| Editor's Note: Canada has long maintained that its people are tolerant of immigrants. That isn't entirely true - racial or ethnic prejudice usually bubbles below the surface and seldom erupts into overt hate and/or violence. But it is still there - worse in some areas and toward some people more than others, but present nonetheless. However, Canada has long tried to hide its racial intolerance toward the original settlers in this land, the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. Concerted and deliberate efforts were made to kill off many Aboriginal people and for those Aboriginals allowed to live, Canada's government signed numerous treaties and has failed to live up to almost all of them. Perhaps worst of all was the programmes designed to rip Indigenous children away from their homes and communities, and to jail them in forced boarding schools - known as Residential Schools - where no effort was spared to 'beat the Indian out of the Indian' and turn these kids into obedient little vassals of White Canada. The children ended up being shunned by both Indigenous and White society because they no longer fit in either. Many Indigenous people felt these children were apples - 'white on the inside and red on the outside'; White society simply considered them to be 'redskins' and not acceptable in polite society. The recent news of 215 bodies buried at a Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia - a school run by the Roman Catholic Church - has caused the history that Canada has tried so diligently to hide to come out in the open again. There are calls to survey ALL the Residential School properties with ground-penetrating x-ray because no one believes that 215 is the full tally. The government of Canada bears huge responsibility for the abuses of the Residental Schools - run by the government and the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches - but 'so sorry' just isn't enough. And certainly those churches bear a huge responsibility. The song that follows is very much about the Residential School system and the travesty it caused. - prh, ed. |