Investigation into Residential School Experiments Called for

By Kim Pemberton
Vancouver Sun
July 18, 2013

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Investigation+into+residential+school+experiments+called/8675431/story.html

There are "literally millions of documents" about the residential school system that Ottawa is just starting to make public and it's not yet known if any more deal with controversial experiments on aboriginal children.

That's the word from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada after reports Tuesday that malnourished aboriginal children in residential schools, including in Port Alberni, were subjected to nutritional experiments shortly after the Second World War.

"There needs to be a planned approach to find out more and to get to the bottom of this," Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs said Wednesday. "There's a good chance other depraved acts in the name of science were taking place to other young children."

The commission, which is charged with establishing the truth about sexual and physical abuse and loss of culture at residential schools, went to court in December to get access to documents held by Ottawa. The documents, mostly in digital files, have started to arrive, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

While the commission's fiveyear mandate runs out in a year, commission chair Murray Sinclair has said he believes it will be possible to study the documents and create a historical record of Canada's residential school system and abuses within it.

"It's just a question of time and resources. It's not a question of intent anymore," Sinclair told Postmedia News recently. "I do not doubt for a moment that they (the federal government) understand their obligation to provide all relevant documents to the commission, and that they are working on a plan to make it happen. ... Whether they are capable of doing it in the time that's left is another question."

The commission, the spokeswoman said, has no idea how many files in total will arrive.

The commission intends to provide access to the documents at a national research centre so the public, researchers and educators can learn more about what happened to the 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children taken from their homes, often

against their parents' wishes, and forced to live in residential schools across Canada. (The residential school system began in the 1870s and more than 130 schools were located across the country. The last one closed in 1996.) Phillip said the chiefs of the Assembly of First Nations, many of whom learned about the experiments while attending their annual general assembly in Whitehorse, are having "intense discussions" about the issue and are "absolutely outraged."

"There's an absolute sense of outrage sweeping through the delegation. You can expect there will be a communications sent to the prime minister demanding answers and he needs to take the necessary steps to make this right," he said.

AFN national chief Shawn Atleo said the assembly is drafting an emergency resolution demanding that Ottawa admit aboriginal children today are still hungry and acknowledge the "horrors" of nutritional experiments once done on aboriginal children.

"We're going to call on the prime minister to give effect to the words that he spoke when he said: 'The burden of this experience has been on your shoulders for far too long. The

burden is properly ours as a government,' " Atleo said, referring to Harper's 2008 apology to survivors of residential schools.

Atleo's father was one of the children in the Port Alberni residential school.

"It hits home in a deeply personal way," he said. "I've heard these stories - some kids allowed to have their oranges and vitamin C and others not."

Ed John, chief of B.C.'s First Nations Summit, said it was "disturbing" and "an affront to human decency" for nutritional experiments to have taken place on aboriginal children.

"We have every right to condemn what the government was involved with," said John."It's a disturbing pattern of government conduct. To experiment with the impact of substandard nutrition on students is a double affront to human decency and humanity."

John said the reconciliation commission should not have had to go to court to get documents. "The government shouldn't hide these records, which is what they've been doing," he said.

"It's very disturbing what happened," he said. "Bear in mind, this came after the experiments by the Nazis and the principles established with the Nuremberg Code (a set of

ethical principles for research on humans) and these were not followed."

The B.C. regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations, Jody Wilson-Raybould, said the recently published research that revealed the nutritional research, by Ian Mosby from the University of Guelph, is a reminder of the ongoing need for healing.

On Tuesday, Mosby revealed that he'd found documentary evidence that, over a 10-year span starting in 1942, at least 1,300 aboriginals, mostly children, were unknowingly made part of the nutritional experiments. At the Port Alberni residential school, for instance, milk rations were held to less than half the recommended amount for two years to get a "baseline" reading for when the milk ration was tripled, according to a 1953 government report discovered by Mosby.

"Our citizens, our communities are still coming to terms with the residential schools legacy and the Mosby paper is another painful reminder of the experiences and how our people suffered at the hands of the government in being subjected to experimentation that they never consented to," said Wilson-Raybould.

With files from The Canadian Press