IN VICTIMS OF BENEVOLENCE: The Dark Legacy of the Williams Lake Residential School (Arsenal Pulp Press, 142 pages, $12.95 paper), the anthropologist Elizabeth Furniss looks at the Indian residential schools from the perspective of the deaths of two children, one of whom died nearly a hundred years ago.

In 1902, nine-year-old Duncan Sticks, together with a number of other boys, attempted to run away from the Williams Lake school operated by the Oblates of St. Joseph's Mission. The others were captured but he was later found dead of exposure. Then, in 1920, Augustine Allan died in a suicide pact with eight other boys (who all survived).

Furniss's archival research shows a pattern of complaints about scant food and excessive beatings throughout the period. The complaints are substantiated by evidence of inadequate funding and authoritarian attitudes, but they were never adequately investigated.

According to Furniss's assessment, the Canadian government attempted to assimilate Native people into the dominant society. But the perpetuation of the Indian Affairs administration separated them from that very society and created the supposition that they were in need of protection from it.

Saddled with this degree of contradiction, the system slowly throttled itself -- and all too many of its intended beneficiaries.