Indian School Road

by Chris Benjamin

  And it was residential school survivors across Canada who led the effort to close the schools. They were effective political leaders and spokespeople. In Nova Scotia, Mi’kmaw leaders pushed the provincial government to finally protect the Mi’kmaq under the provincial Human Rights Act in 1991. It was the same year that the Roman Catholic Church and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate issued official apologies for the harm caused by residential schools. They did not, however, support Phil Fontaine’s call for a formal inquiry into the system.

  Within a year, most of the churches in Canada had issued apologies for their roles in the residential schools. Austin Burke, archbishop of Halifax, visited St. Catherines Church at Indian Brook First Nation a few weeks before Christmas 1992 and apologized to the congregation for the “suffering caused in the Indian Residential School.” Burke gave a homily about the role of Catholics in making a straight path for the Lord. “We have not always understood the difference between gospel and culture,” he preached. “We have confused language and faith. This happened with all groups. It is part of the pain of the history we share.” Burke pointed out that, as an Acadian, his people also had their language repressed by the church. “The straight path is not about correct language or perfect posture or special music,” he acknowledged. “The good news is about the God who created us in infinite variety.” He then offered the Archdiocese’s apology. “I apologize for whatever pain the church itself may have been responsible for causing in the residential school. The church is not meant to hurt, but to heal—and I must say that I am truly sorry if people caused some lingering hurts in the name of the church.”

  Burke called for reconciliation. “The Church of Halifax and the Mi’kmaq people are a part of each other,” he said. “We have been bonded to each other for many years. Our partnership has weathered many storms. We rejoice with you in the publication of the Book of Mi’kmaq Prayers. The Archdiocese and the Sisters of Charity were pleased to contribute to the costs of preparing this material for publication and distribution.” Burke did the same at Sacred Heart Church in Millbrook in 1993. This time he stressed reconciliation throughout his homily—using the word nine times in a three-page address. He outlined the historical context of injustice and heralded the dawn of a new day. “Much that happened in the past was wrong,” he observed. “In North America white European settlers brought the gospel of Jesus Christ. That gospel was presented in their language, filtered through their traditions and culture. The governments they established supported all of that. This has led to injustice for many people.”

  And he repeated the official apology.

  Government Apologizing

  In 1990 parliamentarians took up Phil Fontaine’s call for a public inquiry. But Indian Affairs had to figure out how it could make amends without exposing itself to liability. The whole residential school system was run on a shoestring budget and the last thing Indian Affairs needed was an expensive lawsuit. It would be several years before the federal government experimented with its first official apology to residential school survivors. This statement, which honed in on abuse at the schools, was issued on January 7, 1998, under the authority of the minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. It was part of a new government plan, Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan, “an action plan designed to renew the relationship with the Aboriginal people of Canada.”

  The plan contained a section called “Statement of Reconciliation: Learning from the Past,” which the minster read out at a lunchtime ceremony in a Parliament Hill meeting room. “To those individuals who experienced the tragedy of sexual and physical abuse at residential schools, and who have carried this burden believing that in some way they must be responsible, we wish to emphasize that what you experienced was not your fault and should never have happened,” it read. “To those of you who suffered this tragedy at residential schools, we are deeply sorry….The Government of Canada acknowledges the role it played in the development and administration of these schools.” With this new plan, Canada established the $350 million Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF), which for eleven years funded more than a hundred community-based support groups and initiatives for survivors across the country.

  In 2010 much of the fund was cut, and the rest was channelled through Health Canada. The cuts left these groups scrambling for new funding, which only some have been able to find. The official apology itself failed to address the fact that the residential school system was a violent attempt to destroy cultures and peoples. And it was half-hearted, coming from a minister with little fanfare. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was in Ottawa but didn’t attend the ceremony. And the money for the AHF was nowhere near enough to meet the needs of survivors, tens of thousands of whom struggled with residential school ghosts.

  On June 11, 2008, nearly a decade after this initial apology, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stood in the House of Commons and gave a formal apology for the residential school system. Having already been forced to pay out billions of dollars in compensation to survivors, there was nothing left for the government to lose in admitting responsibility. The leaders of each opposition party followed and did the same. Aboriginal leaders looked on, in a circle on the House of Commons floor. Hundreds of survivors stood above in the gallery and listened. “There is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian Residential Schools system to ever prevail again,” Harper said. He also announced the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a series of hearings to be held across the country in 2011. “This commission presents a unique opportunity to educate all Canadians of the Indian Residential Schools system,” he said. “It will be a positive step in forging a new relationship between Aboriginal peoples and other Canadians, a relationship based on the knowledge of our shared history, a respect for each other, and a desire to move forward together with a renewed understanding that strong families, strong communities, and vibrant cultures and traditions will contribute to a stronger Canada for all of us.”

  For many survivors, their families, and communities, it was a momentous day. But the jury is still out on the apology, the settlement, and the truth and reconciliation process. “It made no real difference that government officials and some representatives of the Catholic Church apologized to Native people for the schools,” Isabelle Knockwood writes. “Those individuals who directly caused our suffering never admitted their wrongdoing and were never called to account for their actions.” But another survivor told Knockwood that she accepted the apology and would “forgive everything.” Doing so relieved her of the burden of what had been done to her.

  Cultural Genocide

  “We have never admitted to ourselves that we were, and still are, a colonial power.”

  –Paul Martin, 21st prime minister of Canada

  In terms of acknowledging past mistakes and learning from them, the Government of Canada has gone no further than apologizing, and has gone so far as to contradict its own apology by denying its history as a colonial state. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who delivered the government apology, told a crowd in Pittsburgh in September 2009 that Canada had “no history of colonialism [and] all the things that many people admire about the great powers, but none of the things that threaten or bother them.” Canada’s Aboriginal leaders, including the high-profile Assembly of First Nations, repeatedly use the term “cultural genocide” to describe Canada’s centuries-long efforts to assimilate Aboriginal peoples. Yet the Canadian government has repeatedly denied the truth of the term, and has yet to acknowledge its attempt at cultural genocide despite the immense and clear documentation of Canada’s intent to assimilate First Nations, Métis, and Inuit cultures and people.

  In 2011, soon after the TRC’s East Coast swing, Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan joined the long list of residential school deniers. Specifically, he called the system an “education policy gone wrong.” In doing so, he denied the reams of archival evidence showing that education w
as never the intent of the schools. They were to cut children off from the “influence of the wigwam,” as Nicholas Flood Davin advocated in 1879. Duncan’s statement also denies his prime minister’s apology of 2008, which stated, “Two primary objectives of the residential school system were to remove and isolate children from their homes, families, traditions, and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture.” When John Duncan’s comments went viral and livid emails swamped his offices, officials at Aboriginal Affairs made plans to shut down and avoid any further questions and comments about the matter, according to emails obtained by APTN National News. “There will be no messaging prepared to address this issue,” the director of communications for Aboriginal Affairs wrote. “The minister and all spokespersons know they are not to speak to it.” Another communications person later asked that the emails be deleted.

  Two years later, the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights, a Crown corporation, decided not to use the term “cultural genocide” to describe Canada’s treatment of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. Its logic was that, not being a government department or court of law, it couldn’t be the first public institution to use the term. It was following the example of the federal government. Three months after that, in October 2013, a provocative commentary by Phil Fontaine and prominent social activist and Liberal politician Bernie Farber appeared in the Globe and Mail, entitled “What Canada committed against First Nations was genocide. The UN should recognize it.” It was published in anticipation of a visit from the Special United Nations Rapporteur for Indigenous People, Professor James Anaya. In it, Fontaine and Farber argue that Canada’s historical treatment of Aboriginal peoples meets the UN definition of genocide.

  Residential schools alone qualify as an attempted cultural genocide. A 1995 draft of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Canada signed, protects against it. Cultural genocide is defined to include:

  any action which has the aim or effect of depriving [Indigenous people] of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities; any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights; any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures; any form of propaganda directed against them.

  Until our government frankly acknowledges the truth of what it tried to do, in clear and certain terms, it is hard to imagine us moving beyond colonial systems of education and child welfare.

  Re-traumatizing

  Despite the size of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, it is flawed in many ways. For one, the estates of former residents who have since died received no compensation, despite the fact that their descendants commonly experienced trauma because of the schools. Since the settlement, health historian Ian Mosby revealed the evidence of nutrition experiments conducted on residential schoolchildren. “Did the government know about these experiments when it negotiated the settlement?” Mosby wonders. “Did it negotiate in good faith?”

  The most disturbing facet though is the process survivors have to go through to make a claim. Anyone who could prove having attended a residential school was eligible for $10,000 for the first year, plus another $3,000 for each additional year. Additional funds were made available for therapy, addictions counselling, and caregivers. But the method of proving attendance was painful, and a challenge for many survivors. Due to spotty government records, some survivors have been unable to find copies of their old school admission forms. Many have had to sit and describe memories of the school and remain consistent with details of abuse. But specific and detailed memories are challenging. Blackouts were common at Shubenacadie, a result of the severe abuse experienced. Some were taken to a school when they were only four years old, and are now elderly. It is a system designed to eliminate claims. As Joanne Henry, director of the Committee on Abuse in Residential Schools Society, puts it: “The government is not looking for one hundred ways to pay you. They’re looking for one way not to.” As of 2012, 51,188 residential school survivors had received less than what they put in for. To date, about 750 Mi’kmaw survivors have applied for the Common Experience Payment.

  The process is much worse for those claiming compensation for abuse. “Survivors have to tell their story three to ten times,” Daphne Hutt-MacLeod, a mental health services director at Eskasoni, explains. More than one hundred people in Atlantic Canada have been admitted to give testimony in this process, but the APC chiefs are lobbying for more time for survivors to apply. The initial deadline was September 19, 2012. Those admitted must, after decades of silence in many cases, publicly pick at painful, humiliating scabs for lawyers and adjudicators—and sometimes medical professionals—to learn what level of sexual abuse they qualify for. Often Elders will pray with survivors before they give their testimony. The adjudicators use a four-page checklist with a points system to determine how much money a survivor can potentially receive. The checklist is part of the fifty-paged Schedule D of the Independent Assessment Process and it is intimidating. Local First Nations groups are working to help survivors through this process. The form itself should come with a trigger warning: even someone who hasn’t experienced abuse could easily suffer from reading it. And therefore some readers may wish to skip the following paragraph.

  The first category on this form is, “Repeated, persistent incidents of anal or vaginal intercourse; Repeated, persistent incidents of anal/vaginal penetration with an object: 45–60 points.” Also included are “One or more incidents of digital anal/vaginal penetration” and “One or more incidents of attempted anal/vaginal penetration (excluding attempted digital penetration).” Masturbation incidents score 26–35 points. Physical abuse categories include, “One or more physical assaults causing a physical injury that led to or should have led to hospitalization or serious medical treatment by a physician; permanent or demonstrated long-term physical injury, impairment or disfigurement; loss of consciousness; broken bones; or a serious but temporary incapacitation such that bed rest or infirmary care of several days duration was required.” Examples are then provided. The form instructs adjudicators to add 5 to 15 percent to the score for verbal abuse, racism, or witnessing the abuse of another child.

  The claimant is supposed to provide dates and times for each alleged incident, and the names of perpetrators—something even the public archives often lack. For survivors who may have blacked out as many details as possible, it’s a fantastical test of memory. The form also explains that, contrary to Aboriginal cultures, “The format does not contemplate a narrative exposition of the evidence heard.” “I’ll lay dollars to doughnuts the victims of the Antigonish Archdiocese didn’t have to go through that,” Hutt-MacLeod says. “Some, not all, have even resumed destructive behaviours they’ve been away from for decades.” It will be several years—until at least 2017—before this process is complete, and the Atlantic Chiefs are lobbying for an extension of the deadline. The average compensation will be around $18,000.

  Truth and Reconciliation

  In 1991, responding to the Oka crisis, the Government of Canada established a Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The commission conducted 178 days of public hearings in 96 communities across Canada and consulted with numerous experts, posing the question: “What are the foundations for a fair and honourable relationship between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people of Canada?” The commission’s four thousand-page final report, released in 1996, set a twenty-year agenda for change. One of its recommendations was to hold a national inquiry on residential schools—echoing Phil Fontaine’s demand in 1990. But it would take Nora Bernard’s driving of the national class-action suit to finally result in a national inquiry of sorts to be facilitated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would be one of the few recommendations of the Royal Commission to be implemented. For 389 survivors of Shubenacadie, their families, descendants, and for
staff of the religious organizations involved, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided the chance to put their stories on record, to be heard and acknowledged, in a series of daylong public events held in fall 2011 in Fredericton, Charlottetown, Indian Brook, and Eskasoni, as well as a four-day national event in Halifax.

  The Halifax event drew nearly 2,000 people each day, including witnesses, commissioners, counsellors, church representatives, political representatives, school groups, and members of the general public. The event involved 175 volunteers, 40 TRC staff members, and 116 health support workers who gave all-day debriefing and self-care services due to the powerful emotions of the day. People participated in survivor sharing circles and panel discussions. Another 10,000 people watched webcasts online. In all, there were more than 50 ceremonies, sharings, activities, performances, and other activities. Participants gave 154 statements in all, 69 of them privately, 28 in sharing circles, 41 on panels, and another 10 during a formal dialogue on reconciliation. Six people made statements of reconciliation. Survivor Lottie Johnson carried ashes from sacred fires lit at the national events in Inuvik and Winnipeg, and started the fire in Halifax. Survivor Patrick Etherington, his partner, and son walked more than 2,200 kilometres from Cochrane, Ontario, to Halifax, raising awareness about abuse at the residential schools.

  Unfortunately, the attendance by non-Aboriginals was low. Journalist Tim Bousquet of The Coast observed that neither the prime minister, premier, nor mayor attended. “Halifax mayor Peter Kelly was in town—his City Hall office is across the street from the World Trade and Convention Centre, and his parking space is about 10 metres from the centre’s front door, but there’s no indication that Kelly crossed the street and spoke with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Bousquet wrote. “There were relatively few white faces present in the convention centre itself.”