This has echoes of what happened in Australia (and Ireland?)...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...nt/7860552.stm

Doesn't make easy reading.

From the late 19th Century up to the 1970s, an estimated 150,000 native children in Canada were seized from their parents and sent far away to state-funded, church-run schools to learn how to think, speak and act like white people. The country is still coming to terms with the disastrous results.

A real dirty secret.

A pretty poorly kept secret methinks....

I have to say I did know about this and did not think that it was such a secret.
They did not just lose thousands of their children but many many years of knowledge related to children and childbirth practices. Today as we look at our medicalised western childbirth system many women try to experience childbirth in a natural way, that knowledge could be helping us now if it had not been destroyed. The tribal system of knowledge thrived on the spoken word being passed down through generations, the link with the past is badly damaged and can never recover.
It was a very effective way of destroying the culture of the native population.

Lets hope we learn from our mistakes
Madwife

Its no secret.

Last year it was apologized for on the floor of Parliament, with Native representatives present, by the Prime Minister, and a compensation scheme has been agreed and implemented.

It was certainly a disgrace, but not a secret one.

uuummmmmm!!!! lets see now.....australia, ireland, canada, parts of africa, india, isreal (were ever that was, moved, moved again).......looks like the 'pink' bits on the old maps, me thinks????? do you think 'we' should be very ashamed of ourselves? yes sirreeeeeee..........

It may be a dirty little secret in the rest of the world but I don't think it is in Canada. Successive Canadian governments have been attempting, not with great success, to resolve this and numerous other First Nations' issues for many years. No Canadian, born here or imported, should look upon the situation as anything but unacceptable. It is somewhat analogous to many situations around the world where present citizens have to accept responsiblity for the sins of their forefathers.
Multi-billions of dollars are spent each year in attempts to improve the lot of our native peoples but obviously money is far from being the full answer. In many northern communities there is no clean water, proper hygiene facilities and no employment. People live on government handouts and children raised in such environments end up following in their parents footsteps, so a revolving door system thrives. Large payouts have taken place recently to some of the children forced to attend such schools but unfortunately, such money has led, in some cases, to increased alcoholism and misuse.
It's a mess, to say the least.

Can't blame the sons of the fathers and all that. I feel very sorry and terribly sad but not guilty or ashamed, it wasn't me!

I have to say alot has to be done to improve the situation, I am in no way saying nothing should be done but, I do not think that it can ever be rectified and put right.
What has happened has to be aknowledged and never forgotten but we have to look forward to improve the lot of the Native/immigrant Canadian (by that I mean all Canadians).
Madwife

Step on many reserves and you'll realize very little has actually been done

other than maybe a lot of promises and talk


reality....... nobody cares here or not enough anyway

No, no secret to me either. This has been a topic of interest of mine for about 25 years through people I know who were affected and my personal interest in social-anth issues in Canada. And the media; news, articles, debates and documentaries aplenty... though in Canada. To me, it's a very important issue and very interesting.

Just title of the article makes me cringe though... dark history? This is an ongoing issue. Though residential schools are now closed, the effects are still very much in the present.

And that's just the residential schools... then there's the forced settlement of the Innu, the lack of a plan to deal with homelessness, the closing of psychiatric hospitals and chucking vulnerable people out to fend for themselves, the lack of action on the cultist abuse in Bountiful, BC, the quiet erosion of pay-equity, etc... lots of 'secrets' and that's just some of the social ones.

Ok, I'll shut up now.

(or maybe not)

I have heard this sentiment many times.

For me, being a white-looking person, I am very aware of the advantage I have in this still racist society. Probably not as aware as my non-white friends but I am quite preceptive and well read in this sort of stuff.

I do not feel any personal guilt for my advantage and the history that produced it but I do recognise that I benefit from it, while other people suffer with the shit end of the stick. I feel it's ethically sound to help level the playing field and I do this in various ways that use my skills.

I can not imagine saying, 'hey, it wasn't me!' and moving on.

The Glenbow museum has a really good (i suppose you'd call it) exhibit on the subject. We learnt a lot and will revisit another time as it is so much information to take in. You know I knew some of the stuff but not much.

I have also read a book on the Beothuk(sp) which was a narrative history which I found fascinating and horrifying.

Unfortunately this sort of thing has happened in, oh, almost every single country in the world. Majorities or those more powerful have always done this kind of thing to the minorities in the countries. Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Blacks, Women you name it it's happened. But hey, at least Canada didn't deal with it the same way the US did, and give smallpox infected blankets to the natives to wipe them out and get the land.