Report estimates at least 500 deaths at former Indigenous residential schools in U.S. | Canada News Media
Connect with us

News

Report estimates at least 500 deaths at former Indigenous residential schools in U.S.

Published

 on

WASHINGTON — Canadian audiences have grown used to seeing an Indigenous politician denounce the federal legacy of residential schools. For Maka Black Elk, it was nothing short of a revelation.

Black Elk watched Wednesday as the first Indigenous cabinet secretary in American history described in chilling detail the 150-year legacy of abuse and neglect at Indian boarding schools, perpetrated in part by the U.S. government.

Investigators found marked and unmarked burial sites at the locations of 53 former Indigenous residential schools in the U.S., and as the work continues, that number will likely grow, said the newly released report.

So too, it predicted, will the number of dead: at least 500 so far, linked to 19 of the 408 schools identified to date as having operated with U.S. government funding in 37 states and then-territories between 1819 and 1969.

Rules were enforced through corporal punishment, including flogging and whipping, solitary confinement, starvation, slapping and cuffing. Older students were at times forced to abuse their younger colleagues.

And in some cases, funding for some schools may have come from money set aside for Indigenous communities that ceded their lands to the U.S.

“The investigation shows that the United States may have used moneys held in Tribal trust accounts, including those based on cessions of Indian territories to the United States, to fund Indian children to attend federal Indian boarding schools.”

With the ultimate goal of eradicating the Indigenous way of life, children were forced to change their names, cut their hair, abandon traditional languages and routinely perform military drills.

Then they were put to work, raising livestock and chickens, making bricks and garments, producing lumber, cooking, helping to build irrigation systems and even U.S. railroads.

By itself, the report commissioned last June by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland likely proved shocking but not surprising to members of Indigenous communities on either side of the Canada-U.S. border.

“This is not new to us,” an emotional Haaland said, gesturing to indicate the other Indigenous officials and guests in the room at the Department of the Interior.

“We have lived with the intergenerational trauma of federal Indian boarding school policies for many years. What is new is the determination in the Biden-Harris administration to make a lasting difference in the impact of this trauma for future generations.”

But for Black Elk, the executive director for truth and healing at the Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, S.D., Wednesday was “historic and significant” not for what was being said, but who it was saying it, and where.

“The department that was responsible for funding and running the schools has formally acknowledged and named, in a tone that’s really different for a government organization, the history, their role in the trauma, and the legacy,” he said, fighting tears.

“Because there’s an Indigenous person and multiple Indigenous people at the helm of that institution, who all have a deep personal connection to the history, as we all do, this has happened in the way it has happened.”

Haaland herself acknowledged the significance of Wednesday’s spectacle.

“I come from ancestors who endured the horrors of the Indian boarding school assimilation policies carried out by the same department that I now lead,” she said.

“Now, we are uniquely positioned to assist in the effort to recover the dark history of these institutions that have haunted our families for too long.”

Haaland ordered the Indian Boarding School Initiative last June, an early executive decision that came just days after a B.C. First Nation announced the grim discovery of human remains at a former residential school.

Its initial report — what came out Wednesday was only Volume 1, and was accompanied by the oft-repeated message that a great deal more work remains — comes not long after Canada’s own residential-school reckoning reached a remarkable climax last month.

“I want to say to you with all my heart: I am very sorry,” Pope Francis told Indigenous delegates from Canada during a meeting at the Vatican, a long-sought gesture of reconciliation for the generations of harm done at schools run by the Roman Catholic Church.

In Canada, an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children are believed to have attended one of about 150 residential schools that operated between the 1880s and when the last one closed in 1996.

Marc Miller, Canada’s minister of Crown-Indigenous relations, said he consulted with Haaland last fall, who has already acknowledged the importance of the grim discoveries in Canada as a significant catalyst in her own work.

Miller said there has been “cross-pollination” between the two departments in recent months on the issue of residential schools, especially given that the border between the two countries is largely an artifice for Indigenous communities.

Miller acknowledged the “change in tone and approach” in the U.S. under President Joe Biden, and cheered Haaland on in her efforts.

“I often hear from Indigenous communities, particularly those that are along the border, about these issues, and they’re very present,” he said. “They’re very real, and it’s a lived experience of Indigenous Peoples across the Americas.”

Black Elk said it’s unlikely that the residential school situation in the U.S. would have received any fresh scrutiny without the “rediscovery” of human remains at unmarked burial sites near several former residential schools in Canada.

A number of such discoveries have been made in the last year since ground-penetrating radar located what are believed to be more than 200 graves at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., last spring.

“Without them, I don’t know if this would have gotten the attention it got here in the United States,” said Black Elk.

“It’s this kind of moment that reignites this issue in the minds of the public, and that’s both good and unfortunate. But confrontation of this challenging history is what we need to help move our nation and our community forward.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2022.

 

James McCarten, The Canadian Press

News

Frozen waffles from Whole Foods join Canadian recall list over listeria concerns

Published

 on

OTTAWA – Whole Foods Market is joining the growing list of brands whose frozen waffles have been recalled in Canada this week because of possible listeria contamination.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says the newest recall spans the Amazon-owned grocer’s organic homestyle and blueberry waffles sold under the 365 Whole Foods Market label.

The agency says the waffles recalled by Horizon Distributors Ltd. were sold in British Columbia, but may have also made their way to other provinces and territories.

It adds there have been no reported illnesses associated with the waffles, but the agency is conducting a food safety investigation, which it says may lead to the recall of other products.

Dozens of frozen waffles from brands like Compliments, Great Value, Duncan Hines and No Name were recalled earlier in the week over similar listeria concerns.

Food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes may not look or smell spoiled but can cause vomiting, nausea, persistent fever, muscle aches, severe headache and neck stiffness.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



Source link

Continue Reading

News

People with disabilities ask feds to restore ‘hope’ and raise benefit amount

Published

 on

TORONTO – Heather Thompson would love to work.

The 26-year-old dreams of going back to university to study politics and environmental science, and ultimately pursue a career to “try and make things better” in society.

“I’m not the person I want to be yet and I want to be able to achieve certain goals and be a well-rounded, well developed person. But I’m prevented from doing that because I live in legislated poverty,” they said.

Thompson is one of 600,000 working-age Canadians with disabilities that the federal government said it would help lift out of poverty with the Canada Disability Benefit, which takes effect next July. The program is meant as a top-up to existing provincial and territorial income supports.

“We had huge expectations and we had all this hope, like finally we can escape poverty,” Thompson said.

But after last spring’s federal budget revealed that the maximum people will receive per month is $200, the hopes of people like Thompson were dashed. Now, advocates are asking the federal government to reconsider the amount in the months before the benefit rolls out.

Thompson, who uses they/them pronouns, has worked at Tim Horton’s, Staples and a call centre, but said their physical and mental disabilities — including osteoarthritis, which “heavily impacts” their mobility, along with clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder — have forced them to leave.

They look for jobs, but many require the ability to lift or stand for long periods, which they can’t do. So Thompson lives on $1,449 a month from the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and shares a house with three roommates in Kingston, Ont., along with Thompson’s 12-year-old emotional support cat, Captain Kirk.

Thompson went to university in 2017, but their mental health issues flared and they had to leave after a semester. Seven years later, they’re still trying to pay that student loan back.

When Bill C-22, which mandated the creation of a Canada Disability Benefit, was passed into law last year, Thompson was “so excited.”

A news release issued by the federal government on June 22, 2023 called the legislation “groundbreaking,” saying the disability benefit would “supplement existing federal and provincial/territorial disability supports, and will help lift working-age persons with disabilities out of poverty.”

It said the benefit would be part of the government’s “disability inclusion action plan” that would “address longstanding inequities that have led to the financial insecurity and exclusion” experienced by people with disabilities.

The government simply hasn’t lived up to its promise, said Amanda MacKenzie, national director of external affairs for March of Dimes Canada, one of the organizations that supported the creation of the benefit.

Now that a public consultation period on the benefit ended last month, she is hoping the government will reconsider and increase the benefit amount in its next budget.

”These are people that are living well under the $30,000 a year mark, for the most part,” MacKenzie said.

“These are the people that you hear about all the time that are saying, ‘I can only have two or one meal a day. I can only afford to take my medication every other day … I can’t support my kids. I can’t help my family. I can’t do anything because you know, I can barely pay my rent,'” she said.

March of Dimes Canada and many people with disabilities all participated in early government consultations about how the federal benefit could be effective in topping up provincial disability support programs to provide a livable income.

”Who were they listening to?” asked Thomas Cheesman, a 43-year-old in Grande Prairie, Alta., receiving provincial disability benefits due to a rare disorder that causes his bones to break down.

“Not one single disabled person would say that this is an adequate program,” he said.

Cheesman was born with Hajdu-Cheney Syndrome and knew he wouldn’t be able to work as long as most people, but managed to work as a chef until he was 39.

At that point, his physical symptoms became so debilitating he had to stop.

“It was just too dangerous between either taking medications to handle pain and being distracted from that, or not being able to function because of the pain,” he said.

Cheesman and his wife, who works as a supervisor at Costco, have three children. Before the Canada Disability Benefit became law, he “did a lot of math” and calculated it would need to total almost $1,000 a month for his family “to have a life outside of poverty.”

In an emailed response to The Canadian Press, the office of Kamal Khera, minister of diversity, inclusion and persons with disabilities, said it was making a $6.1-billion investment “to improve the financial security of over 600,000 persons with disabilities.”

“This is a historic initial investment … and is intended to supplement, not replace, existing provincial and territorial income support measures,” said Khera’s press secretary, Waleed Saleem.

“We also aspire to see the combined amount of federal and provincial or territorial income supports for persons with disabilities grow to the level of Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), to fundamentally address the rates of poverty experienced by persons with disabilities.”

That would mean people with disabilities would get a total monthly income equal to what low-income seniors get from the federal government.

MacKenzie said the lack of adequate financial support for people with disabilities is “not OK,” noting that the money they spend goes back into the economy.

“We tell people with disabilities that what they deserve and what we can afford to give them in society is an existence. It’s not a life,” she said.

For Thompson, that’s “a really hard pill for me to swallow.”

”A lot of people don’t see us as human. They see us as a drain on society,” they said.

”We’re worth investing in.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2024.

Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.



Source link

Continue Reading

News

Quebec Liberals call to investigate closures of French-language classes for newcomers

Published

 on

MONTREAL – The Quebec Liberal Party has called for the French language commissioner to investigate the cancelling of some French-language training courses for newcomers to the province.

Citing an “ongoing series of closures of francization programs,” the Opposition party announced Saturday morning in a news release that its critics for the French language and French classes, André Albert Morin and Madwa-Nika Cadet, sent a letter to the Commissioner of the French Language.

The letter asks commissioner Benoît Dubreuil to “investigate to ensure that the right to French language learning services, included in the Charter of the French Language, is respected,” the release said.

The Liberals are blaming the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s budgetary decisions, which it says, “jeopardize the possibility for immigrants to become French speakers within a time frame that would facilitate their integration into the job market and into Quebec society.”

In several interviews this week, Quebec’s Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge blamed school service centres for the closures, saying his government has actually increased budgets for French-language courses.

However, media reports this week described education centres forced to cut back on programming because of budget constraints imposed on them by the province, which have also resulted in teachers losing their jobs.

“These cuts have led, in recent weeks, to the cancellation of French courses, particularly in the regions of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, the Capitale-Nationale, Estrie, Laval , the Laurentides, Mauricie and Montreal,” the release said.

Aside from cancellations, the Liberals say average wait times for full-time French study has recently doubled to four months while people who are enrolled are sometimes forced to travel hundreds of kilometres to attend class.

“There is an impression of disorder that suggests the government is unable to meet its obligations under the Charter of the French Language,” the letter sent to the Commissioner late Friday stated.

The closures come at a time of increased demand for the classes, with Quebec currently hosting around 600,000 temporary immigrants. Quebec has repeatedly asked the federal government for more power and funds to deal with the surge in newcomers, but the CAQ leadership has also come under fire from Ottawa.

Federal Public Services and Procurement Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Friday that the $750 million the federal government is spending to help the province with newcomers is not being fully used.

“We absolutely must invest the necessary sums in francization,” said Duclos. “If we want new arrivals to be able to reach their full potential, we have to offer them appropriate services.”

Cadet told The Canadian Press in an interview the government is clearly struggling to provide the right to learn French.

“So in our opinion, the commissioner should have the mandate to investigate this, and that’s why we wrote him this letter,” Cadet said, but would not say whether her party would increase French-language budgets.

Last February, Dubreuil stated it would cost between $10.6 and $12.9 billion for all temporary immigrants to complete intermediate-level training in French.

Cadet responded by saying, “I don’t think we’re in that type of scenario. I think there’s a way to better deploy the offer and make sure there are no service breakdowns.”

–With files from La Presse Canadienne

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Exit mobile version