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	'Writing the Missing Chapter' Commission Sets out to Remember Canada's Cultural Genocide By Donna Casey Ottawa Sun March 1, 2008 http://ottsun.canoe.ca/News/National/2008/03/01/4885891-sun.html There are no photographs or mementos, but Shirley Gagnon can see a little child in her mind and with every passing day, the girl comes more into focus. It's supposed to be the other way around, with memories fading as time goes by, but the picture of the little girl is there in her head -- the child with her hair hacked off and wearing someone else's clothes. A little girl robbed of her parents, her siblings and her home and taught to become white and Christian. After talking to a reporter about the six years she spent at a residential school in Northern Ontario more than 40 years ago, Gagnon spends a sleepless night tossing and turning. "As you get older, it just gets more clear, of all the things that have happened," said the 52-year-old Ottawa woman. Gagnon was five when she was taken from her parents to live at St. Anne's Residential School in the tiny community of Fort Albany on the western shore of James Bay. She and her three younger brothers were removed from their home under the auspices that her parents' marriage was breaking up. Her parents had a choice. The four siblings would either become wards of the Children's Aid Society or go to St. Anne's, which was operated for the federal government by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Moosonee, the Oblate order and the Grey Nuns. "My father thought, at least if we were at the school, he knew that he was in the area and that eventually we'd come back," said Gagnon. Six years later, she and her brothers did come back to their Cree community, but returned broken from years of abuse, isolation and cultural genocide. Gagnon is one of 80,000 survivors of residential schools that were run by churches and funded by the federal government from the 1870s until the mid-1970s. LEADERS MEET Tomorrow, aboriginal leaders will join the spiritual heads of Canada's mainline Christian churches in Ottawa to launch a tour promoting the upcoming Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The commission is modelled on similar processes in South Africa, Sierra Leone and Chile where an independent body is responsible for uncovering and revealing past wrongdoings by a government in the hope of resolving conflict and addressing grievances. "We have to face the fact that we had a very aggressive assimilation program that failed terribly," said David MacDonald, special advisor for the United Church on residential schools. "It failed in the sense of being a positive contribution," said MacDonald, a former Conservative cabinet minister, adding that it succeeded in tearing aboriginal children from their families, their identities and cultural roots. "It really just boggles the imagination," said MacDonald of the legacy of thousands of First Nations, Metis and Inuit children taken from their homes. The TRC is part of an agreement signed on May 30, 2005 between the Assembly of First Nations and the federal government. Along with lump-sum payments to former students of the 130 schools, the agreement also includes the promise of an official apology and the independent commission. The official launch of the TRC is the federal government's call, but it's expected to be launched in a few months. The government has earmarked $60 million for the commission, which will take place over a five-year period, along with another $20 million for commemorative projects. The commission, which will be overseen by one full-time and two part-time commissioners, is not a judicial inquiry and will not hold people legally accountable. VIRTUAL PRISON The commission is "about writing the missing chapter in Canadian history," said Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. For Gagnon, the systematic government effort to have aboriginal children speak English and adopt Christianity and Canadian customs meant she lived in a virtual prison for most of her childhood. "You had nothing. You were stripped of everything," recalls Gagnon, who is chairwoman of the board of directors at the Odawa Native Friendship Centre. In 1992, a three-day school reunion led to an OPP investigation into alleged abuses at the school. After interviewing close to 1,000 witnesses, police charged seven employees of the school. Former students recounted whippings and severe beatings, homosexual and heterosexual rape, sexual fondling and forced masturbation. A nun at the school broke Gagnon's collarbone and was convicted in 1998 of abuse against Gagnon, who never told her parents about the mistreatment at St. Anne's. "A number of people don't believe any of this," said Gagnon of what's taught about residential schools. "They don't believe that these kinds of things happened, these abuses." "People here have no idea, no clue. Everyday Canadians don't know anything about it. They just think, 'There are natives getting money again,'" she said.
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