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	Churches Must Come Clean on Residential Schools Montreal Gazette April 9, 2010 http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Churches+must+come+clean+residential+schools/2780420/story.html It would be easier to believe Canadian churches' assurances of their sincere desire to help uncover the truth of what happened in Canada's residential schools if - nine months after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission got under way - they had turned over so much as a single paper from their archives. But they haven't. They are afraid to, thinks John Milloy, the Trent University history professor appointed in January as director of research and report preparation for the commission. In an interview last month with the Trent University newspaper, Milloy said, "The government is being relatively co-operative; the churches are not being co-operative at all. "Even though they signed the agreement saying they'd cough these things up," Milloy told the campus paper, "you go to them and they tell you, 'We can't give you that.'" Milloy said the churches are afraid of lawsuits, for example, under the Charter of Rights. He added, "The Catholics are especially wary." From what is already known of the suffering of many aboriginal children at the residential schools, churches, some of them anyway, have ample reason to be nervous. Milloy was quoted as saying that the death rate of students at one residential school reached 64 per cent. Canada's first residential schools were set up in the 1840s with one of their missions to convert aboriginal children to Christianity and to "civilize" them. By the time the last residential school closed in 1996, as many as 150,000 aboriginal children had attended Canada's 130 residential schools. As described by Milloy, the task ahead of the commission is huge. He told the campus paper that in addition to indexing between 120 and 140 archives across the country, the commission expects "to take 50,000 statements from survivors over the next five years." The commission will also try to locate the unmarked graveyards of the children who died. The churches say they are concerned with privacy issues. If there are legitimate concerns with privacy, they should be sorted out quickly. Many natives and their communities trace their poor health, lack of education, social dysfunction and unemployment to the residential school system. They, along with the government, churches and the country as a whole, need a full, factual airing of what happened in the residential schools. Collectively, we need to face up to this dark chapter of our history. The churches played a part in this history; they need to play a role in the recovery.
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