CANADA
Times Colonist
Ceremonies in Ottawa today wrap up five years of work by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but it’s not the end of the process, just the beginning. And where that process goes depends on actions, not mere words, by Canadians and their governments.
Pressure must be maintained on the federal government, in particular, to ensure the commission’s recommendations are heeded.
The commission, born in part from lawsuits on Vancouver Island, was formed to examine and bring to public consciousness the darkest chapter in Canadian history, when official policy set out to erase aboriginal cultures and languages, to “kill the Indian in the child.” For more than 100 years, First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were removed from their families and sent to government-funded, church-run residential schools, some of them hundreds of kilometres from their homes.
The schools were established, as noted by the commission, “with the purpose to eliminate parental involvement in the spiritual, cultural and intellectual development of aboriginal children.”
The first day of school is often portrayed as a happy moment, but for thousands of aboriginal children, it was terrifying. They were forcibly taken from their families and thrust into a bleak, unfamiliar world, kept like prisoners in residential schools until they were teenagers. Many knew no language but their own, and they were punished, often harshly, if they spoke their own tongue.
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