CANADA
APTN
APTN National News
Premier Kathleen Wynne apologized Monday for Ontario’s role in residential schools that forced Indigenous children into state sponsored, church-ran schools for generations.
“I apologize for the policies and practices supported by past Ontario governments and for the harm they caused. I apologize for the province’s silence in the face of abuses and deaths at residential schools,” said Wynne. “And I apologize for the fact that the residential schools are only one example of systemic, intergenerational injustices inflicted upon Indigenous communities throughout Canada.”
Premier Kathleen Wynne’s statement to Queen’s Park.
Wynne made the statement in Queen’s Park before Indigenous leaders, such as Ontario Regional Chief Isadore Day, Dawn Lavell-Harvard, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada and residential school survivor Andrew Wesley.
“Canada’s residential schools are closed, but they have been closed for not even one generation,” said Wynne. “Echoes of their racist, colonial attitudes can still be heard. And the echoes of a society-wide, intergenerational effort of cultural genocide continue to reverberate loudly and painfully in the lives of Indigenous people today.”
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