http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/editorial/story/4185284p-4775419c.html

Our fault, not yours

Updated: June 12 at 07:35 AM CDT

PRIME Minister Stephen Harper in the House of Commons Wednesday delivered a
historic apology intended to alter Canada's sorry relationship with its
aboriginal people. Mr. Harper apologized repeatedly for the damages
inflicted on generations of aboriginal children taken from their parents
and put into residential schools under a policy that regarded Indians as
"inferior and unequal." Mr. Harper was speaking to all Canadians, however,
when he properly noted the attitudes that inspired the residential schools
policy have no place in this country today.

In an emotional afternoon in Parliament, Canadians watched their political
leaders and then leaders of Canada's three aboriginal groups acknowledge
the legacy of residential schools and a policy of assimilation that set out
to "kill the Indian in the child."

Previous ministers and officials have given lip service to the role
government played in the history of residential schools, but have
steadfastly refused to apologize unconditionally and shoulder the blame for
policies that helped plunge aboriginal people into the dismal social and
economic conditions that prevail in Canada today. Beginning in the late
1900s, native children aged six to 16 were forcibly isolated from their
parents and communities, in a systematic campaign to smother native
culture, to wipe out their language so as to remake them in the image of
the rest of Canada. As early as the turn of the century, the government
recognized industrial schools were an abject failure, but then passed
subsequent amendments to the Indian Act to fill different iterations of
boarding schools with successive generations of First Nations, Métis and
Inuit children. Mr. Harper acknowledged the difficult, indisputable facts:
The children were deprived of the necessary nurturing of their parents and
communities, the food and housing was inadequate to the job. Many died of
disease in the church-run schools and thousands were abused sexually,
physically and emotionally. The crushing effect that residential schools
had on aboriginal culture, language and traditions gave rise to generations
of parents unable to appropriately nurture their own children, Mr. Harper
acknowledged. Noting that reconciliation has been sadly delayed by the
refusal of governments to apologize, Mr. Harper asked for the forgiveness
of aboriginal people.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, in an act of impressive contrition, noted his
party was in power for 70 years of the 20th century, the bulk of the years
when 150,000 aboriginal children were taken to the 132 schools far from
home. As families, communities and children suffered, governments clung to
denial and when that was impossible, they ignored their responsibility or
adopted a silence, he said.

The joint confessions of Canada's primary political leaders have ushered in
a welcome glimmer of hope for the country, the "new dawn" that the
aboriginal leaders on hand spoke of in gratitude to a government that has
finally recognized its role in their pain. Mary Simon of the Inuit Tapiriit
Kanatami called the apology courageous. Assembly of First Nations National
Chief Phil Fontaine said that for those who lived the experience, "this day
represents nothing less than the achievement of the impossible."

The official apology comes late in the game: The Royal Commission on
Aboriginal People laid out in 1996 the testimonies of former students and
parents who suffered the abuses or the loss of children who never returned.
Negotiations over settlements and reparations have dragged on, to the
profit of lawyers far more than the victims. This month's launch of the
truth and reconciliation hearings ought to have followed, not preceded an
apology. Nonetheless, the native leaders were uniformly gracious in their
desire to move ahead, as Mr. Fontaine said: "to end this racial nightmare
together."

Manitoba wears the imprint of residential schools even today. In ways that
only epidemiologists and demographers can fully describe, the impact of
residential schools has combined with the paternalistic Indian Act to
produce demonstrably dysfunctional conditions on many Manitoba reserves,
where a multigenerational dependency envelopes First Nations people. Indian
people are addicted, unemployed, diseased, drop out of school and kill
themselves at rates that defy comprehension. There are some who will
acknowledge the benefits of their schooling, while bemoaning the real
legacy of a cultural conceit that said an institution would do a better job
of raising them. Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe gave Canadians this
arresting image: Whole villages stripped of children. Imagine those left
behind. And the pain that would follow for those who heard, months after
the fact, that their children died, frequently of the diseases that thrive
in cramped and ill-ventilated residences. Mr. Duceppe recalled the 1907
report that notified government of the deadly toll in schools in Manitoba
and the "Northwest Territories" -- an average mortality rate of almost 25
per cent, and as high as 69 per cent.

More than one politician noted that apologies are only as good as the
actions that follow. The truth and reconciliation hearings will help write
into the history books the experiences of those who lived, worked, studied
under the fateful policy of assimilation, and perhaps of those who taught
and cared for the students with the best of intentions. They may hear from
abusers. They will not hear the voices of the children who died for reasons
never explained and who lie in unmarked graves. Those resting places must
be found, the dead honoured. Their families, finally, need this peace. So
does Canada.