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Time for reconciliation
January 24, 2015 - 2:01pm
Truth & Reconciliation Commission.
http://www.kairoscanada.org/get-involved/time-for-reconciliation-2/
I got page not found but truth and reconcilliation can only begin once indigenous rights are fully acknowledged. Right now the "war" is still on. Canada is still trying to stiff indigenous peoples.
Link works for me; if you want to read it you can go to kairoscanada.org and select indigenous issues under the dignity & rights tab.
Here's the full text, I am sure Kairos would not mind.
Link didn't work for me either, but this one should.
From what I know of Kairos (an "enemy" organization by Harper's standards) they certainly advocate justice and truth towards Indigenous peoples as a precondition for reconciliation).
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/metro/Vancouver+internment+activist+weighs+aboriginal/10719276/story.html#ixzz3QM0xxIty
Anglican church will have major presence when Truth Commisison report launches
Plenty of words about this church repenting its role. A good sign if there's to be hope for reconciliation going forward.
From projectofheart.ca
When Ontario (Upper Canada) was hived off of the Province of Canada, there was a concession to the Church of England which we call the Anglicans here. By what I understand from history, The imperial authorities chopped Ontario up into rectangles, and gave 1 rectangle out of 7 to the Anglican Church. All of the 'lots' and 'concession lines' still run where these lines were traced.
I don't know how it went with the other provinces, but it might be useful to see if there were similar land concessions to the Church in what was the NWT and Rupert's land.
As well as being complicit in the theft of land, the Anglican Church was to be the "moral" force for the European settlers in Ontario. The church justified everything the European settlers did by their self-serving theology.
What would the value of 1/7 of the province of Ontario be, granted as undeveloped land? In a fundamental way, that land has the same value now as it did or will at any other time. Whatever it is worth now is what the Anglicans should be liable for.
If you look at the properties the Anglicans own in all the major cities, you could get billions if converted into office buildings or condos. But I'll bet the Anglican books shuffle all the assets off to unknown ledgers, and keep the liabilities on the books. It should be assumed there has been massive accounting fraud, complicity by the wealthiest people in Canada, and abetted by the most competent accounting professionals there are.
I think the Anglican church properties are owned by each individual diocese, and each diocese is an indepednent corporation. That's very Anglican, anyway, having no single national boss. I sure wish Boom Boom was still with us, he'd know. Anyways, the upshot is that some diocese (the ones that ran residential schools) likely face bankruptcy, while the wealthier urban ones (which ran no schools) amy not. But I am just guessing here. I think that there's lots of survivors who do not actually want the churches bankrupted, though.
The rectangles are why both farmland and urban development are so different in Ontario and Québec (where of course the Catholic Church has a great deal of landed property. The French settlements were long, narrow lots so each family would have at least a bit of riverside. This is why north-south blocks are often so long in Montréal (it is also the case in parts of Detroit). You can easily see the difference flying over.
But of course reconciliation requires truth. Is there any real progress in trying to right what can be put right?
The TRC launches its final report tomorrow in Ottawa. About 10,000 people amrched for reconiliation on Sunday. Powerful stuff.
Decolonizing Canada: one of the many thoughtful ieces appearing in the media this week
TRC to deliver final report June 2
Powerful stories being told here in Ottawa by survivors. Beautiful songs, and tears, and resolve. Now it's up to Canada to reconcile and decolonize. As commissioner Murray Sinclair tweeted, #myreconciliationincludes all of you
Truth and Reconciliation Commission urges Canada to confront 'cultural genocide' of residential schools
94 recommendations
Including:
45. WE call upon the Government of Canada, on behalf of all Canadians, to jointly develop with Aboriginal peoples a Royal Proclamation of Reconciliation to be issued by the Crown. The proclamation would build on the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Treaty of Niagara of 1764, and reaffirm the nation to nation relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Crown. The proclamation would include, but not be limited to the following commitments:
i. Repudiate concepts used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous lands and peoples such as the Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius.
ii. Adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the framework for reconciliation.
iii. Renew or establish Treaty relationships based on principles of mutual recognition, mutual respect, and shared responsibility for maintaining those relationships into the future.
iv. Reconcile Aboriginal and Crown constitutional and legal orders to ensure that Aboriginal peoples are full partners in Confederation, including the recognition and integration of Indigenous laws and legal traditions in negotiations and implementation processes involving Treaties, land claims, and other constructive agreements.
Still Surviving: Reconciliation Through Everyday Rebellion
For years Gina Laing followed her grandmothers up the river behind the cannery to bathe. They'd walk along a little creek to a waterfall that poured into a clear green pond. A canopy of trees and ferns shaded the women as they slipped, fully clothed, into the water. How noble and then comical they looked when they emerged again -- arms in a V, hands turned upwards, clothes plastered to their skin, their long black braids dripping.
Both grandmothers were gone now. And that memory seemed far away as Laing, at 17, pushed her way through the trees. She had returned from residential school a year earlier. Stepping over the stones, she walked closer to the rushing water. She sat down on a large rock and studied the gun in her lap. Her last living grandmother had just died. The only person who "loved her without conditions." Slowly she lifted the heavy, metal object to her mouth....
http://thetyee.ca/News/2015/06/02/Residential-School-Survivors/
Some additional background info and critical analysis already posted in other threads on this earlier in the process, hopefully of use and interest. I don't think Canada will comply with anything they aren't forced to, no matter the pretty words of politicians in the short term.
The Circle Game
https://web.archive.org/web/20110727112117/http://www.nativestudies.org/...
"What if the Holocaust had never stopped?"
An Historic Non-Apology, Completely and Utterly Not Accepted
http://www.marxmail.org/ApologyNotAccepted.htm
"And we do not believe the putative mechanism of resolution (the 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission') will resolve anything..."
A Critique of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission
http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/11/a-critique-of-the-indian-residential-s...
"The Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a hoax contrived by the legal establishment to evade culpability.."
"Cultural Genocide": Landmark Report Decries Canada’s Forced Schooling of Indigenous Children
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada has concluded that country’s decades-long policy of forcibly removing indigenous children from their families and placing them in state-funded residential Christian schools amounted to, quote, "cultural genocide." After a six-year investigation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report concluded: quote, "The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to aboriginal people and gain control over their lands and resources. If every aboriginal person had been 'absorbed into the body politic,' there would be no reserves, no treaties and no aboriginal rights."
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/6/3/cultural_genocide_landmark_report_d...
I don't know why some media, like the Globe, are trying to (however well-meaning) softpedal this and ease people into the idea that it was genocide.I wonder why they had to qualify it with the term "cultural". 100 years ago kids going into that prison system had a one in five chance of not making it out, and in several of the institutions here in SK, there was a 70 percent death rate.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/06/02/canadas-residential-school...
I could care less about Harper's intention, or even whether the government intends on addressing this in good faith. This is important, especially considering all those who put themselves out to make this happen, and aren't going to be around that much longer to tell what happened.
They deserve to be honoured for taking that difficult step to try and break the cycle.
..as pamela palmater points out..it's not over.
quote:
And I think what’s really important for people around the world to understand is that residential schools didn’t really stand in isolation. It was in addition to the forced sterilizations, the scalping bounties, all of the—overrepresenting our people in prison, stealing them and putting them in Child and Family Services, the thousands of murdered and missing indigenous women in this country that go unresolved, and no steps taken to prevent these actions, and that this is ongoing. It would be a terrible mistake to historicize this and say, "Well, this happened a long time ago. We now know what happened. Let’s apologize and move on." It is ongoing.
When they closed residential schools, their very next policy was known as the Sixties Scoop, where they actually took more children from First Nations than during the residential school period, which is why we have now 30 to 40 percent of our children in care. They’re still taking our children. They’re still trying to raise them in non-indigenous families. And many of these children end up as murdered or missing indigenous women, or they end up in the prison system. And that’s—this legacy of the residential schools is ongoing. It’s very much in the present. You can track the survivors of residential schools to kids in care, to people in prison, to those who are homeless, to those who have poor health. All of these things are very much in the present. So we have to take action now to address the ongoing problems that were started by the residential school and have never stopped and continue to this day in just different terminology and in different policies.
Yup.
To this:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/hiv-rates-on-sask-reserves-hi...
Good interview on the radio this morning (can't find a link yet) with a woman who made the connections between the HIV epidemic, the seizures of children, the residential prison system, the lot.
And read the comments on that story to see another example of the terrible legacy of that system.
dp
I like the idea of changing the citizenship oath. All Canadians shoudl maybe take one using the propsoed new wording.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/student-on-student-abuse-a-signi...
Why does Harper balk at the TRC? White backlash is one reason.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/karl-nerenberg/2015/06/why-does-harper-b...
Quebec premier Philippe Couillard (of whom I am NOT a fan) agrees that residential schools were cultural genocide and pledges to act on TRC recommendation to teach the residential schools story in Quebec schools.
Couillard reconnaît le «génocide culturel» des autochtones
A shorter version in English
Philippe Couillard agrees with term 'cultural genocide' to describe residential schools
But:
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne's response also agrees that "attempted cultural genocide" took place
Manitoba says three recommendations acted on, others being considered
I don't see news of responses from other premiers as yet.
Aboriginal Affairs moves to limit child-welfare obligations despite TRC recommendations
With the ink barely dry, Aboriginal Affairs moved to shelter itself from dealing with the subject matter of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s first five recommendations in its report released Tuesday.
The regional director general for Aboriginal Affair’s British Columbia branch sent a letter Wednesday to the province’s First Nation child and family services agencies saying the department would no longer be part of tripartite funding and delegation agreements.
The change was interpreted as an attempt by Aboriginal Affairs to limit its responsibilities for First Nations child-welfare with a human rights tribunal ruling looming.
The “Delegation Confirmation Agreements” between Ottawa, the province and the First Nations agencies have been in place for about two decades. The agreements allow for the federal department to fund First Nations agencies in B.C....
http://aptn.ca/news/2015/06/04/aboriginal-affairs-moves-limit-child-welf...
Note that this article was written in February 2014, just as the Canadian Museum of Human Rights (cough) was about to open to great controversy.
Canada is Not the Arbiter of What is Genocide