CANADA
The Globe and Mail
KATHRYN BLAZE CARLSON
The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Jun. 02 2015
All but one of the girls Velma Jackson knew from her days in an Indian residential school are dead. Some of the Blue Quills students died on the streets, some died working in the sex trade, some died from alcohol-fuelled accidents.
This is what Ms. Jackson told the federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which on Tuesday released a landmark report that documents the horrific treatment of native children at the church-run institutions, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse was rampant.
The 388-page report of the commission, headed by Justice Murray Sinclair, drew a connection between the social ills borne out of the residential-school system and the murders and disappearances of indigenous women that plague the community today.
“More research is needed, but the available information suggests a devastating link between the large numbers of murdered and missing Aboriginal women and the many harmful background factors in their lives,” the report says, pointing to poverty, domestic violence and the overrepresentation of natives in the child-welfare system. “The complex interplay of factors – many of which are part of the legacy of residential schools – needs to be examined, as does the lack of success of police forces in solving these crimes against Aboriginal women.”
Among the report’s 94 recommendations is for Ottawa to launch a national inquiry to investigate the violence and its relationship to the “inter-generational legacy of residential schools.” The call comes a year after the RCMP revealed that at least 1,181 native women and girls were killed or went missing between 1980 and 2012.
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