Canada's Residential school Truth and Reconciliation process begins amid controversary and challenges
From the new Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) website at www.trc-cvr.ca
Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission is Formally Established and Operational
OTTAWA, June 1 - Justice Harry S. LaForme, Chair of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and Commissioners Claudette Dumont-Smith and Jane Brewin Morley, Q.C. are pleased to announce that the TRC is officially established and will be fully operational on June 2, 2008.
"Today marks the beginning of our five-year mandate as an independent Commission," said Justice LaForme. "We can now begin formally planning and preparing for the work ahead to learn and understand the truth of the Indian Residential Schools legacy, as well as examine the process of reconciliation."
The TRC was created as a result of the court-approved Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement that was negotiated between legal counsel for former students, legal counsel for the Churches, the Government of Canada, the Assembly of First Nations and other Aboriginal organizations.
"Our first priority will be to meet with partners of the Settlement Agreement, former students and other interested parties so that we can best determine our course of action and move forward quickly with the work ahead," said Commissioner Claudette Dumont-Smith.
"One of the important challenges facing the Commission is engaging the broader community in the process," said Commissioner Jane Morley. "An enduring reconciliation must include young Canadians and Canadians from diverse backgrounds."
Anyone who has been affected by the Indian Residential Schools legacy will have the opportunity to share their experiences in a safe and culturally appropriate manner. Individual statements can be private or public. Details for TRC events will be confirmed in the near future.
For further information: Kimberly Phillips, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Secretariat, (613) 219-5872, www.trc-cvr.ca; Nancy Pine, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Secretariat, (613) 316-5654, www.trc-cvr.ca
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Are reconciliation and 'truth' compatible?
Adrian Humphreys, May 30, 2008
On Monday morning, when the three commissioners gather for the first time in an Ottawa office to begin their monumental five-year task of leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into aboriginal abuse in the residential school system, Canada will take its historical place alongside such tarnished regimes as South Africa, Chile, El Salvador and Sierra Leone.
As the first democratic, Western government to host such an emotionally laden and politically charged forum - a name and a process that is as acclaimed for its positive therapeutic value as it is criticized for assuaging guilt without punishment - there is much hope for constructive change and fear of colossal disappointment.
There are questions of appropriateness and outcome; of scope and purpose; of who is getting the truth and who will be reconciled.
As the commission begins its work, critics are already asking victims to boycott it, calling it a "sham" and a "whitewash."
Questions also come from the man named to lead the commission, Justice Harry LaForme, an Ontario judge who was the first aboriginal person to sit on any appellate court in Canada.
"The commissioners don't even know each other yet so the first little while is going to be taken up with planning our strategy... deciding how we are going to proceed and how it is we are going to attack these issues, in terms of our format," said Justice LaForme.
One thing he does not question, however, is the commission's importance.
Justice LaForme sees it as nothing less that the best chance for significant progress in mending the deteriorating relationship between natives and the rest of Canada, not just over the harm and heartbreak of residential schools but on the daily flashpoints of native activism, land claims and blockades.
"We know the truth in a broad, general sense. Nobody can deny that this happened," said Justice LaForme. "So what we are really looking for now is what are the details of that truth? And what is the breadth and width of it? That's the truth component.
"From the reconciliation component, maybe – and hopefully – comes a better understanding of this fractured relationship that aboriginal people and the rest of Canada currently exist under," said Justice LaForme.
"If we can get to the point where we have a better and healthier understanding and an element of truth to why this relationship exists then people will understand these tensions better and what underlies them."
Such talk, however, aggravates an already aggravated activist.
"To think that we can somehow engineer reconciliation when we are not even doing the most basic things we should be doing towards native people, like treating them like they are equal citizens," said Kevin Annett, a former United Church minister who is a counselor for aboriginal people in Vancouver.
"The problem is, a lot of the people I work with on the ground, the survivors, are not asking about reconciliation. They are asking: When are we going to get our day in court? When are the people responsible going be brought to justice? And from the looks of it, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is not set up to do that."
Clearly, the challenge for Justice LaForme and fellow commissioners Claudette Dumont-Smith and Jane Brewin Morley will be more than just strategy and format.
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Since before its inception as a nation, Canada followed a policy of assimilation towards the aboriginal population. Public policy in the first century of the nation's life featured shockingly blunt language that, today, is hard to read without cringing.
Schooling, Frank Oliver, the minister of Indian affairs said in 1908, would "elevate the Indian from his condition of savagery" and "make him a self-supporting member of the state, and eventually a citizen in good standing."
Education was not seen as a passive force, however, and industrial schools were created, run by various Christian denomination churches. The schools would become full-time boarding schools because keeping the children away from their reserves and their family would, it was hoped, strip them of their Indian culture. Or, in the language of the day, it was necessary to keep them "within the circle of civilized conditions" and away from the "influence of the wigwam."
By 1920, attendance at residential schools was compulsory for all aboriginal children between the ages of 7 to 15 years and priests, Indian agents and police were forcibly removing children from families and shipping them off to a school.
If the establishment of the schools sprang from some sense of mission to better or brighten the future prospects of young Indians, Inuit and Métis, the reality soon became a grim and even deadly experience for students.
"The removal of children from their homes and the denial of their identity through attacks on their language and spiritual beliefs were cruel," says the 1996 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. "But these practices were compounded by the too frequent lack of basic care - the failure to provide adequate food, clothing, medical services and a healthful environment, and the failure to ensure that the children were safe from teachers and staff who abused them physically, sexually and emotionally."
The schools ran for decades, with the last federally run residential school, the Gordon Residential School in Saskatchewan, not closing until 1996, years after troubling stories of abuse from former students became known.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) stems from a legal settlement of a class-action lawsuit by victims of the residential schools. Two years ago this month, the largest class action settlement in Canadian history was announced.
All parties - aboriginal groups, churches that ran the schools and the federal government that enacted the policy - approved the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. Along with cash payments to individual victims, a planned apology from the government, $100 million in funding towards healing initiatives and $20 million for a commemoration and memorial program, the settlement agreement ordered $60 million in government money for the TRC.
The TRC's work is designed to last longer than the payments.
"We know that compensating victims of this kind of experience is, by itself, insufficient, but we also know that this is the best that courts generally do. The justice system just isn't equipped to take it beyond that," said Justice LaForme.
The wide-ranging settlement agreement was, however, incorporated by the courts into its final judgment on the lawsuit. That last step was an important one with potential ramifications that were largely overlooked at the time.
Justice LaForme, with his keen legal eye, quietly understands its implications.
"The commission was not simply created by an agreement between the parties. There was an agreement amongst the parties put in place but it was made the subject of a court order.
"That court order says the parties will cooperate fully and participate fully," he said.
While Justice LaForme hesitates to draw attention to the stick that potentially allows him wield, he accepts it. He agrees he cannot rule out seeking subpoenas or embarking on contempt of court proceeding against uncooperative parties based on that court order.
"At this stage, we presume that everybody that is a party to this agreement will honour the terms of the court judgment, the terms of the agreement, that says they will cooperate fully.
"It is important - very important - to know that people who suggest there is no teeth to this commission miss the point that it is pursuant to a court order."
Similarly, Chuck Strahl, Minister of Indian Affairs, has said the TRC "does not absolve people" of further criminal responsibility.
That mélange of court order, all-party consent and government sanction give the Canadian TRC a unique feel on the world stage.
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The term Truth and Reconciliation Commission came to prominence in South Africa after the end of Apartheid. It was hailed as an alternative to the Nuremberg-style of victor's justice and a way to build peace and cooperative relationships between whites and blacks in a deeply fractured society.
"The beauty of a TRC is being able to isolate a timeframe and look at a series of events and to frame it around massive human rights violates and the role of government or particular players," said Karen Murphy, director of international programs for Facing History and Ourselves, a U.S.-based nonprofit group.
"What you are doing in Canada is pretty amazing."
She said international scholars are watching to see how a TRC works in a stable Western democracy rather than one held in throes of regime change.
Still, Dr. Murphy wonders if the TRC name has become too loaded.
"In a way I wish the word [reconciliation] wasn't there. It should be a truth commission with the hope that one day it will move towards reconciliation," she said, dismissing the notion that the two concepts "are attached together - as if when you get one you get the other."
Mr. Arnett likewise dismisses the name: "Truth and Reconciliation? I think it is a really presumptuous kind of title."
"There is a real sense of discouragement because the attitude is they got away with this and now we're going to have a nice forum where they pretend to be concerned while nothing really changes on the ground," said Mr. Arnett.
If the commission's name aggravates Mr. Arnett, then suggesting to Justice LaForme – a member of the Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation in Ontario who was born and raised on the reserve – that he is merely pretending to be concerned about the plight of aboriginal people appeared to upset the head of the commissioner. He seemed to think things but not speak them.
After a moment, he spoke.
"I will simply say to the critics: Wait for the results. Wait and see how the process unfolds. Wait and see whether we assert our independence, whether we do this with the respect and completeness everybody expects of it and wait and see what we come up with at the end. Then you can tell. Nobody knows at the front end."
Not even the commission.
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From an international perspective ...
Canada confronts its 'genocide'
30/05/2008 12:55 - (SA)
Ottawa - After decades of foot-dragging, Canada is finally about to take a close look at what one aboriginal leader calls "the single most disgraceful, harmful and racist act in our history".
From the 1870s to the 1970s, around 150 000 native Indian children were forcibly removed from their parents and sent to distant schools, where many say they were abused mentally, physically and sexually.
Conditions in the schools - run by various churches on behalf of the government - were sometimes dire.
Contemporary accounts suggest up to half the children in some institutions died of tuberculosis.
One prominent academic calls what happened genocide, yet for many years few Canadians knew what had happened.
Now, for the first time, the mainstream population will be learning a lot more about what was done in its name.
Truth and reconciliation commission
As part of a C$1.9bn settlement between Ottawa and the 90 000 survivors in May 2006 that ended years of law suits, a truth and reconciliation commission is set to start work on June 1.
The commission, which has a life span of five years, will travel across Canada and hold public hearings on the abuses.
"You have to get the truth out ... it seems impossible today but it's real, it happened," said federal Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl.
Native leaders hope the commission - to be headed by aboriginal Judge Harry LaForme - will help improve ties between the largely marginalised one million native population and the rest of the 32 million people in Canada.
"I don't say that this is going to be a magic wand and everybody is going to feel good when this is over. But we do know there is a healing component to that sort of process," LaForme told Reuters.
Government officials at the time said the schools were supposed to educate native children. The other aim was to assimilate aborigines and crush their cultures.
The 'Indian problem'
Duncan Campbell Scott, a senior government bureaucrat dealing with aboriginal matters, declared in 1920 that "I want to get rid of the Indian problem.
He added: "Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic."
Children in the schools were called pigs and dogs. Teachers beat them if they used their own languages and told them they would go to hell unless they converted to Christianity.
Many parents never saw their sons and daughters again. Survivors often took to drugs and alcohol to dim the pain.
Although Canada spends around C$10bn a year on the aboriginal population, many serious problems remain.
Native leaders say the destructive legacy of the schools helps explain the lamentable living conditions, poor health and high crime levels that many face today.
Lazy drunkards
"I think Canadians will have a better appreciation of why we have become so stereotyped - that we're lazy, or losers, or drunkards, or whatever. (This) resulted from a very destructive, oppressive colonisation of aboriginal people," said Chief Robert Joseph.
Critics, noting the commission will not have subpoena powers, say it will not make much of a difference.
Roland Chrisjohn at the University of St Thomas in New Brunswick says Ottawa must first admit that taking children from their parents and giving them to outsiders constituted an act of genocide.
"Residential schools were about destroying our political systems, destroying our religious systems, destroying our communities, our cultures, our livelihood ... they largely succeeded," Chrisjohn said.
'Christianising' people
The churches are suitably contrite. Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, says religious authorities tried to "socialise and Christianise" aboriginal peoples.
"We failed them, we failed ourselves, we failed God. We failed because of our racism and because of the belief that white ways were superior to aboriginal ways," he said.
Ted Quewezance, executive director of the National Residential School Survivors' Society, is confident the commission will help efforts at reconciliation.
Quewezance told Reuters he was abused physically and sexually during seven years at a school.
When asked how he coped with the memories, he replied: "You just live with it, that's all."
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Additional stories about the start of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission work
Too early to write off the TRC
Edmonton Journal - June 1, 2008
Emotional forum on abuse at residential schools opens
Victoria Times-Colonist - June 1, 2008
Canada begins examination of abuses at church-run schools for Indians
AOL News - Saturday, May 31, 2008
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And finally from another white person's perspective ... isn't it great to know that this fellow and his ignorance is teaching teachers to be just like him ...
Residential Schools: Another View - 'Most of these students at least learned modern skills that would help them participate more fully in both aboriginal and Canadian society'
Rodney A. Clifton - May 31, 2008
On Monday, a $60-million travelling "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" chaired by Justice Harry La-Forme will begin holding hearings across the country on aboriginal residential schools. This seems rather curious when you consider that some 87,000 aboriginal people who attended Canada's 130 residential schools already have begun receiving thousands of dollars in payments from the federal government. Don't these payouts suggest the truth is already known?
The commission likely will hear many stories that reflect the claims made by Michael Ignatieff, the deputy leader of the Liberal party, in an op-ed entitled "Setting the Record Straight," published in the National Post a year ago. In his article, Mr. Ignatieff wrote: "The residential school system was without question, the most dismaying betrayal of Canada's first peoples in our history"; and "The worst legacy of the residential schools experience is that it poisoned the wells of faith in education among generations of aboriginal Canadians."
Many people believe that. But is it true?
In 1966-67, I spent a year as a supervisor in an Anglican residential school, Stringer Hall, in Inuvik, North West Territories. I kept extensive notes about the children and my experience. Before that, I lived at Old Sun School (named after a famous Chief), an Anglican residential school on the Blackfoot (Siksika) Reserve in Southern Alberta, for four months. Earlier, my wife (a Siksika) spent 10 years at Old Sun; and even earlier, her parents attended the same school for eight years. Moreover, I completed part of my own high school education at a United Church residential school.
Overall, I interpret the experiences as follows:Both positive and negative things happened in residential schools. In fact, when my wife is asked about her school experience, she describes Old Sun simply as a "private Anglican school." For years after, she exchanged Christmas cards with teachers and administrators who were personal friends.
Of course, we know that some people working in residential schools brutalized the children under their care. Such individuals should be punished for their crimes. So should administrators from both the churches and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs who covered them up.
Nevertheless, the aboriginal residential-school history must be put into appropriate context. At the time, aboriginal residential schools were not much different from many other schools. Many non-aboriginal children, for example, were strapped in schools; some were also sexually abused. Not surprisingly, some pedophiles have been imprisoned, but little attempt has been made -- so far, at least -- to charge teachers and administrators for using corporal punishment, in part because such brutal practices were widely accepted at the time.
Given this context, were aboriginal residential schools the unmitigated disasters that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission will, without a doubt, hear them described as? Probably not.
Most children who went to residential school learned to read, write and calculate. Many children also learned other modern skills -- the principles of democracy and common law, for example -- which would help them participate more fully in both aboriginal and Canadian society.
Some aboriginal children had terrible illnesses -- tuberculosis, serious dental problems and ruptured appendixes, for example -- that were diagnosed and treated only because they were in residential schools.
At Stringer Hall, in fact, a number of children arrived with seriously infected insect bites that required having their hair washed, cut and topical antibiotics applied. Some children arrived with serious ear infections, and residential supervisors provided the appropriate medical treatment. Thankfully, a young nurse was on staff at Stringer Hall. Doctors and dentists were on call to treat children in a way that would have been impossible had they been out on the land hunting and fishing with their parents.
A few of the administrators, teachers and supervisors were aboriginal. At Stringer Hall, for example, two of the six residential supervisors were young Inuit women who, contrary to the common myth, spoke to the children in their mother-tongue. A number of the other employees also used aboriginal expressions and gestures with the children.
Similarly, not all the children who attended residential schools were aboriginal. At Stringer Hall, about 12% of the 280 students were non-aboriginal -- the children of merchants, missionaries and trappers from tiny settlements where no schools existed.
Finally, some aboriginal children had been physically and sexually abused in their home communities and residential schools actually saved some of them from continued abuse.
Even thought this evidence has been available for some time, it is obvious that Michael Ignatieff did not consider it before saying: "Another illusion is that the intentions behind the [residential] schools were good."
On the contrary, my experience is that most of the people who worked in residential schools wanted to help the children receive a good education that would allow them to survive in the modern world. Most of these people also wanted to fulfill the evangelistic calling of committed Christians: to help the poor, tend to the weak and treat the sick.
As a young student, Mr. Ignatieff attended Toronto's Upper Canada College, arguably the top private "residential school" in the country. At the time, he probably did not know that employees of other Canadian residential schools received little pay and many sleepless nights for their labour. But, as an intellectual and as a MP, he should have searched harder for the available evidence. In Stringer Hall, for example, I was responsible for 85 senior boys between the ages of 12 and 21 for 22 hours a day, six days a week. The work was difficult, even for a strong 21-year-old.
Yet today, the reward for former residential school employees is denigration in the national press by people such as Mr. Ignatieff-- and, more surprisingly, by the churches they served. I pray that the commission will hear a variety of perspectives.
Unfortunately, I do not think this will happen because of the hostile climate that now exists. Few former school employees -- both non-aboriginal and aboriginal -- will acknowledge that they worked in residential schools, and even fewer will appear before the commission. They already know that the "truth" has been pre-determined, and that "reconciliation" means financial compensation, which is already being distributed in any event. Few people will praise the residential schools -- their administrators, their teachers or their supervisors. Fewer still will dare publicly admit that their residential-school experiences were positive.
In this reinterpretation of history, neither the Canadian people nor the Truth and Reconciliation Commissioners will likely hear the full story. As a result, I do not think the commission will achieve lasting reconciliation.
- Rodney A. Clifton is a professor of education at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at St. John's College, an Anglican college that has a long history of educating aboriginal people. A longer version of this article appeared this month in C2C: Canada's Journal of Ideas, www.c2cjournal.ca.