“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.”
Justice Murray Sinclair
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.
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.
