During the era of residential schools and the practice of assimilation, indigenous men were forced to cut their hair in order to fit in with white society. This practice was an attempt to erase the indigenous culture.
The shaming of Indigenous children for their long hair can be traced back to residential schools, where young boys and girls had their hair cut short immediately after they arrived. It was a method used by Ottawa to further its colonial and assimilationist agenda.
Hair has a deep tie to old and new life across tribes. In Native culture, a widespread belief is that when someone's hair is cut, they lose a small part of their relationship with themselves. In the Navajo Nation, hair is cut to mourn death in the immediate family.
For Saul, like hundreds of thousands of other Indigenous children, the first thing the nuns do is cut off his hair. This removal of hair parallels a common humiliation and dehumanizing tactic, such as the Nazis shaving the heads of prisoners in concentration camps.
The cutting of hair symbolizes separation from a mothering object, castration, and reparation.
A source of power
Hair has special spiritual and cultural significance for tribes, though traditions and styles vary from tribe to tribe. Whether worn long, braided or bound in a knot, most North American indigenous peoples see hair as a source of strength and power.
Cutting one's hair is not the same as shearing or shaving it. In the Bible, God does not forbid a woman from cutting her hair to a feminine length. A woman cutting her hair to a feminine, long length is covering herself in a way that glorifies her and her Creator.
Our hair is considered sacred and significant to who we are as an individual, family, and community. In many tribes, it is believed that a person's long hair represents a strong cultural identity. This strong cultural identity promotes self-esteem, self-respect, a sense of belonging, and a healthy sense of pride.
Living conditions at the residential schools. 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.
The Staff. This Canadian drama produced by Clint Eastwood is based on the true story of Saul Indian Horse, a famous indigenous hockey player who survived Canada's residential school system. As recently as 1996, indigenous children were taken away from their families to attend brutal assimilation boarding schools.
Native Americans in the Southeast took scalps to achieve the status of warrior and to placate the spirits of the dead, while most members of Northeastern tribes valued the taking of captives over scalps. Among Plains Indians scalps were taken for war honours, often from live victims.
Many tribes cut their hair while grieving the death of an immediate family member, or to signify a traumatic event or a major life change. Cutting the hair at these times represents the time spent with the deceased loved one and it's ending; it can also represent a new beginning.
Native Americans do not appear to have facial hair because they are not genetically predisposed to growing thick hair everywhere on their bodies. And, no. It is not because of ethnicity, as a matter of fact, Native Americans do have facial hair, but it is very soft and sparse.
Fort Albany Residential School, also known as St. Anne's, was home to some of the most harrowing examples of abuse against Indigenous children in Canada.
In some cases, residential schools were the only schools available in the area for non-Indigenous kids to attend. Or those kids may have attended the schools because their parents were principals or teachers, or government employees working in the area.
Braids have been used to symbolize wealth, marital status, age, and rank. They're also functional, keeping their wearers cool and unencumbered so they can work without getting hair in their eyes.
Children between the ages of 4-16 attended Indian residential school. It is estimated that over 150,000 Indian, Inuit, and Métis children attended Indian residential school. What Was An Indian Residential School? Before residential schools existed, industrial schools existed both on and off-reserve.
6,000 children dead
Few parents defied the government by refusing to send their children to residential schools, but some did. In the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, a short chapter is dedicated to stories of resistance. The few cases mentioned occurred in Western Canada. No examples in Quebec are cited.
Information exists in archives about the deaths of children, which has contributed to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation's Memorial Register. As of May 24, 2022, the register has 4,130 confirmed names of children who died while at Indian Residential Schools.
“In general, shorter hair is usually perceived as more professional and confident,” she says. “Long hair, especially if it is a hair weave, can be perceived as more youthful and sexy to some people.”
The roots of young yucca plants were used for shampoo. The crushed roots were soaked in water to make a hair wash. Other methods involved peeling the bark of the root, which was rubbed in a pan of shallow water to make suds to rub into the hair and scalp.
Caucasian people will begin to gray in their mid-thirties, African-American people can retain their original hair color until their midforties, Asian people begin graying in their late thirties, whereas, as compared to South Indian population, North Indians begin to grey in their early thirties.
Paul's expectation was that women would have uncut hair that grows however long nature has determined, and that men would have cut hair that did not 'cover' their heads and thus is distinctly masculine.”
Jesus cautioned His followers, “Do not promise by your head. You are not able to make one hair white or black” (Matthew 5:36 NLV).
The significance of hair is woven throughout the Old and New testaments. In ancient Israel, hair signified important features of identity with respect to gender, ethnicity and holiness, said Susan Niditch, author of, “My brother Esau is a Hairy Man: Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel.”