Download or read book Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume One Summary written by Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and published by James Lorimer & Company. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its six-year investigation of the residential school system for Aboriginal youth and the legacy of these schools. This report, the summary volume, includes the history of residential schools, the legacy of that school system, and the full text of the Commission's 94 recommendations for action to address that legacy. This report lays bare a part of Canada's history that until recently was little-known to most non-Aboriginal Canadians. The Commission discusses the logic of the colonization of Canada's territories, and why and how policy and practice developed to end the existence of distinct societies of Aboriginal peoples. Using brief excerpts from the powerful testimony heard from Survivors, this report documents the residential school system which forced children into institutions where they were forbidden to speak their language, required to discard their clothing in favour of institutional wear, given inadequate food, housed in inferior and fire-prone buildings, required to work when they should have been studying, and subjected to emotional, psychological and often physical abuse. In this setting, cruel punishments were all too common, as was sexual abuse. More than 30,000 Survivors have been compensated financially by the Government of Canada for their experiences in residential schools, but the legacy of this experience is ongoing today. This report explains the links to high rates of Aboriginal children being taken from their families, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and high rates of suicide. The report documents the drastic decline in the presence of Aboriginal languages, even as Survivors and others work to maintain their distinctive cultures, traditions, and governance. The report offers 94 calls to action on the part of governments, churches, public institutions and non-Aboriginal Canadians as a path to meaningful reconciliation of Canada today with Aboriginal citizens. Even though the historical experience of residential schools constituted an act of cultural genocide by Canadian government authorities, the United Nation's declaration of the rights of aboriginal peoples and the specific recommendations of the Commission offer a path to move from apology for these events to true reconciliation that can be embraced by all Canadians.
Download or read book Canada s Residential Schools written by Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Canada s Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials written by Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1867 and 2000, the Canadian government sent over 150,000 Aboriginal children to residential schools across the country. Government officials and missionaries agreed that in order to “civilize and Christianize” Aboriginal children, it was necessary to separate them from their parents and their home communities. For children, life in these schools was lonely and alien. Discipline was harsh, and daily life was highly regimented. Aboriginal languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed. Education and technical training too often gave way to the drudgery of doing the chores necessary to make the schools self-sustaining. Child neglect was institutionalized, and the lack of supervision created situations where students were prey to sexual and physical abusers. Legal action by the schools’ former students led to the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2008. The product of over six years of research, the Commission’s final report outlines the history and legacy of the schools, and charts a pathway towards reconciliation. Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials is the first systematic effort to record and analyze deaths at the schools, and the presence and condition of student cemeteries, within the regulatory context in which the schools were intended to operate. As part of its work the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada established a National Residential School Student Death Register. Due to gaps in the available data, the register is far from complete. Although the actual number of deaths is believed to be far higher, 3,200 residential school victims have been identified. The analysis also demonstrates that residential school death rates were significantly higher than those for the general Canadian school-aged population. The failure to establish and enforce adequate standards of care, coupled with the failure to adequately fund the schools, resulted in unnecessarily high death rates at residential schools. Senior government and church officials were well aware of the schools’ ongoing failure to provide adequate levels of custodial care. Children who died at the schools were rarely sent back to their home community. They were usually buried in school or nearby mission cemeteries. As the schools and missions closed, these cemeteries were abandoned. While in a number of instances Aboriginal communities, churches, and former staff have taken steps to rehabilitate cemeteries and commemorate the individuals buried there, most of these cemeteries are now disused and vulnerable to accidental disturbance. In the face of this abandonment, the TRC is proposing the development of a national strategy for the documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries.
Download or read book Warrior Life written by Pamela Palmater and published by Fernwood Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-28T00:00:00Z with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a moment where unlawful pipelines are built on Indigenous territories, the RCMP make illegal arrests of land defenders on unceded lands, and anti-Indigenous racism permeates on social media; the government lie that is reconciliation is exposed. Renowned lawyer, author, speaker and activist, Pamela Palmater returns to wade through media headlines and government propaganda and get to heart of key issues lost in the noise. Warrior Life: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence is the second collection of writings by Palmater. In keeping with her previous works, numerous op-eds, media commentaries, YouTube channel videos and podcasts, Palmater’s work is fiercely anti-colonial, anti-racist, and more crucial than ever before. Palmater addresses a range of Indigenous issues — empty political promises, ongoing racism, sexualized genocide, government lawlessness, and the lie that is reconciliation — and makes the complex political and legal implications accessible to the public. From one of the most important, inspiring and fearless voices in Indigenous rights, decolonization, Canadian politics, social justice, earth justice and beyond, Warrior Life is an unflinching critique of the colonial project that is Canada and a rallying cry for Indigenous peoples and allies alike to forge a path toward a decolonial future through resistance and resurgence.
Download or read book Discard Studies written by Max Liboiron and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that social, political, and economic systems maintain power by discarding certain people, places, and things. Discard studies is an emerging field that looks at waste and wasting broadly construed. Rather than focusing on waste and trash as the primary objects of study, discard studies looks at wider systems of waste and wasting to explore how some materials, practices, regions, and people are valued or devalued, becoming dominant or disposable. In this book, Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky argue that social, political, and economic systems maintain power by discarding certain people, places, and things. They show how the theories and methods of discard studies can be applied in a variety of cases, many of which do not involve waste, trash, or pollution. Liboiron and Lepawsky consider the partiality of knowledge and offer a theory of scale, exploring the myth that most waste is municipal solid waste produced by consumers; discuss peripheries, centers, and power, using content moderation as an example of how dominant systems find ways to discard; and use theories of difference to show that universalism, stereotypes, and inclusion all have politics of discard and even purification—as exemplified in “inclusive” efforts to broaden the Black Lives Matter movement. Finally, they develop a theory of change by considering “wasting well,” outlining techniques, methods, and propositions for a justice-oriented discard studies that keeps power in view.
Download or read book Archaeologies of the Heart written by Kisha Supernant and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-13 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeological practice is currently shifting in response to feminist, indigenous, activist, community-based, and anarchic critiques of how archaeology is practiced and how science is used to interpret the past lives of people. Inspired by the calls for a different way of doing archaeology, this volume presents a case here for a heart-centered archaeological practice. Heart-centered practice emerged in care-based disciplines, such as nursing and various forms of therapy, as a way to recognize the importance of caring for those on whom we work, and as an avenue to explore how our interactions with others impacts our own emotions and heart. Archaeologists are disciplined to separate mind and heart, a division which harkens back to the origins of western thought. The dualism between the mental and the physical is fundamental to the concept that humans can objectively study the world without being immersed in it. Scientific approaches to understanding the world assume there is an objective world to be studied and that humans must remove themselves from that world in order to find the truth. An archaeology of the heart rejects this dualism; rather, we see mind, body, heart, and spirit as inextricable. An archaeology of the heart provides a new space for thinking through an integrated, responsible, and grounded archaeology, where there is care for the living and the dead, acknowledges the need to build responsible relationships with communities, and with the archaeological record, and emphasize the role of rigor in how work and research is conducted. The contributions bring together archaeological practitioners from across the globe in different contexts to explore how heart-centered practice can impact archaeological theory, methodology, and research throughout the discipline.
Download or read book Telling it to the Judge written by Arthur J. Ray and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arthur Ray's extensive knowledge in the history of the fur trade and Native economic history brought him into the courts as an expert witness in the mid-1980s. For over twenty-five years he has been a part of landmark litigation concerning treaty rights, Aboriginal title, and Métis rights. In Telling It to the Judge, Ray recalls lengthy courtroom battles over lines of evidence, historical interpretation, and philosophies of history, reflecting on the problems inherent in teaching history in the adversarial courtroom setting. Told with charm and based on extensive experience, Telling It to the Judge is a unique narrative of courtroom strategy in the effort to obtain constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and treaty rights.
Download or read book A Knock on the Door written by Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and published by Univ. of Manitoba Press. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “It can start with a knock on the door one morning. It is the local Indian agent, or the parish priest, or, perhaps, a Mounted Police officer.” So began the school experience of many Indigenous children in Canada for more than a hundred years, and so begins the history of residential schools prepared by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Between 2008 and 2015, the TRC provided opportunities for individuals, families, and communities to share their experiences of residential schools and released several reports based on 7000 survivor statements and five million documents from government, churches, and schools, as well as a solid grounding in secondary sources. A Knock on the Door, published in collaboration with the National Research Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, gathers material from the several reports the TRC has produced to present the essential history and legacy of residential schools in a concise and accessible package that includes new materials to help inform and contextualize the journey to reconciliation that Canadians are now embarked upon. Survivor and former National Chief of the Assembly First Nations, Phil Fontaine, provides a Foreword, and an Afterword introduces the holdings and opportunities of the National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, home to the archive of recordings, and documents collected by the TRC. As Aimée Craft writes in the Afterword, knowing the historical backdrop of residential schooling and its legacy is essential to the work of reconciliation. In the past, agents of the Canadian state knocked on the doors of Indigenous families to take the children to school. Now, the Survivors have shared their truths and knocked back. It is time for Canadians to open the door to mutual understanding, respect, and reconciliation.
Download or read book Trading Justice for Peace written by Sigríður Guðmarsdóttir and published by AOSIS. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conflict in its various manifestations continues to be a defining feature in many places throughout the world. In an attempt to address such conflict, various forms of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) have been introduced to facilitate the transition from social conflict to a new dispensation. The introduction and subsequent proceedings of TRCs in South Africa, Canada and Norway are widely regarded as good examples of this approach. Against this background, a number of researchers from VID Specialized University and the University of the Western Cape had an exploratory meeting in Oslo in 2018 where the possibility for a joint research project under the broad theme of ‘discourses on reconciliation’ was first discussed. This led to two further research symposia in Cape Town and Tromsø in 2019. With the inclusion of specialists working on the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation process, these meetings demonstrated common ground and a shared understanding of the issues at stake. Moreover, it pointed to the differences between the South African, Canadian and Norwegian Commissions. In comparing the South African, Canadian and Norwegian experiences, researchers identified that these countries were, in fact, at different stages of their respective truth and reconciliation processes. This has prompted scholars to revisit and problematise these processes in relation to ongoing societal challenges. In all cases, it is quite apparent that reconciliation between individuals and groups remains a significant challenge.
Download or read book Documentation from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions written by Proscovia Svärd and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-12 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documentation from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions highlights the need for post-conflict societies to have access to - and to use – Truth Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs’) documentation to achieve reconciliation and to work towards a democratic society. Including international contributions from a range of disciplines, the volume discusses the challenges that surround TRCs’ documentation. Considering the impact of the politicization of documentation, chapters also highlight the lack of political will to democratize information, the lack of dissemination and the preservation infrastructures that hinder access and its effective use and re-use. Arguing that TRCs’ documentation should be used to inform policy, improve governance and to promote justice, healing and reconciliation, the volume considers the ethical challenges involved in disseminating such information. Contributing authors argue that information professionals should play a major role in the planning for the TRCs’ information management infrastructures, if they are to facilitate access, effectively manage the generated documentation, deal with preservation of the compound records and promote the dissemination of the TRC findings. Documentation from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions demonstrates that TRCs’ documentation provides validation of human rights violations and that it helps to promote an understanding of the causes of conflict. As such, it will be essential reading for academics and students working in Archival Studies, Information Science, History, Transitional Justice, and Peace and Conflict Studies
Download or read book Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the North West Territories written by Peter Henderson Bryce and published by Government Printing Bureau. This book was released on 1907 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Canada s Residential Schools The History Part 1 Origins to 1939 written by Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 1076 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1867 and 2000, the Canadian government sent over 150,000 Aboriginal children to residential schools across the country. Government officials and missionaries agreed that in order to “civilize and Christianize” Aboriginal children, it was necessary to separate them from their parents and their home communities. For children, life in these schools was lonely and alien. Discipline was harsh, and daily life was highly regimented. Aboriginal languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed. Education and technical training too often gave way to the drudgery of doing the chores necessary to make the schools self-sustaining. Child neglect was institutionalized, and the lack of supervision created situations where students were prey to sexual and physical abusers. Legal action by the schools’ former students led to the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2008. The product of over six years of research, the Commission’s final report outlines the history and legacy of the schools, and charts a pathway towards reconciliation. Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1, Origins to 1939 places Canada’s residential school system in the historical context of European campaigns to colonize and convert Indigenous people throughout the world. In post-Confederation Canada, the government adopted what amounted to a policy of cultural genocide: suppressing spiritual practices, disrupting traditional economies, and imposing new forms of government. Residential schooling quickly became a central element in this policy. The destructive intent of the schools was compounded by chronic underfunding and ongoing conflict between the federal government and the church missionary societies that had been given responsibility for their day-to-day operation. A failure of leadership and resources meant that the schools failed to control the tuberculosis crisis that gripped the schools for much of this period. Alarmed by high death rates, Aboriginal parents often refused to send their children to the schools, leading the government adopt ever more coercive attendance regulations. While parents became subject to ever more punitive regulations, the government did little to regulate discipline, diet, fire safety, or sanitation at the schools. By the period’s end the government was presiding over a nation-wide series of firetraps that had no clear educational goals and were economically dependent on the unpaid labour of underfed and often sickly children.
Download or read book Residential Schools and Reconciliation written by J.R. Miller and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1980s, successive Canadian institutions and federal governments as well as Christian churches have attempted to grapple with the malignant legacy of residential schooling through official apologies, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In Residential Schools and Reconciliation, award-winning author J.R. Miller tackles and explains these institutional responses to Canada’s residential school legacy. Analysing archival material and interviews with former students, politicians, bureaucrats, church officials, and the Chief Commissioner of the TRC, Miller reveals a major obstacle to achieving reconciliation – the inability of Canadians at large to overcome their flawed, overly positive understanding of their country’s history. This unique, timely, and provocative work asks Canadians to accept that the root of the problem was Canadians like them in the past who acquiesced to aggressively assimilative policies.
Download or read book A National Crime written by John S. Milloy and published by Univ. of Manitoba Press. This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I am going to tell you how we are treated. I am always hungry.” — Edward B., a student at Onion Lake School (1923) "[I]f I were appointed by the Dominion Government for the express purpose of spreading tuberculosis, there is nothing finer in existance that the average Indian residential school.” — N. Walker, Indian Affairs Superintendent (1948) For over 100 years, thousands of Aboriginal children passed through the Canadian residential school system. Begun in the 1870s, it was intended, in the words of government officials, to bring these children into the “circle of civilization,” the results, however, were far different. More often, the schools provided an inferior education in an atmosphere of neglect, disease, and often abuse. Using previously unreleased government documents, historian John S. Milloy provides a full picture of the history and reality of the residential school system. He begins by tracing the ideological roots of the system, and follows the paper trail of internal memoranda, reports from field inspectors, and letters of complaint. In the early decades, the system grew without planning or restraint. Despite numerous critical commissions and reports, it persisted into the 1970s, when it transformed itself into a social welfare system without improving conditions for its thousands of wards. A National Crime shows that the residential system was chronically underfunded and often mismanaged, and documents in detail and how this affected the health, education, and well-being of entire generations of Aboriginal children.
Download or read book Forty Narratives in the Wyandot Language written by John L. Steckley and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2020-12-04 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1911-1912, French-Canadian anthropologist Marius Barbeau spent a year recording forty texts in the Wyandot language as spoken by native speakers in Oklahoma. Though he intended to return and complete his linguistic study, he never did. More than a century later Forty Narratives in the Wyandot Language continues Barbeau's work. John Steckley provides an engaging analysis and fresh translation of the texts in order to preserve the traditional language and cultural heritage of the Wyandot or Wendat people. Leveraging four decades of studying the dialects of Wyandot and Wendat and his role as tribal linguist for the Wyandotte Nation, the author corrects errors in Barbeau's earlier text while adding personal anecdotes to provide readers with a unique comparative work. The stories in this collection, largely drawn from the traditional folklore of the Wyandot people and told in a language that has been dormant for decades, act as a time capsule for traditional tales, Indigenous history, humour, and Elder knowledge. Steckley's new translation not only aids Wyandot peoples of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Michigan in reclaiming their language but also gives researchers worldwide a rich, up-to-date reference for linguistic study. A significant literary record of a people and a language, Forty Narratives in the Wyandot Language is a major contribution to the preservation and revitalization of an Indigenous language in North America.
Download or read book Iroquois in the West written by Jean Barman and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two centuries ago, many hundreds of Iroquois – principally from what is now Kahnawà:ke – left home without leaving behind their ways of life. Recruited to man the large canoes that transported trade goods and animal pelts from and to Montreal, some Iroquois soon returned, while others were enticed ever further west by the rapidly expanding fur trade. Recounting stories of Indigenous self-determination and self-sufficiency, Iroquois in the West tracks four clusters of travellers across time, place, and generations: a band that settled in Montana, another ranging across the American West, others opting for British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, and a group in Alberta who were evicted when their longtime home became Jasper National Park. Reclaiming slivers of Iroquois knowledge, anecdotes, and memories from the shadows of the past, Jean Barman draws on sources that range from descendants' recollections to fur-trade and government records to travellers' accounts. What becomes clear is that, no matter the places or the circumstances, the Iroquois never abandoned their senses of self. Opening up new ways of thinking about Indigenous peoples through time, Iroquois in the West shares the fascinating adventures of a people who have waited over two hundred years to be heard.
Download or read book Advocating for Palestine in Canada written by Emily Regan Wills and published by Fernwood Publishing. This book was released on 2022-05-31T00:00:00Z with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is it so difficult to advocate for Palestine in Canada and what can we learn from the movement’s successes? This account of Palestine solidarity activism in Canada grapples with these questions through a wide-ranging exploration of the movement’s different actors, approaches and fields of engagement, along with its connections to different national and transnational struggles against racism, imperialism and colonialism. Led by a coalition of students, labour unions, church groups, left wing activists, progressive presses, human rights organizations, academic associations and Palestinian and Jewish community groups, Palestine solidarity activism is on the rise in Canada and Canadians are more aware of the issues than ever before. Palestine solidarity activists are also under siege as never before. The movement advocating for Palestinian rights is forced to contend with relentless political condemnation, media blackouts, administrative roadblocks, coordinated smear campaigns, individual threats, legal intimidation and institutional silencing. Through this book and the experiences of the contributing authors in it, many seasoned veterans of the movement, Advocating for Palestine in Canada offers an indispensable and often first-hand view into the complex social and historical forces at work in one of our era’s most urgent debates, and one which could determine the course of what it means to be Canadian going forward.
