Government provides lower services to First Nations
children (some 163,000 of them) who live on
reserves
Education
◦
Lower educational opportunity and achievement
◦
Results in higher unemployment and
underemployment
Legacy of residential school and
assimilationist policies
Education
◦
Lower educational opportunity and achievement
◦
Results in higher unemployment and
underemployment
Language and culture
◦
Schools drove a wedge between children and parents
◦
Schools made children ashamed of Indigenous culture
(and parents who embodied it)
◦
Today 70% of Indigenous languages are endangered.
Legacy of residential school and
assimilationist policies
Health
◦
Lower life expectancy
◦
Higher rates of mental illness
◦
Higher suicide rates
◦
Higher death rates among children and youth
Justice
◦
Indiference to charges of abuse
◦
Higher rates of incarceration
◦
Lower police concern: for example,
MMIWG
Legacy of residential school and
assimilationist policies
The Canadian
Churches and
Repentance
From colonial church to
solidarity with the victims
Product of class-action suit, “
Indian Residential Schools Settlement
Agreement
”
◦
Names federal government and four churches: Anglican,
Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, and United Church of
Canada
2015,
Final
Report
in six voumes, plus reports,
including
Calls to Action
.
◦
Includes government implementation of United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP)
◦
Includes call for government and church apologies and
reconciliation
Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, 2008-2015
Survivor Theodore (Ted) Fontaine at Alberta
National Event said, “I went through sexual
abuse. I went through physical abuse,
mental, spiritual. And I’ll tell you ... the one
thing that we sufered [from] the most is the
mental and spiritual abuse that we carried
for the rest of our lives.” (p. 96)
Final report and the
churches
Spiritual violence occurs when
◦
a person is not permitted to follow her or his preferred spiritual or
religious tradition;
◦
a diferent spiritual or religious path or practice is forced on a
person;
◦
a person’s spiritual or religious tradition, beliefs, or practices are
demeaned or belittled; or
◦
a person is made to feel shame for practising his or her traditional
or family beliefs. (p. 96)
◦
“From apology to action: Canada and the churches” (Chapter 3 of
Volume 6, pp. 81-116).
Final report and the
churches
58) We call upon the Pope to issue an apology
to Survivors, their families, and communities
for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the
spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and
sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis
children in Catholic run residential schools.
We call for that apology to be similar to the
2010 apology issued to Irish victims of abuse
and to occur within one year of the issuing of
this final report and to be delivered by the
Pope in Canada.
Call to Action #58
59) We call upon church parties to the
Settlement Agreement to develop ongoing
education strategies to ensure that their
respective congregations learn about their
church’s role in colonization, the history and
legacy of residential schools, and why
apologies to former residential school
students, their families, and communities
were necessary.
