SJC Justice Dialogues: Cultural Genocide and Reconciliation in Canada
The Indian Residential School system has been called “Canada’s greatest national shame.” For over a century, Aboriginal children were taken from their families, stripped of their language and culture, and more often than not physically and/or sexually abused. Duncan Campbell Scott, Minister of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, infamously declared the purpose of residential schools was “to kill the Indian in the child.”
Many First Nations communities in both Canada and the US are struggling to heal the wounds left by residential schools. Canada finally negotiated a settlement agreement with survivors of the schools in 2006, resulting in compensation payments and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission currently underway. But the reconciliation process is thorny and controversial.
Who bears responsibility for abuses from the past? Can/should a new generation of Canadians be held accountable? Join the dialogue and share your thoughts with us.
Andrea Glen will be sharing her dual perspective as the Métis descendant of a residential school survivor whose family still bears the scars, and as a person of faith/part Euro-Canadian struggling to come to terms with the violence that was carried out by my forebears.
Also, resident Nacole Walker will also be sharing about the experiences of her community with the boarding school system in the US, and how it still affects them today. Nacole is Lakota/Dakota, from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North and South Dakota.
See the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/135523376598265/
Wednesday, November 28 2013 | 7:30 PM | Lecture Room #1080 | St. John’s College, 2111 Lower Mall