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很可能係家母叫佢咁做嘅
但即使他老人家仍然健在，我也不好要他向我道歉吧？
Canada examines abuses of church-run schools
By ROB GILLIES – 2 days ago
TORONTO (AP) — A truth and reconciliation commission is examining a decades-long government policy that required Canadian Indians to attend schools where students were forced to lose their cultural identity and routinely were subjected to abuse.
The commission's five-year mandate began Sunday and its work starts Monday. Members will eventually travel across Canada to hear stories from former students, teachers and others. The goal is to give survivors a forum to tell their stories and educate Canadians about a grim period in the country's history.
"It's the darkest, most tragic chapter in Canadian history and virtually no one knows about this," Phil Fontaine, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, told The Associated Press.
From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 aboriginal children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools in a painful attempt to rid them of their native cultures and languages and integrate them into Canadian society.
The federal government admitted 10 years ago that physical and sexual abuse in the schools was rampant. Many students recall being beaten for speaking their native languages and losing touch with their parents and customs.
That legacy of abuse and isolation has been cited by Indian leaders as the root cause of epidemic rates of alcoholism and drug addiction on reservations. Canada's more than 1 million aboriginals remain the country's poorest and most disadvantaged group.
The commission was created as part of a $5 billion class action settlement in 2006 — the largest in Canadian history — between the government, churches and the 90,000 surviving students. About $60 million will fund the commission, which will be granted access to government and church records.
Under the settlement, students who attended residential schools are eligible to receive $10,000 for the first school year and $3,000 for every year after. Victims of physical and sexual abuse are eligible for more on top of that.
On June 11, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will deliver a public apology to Canada's aboriginals.
"Never has the leader of the country apologized. It's seen as very symbolic," Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl said.
In February, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology in Parliament to the so-called Stolen Generations — thousands of Aborigines who were forcibly taken from their families as children under assimilation policies that lasted from 1910 to 1970.
But unlike in Canada, Rudd has resisted calls to compensate Australia's Aborigines for the abuse and injustice they suffered.
Today, Canada's aboriginals continue to face major adversity. Their high school graduation rate is just over half the national average, and their life expectancy is five to seven years lower than for non-aboriginals. Suicide rates are threefold and teen pregnancies are nine times higher than the national average.
The commission's goal is to write the missing chapter in Canadian history, said Fontaine, who was subjected to sexual abuse while attending the state-funded schools.
"I'm just one of many," he said.
Michael Cachagee, president of the National Residential School Survivors' Society, attended three different residential schools in Ontario over 12 1/2 years beginning in 1944 when he was four years old. He, too, was physically and sexually abused, he said.
"They took away some of my language and cultural identity and the effects were pronounced," he said. "I had problems with alcohol and problems with marriages and relationships and my children. When I came home my mother didn't even know who I was."
Cachagee said Canadians don't know what natives endured.
"They just say 'Ah, those Indians are getting a bunch of money again,'" Cachagee said.
Aboriginal Judge Harry LaForme, who will oversee the commission, will issue a report in a few years. A memoir or an archive and an educational facility is expected to be created.
"people expect we are going to hear horrific stories of physical and sexual abuse," LaForme said. "What's going to be revealing to the general public is the breadth and width of the emotional harm that was done to generations of people."
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j5TTtKUMVW69ZssdYs2_1XbbgbzwD911CSR80 |
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2008/6/4 01:21
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2008/6/7 14:52
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2008/6/6 12:14
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