A Canadian Shame is a disturbing collection of information that forces every reader to meditate on the atrocities of government and institutions. Grimes's heritage and personal experience make him the perfect author for this book, but the superior documentation is what makes it as credible as it is fascinating. Although a light is being shined into a very dark corner of our society, one still walks away with a knowledge that truth and love will bring all of humanity together. An uncomfortable story can be a powerful catalyst for unity. Find out all about the Indian Act, Residential Schools, Indigenous child welfare, unmarked graves and more in the comprehensive, extremely well sourced, overview of the last 150 years of Canada and the Indian Act. Starlight tours, missing and murdered indigenous women, and the charge of genocide are all explored in an informative and concise way (under 200 pages). Filled with quotes, legislation, correspondence, historical information this book is a must have for anyone interested in the relationship between Canada and the Indigenous people for the bibliography alone. From the inception of the Indian Act to residential schools, from the potlach ban to the sixties scoop, right up to the present day. A Canadian Shame is filled with the highlights of atrocities that every Canadian should know, up until the apologies finally offered over the last decade. from the back of the book... In A Canadian Shame, Darren Grimes has collected and presented overwhelming evidence which shows beyond doubt that a monster bent on the complete destruction of the Indigenous peoples of Canada ( First Nations, Inuit, Metis, and all the other Aboriginal inhabitants of the land) has been devouring not only men and women but also children of those cultures, that this monster has been doing so for hundreds of years, that this destruction has been deliberate and systematic rather than accidental or unintended, and that lethal aspects of it continue right up to the present day.

What is the Indian Act? What were residential schools? A Canadian Shame is a disturbing collection of information that forces every reader to meditate on the atrocities of government and institutions. Grimes's heritage and personal experience make him the perfect author for this book, but the superior documentation is what makes it as credible as it is fascinating. Although a light is being shined into a very dark corner of our society, one still walks away with a knowledge that truth and love will bring all of humanity together. An uncomfortable story can be a powerful catalyst for unity. Find out all about the Indian Act, Residential Schools, Indigenous child welfare, unmarked graves and more in the comprehensive, extremely well sourced, overview of the last 150 years of Canada and the Indian Act. Starlight tours, missing and murdered indigenous women, and the charge of genocide are all explored in an informative and concise way (under 200 pages). Filled with quotes, legislation, correspondence, historical information this book is a must have for anyone interested in the relationship between Canada and the Indigenous people for the bibliography alone. From the inception of the Indian Act to residential schools, from the potlach ban to the sixties scoop, right up to the present day. A Canadian Shame is filled with the highlights of atrocities that every Canadian should know, up until the apologies finally offered over the last decade. from the back of the book... In A Canadian Shame, Darren Grimes has collected and presented overwhelming evidence which shows beyond doubt that a monster bent on the complete destruction of the Indigenous peoples of Canada ( First Nations, Inuit, Metis, and all the other Aboriginal inhabitants of the land) has been devouring not only men and women but also children of those cultures, that this monster has been doing so for hundreds of years, that this destruction has been deliberate and systematic rather than accidental or unintended, and that lethal aspects of it continue right up to the present day.

Based on a viral article, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act is the essential guide to understanding the legal document and its repercussion on generations of Indigenous Peoples, written by a leading cultural sensitivity trainer.Since its creation in 1876, the Indian Act has shaped, controlled, and constrained the lives and opportunities of Indigenous Peoples, and is at the root of many enduring stereotypes. Bob Joseph's book comes at a key time in the reconciliation process, when awareness from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities is at a crescendo. Joseph explains how Indigenous Peoples can step out from under the Indian Act and return to self-government, self-determination, and self-reliance--and why doing so would result in a better country for every Canadian. He dissects the complex issues around truth and reconciliation, and clearly demonstrates why learning about the Indian Act's cruel, enduring legacy is essential for the country to move toward true reconciliation.

"Theodore Fontaine lost his family and freedom just after his seventh birthday, when his parents were forced to leave him at an Indian residential school by order of the Roman Catholic Church and the Government of Canada. Twelve years later, he left school frozen at the emotional age of seven. He was confused, angry and conflicted, on a path of self-destruction. At age 29, he emerged from this blackness. By age 32, he had graduated from the Civil Engineering Program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and begun a journey of self-exploration and healing.

In 2008 the Canadian government apologized to the victims of the notorious Indian residential school system, and established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission whose goal was to mend the deep rifts between Aboriginal peoples and the settler society that engineered the system. Unsettling the Settler Within argues that in order to truly participate in the transformative possibilities of reconciliation, non-Aboriginal Canadians must undergo their own process of decolonization. They must relinquish the persistent myth of themselves as peacemakers and acknowledge the destructive legacy of a society that has stubbornly ignored and devalued Indigenous experience. Today’s truth and reconciliation processes must make space for an Indigenous historical counter-narrative in order to avoid perpetuating a colonial relationship between Aboriginal and settler peoples. A compassionate call to action, this powerful book offers all Canadians – both Indigenous and not – a new way of approaching the critical task of healing the wounds left by the residential school system.

This is the Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its six-year investigation of the residential school system for Aboriginal youth and the legacy of these schools. This report, the summary volume, includes the history of residential schools, the legacy of that school system, and the full text of the Commission's 94 recommendations for action to address that legacy. This report lays bare a part of Canada's history that until recently was little-known to most non-Aboriginal Canadians. The Commission discusses the logic of the colonization of Canada's territories, and why and how policy and practice developed to end the existence of distinct societies of Aboriginal peoples. Using brief excerpts from the powerful testimony heard from Survivors, this report documents the residential school system which forced children into institutions where they were forbidden to speak their language, required to discard their clothing in favour of institutional wear, given inadequate food, housed in inferior and fire-prone buildings, required to work when they should have been studying, and subjected to emotional, psychological and often physical abuse. In this setting, cruel punishments were all too common, as was sexual abuse. More than 30,000 Survivors have been compensated financially by the Government of Canada for their experiences in residential schools, but the legacy of this experience is ongoing today. This report explains the links to high rates of Aboriginal children being taken from their families, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and high rates of suicide. The report documents the drastic decline in the presence of Aboriginal languages, even as Survivors and others work to maintain their distinctive cultures, traditions, and governance. The report offers 94 calls to action on the part of governments, churches, public institutions and non-Aboriginal Canadians as a path to meaningful reconciliation of Canada today with Aboriginal citizens. Even though the historical experience of residential schools constituted an act of cultural genocide by Canadian government authorities, the United Nation's declaration of the rights of aboriginal peoples and the specific recommendations of the Commission offer a path to move from apology for these events to true reconciliation that can be embraced by all Canadians.

Drawing from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation¿s three-volume series Truth and Reconciliation¿which comprises the titles From Truth to Reconciliation; Response, Responsibility, and Renewal; and Cultivating Canada¿acclaimed veteran broadcast-journalist and host of The Next Chapter on CBC Radio Shelagh Rogers joins series editors Mike DeGagné and Jonathan Dewar to present these selected reflections, in reader format, on the lived and living experiences and legacies of Residential Schools and, more broadly, reconciliation in Canada.

Xat'sull Chief Bev Sellars spent her childhood in a church-run residential school whose aim it was to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings, forced separation from family and culture, and discipline. In addition, beginning at the age of five, Sellars was isolated for two years at Coqualeetza Indian Turberculosis Hospital in Sardis, British Columbia, nearly six hours' drive from home. The trauma of these experiences has reverberated throughout her life. The first full-length memoir to be published out of St. Joseph's Mission at Williams Lake, BC, Sellars tells of three generations of women who attended the school, interweaving the personal histories of her grandmother and her mother with her own. She tells of hunger, forced labour, and physical beatings, often with a leather strap, and also of the demand for conformity in a culturally alien institution where children were confined and denigrated for failure to be White and Roman Catholic. Like Native children forced by law to attend schools across Canada and the United States, Sellars and other students of St. Joseph's Mission were allowed home only for two months in the summer and for two weeks at Christmas. The rest of the year they lived, worked, and studied at the school. St. Joseph's Mission is the site of the controversial and well-publicized sex-related offences of Bishop Hubert O'Connor, which took place during Sellars's student days, between 1962 and 1967, when O'Connor was the school principal. After the school's closure, those who had been forced to attend came from surrounding reserves and smashed windows, tore doors and cabinets from the wall, and broke anything that could be broken. Overnight their anger turned a site of shameful memory into a pile of rubble. In this frank and poignant memoir, Sellars breaks her silence about the institution's lasting effects, and eloquently articulates her own path to healing.

One of the first books published to deal with the phenomenon of residential schools in Canada, Resistance and Renewal is a disturbing collection of Native perspectives on the Kamloops Indian Residential School(KIRS) in the British Columbia interior. Interviews with thirteen Natives, all former residents of KIRS, form the nucleus of the book, a frank depiction of school life, and a telling account of the system's oppressive environment which sought to stifle Native culture.