Australian apology to native people sets high bar for Canada: AFN
Last Updated: Thursday, February 14, 2008 | 11:13 AM CT
CBC News
The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations says the Canadian government should match an apology Australia has made to its aboriginal people.
Earlier this week, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology for a century of taking aboriginal children from their families and forcing them into institutions far from their homes.
"We apologize for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians," Rudd said in Parliament, reading from a motion that was unanimously accepted Wednesday by lawmakers on behalf of all Australians.
AFN national chief Phil Fontaine said he hopes the Canadian government will make a similar move.
"It's quite a statement. It's of great significance — monumental. It's a special moment for the country. It's inspirational and sets a very high standard," Fontaine said.
"We hope that Canada's apology that was promised in the recent speech from the throne will be as significant and as full as sincere as the Australian government's apology."
The federal government's last speech from the throne, delivered in October, indicated Prime Minister Stephen Harper would launch a truth and reconciliation commission into Canada's aboriginal schools, and "use this occasion to make a statement of apology to close this sad chapter in our history."
Australia's apology was directed at tens of thousands of Aborigines who were forcibly taken from their families as children under now-abandoned assimilation policies.
"To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry," the apology motion said.
"And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry."
In 1998, the Canadian government issued a "statement of reconciliation" which recognized and apologized to people who experienced physical and sexual abuse at residential schools. The statement was part of an action plan made in response to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which called for extensive changes in the relationship between aboriginals, non-aboriginals and governments in Canada.
Fontaine described the 1998 statement as a "statement of regret, rather than a full and sincere apology."
