Apology to Aboriginal residential school survivors on June 11 providing opportunity to make things right
Government still failing aboriginal children
June 02, 2008
Re: PM to apologize for residential schools
As the prime minister prepares to apologize to Aboriginal peoples for the multi-generational harms of residential schools, it is an opportunity for the Ottawa Citizen to re-publish the article authored by Dr. Peter H. Bryce, Health Officer for the Department of Indian Affairs, that appeared in the Citizen on Nov. 15, 1907.
Dr. Bryce surveyed the health of Aboriginal children in 15 residential schools and found that about one in every two students were dying at the schools from preventable spread of disease.
Despite Dr. Bryce's articles and his continued advocacy for over 20 years, the federal government did little to improve the situation for First Nations children and the deaths continued. There is no doubt the federal government knew of the deaths -- and the historical record says they did almost nothing to stop it. There is also no doubt that Canadians should celebrate the many Aboriginal peoples who advocated to stop the deaths and abuses and non-Aboriginal people like Dr. Bryce who joined them in the struggle.
Today, there are three times the number of First Nations in child welfare care than there were at the height of residential schools. The cause is neglect fueled by poor housing, poverty and caregiver substance misuse, often linked to the residential schools and complicated by the fact First Nations children and young people get far fewer government and voluntary sector services than other Canadians.
The Auditor General of Canada reports that the federal government is short changing First Nations children on reserves by under-funding child welfare services. Again, the federal government has known about this for years and has done very little to improve the situation. In fact, the auditor general has reviewed the "new Alberta" approach the feds are proposing to deal with the inequity and found it to be inequitable.
If reconciliation means saying sorry twice, the federal government is failing. On the day of the apology, Canadians need to demand that the federal government ensures equity, respect, and justice for First Nations children.
Cindy Blackstock,
Ottawa
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United Church press release ...
June 11 Apology Must Be a Defining Moment in Canadian History
TORONTO, June 2 - In a letter sent to Stephen Harper, The United Church of Canada has urged the Prime Minister to ensure that the June 11 apology to residential school survivors and their families is an occasion that will be experienced as a defining moment in the healing of our nation.
The church's letter also echoes the concerns raised by the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine, in an open letter on April 22. In that letter Chief Fontaine lamented the absence of direct consultation with Aboriginal leaders and survivors about the content of the national apology.
The United Church says it agrees that consultation with those who have been directly affected by the legacy of residential schools is essential.
"Such consultation is critical in order that survivors experience the apology as full, genuine, and substantial," writes the Moderator, the Right Rev. David Giuliano.
The church's letter urges the Prime Minister "to meet with Aboriginal leaders and survivor representatives as soon as possible so that the apology might achieve the hopes that so many of us have for it."
The Rev. James Scott is the United Church's General Council Officer for Residential Schools. He says the church sees the apology as having immense importance in the national healing process and in fulfilling the hopes and intentions of the overall Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
"In offering our own apologies, the United Church has come to understand both the real and symbolic importance of apology in the healing journey of those who were harmed by the schools," explains Scott. "And apologizing has also been the first step in our church's own journey of recovery and healing from the attitudes that led to the schools in the first place."
Scott adds that the apology is also a vital element in meeting the objectives of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for broad public awareness and ownership of the residential school legacy.
"The offering of this apology should be an event of singular significance in the unfolding of our national story," says Scott. "It is therefore absolutely critical that the presentation of the apology be consistent with the import of its message and the need to generate an extraordinary level of public attention."
The Moderator concludes his letter to the Prime Minister with the following words of encouragement and support:
"We believe in the power of reconciliation. We believe in the possibility of healing, of new beginnings, even out of the devastation of such a tragic policy as the Indian residential school system. The national apology offers the opportunity to begin the process of healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The legacy of a national apology to survivors and their families can be the foundation on which our nation builds a new and hopeful future.
"We look to your leadership in offering a full, honest, and sincere national apology. Such an apology would be a profoundly important platform on which to renew a relationship of respect, equality, and justice between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples across this great land. We offer you our prayerful support in this task."
For further information: Mary-Frances Denis, Communications Officer, The United Church of Canada, (416) 231-7680 ext. 2016 (office), 1-800-268-3781 ext. 2016 (toll-free), (416) 885-7478 (cell), (416) 766-0057 (home), mdenis@united-church.ca.
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Too early to write off the TRC - But odds are against new commission probing residential schools
Lorne Gunter, June 01
Given past experience with federal commissions on aboriginal Canadians, I could reel off a hundred reasons why Ottawa's five-year, $60-million Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on abuse of aboriginals in residential schools will fail to find truth or reconcile anyone to anyone else.
The odds are decidedly against the TRC serving as a catharsis for native Canadians that leads to a healing of their animosity towards whites, or as a bridge between native and non-native Canadians.
If I had to bet, I'd put my chips on the commission making things worse by June 2013, when it is slated to wrap up.
Rather than being a salve for jagged aboriginal views of non-native society, of history and of land claims, I am predicting the commission will serve as an amplifier for First Nations' discontent.
Rather than stimulating understanding, I'd wager the commission will serve only to reinforce aboriginal victimhood -- the myth, too prevalent among First Peoples, that their plight is entirely of someone else's making, namely non- natives.
It is a view that is, of course, not entirely wrong, but it is far from right, too.
And the fact that the TRC is too narrowly focussed on residential schools means it is prone to repeating the all-eggs-in-one-basket mistake of the Mulroney-era Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.
That commission, which cost nearly as much and took nearly as long, decided to lay the blame for all the ills that have befallen aboriginal Canadians at the feet of residential schools. Like slavery for African-Americans, residential schools have become the catch-all excuse for everything that has gone wrong with the community and the absolution for any self-inflicted problems.
The conclusions of the Royal Commission of a decade ago can basically be summed as: Residential schools are the main reason aboriginal culture and communities are dysfunctional. Since residential schools were foisted on aboriginals by non-aboriginals, this means non-aboriginals are responsible for aboriginals' plight. Therefore, it is up to non-aboriginals to fix all the problems.
Of course, non-aboriginals are partly to blame. Each generation's public policy solutions to aboriginal needs have tended to exacerbate problems rather than alleviate them.
Residential schools are a prime example. They were propelled by the socially enlightened thinkers of their day. They were seen as progressive by the social engineers of their time. The liberal thinkers of the 1920s, when the schools got going in earnest, believed residential schools would make aboriginal children better characters and citizens. Assimilating aboriginals into the broader Canadian culture was the right (and kind) thing to do, in their minds.
A frequent criticism of the schools is that they were engaged in cultural genocide, for which a strong case can be made. But the people running them on behalf of mainline churches and the federal government weren't engaged in a holocaust, at least not wittingly. They saw themselves and their policies as the pinnacle of compassion But as much as the unintended consequences of the schools have contributed to modern native problems, so has collective land ownership on reserves, lack of accountability in reserve government, corruption, welfare dependence, the cult of victimhood, and so on.
Addictions, family breakup, unemployment, poor drinking water and housing, high dropout rates and other problems cannot be blamed entirely, or even mostly, on residential schools, particularly since it has been more than 50 years since the schools were at their zenith.
If the TRC is going to look only at residential schools and hear only from those people who see them as a) all bad and b) the primary reason for aboriginal social and economic ills, then in the end the commission will not have been about truth nor will it facilitate much reconciliation or improvement in the lives of First Nations Canadians. It will have been just another politically correct whitewash.
Still, while I could make a case for doubting the worth of the TRC from the outset, I keep coming back to one thought: give it a chance.
The three commissioners will meet each another for the first time Monday in Ottawa. It will be a non-descript affair in a departmental office. It could be a year or more before they figure out how to proceed -- where to hold hearings, who to invite, what kinds of testimony to permit, etc. -- and thus more than a year before their work goes public.
But, since it is import that someone eventually succeed in devising solutions to aboriginals' many problems, rather than dismissing the TRC out of hand, I am willing to hold out some hope these commissioners will finally find the formula.
According to the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, "since 1996, the aboriginal population has increased by 47 per cent compared to eight per cent for non-aboriginals." Half of on-reserve aboriginals lack a high school diploma, compared to 15 per cent of non-aboriginals. And by 2017, one-third of the population of Saskatchewan, one-quarter of Manitoba's and 15 per cent of B.C.'s will be aboriginal.
The pressure to find a reconciliation will only increase. So it is too early to write off the TRC.