Excerpts from Keynote Address, Canadian National Residential School Conference, Edmonton, AB, Feb. 23, 2001, Proposal for Full Resolution
"As we know, the imposition of the residential school system on Canada’s Aboriginal people was a grave historical injustice committed by the very Government and Christian Religious Authorities responsible for taking care of our best interests. As well meaning as these actions may have been, the goal of the Government and Churches was to wipe out our tribal cultures from the face of Mother Earth, making the residential school claims, unlike any other Canada, has ever seen. They are far from ordinary lawsuits.
This Government and Church imposed system caused life-long damages to most residential school survivors and deeply ruptured the social and cultural fabric of many Aboriginal communities across Canada. This episode of infamy caused a festering wound on the body politic that is sorely in need of an in-depth national healing process. This healing process needs to involve all Canadians. Aboriginal peoples deserve nothing short of complete public exposure, acknowledgment, restitution, healing and reconciliation of this terrible injustice. "
"The Government and Churches must also acknowledge that it’s residential school program amounted to nothing less than cultural genocide. This cultural genocide resulted from a system, perpetrated by the Government and Churches, that inflicted humiliation, indignity, emotional and mental distress, degradation and injury on defenseless and innocent children and parents.
These genocidal acts were deliberately undertaken and carried out with the stated intent to strip away our cultures and languages and annihilate all Aboriginal peoples as distinct ethnical, racial, cultural, linguistic, spiritual and religious groups. They deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about our destruction in whole or in part, including causing serious physical, emotional, spiritual and mental harm to many members of our tribal communities, including forcibly transferring the children of our communities to the care of another group, i.e. European-based Canadians.
A primary question is “does the purpose and impact of the residential school system fit the criteria for Cultural Genocide described in International Law?” I firmly believe it does!"
Brother Phil Lane Jr., Yankton Sioux Tribe - Chickasaw Nation, Four Worlds International Institute