“A Cultural Genocide” in Canada

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“A cultural genocide” in Canada, that’s what a long-awaited report calls the establishment and operation of residential schools. Thousands of children died and many who lived through the experience say they endured physical and sexual abuse at the Government funded, church-run schools that separated Aboriginal children from their families to try and break the link to their culture and identity the schools operated for more than 120 years with the last one closing in 1996.

The Truth and Reconciliation commission made 94 broad recommendations as part of its findings. Canada’s first aboriginal justice and the commission’s chairman Justice Murray Sinclair calls the residential school experience “one of the darkest, most troubling chapters in our collective history.”

6 years of testimony, nearly 7 000 witnesses, the 350 plus page report details accounts of neglect, physical and sexual abuse, as more than 150 000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were separated from their parents not to educate them, but as the report finds “to break their link to their culture and identity.”

Over 6 000 students died while in residential schools. Justice Murray Sinclair says all Canadians must call for an ongoing progress of reconciliation. “Survivors, their families and their communities are looking to our political leaders to display the conviction and the courage to honour the commitments made to Aboriginal people in Canada to start the new chapter in the story of Canada. One that we can all be proud of.”

The commission made 94 recommendations, among them that governments acknowledge the current state of Aboriginal health in Canada is a direct result of previous Canadian government policies including residential schools. In 2008 Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued an apology on behalf of all Canadians.

But the report finds the expectations created by that speech have not been met. One of the recommendations is to fully implement the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples, something the government has only adopted as a goal only.

Visit trc.ca for more information