CANADA
Irish Times
Jennifer Hough
Mon, Nov 24, 2014
Indigenous peoples in Canada comprise First Nations people, Inuit and Métis. They account for 4.3 per cent of the national population – 1,400,685 people – and live on reserves across Canada from British Columbia to Nova Scotia.
Traditionally, First Nations people had unlimited access to large expanses of Canadian land, which was sparsely populated.
From the late 18th century onwards, European colonists forced these nomadic hunters and trappers onto tracts of land – reserves – and encouraged aboriginals to assimilate into their culture.
Chief Paddy Peters (left) at a meeting with the Pikangikum working group. Photo: Jennifer HoughCanadian youth pushed to despair in poverty-stricken indigenous community
These efforts eventually resulted in forced integration, through a residential school system that removed more than 150,000 aboriginal children, sometimes as young as six, from their homes, and placed them in Christian-run boarding schools.
There they were subjected to extreme cultural suppression, emotional deprivation and physical, and at times, sexual abuse.
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