Truth and consequences

Hello, assimilation

FOR more than a century, Canadian governments removed aboriginal children from their homes and put them in residential schools modelled on Victorian poor houses. Some 150,000 passed through 139 of these Dickensian establishments from 1883 to 1998. In the 1940s they housed nearly a third of aboriginal children of school age. Half were physically or sexually abused and around 6,000 died. Today Canada’s 1.4m aboriginal people have lower incomes on average and higher rates of incarceration, suicide and disease than the general population. Those brutal boarding schools are part of the reason.

In 2008 a “truth and reconciliation commission” was set up as part of the settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by survivors against the government and churches that operated the schools. The government has so far paid out C$4.4 billion ($3.5 billion) in compensation. On June 2nd, after seven years of sometimes excruciating testimony, the commission issued 94 recommendations. Together, they are meant to be a blueprint for reconciliation between non-aboriginal Canadians and the country’s three indigenous groups,...

from The Economist: The Americas http://ift.tt/1Igxfog