Elder bashes ADR program

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Just days before he was called on to perform a cleansing ceremony for Prime Minister Paul Martin during his swearing in ceremony at Rideau Hall Dec. 12, Elder Elmer Courchene slammed the federal government's treatment of residential school survivors.

"It hasn't been survivor-driven," he said of the negotiations to provide compensation. "I've seen many of our Elders that have passed on already from our group. There's three offers that have been put before us. And the offers that were put forward to the survivors, it's unbelievably insulting. And when you see your fellow survivors sitting there in all hopelessness, frustration. The abandonment, the rejection that they feel, you feel it because you have lived it and you have been part of it."

The Elder has been involved in compensation negotiation on behalf of survivors in his Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba.

"The residential school, I've been involved in it for the last six years. The residential schools played a very big part in our lives. It spreads out like a mushroom. It affects us in more ways than one."

He said that a recent CBC-TV documentary he watched that dealt with how Norway dealt with the children of Nazi soldiers who occupied their country during the Second World War convinced him that Canada could do better.

"We all know that Hitler was looking for a pure race. It so happened the Norwegians, to him, were a pure race. He got his soldiers to mingle with the women and ultimately children were born. When the war was over and Norway took back its rightful place, the women and the children were scorned by their own government and their own people," he told the chiefs gathered for the Assembly of First Nations December Confederacy in Ottawa. "They went to court. The government of Norway would not compensate on cultural genocide-and residential school is cultural genocide-but they went a step further. They compensate them on principles, on principles of life."

He said Canada has done that before and wondered why it wasn't being done now.

"I met a Japanese person in the airport here in Ottawa and we began to talk," Courchene said. "And he told me about B.C. I asked how did your people handle engaging the government. He said, 'We went on principle. We based everything on principle to get something from the government.' So this last month or so, I've been thinking very heavily on principle with the residential schools with regards to culture and languages."

He also said the government's definition of physical abuse, something it is willing to compensate for, is very narrow.

"The way the government is looking at physical abuse is only that you've been hit and there's a mark that's on you for the rest of your life. When I looked at physical abuse, I looked at it this way: When I was in the residential school, poor nutrition was physical abuse, being outside and having to face the elements, the cold, was physical abuse. Even in the classroom when I was in there and we were over-crowded, it was physical abuse. All of these things, they don't want to listen to. That's why we really have to define what is physical abuse. Everything that is happening in regards to the residential schools is coming down from them. And every time we try to explain ourselves and articulate, they say it's not right," he said.

Canadians and the Canadian government have not yet come to a full realization of what was done to Native people in the school system, he said.

"When I look at the residential school and I look at the Crown, I see this. They are in denial to face their own wrong. They don't have the courage and they are afraid. But somehow, some way, we have to stand very strong," he said.

He talked about agreements with churches where compensation is paid and no action is taken against abusers. He promised to raise that issue whenever he could.

"That's opening a door to all abusers. It's OK to abuse. We can't let these kinds of things go. It doesn't only involve u. Residential school has carried through to today to child and family services. When you really study and look at residential schools, it's a big, big monster. We have lost so many of our people," the Elder said. "At one point in time I went to our own assembly chiefs and they gave us support to look at a process where we'd have something for our people for the time being while everything is being done. We drew up a plan over five years. I sent that proposal to all government in this country. Not one responded. So that tells me a lot of things. That tells me we have a lot of work to do."