Truth and Reconciliation - from Past to Future
Montreal Gazette
Many non-aboriginal Canadians remain all too ignorant of the shameful history of Canada’s residential schools, whose damaging legacy continues to be felt in aboriginal communities across the country. The Montreal hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which got underway Wednesday and are to continue until Saturday, are part of the process of moving forward, not only for those who choose to testify, but for all Canadians. At these public hearings, which are being held in seven Canadian cities, survivors of the residential school system are getting an opportunity to recount their experiences. Over the course of more than a century, tens of thousands of First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were wrenched from their families and communities, and sent away to boarding schools run by religious groups and funded by the federal government. Though the schools were winding down by the 1970s, the last of them did not close until 1996. More than merely a well-intentioned effort to educate children, the policy was frankly designed to assimilate aboriginals — “to take the Indian out of the child,” according to one bureaucrat of the day. Students were forbidden to speak their own languages, and their traditional beliefs were denigrated and characterized as sinful. And all too often, the children were also subjected to physical and sexual abuse. No wonder, then, that the schools have left a painful legacy, one with which survivors, their descendants and their communities are still struggling. The commission’s work is part of a healing process that also includes monetary compensation, and has seen a 2008 apology from the federal government. Some non-aboriginal Canadians may be tempted to respond, “That was then, and this is now.” One obvious response to this attitude is that understanding and coming to terms with the past helps us understand the present. That said, what about now? The present situation of aboriginals in Canada gives no reason for complacency. While there are many successful communities and individuals, economic and social statistics tell a dismal story: aboriginals are twice as likely as other Canadians to be unemployed; they are far more likely to live in overcrowded homes; aboriginals make up 23 per cent of the population in federal correctional institutions although they make up only four per cent of the Canadian population (and aboriginal women make up 33 per cent of the female population in federal jails). And as Assembly of First Nations national chief Shawn Atleo pointed out earlier this year, the problem of children being sent away from their communities is not entirely a thing of the past: systematic under-funding of child-welfare services on reserves means children of families in crisis often end up being taken away from their communities. Are the residential schools solely to blame for all this? Of course not, but their destructive legacy should not be underestimated. Nor should the persistence of an assimilationist mindset in some quarters. Even now, how many Canadians still expect aboriginals to abandon their rights, ways and heritage? It seems a safe prediction that aboriginal issues will increasingly be on the national agenda in the years to come, not least because the aboriginal population is fast-growing, and young. (The median age of aboriginals in Canada is 27, compared with a national median of 40.) Fundamental reforms are needed in many areas, to open the way for a more self-reliant and prosperous future for aboriginals. As participants in last winter’s Idle No More flash mobs attempted to remind ordinary Canadians, with the sound of drumbeats suddenly echoing through the nation’s shopping malls, Canada and aboriginal peoples continue to have much unfinished business.
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