 |
 |
Canada “lost a significant amount of truth” about the worst abuses at Indian residential schools with last week’s Supreme Court of Canada decision that records should be destroyed, says the director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. “The truth is powerful but easily suppressed,” Ry Moran said Wednesday in Saskatoon. The Supreme Court ruled that survivors who told detailed accounts of horrific physical and sexual abuses at Indian residential schools in an assessment process to decide financial compensation were told their stories would be kept private and signed confidentiality agreements. http://bit.ly/2xRIyCX http://bit.ly/2xRIyCX+ As part of the Canadian government's 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, thousands of Indigenous Canadians have shared harrowing memories of their time in government-run residential schools in hopes of obtaining compensation for years of neglect and mistreatment. The survivors provided accounts of physical, emotional and sexual abuse during closed hearings, believing that their testimony would remain confidential. But the government has fought to retain the testimony for historical documentation. Seeking recourse in the legal system, the government argued that because the testimony was government record, it could not be legally destroyed, Colby Cosh explains in the *National Post.* http://bit.ly/2yAK1Rq http://bit.ly/2yAK1Rq+ One of the ways to persecute is to rob people of their history. This was done by male historians seeking to undervalue the contributions of women. It was done by white historians seeking to confirm racist ideologies. Now a group of all white judges has entrenched the power of a body created by a white majority government to rob the victims of residential schools of their history. On October 6, 2017 the Supreme Court of Canada made it legal for the authorities in charge of compensating the victims of the residential school system to destroy the records of the abuse after a given delay. Before we get into why the highest court in Canada came to this decision, we need to talk about residential schools. http://bit.ly/2gw2mZS http://bit.ly/2gw2mZS+ -- Peterk Dallas, Tx [log in to unmask] Save our in-boxes! http://emailcharter.org “If only there were a massive entity that I were forced to fund to tell me how I should live my life, since I’m so obviously incapable of deciding for myself.” M. Hashimoto Contact the list owner for assistance at [log in to unmask] For information about joining, leaving and suspending mail (eg during a holiday) see the list website at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=archives-nra