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	Queen Asked to Apologize for Residential Schools By Alexandra Paul Winnipeg Free Press February 21, 2008 http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/story/4129067p-4722588c.html The Grand Chief of 30 of the most remote northern First Nations in Canada is asking the Queen to do what no Prime Minister will: Apologize to aboriginal people for Indian residential schools. Northern Manitoba Grand Chief Sydney Garrioch's letter asks the Queen to say "Sorry" since none of the country's prime ministers will. A copy of the Feb. 21 letter was sent to the Free Press. For more than a century, First Nation children were forcibly removed from parents and sent to schools for years at a time, often seeing family for only holidays and summers. "I would humbly implore you as our Head of State and the Queen of the British Commonwealth to ensure our cries of the former residential school students are heard, issue an apology on behalf of your government in Canada and let us close this terrible chapter in Canadian history," pleads the brief six-paragraph letter. Typed on official letterhead from the Manitoba Keewatinook Ininew Okimowin, the letter is addressed simply to: Her Majesty The Queen, Buckingham Palace, London, SW1A 1AA. Exactly a week ago, Australia made a formal apology to aboriginal people of for generations of wrongs, including its residential schools. Aboriginal leaders here reacted by repeating their calls for the prime minister to offer a similar gesture. Australia's apology was beamed around the world and it underscored a feeling an apology is long overdue, Garrioch said. As recently as last June, Harper's Conservative government signaled it might reverse a a generally held federal policy of "no apology, no compensation" to aggrieved ethnic groups but so far there's been no change. "We've been talking to the federal government for two decades and they're finally now paying compensation but they still are not giving us an apology," the grand chief said. "We've given them enough time to do the right thing." So now, it is up to the British Crown to heal the breach, the Manitoba First Nations say. "The federal government hesitated. We're asking the Queen now to make that official, an apology for all the survivors, all Canadian First Nations people." The letter also suggests that only a royal representative of government is able to apologize in a way that Canadian aboriginal people can accept. Garrioch saves the final lines to remind Her Majesty of the special relationship between aboriginal people and royalty in treaties to settle Canada. "Our nations agreed in 1871 with your great, great grandmother, Queen Victoria, to enter into a treaty relationship win which she promised that her "Indian" children would be protected and bear her benevolence "for as long as the sun shines, the rivers flow and the grass grows." "I hope you will honour that legacy and join me in the healing journey of our people with an official apology," the chief's final words say. Australia offered an apology but no compensation. Canada made no apology but the letter tells the Queen the country is paying out $1.9 billion to an estimated 80,000 surviving adults who spent their childhoods in the schools. The letter makes it clear saying sorry is not the same thing as paying money. Every survivor is receiving a basic payment of $10,000 plus $3,000 for every year in school. Most of the Indian residential schools in Canada closed in the 1970s but the last federally-run residential school didn't shut down until 1996. In the letter, the Queen is told, "Many of our survivors suffered as a result of being inhumanely deprived of their cultures, ideology, thought, freedom, language and families. Others went through the traumatic experience of sexual, physical, mental and spiritual abuse at the hands of school officials." The schools, mostly church run and federally funded, were intended to assimilate aboriginal children but the attempt is now widely perceived as misguided. Contact: alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
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