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‘There was nothing good’: Anglican church disputes Senator’s claim that residential schools contained ‘good’

By Tristin Hopper
National Post
March 20, 2017

https://goo.gl/zIqq5D

Residential schoolchildren in a typical classroom.

In response to Senator Lynn Beyak’s assertion that Canadians ignore the “abundance of good” that happened in residential schools, one of the system’s primary operators issued a statement Monday saying “there was nothing good.”

“There was nothing good about children going missing and no report being filed. There was nothing good about burying children in unmarked graves far from their ancestral homes,” reads a statement co-signed by the Most Rev. Fred Hiltz, archbishop of the Anglican Church of Canada.

Although the majority of Canada’s residential schools were operated by Roman Catholic dioceses, about a third fell under the purview of Anglican organizations.

“There are hundreds of students who went to Residential Schools administered by the Anglican Church of Canada … we have hung our heads in shame and raised them with remorse over the pain our church inflicted upon those children,” said Monday’s statement, which detailed the various abuses of the system that were “nothing less than crimes against humanity.”

“We cannot speak about the Residential Schools without acknowledging these truths.”

Twice this year, Belak has issued on-the-record statements expressing “disappointment” that Canada does not place more emphasis on what she called the “good people doing good things” at Indian Residential Schools.

“Mistakes were made at residential schools — in many instances, horrible mistakes that overshadowed some good things that also happened at those schools,” she said in a March 7 debate concerning the over-representation of Indigenous women in Canadian prisons.

For more than a century, Indigenous children across Canada were forcibly removed from their families and enrolled in residential schools.

The schools carried the explicit goal of extinguishing native culture and language, and were rife with disease, poor conditions and sexual abuse.

“Children were abused, physically and sexually, and they died in the schools in numbers that would not have been tolerated in any school system anywhere in the country, or in the world,” reads the 2015 final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

Stephen Harper, the same prime minister who appointed Beyak, issued an official apology for the system in 2008.

“While some former students have spoken positively about their experiences at residential schools, these stories are far overshadowed by tragic accounts of the emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect of helpless children, and their separation from powerless families and communities,” said Harper at the time. 

Nevertheless, in a lengthy address made in the Senate earlier this month, Beyak highlighted a handful of historical instances in which church-run schools appeared to be greeted positively by an Indigenous community. 

In particular, she focused on statements made by Cree playwright Tomson Highway, who told the Huffington Post in 2015 that “I have a thriving international career, and it wouldn’t have happened without that school.”

In its Monday statement, the Anglican Church said that “good, well-intentioned” staff did indeed exist in residential schools, but that these “glimpses of good” were far overshadowed by a system that ultimately “failed God.”

“While there is no doubt that some good things happened, that is so clearly not the whole story that it demands a response,” it read.

Contact: thopper@nationalpost.com




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