‘Denial of our truth’: the fight against the denial of a housing school in Canada | News of indigenous rights

While autochthonous communities have long known Death in residential schools And the existence of unmarked funeral sites, for most of the history of Canada, the system of residential schools remained flawless.

“Canada has normalized the disappearances, deaths and unmarked burials of indigenous children for more than a century on a ladder that is unspeakable,” said Murray, a special interlocutor, in her final report (Pdf) last year.

Eva Jewell, head of research at the Institute of Yellow Head under the guidance of the natives, said that the feeling of normalization was overcoming even among the inhabitants of its community, Chippewas of the Temze First Nation in the southwestern Ontario.

Chippewas of Temza was the home of one of the first residential schools in the country, Industrial School Mount Elgin.

“For a long time it was just like what we needed to happen, in order to fit into this dominant society,” she told Al Jazeera of the Housing School System.

But that position began to change in the 1960s and 1970s, when former students began talking about their experiences with the appearance of therapy, Jewell explained.

Then, in the 1990s, groups of survivors filed lawsuits against the Canadian government to demand compensation for what they had suffered, which culminated in the 2006 Indian Settlement Agreement.

The largest settlements of class in Canadian history, an agreement launched in what Jewell describes as “era of apology.”

The Canadian Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (Trc) – Born from the Settlement Agreement – was launched in 2007 and a year later the Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for housing schools in the House of Municipalities.

In 2015, after hearing more than 6,500 witnesses – including survivors – over six years, Trc said in his final report (Pdf) that the residential school system “was an integral part of a conscious cultural genocide policy.”

“The children were abused, physically and sexually, and died in schools in a number that would not be tolerated in any school system anywhere in the country or in the world,” it is said.

Just a few months after Trc published his report, Liberal Party of Justin Trudeauu They beat the federal elections for the promise to reconcile the truth with indigenous people one of their main priorities.

“We have to admit the truth: residential schools were a reality, a tragedy, which existed here in our country and we have to own it on it,” the prime minister told days after TK’EMLUPS and secwepemc located unmarked graves in Kamloops 2021.

That June, in the midst of international and domestic deviations, the Government Trudeau ended three “calls for action” by TRC, including creation a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

However, Murray, a special interlocutor, said in his report that “a system failure in documenting the historical and current genocide of indigenous peoples within Canada, including the failure of Kanadjan’s education about this aspect of the national history of Canada.”

This “continues to create the conditions in which the denial can flourish,” she warned.

According to Jewell, an idea that supports the denial of a residential school – “that autochthonous peoples are in the first place of unworthy sovereign peoples” – it also remains firmly built into Canada.

“In fact, historically speaking, we only had a very small window where there was acceptance that housing schools were harmful practices,” she told Al Jazeera.

“Reconciliation He was never strong enough … in the Canadian public awareness that we even say that denial is on the rise. It was more like a reconciliation on the rise, and now she faded, “Jewell said.

“Canadians need to remember this. Reconciliation is not what they are. Demalism is who they are.”