becoming the tenth best-selling single of the 1990s, and was certified two times Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on January 1, 1993. [96] [97] [98] In 1992 alone the single had sold 960,000 copies in United Kingdom. [99] In 1993 the single sold 395,000 copies in United Kingdom. [100] It was certified Platinum for shipments of over 500,000 copies by the Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI) in Germany. [101] In Japan, "I Will Always Love You" sold over 810,000 copies, staying for 27 weeks on the chart, and became the best-selling single by a foreign female artist at the time, despite not topping the charts. [102] [103]
Only a few hours after Houston's death on February 11, 2012, "I Will Always Love You" topped the U.S. iTunes charts. Also, in the week following her death, the single returned to the Billboard Hot 100 after almost twenty years, debuting at number seven, and becoming a posthumous top-ten single for Houston, the first one since 2001. The song eventually peaked at number three (two spots shy of repeating the feat achieved by Chubby Checker when " The Twist " returned to the top position after previously falling off the chart). [104] It debuted on the Billboard Hot Digital Singles Chart at number three on the chart dated February 25, 2012, with over 195,000 copies downloaded. [105] In the UK, the song charted at number ten the week of Houston's death. [106]
"I Will Always Love You" won the 1994 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance , Houston's third win in the latter category after earlier wins in 1986 and 1988. During the Grammy Award telecast, the Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female award was presented to Houston by composer Dolly Parton and David Foster. The single topped the 1993 Billboard Hot 100 and Hot R&B Singles year-end charts simultaneously, becoming the first single by a female artist and the second overall to achieve that feat behind Prince 's " When Doves Cry " in 1984. In addition, it received Favorite Pop/Rock Single and Favorite Soul/R&B Single awards at the 21st American Music Awards , which was the first record by a solo female artist to win both categories, and the third overall in AMA history behind " Endless Love " by Lionel Richie & Diana Ross in 1982 and " Beat It " by Michael Jackson in 1984. "I Will Always Love You" won two Japan Gold Disc Awards in 1993 for International Song of the Year, and a 1994 International Song of the Year Special Award for Japanese sales of over one million units. [107]
In 2015, "I Will Always Love You" was named the No. 1 Song of the Rock Era in the book The Top 500 Songs of the Rock Era: 1955–2015 . [108]
In 2020, "I Will Always Love You" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". [109]
In 2021, "I Will Always Love You" was listed at number 94 on the updated list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time . [110]
|Year||Awards ceremony||Award description(s)||Results|
|1993||The 19th People's Choice Awards||Favorite New Music Video [111]||Won|
|The 7th Soul Train Music Awards||Best R&B/Soul Single, Female [112]||Won|
|The 7th Japan Gold Disc Awards||Song of the Year (International) [113]||Won|
|The 2nd MTV Movie Awards||Best Song from a Movie [114] [115]||Won|
|The 4th Billboard Music Awards||#1 Hot 100 Single (Hot 100 Single of the Year) [116] [117]||Won|
|#1 Hot R&B Single (R&B Single of the Year) [116] [117]||Won|
|Special Award: Single Most Weeks at No. 1 (14 weeks) [116] [117]||Won|
|No. 1 World Single [116] [117]||Won|
|No. 1 Hot 100 Singles Sales [116]||Won|
|No. 1 Hot R&B Singles Sales [116]||Won|
|1994||The 21st American Music Awards||Favorite Pop/Rock Single [118]||Won|
|Favorite Soul/R&B Single [118]||Won|
|36th Grammy Awards||Record of the Year [119]||Won|
|Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female [119]||Won|
|The 8th Soul Train Music Awards||Best R&B Song of the Year [120] [121]||Won|
|The 8th Japan Gold Disc Awards||Special Award [113]||Won|
After Houston's recording became a hit in 1992, the tabloid press began reporting on a 'feud' between the two performers, stemming from Parton allegedly reneging on an agreement that she would not perform the song for a number of months while Houston's version was on the charts, so as not to compete with Houston's recording. However, both Parton and Houston dismissed any rumors, speaking glowingly of one another in interviews. [122] [123] Houston praised Parton for writing a beautiful song. In return, Parton thanked Houston for bringing her song to a wider audience and increasing the amount of royalties in the process. Parton also gave a live interview, confirming this.
When Houston won the Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female award at the 36th Annual Grammy Awards for her recording, Parton (along with David Foster ) presented the award.
In a statement to Billboard mourning Houston's death in February 2012, Parton said:
Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston. I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.' [124]
The single's music video is credited to Alan Smithee ( Nick Brandt removed his name due to the way Clive Davis re-edited the video), and produced by Rob Newman. It begins with the performance of the song Houston gives at the end of The Bodyguard . The video then cuts to the singer in a dark blue suit sitting in an empty theater with the spotlight shining on her, singing of her love, and when she starts her dramatic vocal finale, the theater changes into open camp surrounded by snow, which is meant to be at Fallen Leaf Lake, California, where The Bodyguard ' s boat scene was filmed. The video is interspersed with scenes from the film and gives the viewer the experience of reliving the moments with Houston. At the time of the video's shooting the singer was pregnant with her daughter Bobbi Kristina, so she is shown only sitting in the theater scenes. [125] On October 24, 2020, the video for "I Will Always Love You" reached one billion views on YouTube. It is the first music video of the 20th century by a solo artist to reach the milestone. Later in that year the 4k video was released.
- A "I Will Always Love You" – 4:31
- A "I Will Always Love You" – 4:31
|Region||Certification||Certified units /sales|
|Australia ( ARIA ) [214]||4× Platinum||280,000 ^|
|Austria ( IFPI Austria) [215]||Gold||25,000 *|
|Denmark ( IFPI Danmark ) [216]||Platinum||90,000|
|France ( SNEP ) [217]||Gold||250,000 *|
|Germany ( BVMI ) [218]||Platinum||500,000 ^|
|Italy ( FIMI ) [219]||Platinum||50,000|
| Japan ( RIAJ ) [220] |
Physical single
|5× Platinum||500,000 ^|
| Japan ( RIAJ ) [221] |
Digital single
|Platinum||250,000 *|
|Mexico ( AMPROFON ) [222]||Gold||30,000 *|
|Netherlands ( NVPI ) [223]||Platinum||75,000 ^|
|New Zealand ( RMNZ ) [224]||Platinum||10,000 *|
|Norway ( IFPI Norway) [225]||Platinum||60,000|
|Sweden ( GLF ) [226]||Platinum||50,000 ^|
|United Kingdom ( BPI ) [227]||2× Platinum||1,670,000 [202]|
|United States ( RIAA ) [228]||Diamond||10,000,000|
* Sales figures based on certification alone.
Jennifer Hudson performed the song in front of Houston, who received The BET Honors Award for Entertainer Lifetime Achievement spanning over 25 years in the industry. The 2010 BET Honors Awards was held at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. and aired on February 1, 2010.
Since Houston's death in 2012, many other artists have performed tributes to the late singer's version of the song, including on February 12, 2012, when Hudson performed the song as a tribute during the 54th Annual Grammy Awards , the day after Houston's death, alongside images of musicians who had died in 2011 and 2012, including Amy Winehouse and Etta James . The song was played at Houston's funeral as her casket was brought out of the church. Parton complimented Hudson on her performance, saying,
I was brought to tears again last night, as I'm sure many were, when Jennifer Hudson sang "I Will Always Love You" on the Grammys in memory of Whitney. Like everybody else, I am still in shock. But I know that Whitney will live forever in all the great music that she left behind. I will always have a very special piece of her in the song we shared together and had the good fortune to share with the world. Rest in peace, Whitney. Again, we will always love you. [229] [230]
The song title also served as the epitaph on Houston's gravestone. [231] In 2012, following Whitney Houston's death, American singer Beyoncé performed a tribute to Houston during her revue Revel Presents: Beyoncé Live in Atlantic City , New Jersey at the Revel resort. [232] [233] She began the performance of her song " Halo " singing the first verse of "I Will Always Love You" a cappella. [233] [234] Later, in 2013, during her The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour , Beyoncé also sang the opening lines of "I Will Always Love You" prior to the performance of "Halo" as the final song of the tour. [235] At the 2017 Commencement of the University of Southern California, Will Ferrell sang "I Will Always Love You" to the graduating class. [236]
British singer Sarah Washington released a dance- cover of "I Will Always Love You" in August 1993. It became her highest-charting hit, reaching number three in Spain, number 12 in the UK, number 15 in Ireland, and number 32 in Sweden. On the Eurochart Hot 100 , it peaked at number 44 in September 1993. It was released on Almighty Records , which described Washington as "an eager young hopeful" and cited her "sensational studio performance" as being key to the ultimate success of the track, also giving credit to London radio station 95.8 Capital FM and its heavy rotation of the song. [238] A black-and-white music video was produced to promote the single. In 2006, Almighty Records released an 11-mixes package of "I Will Always Love You".
Larry Flick from Billboard commented, "There are no less than nine dance music covers of the Whitney Houston megahit "I Will Always Love You". So far, only Sarah Washington's hi-NRG rendering on Almighty Records is worth a spin." [239] In his weekly UK chart commentary, James Masterton wrote, "If anything this new version adds a little more to the song, and at least proves it had genuine soul to start with. Top 10 for sure." [240] Alan Jones from Music Week gave it four out of five, complimenting "a sinewy garage groove with a powerful vocal from the Donna Summer school of disco divas." [241] James Hamilton from the RM Dance Update described it as a " I Will Survive -ish" remake. [242]
- CD single (Dance Mix), UK (1993)
- "I Will Always Love You" (The Dolly Mix) – 6:20
- "I Will Always Love You" (7" Edit) – 5:25
- "I Will Always Love You" (Mighty Mix) – 7:26
- "Body Heat" – 4:38
- CD single (Dance Mix), Scandinavia (1993)
- "I Will Always Love You" (7" Edit) – 5:27
- "I Will Always Love You" (12" Original Mix) – 7:27
- CD single (Dance Mix), Australia (1993)
- "I Will Always Love You" (7" Edit)
- "I Will Always Love You" (12" Original Mix)
- "I Will Always Love You" (Luv'd Up Mix)
- "Body Heat"
|Chart (1993)|| Peak |
position
|Europe ( Eurochart Hot 100 ) [243]||44|
|Ireland ( IRMA ) [244]||15|
|Spain ( AFYVE ) [245]||3|
|Sweden ( Sverigetopplistan ) [246]||32|
|UK Singles ( OCC ) [247]||12|
|UK Dance ( Music Week ) [248]||11|
In 2002, English pop singer Rik Waller took his own version of "I Will Always Love You" into the top ten of the UK Singles Chart , peaking at number 6. [249] It was his debut single and the first released from his debut studio album From Now... , after his taking part in the Pop Idol series.
"I Will Always Love You" was covered by American actress and singer Kristin Chenoweth as a duet with Dolly Parton. It was released on August 9, 2019, [250] as the first single [251] [252] from Chenoweth's album, For the Girls .
Chenoweth reflected on recording "I Will Always Love You" with ET Online, saying "it is a song I've loved since I was a child." She went on to say, "I used to think, 'One day I'm gonna sing that song.' Little did I know that I'd get to sing it with the queen herself." [253]
The song found further chart success as part of the " Forever Country " medley, created in 2016 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Country Music Association Awards. The medley also features " Take Me Home, Country Roads " and " On the Road Again ". Parton performs on the medley, along with 29 other country music artists. The medley debuted at number one on the Billboard US Hot Country Songs chart and number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on October 8, 2016. [254] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Always_Love_You | 81 |
who wrote i will always love you dolly parton | I Will Always Love You | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the Dolly Parton song also recorded by Whitney Houston. For other uses, see I Will Always Love You (disambiguation) .
" I Will Always Love You " is a song written and originally recorded in 1973 by American singer-songwriter Dolly Parton . Written as a farewell to her business partner and mentor Porter Wagoner , expressing Parton's decision to pursue a solo career, [1] the country single was released in 1974. The song was a commercial success for Parton, twice reaching the top spot of Billboard Hot Country Songs : first in June 1974, then again in October 1982, with a re-recording for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas soundtrack .
Whitney Houston recorded a soul - ballad arrangement of the song for the 1992 film The Bodyguard . Houston's version peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for a then-record-breaking 14 weeks. [2] The single was certified diamond by the RIAA , making Houston's first diamond single, the third female artist who had both a diamond single and a diamond album, [3] and becoming the best-selling single by a woman in the U.S. [4] [5] [6] [7] The song was a global success, topping the charts in almost all countries. With over 20 million copies sold, it became the best-selling single of all time by a female solo artist. [8] [9] Houston won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1994 for "I Will Always Love You". [10]
The song has been recorded by many other artists including Linda Ronstadt , [11] John Doe , [12] Amber Riley , LeAnn Rimes , [13] and Sarah Washington , whose dance version reached number 12 on the UK Singles Chart . I Will Always Love You has been recognized by BMI for over ten million broadcast performances. [14]
Problems playing this file? See media help .
Country music singer-songwriter Dolly Parton wrote the song in 1973 for her one-time partner and mentor Porter Wagoner , from whom she was separating professionally after a seven-year partnership. [15] [16] She recorded it in RCA Studio B in Nashville on June 12, 1973. [17]
Author Curtis W. Ellison stated that the song "speaks about the breakup of a relationship between a man and a woman that does not descend into unremitting domestic turmoil, but instead envisions parting with respect – because of the initiative of the woman". [18] The country love track is set in a time signature of common time with a tempo of 66 beats per minute . (Larghetto/Adagio) [19] Although Parton found much success with the song, many people are unaware of its origin; during an interview, Parton's manager Danny Nozel said that "one thing we found out from American Idol is that most people don't know that Dolly Parton wrote [the track]". [20] During an interview on The Bobby Bones Show , Dolly Parton revealed that she wrote her signature song "Jolene" on the same day that she wrote "I Will Always Love You." [21] [22]
Several times (long before Whitney Houston recorded the song), Dolly Parton suggested to singer Patti LaBelle that she record "I Will Always Love You" because she felt LaBelle could have sung it so well. However, LaBelle admitted she kept putting off the opportunity to do so and later deeply regretted it after she heard Whitney Houston's rendition. [23]
"I Will Always Love You" was issued on March 18, 1974, as the second single from Parton's thirteenth solo studio album, Jolene (1974). During its original release in 1974, "I Will Always Love You" reached number four in Canada on the Canadian RPM Country Tracks chart and peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, becoming one of the best selling singles of 1974. [24]
When the 1974 recording of the song reached number one on the country charts, Elvis Presley indicated that he wanted to record the song. Parton was interested until Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker , told her that it was standard procedure for the songwriter to sign over half of the publishing rights to any song Elvis recorded. [25] Parton refused. She recalls:
I said, 'I'm really sorry,' and I cried all night. I mean, it was like the worst thing. You know, it's like, Oh, my God… Elvis Presley.' And other people were saying, 'You're nuts. It's Elvis Presley.' …I said, 'I can't do that. Something in my heart says, 'Don't do that. And I just didn't do it… He would have killed it. But anyway, so he didn't. Then when Whitney [Houston's version] came out, I made enough money to buy Graceland . [26]
The song won Parton Female Vocalist of the Year at the 1975 CMA Awards .
In Curtis W. Ellison's book, Country Music Culture: From Hard Times to Heaven (1995), he stated: "In the early 1990s, when ambiguity in romantic relationships accompanies changing expectations for both men and women, this song demonstrates Dolly Parton's appeal as a songwriter in the pop music market." [18] Ken Knight, author of The Midnight Show: Late Night Cable-TV "Guy-Flicks" of the '80s (2008), commented that Parton is the only singer who can sing "I Will Always Love You" and "make it memorable". [27] Writer Paul Simpson criticized the singer, stating that the track was only written to "soften the blow" of Parton and Wagoner's split. [28]
- "I Will Always Love You" – 2:53
- "Lonely Comin' Down" – 3:09
Parton re-recorded the song for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , released July 12, 1982, as the first single from the soundtrack album . The single eventually hit number one on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, earning Parton a rare distinction: reaching the number one position twice with the same song.
Billboard gave a positive review which said, "The first single from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas isn't the sort of brassy main theme normally used to launch a major movie musical: here Parton reinterprets one of her earliest exercises in pure pop writing, and while older fans may be divided over the breathier, more stylized reading she offers here, the song itself is still a lovely ballad with a soaring chorus." [32]
Cashbox also reviewed the single favorably, saying that "hoisted over a building arrangement, Parton's vocals have never been more convincing or moving. The single choice from her Hollywood flick, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , the tune is sentiment wrapped in an appropriate package replete with strings, oboe and harp in addition to a delicate rhythm section." [33]
|Chart (1982)|| Peak |
position
|Australia ( Kent Music Report ) [34]||72|
|Belgium ( Ultratop 50 Flanders) [35]||4|
|Canada Top Singles ( RPM ) [29]||8|
|Canada Adult Contemporary ( RPM ) [36]||1|
|Canada Country Tracks ( RPM ) [29]||1|
|Netherlands ( Single Top 100 ) [37]||2|
|Sweden ( Sverigetopplistan ) [38]||45|
|US Billboard Hot 100 [39]||53|
|US Adult Contemporary ( Billboard ) [40]||17|
|US Hot Country Songs ( Billboard ) [41]||1|
|Region||Certification||Certified units /sales|
|Australia ( ARIA ) [42]||Gold||35,000|
|United Kingdom ( BPI ) [43]||Silver||200,000|
|United States ( RIAA ) [44]||Platinum||1,000,000|
|Streaming|
|Sweden ( GLF ) [45]||Gold||4,000,000|
Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
Parton recorded "I Will Always Love You" in 1995 as a duet with Vince Gill for her album, Something Special . Following an August 26 performance of the duet at the Grand Ole Opry which aired on TNN , radio stations began giving the duet unsolicited airplay, causing it to debut on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart at number 53. After a performance at the 29th Annual CMA Awards , the song was officially released as a single in November 1995, peaking at number 15. This marked the third time Parton had a top 20 hit with the song. The song was nominated at the 38th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals and was named Vocal Event of the Year at the 30th Annual CMA Awards.
Adapted from the album liner notes.
- Assa Dormi – concertmaster
- Paul Franklin – steel
- Vince Gill – duet vocals
- Owen Hale – drums
- David Hungate – bass
- Brent Mason – guitar
- Terry McMillan – percussion
- Dale Oehler – string arrangements, conductor
- Dolly Parton – lead vocals
- Matt Rollings – piano
- Brent Rowan – guitar
In 1992, American singer Whitney Houston recorded a new arrangement of "I Will Always Love You" for the soundtrack to The Bodyguard , her film debut. The song has a saxophone solo by Kirk Whalum . She was originally to record Jimmy Ruffin 's " What Becomes of the Brokenhearted " as the lead single from The Bodyguard . However, when it was discovered the song was to be used for Fried Green Tomatoes , Houston requested a different song. It was her co-star Kevin Costner who suggested "I Will Always Love You", playing her Linda Ronstadt 's 1975 version from her album Prisoner in Disguise . [50] [51] Producer David Foster and Houston re-arranged the song as a soul ballad. [48] Her record company did not feel a song with an a cappella introduction would be as successful; however, Houston and Costner insisted on retaining it. When Parton heard that Houston was using Ronstadt's recording as a template, she called Foster to give him the final verse, which was missing from the Ronstadt recording, as she felt it was important to the song. Houston's rendition of the song was issued as the soundtrack's leading single on November 3, 1992, by Arista Records .
Houston's recording is not the only version of the song featured in the film. In a scene where she dances with Costner, a version by John Doe can be heard playing on a jukebox.
Houston's version appears at No. 8 on NME ' s Greatest No 1 Singles in History list. [52] In 2004, Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" placed at number 65 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. [53] It was also ranked at number 22 on The Guardian ' s list of Britain's favorite 100 songs, published in May 2002. [54] As of January 2013, Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling single by a female artist of all time [55] as well as one of the best-selling singles of all time. [56]
In February 2014, the song placed at number six on Billboard ' s list of the Top 50 'Love' Songs of All Time. [57] A live performance was included on the 1999 release Divas Live '99 , and a 1994 performance of the song was included on the 2014 CD/DVD release of Whitney Houston Live: Her Greatest Performances . [58]
Houston's cover of "I Will Always Love You" received widespread acclaim from music critics, being now regarded as one of her "signature'' songs. Larry Flick of Billboard wrote that the song is "bolstered by a remarkably restrained (and ultimately effective) vocal by Houston. She builds to dramatic, heartfelt conclusion that makes sense, given the unusually slow-building created by producer David Foster ." [59] Randy Clark of Cashbox noted that "the unstoppable voice and unquestionable talent of Whitney Houston will no doubt come roaring back onto the charts with this cover". [60] Amy Linden of Entertainment Weekly said it "is artistically satisfying and uncharacteristically hip for the MOR songbird." [61] John Martinucci of Gavin Report asserted that Houston "delivers a powerful rendition that reminds us of her natural abilities as a singer with or without musical accompaniment." [62] Chris Willman of the Los Angeles Times commented that the singer "has the goods to deliver on the tune's haunting beauty and resists overpowering it – until the finale, when the key change and stratospheric notes drain all the heart-rending sadness out of the song and make it sound like just another anthem of survival." [63] Stephen Holden of The New York Times called it a "magnificent rendition", commenting,
Houston transforms a plaintive country ballad into a towering pop-gospel assertion of lasting devotion to a departing lover. Her voice breaking and tensing, she treats the song as a series of emotional bursts in a steady climb toward a final full-out declamation. Along the way, her virtuosic gospel embellishments enhance the emotion and never seem merely ornamental. [64]
Peter Stanton of Smash Hits commented, "A slow intro moulds into a crescendo of huggy-kissy-smoochiness that could melt the heart of the yeti of Northern Siberia." [65] Writing for USA Today on November 17, 1992, James T. Jones IV labeled it a "tour-de-force", and added "[Houston] gives a 3 1 ⁄ 2 -star [out of four] performance. Where Dolly Parton's original 'I Will Always Love You' was plaintive and tear-stained, Houston's is gospel-infused and dramatic." [66]
The single spent 14 weeks at the top of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 , which at the time was a record. [67] [68] It became Houston's longest run atop the chart, surpassing her previous record of three weeks with " Greatest Love of All " in 1986. It is also the longest running number-one single from a soundtrack album.
It debuted at number 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, and became Houston's tenth number-one entry two weeks later. It also dominated other Billboard charts, spending 14 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 Single Sales chart, and 11 weeks at number one on its Hot 100 Airplay chart. The song remained at number one on the Mainstream Top 40 chart for nine consecutive weeks. It was Houston's first single on the chart and her first number one. The song also remained at number one for five weeks on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks , and for 11 weeks on the Hot R&B Singles chart becoming the longest running number one on the R&B charts at the time; it remained in the top 40 for 24 weeks. [69] [70] [71] It became Arista Records ' biggest hit. The song was number one on the Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, and R&B chart simultaneously for a record-equaling five weeks; Ray Charles' " I Can't Stop Loving You " in 1962 achieved the same feat on the same charts. [72]
The song stayed at number one in the U.S. throughout January and February 1993, making it the first time Billboard did not rank a new number-one single until March of the new year. Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was also the year-end number one single of 1993 in the US. [73] Similarly, in the UK, Houston's version was ranked the number-one single of 1992, and then made the countdown again in 1993 where it was ranked number nine, marking the first time any musical act had the same single ranked in the top ten of the year-end review two years in a row. [74] In Australia, it was the number 17 single of 1992 and the number two song of 1993. [75] [76]
Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was also a massive international hit, topping the singles charts in almost every country, including the Eurochart Hot 100 Singles , where it spent 13 weeks at the top. The single ruled the summit position for ten weeks in Australia, [77] five weeks in Austria, [78] seven weeks for Belgium, [79] eight weeks in France, [80] six weeks in Germany, [81] eight weeks in Ireland, [82] six weeks in the Netherlands, [83] fourteen weeks in New Zealand, [84] nine weeks in Norway, [85] one week in Spain and Uruguay, six weeks in Sweden, [86] eight weeks in Switzerland, [87] and ten weeks in the UK. [88] The song reached the number one spot in the UK in 1992. Houston's ten-week reign in the UK was the longest run at the top by a solo female artist in the history of the British singles chart, until it was overtaken by Tones & I in 2019. [89] [90] [91] It was the year-end number one song for in three countries – the U.S., Canada and the UK.
Houston's single sold approximately 400,000 copies in its second week at the top of the charts, making it the best-selling song in a single week surpassing Bryan Adams ' " (Everything I Do) I Do It for You ". It broke its own record in the following three weeks, peaking at 632,000 copies in the week ending on December 27, 1992. The January 9, 1993, issue of Billboard reported it had broken its own record for most copies sold in a single week for any song in the Nielsen SoundScan era. This record was broken by Elton John 's " Candle in the Wind 1997 / Something About the Way You Look Tonight ", which sold 3.4 million in the final week of September 1997. [92] "I Will Always Love You" was certified four times Platinum in the U.S. for shipments of over 4 million copies by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on January 12, 1993, making Houston the first female artist with a single to reach that level in RIAA history. [4] [93] According to Nielsen SoundScan , as of 2009, the single had sold 4,591,000 copies, and had become the second best-selling physical single in the US. [6] [94] On January 12, 2022, the single was certified Diamond by the RIAA for selling 10 million equivalent sales units from sales and streams, becoming the second-eldest song in history to do so after Queen 's " Bohemian Rhapsody " and the third song overall in the 20th century to do so, preceded by "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Mariah Carey 's 1994 Christmas single, " All I Want for Christmas is You ". [95] With this accomplishment, Houston became only the third female artist to have a diamond single and album after Carey and Taylor Swift . [95]
In the UK, the single sold over 1,550,000 copies, becoming the tenth best-selling single of the 1990s, and was certified two times Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on January 1, 1993. [96] [97] [98] In 1992 alone the single had sold 960,000 copies in United Kingdom. [99] In 1993 the single sold 395,000 copies in United Kingdom. [100] It was certified Platinum for shipments of over 500,000 copies by the Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI) in Germany. [101] In Japan, "I Will Always Love You" sold over 810,000 copies, staying for 27 weeks on the chart, and became the best-selling single by a foreign female artist at the time, despite not topping the charts. [102] [103]
Only a few hours after Houston's death on February 11, 2012, "I Will Always Love You" topped the U.S. iTunes charts. Also, in the week following her death, the single returned to the Billboard Hot 100 after almost twenty years, debuting at number seven, and becoming a posthumous top-ten single for Houston, the first one since 2001. The song eventually peaked at number three (two spots shy of repeating the feat achieved by Chubby Checker when " The Twist " returned to the top position after previously falling off the chart). [104] It debuted on the Billboard Hot Digital Singles Chart at number three on the chart dated February 25, 2012, with over 195,000 copies downloaded. [105] In the UK, the song charted at number ten the week of Houston's death. [106]
"I Will Always Love You" won the 1994 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance , Houston's third win in the latter category after earlier wins in 1986 and 1988. During the Grammy Award telecast, the Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female award was presented to Houston by composer Dolly Parton and David Foster. The single topped the 1993 Billboard Hot 100 and Hot R&B Singles year-end charts simultaneously, becoming the first single by a female artist and the second overall to achieve that feat behind Prince 's " When Doves Cry " in 1984. In addition, it received Favorite Pop/Rock Single and Favorite Soul/R&B Single awards at the 21st American Music Awards , which was the first record by a solo female artist to win both categories, and the third overall in AMA history behind " Endless Love " by Lionel Richie & Diana Ross in 1982 and " Beat It " by Michael Jackson in 1984. "I Will Always Love You" won two Japan Gold Disc Awards in 1993 for International Song of the Year, and a 1994 International Song of the Year Special Award for Japanese sales of over one million units. [107]
In 2015, "I Will Always Love You" was named the No. 1 Song of the Rock Era in the book The Top 500 Songs of the Rock Era: 1955–2015 . [108]
In 2020, "I Will Always Love You" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". [109]
In 2021, "I Will Always Love You" was listed at number 94 on the updated list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time . [110]
|Year||Awards ceremony||Award description(s)||Results|
|1993||The 19th People's Choice Awards||Favorite New Music Video [111]||Won|
|The 7th Soul Train Music Awards||Best R&B/Soul Single, Female [112]||Won|
|The 7th Japan Gold Disc Awards||Song of the Year (International) [113]||Won|
|The 2nd MTV Movie Awards||Best Song from a Movie [114] [115]||Won|
|The 4th Billboard Music Awards||#1 Hot 100 Single (Hot 100 Single of the Year) [116] [117]||Won|
|#1 Hot R&B Single (R&B Single of the Year) [116] [117]||Won|
|Special Award: Single Most Weeks at No. 1 (14 weeks) [116] [117]||Won|
|No. 1 World Single [116] [117]||Won|
|No. 1 Hot 100 Singles Sales [116]||Won|
|No. 1 Hot R&B Singles Sales [116]||Won|
|1994||The 21st American Music Awards||Favorite Pop/Rock Single [118]||Won|
|Favorite Soul/R&B Single [118]||Won|
|36th Grammy Awards||Record of the Year [119]||Won|
|Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female [119]||Won|
|The 8th Soul Train Music Awards||Best R&B Song of the Year [120] [121]||Won|
|The 8th Japan Gold Disc Awards||Special Award [113]||Won|
After Houston's recording became a hit in 1992, the tabloid press began reporting on a 'feud' between the two performers, stemming from Parton allegedly reneging on an agreement that she would not perform the song for a number of months while Houston's version was on the charts, so as not to compete with Houston's recording. However, both Parton and Houston dismissed any rumors, speaking glowingly of one another in interviews. [122] [123] Houston praised Parton for writing a beautiful song. In return, Parton thanked Houston for bringing her song to a wider audience and increasing the amount of royalties in the process. Parton also gave a live interview, confirming this.
When Houston won the Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female award at the 36th Annual Grammy Awards for her recording, Parton (along with David Foster ) presented the award.
In a statement to Billboard mourning Houston's death in February 2012, Parton said:
Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston. I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.' [124]
The single's music video is credited to Alan Smithee ( Nick Brandt removed his name due to the way Clive Davis re-edited the video), and produced by Rob Newman. It begins with the performance of the song Houston gives at the end of The Bodyguard . The video then cuts to the singer in a dark blue suit sitting in an empty theater with the spotlight shining on her, singing of her love, and when she starts her dramatic vocal finale, the theater changes into open camp surrounded by snow, which is meant to be at Fallen Leaf Lake, California, where The Bodyguard ' s boat scene was filmed. The video is interspersed with scenes from the film and gives the viewer the experience of reliving the moments with Houston. At the time of the video's shooting the singer was pregnant with her daughter Bobbi Kristina, so she is shown only sitting in the theater scenes. [125] On October 24, 2020, the video for "I Will Always Love You" reached one billion views on YouTube. It is the first music video of the 20th century by a solo artist to reach the milestone. Later in that year the 4k video was released.
- A "I Will Always Love You" – 4:31
- A "I Will Always Love You" – 4:31
|Region||Certification||Certified units /sales|
|Australia ( ARIA ) [214]||4× Platinum||280,000 ^|
|Austria ( IFPI Austria) [215]||Gold||25,000 *|
|Denmark ( IFPI Danmark ) [216]||Platinum||90,000|
|France ( SNEP ) [217]||Gold||250,000 *|
|Germany ( BVMI ) [218]||Platinum||500,000 ^|
|Italy ( FIMI ) [219]||Platinum||50,000|
| Japan ( RIAJ ) [220] |
Physical single
|5× Platinum||500,000 ^|
| Japan ( RIAJ ) [221] |
Digital single
|Platinum||250,000 *|
|Mexico ( AMPROFON ) [222]||Gold||30,000 *|
|Netherlands ( NVPI ) [223]||Platinum||75,000 ^|
|New Zealand ( RMNZ ) [224]||Platinum||10,000 *|
|Norway ( IFPI Norway) [225]||Platinum||60,000|
|Sweden ( GLF ) [226]||Platinum||50,000 ^|
|United Kingdom ( BPI ) [227]||2× Platinum||1,670,000 [202]|
|United States ( RIAA ) [228]||Diamond||10,000,000|
* Sales figures based on certification alone.
Jennifer Hudson performed the song in front of Houston, who received The BET Honors Award for Entertainer Lifetime Achievement spanning over 25 years in the industry. The 2010 BET Honors Awards was held at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. and aired on February 1, 2010.
Since Houston's death in 2012, many other artists have performed tributes to the late singer's version of the song, including on February 12, 2012, when Hudson performed the song as a tribute during the 54th Annual Grammy Awards , the day after Houston's death, alongside images of musicians who had died in 2011 and 2012, including Amy Winehouse and Etta James . The song was played at Houston's funeral as her casket was brought out of the church. Parton complimented Hudson on her performance, saying,
I was brought to tears again last night, as I'm sure many were, when Jennifer Hudson sang "I Will Always Love You" on the Grammys in memory of Whitney. Like everybody else, I am still in shock. But I know that Whitney will live forever in all the great music that she left behind. I will always have a very special piece of her in the song we shared together and had the good fortune to share with the world. Rest in peace, Whitney. Again, we will always love you. [229] [230]
The song title also served as the epitaph on Houston's gravestone. [231] In 2012, following Whitney Houston's death, American singer Beyoncé performed a tribute to Houston during her revue Revel Presents: Beyoncé Live in Atlantic City , New Jersey at the Revel resort. [232] [233] She began the performance of her song " Halo " singing the first verse of "I Will Always Love You" a cappella. [233] [234] Later, in 2013, during her The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour , Beyoncé also sang the opening lines of "I Will Always Love You" prior to the performance of "Halo" as the final song of the tour. [235] At the 2017 Commencement of the University of Southern California, Will Ferrell sang "I Will Always Love You" to the graduating class. [236]
British singer Sarah Washington released a dance- cover of "I Will Always Love You" in August 1993. It became her highest-charting hit, reaching number three in Spain, number 12 in the UK, number 15 in Ireland, and number 32 in Sweden. On the Eurochart Hot 100 , it peaked at number 44 in September 1993. It was released on Almighty Records , which described Washington as "an eager young hopeful" and cited her "sensational studio performance" as being key to the ultimate success of the track, also giving credit to London radio station 95.8 Capital FM and its heavy rotation of the song. [238] A black-and-white music video was produced to promote the single. In 2006, Almighty Records released an 11-mixes package of "I Will Always Love You".
Larry Flick from Billboard commented, "There are no less than nine dance music covers of the Whitney Houston megahit "I Will Always Love You". So far, only Sarah Washington's hi-NRG rendering on Almighty Records is worth a spin." [239] In his weekly UK chart commentary, James Masterton wrote, "If anything this new version adds a little more to the song, and at least proves it had genuine soul to start with. Top 10 for sure." [240] Alan Jones from Music Week gave it four out of five, complimenting "a sinewy garage groove with a powerful vocal from the Donna Summer school of disco divas." [241] James Hamilton from the RM Dance Update described it as a " I Will Survive -ish" remake. [242]
- CD single (Dance Mix), UK (1993)
- "I Will Always Love You" (The Dolly Mix) – 6:20
- "I Will Always Love You" (7" Edit) – 5:25
- "I Will Always Love You" (Mighty Mix) – 7:26
- "Body Heat" – 4:38
- CD single (Dance Mix), Scandinavia (1993)
- "I Will Always Love You" (7" Edit) – 5:27
- "I Will Always Love You" (12" Original Mix) – 7:27
- CD single (Dance Mix), Australia (1993)
- "I Will Always Love You" (7" Edit)
- "I Will Always Love You" (12" Original Mix)
- "I Will Always Love You" (Luv'd Up Mix)
- "Body Heat"
|Chart (1993)|| Peak |
position
|Europe ( Eurochart Hot 100 ) [243]||44|
|Ireland ( IRMA ) [244]||15|
|Spain ( AFYVE ) [245]||3|
|Sweden ( Sverigetopplistan ) [246]||32|
|UK Singles ( OCC ) [247]||12|
|UK Dance ( Music Week ) [248]||11|
In 2002, English pop singer Rik Waller took his own version of "I Will Always Love You" into the top ten of the UK Singles Chart , peaking at number 6. [249] It was his debut single and the first released from his debut studio album From Now... , after his taking part in the Pop Idol series.
"I Will Always Love You" was covered by American actress and singer Kristin Chenoweth as a duet with Dolly Parton. It was released on August 9, 2019, [250] as the first single [251] [252] from Chenoweth's album, For the Girls .
Chenoweth reflected on recording "I Will Always Love You" with ET Online, saying "it is a song I've loved since I was a child." She went on to say, "I used to think, 'One day I'm gonna sing that song.' Little did I know that I'd get to sing it with the queen herself." [253]
The song found further chart success as part of the " Forever Country " medley, created in 2016 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Country Music Association Awards. The medley also features " Take Me Home, Country Roads " and " On the Road Again ". Parton performs on the medley, along with 29 other country music artists. The medley debuted at number one on the Billboard US Hot Country Songs chart and number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on October 8, 2016. [254] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Always_Love_You | 81 |
who wrote i will always love you dolly parton | Dolly Parton Wrote 'I Will Always Love You' About Her Friendship With Porter Wagoner | By Bobbie Jean Sawyer |
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Career-defining songs don't come along every day. And songs that become signature tunes for multiple artists? Those are even rarer. But leave it to Dolly Parton to write a song that would top the charts three times (twice by Parton alone) and break records nearly 20 years after it was first recorded.
Parton famously wrote "I Will Always Love You" as a farewell to her friend and longtime collaborator Porter Wagoner when she made the difficult decision to leave The Porter Wagoner Show .
"Many people think that the song 'I Will Always Love You' was written about breaking up with some lover, but in fact I wrote it about Porter and the special, although painfully heart-wrenching, time we spent together," Parton wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business.
Parton's song about her friendship and contentious relationship with Wagoner was featured on her 1974 album Jolene and hit No. 1 in June of 1974.
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But it certainly wouldn't be the last time the song was a hit for Parton. In 1982, the Smoky Mountain queen recorded the song for the film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which she starred in opposite Burt Reynolds. Once again, the song topped the charts, putting Parton on the short list of aritsts to score a No. 1 hit twice with the same song.
The song was almost recorded by Elvis Presley, but the business-savvy Parton couldn't allow The King to record the song because of demands made by Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
"I still grieve over that...Colonel Tom said I had to give away half the publishing because Elvis didn't record anything unless he had half the publishing," Parton said in an interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers . "I said I couldn't do it because I was leaving that for my family."
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As we all know, that turned out to be the right decision.
In 1995, Parton would record the song yet again -- this time as a duet with Vince Gill, marking the third time Parton had a top 20 hit with "I Will Always Love You."
Linda Ronstadt's stunning version of "I Will Always Love You," featured on her 1975 album Prisoner in Disguise , is certainly not the most famous recording of the song. But Ronstadt's rendition would go on to play an important role in the life of the timeless song.
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When preparing for her film debut in 1992's The Bodyguard, Whitney Houston was set to record Jimmy Ruffin's "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted." But the song was just featured in the 1991 film Fried Green Tomatoes, so Houston was in search of another song to record. (Record producer Clive Davis had already reached out to The Bodyguard director Mick Jackson to stress the importance of getting the right music for the film.) Houston's co-star Kevin Costner just happened to be a fan of "I Will Always Love You" and he told music producer David Foster to check out the song. But the first version Foster heard was not Parton's, but Ronstadt's.
"I called Kevin and feigned sadness, like, 'Oh, Kevin, this is such a bummer. We can't use ["What Becomes of the Brokenhearted"] now!' He told me to listen to 'I Will Always Love You,' and that it was the perfect song," Foster told Entertainment Weekly in 2012. "So I ran down to a record store in Malibu and bought the Linda Ronstadt version -- that was the only one I could find. The minute I heard it, I knew I could make it work with Whitney."
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Houston was hooked, even if her record company didn't think the song's a cappella opening would go over well. Both Houston and Costner held firm.
When Parton got word that Houston wanted to record the tune, she called Foster to deliver the song's final verse, which was missing from Ronstadt's recording: "I hope life treats you kind and I hope you have all you've ever dreamed of/ And I wish you joy and happiness/ But above all this, I wish you love."
The rest is movie and music history.
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Houston worked with producer David Foster to deliver her iconic version of "I Will Always Love You." To call Houston's recording a smash hit would be an understatement. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 weeks and became the best-selling single by a woman in music history. "I Will Always Love You" is also the longest running No. 1 single from a soundtrack. ( The Bodyguard soundtrack also featured Houston's songs "I Have Nothing," "Run to You" and "I'm Every Woman.")
"When you think about how many rules that song broke for radio -- it was a ballad, it was an R&B singer doing a country song, it's got that a cappella part, it's long. It was a perfect storm," Foster told Entertainment Weekly . "I don't want to overdramatize, but it is the love song of the century."
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Costner reflected on his friendship with Houston, her talent and incredible performance in The Bodyguard at Houston's memorial service.
When Houston passed away on February 11, 2012, her recording of "I Will Always Love You" was in heavy rotation across the world. Within a week, the song returned to the Billboard Top 100 and was a posthumous top 10 hit for Houston.
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"Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston," Dolly Parton said in a statement to Billboard in 2012. "I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.'"
This article was originally published in July of 2020.
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If I should stay
Well I would only be in your way
And so I'll go, and yet I know
I'll think of you each step of the way
Well I would only be in your way
And so I'll go, and yet I know
I'll think of you each step of the way
And I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
Bitter-sweet memories
That's all I'm taking with me
Good-bye, please don't cry
'Cause we both know that I'm not
What you need
That's all I'm taking with me
Good-bye, please don't cry
'Cause we both know that I'm not
What you need
But I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
And I hope life, will treat you kind
And I hope that you have all
And I hope that you have all
That you ever dreamed of
Oh I do wish you joy
And I wish you happiness
But above all this
I wish you love
I love you
I will always love you
Oh I do wish you joy
And I wish you happiness
But above all this
I wish you love
I love you
I will always love you
I, I will always, always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
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01:29 | https://www.wideopencountry.com/i-will-always-love-you-whitney-houston-dolly-parton/ | 81 |
who wrote i will always love you dolly parton | Interesting Facts Fans May Not Know About Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You' | Dolly Parton, who wrote the song, first learned about Houston's version after hearing it on the radio
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Published on December 16, 2022 04:47 PM
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We will always love Whitney Houston 's "I Will Always Love You."
Written by Dolly Parton and originally released as a chart-topping country hit by the legendary musician in 1974, the iconic ballad reached new heights once Houston recorded it for the soundtrack to the 1992 film The Bodyguard .
Houston's version of the track reached No. 1 in over a dozen countries upon its release and went on to win awards for record of the year and best pop vocal performance at the 1994 Grammys — before eventually becoming certified diamond by the RIAA for more then ten million units sold.
While fans may have the lyrics to "I Will Always Love You" down pat, its history is a little less well-known. So, before theaters are filled with audiences watching Naomi Ackie as Houston — who died at age 48 in 2012 — in the biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody once it's released on Dec. 23, here are some interesting facts about the beloved song.
Parton, 76, got her start on The Porter Wagoner Show in 1967. With dreams of a solo career but no hit songs (yet), Parton sang on Wagoner's show for seven years — until she signed an autograph for a girl named Jolene, and her first hit song was born. With her star on fire by 1974, Parton had to find a way to tell Wagoner that she was leaving his show and moving on to pursue her own solo career.
So, she wrote Wagoner a song. Its title? "I Will Always Love You."
"I thought 'Do what you do best, just write a song.' So, I wrote the song, took it back in the next day. And I said, 'Porter sit down, I got something I have to sing to you.' So I sang it. And he was sitting at his desk and he was crying," Parton recalled in a 2021 clip from filmmaker Ken Burns' Country Music . "He said, 'It's the best thing you ever wrote. OK, you can go, but only if I can produce that record.' And he did and the rest is history!"
During a recent appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show , Parton explained how Kevin Costner called her to ask if he could use "I Will Always Love You" for the 1992 film The Bodyguard , which Houston starred in. Parton said yes, but then never heard anything more about how it would be used.
"I didn't know if they had it, I didn't know if they had done it," she told Clarkson.
"I was just driving along, I had the radio on," she continued. "When I heard the first 'If I...' I just freaked out. I had to pull over to the side because I honestly thought that I was gonna wreck. It was the most overwhelming feeling and you know how great that was."
Before Houston sang "I Will Always Love You" in The Bodyguard , Parton had offered it to Patti Labelle.
In a 2019 appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen , LaBelle revealed she was absolutely interested in covering the song and was in talks with Parton to do so.
"I said to Dolly, 'Oh yes, I want to do that song, honey!'" LaBelle said. "But before I could say real yes, it was in the movie and Whitney killed it."
"I was so happy Whitney got that song and it just went like it did. But Dolly Parton and I had planned. 'Patti, you're going to sing that song,'" LaBelle continued.
However, there were never any hard feelings.
"Next! That's how show-business is!" LaBelle added.
The line for "almost" having covered Parton's hit seems to be long, and it includes Elvis Presley. In a 2021 interview with W Magazine , Parton recalled meeting with Presley's manager at the time, who asked for half of Parton's publishing rights to the song in order for the "Hound Dog" singer to record it.
"I said, 'I'm sorry, but I can't give you the publishing.' I wanted to hear Elvis sing it, and it broke my heart — I cried all night," Parton said. "But I had to keep that copyright in my pocket. You have to take care of your business!"
In that same 2021 W Magazine interview, Parton detailed a conversation she had with Priscilla Presley, in which the King's wife disclosed that when the couple divorced in 1973, Elvis sang the song to her.
"That touched me so deeply," Parton recalled, before adding, "And they also played the song at Whitney Houston's funeral. After that, I thought, I bet they'll play the same song when I go."
Parton kept Houston in mind when deciding how to spend the money she's made from the song. During a 2021 appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen , Parton revealed that she'd invested the royalties in a Black community in Nashville.
"I bought a property down in what was the Black area of town, and it was mostly just Black families and people that lived around there. It was off the beaten path from 16th Avenue and I thought, 'Well, I am gonna buy this place — the whole strip mall.' And I thought, 'This is the perfect place for me to be,' considering it was Whitney," she said.
Parton continued, "I thought this was great — I'm just gonna be down here with her people, who are my people as well. So, I just love the fact that I spent that money on a complex and I think, 'This is the house that Whitney built.'"
In 1993, one 20-year-old fan of the song was jailed for a week in Britain after refusing to turn down her stereo blasting "I Will Always Love You."
That same year, another London woman threw her neighbor's stereo out of a fourth floor window (and was then attacked by said neighbor) because the neighbor's son wouldn't stop playing the song, either. The neighbor pleaded guilty to assault and was ordered to stay at a different address. | https://people.com/music/interesting-facts-you-didnt-know-about-whitney-houstons-i-will-always-love-you/ | 81 |
who wrote i will always love you dolly parton | Dolly Parton Wrote "I Will Always Love You" About a Professional Breakup, Not a Romantic One | Dolly's lyrics have a true — and heartbreaking — meaning behind them, but it's not what you might think.By Heather Finn
- Dolly Parton wrote the iconic song "I Will Always Love You" (which was later made popular again by Whitney Houston) in 1974.
- Although the lyrics sound like they're about the end of a romantic relationship, they're actually about the end of a professional one.
- Dolly wrote the song when she decided to leave Porter Wagoner's show.
Of all the legendary songs Dolly Parton has written in her illustrious career, "I Will Always Love You" remains one of the most iconic. Dolly's version hit No. 1 on the charts twice in her career (when she first released the song in 1974, and again when she re-recorded it for her 1982 movie The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas ). And of course, the ballad became popular all over again when Whitney Houston recorded a version for the movie The Bodyguard in 1992.
Perhaps the reason that "I Will Always Love You" has struck a chord with so many listeners through the years is that it has such strikingly simple, yet heartbreaking, lyrics. It's the straightforward passion behind the words that make the song so timeless:
If I should stay
I would only be in your way
And so I'll go, but I know
I'll think of you each step of the way
And I will always love you
I will always love you
And yet, Dolly did not write the song about a romantic breakup — it was written about a professional one.
In 1973, Dolly had hit a roadblock in her relationship with Porter Wagoner, her mentor and on-screen duet partner. She had agreed to star on his TV program, The Porter Wagoner Show , for five years and had done so with great success — but she was ready to go out on her own and make her own career. Unfortunately, Porter wasn't ready to see her go, and they were butting heads over the decision.
Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner perform together in 1978.
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"There was a lot of grief and heartache there, and he just wasn't listening to my reasoning for my going," Dolly told CMT back in 2011. "I thought, 'Well, why don't you do what you do best? Why don't you just write this song?'... so I went home and out of a very emotional place in me at that time, I wrote the song, 'I Will Always Love You.'"
The next day, armed with her new song, Dolly walked back into the office and asked Porter if he could hear her out for minute. She sang "I Will Always Love You" to him — and Porter was overcome with emotion.
"He started crying," Dolly told the Tennessean in 2015. "When I finished, he said, 'Well, hell! If you feel that strong about it, just go on — providing I get to produce that record because that's the best song you ever wrote.'"
From there, the rest was history: Dolly eventually left the show, and Porter produced her next record, Jolene , with "I Will Always Love You" on the track list. The song became the multiple-time No. 1 hit we know it as today, and Dolly and Porter even went on to perform it together at a special Grand Ole Opry show. She also reportedly sang it to Porter one final time, on the day that he died in 2007.
In the end, Dolly says "I Will Always Love You" represents her desire to make it clear to Porter how much she cared about and appreciated him, even though it was time for her to leave the show.
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"It's saying, 'Just because I'm going don't mean I won't love you," she told CMT. "I appreciate you and I hope you do great and I appreciate everything you've done, but I'm out of here.'"
For can't-miss news, expert beauty advice, genius home solutions, delicious recipes, and lots more, sign up for the Good Housekeeping newsletter . | https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/entertainment/a30570197/dolly-parton-i-will-always-love-you-lyrics-meaning/ | 81 |
who wrote i will always love you dolly parton | The Real Story Behind Dolly Parton's 'I Will Always Love You' | Though the song didn’t really take off until Whitney Houston sang it in The Bodyguard in 1992, “I Will Always Love You” is one of the most famous songs Dolly Parton has ever written. She wrote it in 1974 for Porter Wagoner as a way to tell him that she was leaving The Porter Wagoner show. Here’s what the song means to Parton and why she left.
Parton was brought on to be Wagoner’s “new girl singer” after his former “girl singer,” Norma Jean Beasley, left the show. The former co-stars told their audience that Beasley’s reason for leaving was that she had plans to get married and move back to Oklahoma City. But there was also a rumor that Beasley was leaving because she and Wagoner had had an affair and things turned complicated.
Throughout Parton’s career with Wagoner, there was a sort of power struggle that increased the longer Parton was on the show. She wanted to stretch her wings as a new singer with a fan base. But Wagoner felt a sense of ownership over her.
“He would say, ‘This is my damn show,'” Parton said in an interview on Dolly Parton’s America . “I’d say, ‘I know, but this is my damn life, and we’re not talking about the show, I’m talking about my life. I’m talking about my future. I can’t stay here as the girl singer forever. I want an individual career. I am my own self. I didn’t come to Nashville to be just part of a duet and to be a girl singer in somebody’s group. I want my own band. I want my own show. I want my own dreams.’
“It was like, ‘I made you.’ I said, ‘Yeah, you’ve made me mad again. You’ve made me a lot of things. I’m not taking anything from you,’ I would say, ‘I appreciate everything you’ve done, but I never promised you forever.’ We just were not happy.”
Parton and Wagoner continued to fight. Parton couldn’t take it anymore.
“I just finally just thought I’m going to break myself if I don’t go, because all we were doing was fighting, and it just wasn’t working,” she said. “I couldn’t think. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. He wasn’t happy either. I thought, ‘This is just insane. We’ve got to do something.’ That’s when I went in and said … I thought, ‘He’s not going to listen.’ We’d fought. I’d go home crying. That’s when I wrote ‘I Will Always Love You’ and went back to sing it.”
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Parton returned to Wagoner’s office and sang him “I Will Always Love You” as he sat in his chair. He started crying.
“Then he said, ‘That’s the best song you ever wrote.’ I said, You inspired it.’ He said, ‘I guess you can go, if I can produce the record.’ I said, ‘Okay, you can.’ | https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/real-story-behind-dolly-parton-i-will-always-love-you.html/ | 81 |
who wrote i will always love you dolly parton | I Will Always Love You | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the Dolly Parton song also recorded by Whitney Houston. For other uses, see I Will Always Love You (disambiguation) .
" I Will Always Love You " is a song written and originally recorded in 1973 by American singer-songwriter Dolly Parton . Written as a farewell to her business partner and mentor Porter Wagoner , expressing Parton's decision to pursue a solo career, [1] the country single was released in 1974. The song was a commercial success for Parton, twice reaching the top spot of Billboard Hot Country Songs : first in June 1974, then again in October 1982, with a re-recording for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas soundtrack .
Whitney Houston recorded a soul - ballad arrangement of the song for the 1992 film The Bodyguard . Houston's version peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for a then-record-breaking 14 weeks. [2] The single was certified diamond by the RIAA , making Houston's first diamond single, the third female artist who had both a diamond single and a diamond album, [3] and becoming the best-selling single by a woman in the U.S. [4] [5] [6] [7] The song was a global success, topping the charts in almost all countries. With over 20 million copies sold, it became the best-selling single of all time by a female solo artist. [8] [9] Houston won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1994 for "I Will Always Love You". [10]
The song has been recorded by many other artists including Linda Ronstadt , [11] John Doe , [12] Amber Riley , LeAnn Rimes , [13] and Sarah Washington , whose dance version reached number 12 on the UK Singles Chart . I Will Always Love You has been recognized by BMI for over ten million broadcast performances. [14]
Problems playing this file? See media help .
Country music singer-songwriter Dolly Parton wrote the song in 1973 for her one-time partner and mentor Porter Wagoner , from whom she was separating professionally after a seven-year partnership. [15] [16] She recorded it in RCA Studio B in Nashville on June 12, 1973. [17]
Author Curtis W. Ellison stated that the song "speaks about the breakup of a relationship between a man and a woman that does not descend into unremitting domestic turmoil, but instead envisions parting with respect – because of the initiative of the woman". [18] The country love track is set in a time signature of common time with a tempo of 66 beats per minute . (Larghetto/Adagio) [19] Although Parton found much success with the song, many people are unaware of its origin; during an interview, Parton's manager Danny Nozel said that "one thing we found out from American Idol is that most people don't know that Dolly Parton wrote [the track]". [20] During an interview on The Bobby Bones Show , Dolly Parton revealed that she wrote her signature song "Jolene" on the same day that she wrote "I Will Always Love You." [21] [22]
Several times (long before Whitney Houston recorded the song), Dolly Parton suggested to singer Patti LaBelle that she record "I Will Always Love You" because she felt LaBelle could have sung it so well. However, LaBelle admitted she kept putting off the opportunity to do so and later deeply regretted it after she heard Whitney Houston's rendition. [23]
"I Will Always Love You" was issued on March 18, 1974, as the second single from Parton's thirteenth solo studio album, Jolene (1974). During its original release in 1974, "I Will Always Love You" reached number four in Canada on the Canadian RPM Country Tracks chart and peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, becoming one of the best selling singles of 1974. [24]
When the 1974 recording of the song reached number one on the country charts, Elvis Presley indicated that he wanted to record the song. Parton was interested until Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker , told her that it was standard procedure for the songwriter to sign over half of the publishing rights to any song Elvis recorded. [25] Parton refused. She recalls:
I said, 'I'm really sorry,' and I cried all night. I mean, it was like the worst thing. You know, it's like, Oh, my God… Elvis Presley.' And other people were saying, 'You're nuts. It's Elvis Presley.' …I said, 'I can't do that. Something in my heart says, 'Don't do that. And I just didn't do it… He would have killed it. But anyway, so he didn't. Then when Whitney [Houston's version] came out, I made enough money to buy Graceland . [26]
The song won Parton Female Vocalist of the Year at the 1975 CMA Awards .
In Curtis W. Ellison's book, Country Music Culture: From Hard Times to Heaven (1995), he stated: "In the early 1990s, when ambiguity in romantic relationships accompanies changing expectations for both men and women, this song demonstrates Dolly Parton's appeal as a songwriter in the pop music market." [18] Ken Knight, author of The Midnight Show: Late Night Cable-TV "Guy-Flicks" of the '80s (2008), commented that Parton is the only singer who can sing "I Will Always Love You" and "make it memorable". [27] Writer Paul Simpson criticized the singer, stating that the track was only written to "soften the blow" of Parton and Wagoner's split. [28]
- "I Will Always Love You" – 2:53
- "Lonely Comin' Down" – 3:09
Parton re-recorded the song for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , released July 12, 1982, as the first single from the soundtrack album . The single eventually hit number one on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, earning Parton a rare distinction: reaching the number one position twice with the same song.
Billboard gave a positive review which said, "The first single from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas isn't the sort of brassy main theme normally used to launch a major movie musical: here Parton reinterprets one of her earliest exercises in pure pop writing, and while older fans may be divided over the breathier, more stylized reading she offers here, the song itself is still a lovely ballad with a soaring chorus." [32]
Cashbox also reviewed the single favorably, saying that "hoisted over a building arrangement, Parton's vocals have never been more convincing or moving. The single choice from her Hollywood flick, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , the tune is sentiment wrapped in an appropriate package replete with strings, oboe and harp in addition to a delicate rhythm section." [33]
|Chart (1982)|| Peak |
position
|Australia ( Kent Music Report ) [34]||72|
|Belgium ( Ultratop 50 Flanders) [35]||4|
|Canada Top Singles ( RPM ) [29]||8|
|Canada Adult Contemporary ( RPM ) [36]||1|
|Canada Country Tracks ( RPM ) [29]||1|
|Netherlands ( Single Top 100 ) [37]||2|
|Sweden ( Sverigetopplistan ) [38]||45|
|US Billboard Hot 100 [39]||53|
|US Adult Contemporary ( Billboard ) [40]||17|
|US Hot Country Songs ( Billboard ) [41]||1|
|Region||Certification||Certified units /sales|
|Australia ( ARIA ) [42]||Gold||35,000|
|United Kingdom ( BPI ) [43]||Silver||200,000|
|United States ( RIAA ) [44]||Platinum||1,000,000|
|Streaming|
|Sweden ( GLF ) [45]||Gold||4,000,000|
Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
Parton recorded "I Will Always Love You" in 1995 as a duet with Vince Gill for her album, Something Special . Following an August 26 performance of the duet at the Grand Ole Opry which aired on TNN , radio stations began giving the duet unsolicited airplay, causing it to debut on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart at number 53. After a performance at the 29th Annual CMA Awards , the song was officially released as a single in November 1995, peaking at number 15. This marked the third time Parton had a top 20 hit with the song. The song was nominated at the 38th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals and was named Vocal Event of the Year at the 30th Annual CMA Awards.
Adapted from the album liner notes.
- Assa Dormi – concertmaster
- Paul Franklin – steel
- Vince Gill – duet vocals
- Owen Hale – drums
- David Hungate – bass
- Brent Mason – guitar
- Terry McMillan – percussion
- Dale Oehler – string arrangements, conductor
- Dolly Parton – lead vocals
- Matt Rollings – piano
- Brent Rowan – guitar
In 1992, American singer Whitney Houston recorded a new arrangement of "I Will Always Love You" for the soundtrack to The Bodyguard , her film debut. The song has a saxophone solo by Kirk Whalum . She was originally to record Jimmy Ruffin 's " What Becomes of the Brokenhearted " as the lead single from The Bodyguard . However, when it was discovered the song was to be used for Fried Green Tomatoes , Houston requested a different song. It was her co-star Kevin Costner who suggested "I Will Always Love You", playing her Linda Ronstadt 's 1975 version from her album Prisoner in Disguise . [50] [51] Producer David Foster and Houston re-arranged the song as a soul ballad. [48] Her record company did not feel a song with an a cappella introduction would be as successful; however, Houston and Costner insisted on retaining it. When Parton heard that Houston was using Ronstadt's recording as a template, she called Foster to give him the final verse, which was missing from the Ronstadt recording, as she felt it was important to the song. Houston's rendition of the song was issued as the soundtrack's leading single on November 3, 1992, by Arista Records .
Houston's recording is not the only version of the song featured in the film. In a scene where she dances with Costner, a version by John Doe can be heard playing on a jukebox.
Houston's version appears at No. 8 on NME ' s Greatest No 1 Singles in History list. [52] In 2004, Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" placed at number 65 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. [53] It was also ranked at number 22 on The Guardian ' s list of Britain's favorite 100 songs, published in May 2002. [54] As of January 2013, Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling single by a female artist of all time [55] as well as one of the best-selling singles of all time. [56]
In February 2014, the song placed at number six on Billboard ' s list of the Top 50 'Love' Songs of All Time. [57] A live performance was included on the 1999 release Divas Live '99 , and a 1994 performance of the song was included on the 2014 CD/DVD release of Whitney Houston Live: Her Greatest Performances . [58]
Houston's cover of "I Will Always Love You" received widespread acclaim from music critics, being now regarded as one of her "signature'' songs. Larry Flick of Billboard wrote that the song is "bolstered by a remarkably restrained (and ultimately effective) vocal by Houston. She builds to dramatic, heartfelt conclusion that makes sense, given the unusually slow-building created by producer David Foster ." [59] Randy Clark of Cashbox noted that "the unstoppable voice and unquestionable talent of Whitney Houston will no doubt come roaring back onto the charts with this cover". [60] Amy Linden of Entertainment Weekly said it "is artistically satisfying and uncharacteristically hip for the MOR songbird." [61] John Martinucci of Gavin Report asserted that Houston "delivers a powerful rendition that reminds us of her natural abilities as a singer with or without musical accompaniment." [62] Chris Willman of the Los Angeles Times commented that the singer "has the goods to deliver on the tune's haunting beauty and resists overpowering it – until the finale, when the key change and stratospheric notes drain all the heart-rending sadness out of the song and make it sound like just another anthem of survival." [63] Stephen Holden of The New York Times called it a "magnificent rendition", commenting,
Houston transforms a plaintive country ballad into a towering pop-gospel assertion of lasting devotion to a departing lover. Her voice breaking and tensing, she treats the song as a series of emotional bursts in a steady climb toward a final full-out declamation. Along the way, her virtuosic gospel embellishments enhance the emotion and never seem merely ornamental. [64]
Peter Stanton of Smash Hits commented, "A slow intro moulds into a crescendo of huggy-kissy-smoochiness that could melt the heart of the yeti of Northern Siberia." [65] Writing for USA Today on November 17, 1992, James T. Jones IV labeled it a "tour-de-force", and added "[Houston] gives a 3 1 ⁄ 2 -star [out of four] performance. Where Dolly Parton's original 'I Will Always Love You' was plaintive and tear-stained, Houston's is gospel-infused and dramatic." [66]
The single spent 14 weeks at the top of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 , which at the time was a record. [67] [68] It became Houston's longest run atop the chart, surpassing her previous record of three weeks with " Greatest Love of All " in 1986. It is also the longest running number-one single from a soundtrack album.
It debuted at number 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, and became Houston's tenth number-one entry two weeks later. It also dominated other Billboard charts, spending 14 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 Single Sales chart, and 11 weeks at number one on its Hot 100 Airplay chart. The song remained at number one on the Mainstream Top 40 chart for nine consecutive weeks. It was Houston's first single on the chart and her first number one. The song also remained at number one for five weeks on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks , and for 11 weeks on the Hot R&B Singles chart becoming the longest running number one on the R&B charts at the time; it remained in the top 40 for 24 weeks. [69] [70] [71] It became Arista Records ' biggest hit. The song was number one on the Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, and R&B chart simultaneously for a record-equaling five weeks; Ray Charles' " I Can't Stop Loving You " in 1962 achieved the same feat on the same charts. [72]
The song stayed at number one in the U.S. throughout January and February 1993, making it the first time Billboard did not rank a new number-one single until March of the new year. Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was also the year-end number one single of 1993 in the US. [73] Similarly, in the UK, Houston's version was ranked the number-one single of 1992, and then made the countdown again in 1993 where it was ranked number nine, marking the first time any musical act had the same single ranked in the top ten of the year-end review two years in a row. [74] In Australia, it was the number 17 single of 1992 and the number two song of 1993. [75] [76]
Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was also a massive international hit, topping the singles charts in almost every country, including the Eurochart Hot 100 Singles , where it spent 13 weeks at the top. The single ruled the summit position for ten weeks in Australia, [77] five weeks in Austria, [78] seven weeks for Belgium, [79] eight weeks in France, [80] six weeks in Germany, [81] eight weeks in Ireland, [82] six weeks in the Netherlands, [83] fourteen weeks in New Zealand, [84] nine weeks in Norway, [85] one week in Spain and Uruguay, six weeks in Sweden, [86] eight weeks in Switzerland, [87] and ten weeks in the UK. [88] The song reached the number one spot in the UK in 1992. Houston's ten-week reign in the UK was the longest run at the top by a solo female artist in the history of the British singles chart, until it was overtaken by Tones & I in 2019. [89] [90] [91] It was the year-end number one song for in three countries – the U.S., Canada and the UK.
Houston's single sold approximately 400,000 copies in its second week at the top of the charts, making it the best-selling song in a single week surpassing Bryan Adams ' " (Everything I Do) I Do It for You ". It broke its own record in the following three weeks, peaking at 632,000 copies in the week ending on December 27, 1992. The January 9, 1993, issue of Billboard reported it had broken its own record for most copies sold in a single week for any song in the Nielsen SoundScan era. This record was broken by Elton John 's " Candle in the Wind 1997 / Something About the Way You Look Tonight ", which sold 3.4 million in the final week of September 1997. [92] "I Will Always Love You" was certified four times Platinum in the U.S. for shipments of over 4 million copies by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on January 12, 1993, making Houston the first female artist with a single to reach that level in RIAA history. [4] [93] According to Nielsen SoundScan , as of 2009, the single had sold 4,591,000 copies, and had become the second best-selling physical single in the US. [6] [94] On January 12, 2022, the single was certified Diamond by the RIAA for selling 10 million equivalent sales units from sales and streams, becoming the second-eldest song in history to do so after Queen 's " Bohemian Rhapsody " and the third song overall in the 20th century to do so, preceded by "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Mariah Carey 's 1994 Christmas single, " All I Want for Christmas is You ". [95] With this accomplishment, Houston became only the third female artist to have a diamond single and album after Carey and Taylor Swift . [95]
In the UK, the single sold over 1,550,000 copies, becoming the tenth best-selling single of the 1990s, and was certified two times Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on January 1, 1993. [96] [97] [98] In 1992 alone the single had sold 960,000 copies in United Kingdom. [99] In 1993 the single sold 395,000 copies in United Kingdom. [100] It was certified Platinum for shipments of over 500,000 copies by the Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI) in Germany. [101] In Japan, "I Will Always Love You" sold over 810,000 copies, staying for 27 weeks on the chart, and became the best-selling single by a foreign female artist at the time, despite not topping the charts. [102] [103]
Only a few hours after Houston's death on February 11, 2012, "I Will Always Love You" topped the U.S. iTunes charts. Also, in the week following her death, the single returned to the Billboard Hot 100 after almost twenty years, debuting at number seven, and becoming a posthumous top-ten single for Houston, the first one since 2001. The song eventually peaked at number three (two spots shy of repeating the feat achieved by Chubby Checker when " The Twist " returned to the top position after previously falling off the chart). [104] It debuted on the Billboard Hot Digital Singles Chart at number three on the chart dated February 25, 2012, with over 195,000 copies downloaded. [105] In the UK, the song charted at number ten the week of Houston's death. [106]
"I Will Always Love You" won the 1994 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance , Houston's third win in the latter category after earlier wins in 1986 and 1988. During the Grammy Award telecast, the Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female award was presented to Houston by composer Dolly Parton and David Foster. The single topped the 1993 Billboard Hot 100 and Hot R&B Singles year-end charts simultaneously, becoming the first single by a female artist and the second overall to achieve that feat behind Prince 's " When Doves Cry " in 1984. In addition, it received Favorite Pop/Rock Single and Favorite Soul/R&B Single awards at the 21st American Music Awards , which was the first record by a solo female artist to win both categories, and the third overall in AMA history behind " Endless Love " by Lionel Richie & Diana Ross in 1982 and " Beat It " by Michael Jackson in 1984. "I Will Always Love You" won two Japan Gold Disc Awards in 1993 for International Song of the Year, and a 1994 International Song of the Year Special Award for Japanese sales of over one million units. [107]
In 2015, "I Will Always Love You" was named the No. 1 Song of the Rock Era in the book The Top 500 Songs of the Rock Era: 1955–2015 . [108]
In 2020, "I Will Always Love You" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". [109]
In 2021, "I Will Always Love You" was listed at number 94 on the updated list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time . [110]
|Year||Awards ceremony||Award description(s)||Results|
|1993||The 19th People's Choice Awards||Favorite New Music Video [111]||Won|
|The 7th Soul Train Music Awards||Best R&B/Soul Single, Female [112]||Won|
|The 7th Japan Gold Disc Awards||Song of the Year (International) [113]||Won|
|The 2nd MTV Movie Awards||Best Song from a Movie [114] [115]||Won|
|The 4th Billboard Music Awards||#1 Hot 100 Single (Hot 100 Single of the Year) [116] [117]||Won|
|#1 Hot R&B Single (R&B Single of the Year) [116] [117]||Won|
|Special Award: Single Most Weeks at No. 1 (14 weeks) [116] [117]||Won|
|No. 1 World Single [116] [117]||Won|
|No. 1 Hot 100 Singles Sales [116]||Won|
|No. 1 Hot R&B Singles Sales [116]||Won|
|1994||The 21st American Music Awards||Favorite Pop/Rock Single [118]||Won|
|Favorite Soul/R&B Single [118]||Won|
|36th Grammy Awards||Record of the Year [119]||Won|
|Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female [119]||Won|
|The 8th Soul Train Music Awards||Best R&B Song of the Year [120] [121]||Won|
|The 8th Japan Gold Disc Awards||Special Award [113]||Won|
After Houston's recording became a hit in 1992, the tabloid press began reporting on a 'feud' between the two performers, stemming from Parton allegedly reneging on an agreement that she would not perform the song for a number of months while Houston's version was on the charts, so as not to compete with Houston's recording. However, both Parton and Houston dismissed any rumors, speaking glowingly of one another in interviews. [122] [123] Houston praised Parton for writing a beautiful song. In return, Parton thanked Houston for bringing her song to a wider audience and increasing the amount of royalties in the process. Parton also gave a live interview, confirming this.
When Houston won the Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female award at the 36th Annual Grammy Awards for her recording, Parton (along with David Foster ) presented the award.
In a statement to Billboard mourning Houston's death in February 2012, Parton said:
Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston. I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.' [124]
The single's music video is credited to Alan Smithee ( Nick Brandt removed his name due to the way Clive Davis re-edited the video), and produced by Rob Newman. It begins with the performance of the song Houston gives at the end of The Bodyguard . The video then cuts to the singer in a dark blue suit sitting in an empty theater with the spotlight shining on her, singing of her love, and when she starts her dramatic vocal finale, the theater changes into open camp surrounded by snow, which is meant to be at Fallen Leaf Lake, California, where The Bodyguard ' s boat scene was filmed. The video is interspersed with scenes from the film and gives the viewer the experience of reliving the moments with Houston. At the time of the video's shooting the singer was pregnant with her daughter Bobbi Kristina, so she is shown only sitting in the theater scenes. [125] On October 24, 2020, the video for "I Will Always Love You" reached one billion views on YouTube. It is the first music video of the 20th century by a solo artist to reach the milestone. Later in that year the 4k video was released.
- A "I Will Always Love You" – 4:31
- A "I Will Always Love You" – 4:31
|Region||Certification||Certified units /sales|
|Australia ( ARIA ) [214]||4× Platinum||280,000 ^|
|Austria ( IFPI Austria) [215]||Gold||25,000 *|
|Denmark ( IFPI Danmark ) [216]||Platinum||90,000|
|France ( SNEP ) [217]||Gold||250,000 *|
|Germany ( BVMI ) [218]||Platinum||500,000 ^|
|Italy ( FIMI ) [219]||Platinum||50,000|
| Japan ( RIAJ ) [220] |
Physical single
|5× Platinum||500,000 ^|
| Japan ( RIAJ ) [221] |
Digital single
|Platinum||250,000 *|
|Mexico ( AMPROFON ) [222]||Gold||30,000 *|
|Netherlands ( NVPI ) [223]||Platinum||75,000 ^|
|New Zealand ( RMNZ ) [224]||Platinum||10,000 *|
|Norway ( IFPI Norway) [225]||Platinum||60,000|
|Sweden ( GLF ) [226]||Platinum||50,000 ^|
|United Kingdom ( BPI ) [227]||2× Platinum||1,670,000 [202]|
|United States ( RIAA ) [228]||Diamond||10,000,000|
* Sales figures based on certification alone.
Jennifer Hudson performed the song in front of Houston, who received The BET Honors Award for Entertainer Lifetime Achievement spanning over 25 years in the industry. The 2010 BET Honors Awards was held at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. and aired on February 1, 2010.
Since Houston's death in 2012, many other artists have performed tributes to the late singer's version of the song, including on February 12, 2012, when Hudson performed the song as a tribute during the 54th Annual Grammy Awards , the day after Houston's death, alongside images of musicians who had died in 2011 and 2012, including Amy Winehouse and Etta James . The song was played at Houston's funeral as her casket was brought out of the church. Parton complimented Hudson on her performance, saying,
I was brought to tears again last night, as I'm sure many were, when Jennifer Hudson sang "I Will Always Love You" on the Grammys in memory of Whitney. Like everybody else, I am still in shock. But I know that Whitney will live forever in all the great music that she left behind. I will always have a very special piece of her in the song we shared together and had the good fortune to share with the world. Rest in peace, Whitney. Again, we will always love you. [229] [230]
The song title also served as the epitaph on Houston's gravestone. [231] In 2012, following Whitney Houston's death, American singer Beyoncé performed a tribute to Houston during her revue Revel Presents: Beyoncé Live in Atlantic City , New Jersey at the Revel resort. [232] [233] She began the performance of her song " Halo " singing the first verse of "I Will Always Love You" a cappella. [233] [234] Later, in 2013, during her The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour , Beyoncé also sang the opening lines of "I Will Always Love You" prior to the performance of "Halo" as the final song of the tour. [235] At the 2017 Commencement of the University of Southern California, Will Ferrell sang "I Will Always Love You" to the graduating class. [236]
British singer Sarah Washington released a dance- cover of "I Will Always Love You" in August 1993. It became her highest-charting hit, reaching number three in Spain, number 12 in the UK, number 15 in Ireland, and number 32 in Sweden. On the Eurochart Hot 100 , it peaked at number 44 in September 1993. It was released on Almighty Records , which described Washington as "an eager young hopeful" and cited her "sensational studio performance" as being key to the ultimate success of the track, also giving credit to London radio station 95.8 Capital FM and its heavy rotation of the song. [238] A black-and-white music video was produced to promote the single. In 2006, Almighty Records released an 11-mixes package of "I Will Always Love You".
Larry Flick from Billboard commented, "There are no less than nine dance music covers of the Whitney Houston megahit "I Will Always Love You". So far, only Sarah Washington's hi-NRG rendering on Almighty Records is worth a spin." [239] In his weekly UK chart commentary, James Masterton wrote, "If anything this new version adds a little more to the song, and at least proves it had genuine soul to start with. Top 10 for sure." [240] Alan Jones from Music Week gave it four out of five, complimenting "a sinewy garage groove with a powerful vocal from the Donna Summer school of disco divas." [241] James Hamilton from the RM Dance Update described it as a " I Will Survive -ish" remake. [242]
- CD single (Dance Mix), UK (1993)
- "I Will Always Love You" (The Dolly Mix) – 6:20
- "I Will Always Love You" (7" Edit) – 5:25
- "I Will Always Love You" (Mighty Mix) – 7:26
- "Body Heat" – 4:38
- CD single (Dance Mix), Scandinavia (1993)
- "I Will Always Love You" (7" Edit) – 5:27
- "I Will Always Love You" (12" Original Mix) – 7:27
- CD single (Dance Mix), Australia (1993)
- "I Will Always Love You" (7" Edit)
- "I Will Always Love You" (12" Original Mix)
- "I Will Always Love You" (Luv'd Up Mix)
- "Body Heat"
|Chart (1993)|| Peak |
position
|Europe ( Eurochart Hot 100 ) [243]||44|
|Ireland ( IRMA ) [244]||15|
|Spain ( AFYVE ) [245]||3|
|Sweden ( Sverigetopplistan ) [246]||32|
|UK Singles ( OCC ) [247]||12|
|UK Dance ( Music Week ) [248]||11|
In 2002, English pop singer Rik Waller took his own version of "I Will Always Love You" into the top ten of the UK Singles Chart , peaking at number 6. [249] It was his debut single and the first released from his debut studio album From Now... , after his taking part in the Pop Idol series.
"I Will Always Love You" was covered by American actress and singer Kristin Chenoweth as a duet with Dolly Parton. It was released on August 9, 2019, [250] as the first single [251] [252] from Chenoweth's album, For the Girls .
Chenoweth reflected on recording "I Will Always Love You" with ET Online, saying "it is a song I've loved since I was a child." She went on to say, "I used to think, 'One day I'm gonna sing that song.' Little did I know that I'd get to sing it with the queen herself." [253]
The song found further chart success as part of the " Forever Country " medley, created in 2016 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Country Music Association Awards. The medley also features " Take Me Home, Country Roads " and " On the Road Again ". Parton performs on the medley, along with 29 other country music artists. The medley debuted at number one on the Billboard US Hot Country Songs chart and number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on October 8, 2016. [254] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Always_Love_You | 81 |
who wrote i will always love you dolly parton | Dollywood celebrates 50 years of 'I Will Always Love You' with star-studded concert series | Dolly Parton's timeless hit "I Will Always Love You " marks its 50th anniversary this year, and Dollywood is celebrating in a big way.
From March 11 through April 8, the Tennessee theme park will host an all-new " I Will Always Love You Celebration " highlighting the power of songwriting and songs.
Each Saturday, guests will be able to see a different award-winning artist perform as part of the celebration's Celebrity Concert Series. They'll also be able to hear directly from acclaimed songwriters like Dana Black, who wrote George Strait's "Check Yes or No" and "Write this Down," Billy Montana, who co-wrote "Suds in the Bucket" for Sara Evans, and Steve Dean, who co-wrote Reba McEntire's "Walk On." There will also be special food, decor and merchandise for the event.
Here's what Dollywood guests should know.
- March 11 - Natalie Grant.
- March 18 - Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder.
- March 25 - Jo Dee Messina.
- April 1 - Larry, Steve & Rudy: The Gatlin Brothers.
- April 8 - Lauren Alaina.
The concerts are included with admission to the park.
"It's humbling to be a part of such a beautiful celebration," Messina said in a statement. "This isn't just a show; it's inclusion in celebrating a huge part of musical history. 'I Will Always Love You' has crossed the lines of musical genres , has transcended throughout generations, and has impacted people worldwide. Dang, Dolly, that's amazing!"
Alaina called Parton the "best artist/songwriter of all time" and an inspiration throughout her own life.
"Dolly is a legend, an icon and pure class," she said. "I would celebrate her any time."
Dolly Parton has Elton, McCartney and Stevie Nicks on upcoming rock album: But she still wants Jagger
One-day theme park tickets cost $89 per adult. The daily rate goes down as more days are added to the ticket.
Like many other theme parks, Dollywood considers guests age 10 and up adults for admission. Discounts are available for younger children and seniors. Entry for kids under age 4 is free, and free Pre-K Imagination Passes are available for kids born in 2018 and 2019.
Yes, but you won't be able to do everything. Beyond this event, there are more than 50 attractions across the 160-acre park in addition to ongoing entertainment offerings. | https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/experience/theme-parks/2023/02/15/dollywood-i-will-always-love-you-celebration-concerts/11263001002/ | 81 |
why did the 13 colonies revolt against england | 4 Reasons Colonists Rebelled Against Britain (Besides High Taxes) | Americans today tend to look at the War of Independence in terms of patriotic slogans.
“No Taxation without Representation!”
“I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”
“Give me liberty or give me death.”
“Don’t Tread on Me!”
Through this lens, the Revolutionary War was an inevitable conflict brought about by punitive British taxes (without representation!) that prompted a motley band of patriots to dump a bunch of tea into Boston Harbor.
Taxation without representation and the Boston Tea Party were of course key elements of the Revolutionary War. But this simplistic view overlooks a richer and more interesting story.
Whether or not a historic event of this magnitude is “inevitable” depends largely on one’s worldview and historical perspective, but we know that most of the men who led the rebellion did not view war with the world’s most powerful empire as a foregone conclusion. Indeed, most of them were shocked and appalled when open conflict erupted at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.
“Yesterday produced a scene the most shocking New England ever beheld,” John Adams wrote a day after the battle. “When I reflect and consider that the fight was between whose parents but a few generations ago were brothers, I shudder at the thought, and there’s no knowing where our calamities will end.”
While taxation was one of the causes that fueled discord between the colonials and the Crown, other grievances also loomed large. Here are four of them:
There was a fundamental disagreement between the Crown and colonials regarding the rule of law. Colonials recognized they were subjects of King George III, but they believed their charters, passed in assemblies and approved by the Crown, were the law of the land. They did not believe the king had authority to simply repeal approved laws or pass new ones without their consent.
The Crown felt otherwise. These opposing views on colonial rights versus Crown prerogatives were on display when Ben Franklin met with the Earl of Granville while in London years before the outbreak of the conflict.
“You Americans have wrong ideas on the Nature of your Constitution,” Granville told Franklin in 1757. “The King in Council is legislator for the Colonies, and when His Majesty’s instructions come there, they are the law the land.”
Franklin, whose sympathies with the Crown probably exceeded those any of America’s Founding Fathers, was baffled by this explanation.
“I told his Lordship this was new doctrine to me. I had always understood from our charters that our laws were to be made by our Assemblies, to be presented indeed to the king for his royal assent, but that being once given the king could not repeal or alter them.
And as the Assemblies could not make permanent laws without his assent, so neither could he make a law for them without theirs. He assured me I was totally mistaken.”
These diametrically opposing views on Crown authority and the rights of colonists made reconciliation between the king and his subjects terribly difficult.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763, issued by George III on Oct. 7, forbade colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. This meant settlements previously approved by the Crown were now unlawful, even though many of these lands were already occupied by settlers, many of whom had fought for the British during the French and Indian War.
The proclamation, writes historian Paul Johnson, “was anathema to the colonies—it destroyed their future, at a stroke.” He continued:
“The Great Proclamation in short was not a practical document. It enraged and frightened the colonists without being enforceable… . The Proclamation was one of Britain’s cardinal errors. Just at the moment when the expulsion of the French had entirely removed American dependence on British military power…the men in London were proposing to replace the French by the Indians and deny the colonies access. It made no sense, and it looked like a deliberate insult to American sensibilities.”
Colonists were further infuriated by passage of the Quebec Act (1774), which nullified many colonial claims by extending the boundaries of Quebec to the Ohio River on the south and to the Mississippi on the west.
Popular history has often overlooked the fact that in the decades leading up to the Revolution, Britain’s imperial impulses resulted in several clumsy attempts at social engineering that no doubt dampened colonial support of the Crown. Perhaps first among these was the Great Upheaval (also known as the Expulsion of the Acadians), which involved the Crown expelling some 14,000 French-speaking settlers (Acadians) from Nova Scotia.
The dubious policy, implemented out of fear of a French uprising, was a disaster for everyone—not just for the Acadians ripped from their homes. The Crown’s attempt to resettle the Acadians, who were Catholic, in the Thirteen Colonies was met with outrage and suspicion. The Crown eventually gave way and began shipping Acadians to Britain and France. But images of Red Coats forcing families onto ships undoubtedly made a dark impression on colonialists. The policy was both senseless and an abuse of power, a dangerous omen for an imperial power attempting to govern a fiercely independent people.
It’s easy to forget that the 30 Years War, which involved Catholics and Protestants destroying each other in Europe, concluded barely a century after the start of the French and Indian War. The conclusion of the latter resulted in a continent that was, geographically speaking, religiously divided, with Catholics in Canada to the north and the Thirteen Colonies predominately Protestant to the south.
This religious tension was not especially conspicuous until passage of the aforementioned Quebec Act. The legislation, which put Canada on a path toward self-government, was designed to keep the British subjects to the North loyal to the Crown, Johnson notes. In this it succeeded—but it also created a sort of paranoia in the colonies.
Passed at roughly the same time colonials were fuming over the Intolerable Acts, it caused fevered speculation in colonists that a Catholic conspiracy was afoot. Even the distinguished John Adams fretted that the Crown was seeking to bring back “the hated despotism of the Stuarts” (who were Catholic).
—
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why did the 13 colonies revolt against england | Revolutionary War - Timeline, Facts & Battles | The Revolutionary War was an insurrection by American Patriots in the 13 colonies to British rule, resulting in American independence.
The Revolutionary War (1775-83), also known as the American Revolution, arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain’s 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown. Skirmishes between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and Concord in April 1775 kicked off the armed conflict, and by the following summer, the rebels were waging a full-scale war for their independence. France entered the American Revolution on the side of the colonists in 1778, turning what had essentially been a civil war into an international conflict. After French assistance helped the Continental Army force the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, the Americans had effectively won their independence, though fighting would not formally end until 1783.
American Revolution History
For more than a decade before the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, tensions had been building between colonists and the British authorities.
The French and Indian War , or Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), brought new territories under the power of the crown, but the expensive conflict lead to new and unpopular taxes. Attempts by the British government to raise revenue by taxing the colonies (notably the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773) met with heated protest among many colonists, who resented their lack of representation in Parliament and demanded the same rights as other British subjects.
Colonial resistance led to violence in 1770, when British soldiers opened fire on a mob of colonists, killing five men in what was known as the Boston Massacre . After December 1773, when a band of Bostonians altered their appearance to hide their identity boarded British ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party , an outraged Parliament passed a series of measures (known as the Intolerable, or Coercive Acts ) designed to reassert imperial authority in Massachusetts .
Did you know? Now most famous as a traitor to the American cause, General Benedict Arnold began the Revolutionary War as one of its earliest heroes, helping lead rebel forces in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775.
In response, a group of colonial delegates (including George Washington of Virginia , John and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia and John Jay of New York ) met in Philadelphia in September 1774 to give voice to their grievances against the British crown. This First Continental Congress did not go so far as to demand independence from Britain, but it denounced taxation without representation, as well as the maintenance of the British army in the colonies without their consent. It issued a declaration of the rights due every citizen, including life, liberty, property, assembly and trial by jury. The Continental Congress voted to meet again in May 1775 to consider further action, but by that time violence had already broken out.
On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord, Massachusetts in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere and other riders sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the Redcoats. On April 19, local militiamen clashed with British soldiers in the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, marking the “shot heard round the world” that signified the start of the Revolutionary War.
From the roots of the rebellion to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, explore this pivotal era in American history through sweeping cinematic recreations.
When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia, delegates—including new additions Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson —voted to form a Continental Army, with Washington as its commander in chief. On June 17, in the Revolution’s first major battle, colonial forces inflicted heavy casualties on the British regiment of General William Howe at Breed’s Hill in Boston. The engagement, known as the Battle of Bunker Hill , ended in British victory, but lent encouragement to the revolutionary cause.
Throughout that fall and winter, Washington’s forces struggled to keep the British contained in Boston, but artillery captured at Fort Ticonderoga in New York helped shift the balance of that struggle in late winter. The British evacuated the city in March 1776, with Howe and his men retreating to Canada to prepare a major invasion of New York.
Washington Commands the Continental Army – David McCullough
By June 1776, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, a growing majority of the colonists had come to favor independence from Britain. On July 4 , the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence , drafted by a five-man committee including Franklin and John Adams but written mainly by Jefferson. That same month, determined to crush the rebellion, the British government sent a large fleet, along with more than 34,000 troops to New York. In August, Howe’s Redcoats routed the Continental Army on Long Island; Washington was forced to evacuate his troops from New York City by September. Pushed across the Delaware River , Washington fought back with a surprise attack in Trenton, New Jersey , on Christmas night and won another victory at Princeton to revive the rebels’ flagging hopes before making winter quarters at Morristown.
British strategy in 1777 involved two main prongs of attack aimed at separating New England (where the rebellion enjoyed the most popular support) from the other colonies. To that end, General John Burgoyne’s army marched south from Canada toward a planned meeting with Howe’s forces on the Hudson River . Burgoyne’s men dealt a devastating loss to the Americans in July by retaking Fort Ticonderoga, while Howe decided to move his troops southward from New York to confront Washington’s army near the Chesapeake Bay. The British defeated the Americans at Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvania , on September 11 and entered Philadelphia on September 25. Washington rebounded to strike Germantown in early October before withdrawing to winter quarters near Valley Forge .
Howe’s move had left Burgoyne’s army exposed near Saratoga, New York, and the British suffered the consequences of this on September 19, when an American force under General Horatio Gates defeated them at Freeman’s Farm in the first Battle of Saratoga . After suffering another defeat on October 7 at Bemis Heights (the Second Battle of Saratoga), Burgoyne surrendered his remaining forces on October 17. The American victory Saratoga would prove to be a turning point of the American Revolution, as it prompted France (which had been secretly aiding the rebels since 1776) to enter the war openly on the American side, though it would not formally declare war on Great Britain until June 1778. The American Revolution, which had begun as a civil conflict between Britain and its colonies, had become a world war.
During the long, hard winter at Valley Forge, Washington’s troops benefited from the training and discipline of the Prussian military officer Baron Friedrich von Steuben (sent by the French) and the leadership of the French aristocrat Marquis de Lafayette . On June 28, 1778, as British forces under Sir Henry Clinton (who had replaced Howe as supreme commander) attempted to withdraw from Philadelphia to New York, Washington’s army attacked them near Monmouth, New Jersey. The battle effectively ended in a draw, as the Americans held their ground, but Clinton was able to get his army and supplies safely to New York. On July 8, a French fleet commanded by the Comte d’Estaing arrived off the Atlantic coast, ready to do battle with the British. A joint attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island , in late July failed, and for the most part the war settled into a stalemate phase in the North.
The Americans suffered a number of setbacks from 1779 to 1781, including the defection of General Benedict Arnold to the British and the first serious mutinies within the Continental Army. In the South, the British occupied Georgia by early 1779 and captured Charleston, South Carolina in May 1780. British forces under Lord Charles Cornwallis then began an offensive in the region, crushing Gates’ American troops at Camden in mid-August, though the Americans scored a victory over Loyalist forces at King’s Mountain in early October. Nathanael Green replaced Gates as the American commander in the South that December. Under Green’s command, General Daniel Morgan scored a victory against a British force led by Colonel Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens, South Carolina, on January 17, 1781.
By the fall of 1781, Greene’s American forces had managed to force Cornwallis and his men to withdraw to Virginia’s Yorktown peninsula, near where the York River empties into Chesapeake Bay. Supported by a French army commanded by General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington moved against Yorktown with a total of around 14,000 soldiers, while a fleet of 36 French warships offshore prevented British reinforcement or evacuation. Trapped and overpowered, Cornwallis was forced to surrender his entire army on October 19. Claiming illness, the British general sent his deputy, Charles O’Hara, to surrender; after O’Hara approached Rochambeau to surrender his sword (the Frenchman deferred to Washington), Washington gave the nod to his own deputy, Benjamin Lincoln, who accepted it.
Though the movement for American independence effectively triumphed at the Battle of Yorktown , contemporary observers did not see that as the decisive victory yet. British forces remained stationed around Charleston, and the powerful main army still resided in New York. Though neither side would take decisive action over the better part of the next two years, the British removal of their troops from Charleston and Savannah in late 1782 finally pointed to the end of the conflict. British and American negotiators in Paris signed preliminary peace terms in Paris late that November, and on September 3, 1783, Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States in the Treaty of Paris . At the same time, Britain signed separate peace treaties with France and Spain (which had entered the conflict in 1779), bringing the American Revolution to a close after eight long years. | https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/american-revolution-history | 82 |
why did the 13 colonies revolt against england | Revolutionary War - Timeline, Facts & Battles | The Revolutionary War was an insurrection by American Patriots in the 13 colonies to British rule, resulting in American independence.
The Revolutionary War (1775-83), also known as the American Revolution, arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain’s 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown. Skirmishes between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and Concord in April 1775 kicked off the armed conflict, and by the following summer, the rebels were waging a full-scale war for their independence. France entered the American Revolution on the side of the colonists in 1778, turning what had essentially been a civil war into an international conflict. After French assistance helped the Continental Army force the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, the Americans had effectively won their independence, though fighting would not formally end until 1783.
American Revolution History
For more than a decade before the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, tensions had been building between colonists and the British authorities.
The French and Indian War , or Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), brought new territories under the power of the crown, but the expensive conflict lead to new and unpopular taxes. Attempts by the British government to raise revenue by taxing the colonies (notably the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773) met with heated protest among many colonists, who resented their lack of representation in Parliament and demanded the same rights as other British subjects.
Colonial resistance led to violence in 1770, when British soldiers opened fire on a mob of colonists, killing five men in what was known as the Boston Massacre . After December 1773, when a band of Bostonians altered their appearance to hide their identity boarded British ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party , an outraged Parliament passed a series of measures (known as the Intolerable, or Coercive Acts ) designed to reassert imperial authority in Massachusetts .
Did you know? Now most famous as a traitor to the American cause, General Benedict Arnold began the Revolutionary War as one of its earliest heroes, helping lead rebel forces in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775.
In response, a group of colonial delegates (including George Washington of Virginia , John and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia and John Jay of New York ) met in Philadelphia in September 1774 to give voice to their grievances against the British crown. This First Continental Congress did not go so far as to demand independence from Britain, but it denounced taxation without representation, as well as the maintenance of the British army in the colonies without their consent. It issued a declaration of the rights due every citizen, including life, liberty, property, assembly and trial by jury. The Continental Congress voted to meet again in May 1775 to consider further action, but by that time violence had already broken out.
On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord, Massachusetts in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere and other riders sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the Redcoats. On April 19, local militiamen clashed with British soldiers in the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, marking the “shot heard round the world” that signified the start of the Revolutionary War.
From the roots of the rebellion to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, explore this pivotal era in American history through sweeping cinematic recreations.
When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia, delegates—including new additions Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson —voted to form a Continental Army, with Washington as its commander in chief. On June 17, in the Revolution’s first major battle, colonial forces inflicted heavy casualties on the British regiment of General William Howe at Breed’s Hill in Boston. The engagement, known as the Battle of Bunker Hill , ended in British victory, but lent encouragement to the revolutionary cause.
Throughout that fall and winter, Washington’s forces struggled to keep the British contained in Boston, but artillery captured at Fort Ticonderoga in New York helped shift the balance of that struggle in late winter. The British evacuated the city in March 1776, with Howe and his men retreating to Canada to prepare a major invasion of New York.
Washington Commands the Continental Army – David McCullough
By June 1776, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, a growing majority of the colonists had come to favor independence from Britain. On July 4 , the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence , drafted by a five-man committee including Franklin and John Adams but written mainly by Jefferson. That same month, determined to crush the rebellion, the British government sent a large fleet, along with more than 34,000 troops to New York. In August, Howe’s Redcoats routed the Continental Army on Long Island; Washington was forced to evacuate his troops from New York City by September. Pushed across the Delaware River , Washington fought back with a surprise attack in Trenton, New Jersey , on Christmas night and won another victory at Princeton to revive the rebels’ flagging hopes before making winter quarters at Morristown.
British strategy in 1777 involved two main prongs of attack aimed at separating New England (where the rebellion enjoyed the most popular support) from the other colonies. To that end, General John Burgoyne’s army marched south from Canada toward a planned meeting with Howe’s forces on the Hudson River . Burgoyne’s men dealt a devastating loss to the Americans in July by retaking Fort Ticonderoga, while Howe decided to move his troops southward from New York to confront Washington’s army near the Chesapeake Bay. The British defeated the Americans at Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvania , on September 11 and entered Philadelphia on September 25. Washington rebounded to strike Germantown in early October before withdrawing to winter quarters near Valley Forge .
Howe’s move had left Burgoyne’s army exposed near Saratoga, New York, and the British suffered the consequences of this on September 19, when an American force under General Horatio Gates defeated them at Freeman’s Farm in the first Battle of Saratoga . After suffering another defeat on October 7 at Bemis Heights (the Second Battle of Saratoga), Burgoyne surrendered his remaining forces on October 17. The American victory Saratoga would prove to be a turning point of the American Revolution, as it prompted France (which had been secretly aiding the rebels since 1776) to enter the war openly on the American side, though it would not formally declare war on Great Britain until June 1778. The American Revolution, which had begun as a civil conflict between Britain and its colonies, had become a world war.
During the long, hard winter at Valley Forge, Washington’s troops benefited from the training and discipline of the Prussian military officer Baron Friedrich von Steuben (sent by the French) and the leadership of the French aristocrat Marquis de Lafayette . On June 28, 1778, as British forces under Sir Henry Clinton (who had replaced Howe as supreme commander) attempted to withdraw from Philadelphia to New York, Washington’s army attacked them near Monmouth, New Jersey. The battle effectively ended in a draw, as the Americans held their ground, but Clinton was able to get his army and supplies safely to New York. On July 8, a French fleet commanded by the Comte d’Estaing arrived off the Atlantic coast, ready to do battle with the British. A joint attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island , in late July failed, and for the most part the war settled into a stalemate phase in the North.
The Americans suffered a number of setbacks from 1779 to 1781, including the defection of General Benedict Arnold to the British and the first serious mutinies within the Continental Army. In the South, the British occupied Georgia by early 1779 and captured Charleston, South Carolina in May 1780. British forces under Lord Charles Cornwallis then began an offensive in the region, crushing Gates’ American troops at Camden in mid-August, though the Americans scored a victory over Loyalist forces at King’s Mountain in early October. Nathanael Green replaced Gates as the American commander in the South that December. Under Green’s command, General Daniel Morgan scored a victory against a British force led by Colonel Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens, South Carolina, on January 17, 1781.
By the fall of 1781, Greene’s American forces had managed to force Cornwallis and his men to withdraw to Virginia’s Yorktown peninsula, near where the York River empties into Chesapeake Bay. Supported by a French army commanded by General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington moved against Yorktown with a total of around 14,000 soldiers, while a fleet of 36 French warships offshore prevented British reinforcement or evacuation. Trapped and overpowered, Cornwallis was forced to surrender his entire army on October 19. Claiming illness, the British general sent his deputy, Charles O’Hara, to surrender; after O’Hara approached Rochambeau to surrender his sword (the Frenchman deferred to Washington), Washington gave the nod to his own deputy, Benjamin Lincoln, who accepted it.
Though the movement for American independence effectively triumphed at the Battle of Yorktown , contemporary observers did not see that as the decisive victory yet. British forces remained stationed around Charleston, and the powerful main army still resided in New York. Though neither side would take decisive action over the better part of the next two years, the British removal of their troops from Charleston and Savannah in late 1782 finally pointed to the end of the conflict. British and American negotiators in Paris signed preliminary peace terms in Paris late that November, and on September 3, 1783, Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States in the Treaty of Paris . At the same time, Britain signed separate peace treaties with France and Spain (which had entered the conflict in 1779), bringing the American Revolution to a close after eight long years. | https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/american-revolution-history | 82 |
why did the 13 colonies revolt against england | American Revolution | Causes, Battles, Aftermath, & Facts | Written by Willard M. Wallace
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American Revolution , also called United States War of Independence or American Revolutionary War , (1775–83), insurrection by which 13 of Great Britain ’s North American colonies won political independence and went on to form the United States of America . The war followed more than a decade of growing estrangement between the British crown and a large and influential segment of its North American colonies that was caused by British attempts to assert greater control over colonial affairs after having long adhered to a policy of salutary neglect . Until early in 1778 the conflict was a civil war within the British Empire , but afterward it became an international war as France (in 1778) and Spain (in 1779) joined the colonies against Britain . Meanwhile, the Netherlands , which provided both official recognition of the United States and financial support for it, was engaged in its own war against Britain. From the beginning, sea power was vital in determining the course of the war, lending to British strategy a flexibility that helped compensate for the comparatively small numbers of troops sent to America and ultimately enabling the French to help bring about the final British surrender at Yorktown .
Americans fought the war on land with essentially two types of organization: the Continental (national) Army and the state militias . The total number of the former provided by quotas from the states throughout the conflict was 231,771 men, and the militias totaled 164,087. At any given time, however, the American forces seldom numbered over 20,000; in 1781 there were only about 29,000 insurgents under arms throughout the country. The war was therefore one fought by small field armies. Militias, poorly disciplined and with elected officers, were summoned for periods usually not exceeding three months. The terms of Continental Army service were only gradually increased from one to three years, and not even bounties and the offer of land kept the army up to strength. Reasons for the difficulty in maintaining an adequate Continental force included the colonists’ traditional antipathy toward regular armies, the objections of farmers to being away from their fields, the competition of the states with the Continental Congress to keep men in the militia , and the wretched and uncertain pay in a period of inflation.
By contrast, the British army was a reliable steady force of professionals. Since it numbered only about 42,000, heavy recruiting programs were introduced. Many of the enlisted men were farm boys, as were most of the Americans. Others were unemployed persons from the urban slums. Still others joined the army to escape fines or imprisonment. The great majority became efficient soldiers as a result of sound training and ferocious discipline . The officers were drawn largely from the gentry and the aristocracy and obtained their commissions and promotions by purchase. Though they received no formal training, they were not so dependent on a book knowledge of military tactics as were many of the Americans. British generals, however, tended toward a lack of imagination and initiative , while those who demonstrated such qualities often were rash.
Because troops were few and conscription unknown, the British government, following a traditional policy, purchased about 30,000 troops from various German princes. The Lensgreve (landgrave) of Hesse furnished approximately three-fifths of that total. Few acts by the crown roused so much antagonism in America as that use of foreign mercenaries .
The colony of Massachusetts was seen by King George III and his ministers as the hotbed of disloyalty. After the Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773), Parliament responded with the Intolerable Acts (1774), a series of punitive measures that were intended to cow the restive population into obedience. The 1691 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was abrogated , and the colony’s elected ruling council was replaced with a military government under Gen. Thomas Gage , the commander of all British troops in North America . At Gage’s headquarters in Boston , he had four regiments—perhaps 4,000 men—under his command, and Parliament deemed that force sufficient to overawe the population in his vicinity. William Legge, 2nd earl of Dartmouth , secretary of state for the colonies, advised Gage that
the violence committed by those, who have taken up arms in Massachusetts, have appeared to me as the acts of a rude rabble, without plan, without concert, without conduct.
From London, Dartmouth concluded that
a small force now, if put to the test, would be able to conquer them, with greater probability of success, than might be expected of a larger army, if the people should be suffered to form themselves upon a more regular plan.
Gage, for his part, felt that no fewer than 20,000 troops would be adequate for such an endeavour, but he acted with the forces he had at hand. Beginning in the late summer of 1774, Gage attempted to suppress the warlike preparations throughout New England by seizing stores of weapons and powder . Although the colonials were initially taken by surprise, they soon mobilized. Groups such as the Sons of Liberty uncovered advance details of British actions, and Committees of Correspondence aided in the organization of countermeasures. Learning of a British plan to secure the weapons cache at Fort William and Mary, an undermanned army outpost in Portsmouth , New Hampshire , Boston’s Committee of Correspondence dispatched Paul Revere on December 13, 1774, to issue a warning to local allies. The following day, several hundred men assembled and stormed the fort, capturing the six-man garrison, seizing a significant quantity of powder, and striking the British colours; a subsequent party removed the remaining cannons and small arms. That act of open violence against the crown infuriated British officials, but their attempts to deprive the incipient rebellion of vital war matériel over the following months were increasingly frustrated by colonial leaders who denuded British supply caches and sequestered arms and ammunition in private homes. On April 14, 1775, Gage received a letter from Dartmouth informing him that Massachusetts had been declared to be in a state of open revolt and ordering him to “arrest and imprison the principal Actors and Abettors in the [Massachusetts] Provincial Congress.” Gage had received his orders, but the colonials were well aware of his intentions before he could act.
American Revolution events
On April 16 Revere rode to Concord , a town 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Boston, to advise local compatriots to secure their military stores in advance of British troop movements. Two nights later Revere rode from Charlestown —where he confirmed that the local Sons of Liberty had seen the two lanterns that were posted in Boston’s Old North Church, signaling a British approach across the Charles River —to Lexington to warn that the British were on the march. Revolutionary leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams fled Lexington to safety, and Revere was joined by fellow riders William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. The trio were apprehended outside Lexington by a British patrol, but Prescott escaped custody and was able to continue on to Concord. Revere’s “midnight ride” provided the colonists with vital information about British intentions, and it was later immortalized in a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow .
Some 700 British troops spent the evening of April 18, 1775, forming ranks on Boston Common, with orders to seize the colonial armoury at Concord . The lengthy public display ensured that Gage had lost any chance at secrecy, and by the time the force had been transported across the Charles River to Cambridge it was 2:00 am the following morning. The march to Lexington was an exercise in misery. It began in a swamp, and the British were forced to wade through brackish water that was, in places, waist deep. By the time the soaked infantrymen arrived in Lexington at approximately 5:00 am , 77 minutemen were among those who had assembled on the village green. Officers on both sides ordered their men to hold their positions but not to fire their weapons. It is unclear who fired “the shot heard ’round the world,” but it sparked a skirmish that left eight Americans dead. The colonial force evaporated, and the British moved on to Concord, where they were met with determined resistance from hundreds of militiamen. Now outnumbered and running low on ammunition, the British column was forced to retire to Boston. On the return march, American snipers took a deadly toll on the British, and only the timely arrival of 1,100 reinforcements prevented the retreat from becoming a rout. Those killed and wounded at the Battles of Lexington and Concord numbered 273 British and 95 Americans.
Rebel militia then converged on Boston from all over New England, while London attempted to formulate a response. Generals Sir William Howe , Sir Henry Clinton , and John Burgoyne were dispatched at once with reinforcements, and Charles Cornwallis followed later. Those four commanders would be identified with the conduct of the principal British operations. The Continental Congress in Philadelphia , acting for the 13 colonies, voted for general defensive measures, called out troops, and appointed George Washington of Virginia commander in chief. Before Washington could take charge of the 15,000 colonial troops laying siege to the British garrison in Boston, Gage ordered Howe to drive the Americans from the heights in Charlestown.
The Americans provoked the assault by entrenching on Breed’s Hill, the lower of two hills overlooking the British position. The placement of American artillery on the heights would have made the British position in Boston untenable , so on June 17, 1775, Howe led a British frontal assault on the American fortifications. In the misleadingly named Battle of Bunker Hill (Breed’s Hill was the primary locus of combat), Howe’s 2,300 troops encountered withering fire while storming the rebel lines. The British eventually cleared the hill but at the cost of more than 40 percent of the assault force, and the battle was a moral victory for the Americans. | https://www.britannica.com/event/American-Revolution | 82 |
why did the 13 colonies revolt against england | The 13 Colonies: Map, Original States & Facts | HISTORY | The 13 colonies founded along the Eastern seaboard in the 17th and 18th centuries weren't the first colonial outposts on the American continent, but they are the ones where colonists eventually pushed back against British rule and designed their own version of government to form the United States. These 13 colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia) were established by British colonists for a range of reasons, from the pursuit of fortunes, to escape from religious prosecution to the desire to create new forms of government.
Sixteenth-century England was a tumultuous place. Because they could make more money from selling wool than from selling food, many of the nation’s landowners were converting farmers’ fields into pastures for sheep. This led to a food shortage; at the same time, many agricultural workers lost their jobs.
Did you know? Virginia Dare, the first American-born child of English parents, was born in Roanoke in 1587.
The 16th century was also the age of mercantilism, an extremely competitive economic philosophy that pushed European nations to acquire as many colonies as they could. As a result, for the most part, the English colonies in North America were business ventures. They provided an outlet for England’s surplus population and (in some cases) more religious freedom than England did, but their primary purpose was to make money for their sponsors.
The 13 Colonies
In 1606, King James I divided the Atlantic seaboard in two, giving the southern half to the London Company (later the Virginia Company) and the northern half to the Plymouth Company.
The first English settlement in North America had actually been established some 20 years before, in 1587, when a group of colonists (91 men, 17 women and nine children) led by Sir Walter Raleigh settled on the island of Roanoke. Mysteriously, by 1590 the Roanoke colony had vanished entirely . Historians still do not know what became of its inhabitants.
In 1606, just a few months after James I issued its charter, the London Company sent 144 men to Virginia on three ships: the Godspeed, the Discovery and the Susan Constant. They reached the Chesapeake Bay in the spring of 1607 and headed about 60 miles up the James River, where they built a settlement they called Jamestown .
The Jamestown colonists had a rough time of it: They were so busy looking for gold and other exportable resources that they could barely feed themselves. It was not until 1616, when Virginia’s settlers learned how to grow tobacco, that it seemed the colony might survive. The first enslaved African arrived in Virginia in 1619.
In 1632, the English crown granted about 12 million acres of land at the top of the Chesapeake Bay to Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore. This colony, named Maryland after the queen, was similar to Virginia in many ways. Its landowners produced tobacco on large plantations that depended on the labor of indentured servants and (later) enslaved workers.
But unlike Virginia’s founders, Lord Baltimore was a Catholic, and he hoped that his colony would be a refuge for his persecuted coreligionists. Maryland became known for its policy of religious toleration for all.
Mystery at Roanoke
The first English emigrants to what would become the New England colonies were a small group of Puritan separatists, later called the Pilgrims, who arrived in Plymouth in 1620 to found Plymouth Colony . Ten years later, a wealthy syndicate known as the Massachusetts Bay Company sent a much larger (and more liberal) group of Puritans to establish another Massachusetts settlement. With the help of local natives, the colonists soon got the hang of farming, fishing and hunting, and Massachusetts prospered.
As the Massachusetts settlements expanded, they formed new colonies in New England. Puritans who thought that Massachusetts was not pious enough formed the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven (the two combined in 1665). Meanwhile, Puritans who thought that Massachusetts was too restrictive formed the colony of Rhode Island, where everyone–including Jewish people–enjoyed complete “liberty in religious concernments.” To the north of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a handful of adventurous settlers formed the colony of New Hampshire.
In 1664, King Charles II gave the territory between New England and Virginia, much of which was already occupied by Dutch traders and landowners called patroons, to his brother James, the Duke of York. The English soon absorbed Dutch New Netherland and renamed it New York.
Most of the Dutch people (as well as the Belgian Flemings and Walloons, French Huguenots, Scandinavians and Germans) who were living there stayed put. This made New York one of the most diverse and prosperous colonies in the New World.
Featured
In 1680, the king granted 45,000 square miles of land west of the Delaware River to William Penn, a Quaker who owned large swaths of land in Ireland. Penn’s North American holdings became the colony of “Penn’s Woods,” or Pennsylvania.
Lured by the fertile soil and the religious toleration that Penn promised, people migrated there from all over Europe. Like their Puritan counterparts in New England, most of these emigrants paid their own way to the colonies and had enough money to establish themselves when they arrived. As a result, Pennsylvania soon became a prosperous and relatively egalitarian place.
By contrast, the Carolina colony, a territory that stretched south from Virginia to Florida and west to the Pacific Ocean, was much less cosmopolitan. In its northern half, hardscrabble farmers eked out a living. In its southern half, planters presided over vast estates that produced corn, lumber, beef and pork, and–starting in the 1690s–rice.
These Carolinians had close ties to the English planter colony on the Caribbean island of Barbados, which relied heavily on African slave labor, and many were involved in the slave trade themselves. As a result, slavery played an important role in the development of the Carolina colony. (It split into North Carolina and South Carolina in 1729.)
In 1732, inspired by the need to build a buffer between South Carolina and the Spanish settlements in Florida, the Englishman James Oglethorpe established the Georgia colony. In many ways, Georgia’s development mirrored South Carolina’s.
In 1700, there were about 250,000 European settlers and enslaved Africans in North America’s English colonies. By 1775, on the eve of revolution, there were an estimated 2.5 million. The colonists did not have much in common, but they were able to band together and fight for their independence.
The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) was sparked after American colonists chafed over issues like taxation without representation, embodied by laws like The Stamp Act and The Townshend Acts. Mounting tensions came to a head during the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, when the “shot heard round the world” was fired.
It was not without warning; the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770 and the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773 showed the colonists’ increasing dissatisfaction with British rule in the colonies.
The Declaration of Independence , issued on July 4, 1776, enumerated the reasons the Founding Fathers felt compelled to break from the rule of King George III and parliament to start a new nation. In September of that year, the Continental Congress declared the “United Colonies” of America to be the “United States of America.”
France joined the war on the side of the colonists in 1778, helping the Continental Army conquer the British at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. The Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution and granting the 13 original colonies independence was signed on September 3, 1783.
Stream American Revolution documentaries and your favorite HISTORY series, commercial-free. | https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/thirteen-colonies | 82 |
why did the 13 colonies revolt against england | Learn & Explore - Preparing for the Oath | USCIS 61
The colonists fought the British because they wanted to be free from Britain. They fought the British because of unfair taxes. They fought because they didn't have self-government . When the American colonies formed, they were part of Britain. Britain increased taxes for colonists on things they bought and used every day, like tea. Many colonists were angry because no one represented their needs in the British government. Colonists believed they did not have self-government . The British forced colonists to allow British soldiers to sleep and eat in their homes. The colonists joined together to fight Britain and gain independence . They fought the War of Independence from 1775 to 1783. The colonies won the war. They created the United States.
Words in bold are English words you may not know. You can learn these words in the Word List . | https://americanhistory.si.edu/citizenship/learn/independence/61/learn | 82 |
why did the 13 colonies revolt against england | Learn & Explore - Preparing for the Oath | USCIS 61
The colonists fought the British because they wanted to be free from Britain. They fought the British because of unfair taxes. They fought because they didn't have self-government . When the American colonies formed, they were part of Britain. Britain increased taxes for colonists on things they bought and used every day, like tea. Many colonists were angry because no one represented their needs in the British government. Colonists believed they did not have self-government . The British forced colonists to allow British soldiers to sleep and eat in their homes. The colonists joined together to fight Britain and gain independence . They fought the War of Independence from 1775 to 1783. The colonies won the war. They created the United States.
Words in bold are English words you may not know. You can learn these words in the Word List . | https://americanhistory.si.edu/citizenship/learn/independence/61/learn | 82 |
who is called the liberator of indian press | Press Act 1835 (Metcalfe Act) - Modern India History Notes | Sir Charles Metcalfe passed the Press Act in 1835 , thus restoring press freedom. Metcalfe was the governor-general from 1835 to 1836 . He repealed the obnoxious 1823 ordinance, earning him the moniker "liberator of the Indian press." The new Press Act (1835) required a printer/publisher to give a detailed account of the premises of a publication and to cease operations if a similar declaration was issued. A liberal press policy resulted in a rapid expansion of newspapers. In this article, we will discuss the Press Act (Metcalfe), 1835 which will be helpful for UPSC exam preparation.
Table of Contents
Features
- Governor-general Charles Metcalfe had a liberal attitude toward Indian Press and he repealed the 1823 regulations.
- This act, therefore, is called the ‘Metcalfe Act’ and Metcalfe is known as the ‘Liberator of the Indian Press’.
- This act remained in force till 1856 and led to the rapid growth of newspapers in the country.
|Licensing Regulations 1823||Vernacular Press Act , 1878|
|Licensing Act, 1857||Indian Press Act, 1910|
|Registration Act 1867||Indian Press(Emergency Power) Act, 1931|
Sir Charles Metcalfe
- Sir Charles Metcalfe (1785-1846) served as acting Governor-General of India from March 1835 to March 1836.
- Charles Metcalfe was born on January 30, 1785, in Kolkata, the son of Thomson Metcalfe, a Major in the East India Company's Army.
- He was educated at Bromley and Eton before returning to Calcutta in 1801 as a writer in the Company's service at the age of sixteen.
- Metcalfe held a variety of political positions. He played a key role in concluding the Amritsar Treaty of 1809 with Ranjit Singh , which brought stability to Punjab and remained in force until the first Sikh war of 1845.
- As the Sikhs' energies were diverted against Afghanistan and Sind, the British territory was secured.
- Metcalfe was the longest-serving Englishman in India. He arrived in India during Lord Wellesley's ascendancy of British power and stayed for 38 years.
- His desire for reform led him to outlaw slavery, sati, and infanticide in the Delhi territory as early as 1812.
- Metcalfe was a member of the Council who persuaded Governor-General Bentinck to include natives in the country's governance. He was a capable civil servant with progressive views.
- His liberal press policy endeared him to the Indians who built Metcalfe Hall in Calcutta and erected his bust there.
Impact
- The Act was enthusiastically received by the European community in India and the principal inhabitants of Calcutta, including the most eminent native gentry in rank and accomplishments.
- They gathered and voted an address of thanks to Sir Charles Metcalfe for the boon he had bestowed on the country, as well as subscriptions to commemorate it by erecting a noble hall in his honor.
- In his response to the address, he stated that:
- "The Act evinced to the world that the Company's government desired no concealment, that it was happy to have the most minute particulars of its Indian administration scrutinized."
- It demonstrated to the universe that it sought information and instruction wherever they could be found and that it did not want to rule India as a conquered, ignorant, and enslaved country, but as a cherished, enlightened, and free country."
Conclusion
Newspapers were crucial in the Indian independence struggle. The British government saw the emergence and growth of Indian newspapers as a threat and thus took a number of measures to suppress them through various acts and laws. Metcalfe was dubbed the "liberator of the Indian press" after repealing the obnoxious 1823 ordinance. In 1835, Lord Metcalfe took over as Bentink's successor. He, like Bentink, was a liberal who believed strongly in press freedom.
|Modern India History Notes||Administrative and Judicial Developments|
|Press||Civil Services|
|Nagpur session||Judiciary|
|Charter Act,1813||Government of India Act, 1919 (Montagu-Chelmsford reforms)|
FAQs
Question: Why is Metcalfe known as the press liberator?
Question: What was the Metcalfe Act of 1835?
Question: Who granted press freedom in 1835?
MCQs
Question: Which of the following acts eased the restrictions imposed by the Metcalf Act?
(a) Registration Act of 1867
(b) Licensing Act of 1857
(c) Press Act of 1835
(d) Vernacular Press Act of 1878
Answer: (a) See the Explanation
Question: Which of the following is/are correctly matched pair(s)?
(a) Lord Wellesley - Censorship of the Press Act, 1799
(b) John Adams - Licensing Regulation in 1823
(c) Metcalfe - Press Act of 1835
(d) All of the above
Answer: (d) See the Explanation
|Indian Polity Notes||Indian Economy Notes|
|Art and Culture Notes||Governance Notes|
|Ancient India History Notes||Medieval India History Notes|
|Modern India History Notes||Geography Notes|
|Science And Technology Notes||Environment And Ecology Notes|
|Post Independence Notes||Society Notes|
|Internal Security Notes||Ethics Notes|
|Disaster Management Notes||World History|
|International Relations||Social Justice Notes|
|CSAT Notes||Government Scheme Notes|
*The article might have information for the previous academic years, please refer the official website of the exam.
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who is called the liberator of indian press | Press Act 1835 (Metcalfe Act) - Modern India History Notes | Sir Charles Metcalfe passed the Press Act in 1835 , thus restoring press freedom. Metcalfe was the governor-general from 1835 to 1836 . He repealed the obnoxious 1823 ordinance, earning him the moniker "liberator of the Indian press." The new Press Act (1835) required a printer/publisher to give a detailed account of the premises of a publication and to cease operations if a similar declaration was issued. A liberal press policy resulted in a rapid expansion of newspapers. In this article, we will discuss the Press Act (Metcalfe), 1835 which will be helpful for UPSC exam preparation.
Table of Contents
Features
- Governor-general Charles Metcalfe had a liberal attitude toward Indian Press and he repealed the 1823 regulations.
- This act, therefore, is called the ‘Metcalfe Act’ and Metcalfe is known as the ‘Liberator of the Indian Press’.
- This act remained in force till 1856 and led to the rapid growth of newspapers in the country.
|Licensing Regulations 1823||Vernacular Press Act , 1878|
|Licensing Act, 1857||Indian Press Act, 1910|
|Registration Act 1867||Indian Press(Emergency Power) Act, 1931|
Sir Charles Metcalfe
- Sir Charles Metcalfe (1785-1846) served as acting Governor-General of India from March 1835 to March 1836.
- Charles Metcalfe was born on January 30, 1785, in Kolkata, the son of Thomson Metcalfe, a Major in the East India Company's Army.
- He was educated at Bromley and Eton before returning to Calcutta in 1801 as a writer in the Company's service at the age of sixteen.
- Metcalfe held a variety of political positions. He played a key role in concluding the Amritsar Treaty of 1809 with Ranjit Singh , which brought stability to Punjab and remained in force until the first Sikh war of 1845.
- As the Sikhs' energies were diverted against Afghanistan and Sind, the British territory was secured.
- Metcalfe was the longest-serving Englishman in India. He arrived in India during Lord Wellesley's ascendancy of British power and stayed for 38 years.
- His desire for reform led him to outlaw slavery, sati, and infanticide in the Delhi territory as early as 1812.
- Metcalfe was a member of the Council who persuaded Governor-General Bentinck to include natives in the country's governance. He was a capable civil servant with progressive views.
- His liberal press policy endeared him to the Indians who built Metcalfe Hall in Calcutta and erected his bust there.
Impact
- The Act was enthusiastically received by the European community in India and the principal inhabitants of Calcutta, including the most eminent native gentry in rank and accomplishments.
- They gathered and voted an address of thanks to Sir Charles Metcalfe for the boon he had bestowed on the country, as well as subscriptions to commemorate it by erecting a noble hall in his honor.
- In his response to the address, he stated that:
- "The Act evinced to the world that the Company's government desired no concealment, that it was happy to have the most minute particulars of its Indian administration scrutinized."
- It demonstrated to the universe that it sought information and instruction wherever they could be found and that it did not want to rule India as a conquered, ignorant, and enslaved country, but as a cherished, enlightened, and free country."
Conclusion
Newspapers were crucial in the Indian independence struggle. The British government saw the emergence and growth of Indian newspapers as a threat and thus took a number of measures to suppress them through various acts and laws. Metcalfe was dubbed the "liberator of the Indian press" after repealing the obnoxious 1823 ordinance. In 1835, Lord Metcalfe took over as Bentink's successor. He, like Bentink, was a liberal who believed strongly in press freedom.
|Modern India History Notes||Administrative and Judicial Developments|
|Press||Civil Services|
|Nagpur session||Judiciary|
|Charter Act,1813||Government of India Act, 1919 (Montagu-Chelmsford reforms)|
FAQs
Question: Why is Metcalfe known as the press liberator?
Question: What was the Metcalfe Act of 1835?
Question: Who granted press freedom in 1835?
MCQs
Question: Which of the following acts eased the restrictions imposed by the Metcalf Act?
(a) Registration Act of 1867
(b) Licensing Act of 1857
(c) Press Act of 1835
(d) Vernacular Press Act of 1878
Answer: (a) See the Explanation
Question: Which of the following is/are correctly matched pair(s)?
(a) Lord Wellesley - Censorship of the Press Act, 1799
(b) John Adams - Licensing Regulation in 1823
(c) Metcalfe - Press Act of 1835
(d) All of the above
Answer: (d) See the Explanation
|Indian Polity Notes||Indian Economy Notes|
|Art and Culture Notes||Governance Notes|
|Ancient India History Notes||Medieval India History Notes|
|Modern India History Notes||Geography Notes|
|Science And Technology Notes||Environment And Ecology Notes|
|Post Independence Notes||Society Notes|
|Internal Security Notes||Ethics Notes|
|Disaster Management Notes||World History|
|International Relations||Social Justice Notes|
|CSAT Notes||Government Scheme Notes|
*The article might have information for the previous academic years, please refer the official website of the exam.
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who is called the liberator of indian press | Press Act 1835 (Metcalfe Act) - Modern India History Notes | Sir Charles Metcalfe passed the Press Act in 1835 , thus restoring press freedom. Metcalfe was the governor-general from 1835 to 1836 . He repealed the obnoxious 1823 ordinance, earning him the moniker "liberator of the Indian press." The new Press Act (1835) required a printer/publisher to give a detailed account of the premises of a publication and to cease operations if a similar declaration was issued. A liberal press policy resulted in a rapid expansion of newspapers. In this article, we will discuss the Press Act (Metcalfe), 1835 which will be helpful for UPSC exam preparation.
Table of Contents
Features
- Governor-general Charles Metcalfe had a liberal attitude toward Indian Press and he repealed the 1823 regulations.
- This act, therefore, is called the ‘Metcalfe Act’ and Metcalfe is known as the ‘Liberator of the Indian Press’.
- This act remained in force till 1856 and led to the rapid growth of newspapers in the country.
|Licensing Regulations 1823||Vernacular Press Act , 1878|
|Licensing Act, 1857||Indian Press Act, 1910|
|Registration Act 1867||Indian Press(Emergency Power) Act, 1931|
Sir Charles Metcalfe
- Sir Charles Metcalfe (1785-1846) served as acting Governor-General of India from March 1835 to March 1836.
- Charles Metcalfe was born on January 30, 1785, in Kolkata, the son of Thomson Metcalfe, a Major in the East India Company's Army.
- He was educated at Bromley and Eton before returning to Calcutta in 1801 as a writer in the Company's service at the age of sixteen.
- Metcalfe held a variety of political positions. He played a key role in concluding the Amritsar Treaty of 1809 with Ranjit Singh , which brought stability to Punjab and remained in force until the first Sikh war of 1845.
- As the Sikhs' energies were diverted against Afghanistan and Sind, the British territory was secured.
- Metcalfe was the longest-serving Englishman in India. He arrived in India during Lord Wellesley's ascendancy of British power and stayed for 38 years.
- His desire for reform led him to outlaw slavery, sati, and infanticide in the Delhi territory as early as 1812.
- Metcalfe was a member of the Council who persuaded Governor-General Bentinck to include natives in the country's governance. He was a capable civil servant with progressive views.
- His liberal press policy endeared him to the Indians who built Metcalfe Hall in Calcutta and erected his bust there.
Impact
- The Act was enthusiastically received by the European community in India and the principal inhabitants of Calcutta, including the most eminent native gentry in rank and accomplishments.
- They gathered and voted an address of thanks to Sir Charles Metcalfe for the boon he had bestowed on the country, as well as subscriptions to commemorate it by erecting a noble hall in his honor.
- In his response to the address, he stated that:
- "The Act evinced to the world that the Company's government desired no concealment, that it was happy to have the most minute particulars of its Indian administration scrutinized."
- It demonstrated to the universe that it sought information and instruction wherever they could be found and that it did not want to rule India as a conquered, ignorant, and enslaved country, but as a cherished, enlightened, and free country."
Conclusion
Newspapers were crucial in the Indian independence struggle. The British government saw the emergence and growth of Indian newspapers as a threat and thus took a number of measures to suppress them through various acts and laws. Metcalfe was dubbed the "liberator of the Indian press" after repealing the obnoxious 1823 ordinance. In 1835, Lord Metcalfe took over as Bentink's successor. He, like Bentink, was a liberal who believed strongly in press freedom.
|Modern India History Notes||Administrative and Judicial Developments|
|Press||Civil Services|
|Nagpur session||Judiciary|
|Charter Act,1813||Government of India Act, 1919 (Montagu-Chelmsford reforms)|
FAQs
Question: Why is Metcalfe known as the press liberator?
Question: What was the Metcalfe Act of 1835?
Question: Who granted press freedom in 1835?
MCQs
Question: Which of the following acts eased the restrictions imposed by the Metcalf Act?
(a) Registration Act of 1867
(b) Licensing Act of 1857
(c) Press Act of 1835
(d) Vernacular Press Act of 1878
Answer: (a) See the Explanation
Question: Which of the following is/are correctly matched pair(s)?
(a) Lord Wellesley - Censorship of the Press Act, 1799
(b) John Adams - Licensing Regulation in 1823
(c) Metcalfe - Press Act of 1835
(d) All of the above
Answer: (d) See the Explanation
|Indian Polity Notes||Indian Economy Notes|
|Art and Culture Notes||Governance Notes|
|Ancient India History Notes||Medieval India History Notes|
|Modern India History Notes||Geography Notes|
|Science And Technology Notes||Environment And Ecology Notes|
|Post Independence Notes||Society Notes|
|Internal Security Notes||Ethics Notes|
|Disaster Management Notes||World History|
|International Relations||Social Justice Notes|
|CSAT Notes||Government Scheme Notes|
*The article might have information for the previous academic years, please refer the official website of the exam.
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who is called the liberator of indian press | [Solved] Who was known as the Liberator of the Press? | The correct answer is Metcalfe .Key Points
- Lord Metcalfe is known as Liberator of India Press .
- The freedom of the Indian Press dates from the 15th of September, 1835 .
- He abolished all restrictions on the vernacular press through the famous “Press Law” .
- Vernacular Press Act , in British India, the law was enacted in 1878 to curtail the freedom of the Indian-language (i.e., non-English) press.
- Proposed by Lord Lytton , then viceroy of India (governed 1876–80), the act was intended to prevent the vernacular press from expressing criticism of British policies—notably, the opposition that had grown with the outset of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80) .
- The act excluded English-language publications. It elicited strong and sustained protests from a wide spectrum of the Indian populace.
|Bentinck|
|Macaulay|
|Hastings| | https://testbook.com/question-answer/who-was-known-as-the-liberator-of-the-press--609cf62b9e2c5d98b6ee6882 | 83 |
who is called the liberator of indian press | [Solved] Who was known as the Liberator of the Press? | The correct answer is Metcalfe .Key Points
- Lord Metcalfe is known as Liberator of India Press .
- The freedom of the Indian Press dates from the 15th of September, 1835 .
- He abolished all restrictions on the vernacular press through the famous “Press Law” .
- Vernacular Press Act , in British India, the law was enacted in 1878 to curtail the freedom of the Indian-language (i.e., non-English) press.
- Proposed by Lord Lytton , then viceroy of India (governed 1876–80), the act was intended to prevent the vernacular press from expressing criticism of British policies—notably, the opposition that had grown with the outset of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80) .
- The act excluded English-language publications. It elicited strong and sustained protests from a wide spectrum of the Indian populace.
|Bentinck|
|Macaulay|
|Hastings| | https://testbook.com/question-answer/who-was-known-as-the-liberator-of-the-press--609cf62b9e2c5d98b6ee6882 | 83 |
who is called the liberator of indian press | [Solved] Who was known as the Liberator of the Press? | The correct answer is Metcalfe .Key Points
- Lord Metcalfe is known as Liberator of India Press .
- The freedom of the Indian Press dates from the 15th of September, 1835 .
- He abolished all restrictions on the vernacular press through the famous “Press Law” .
- Vernacular Press Act , in British India, the law was enacted in 1878 to curtail the freedom of the Indian-language (i.e., non-English) press.
- Proposed by Lord Lytton , then viceroy of India (governed 1876–80), the act was intended to prevent the vernacular press from expressing criticism of British policies—notably, the opposition that had grown with the outset of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80) .
- The act excluded English-language publications. It elicited strong and sustained protests from a wide spectrum of the Indian populace.
|Bentinck|
|Macaulay|
|Hastings| | https://testbook.com/question-answer/who-was-known-as-the-liberator-of-the-press--609cf62b9e2c5d98b6ee6882 | 83 |
who is called the liberator of indian press | Q. Which of the following Governor General is Known as “Liberator of Press”? | Explanation:
Lord Metcalfe (1835-1836) supported New press law, removing restrictions on the press in India. Hence is known as the Liberator of the Press. | https://byjus.com/question-answer/q-which-of-the-following-governor-general-is-known-as-liberator-of-press/ | 83 |
who is called the liberator of indian press | Press Act 1835 (Metcalfe Act) - Modern India History Notes | Sir Charles Metcalfe passed the Press Act in 1835 , thus restoring press freedom. Metcalfe was the governor-general from 1835 to 1836 . He repealed the obnoxious 1823 ordinance, earning him the moniker "liberator of the Indian press." The new Press Act (1835) required a printer/publisher to give a detailed account of the premises of a publication and to cease operations if a similar declaration was issued. A liberal press policy resulted in a rapid expansion of newspapers. In this article, we will discuss the Press Act (Metcalfe), 1835 which will be helpful for UPSC exam preparation.
Table of Contents
Features
- Governor-general Charles Metcalfe had a liberal attitude toward Indian Press and he repealed the 1823 regulations.
- This act, therefore, is called the ‘Metcalfe Act’ and Metcalfe is known as the ‘Liberator of the Indian Press’.
- This act remained in force till 1856 and led to the rapid growth of newspapers in the country.
|Licensing Regulations 1823||Vernacular Press Act , 1878|
|Licensing Act, 1857||Indian Press Act, 1910|
|Registration Act 1867||Indian Press(Emergency Power) Act, 1931|
Sir Charles Metcalfe
- Sir Charles Metcalfe (1785-1846) served as acting Governor-General of India from March 1835 to March 1836.
- Charles Metcalfe was born on January 30, 1785, in Kolkata, the son of Thomson Metcalfe, a Major in the East India Company's Army.
- He was educated at Bromley and Eton before returning to Calcutta in 1801 as a writer in the Company's service at the age of sixteen.
- Metcalfe held a variety of political positions. He played a key role in concluding the Amritsar Treaty of 1809 with Ranjit Singh , which brought stability to Punjab and remained in force until the first Sikh war of 1845.
- As the Sikhs' energies were diverted against Afghanistan and Sind, the British territory was secured.
- Metcalfe was the longest-serving Englishman in India. He arrived in India during Lord Wellesley's ascendancy of British power and stayed for 38 years.
- His desire for reform led him to outlaw slavery, sati, and infanticide in the Delhi territory as early as 1812.
- Metcalfe was a member of the Council who persuaded Governor-General Bentinck to include natives in the country's governance. He was a capable civil servant with progressive views.
- His liberal press policy endeared him to the Indians who built Metcalfe Hall in Calcutta and erected his bust there.
Impact
- The Act was enthusiastically received by the European community in India and the principal inhabitants of Calcutta, including the most eminent native gentry in rank and accomplishments.
- They gathered and voted an address of thanks to Sir Charles Metcalfe for the boon he had bestowed on the country, as well as subscriptions to commemorate it by erecting a noble hall in his honor.
- In his response to the address, he stated that:
- "The Act evinced to the world that the Company's government desired no concealment, that it was happy to have the most minute particulars of its Indian administration scrutinized."
- It demonstrated to the universe that it sought information and instruction wherever they could be found and that it did not want to rule India as a conquered, ignorant, and enslaved country, but as a cherished, enlightened, and free country."
Conclusion
Newspapers were crucial in the Indian independence struggle. The British government saw the emergence and growth of Indian newspapers as a threat and thus took a number of measures to suppress them through various acts and laws. Metcalfe was dubbed the "liberator of the Indian press" after repealing the obnoxious 1823 ordinance. In 1835, Lord Metcalfe took over as Bentink's successor. He, like Bentink, was a liberal who believed strongly in press freedom.
|Modern India History Notes||Administrative and Judicial Developments|
|Press||Civil Services|
|Nagpur session||Judiciary|
|Charter Act,1813||Government of India Act, 1919 (Montagu-Chelmsford reforms)|
FAQs
Question: Why is Metcalfe known as the press liberator?
Question: What was the Metcalfe Act of 1835?
Question: Who granted press freedom in 1835?
MCQs
Question: Which of the following acts eased the restrictions imposed by the Metcalf Act?
(a) Registration Act of 1867
(b) Licensing Act of 1857
(c) Press Act of 1835
(d) Vernacular Press Act of 1878
Answer: (a) See the Explanation
Question: Which of the following is/are correctly matched pair(s)?
(a) Lord Wellesley - Censorship of the Press Act, 1799
(b) John Adams - Licensing Regulation in 1823
(c) Metcalfe - Press Act of 1835
(d) All of the above
Answer: (d) See the Explanation
|Indian Polity Notes||Indian Economy Notes|
|Art and Culture Notes||Governance Notes|
|Ancient India History Notes||Medieval India History Notes|
|Modern India History Notes||Geography Notes|
|Science And Technology Notes||Environment And Ecology Notes|
|Post Independence Notes||Society Notes|
|Internal Security Notes||Ethics Notes|
|Disaster Management Notes||World History|
|International Relations||Social Justice Notes|
|CSAT Notes||Government Scheme Notes|
*The article might have information for the previous academic years, please refer the official website of the exam.
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8
9
10 | https://prepp.in/news/e-492-press-act-1835-metcalfe-act-modern-india-history-notes | 83 |
who is called the liberator of indian press | Which Governor-General of India is known as the Liberator of the Indian Press? | Q. Which Governor-General of India is known as the Liberator of the Indian Press?
Answer: [B] Sir Charles Metcalfe
Notes: Sir Charles Metcalfe (1834-36) is known as the Liberator of the Indian Press, who abolished all restrictions on vernacular press through the famous “Press Law”.
Answer: [B] Sir Charles Metcalfe
Notes: Sir Charles Metcalfe (1834-36) is known as the Liberator of the Indian Press, who abolished all restrictions on vernacular press through the famous “Press Law”.
3 | https://www.gktoday.in/question/which-governor-general-of-india-is-known-as-the-li | 83 |
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