Culture News Blog

As Canadians, we have many reasons to be proud of our country, including Canada's commitment to multiculturalism, its tradition of international peacekeeping and a strong social safety net. However, this pride must not give way to complacency or self-righteousness. While there is nothing wrong with taking pride in what makes Canada great, we should not overlook the fact that there are still some unresolved dark chapters in our country's history.

Too often it's easy to criticize other countries for their shortcomings, while ignoring our own.

One of these dark chapters in our country's history is residential schools. For more than a century - from 1879 until 1996 - the federal government funded residential schools, boarding schools for aboriginal children that were administered by various churches. The aim of these schools was to assimilate aboriginal children into Euro-Canadian society by stamping out their culture - for example, through punishing them for speaking their indigenous languages.

Children from aboriginal families were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in these schools where they were physically, emotionally and - in many cases - sexually abused. Faced with poor and oppressive conditions at these schools, many aboriginal children died.

The aim of these schools was to break and destroy aboriginal culture. In many respects they succeeded, as many of the social problems plaguing aboriginal communities today have their roots in the abusive conditions at these schools. Beaten and abused children who were forced to attend these schools grew up to pass their despair on to younger generations.

The survivors of these schools range in age from the very elderly to some who are currently only in their twenties - thus the human rights abuses at these residential schools were carried out until very recently.

What's especially disturbing is that Canada's first Prime Minister, John A. MacDonald - honoured as our country's founder - was instrumental in the establishment of federal funding for these schools, whose aims he fully supported. Successive Canadian governments continued this policy. Thus this disturbing and horrific chapter in our country's history is closely woven in with the highest levels of power and authority in Canada.

These residential schools were not only in Canada. They existed as a policy of assimilation in Australia and the United States as well. In Australia, the previous Prime Minister, John Howard, refused to acknowledge or apologize for the injustices meted out to the "stolen generations" of Australian Aborigines who were forced to attend these schools. The current Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has begun to correct for this injustice by offering a full apology for the injustices committed by these schools.

The United States government has yet to offer an apology for residential schools, known there as Indian Boarding Schools. Unfortunately, aboriginal issues often don't rank high on national priorities, as First Nations peoples compose less than one per cent of the American population. This may change in the near future as the aboriginal population, while small nationwide, does form a sizeable percentage in some Western states which could be crucial in deciding the upcoming Presidential race.

Democrat Barack Obama himself has taken great measures to meet with aboriginal leaders and has pledged to redress the injustices they have faced. Republican John McCain, as a Senator, has been chair of the leading committee dealing with aboriginal issues in the United States. So maybe there's hope of an apology there in the not too distant future?

Here in Canada, Stephen Harper's recent apology for the horrors meted out at residential schools - an apology which was both thorough and unambiguous - is a positive first step on the road to reconciliation. This is something for which Harper should be praised.

Also welcoming was the multi-partisan consensus on this apology. Liberal leader Stéphane Dion expressed heartfelt regret over the role that previous Liberal governments, who had been in power for most of the twentieth century, played in the administration of these residential schools. NDP leader Jack Layton, who was moved to the verge of tears, offered a passionate and heartfelt response to the apology.

This apology is an important first step towards reconciliation, but of course it is precisely that, a first step. To date, the Harper government's record on aboriginal affairs has been dismal. The terms of the Kelowna Accord with First Nations people, negotiated by the previous government and which would have provided much needed aid to these communities, was not honoured by Harpers' Conservatives. This was a crass betrayal of Aboriginal Peoples throughout this country.

At the United Nations recently, Canada was one of the few countries to vote against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Furthermore, one of Stephen Harper's senior advisors, University of Calgary Professor Tom Flanagan, has made a career out of trying to providing academic justifications for denying redress for the injustices faced by aboriginal peoples.

It's not helpful that a Conservative MP, Pierre Poillievre, had to apologize for making disparaging remarks about aboriginal peoples on the eve of Harper's apology.

The apology must be followed up by concrete actions to help aboriginal communities and redress both the economic and social inequities they face. An important step in this regard has been the federal government's commitment to follow this apology up with financial redress for the traumas meted out by residential schools.

Stephen Harper's predecessors in the Prime Minister's Office, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, placed a high priority on helping First Nations peoples. Is it possible that there may now be a change in the attitude of the Harper government with regards to First Nations issues?

Hopefully, this apology represents a first step towards a new Aboriginal-Canadian policy by the Conservative government.

Hassan Arif is a graduate of UNB Law School and received his MA in Political Science at Carleton University. He resides in Fredericton.

This is cache, read story here