Rallies over Nutrition Experiments Urge Ottawa to Disclose All Documents
By Kevin Menz
Erica Lee remembers Prime Minister Stephen Harper's 2008 apology vividly. She sat in a packed gymnasium at Saskatoon's White Buffalo Youth Lodge, watching the television as Harper apologized from the House of Commons for abuse aboriginal people endured under the residential school system, for the Canadian government's role in the system, and for separating children from their families. "It felt like closure. Now it's been how many years and nothing has changed," Lee said Thursday. The 23-year-old University of Saskatchewan philosophy student, who is closely involved with the grassroots Idle No More movement, organized the Saskatoon leg of several Honour the Apology rallies across Canada on Thursday. The rallies called on the federal government to release all documents on residential schools to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission - a national commission investigating the residential schools legacy - after nutritional experiments performed on aboriginal people in the 1940s recently came to light. Research by food historian Ian Mosby, published in May, revealed the federal government had commissioned studies on aboriginal people in remote communities in northern Manitoba and at six residential schools across the country between 1942 and 1952. The researchers knew the people they were studying were hungry, but instead of advocating that they be better fed, they chose to use them as unwitting subjects to test the effects of different vitamins and minerals. "This is something where, even if you've been in the aboriginal community and read many native studies books, this still catches you by surprise," Lee said before speaking in front of a crowd of about 100 people at the Vimy Memorial Bandshell in Saskatoon's Kiwanis Park on Thursday afternoon. "I'm here because I don't know my father because of residential schools. My father is not a healthy man. He is not in the best place, but I have a hard time blaming him for that," she told the crowd. Lee has only met her father, who attended a residential school, once in her life. He is addicted to alcohol and drugs, and has a history of violence. While she never attended a residential school herself, it's important for the government to disclose everything that happened under the residential system so the aboriginal community can move forward, she said. "In order for us to heal, we need to have all the information." University of Saskatchewan assistant native studies professor Rob Innes said calling on the government to release documents is about the federal government making good on its apology. "If the government really wants to move to reconciliation, we need truth. The truth is in those documents," he said. Library and Archives Canada estimates it would take $40 million and 10 years to find and digitize all the required records. The auditors say the documentation would need to be pulled from 80 different archives involving 135 schools and would fill about 69,000 boxes. kmenz@thestarphoenix.com twitter.com/kevinmenz
|
.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.