INDIGENOUS CHILDREN WHO WERE AFFECTED BY FORCED ADOPTION IN CANADA WILL BE INDEMNIFIED
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It is sad to know that the Catholic churches lend themselves to this abominable mistreatment of children, only to consider that they should be assimilated to be included in society.
But everything has an end and thank God this situation ended, but leaving great consequences in these children today adults.
Many of these children died in the boarding schools because of the mistreatment they had there.
At present, they are still paying compensation, which I consider not even paying all the money in the world could correct the years lived.
Here is the content and testimonies of the events that took place at that time.
The Canadian state is paying its historical debts with what they call "first nations." Ottawa has agreed to pay compensation to the thousands of indigenous children, now adults, who were forcibly separated from their communities and adopted by non-indigenous families.
These children were deprived of their cultural identity when social services dedicated to childhood separated them from their families during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Many of them consequently lost contact with their culture and language.
Some 20,000 people will receive state compensation, which will consist of a total amount of 750 million Canadian dollars (596 million US dollars) to be distributed among all beneficiaries.
One of the main plaintiffs whose battle has ended in this arrangement, Marcia Brown Martel, who was separated from her family by social services and forcibly adopted by a non-indigenous family, called these cases "child robberies".
Brown Martel, who went through the reception service and suffered emotional, physical and sexual abuse, expressed hope that, after this victory, "this never happens again in Canada."
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Cardinal was one of the thousands of children of the native tribes of Canada separated from their biological families between 1960 and the mid-1980s and sent with white families, who according to the authorities could then give them better care. Many of them lost contact with their culture and language.
It is a case similar to that of Canadian residential schools. Some 150,000 members of the original nations, the Inuit and the Metis were removed from their families for much of the last century and placed in government schools, where they were forced to convert to Christianity and were forbidden to speak their native language. Many were beaten and received insults, and it is said that up to 6,000 would have died.
The government of Canada apologized and paid compensation to the victims of this type of centers, and is now compensating those affected by what is known as "Sixties Scoop", when the children were removed from their reserves and indigenous families. But many say that the agreement is too low and too late.
TEMONSTIY:
COLLEEN CARDINAL
Cardinal says she will not erase what for her was a traumatic experience. She was separated from her family, in Alberta, and sent to a house about 1,600 miles away, by a lake in rural Ontario, where she and her two older sisters were sexually abused.
"We had to flee that house to escape physical and sexual violence, and my two older sisters were sexually assaulted," Cardinal said.
A few years earlier, Cardinal was surprised to discover that she was indigenous.
"When you are a child you want to hear that they love you and that people love you," he explained. "What I heard instead was 'Well, we chose you from a catalog of native children for adoption.'
The only catalog Cardinal knew was the Sears department store, not the government lists or religious organizations that included pictures of children available for adoption.
"I was thinking 'Is there a catalog of indigenous children like me?' That remained in my mind always happens, that I was selected from a catalog of indigenous children, "he said.
The victims of the "Sixties Scoop" began to sue the government of Canada in 2010, claiming damages for the loss of their language, culture and identity. Ontario Supreme Court Justice Edward Belobaba ruled last February 2017, that the country had breached its "duty of care" towards children and said the authorities were responsible.
The agreement, which is estimated to reach 20,000 people, seeks to resolve numerous related complaints. The victims will share $ 586 million dollars in individual compensation that will be determined later. Many expect it to be around $ 50,000 per affected.
JOSEPH MAUD
When Joseph Maud was a child urinating on the bed, the nun in charge of his bedroom forced him to rub his face against the dirty sheets.
"It was very degrading, humiliating, because I was in a dormitory with 40 other children, it makes me cry at this moment when I think about it, but the biggest pain was being separated from my parents, my cousins and my uncles", Maud said in 2015 to the BBC when recalling that traumatic experience that he had to live in the mid-1960s.
Maud was one of the 150,000 aboriginal children who, between 1840 and 1996, the Canadian government forcibly separated from their families and sent them internees managed by the Catholic Church.
The children were forbidden to speak their own languages or practice their native culture. They were not casual decisions: the goal was to force their assimilation into Canadian society, as understood by the Anglo-French majority. The idea was "to kill the Indian in the child".
More than 6,000 children died in those schools. Many suffered emotional, physical and sexual abuse, according to the report presented in 2015 by the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation of Canada (CTR), which gathered the testimony of more than 7,000 people about what happened in those schools.
Some of the survivors blame that traumatic experience for the high incidence of problems of poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence and suicide that exist in their communities today.
The report described what happened as "cultural genocide."
"These measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aborigines as different peoples and assimilate them into the majority of Canadian society against their will," the document says.
"The government of Canada applied this policy of cultural genocide because it wanted to separate itself from legal and financial obligations with the aboriginal peoples and obtain control over their lands and resources," he adds.
JOSEPH MAUD
When Joseph Maud was a child urinating on the bed, the nun in charge of his bedroom forced him to rub his face against the dirty sheets.
"It was very degrading, humiliating, because I was in a dormitory with 40 other children, it makes me cry at this moment when I think about it, but the biggest pain was being separated from my parents, my cousins and my uncles", Maud said in 2015 to the BBC when recalling that traumatic experience that he had to live in the mid-1960s.
Maud was one of the 150,000 aboriginal children who, between 1840 and 1996, the Canadian government forcibly separated from their families and sent them internees managed by the Catholic Church.
The children were forbidden to speak their own languages or practice their native culture. They were not casual decisions: the goal was to force their assimilation into Canadian society, as understood by the Anglo-French majority. The idea was "to kill the Indian in the child".
More than 6,000 children died in those schools. Many suffered emotional, physical and sexual abuse, according to the report presented in 2015 by the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation of Canada (CTR), which gathered the testimony of more than 7,000 people about what happened in those schools.
Some of the survivors blame that traumatic experience for the high incidence of problems of poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence and suicide that exist in their communities today.
The report described what happened as "cultural genocide."
"These measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aborigines as different peoples and assimilate them into the majority of Canadian society against their will," the document says.
"The government of Canada applied this policy of cultural genocide because it wanted to separate itself from legal and financial obligations with the aboriginal peoples and obtain control over their lands and resources," he adds.
APOLOGIES
Although in 2008, the then Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper apologized to the survivors of what happened in these schools, the report points out that there is an urgent need for reconciliation and that the country must move from apologies to action.
On Monday, Harper's successor in charge of the government of Canada, Justin Trudeau, took a step in that direction by asking Pope Francis to apologize for the role of the Catholic Church within those schools in which Aboriginal children suffered countless abuses
"I told him how important it is for Canadians to move towards true reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples and I highlighted how he could help by issuing an apology," Trudeau told reporters after leaving the meeting with the pontiff at the Vatican.
The issuance of an apology by the Pope is one of the measures proposed by the CTR as part of the process of healing the survivors.
Although the Vatican did not comment on Trudeau's request, it did confirm that Francisco had a "cordial" talk for about 36 minutes with the Canadian president and that the conversation "focused on the issues of integration and reconciliation, as well as in religious freedom and ethical issues."
Trudeau, who personally apologized to the survivors, noted that Pope Francis had already offered a similar apology for the ill-treatment suffered by Aboriginal communities in South America during the colonial era.
In 2009, Francisco's predecessor, Benedict XVI, expressed his sorrow for the abuses committed in Canada.
"We can go on adding bricks of discrimination around the ghetto in which they live and at the same time perhaps helping them preserve certain cultural traits and certain ancestral rights. Or we can say you’re at a crossroad—the time is now to decide whether the Indians will be a race apart in Canada or whether it will be Canadians of full status."
-Pierre Trudeau
It should continue to defend all the rights of the indigenous people and free everyone from that of abuses. Regards