Vol. 72/No. 31      August 4, 2008

This past June, 12 years after the hated institutions had been shut down, Prime Minister Stephen Harper finally issued a historic apology for the policy.

During the period of the residential schools more than 150,000 Native children were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in schools operated in collaboration with the Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and United churches. Harper acknowledged that the institutions were openly designed to “kill the Indian in the child.”

The schools gave religious, agricultural, and domestic instruction. Students were forbidden to speak their maternal languages. Thousands died from tuberculosis due to overcrowding, poor sanitation, and a lack of medical care; many ended up in unmarked graves. Thousands more suffered sexual and other abuse at the hands of school staff.

The formal apology is part of a package that includes a $2 billion class-action settlement with survivors that went into effect last September and an Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission launched June 1 that will travel throughout the country over the next five years.

The backdrop to Ottawa’s apology is the increased resistance by Native people to the conditions imposed on them by Canada’s capitalist rulers, and the long-term trend toward increased integration of Native people into the working class.

At almost 1.2 million, according to the 2006 census, Native people comprise 3.7 percent of Canada’s total population. About 958,000 are North American Indian, 266,000 are Métis (mixed French and Native ancestry), and 51,000 are Inuit who live in the far north.

Twenty-two percent of Native people live on reservations administered by the Department of Indian Affairs. Unemployment among Native people on many reservations is 50 percent. Overall Native unemployment is about 19 percent, compared to 7.4 percent for other Canada residents. More than 50 percent of aboriginal peoples live in urban areas.

The percentage of Native people who work in construction—8.2 percent—is higher than that for construction workers in the whole population, which stands at 5.6 percent. The same holds for mining where 2.3 percent of Natives work, compared to 1.1 percent of other workers.

The median income for Native people is $14,000 compared to $23,000 for others. One in four Native children live in poverty; the figure is one in six for the rest of the population.

The day after the apology the editors of the Globe and Mail, Canada’s major English-language national daily, expressed concern over “raised expectations.” While paying lip service to the need to eliminate “Third World living conditions” and “the settlement of unresolved land claims,” the Globe editors called on Native people to avoid “provocations such as illegal occupations and roadblocks”—a reference to a series of actions by Native people across the country demanding action on more than 800 outstanding land claims.

On June 10, federal cops shot and killed 21-year old Chase McKay Standingready on the White Bear First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan after intervening in what they said was a domestic dispute.  
 
 
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