Teachings about aboriginals 'simply wrong', says Murray Sinclair

By Mark Kennedy
Ottawa Citizen
May 24, 2015

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/teachings-about-residential-schools-simply-wrong-says-head-of-truth-and-reconciliation-commission

Justice Murray Sinclair, head of the aboriginal residential schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission. says one of the most important messages that will come from his report is that the consequences of the school system are far more wide-reaching than many realize. Photo by John Woods

Canadians must acknowledge that for generations their public schools have fed them misinformation about aboriginal people, says the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Justice Murray Sinclair, whose commission has examined the history and abuses that took place in Indian residential schools, made the comment in a personal interview with the Citizen.

Sinclair’s commission has finished six years of hearings and research and will publicly release its findings in Ottawa on June 2.

The TRC’s report will provide a detailed account of how 150,000 aboriginals were stripped from their families starting in the 1880s and sent to church-run schools established by the federal government. The last residential school closed in the 1990s.

The report will chronicle the abuse many faced, and how the system scarred several generations of aboriginals, leaving their communities in shambles.

But Sinclair emphasized that one of the most important messages that will come from the report is that the consequences of the school system are far more wide-reaching than many realize.

“This is not an aboriginal problem,” he said. “This is a Canadian problem. Because at the same time that aboriginal people were being demeaned in the schools and their culture and language were being taken away from them and they were being told that they were inferior, they were pagans, that they were heathens and savages and that they were unworthy of being respected — that very same message was being given to the non-aboriginal children in the public schools as well.”

As a result, he said, many generations of non-aboriginal Canadians have had their perceptions of aboriginal people “tainted.”

“They need to know that this history includes them,” Sinclair said of Canadians.

He said many people have told the commission they did not know their country had set up a school system that treated aboriginal children so poorly.

Sinclair said the commission decided during its work that it needed to be “gentle” with Canadians as they learned of their country’s past.

“We needed to be sure that people were brought to the table of knowledge about this in a way that didn’t scare them, didn’t push them away, didn’t make them feel ashamed or guilty or that they were to blame.

“But they needed to see that they were victims, too, of this history.”

In their report, Sinclair and his co-commissioners, former journalist Marie Wilson and Alberta Chief Willie Littlechild, will make recommendations to federal and provincial governments. It’s clear one of them will be to ensure schools teach children about the residential schools and indigenous culture.

“By including teaching around residential schools in Canadian curriculum,” said Sinclair, “we are not only opening the door to having aboriginal people become part of the circle, we are also opening the eyes of Canadians to the fact that they have been educated in the public schools about aboriginals historically, and even today, in (a way) that is simply wrong and doesn’t contain accurate information.”

Sinclair’s commission was established as part of a class-action lawsuit settlement between residential school students and the federal government and churches.

In addition to telling the truth behind the school saga, the commission hopes to foster reconciliation between Canada’s aboriginals and non-aboriginals.

“The message for all Canadians is it’s important for us to understand that it’s now time for us to live up to the reputation that we think we had, that we thought we had — and we don’t have,” he said.

“It’s important for us to understand that we have deluded ourselves as a country to a certain extent because we have not educated ourselves about this experience.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which heard testimony from more than 7,000 former residential school students, has helped shine a light on their experiences.

Sinclair said that now that those stories about “damaged” people have been told and it is clear that “Canada is responsible for that damage,” it’s time for aboriginals and non-aboriginals to forge a better relationship.

“This is about your grandchildren,” Sinclair said he often tells people.

“Because we’re leaving them this society. And do we want to leave them a society in which they are always in conflict? Or do we want to leave them a society in which they see themselves as partners in this wonderful nation that we want to have, but we don’t yet have.”