Canada issues a heartfelt ’sorry’ to stolen generations
Friday, June 13th, 2008Deneen 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.
