heartfelt and transformational or awkward and obtuse

“How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong look like right.”

- Black Hawk, Sauk

One of the most important speeches in Stephen Harper’s history is going to take

place at 3:00 pm this afternoon when he stands up in front of a hushed House of Commons and apologizes to First Nations communities for the horrific injustices inflicted on them by Canada’s Residential School System. Don Martin at The Natl Post has rather cavalierly and audaciously described it as “the greatest grovel in Canadian history”. Nice way of diminishing things. The federal government conceded 10 years ago that physical, sexual and psychological abuse was rampant at residential schools, but no public official has yet formally apologized for it. The United Church of Canada, entreated with operating many of these schools, apologized and compensated First Nations communities back in 1998.

There are still many misconceptions about Canada’s Indian Residential School System. Many think residential schools happened a long time ago and it’s all in our distant past. In reality, there are still some 75,000 former students alive today.

Residential schools operated well into the last quarter of the 20th Century. The Gordon Residential School in Saskatchewan didn’t close until the late ’90s. Abuses did not just happen ’a long time ago’. Furthermore, the residential school system introduced features to Aboriginal communities which have been passed on from generation to generation – these are collectively a symptom and legacy of the intergenerational residential school system. The consequences of Canada’s policy of forced assimilation are very much alive today in many Aboriginal communities.

Missionary Hugh McKay admitted in 1903 that Canada’s policy of forced assimilation was “designed to educate and colonize a people against their will”.

It is difficult to believe that Canada, a western democratic nation held in such high regard around the world, a country of such rich cultural diversity, a nation of global peacekeepers and diplomats, carries such a prejudice towards thousands and thousands of her own people.

Let us hope that Mr. Harper and Canada’s apology will be heartfelt and framed with the utmost sincerity. Only then can a new chapter be written in Canada’s history and the healing begin.

- Steve Steinbach