A national spokesman for former students says his group and the Assembly of First Nations have been shut out of final planning as the draft text of the apology is kept under tight wraps.
"I tell you, we're getting a little nervous and concerned when everything is so secretive," Ted Quewezance, executive director of the National Residential School Survivors' Society, said Thursday.
"It's a long time coming and I think it's a responsibility of Canada to really understand how important this apology is to survivors across the country. Everybody's emotional about it, they're angry about it, they're frustrated about it. And we don't understand what's going to come out of it at this point in time."
Quewezance says neither his group nor the assembly has been consulted on the final text of the apology as they'd expected to be.
Man if you didn't know any better, you'd almost think the native leaders believed that the apology was for their benefit. Typically, the Hareperialists send out a whelp to squat and gobble for the cameras.
The assembly offered a suggested text that was a helpful basis for what Harper will ultimately say, Strahl added.
"We've got some great ideas from former students who are helping us, I think, create a truly historic document. It's going to be a great apology because we've done a lot of consulting now for a good long time."
Consulting for a good long time, eh. Just not with the foremost organizations representing the interests of first nations peoples and the survivors of Canada's shameful legacy of abuse. Here's a thought Minister Strahl, how about you couple that most excellent of secret apologies with an open investigation of the allegations of mass graves on the sites of the residential schools?
What say we actually investigate the decades of systematic, institutional abuse and the practice of cultural genocide in Canada. Let's take a 'good long time' to look at the culpability of those that ran the schools and committed the crimes. Let's seek reparations on behalf of the living victims. How about we just pull the tax exempt status of every church hierarchy that operated residential schools. If it means liquidating the assets of the Catholic Church and the other robed villains, so be it. Let's have the pious bastards pay damages to those they were so intent on stripping of their faith, language, families, lands and culture.
2 comments:
Although I find it really (really) odd to be doing this I know some of the Aboriginal people Harper has been talking to about this, not Aboriginal politicians or Aboriginal leadership who may have agendas, but people who attended and survived the residential school system.... and that is a very good thing.
One of them said that Harper was engaged, was interested, and was sitting there, paying close attention, without benefit of bureaucrats or pencil pushing policy wonks, paper and pen in hand, taking his own notes and forming his own conclusions based on what he was being told.
I don't know what Harper is going to say come June 11th but I do know that whether or not the apology is acceptable/accepted, or not, is a decision that should be made on an individual level by those who were forced into the perverted, racist, and vile, authoritarian, institutions known as "residential schools" that the government back for so long - and not by the Aboriginal political leadership.
The leader who comes out with a "we accept / do not accept this apology" statement when individuals they claim to represent are taking a different, or potentially may different, position(s) on this extremely personal issue does so at his or her political peril.
thanks for that stageleft. it is certainly easy to demonize harper and his gang for heir many failings. unfortunately for the thousands and thousands of victims and their families, it may be through the political and activist groups that news and information are disseminated through the diversity of first nations peoples. i'm pleased to learn that harper is engaged and involved, that is, after all, his job and this is an important step in the process of healing some very deep wounds.
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