Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

192 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissioni. Affirm the right of Aboriginal governments to establish and maintain theirown child-welfare agencies.ii. Require all child-welfare agencies and courts to take the residential schoollegacy into account in their decision making.iii. Establish, as an important priority, a requirement that placementsof Aboriginal children into temporary and permanent care be culturallyappropriate.There is also a human dimension to improving outcomes for Aboriginal children.The intergenerational impact of the residential school experience has left some familieswithout strong role models for parenting. An investment in culturally appropriateprograms in Aboriginal communities has the potential to improve parenting skills andenable more children to grow up safely in their own families and communities.Call to Action5) We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial, and Aboriginal governments todevelop culturally appropriate parenting programs for Aboriginal families.EducationThe residential school system failed as an education system. It was based on racistassumptions about the intellectual and cultural inferiority of Aboriginal people—thebelief that Aboriginal children were incapable of attaining anything more than a rudimentaryelementary-level or vocational education. Consequently, for most of the system’shistory, the majority of students never progressed beyond elementary school.The government and church officials who operated the residential schools ignoredthe positive emphasis that the Treaties and many Aboriginal families placed on education.Instead, they created dangerous and frightening institutions that provided littlelearning.In their mission to ‘civilize’ and Christianize, the school staff relied on corporalpunishment to discipline their students. That punishment often crossed the line intophysical abuse. Although it is employed much less frequently now, corporal punishmentis still legally permissible in schools and elsewhere under Canadian law. Section43 of the Criminal Code says: “Every schoolteacher, parent or person standing in theplace of a parent is justified in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child,as the case may be, who is under his care, if the force does not exceed what is reasonableunder the circumstances.” The Commission believes that corporal punishment isa relic of a discredited past and has no place in Canadian schools or homes.