OTTAWA (AFP) — Canada's prime minister officially apologized on Wednesday to tens of thousands of natives for more than a century of abuses at boarding schools set up to assimilate indigenous peoples.
"The government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks the forgiveness of the aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly. We are sorry," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in the House of Commons.
Flanked by MPs, native leaders and Indian Residential School alumni, he described the treatment of children in the schools as a "sad chapter in our history," one that had had a "lasting and damaging" effect on their communities.
He said the schools were intended to isolate children from the influence of their homes and cultures and assimilate them into the dominant culture, based on the assumption that aboriginal cultures and beliefs were "inferior and unequal."
"The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian Residential Schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage, and language," he said.
Beginning in 1874, 150,000 Indian, Inuit and Metis children in Canada were forcibly enrolled in the 132 boarding schools run by Christian churches on behalf of the federal government in an effort to integrate them into society.
Survivors allege abuse by headmasters and teachers and say their education left them disconnected from their families and communities, making them feel "ashamed" of being born native.
It was "the darkest chapter in Canada's history," said Chief Phil Fontaine of the Assembly of First Nations.
"They tried to kill the Indian in the child, to eradicate any sense of Indian-ness from Canada," he told AFP.
The experience has also been blamed for gross poverty and desperation in native communities that breeds abuse, suicide, and crime.
"It was cultural genocide," said Ted Quewezance, a residential school alumni and director of the National Residential School Survivors' Society.
In his address, Harper acknowledged that many native students were "inadequately fed, clothed and housed" at the boarding schools.
"All were deprived of the care and nurturing of their parents, grandparents, and communities," he said.
And he said the "emotional, physical, and sexual abuse and neglect of helpless children and their separation from powerless families and communities" has contributed to social woes that persist today.
There are some 1.3 million aboriginals in Canada, out of a total population of 33 million.
Most of Canada's Indian Residential Schools, modeled after US Indian industrial schools of the period, were shut down in the 1970s. The last one closed in 1996 in Saskatchewan province.
The government's apology is part of a 1.9-billion dollar (Canadian, US) settlement with 80,000 former students in 2006 -- the largest settlement in Canadian history.
It provided for the appointment of a five-year commission headed by Canada's top aboriginal jurist to probe abuses of natives at the schools.
The commission plans to hear testimony from thousands of survivors and officials, as well as gather and review millions of government and church documents to be made public for the first time.
Wearing an Indian feather headdress, his voice cracking, Chief Fontaine told the House on Wednesday: "The attempts to erase our identities hurt us deeply. But it also hurt all Canadians and impoverished the character of this nation."
He said the memories of residential schools "sometimes cut like merciless knives at our souls. But this day will help us to put that pain behind us."
"For the generations that will follow us, we bear witness today in this House that our survival as First Nations peoples in this land is affirmed forever," said Fontaine.
"There are many fights still to be fought ... We still have to struggle, but now we are in this together."
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