I heard a report this morning on (US) NPR about the abuses that many
Canadian Indians had been subject to in boarding schools sponsored and run
by the Canadian government and the United Church of Canada. Independent of
the sexual and physical abuse that was the centerpiece of the story (which
was about a lawsuit), does anyone know about this program? were Indian
children forcibly taken from their parents and/or communities? I know they
were forced to stop speaking their original languages and prevented from
practicing their cultural rituals. But how were they separated from their
parents?
Further, how different is the case of the US, which the NPR story never
mentioned? The fact that my wife's friends in the Indian community hate the
idea of "Indian" schools and the fact-based fictional children's movie
called "The Education of Little Tree" that I saw a while back suggests that
the similarities between the US and Canadian systems of aggressive
acculturation are more important than their differences.
(I wish I could talk to my wife's friends about this, but she moved on to a
new job so we see them much more rarely.)
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"There's nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine... Been here 4
1/2 billion years. We've been here, what a 100,000 years, maybe 200,000.
And we've only engaged in heavy industry a little over 200 years. 200 years
vs. 4 1/2 billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow we're a
threat? The planet isn't going away. We are."
-- George Carlin.
