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Senator’s Residential School Praise Shows ‘long Way to Go’: Bearhead

By David P. Ball
Metro News
March 29, 2017

http://www.metronews.ca/news/edmonton/2017/03/29/senator-residential-school-praise-gord-downie-fund-chair.html

Charlene Bearhead is co-chair of the Downie Wenjack fund, to which members of the public can contribute in support of indigenous/non-indigenous reconciliation projects.

The co-chair of the reconciliation fund set up by Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie has joined outcry over a Senator’s praise for the “good” side of Indian residential schools.

Edmonton-based Charlene Bearhead — with the Downie and Wenjack Fund created by the singer to channel donations in support of Indigenous/non-Indigenous projects — told Metro that Sen. Lynn Beyak’s controversial remarks (see sidebar) are a reminder that Canada “still has a long way to go” in addressing its history.

“Comments like this Senator’s are a big, firm slap in the face,” said Bearhead in a phone interview. “You don’t have to look very far to know ignorance is still alive and well.

“But they remind us to wake up and not be complacent. You can start feeling really good about the progress we’re making … But when people in positions like that still can’t humble themselves and open their minds, hearts, eyes and ears to reality, it’s a reminder that we still have a long way to go.”

Bearhead, who is also involved in the Pathways to Education Indigenous Education Advisory Circle, is speaking in Edmonton on Thursday on a panel to mark three years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s hearings in Edmonton in 2014 (see factbox).

Reconciliation in Solidarity Edmonton co-founder Miranda Jimmy.

The panel event, which will be held at Edmonton City Hall, is organized by Reconciliation in Solidarity Edmonton (RISE), whose cofounder told Metro that the “worst” of Sen. Beyak’s remarks to CBC News that “she has nothing more to learn about residential schools.”

“I’ve been engaged in this work for a long time,” Miranda Jimmy, of Thunderchild First Nation, said in a phone interview. She testified before the TRC about the “intergenerational” effects of her father’s residential school experiences. “Every conversation I have and book I read, I learn something.

“It's a continual learning process. To say you've learned enough is basically closing the door on any learning.”

Other panelists at the Thursday event include Steven Cooper, one of the lawyers who secured the TRC as part of the historic court settlement, as well as residential school survivor Arthur Bearchief, author of a memoir My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell.

The event will take place at Edmonton City Hall on Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. and is free of charge.

Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak was appointed to the Senate on Jan. 25, 2013 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. She remains a member of the Senate committee on Aboriginal Peoples, despite calls for her to step aside from her role there.

What the Senator said

On Tuesday, Sen. Lynn Beyak refused to back down on her criticism of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) because “it didn’t focus on the good” accomplished by residential schools.

Asked about her comment, she told The Canadian Press it “is still relevant today,” and earlier told CBC News that she, too, has “suffered” like school survivors.

Here are excerpts of the Tory Upper House member’s original March 7 speech:

“I speak partly for the record, but mostly in memory of the kindly and well-intentioned men and women and their descendants … whose remarkable works, good deeds and historical tales in the residential schools go unacknowledged for the most part …

“There were many people who came from residential schools with good training and good language skills, and, of course, there were the atrocities as well. I was disappointed in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report in that it didn't focus on the good. The people I talk to are Christians."

One First Nations survivor of the schools — New Democrat MP Romeo Saganash — told reporters March 9 that Beyak’s remarks were “like saying, ‘Well, there are some good sides to what Hitler did to the Jewish community.’

NDP MP Romeo Saganash asks a question during Question Period in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Monday, June 1, 2015.

What the TRC found

It’s been three years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) stopped in Edmonton for three days of hearings from March 27-30, 2014, hearing tearful testimony from hundreds of Alberta residential school survivors and their descendants.

The TRC — which Canada was pressured to create as part of the largest-ever legal settlement in the country’s history — concluded that the schools amounted to “cultural genocide” against Indigenous People, and that at least 6,000 Indigenous children died there from abuse, malnourishment, disease and neglect.

Advocates say that number is much higher, and the schools should be seen as more than just “culturally” genocidal. Here are a few of the TRC’s 94 recommendations:

• Reduce the number of Indigenous children in foster care and enact a law regulating child welfare seizures.

• Equalize funding for Indigenous education, health and other services up to the same level as for non-Indigenous Canadians.

• Create an Aboriginal Languages Commissioner to protect threatened Indigenous dialects as human rights.

• “Close the gaps in health outcomes” between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities.

• Eliminate "over-representation" of Indigenous people in prisons and youth custody within 10 years.

• Hold a public inquiry into “disproportionate victimization of Aboriginal women and girls,” including thousands of missing and murdered women.

• “Fully adopt and implement” the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

• Force authorities to turn over death records for Indigenous children who died in residential schools.

—Correction (Mar. 29): Bearhead is no longer affiliated with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, where she held a former role. The Downie Wenjack fund she co-chairs, to which members of the public can contribute, is distinct from the album sales fund.

 

 

 

 

 




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