Responding to the Legacy of Canadian Residential Schools
AbstractThis article focuses on the Canadian residential schooling system for indigenous children. After a brief history of the residential school experience the author discusses the demands for reparations and responses to those demands. Reparation includes all types of material and non-material redress - restitution, compensation, rehabilitation and, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition. The right to reparations for wrongful acts has long been recognised as a fundamental principle of law essential to the functioning of legal systems. The residential schools experiment in Canada has had a pervasive effect on the victims, their families and communities. The scars remain with current generations. The victims and their representatives, consistent with international law obligations, have made a number of reparation demands on the federal government. The Canadian Government has responded in some measure to the demands but many of those removed to residential schools demand more. |