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| Volume 9, Number 2 | September 7, 2001 |
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‘Churches get too much blame in residential school lawsuits’
By Kathleen Prendergast There’s been a growing recognition of the fact that Native children in residential schools were subjected to inadequate care, overwork, inferior instruction, and excessive and discriminatory religious training, not to mention physical, sexual and cultural abuse. 
But now with more than 7,500 lawsuits launched against both the Canadian government and the churches by former residential school students and thousands more expected, the contentious issue is sorting out shares of responsibility and financial liability, says U of S History Professor Jim Miller. Residential schools were authorized and largely funded by the government, but run by the churches. Based on the level of compensation in a few successful suits, estimates are these suits could render government and churches liable for up to $1 billion. But so far the churches have been forced to carry an unfair burden of the blame, Miller says. In one landmark case, a judge apportioned liability for compensation 60 per cent to the churches and 40 per cent to government. “If applied to the pending actions, this ruling will bankrupt the Christian denomination or major parts of them,” Miller says. This 60/40 division of responsibility favoring the government does not square with historical reality, he stresses. “Bankrupting the churches would be wrong historically and socially,” he says. “The government had a much greater share of responsibility, in my opinion, than the churches did.” He notes that the government fashioned the educational policy of which residential schools were a part, and the curricula were prescribed by Ottawa, which was also responsible for inspecting the institutions. “Secondly, the churches still play a very important social role in many Aboriginal communities in Canada,” he says, noting they provide not only spiritual services but also social programs such as inner-city missions. He notes as well that Native people look to church archives for the documentation they need for land claims, schools litigation and applications to restore Indian status. He acknowledges that an easy solution is not in sight. Discussions are now taking place between the federal government and the church representatives, but they are proceeding very slowly. “There’s a real danger that the money will be gone before any Aboriginal claimants will get compensation because so far all the money is going to the lawyers,” he says. Miller’s extensive research into residential schools culminated in the book, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools, published in 1996. He was recently appointed the Canada Research Chair in Native-newcomer Relations at U of S. With $1.4 million over seven years, he will conduct research into the history of treaty-making in Canada and related issues such as present-day treaty rights and Aboriginal self-government. Contrary to the beliefs of some Canadians, Aboriginal people in Canada were always interested in acquiring Western-style education from the time of the first contact with European newcomers, he says. “Aboriginal people sought the tools and means to adjust to the change that the newcomers brought to their society and to the environment in which they lived,” Miller says. “They never eschewed or avoided change at all. Quite the contrary, they always showed amazing adaptability.” He says they turned against the residential schools not because they were against Western-style schools, but because they were denied any control over the form of the education their children were to be given. “They wanted schooling, but they didn’t want all the assimilative baggage that came with the residential schools,” Miller says, referring to the tendency of the schools to force students to deny their culture and language. Miller stresses that because U of S is situated in the province with the highest proportion of Aboriginal people, it has both “an obligation and an opportunity” to further research into topics relevant to Canada’s first people and to raise public awareness of these issues. “We have on this campus a lot of expertise involving Aboriginal people, but we need to co-ordinate this expertise,” he says. “I think we’ve got the resources to do a lot of useful and important research, important both in the scholarly realm and also that could contribute to the formation of better public policy.”
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