CANADA: Truth commission will help heal residential schools legacy, church and native leaders say

By Solange De Santis, March 06, 2008 [Episcopal News Service] In a soaring glass hall at the Museum of Anthropology, under the watchful eyes of a dozen huge totem poles, church, native and government leaders on March 5 pledged that the upcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission will lead to healing as it hears the painful stories of Indian residential schools in Canada.

The event, which included a walk to the museum led by native drummers, was part of a four-city tour by the leaders that was called Remembering the Children and was designed to draw attention to the commission and its work.  

Established as part of a settlement agreement that limited liability for churches and distributed compensation to former residential school students, the commission in its five-year mandate will hear stories of former students and use church and government archives to create an extensive historical record of the school system. The date of the commencement of the commission's work and its composition has yet to be announced by the federal government.

Archbishop Fred Hiltz, the Anglican primate, reiterated the church's 1993 apology for its role in the system, which operated across Canada from the mid-19th century into the 1970s.

"I represent a church that was complicit in a system that took children far from home and family, took their clothing, cut off their hair and punished them when they spoke their own language. Some of our staff abused children. The Anglican church has so much for which to be so sorry," he said.

Gloria Moses, co-chair of the Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples who attended St. George's residential school in British Columbia from 1949 to 1959, said in an interview before the event that she had mixed emotions about her experience in the school and about the commission.

"I got a good education, but the discipline was so difficult -- slapping, strapping -- and I was so lonely" after being taken from her family, she said. About the commission, she said she had hoped that "once the settlement was over and done with, we could dig a big hole and bury (the residential school legacy). But every now and then I feel that pain and anger, so it might be good to talk about it."

The full story is available on the Anglican Journal website here.

-- Solange De Santis is staff writer for the Anglican Journal.

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