Canada's indigenous schools policy was 'cultural genocide', says report
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Representatives of First Nations peoples take part in a march in Ottawa
on Saturday as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wrapped up its
work. Photograph: Ben Powless/Demotix/Corbis
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Tuesday 2 June 2015 12.58 EDT
Canadian
governments and churches pursued a policy of "cultural genocide"
against the country's aboriginal people throughout the 20th century,
according to an investigation into a long-suppressed history that saw
150,000 Native, or First Nations, children forcibly removed from their
families and incarcerated in residential schools rife with abuse.
After
seven years of hearings, and testimony from thousands of witnesses, the
country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission called on Tuesday for a
new era of forgiveness and understanding even as it exposed the cultural
and personal devastation inflicted by the residential schools policy in
excruciating detail.
"These
measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aboriginal people
as distinct peoples and to assimilate them into the Canadian mainstream
against their will," the commission's final report declares.
"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."
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NW Canadian Native Art
University of British Columbia
Photograph: Heather Gray 2014
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Financed by the award from a huge class action suit against the federal
government, the project proceeded despite the reluctance - and
occasional interference - of the Conservative government of the prime
minister, Stephen Harper. It was a "difficult, inspiring and painful
journey", according to the commission chair, Murray Sinclair, a Manitoba
judge whose parents and grandparents both survived residential schools.
"The
residential school experience is clearly one of the darkest, most
troubling chapters in our collective history," Sinclair told a news
conference in Ottawa.
From
the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 aboriginal children
were forced to attend Christian schools to rid them of their native
cultures and integrate them into Canadian society.
Children
inducted into residential schools were forbidden from speaking their
native languages and subjected to routine physical abuse, inadequate
nutrition and neglect. Sexual abuse was common, according to the
survivors who testified at commission hearings throughout the country.
"They were stripped of their self-respect and they were stripped of their identity," Sinclair said.
More
than 3,000 children died and were often buried in unmarked graves
without any identification or notice to their parents. Death rates among
indigenous children at residential schools were higher than among
Canadian soldiers in the second world war, the report found. These were
schools that often had no playgrounds but always had graveyards,
according to commissioner Marie Wilson.
"Parents
... had their children ripped out of their arms, taken to a distant and
unknown place, never to be seen again," she said. "Buried in an
unmarked grave, long ago forgotten and overgrown. Think of that. Bear
that. Imagine that."
The
report makes 94 recommendations to repair the resulting damage to First
Nations society, which is easily apparent throughout Canada.
Native children are eight times more likely than other Canadian
children to be wards of child protection services, according to Wilson.
They are massively overrepresented in the country's jails.
"We
need reconciliation so that broken families can become whole again,"
she said, "and we need reconciliation so that a broken country can
become whole again."
Many
of the recommendations in the report aim to repair cultural attitudes
that remain unchanged from 100 years ago, including changes to
educational curricula to promote "a broader, less-Eurocentric vision of
our country", according to Wilson. The report also calls for a national
research program to advance the understanding of reconciliation itself.
"The
words of the apologies will ring hollow if Canada's actions fail to
produce the necessary social, cultural, political and economic change
that benefits aboriginal peoples and all Canadians," the report said.
Aboriginal
affairs minister Bernard Valcourt responded to the report by promising
the government's continuing "commitment to joining Canada's aboriginal
peoples on a journey to healing and reconciliation".
"The
burden of this experience has been on your shoulders for far too long,"
Valcourt told Monday's conference, to warm applause from a large,
mainly Native audience. "The burden is properly ours, as a government
and as a country."
The
commissioners recommended that Native spiritual beliefs be included in
the religious curriculum in government-supported Catholic schools, and
they called on Pope Francis to issue an apology within one year for the
church's role in the "spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and
sexual abuse" of First Nations children.
Taking
aim at the federal government, the report also calls for a public
inquiry into the recent fate of hundreds of missing or murdered
aboriginal women and girls - something it has strongly resisted in the
past. The commission has had a troubled relationship with the federal
government since its inception, causing its original commissioners to
resign and leading to accusations of obstruction throughout its
seven-year research.
"Our
leaders must not fear this onus of reconciliation," Sinclair said. "The
burden is not theirs to bear alone; rather, reconciliation is a process
that involves all parties of this new relationship."
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