CANADA
Ottawa Citizen
MARK KENNEDY, OTTAWA CITIZEN
Modern-day Canada is perpetuating the mistakes that led to the creation of the often-abusive aboriginal residential schools more than a century ago by policies that still harm indigenous people, an exhaustive new report has concluded.
The warning comes in the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to be released Tuesday. The seven-volume report, a blistering indictment of Canada’s current approach to aboriginal issues, puts the onus squarely on political leaders at all levels to change government policies.
“The beliefs and attitudes that were used to justify the establishment of residential schools are not things of the past: they continue to animate much of what passes for Aboriginal policy today,” says the report.
“Reconciliation will require more than pious words about the shortcomings of those who preceded us. It obliges us to both recognize the ways in which the legacy of residential schools continues to disfigure Canadian life and to abandon policies and approaches that currently serve to extend that hurtful legacy.”
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