Legal Research

Government of Canada Officially Apologizes for Indian Residential Schools Fiasco

By Michel-Adrien Sheppard

Prime Minister Stephen Harper presented a formal apology today on behalf of the Canadian government for the damage done to generations of aboriginal Canadians who went through Indian residential schools.

The apology was read to a packed House of Commons in which many aboriginal leaders had been invited to sit. The apology ceremony was broadcast live on TV, radio, and the Internet.

From the 19th century until very recently, in total, about 150,000 aboriginal, Inuit and Métis children were removed from their communities and forced to attend remote boarding schools run by Christian congregations under government contract. Countless children were abused physically or sexually.

The assumption behind the system was that aboriginal Canadian cultures were unable to adapt to modern industrial society. The schools were intended to aggressively assimilate the children and Christianize them. They were frequently punished for speaking their ancestral tongues and their culture was denied or “beaten out” of them.

As the Prime Minister admitted in his apology today, the real goal of the system was “to kill the Indian in the child.”

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has produced a very thorough package of resources on the question of residential schools under the title Truth and Reconciliation: Stolen Children.

Cross-posted to Library Boy.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on June 11, 2008 (boomark / email).