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	Aboriginal, Church Leaders Take First Step to Healing Museum Meeting Sets Stage for Upcoming Truth, Reconciliation Commission Ottawa Citizen March 3, 2008 http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/city/story.html?id=8dfa5757-45f5-4ed1-bde5-63366b6b7a7a&k=75454 Aboriginal and church leaders gathered yesterday at the Canadian Museum of Civilization to mark the beginning of a tour that will announce an upcoming process of sharing and truth-telling to heal relations between aboriginal people and larger society. The Remembering the Children Tour will speak of the upcoming Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission. No precise date for the commencement of the commission has been set. Roughly 450 people were present in the perfect setting, the museum's Grand Hall, filled with totem poles and other artifacts of the native peoples of the West Coast. Phil Fontaine, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said the commission offers the federal government an opportunity to "do right by all its citizens, but most notably by those who were most harmed, the vulnerable children." The residential schools were explicitly designed to remove aboriginal children from their homes, often forcibly, and to assimilate them into mainstream society. In the schools, which were run by Canadian churches, they were denied the right to use their languages, and in many cases suffered physical, mental, and sexual abuse. Chief Fontaine said there have been a number of truth and reconciliation commissions around the world -- most notably in post-Apartheid South Africa -- but the Canadian version will be unique. For one thing, it will be community-based, so survivors of the schools can testify and be heard where they live, rather than in some distant centre. Also, in Canada, compensation for abuse and suffering has been given out before a commission was set up, rather than after. "The commission will give Canada an opportunity to shine light on its darkest chapter," Chief Fontaine said. Rev. Fred Hiltz, the Primate of the Anglican Church in Canada, said his church had long acknowledged the abuse that had been done to aboriginal children in the residential schools. "As a church, we have so much for which to be so sorry. "When the truth has been told and recognized, there will be a renewed national resolve to respect the dignity of every human being. We recognize the road of reconciliation is a long one, and we ask for the Creator's blessing and guidance." The moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, Hans Kouwenberg, said his church, too, had acknowledged and expressed sorrow for "our failure to love our aboriginal neighbours as ourselves. "We want to renew our commitment to working together and walking together on a new path. And it is our heartfelt hope that aboriginal people will accept." David Giuliano, moderator of the United Church of Canada, pointed out that the commission will be aimed every bit as much at church people in the larger society. "The question is, can we risk to be healed of our sense of religious superiority? Of the belief that our spirituality is richer and more full?" The event finished with a circle of reconciliation, with the whole roomful of people moving in a slow circle to native drumming and chanting, around the Grand Hall. Over the next eight days, the tour will visit Vancouver, Saskatoon and Winnipeg.
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