TRC: Aboriginal residential schools amounted to “cultural genocide”
“Today is a wake-up call for all of Canada”
Justice Murray Sinclair introduces the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s summary report, which includes 94 recommendations, a 243-page collection of survivor testimonies and a 194-page collection of the commission’s findings. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)
More than 700 people crammed into the ballroom at the Delta Ottawa hotel erupted with applause when Justice Murray Sinclair declared that Canada’s residential school system amounted to nothing short of cultural genocide. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)
ITK president Terry Audla outside the Ottawa Delta hotel June 1. Audla said June 2 that ITK wants Canada to recognize survivors of residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador: “I call on the Government of Canada to uphold the honour of the Crown and take immediate action to recognize survivors of residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Inuit region of Nunatsiavut,” he said. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)
(Updated 7:30 p.m., June 2)
Many cheered and some used Kleenex to dab tears from the corners of their eyes.
But when Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, while introducing the TRC’s final report in Ottawa June 2, declared that “what took place in residential schools amounts to nothing short of cultural genocide,” his audience responded with a long, loud round of applause.
More than 700 Aboriginal residential school survivors, non-Aboriginal supporters, church members and politicians crammed into the ballroom of the Delta Hotel for the release of the TRC’s long-awaited findings, which completes the work the commission started in 2009.
Among them sat Inuit leader Piita Irniq, who in the late 1980s began to expose the shocking abuses against Inuit children that were committed at Sir Joseph Bernier School in Chesterfield Inlet in the 1950s and 1960s.
“Today is a wake-up call for all of Canada,” said Irniq, who has been invited to attend the TRC’s closing ceremony at Rideau Hall June 3.
In 1993, Irniq and many others publicly disclosed the sexual and physical abuse inflicted on them by Oblate priests and Grey Nuns at the Joseph Bernier school and its adjoining Turquetil Hall residence.
He said he’s satisfied with the TRC report, which includes testimony gathered by an Inuit sub-commission that Irniq pushed for in 2010 and 2011.
That sub-commission toured the Arctic in 2011, gathering statements from Inuit residential school survivors in Nunavik, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Ottawa and other places.
“There was quite a good recognition of Inuit in the early stages of the process,” Irniq said.
As for the report, Irniq said he would add a recommendation that Inuit cultural beliefs, including shamanism, be added to school curricula.
In its exhaustive report, the TRC commissioners summarize the often heart-rending testimony given to them by the 6,750 Aboriginal residential school survivors from whom they received statements, as well as research into the archival history of residential schools, which afflicted many generations for Aboriginal families for more than 100 years.
You can download the TRC’s findings and related reports here.
They make 94 recommendations to governments at all levels and urge all Canadians to embrace the principle of reconciliation with Aboriginal people.
The report also confirms what many Aboriginal people have known for decades: that residential school staff, many of whom worked for churches, were able to torture, rape and sexually abuse Aboriginal children with impunity.
“These were heartbreaking, tragic and shocking accounts of discrimination, deprivation and all manners of physical, sexual, emotional and mental abuse,” Sinclair said.
The commission found that in numerous residential schools, supervisors used forms of corporal punishment that would have been considered harsh even in earlier times, when hitting children was still socially acceptable.
Those practices include flogging with riding whips, belts and yardsticks, as well as punching, kicking and hair-pulling.
These punishments were often inflicted after Aboriginal children were caught speaking their languages in school, or for minor transgressions, such as standing in the wrong line for lunch or being late for school.
Another shocking finding is that Aboriginal children at residential schools died at an alarming rate.
“At least 3,200 students sent to residential schools never returned home. In almost a third of those cases, the student’s name wasn’t even recorded. A quarter of the time, the student’s gender was not recorded,” TRC commissioner Marie Wilson said.
The commission found that medical care at residential schools was often “of the lowest quality” and that they often went hungry and suffered from a poor diet.
And the Department of Indian Affairs was part of “an accepted system of corruption and cover-ups” that kept the Canadian public from learning about these and other abuses against Aboriginal children.
That included attempts to thwart police investigations of sexual abusers.
Many of the TRC’s recommendations suggest specific actions aimed at reconciling Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people based on an accurate understanding of history, including a recommendation that the Crown issue a “Royal Proclamation of Reconciliation.”
And they also call on all governments to acknowledge and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and that UNDRIP principles be used in Canada as the basis for reconciliation.
Other recommendations suggest specific ways of improving health, justice and child welfare services for Aboriginal people.
“Words are not enough. Reconciliation requires deliberate, thoughtful and sustained action,” Sinclair said.
Another recommendation calls on the Pope to apologize for crimes committed by agents of the Roman Catholic church.
Yet another recommendation calls on the federal government to create an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women.
Following the release of the TRC report, Sinclair said the commission met with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and “shared a frank and open dialogue.”
“He was open to listening to some of our concerns and inquired about some of our recommendations,” Sinclair said.
On the other hand, Sinclair said the government is still skeptical about the idea of implementing the UN declaration.
“I remain concerned with the Government’s resistance to the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” Sinclair’s statement said.
In its response, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami has issued its own Inuit statement of reconciliation. (See document below.)
And in a statement, ITK President Terry Audla called on Canada to recognized the experience of Inuit who survived residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador.
“I call on the Government of Canada to uphold the honour of the Crown and take immediate action to recognize survivors of residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Inuit region of Nunatsiavut. I call on all parties to the settlement agreement to continue to pursue full recognition for these survivors until we have fulfilled our collective promise to them,” Audla said.
Audla issued a call to action on the implementation of five constitutionally-entrenched Inuit land claim agreements.
“Let’s stop using politics as a barrier. The political decisions were made when these agreements were negotiated and signed. Now, it’s a matter of fulfilling those commitments — for our children and grandchildren,” he said.
Labrador Inuit were excluded from the 2006 out-of-court settlement agreement that provided most Aboriginal, but not all, residential school survivors in Canada with a $2.1 billion compensation fund.
The fund was was used to finance common experience and independent assessment payments for many thousands of survivors, and provided $60 million to pay for the work of the TRC.
Another group excluded from the settlement agreement are the Métis.
“Other than a few of the recommendations that include Métis in proposed actions, we are treated as an afterthought”, the Métis National Council president, Clément Chartier, said in a statement.
“Little thought was given or advice provided to deal with the exclusion of Métis residential schools from federal settlements agreements,” Chartier said.
(More to follow)
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