The Council of Canadians Northwest Territories chapter has thanked their Member of Parliament — Liberal MP Michael McLeod, who is Métis — for calling for the resignation of Harper-appointed, Dryden, Ontario-based Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak given her remarks on residential schools.
On Tuesday March 7, Beyak said, “I speak partly for the record, but mostly in memory of the kindly and well-intentioned men and women and their descendants — perhaps some of us here in this chamber — whose remarkable works, good deeds and historical tales in the residential schools go unacknowledged for the most part. …Mistakes were made at residential schools. In many instances, horrible mistakes that overshadowed some good things that also happened at those schools.”
The chapter has posted on Facebook, “The NWT Chapter of the Council of Canadians wishes to thank MP Michael McLeod and his colleagues on the Liberal Indigenous Caucus. Please take a moment to send your thanks to him.”
McLeod’s email is Michael.McLeod@parl.gc.ca
McLeod and his colleagues recently endorsed a statement by Thunder Bay-Rainy River MP Don Rusnak which says, “The Indigenous Liberal Caucus is shocked and dismayed by the ignorant and harmful comments made yesterday regarding the Residential School System by Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak. Statements such as those made by the Senator are unacceptable in today’s Canada. These appalling comments also demonstrate the continuing need for increased education and awareness about the Residential School System, the impact it has had, and the impact it continues to have on Indigenous People in Canada. The historical facts on this are clear.”
That statement adds, “We, as a Caucus, call on Senator Beyak to issue an apology for her harmful comments regarding the Residential School System. We also call for her removal from the Senate Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples and that the Leader of the Official Opposition, the Honourable Rona Ambrose, acknowledge the harmful nature of the these comments by removing Senator Beyak from the Conservative Caucus. Indigenous Caucus also asks that Senator Beyak immediately resign from the Senate as her views are inconsistent with the Spirit of Reconciliation that is required in both chambers of Parliament.”
Between the 1880s and 1996, 150,000 Indigenous children were sent by the federal government to residential schools in Canada.
More than 6,000 of those children died at those schools.
Mi’kmaw lawyer Pam Palmater has written, “Indian residential schools were boarding schools created and designed by the federal government to eliminate the ‘Indian problem’ in Canada… Instead of receiving an education (most never received more than a grade six education), most were starved, beaten, tortured, raped and medically experimented on. In some schools, upwards of 40 per cent of Indigenous children never made it out alive. Nationally, the death rate for these children was one-in-25 — higher than the one-in-26 death rate for enlistees in the Second World War.”
And author Rupert Ross has written in his book Indigenous Healing, “The combination of childhood trauma and emotional numbing is, in my view, one of the most important legacies of residential school. This explains why the destructive forces begun within residential schools still plague so many aboriginal families today, even when the last school shut its doors 40 years ago.”
Former prime minister Paul Martin stated, “Let us understand that what happened at the residential schools was the use of education for cultural genocide.”
To ask Senator Beyak to issue an apology, to step down from the Senate Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, and to immediately resign from the Senate, you can e-mail her at lynn.beyak@sen.parl.gc.ca
