The head of Canada’s largest indigenous
organization says the government acted counter to its own apology for
the treatment of children at Indian residential schools when it used a
technical argument to deny compensation to many of those who were
abused.
The 2008 apology was made the
year after the implementation of the Indian Residential Schools
Settlement Agreement involving the government, the survivors and the
churches that ran the schools. In it, former Conservative prime minister
Stephen Harper asked on behalf of Canada for the “forgiveness of the
aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly.”
