Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if that were in fact what was going on in the aide's mind - probably combined with the racial assumption often held by white people of Aboriginal peoples in Canada (don't know if it's similar in Australia) that aboriginal people are "dirty" - thus making it a "good" thing to "clean the boy up a little."

But in Canada - and I think there is something similar in Australia - there is a history of white people at the residential schools doing everything possible to destroy all sense of cultural connection between the children in their "care" and the communities they were taken from (to say nothing of all sorts of physical and sexual abuse that, taken together with forced assimilation and attempts at cultural genocide, has almost destroyed two to three generations of Aboriginal people in this country) - and this has been a huge topic in the media for several years now, as former residents of these schools have come forward with their stories and demamded reparations from the churches that ran the schools and the governemnts that gave them the power to essentially kidnap these children and do whatever they e=wanted to them.

So anyone teaching in Canada today, particularly anyone teaching in an area where there is a large population of Aboriginal people (and Thunder Bay is such a place), should be aware of the ramifications of an action like this. And even if the aide didn't understand, the school administration should. And the government should - but the Crown says there's no grounds for pressing charges, either.

It shouldn't still be happening, but it is, and that's a big steaming pile of fail on a number of levels.