donderdag, oktober 30, 2014

Switzerland's shame: The children used as cheap farm labour BBC




Thousands of people in Switzerland who were forced into child labour are demanding compensation for their stolen childhoods. Since the 1850s hundreds of thousands of Swiss children were taken from their parents and sent to farms to work - a practice that continued well into the 20th Century.
David Gogniat heard a loud knock on the door. There were two policemen.
"I heard them shouting and realised something was wrong. I looked out and saw that my mother had pushed the policemen down the stairs," he says.
"She then came back in and slammed the door. The next day three policemen came. One held my mother and the other took me with them."
At the age of eight, he was in effect kidnapped and taken away to a farm. To this day he has no idea why.
For the first years of his life, he and his older brother and sisters lived alone with their mother. They were poor, but his childhood was happy until one day in 1946, when he came home from school to find his siblings had disappeared.

A year later it was his turn.



Operatie Kelk

28-10-2014 

Keywords
(Art. 6) Right to a fair trial
(Art. 6-2) Presumption of innocence
(Art. 41) Just satisfaction-{general}

het amsterdams Mirakel: advocaat met pannekoeken









joechheirassa, joechheirassa
sloe, sloe, quick, quick, sloe

Koekoekswals Sancta Maria van de h. geestgronden Danke fur die Blumen, darf ich hier ein Keul graben; U ook een stekkie ?









das Lied von der Moldau


























bron

dinsdag, oktober 28, 2014

HVO Verdomd weinig nieuws onder de zon

De Vliegende Hollander 



Een vandaag 


Ze worden de 'nieuwe daklozen' genoemd. Mensen die niet verslaafd zijn, geen psychiatrische problemen hebben, die goed opgeleid zijn en een normaal burgerlijk bestaan leiden en toch van de ene dag op de andere letterlijk op straat komen te staan.
Ze gaan scheiden, ze raken hun baan kwijt en ineens gaat alles mis. Deze daklozen hebben nog een extra probleem: zonder verslaving of psychische problemen kun je niet terecht bij de reguliere daklozenopvang
Het project 'onder de pannen' van de Regenboog Groep in Amsterdam biedt een oplossing: daklozen op kamers bij eenzame Amsterdammers. Hoe dat precies werkt bespreken we met Hans Wijnands, directeur van de Regenboog Groep.  
Onze verslaggever Laura Kors sprak met Floris: hij is 31 jaar, heeft een goed diploma op zak en is sinds anderhalf jaar dakloos.


Mijn bejaarde vader wil graag een 24-uurs alarmknop in zijn appartement, om bij eventuele nood een zorgverlener te kunnen waarschuwen.
Ik bel met de thuiszorgorganisatie die deze dienst in het pakket heeft. Mijn vader heeft veel vragen, maar hoort slecht, dus ik vraag de thuiszorg of ze langs willen komen om hem persoonlijk uitleg te geven. De vriendelijke mevrouw van de klantenservice geeft aan dat dat niet mogelijk is en legt uit dat de thuiszorginstelling een half jaar geleden besloten heeft uit financiële overwegingen geen huisbezoeken meer af te leggen.
L. Hanff

pedagogische tik



klik

Geloofskwestie

„Ik wil niet naar die dood, ik vind het eng!” gilt Leyna, mijn dochter van vijf, op weg naar de katholieke doopplechtigheid van de dochter van een goede vriend in Den Haag. Er is geen lijk, begrijpt ze als we bij de kerk zijn, er wordt een kindje gedoopt. We glippen net op tijd binnen. De Sint Jacobuskerk is prachtig, Leyna kijkt haar ogen uit. De dienst begint. „Waar is Jezus eigenlijk?” fluistert ze hard. Ik wijs naar het kruis. „Zielig zeg, dat ze hem zo hoog opgehangen hebben!”. 
Dan buigt ze zich naar me toe: „Mam, wij geloven niet in God hè, wij geloven in de boerknal”.

Judith Fischer



vrijdag, oktober 24, 2014

donderdag, oktober 23, 2014

D # ijdel no more

bron
Down at the market you can hear
sounds of laughter everywhere










KLIK










 EDMONTON JOURNAL OCTOBER 22, 2014


EDMONTON - The city is looking at spending up to $200,000 to commemorate Edmonton’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission meeting last March.
It was the final national event of the commission, set up to learn what happened at Canada’s Indian residential schools.
The city will consult aboriginal, faith and other groups about what kind of public art would be appropriate to mark the event.
Money for the project, which council supported Wednesday, might also be provided by the province or other donors.
A report is due in the first three months of 2015.





Meegwetch

woensdag, oktober 22, 2014

Gij zult géén hondjes in de magnetron drogen


...
"Het probleem van het Midden-Oosten is dat er geen degelijke cultuur van politieke instituties bestaat. Wat het Midden-Oosten nodig heeft zijn personen van de statuur van Nelson Mandela of Martin Luther King. Er is een groot leiderschapsprobleem. Europa heeft dat opgelost. Daar geldt de wet zelfs binnen de familie. De vloek van het Midden-Oosten is het tribale denken. Er is geen democratische legitimatie
...


Iraakse aartsbisschop Jousif Thomas Mirk
trouw  21 10 2014

Hoe zou je vila morena in het arabisch schrijven?
En zingen, heer van Uhm ?
dokter in de zaal?

dinsdag, oktober 21, 2014

I am  a model, I am real 
...
Pope Francis seems for over a year and a half, to have made as his highest priority, protecting Catholic cardinals and bishops from prosecution, especially related to allegations of child abuse and/or related cover-ups and of financial corruption, (A) by easing out, quietly and with minimal recriminations, controversial hierarchs by
comfortable retirements, demotions or transfers (O’Brien, Brady, Tebartz-van Elst (Bling Bishop), Liveries, Burke, Rigali, even Wesolowski so far, et al.), and
(B) by trying to co-opt completely all independent government investigations of hierarchs with Vatican controlled and secretive proceedings (especially Archbishop Wesolowski), that conveniently also protect against disclosures about other hierarchs that may have been implicated.
We already saw how the Vatican orchestrates “criminal trials” in the absurd “staged trial” of the ex-Pope’s butler. Wesolowski’s trial should be even more staged and absurd.
The Vatican has no experience with criminal trials of serious crimes like child sex abuse, even if the Vatican were sincere about this, which as a lawyer I doubt they are by trying Wesolowski at “home”.
Archbishop Wesolowski  served in numerous countries over more than three decades. He could well have in his 100,000+ computer files of child porn related links. evidence of contacts with other pedophiles in the worldwide hierarchy — who knows, but why did Francis have him smuggled, in effect, back to the Vatican?
Pope Francis must know well by now that escalating Vatican scandals involving child sex abuse and rampant financial corruption present an unprecedented crisis. These scandals are rapidly reducing papal moral authority and Vatican wealth, while papal rigidity on sexual morality is straining belief in papal infallibility, all together diminishing papal power and influence.
These accelerating challenges have already led to the sudden and first papal resignation in 600 years and to the unexpected and “engineered” installation of an elderly replacement with limited international experience. Will a rapidly aging and potentially unsuccessful Francis soon be the second pope to resign in 600 years?
Indeed, the Archbishop of Malta, a decade younger than Francis, has just unexpectedly resigned early for “health reasons”, reportedly related to “earlier exhaustion” from his unsuccessful “culture war” against divorce in Malta. This is also especially timely and ironic as German bishops relentlessly pushed recently at the Synod to welcome divorced and remarried Catholics and their families back to the German Catholic Church. Of course, German bishops also seek to regain the related and very generous automatic per capita government tax subsidy for German bishops that is not paid with respect to divorced Catholics who elect to be exiles from the German Catholic Church.
....


SALAMAT 'Opvang en onderwijs voor kinderen uit de prostitutie en webcam kindersekstoerisme'




Webcam sex with fake girl Sweetie leads to sentence

BBC News 
21-10-201014




Want uitbuiting van kinderen is onacceptabel. 





Op de muren van ons hoofdkantoor staat de volgende tekst:
"Een wereld waarin kinderen niet meer worden uitgebuit. Wij gaan net zo lang door tot dit bereikt is". 
Staat u achter dit ideaal? Dan zijn we blij met uw steun en stem. 


Christian Catholicism: Pope Francis, Let’s Not Neglect Children at the Next Synod



Views of Jerry Slevin, a Harvard and Catholic "schooled" retired international lawyer ______
If you benefited here, please share/forward this now to others to read__
 ____ Click on (other) topics for more _____

The Family Synod’s 190 celibate bishops, and the international media echo chamber generally, paid little attention recently to the need to reverse the Vatican’s failed “doctrines” and “rules” regarding the welfare and safety of children. Indeed, some of Pope Francis’ lawyers,  lobbyists and large donors, especially in the USA, are likely broadly smiling now.
Hopefully, the protection of children and the endorsement of artificial contraception by the Vatican will be center stage at the October 2015 Final Family Synod.
For two weeks, with barely another two weeks now to go before crucial US Senate elections on November 4, Francis’ media machine, with some help from Cardinals Dolan, Burke and some others from Africa, have managed to keep gay marriage and divorced Catholics issues front and center. Since the anti-gay voters in some US states could be the difference in some close Senate elections, getting these voters fired up and motivated to vote is quite important for the Vatican and its right wing billionaire buddies.

That many gay Catholics are unjustly and seriously harmed and hurt by these political games seems irrelevant to the Vatican and the US bishops, notwithstanding the large number of these clerics who are reportedly gay. See, for example

At the same time, the Vatican media spinners have seemingly endeavored with some success to keep the anti-contraception crusade and the priest child abuse scandal out of the press for a couple of weeks.
Media attention about these last two issues tend to bring out voters who are unattractive to the Vatican’s “low regulation/lower taxes” billionaire buddies.
The Vatican was able during the Synod in a very low keyed manner to reinforce its anti-artificial birth control “doctrine” and to beatify the “doctrine’s” main modern proponent, Pope Paul VI. Incidentally, Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, hardly the most “prophetic” supporter of Pope Francis, was welcomed by Francis in Rome for Paul VI’s beatification, as is evident in the picture and report  here.

Presumably, in the next two weeks before the elections, the advocates for Obamacare’s contraception insurance mandate will now respond effectively and forcefully to preserve affordable access to contraception, especially for poorer US couples.
As an example, and a very significant one, of Francis’ strategy, the reported vote in the Synod Final Report was 167 votes in approval to 9 opposed.or almost 95% in favor, of paragraph 58 relating to contraception and Humanae Vitae. The Synod bishops indicated, in pertinent part, that  in this area it is necessary to give “… the reason for the beauty and truth of the unconditional openness to life …” and the need ” … to rediscover the message of the encyclical “Humanae Vitae …” . “
“{U}nconditional openness to life” = “No artificial contraception”, no?
It appears that in almost a half century, since Paul VI’s profoundly mistaken and harmful encyclical, the celibate Catholic hierarchy have learned almost nothing from Catholic couples about responsible family planning. So much for “infallibility” and “graduality”, it appears.
Approximately 95% of Catholic couples reportedly use artificial contraception in good conscience; yet, it appears that nearly 95% of celibate bishops think these couples are committing a mortal sin. Hello?
Of course, the couples, unlike Pope Francis and 95% of his bishops, are not desperately trying to preserve papal infallibility as the cornerstone of the current corrupt Vatican top down structure. If the Pill is moral, then two popes, Pius XI and Paul VI, were dead wrong, and popes are “fallible” like every other human being!
And of course, popes are fallible, and Francis and his bishops must know this, especially after this Synod fiasco with the pope and bishops all over the place theologically, depending on the day of the week and the changing factional alignments. As John Allen reported (10/20): “I don’t think he {Pope Francis} is much of a strategist,” one cardinal told Crux Sunday night. “I used to think there was a plan underneath the chaos … now I’m wondering if the chaos is the plan.” No, John, this is just a “mess”, the Jesuit pope’s preferred word for “chaos”, but it is an “infallible mess”, no?
The Synod has. in effect, dealt a fatal blow to the whole modern “doctrine” of the Magisterium. The 2015 Synod will either administer the “last rites” to the concept of an infallible Magisterium, or the Vatican Titanic will thereafter sink even faster.
For a sense of the outrage of many Catholics on the Synod’s evasive approach to the contraception ban, please consider perusing some of the more than 400 hundred comments, mostly negative, submitted recently in just a few days to the recent  superb article at the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) by Yale educated Jamie Manson, entitled, “Why isn’t anyone talking about the synod’s paragraphs on contraception?” 
Jamie Manson perceptively noted: “The synodal fathers seem insistent that natural family planning methods will remain the only form of contraception allowed to Catholic families and that all acts of sexual intimacy in marriage must be open to life. While in the U.S., many of us have the luxury of ignoring the church’s teaching on contraception, in many developing countries, the church’s position on birth control directly impacts the law of the land.”

“You would think we would understand this lesson after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops almost single-handedly widened conscience exemptions on the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate. Apparently, it didn’t affect enough of us.”
“For the global poor, access to contraception can mean the difference between starvation and nourishment, poverty and stability, illness and health, death and life. Few issues are more crucial to the fate of poor families around the world.”
“It seems to be inherent in human nature: If an issue isn’t affecting us directly, it’s harder to become impassioned about it. Sometimes even the most well-meaning progressives can get caught up in their tight circle of concerns and cannot see beyond their own privilege. On the issue of contraception, that needs to change, especially as the Synod of Bishops on the family develops over the next two years. …”
Pope Francis in his Jesuit magazines’ interview last year noted:”We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible…  The teaching of the Church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the Church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”
Likely facing pressure from worldwide media observers assembled at the Vatican to report on Family Synod issues, two weeks ago, Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s seemingly “do nothing advisory commission on minors” made its latest pitch at trying to appear serious. Now as “chief papal protector of children”, Boston’s O’Malley is supposedly addressing  the most important current Catholic family issue — clerical child sexual abuse, that the Family Synod obscenely ducked.

Hopefully, Pope Francis and his bishops will show more courage at next October’s Final Family Synod and adopt effective and transparent bishop accountability measures, if not before then. After all, it is almost three decades since the US Papal Nuncio’s canon lawyer, Fr. Thomas Doyle, O.P., recommended to the US bishops and also to the Vatican that they get the priest sexual abuse of children scandal under control.
While the Family Synod was garnering most media attention recently, new child abuse scandal stories continued to appear.
In the Dominican Republic, the pressure is continuing to build to prosecute Polish Archbishop Wesolowski there. 

In Minneapolis, the wheels of criminal justice, which turn slowly there, did turn with the prospect of criminal prosecutions of priests, including one priest case that reportedly may involve Archbishop Nienstedt in some capacity. See:  http://www.startribune.com/local/east/279581672.html  and
And former Minneapolis Archdiocesan official, Jennifer Haselberger, whose recent unprecedented  107-page affidavit was Archbishop Nienstedt’s worst nightmare come true, has continued to press to protect children there. She is also pressing both for Nienstedt’s removal, and for public disclosure of the confidential report about allegations of improper relationships that Niensted allegedly had with some seminarians and priests.. See her recent TV appearance, interview and reports here:
Predictably, Pope Francis’ advisory “abuse commission”, after almost a year (and over a year and a half of Francis’ papacy”),  has not yet even finalized completely its membership or operating rules or even set up a permanent office. Indeed, its lone abuse survivor member, Marie Collins recently indicated to AP that she had been frustrated with the slow pace of work on the commission.

AP’s forthright Rome reporter, Nicole Winfield, honestly observed recently that, while “Francis’ other expert commissions looking into Vatican finance and administration worked at a frenzied pace through 2014 and finished their projects in recent months, the sex abuse commission never seemed to get off the ground. It lacked organization, a clear mission statement, office space, funding and a full membership roster. …” Would that some other Vatican reporters had some of Winfield’s candor!
Winfield also noted that ” …O”Malley has pledged that the commission will develop “clear and effective protocols” to hold accountable bishops who covered up for abusive priests …”  O’Malley seems to have made similar pledges before with little to show for it, it appears.
As to Pope Francis’ new “papal protector of children”,  Cardinal Sean O’Malley, please see the recent detailed, and documented, information, from Anne Barrett Doyle, the excellent researcher at BishopAccountabillity.org, on Cardinal O’Malley’s poor history on child abuse prevention efforts, described in her “Six Ways Cardinal Sean O’Malley Has Mishandled the Abuse Crisis” at:
To date, after a well publicized announcement almost a year ago, O’Malley has mainly had only a few photo ops with Pope Francis and some perfunctory meetings of his inchoate priest child abuse commission, usually timed to deflect negative publicity from UN committee condemnations of the Vatican’s priest child abuse cover-ups and the like.
It seems quite clear that Pope Francis is intentionally pursuing effective child protection reform measures very slowly and almost secretly with this new advisory committee (A) headed by Cardinal Law’s successor, Cardinal O’Malley, who is experienced with “handling” abuse investigations confidentially and slowly, and (B) assisted now, as top assistant, by Cardinals Law’s, O’Malley’s  and Mueller’s predictable and pliable longtime canon lawyer, Fr. Robert Oliver.
For the current “big picture” on the Vatican’s continuing failures here, please see the recent report by Fr. Thomas P. Doyle, O.P., the world’s leading expert on curtailing priest child sexual abuse, at:

maandag, oktober 20, 2014

zondag, oktober 19, 2014

ZZ




O sterre der zee

In the report the Synod Fathers state that the Church is particularly called to recognize suffering of abandoned spouses and how children are the real victims of family breakups.
Many synod members expressed the need for reformed, simplified procedures for annulments .  Card. Erdő spoke of how this annulment reform will require diocesan bishops to take on new responsibilities and perhaps delegate a specially trained priest.

Tja...
en dan motte d´r óók nog komme met  pastorale antwoorden ook....
Jongens:zoeken !! De eerste die er eentje vindt met een stevig aantal jaren Wing Chun krijgt een gouden kelkje 

Arme Bonefatio
Toch wel aardig om te weten dat ze nu alweer een stukkie dichter naar d´r hemelpoort is opgeschoven. 
Nou maar hopen dat Petrus dat dan ook door heeft. 
En zou Wiel Stevens dan ook nog voor elkaar kunnen krijgen dat precies op het moment dat die bisschop van Leeuwarden en die vrouw uiit Blauwhuus elkaar in tegenovergestelde riching  al schuivelend net buiten die poort passeren ik ze al wapperend met mijn dagboekvelletjes daar allebei  ter compensatie een enorme rotschop onder hun te onderscheiden eerwaarde deel mag verkopen? 

Rest natuurlijk ook nog de vraag of het opperhoofd van de Cie. van de Burgerlijke Stand in Nederland een jurist of een psychiater is. 



zaterdag, oktober 18, 2014

donderdag, oktober 16, 2014

Justice Murray Sinclair: ¨Church not helping reconciliation¨; ¨Catholic entities ‘discriminated’ against by TRC commissioner, there is no “Catholic Church” ¨. De mist in Canada !


klik


Catholic entities ‘discriminated’ against by TRC commissioner
BY DEBORAH GYAPONG,
CANADIAN CATHOLIC NEWS
October 15, 2014

OTTAWA - A lawyer representing the Catholic entities involved in Indian residential schools has vehemently rejected criticism from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) head who has accused the Catholic Church of withholding documents.
Pierre Baribeau says commission chair Justice Murray Sinclair has unfairly targeted the Catholic entities.
bron
“We have a feeling that we have been discriminated against by the TRC, compared to the way they have treated the other churches,” said Baribeau. “That’s a strong feeling, and it’s very unfortunate.”

Baribeau was reacting to a speech in Winnipeg Sept. 29 by Sinclair, who said the road to reconciliation after 150 years will be a long one and the Catholic Church isn’t helping, as reported in the Prairie Messenger. Sinclair said the “government of Canada and the Catholics have not provided documents” needed for the commission to complete its work. He also said the churches were being unco-operative, and the Catholic Church in particular fears more abuse stories will emerge against living clergy.

Sinclair chairs the commission that began with a five-year mandate that has been extended by a year. It is looking into the abuses that occurred over the years in Indian residential schools in which government policy was to assimilate Canada’s First Nations’ youth with the rest of Canadian society. From 1820 to the 1970s, the federal government removed aboriginal children from their homes and placed them in Church-run boarding schools in what became known as an effort “to kill the Indian in the child.” The children were not allowed to speak their language or practise their culture and many suffered abuse.

“Those comments (by Sinclair) are erroneous,” said Baribeau, who negotiated on behalf of 50 Catholic religious orders or dioceses in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and remains a director of the Canadian Co-operation of Catholic Entities Party to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement.

Baribeau cited numerous examples where religious entities such as the Oblates and the Grey Nuns opened their archives, making available photographs of thousands upon thousands of original documents to the commission.
“It is very unpleasant to read those negative comments by the chair... We feel they are misrepresentations of the facts and of contributions of Catholic entities individually and as institutions.”

Seventy per cent of the 140 Indian residential schools were run by the Catholic Church with the remainder operated by the Anglican, United, Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Methodist Churches.

“We tried very hard, but we were the black sheep,” he said. “Out of the four groups, we are the black sheep and they don’t really like us.”

Baribeau said there is no “Catholic Church” in terms of the agreement as every entity is independent. Yet the religious orders and dioceses have made efforts to co-ordinate to help the process.
The entities have also contributed hundreds of initiatives of reconciliation that are worth well over $30 million, Baribeau said, and they are still going on.

Baribeau said reconciliation needs to work both ways. He said he asked Sinclair some time ago to begin that process of reconciliation around the table with the stakeholders and nothing happened. Instead of “concrete gestures of reconciliation,” the commission has been using some of its funding to take the entities to court. At a mediation proceeding, Baribeau said he and members of the executive were shocked to hear the commission counsel accuse the Catholics of being “perpetrators.”
This is disrespectful, he said. Many of the religious men and women gave their entire lives to working in the schools and they should not be lumped in with those who committed abuse, he said.






Church not helping reconciliation: Sinclair


By James Buchok
WINNIPEG — The road to reconciliation between Canada’s Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people over the 150-year legacy of Indian residential schools will be a long one, says Justice Murray Sinclair, and the Catholic Church isn’t helping.

Sinclair is chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with a five-year mandate that was to end in July 2014 but extended to 2015 because “the Government of Canada and the Catholics have not provided documents.”

In 2010, the commission’s research director said the churches involved in residential schools were being unco-operative and suggested the Catholic Church in particular fears more abuse stories will emerge against living clergy.
Sinclair said the average age of school survivors is now 71. “It is important to complete our report so survivors will be around to see,” he said.

Sinclair was the guest for the 11th annual Sol Kanee Lecture on Peace and Justice Sept. 29 in Winnipeg. The lecture is hosted by the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice at St. Paul’s College at the University of Manitoba.

From 1820 to the 1970s, the federal government removed Aboriginal children from their homes and placed them in church-run boarding schools in what became known as an effort “to kill the Indian in the child.” The children were not allowed to speak their language or practice their culture and many suffered abuse.

Seventy per cent of the 140 Indian residential schools were run by the Catholic Church with the remainder operated by the Anglican Church and United Church and its predecessors the Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Methodist churches.

Sinclair explained how the TRC was created after a lawsuit was brought against the Canadian government and several churches by survivors who emerged from the schools in a damaged state. The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement of 2007 became the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history.

Sinclair said the agreement is flawed and the commission believes another 1,300 schools should have been included. “This excludes a lot of students and creates a significant challenge to reconciliation,” Sinclair said, adding that “day students” who did not live in the schools are also excluded, “even though they faced the same treatment.”

Sinclair said the commission has allowed any and all school survivors to present testimony at the hundreds of hearings held across Canada, from the national event in Winnipeg in June 2010 to the conclusion in Edmonton last March.

“For any society to function, its citizens must be taught the great questions of life,” Sinclair said. “Why am I here? How did I get here? Who am I? We all have a creation story and we need to know what it is. For children who were raised in residential schools the answers to those questions were denied to them. The first teacher is our mother and the first classroom is our home. Residential schools denied the children all of that and tried to squash their identities.”

Sinclair said the testimonies of horiffic abuse do not tell the whole story. “Most children were not physically or sexually abused. But all have been changed in some way, some without knowing it. Separation from parents, the atmosphere of loneliness and repression would damage any child.”

Sinclair said the problem and the solution is education. He said public schools have taught that North America started in 1492 with Columbus and text books have portrayed Aboriginals as spectators to history, as savage warriors, as an obstacle to white settlement, as victims or as a problem. “Great damage has been done because non-Aboriginals have been educated to not respect Aboriginal people. The system must teach children to speak respectfully about each other.”

Sinclair said non-Aboriginal people have attended the hearings “and they say, ‘I lived here and was taught here my whole life and I never knew any of this.’ Non-Aboriginals see the dysfunction but they have no idea how it was created. The education system has failed to do that but education can fix what it has broken.”

Sinclair said a “legacy of hope” has started with a number of provinces changing curricula to include residential schools. But, he added, “if this is taught only as an elective I expect that in five, 10 or 15 years I will still hear from people who say they had never heard of the residential schools.”

Sinclair has spoken to ministers of education asking for changes “to ensure that every child is taught about Indian residential schools and the treatment of Aboriginal people in this country. I ask each of you to help ensure that is done.”
He said the residential school system was not so much a school system as a child welfare system. “The government felt the children would receive the upbringing government wanted them to receive and that the government believed the parents could not provide. The schools were really about keeping children away from their families,” he said.

“Reconciliation cannot be achieved in five years,” Sinclair said. “We will establish what the parties need to do to get to reconciliation. The commission knows reconciliation is not going to occur in our lifetimes, but maybe we can start the conversation. The work we do today will immeasurably strengthen the fabric of this country.”

Sol Kanee (1909-2007) was a Winnipeg lawyer and former president of the Canadian Jewish Congress and longtime chair of the World Jewish Congress Board of Governors.