Canada Just Confronted Its 'Cultural Genocide' Of Native People. Why Can't The U.S. Do The Same?
My grandmother still recalls the day when the Indian agent came to
the Canim Lake Indian Reserve in British Columbia, Canada, to round up
the children and take them away to the residential school. She remembers
how her parents tried to hide her with a cousin in a backwoods cabin,
and how the whole community wailed when government officials took the
children on the back of a cattle truck to the Williams Lake residential
school. The Roman Catholic Church operated the school with funding
from the Canadian government. Its mandate -- like Indian schools
operated throughout Canada and the U.S. at the time -- was to
proselytize, civilize and assimilate the local Native peoples with a
Catholic and industrial school education.
