Ethics Newsline®

“Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm and has no place in our country.”

– Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, publicly apologizing to the nation’s native peoples last week for the “longtime government policy of forcing their children to attend state-funded schools aimed at assimilating them,” according to the Associated Press. “From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indian children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to assimilate them into Canadian society,” notes the report. At the schools, many of the children were physically or sexually abused — a tragedy for which Harper also apologized.

Source: AP, June 11.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Feb. 18 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 10, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 13, 1999.