The Canadian government issued a stirring apology to its Aboriginal Peoples Wednesday for a longtime policy under which more than 150,000 native children were taken from their families and placed in schools where they were forced to abandon their traditional language and culture.
Many of the children in so-called "residential schools" faced physical and sexual abuse or died. The schools were run by the government and churches and were prominent through much of the 20th Century.
"The treatment of children in Indian Residential Schools is a sad chapter in our history," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a special gathering of Canada's parliament Wednesday.
Mr. Harper added that the system had a "lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage, and language" and contributed to "social problems that continue today."
The residential schools were put in place when Canada was still a colony of Britain as a means of both educating native youth and forcing assimilation.
Children in residential schools were punished for speaking native languages and were cut-off from their families. Numerous reports of physical and sexual abuse emerged from the schools, and government reports showed a high instance of death in many schools.
Opposition NDP Leader Jack Layton, who the prime minister said had helped bring about the apology, told a story of one woman who had 12 of her 14 children taken away by the government. One child died at the school and it took forty years before the mother was able to find his unmarked grave, Layton said.
Layton said the "racist" residential school policies were enacted in the House of Commons and "it is in this House that we must start the process of reconciliation."
He cited problems of poverty, suicide, overcrowding, and inadequate access to drinking water, which still exist in many of Canada's aboriginal communities.
The residential schools remained until the mid-1990s, though most were shut down in the 1970s. An estimated 80,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people living in Canada today attended the schools.
"The burden of this experience has been on your shoulders for far too long," Prime Minister Harper told natives who crowded the gallery at parliament, and thousands more who watched via live television feeds outside parliament and in locations across the country.
"The burden of this experience is properly ours as a government," he said.
On behalf of Canada, Harper asked the natives for forgiveness for "failing them so profoundly."
The ceremony, which saw speeches of apology from each of the four political parties represented in Canada's parliament, brought some natives in attendance to tears.
Stéphane Dion, leader of Canada's Official Opposition, the Liberal party, apologized for his party's role in "creating a system to punish you for who you were."
The Liberals were in power for 70 years in the 20th Century, Dion noted.
"I acknowledge our role and our shared responsibility in this tragedy. I am deeply sorry. I apologize."
Eleven aboriginal representatives, including the leaders of Canada's largest aboriginal organizations, listened to the speeches from the floor of the House of Commons.
Five of them spoke after the politicians, giving mostly positive responses to an apology they had long sought.
"Finally, we heard Canada say it is sorry," said Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, who was himself abused in a residential school.
"For our parents, our grandparents, great grandparents, for all generations that preceded us, this day amounts to nothing less than the achievement of the impossible," he said.
Fontaine described the apology as "a new dawn in the relationship between us and the rest of Canada."
"For the generations that will follow us, we bear witness today that our survival as First Nations Peoples in this land is affirmed forever."
But after years of feeling neglected, some natives were hesitant to say how much the apology would change.
"It is a big thing to recognize that there is an apology, [but] I know that it is not enough," said Gina Thomas, a 39-year-old mother who belongs to the Clem Clem Nation and lives near Duncan, B.C.
Four generations of Thomas's family attended residential schools. She says she was sexually abused at a residential school in Mission, B.C.
"There is still a lot of feelings, and lot of anger and aggression," Thomas told The Epoch Times.
She says the impacts of the residential school system are "generational." Her mother died young, and her father's experiences left him unable to properly care for his children, she explained.
Thomas, like four of her own children, was put in foster care, which keeps children separated from their traditional culture and practices, she said.
"I think it is going to be a ripple effect with a lot of people," she said of the apology. "Everybody is going to take it differently. A lot of people are going to take it in stride, and [for] a lot of people it will hit them maybe tomorrow or the next day."
"I just hope that the aboriginal people will be more recognized and the aboriginal women will be recognized."
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