Canadian PM to apologize to Indians

AP:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will deliver a public apology for a decades-long government policy requiring Canadian Indians to attend state-funded church schools - often scenes of physical and sexual abuse.

"The apology is a crucial step in the journey towards healing and reconciliation," Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl said Thursday.

He said that Harper will make the apology in Parliament on June 11 to Canada's First Nations, a collection of Indian groups that have been seeking such an acknowledgment for years.

From the 19th century until the 1970s, tens of thousands of aboriginal children were required to attend church-run schools in a painful attempt to rid them of their native cultures and languages and integrate them into Canadian society. . . .

The apology is to coincide with a truth and reconciliation commission examining abuse in native residential schools that will begin its work June 1.

The commission will spend five years traveling across the country to hear stories from former students, teachers and others involved in the so-called residential schools. The goal is to give survivors a forum to tell their stories and to educate Canadians about that dark chapter in the country's history. . . .

In 2005, the federal government earmarked $1.7 billion in payments for aboriginal victims of sexual and psychological abuse during the forced Christian schooling.

Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First nations, did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment. He helped broker the compensation deal and hoped to help draft the apology. Fontaine raised the prospect in recent weeks that First Nations might reject the apology if it was used as a political ploy to mute a national day of protest on May 29.

Phil Fontaine: I'm sorry.

Phil Fontaine: Hmpf! (stalks from room).

Update: A little too flippant, maybe? I'm all for the Canadian government paying out crap-bucketloads of money and apologizing to the Indians. But is there anyone who believes those actions or even a five-year reconciliation roadshow will conciliate (let alone "re") a single person?

Update II: Some background on the settlement between First Nations and the government reached in November, 2005:

Wednesday's package, if confirmed by the courts, will provide payments to some 86,000 former students of the schools. McLellan said that each former residential school student will be entitled to 8,500 dollars plus 2,560 dollars for each year spent in the residential school system.

Individuals will receive up to 25,000 dollars each, depending on how long they were in the system. Payments to older victims of the abuse will be streamlined with an immediate downpayment of 6,800 dollars to each ex-student 65 years or older.Fontaine said this was an important element of the package because the average age of the victims was now 60.

The 106-million-dollar "truth and reconciliation" process will provide funding for five years for the Aboriginal Healing foundation and "truth and reconciliation" gatherings.

But victims accepting compensation will waive their rights to sue either the federal government or the churches that ran the schools.