Natives, non-Natives must forge healing

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Healing the rift between Natives and non-Natives is the over-riding issue facing the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the commission's co-chair said.

"On the Aboriginal side there is anger, which when turned inwards, leads to social dysfunction," Rene Dessault said in an address to the Canadian Judge's Conference August 25.

"On the non-Aboriginal side, there is guilt, which when turned inwards leads to denial. What is required in each case is the acceptance of responsibility."

Natives cannot blame all non-Natives for their problems, he said. But non-Aboriginals must accept some responsibility for the poverty, unemployment and chronic health problems Natives are currently facing.

Accepting one another's cultures would help foster respect and affirm diversity in Canadian society, he added.

"The history of government policy has been to assimilate Aboriginal people, to take away their languages, their spirituality, their culture. The legacy of residential schools, adoption policies, relocations and foster homes are with us still. They were based on an assumption that Aboriginal ways were inferior to the ways of Europeans and that Aboriginal people had to be brought up to the level of those of European background."

Dessault, a justice with the Quebec Court of Appeals, also said self-government is an existing Aboriginal or Treaty right implicitly recognized in the Canadian Constitution.

If Ottawa could be persuaded that argument, then there would be no need for constitutional amends, he added.

The commission, which was established in the fall of 1991, has produced three working papers on the state of Natives in Canada and is expected to present its final recommendations the end of 1994.