An Indigenous-led think tank says that seven years after the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report, progress on this front is happening at a snail’s pace.
The Yellowhead Institute, based at Metropolitan University of Toronto, says two of the 94 ‘calls to action’ contained in the commission’s report were completed this year, bringing the total number of recommendations made to 13. so far.
The panel says that at this rate, it will take 42 years, until 2065, to complete all the calls to action in the commission’s report.
“We’ve been following the calls to action for a few years now and continue to be shocked by Canada’s slow progress,” wrote Eva Jewell and Ian Mosby, who signed an update posted by the group this week. .
For five years, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission collected testimonies from thousands of Indigenous people who were forced to attend church-run, federally-funded residential schools as children. Through these stories, the Commission learned how children were separated from their families, stripped of their culture and suffered emotional, sexual and physical abuse.
The final report and calls for action were published in December 2015.
Calls to Action completed this year were aimed at the Canadian Museums Association and the Association of Canadian Archivists. The aim was to push these two organizations to undertake reviews of policies and best practices to ensure compliance with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Yellowhead Institute reiterated that the application of these two calls to action was necessary.
Insufficient papal apologies
“Unfortunately, we are less optimistic about the progress of Call to Action 58, the Papal Apologies,” the think tank update notes, however.
Pope Francis issued an apology to survivors of federal residential schools in Alberta in July.
However, the think tank points out that the pope did not specifically address “the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical and sexual abuse that First Nations, Inuit and Métis children have suffered.”
Therefore, the group concludes, it did not go far enough to complete the call-to-action directive.
We receive grandiose but ultimately empty promises from all levels of government. And all of this is covered in a thick layer of orange good intentions.
The Yellowhead Institute also believed that the federal bill to create a National Council of Reconciliation could be an important step. The legislation was passed by the House of Commons and is now before the Senate.
However, the think tank raised some concerns about this project, particularly with regard to the design of the council and the resources that will be devoted to it.
“Eternal Prologue”
According to the expert group, as of 1er December, 38% of calls to action were “not sent” or were “blocked”.
The executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, Cindy Blackstock, noted in the report that Canada had made no call to action on the protection of the childhood, saying it should make all Canadians think.
“I am tired of hearing the government say that we cannot see change overnight, when we have been waiting for 157 years,” wrote Ms.me Blackstock.
The report’s authors also claimed that they feel immersed in an “eternal prologue”.
“We try to define the problems that need to be solved, but with incomplete data. We receive grandiose but ultimately empty promises from all levels of government. And all of this is covered in a thick layer of orange good intentions. »