Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

The legacy • 193Call to Action6) We call upon the Government of Canada to repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Codeof Canada.The objectives of the schools were to strip away Aboriginal children’s identitiesand assimilate them into Western Christian society. Doris Young, who attended theElkhorn residential school in Manitoba, described the experience as a systematicattack on her identity as a Cree person.Those schools were a war on Aboriginal children, and they took away ouridentity. First of all, they gave us numbers, we had no names, we were numbers,and they cut our hair. They took away our clothes, and gave us clothes … we alllooked alike. Our hair was all the same, cut us into bangs, and straight short,straight hair up to our ears.... They took away our moccasins, and gave us shoes.I was just a baby. I didn’t actually wear shoes, we wore moccasins. And so ouridentity was immediately taken away when we entered those schools. 37In addition to the emotional and psychological damage they inflicted, one ofthe most far-reaching and devastating legacies of residential schools has been theirimpact on the educational and economic success of Aboriginal people. The lack ofrole models and mentors, insufficient funds for the schools, inadequate teachers, andunsuitable curricula generally taught in a foreign language—and sometimes by teacherswho were also not proficient in the language of instruction—have all contributedto dismal success rates for Aboriginal education. These conditions were compoundedfor many students by the challenges of trying to learn in environments rendered traumaticby homesickness, hunger, fear, abuse, and institutionalized helplessness. TheCommission has heard many examples of students who attended residential schoolfor eight or more years, but left with nothing more than Grade Three achievement,and sometimes without even the ability to read. According to Indian Affairs annualreports, in the 1950s, only half of each year’s enrolment got to Grade Six. 38Poor educational achievement has led to the chronic unemployment or under-employment,poverty, poor housing, substance abuse, family violence, and ill health thatmany former students of the schools have suffered as adults. Although educationalsuccess rates are slowly improving, Aboriginal Canadians still have dramatically lowereducational and economic achievements than other Canadians.Education is a fundamental human and Aboriginal right, guaranteed in Treaties, ininternational law, and in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In particular,the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples contains a powerfulstatement on the right to education under community control. The Declarationstates, “Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educationalsystems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner