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| Train Up Your Children by Dorothy Sullivan |
Vancouver Bureau
After many years of speculation based on anecdotal evidence, some hard facts are emerging about the numbers of deaths in Canada's racist system of residential schools.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (www.tra.ca) has now determined that at least 4,000 aboriginal children died in the church-run schools, which operated from the 1870s until the last one closed in 1996. About 150,000 children were full-time students in the schools, isolated from their families for most of the year. The students were virtually imprisoned, in conditions which made them the victims of fires, disease, and abusers.
Thousands more were day students at such schools, many affected in similar ways. Although the federal government has issued a formal apology and financial compensation for the full-time students, the day students are still fighting for recognition.
The racist nature of the residential school system was revealed by administrators who spoke about "taking the Indian out of the child." The schools banned students from speaking in their own languages or learning traditional skills, instead training them in English or French to become exploited members of the Canadian workforce. This strategy is today universally recognized as a form of genocide, an attempt to destroy a people by wiping out their unique culture.
