Gij zult Uw hoof niet schudden.
From the late 19th century right up to the 1970s, an estimated 150,000
native children – First Nations, Inuit and Métis – were packed off to the
schools, funded by the state and run by the Catholic, Anglican and United
churches.
The story has taken a more sinister turn, with allegations about death
by torture, fatal medical experiments, forced sterilisation and secret burials
in mass graves filtering into the public domain.
These allegations have been gathered and disseminated by Kevin Annett,
a defrocked minister who was thrown out of the United Church in 1996 for his
part in exposing the schools scandal and the clergy's sale of entrusted native
lands to a logging company.
Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, apologised last
year on behalf of the religious authorities.
"We failed them, we failed ourselves, we failed God. We failed because
of our racism and because of the belief that white ways were superior to
aboriginal ways," he said. Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)
has responded to the claims over Mr Annett's allegations by ordering maps to be
drawn up of possible burial sites and research into numbers and causes of death.
"We have built false models of God and we have built false models of Church which become ideology or rule book or power structure rather than the place where in our vacillation we can turn to a God who is always faithful and who will bless us and protect us. " Diamud Martin 01-01 -2009
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten