(Photo Supplied: The Convent of Angels Indian Residential School in Fort Chipewyan pictured here in 1930. J.F. Moran / Canada. Dept. of Indian and Northern Affairs / Library and Archives Canada )
Nineteen years after the last residential closed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its long awaited report on the impact of the residential school system.
It also released 94 broad recommendations.
“For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada,” says the report. “The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as ‘cultural genocide.’”
Recommendations include everything from greater police independence and reducing the number of aboriginal children in foster care to restrictions on the use of conditional and mandatory minimum sentences.
The summary is the culmination of six years of study into the church-run, government-funded schools, which ran for more than 120 years.
More than 130 residential schools operated across Canada and an estimated 150,00 First Nation, Metis, and Inuit students passed through the system.
It is estimated that more than 6,000 children died while in the residential school system. The school closest to Fort McMurray was in Fort Chipewyan, the Holy Angels Indian Residential School.
“Canada separated children from their parents, sending them to residential schools,” says the summary. “This was done not to educate them, but primarily to break their link to their culture and identity.”
The full report, weighing in at six volumes and thousands of pages, will be released later this year. The commission, prompted by the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history, found neglect was institutionalized and students were often “prey to sexual and physical abusers.”
It goes so far as to recommend additional CBC funding, a statutory holiday to honour survivors and an apology from the Pope on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church.
“The thousands of survivors who publicly shared their residential school experiences at TRC events in every region of this country have launched a much-needed dialogue about what is necessary to heal themselves, their families, communities and the nation,” the summary says.
According to the report the federal government deemed aboriginal parents unfit by establishing the system administered mostly by churches.
It calls on all levels of government to look to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as “the framework for reconciliation.”
“Without truth, justice and healing, there can be no genuine reconciliation.”
(The Canadian Press, Bradley Karp)
