Deneen Brown; 13/6/08
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has delivered a long-anticipated apology to tens of thousands of indigenous people who as children were taken from their families and sent to boarding schools, where many were abused as part of official government policy to “kill the Indian in the child”. Mr Harper rose on the floor of a packed House of Commons and condemned the decades-long federal effort to wipe out aboriginal culture and assimilate native Canadians into European-dominated society. “The Government of Canada sincerely apologises and asks the forgiveness of the aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly,” Mr Harper declared. “We are sorry.” Investigations have established that thousands of Indian, Inuit and Metis children suffered mental, physical and sexual abuse in 132 boarding schools, most of them run by churches. The first opened in the late 1800s; the last shut in 1996.
Canada’s sorry day puts money where its mouth is
13/6/08
Canada addressed one of the darkest chapters in its history yesterday with a formal apology for forcing 150,000 aboriginal children into grim boarding schools, where many say they were sexually and physically abused. Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a parliamentary chamber packed with legislators and aboriginal representatives that there could be no excuses for what happened at the church-run schools, which operated from the 1870s to the 1970s. Mr Harper’s act mirrored the apology offered by Kevin Rudd in February to indigenous people who were taken from their families through much of the 20th century under successive governments. Many suffered terrible abuse in government and church-run institutions.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23853835-2703,00.html
