CANADA
CBC News
The Canadian Press Posted: Jul 21, 2013
Aboriginal leaders are pointing to past abuses as evidence that the federal government should let their communities craft their own education policies.
When news broke that more than 1,300 aboriginal people, mostly children, were used as subjects of nutritional experiments initiated by the Canadian government in the 1940s and ’50s, it struck a chord with aboriginal leaders that was all-too-contemporary.
A statement from the Assembly of First Nations said such horrors would never have happened if aboriginal people were in control of their own lives and communities.
News of the old abuses resurfaced as the national organization was meeting this week in Whitehorse, where members were discussing education reform.
Some lamented that federal policy-makers haven’t learned key lessons of the past, as they prepare to present the First Nation Education Act to Parliament this fall.
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