Oh Canada...

Canada apologizes for mistreatment Government says it regrets role in abuse of aboriginals at church-run schools

By RON CSILLAG, Religion News Service First published: Saturday, June 14, 2008

TORONTO -- For the second time in a decade, the Canadian government has apologized to the country's aboriginal peoples for its role in abuse at church-run residential schools.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a historic apology for the mistreatment of native children in schools run jointly by the government and four Christian churches.

"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," Harper said Wednesday in Parliament, with an audience that included 12 native leaders.

In the 1870s, the schools began forcibly removing aboriginal children from their homes in an attempt to assimilate them into the dominant white, Christian culture.

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