OTTAWA — Canada’s
former policy of forcibly removing aboriginal children from their
families for schooling “can best be described as ‘cultural genocide.’ ”
That is the conclusion reached by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission after six years of intensive research, including 6,750 interviews. The commission published a summary version
on Tuesday of what will ultimately be a multivolume report, documenting
widespread physical, cultural and sexual abuse at government-sponsored
residential schools that Indian, Inuit and other indigenous children
were forced to attend.
The
schools, financed by the government but run largely by churches, were
in operation for more than a century, from 1883 until the last one
closed in 1998.
The
commission documented that at least 3,201 students died while attending
the schools, many because of mistreatment or neglect, in the first
comprehensive tally of such deaths.
The
report linked the abuses at the schools, which came to broad public
attention over the last four decades, to social, health, economic and
emotional problems affecting many indigenous Canadians today. It
concluded that although some teachers and administrators at the schools
were well intentioned, the overriding motive for the program was
economic, not educational.
“The
Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it
wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to
aboriginal people and gain control over their lands and resources,” the
report said. “If every aboriginal person had been ‘absorbed into the
body politic,’ there would be no reserves, no treaties and no aboriginal
rights.”
The Canadian government apologized to former students in a landmark 2008 court settlement and established the commission to document what had happened and to reconcile Canada’s native and nonnative peoples.
The
commission, led by Justice Murray Sinclair, an Ojibwa who was the first
aboriginal judge in the province of Manitoba, said Tuesday that it
would take considerable effort and significant social, legal and
political changes to achieve that mandate.
“A
just reconciliation requires more than simply talking about the need to
heal the deep wounds of history,” the report said. “Words of apology
alone are insufficient; concrete actions on both symbolic and material
fronts are required.”
In contrast, the commission found that “all too often, policies and programs are still based on faded notions of assimilation.”
In
its report, the commission offered 94 recommendations, including an
overhaul of the child welfare system for aboriginal children, which
continues to produce cases of abuse and neglect, and a change in
Canada’s oath of citizenship to include a promise to “faithfully observe
the laws of Canada, including treaties with indigenous peoples.”
A
principal recommendation is a step that has long been a sore point
between aboriginal groups and the government. The report repeatedly
calls on the government to fully adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the basis of a new relationship.
Canada, along with the United States, Australia and New Zealand, has been
reluctant to take that step, saying instead that the country endorses
the declaration only as a “non-legally-binding aspirational document.”
The
major sticking point is the declaration’s requirement that issues
involving the lands, territories and resources of aboriginal people be
subject to their “prior and informed consent.” The government is
concerned that the requirement would essentially give aboriginal groups a
sweeping veto over Canadian law.
The
commission said, however, that the declaration affirmed rights already
held by native groups under treaties with the government and was
consistent with recent decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada related
to aboriginal rights.
Aboriginal
groups and the government see reconciliation very differently, the
report said: The government appears to believe that it involves
aboriginal people’s accepting “the reality and validity” of the
government’s power “in order to allow the government to get on with
business.”
“Aboriginal
people, on the other hand, see reconciliation as an opportunity to
affirm their own sovereignty and return to the ‘partnership’ ambitions
they held,” the report said.
Prime
Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has had a strained
relationship with indigenous people, even though it was Mr. Harper who
made the apology in 2008. When a reporter at a news conference on
Tuesday asked whether the Conservatives were at all likely to adopt the
commission’s recommendations, Justice Sinclair said, “We are writing for
the future, not just for this government,” a remark that met with
prolonged applause and cheers from the largely aboriginal audience.
Bernard
Valcourt, the aboriginal affairs minister, said Tuesday: “This dark
chapter in Canada’s history has left a mark on our country. I’m
confident that we can build on the important work that’s been done and
continue to heal as a nation.”
Leaders
of the Protestant churches that ran many of the schools apologized long
ago. But the report and Justice Sinclair urged Pope Francis to formally
take that step for the Roman Catholic Church, which ran some of the
schools, saying that apologies from local Catholic officials were not
enough.
The
research and interviews conducted by the commission detailed a boarding
school system that was woefully underfunded, inadequately staffed and
largely ineffective at its stated aim of providing useful education.
Some
former students interviewed by the commission cited school sports and
music and arts programs as bright spots in their lives. But those
programs were not generally part of the system, and most former
students, even those who were not physically or sexually harmed or
neglected, said their daily lives had been heavily regimented and lacked
privacy and dignity. At many of the schools, students were addressed
and referred to by number as if they were prisoners.
“In
the school, I didn’t have a name,” Lydia Ross, a former student, told
the commission. “I had No. 51, No. 44, No. 32, No. 16, No. 11 and then
finally No. 1, when I was just coming to high school.”
The
commission found that the government had in effect blocked criminal
investigations of some sexual predators employed at the schools. The
report documented widespread bullying and beating involving both staff
members and older students.
Many
staff members were paid poorly, and the government justified the policy
by arguing that “because many employees belonged to missionary
organizations, pay was a ‘minor consideration,’ ” the commission found.
Nuns at one school in the 1960s were paid just $50 a month, the report
said, a situation that made its principal “feel like a heel.”
The
report documented instances in which students tried to burn down their
schools or died after running away from schools in remote locations.
Justice Sinclair said at the news conference that although the
commission was able to document 3,201 student deaths, research suggested
that 6,000 or more may have died.
A
disproportionate number of aboriginal people are imprisoned in Canada,
and aboriginal children account for a much larger part of the child
welfare system’s caseload than their share of the population. The
commission said both of those trends were consequences of the regimented
residential school system.
People
raised in the schools, the report said, “sometimes found it difficult
to become loving parents.” Those who were abused often went on to abuse
other people as adults, or fell victim to substance abuse.
“Students
who were treated and punished like prisoners in the schools often
graduated to real prisons,” the commission wrote. “For many, the path
from residential school to prison was a short one.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/world/americas/canadas-forced-schooling-of-aboriginal-children-was-cultural-genocide-report-finds.html?ref=education
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