Canada Apolgizes

Today Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, stood up in the house of commons to apologize to all of Canada's aboriginal people for the injustices they suffered in Government imposed residential schools. These schools opened in the nineteenth century, the last one was shut down in 1996. Aboriginal children were forcibly taken away from their parents and their culture, shut away in church run schools so they could learn to become white. Many of them suffered physical, mental and sexual abuse. If they spoke their native language they were hit. They were raped, denied food and locked away. Some of their stories are truly horrible.

As a result of all this abuse native people have lost their identity. Struggling to find their way and escape their pain many natives today are drug addicted or alcoholic. Canada's prisons are full of young native males. Most of the children in government foster homes are native. The cycle of abuse, started in residential school, is what natives learned as children. Now they are parents themselves and who can blame them for treating their children the same way.

It will take generations for the cycle of abuse to stop, for native people to remember who they once were and all their rich historical culture. Let us hope it does not take as long for us, the people of the rest of Canada, to learn to accept natives for themselves.

For the whole story and more go to this CBC archive