The schools are gone, but the damage remains. While most closed in the 70s, there were a couple that lasted into the 90s! and there are many living survivors who continue to suffer from the trauma they experienced.
The stated goal of the schools was to eliminate First Nations' culture and it was tragically highly effective. A culture doesn't recover from generations of ethnocide overnight.
While true, I think this is generally misleading without context.
The federal government took control of the schools from the churches around 1970. By the mid-70s, control of most of them had been transferred to the band councils in some form or another, and a third of the staff at the schools had Indian status. By 1980, only 15 were still left operating.
It's really hard to find any actual information on _what_ the schools that remained open were like in the 90s as most easily discoverable documentation is about beginning to unravel the abuses that had occurred prior, but what little I've ever been able to find sounds like they continued to operate as a school (presumably because the community needed a school), not as an implement of cultural genocide.
This would seem to be backed up by some sources saying that some of the communities that housed the schools resisted their closure. Not that it's a particularly great situation, but it's likely that it was the only source of formal education available to them at the time and they didn't want to lose it, rather reform it. The current school situation on reservations is abysmal, so this is... understandable.
None of this is to try and discount the atrocities that occurred at the schools, but I like to think saying "They operated until the mid-90s!" is a bit sensationalist, implying that the kidnapping, experimentation, abuse and murder was occurring at the same time Seinfeld and Friends were airing. I think there's more than enough to be horrified at here without implying a worse situation which may lead some people to discount some of the actual atrocities.
That said, if you (or anyone) can dig up some information to refute any of this, I'm more than happy to hear it. I am genuinely interested and I have a lot of difficulty trying to find concrete information.
These are very fair points. I likely should have given some additional context on the later operations.
I will admit I was trying for some shock value since a non-Canadian outsider was asking. It's far too easy to think about the abuse as happening long in the past and therefore more of an abstract conversation. It's really a conversation about the ongoing trauma of survivors, some of whom are not actually that old.
The stated goal of the schools was to eliminate First Nations' culture and it was tragically highly effective. A culture doesn't recover from generations of ethnocide overnight.