Canadian PM to apologise for residential school abuses

TORONTO: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will strive to begin closing one of the darkest chapters in country's history by formally apologising to survivours of residential schools for abuses committed against them over the past century.
 
Harper will make the long-awaited apology on June 11 from the floor of the House of Commons, where he will speak to the survivors of the residential schools. Many of them continue to struggle with the painful legacy of the schools.
 
The government initially had said in last fall's Throne Speech that it would apologize to those who were among the more than 100,000 native children who passed from schools from 1874 until the mid-1970s, when most closed their doors.
 
The promise came after the government resisted repeated requests for an apology.
 
"This is going to be a very meaningful and respectful apology that first nations have been asking for, for many years," Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl said in Toronto following a speech at the Empire Club of Canada.
 
Michael Cachagee, president of the National Residential School Survivors' Society, said the apology will be meaningless if it does not include an acknowledgment of all the 'devastation' that took place inside these schools.
 
"Any apology without supportive actions is really an empty apology," 68-year-old Cachagee, himself a survivor of the system, said.
 
The schools were an extension of religious missionary work. They started receiving federal support in 1874 as part of Canada's campaign to assimilate aboriginals into Christian society by obliterating their language, religion and culture.
 
Children were forced to abandon their native language and culture, leaving many of them feeling that they did not belong to their native community or to white society.