Church in the World

Churches accused over deaths of aboriginal children

Canada

A coalition of aboriginals in Canada has issued an ultimatum to Canada's main Churches and the federal Government to disclose how thousands of children came to die in their care between 1840 and 1940.

The coalition, the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared, wrote to the Canadian Government, the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church and the United Church of Canada threatening to take the Churches to the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide. The coalition gave the Churches until 4 March to reveal the cause of death and burial sites of nearly 40,000 aboriginal children who died in schools run by the Churches for the Government. In addition the group wants a formal apology that uses the word "genocide".

The demands were delivered on 8 February to the Prime Minister's office and the office of the Archdiocese of Toronto. Similar letters have been delivered to the Queen and the Pope.

British and colonial authorities established Residential Schools in the 1860s for the education and assimilation of aboriginal students. There were 130 schools, 70 per cent of which were run by the Catholic Church. Federal law made attendance mandatory and during the first 60 years of the schools' operation an estimated half of the students died or disappeared. The schools were abolished in the 1970s after years of protest, though Church involvement had ended by 1969. In 2005 the federal Government reached an out-of-court settlement with survivors of the system, almost 90,000, that included cash payments and the agreement to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The Catholic Church has committed itself to fully co-operating with the Commission but insists any further action will depend on the outcome of the inquiry.

n Catholics in Australia have welcomed their new Government's decision to make a formal apology to its indigenous people - especially the "stolen generations" of Aborigines forcibly removed from their families when they were children - the first substantive act of the forty-second Parliament, which met for the first time this week. Archbishop Barry Hickey of Perth, chairman of the Bishops' Commission for Relations with Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, said the apology could help break the impasse that had restricted the effectiveness of government programmes for Aboriginal advancement.