Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart hands "Statement of Reconciliation" to Indian leader Phil Fontaine. (Reuters)

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 8 1998; Page A01

The Canadian government apologized today to the country's Indian, Inuit and other aboriginal peoples for decades of mistreatment, offering an emotional atonement for policies that sought to stamp out native culture and confined Indian children in often abusive government-run schools.

Following an Indian drum and dance performance, and clutching a ceremonial feather, Jane Stewart, Canada's minister of Indian affairs and northern development, read an official "Statement of Reconciliation" that acknowledged the damage done to native populations beginning with the arrival of Europeans in the 15th century and running through modern efforts to suppress native religion and language.

The statement dealt in broad terms with an array of offenses, including the hanging of Louis Riel, a leader of the French-Indian Metis people, who was convicted of treason and executed in 1885 for his role in a Saskatchewan uprising.

Stewart said she hopes the statement will inaugurate a new relationship between Canada and its original residents, and she pledged $250 million for a "healing fund" to help those who suffered physical and mental abuse at the government-run schools. The schools were not closed until the 1970s and left a legacy of emotional scars among generations of Indians who remember them as places where they were secluded from their families, forbidden from speaking their language and, in the harshest cases, physically and sexually assaulted.

"As a country, we are burdened by past actions that resulted in weakening the identity of aboriginal peoples, suppressing their languages and cultures, and outlawing spiritual practices," Stewart said, reading from a statement inscribed on a scroll that was presented to representatives of Canada's five major Indian organizations.

"The government of Canada today formally expresses to all aboriginal people in Canada our profound regret for past actions of the federal government which have contributed to these difficult pages in the history of our relationship together."

Along with the healing fund, Stewart said the government will begin working with Indian leaders to develop health, counseling and economic development programs to address unemployment, teenage suicide and other chronic social problems plaguing many native communities – what she dubbed a "spiritual poverty" linked to the government's suppressive policies.

For a variety of historic, economic and demographic reasons, native affairs have remained among Canada's most pressing domestic concerns and occupy a far higher profile than in the United States. Indians form a larger portion of the population than in the United States, and though the percentage is still small, they are the fastest-growing segment of Canadian society. In such cities as Winnipeg, for example, Indians are a very visible minority.

Many provinces, most notably British Columbia, are involved in treaty negotiations with Indian groups over basic questions of land title and access to resources that were not settled in the colonial era. The courts here have on several occasions recognized aboriginal rights to harvest the resources contained on their traditional lands – limiting what was assumed to be provincial jurisdiction over forests and fishing grounds, for example.

The statement of reconciliation, therefore, is not only an ethical expression of sorrow but also an acknowledgment that Canada still needs to resolve complicated questions about how to divide the wealth of the land between cultures. After decades of legal battles, time-consuming talks and sometimes violent protests by natives asserting traditional land claims, the statement is a step in the right direction, said Phil Fontaine, grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, a coalition of Canada's dozens of distinct native bands.

"For the first time in history," Fontaine said, "this government has accepted that Canada cannot achieve its full potential" without the success of native peoples who form 2.7 percent of the population but loom much larger in Canada's history and self-image. "This is and always has been our land, before the pharaohs constructed pyramids, or China's emperors built the Great Wall. . . . Our knowledge of the world, our obligation to the creator, makes us unique among Canadians.

"This celebrates the beginning of a new era," Fontaine said, adding that he expects serious government efforts to provide native communities with access to the land, forest and other resources they need to sustain and govern themselves and protect their culture.

Those were some of the more important principles embodied in a $35 million, five-year study of native issues conducted by a Royal Commission and released last year. Indian leaders welcomed the report's focus on economic and political self-determination and its call for government to acknowledge the damage done by decades of harmful programs. Among the most repressive was the forced relocation of entire Inuit villages in the Arctic, which disrupted centuries-old hunting patterns.

For a year, the Liberal Party government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien said little about the five-volume study, a fact that angered native leaders who felt their concerns were once again being ignored. Today's statement by Stewart represented the government's official response.

Not all Indian leaders were as accepting of the government's comments as Fontaine. Four others, representing Inuit, native women's groups and Metis – descendants of intermingling between early French explorers and native tribes – accepted scrolls and participated in the discussion, but they said they believe the apology was not strong enough and that the remedial steps announced were insufficient for a government expecting to run a budget surplus.

"I don't want to trivialize" the money committed to the healing fund, said Harry Daniels, president of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, which represents a number of native groups not included in the Assembly of First Nations. "But that is far less than they gave a helicopter company not to build helicopters," he said, referring to an aircraft order that Chretien's government canceled – at a cost of a half-billion dollars – and then reinstated.

Metis and Inuit leaders also were critical because the statement did not refer in more detail to the wrongs done their communities and because Stewart's later statements did not mention specific programs for them.

Although the mention of Riel in Stewart's statement was welcomed, Metis National Council leader Gerald Morin said the group still wants him to be officially pardoned. Morin added that he was "disappointed" that the government did not consult more with Metis officials before today's statements.