Chief Arvol Looking Horse

Someone I did shake hands with...

Chief Arvol Looking Horse (S'unkawakan Wicas'a), 19th generation keeper of the original Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nation of the Sioux.

[Picture from an interesting article on a ceremony held to release the spirit of the bison which had died in Yellowstone.]

Canada Apologizes for Native Residential Schools

There is no end to the wound that Canada's residential school policy caused First Nations people. Hopefully today's national apology will help some measure of healing to begin. There is still a long way to go.

In the first formal apology ever delivered by a Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper stood in the House of Commons on Wednesday to say sorry to former
students of the government's native residential school program.

"Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today to offer an apology to former students of Indian residential schools," Harper said in Ottawa, surrounded by a small group of aboriginal leaders and former students, some of whom wept as he spoke.

"The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history.

"Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country," he said to applause.

"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.

"While some former students have spoken positively about their experiences at residential schools, these stories are far overshadowed by tragic accounts of the emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect of helpless children, and their separation from powerless families and communities."

(From the National Post. Also see the Globe and Mail.)

To read some of the sad stories of residential school survivors, see here and here.

The United Church of Canada, where I work, was involved running residential schools for the government along with other religious denominations. The United Church apologized to the First Nations people in 1986 and has continued to make healing and reconciliation with First Nations a top priority, which I think is important to do for an institution that wants to follow in the way of Jesus.