What others say

Page 4

The conspiracy of silence about child abuse in Indian residential schools is over.

It's time Canada's mainstream churches confronted the criminal activity that happened in their own boarding schools. Unfortunately, they can't be trusted to investigate themselves. They have proven that, again and again.

The Canadian government, which depended on the churches to educate Native children from the 1880s through the 1960s, should investigate the most recent allegations in a full inquiry, and bring the perpetrators to justice.

For decades, Canadians in almost every province heard rumors about child abuse in the church-operated residential schools.

Native elders, with hurt in their eyes, would reveal they had been beaten for speaking Cree as students. Occasionally there were terse news reports about Native pupils who died as they attempted to walk home to distant reserves during winter. Canadians wondered about a possible link between reports of child abuse in the 1960s and adult alcoholism on reserves in the 1980s.

The stories are no long quiet, second-hand rumors. Phil Fontaine, leader of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, came forward recently with painful revelations about his own suffering at the hands of pedophiles at the Fort Alexander residential school in the 1950s and 1960s. There has been no denial from the roman Catholic church which operated the school.

Fontaine is familiar to many Canadians as an articulate opponent of the Meech Lake Accord. His quiet admission carried authority.

Indian Affairs Minister Tom Siddon promised vaguely he would do something about Fontaine's allegations. An inquiry into abuse at the Fort Alexander school is the best place to begin.

Edmonton Journal editorial / 12 Nov.1990.