Monday, June 06, 2005

Federal Government Compensation package Fiascoe

Rose Henry Response to the Federal Government Response to the Residential School Fiascoes
What is the price tag for all the years of un-necessary suffering at residential schools that our country’s pre-Canadian have had imposed on them because of their race?
Canada’s pre-Canadian have had to endure this invasion at a settlement price of just barely over twenty-nine thousand dollars per child who attend residential school.
Of the $83 million spent last year by the federal Office of Indian Residential Schools Resolution, $17m (or 20%) - was used to resolve 593 claims. The rest paid for government lawyers, staff salaries, research fees and other administrative costs.
Thousands of First Nations children were forced to attend residential schools over a six decade time period before the majority of the schools were force to close permanently in latter half of the 1970’s, with the last closing in 1996.
Compensating for every former pupil wouldn't be cheap for the FN communities or federal government due to the exceeding amount of adults now disclosing the amount of abuse and neglect they have suffered since their early childhood.
The detrimental effects of the financial ramification that have cost our country are huge. Especially when one considers the amount of paid work each individual has missed, the amounts of times each person has ended up in using our health care system through premature deaths due to depression and addictions, the onset of poor health conditions because of the lack of access to their traditional foods and medicines, to being uneducated because the former residential school system that instilled a fear of this system and therefore have passed their experiences onto the children.
I personally think that this compensation package should be extended to include
1. one hundred percent Health care coverage to help this race out with the trauma that they have had to endure for decades.
2. A public apology to all FN and their descendants should be delivered verbatim from all the governments and churches that were responsible for these schools existence.
3. The perpetrators of these institutions should also pick-up the cost of all legal fees and not tax the recipients of this settlement.
As the settlement reads right now the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) says each student (or their descendants) should get $10,000 plus $3,000 for each year spent in the schools that were meant to "Christianize" them.
"I have no reason to believe that the claimants and (their) lawyers will not work with (judge Iacobucci) in a spirit of good faith.
"They want fairness for their clients, but they want finality as well."
These words have been echoed through history with the signing of each treaty and acts that have passed through Parliament. They have also fallen to the side because the rest of Canada as successful and progressive as it has become has failed to honor and respect its first people. So reestablishing a trusting relationship with the FN community should be deemed essential if this is country going to continue to progress in a healthier future and not loose its pre-Canadian citizens.
What I would like to hear and see from all parties involved in this process is a commitment to follow through with their agreements, that there never be another residential school set up, and that there be some kind of guaranteed livable income for all

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Justice or is It A In-JUSTICE?

Essay writing
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Rose H.

Although we pay dearly for our legal system, we do not always get justice because we cannot define justice with one word. Since our country consists of many different levels of governments and was built by people with strong ethnic connections from all over the world, the word justice has taken on many different meanings.
For instance the upholding of what is just for one person does not mean that it will be the same for another person, especially when it comes to fair treatment if the injustice was based on a person’s capabilities, skin color or gender.
The current justice system is not flexible enough to encompass the different ways people have of saying what has happened to them during their interaction with justice issues. Victims or witnesses of this system usually do not have enough time to tell the whole impact of what has happened to them, or what they witnessed. To get conformity to truth, fact, or sound reason from a person’s response in one sentence or word is almost impossible. Getting victims’ to repeat their answers, in a verbatim style response is just as challenging. Some times if a victim or a witness has to recite an event, in a verbatim style, their story will begin to change unintentionally as time goes on.
To deliver fairness to all is a challenge, especially when you are dealing with young people, people with disabilities, or people of a different race. For instance when you are dealing with a school incident the teacher will usually ask who started the incident. A witness might come forward and start telling the truth as to how they saw things. Then, somewhere during this action the truth changes, and the witness ends the story with a reflection of the teacher’s impatience, or the perpetrator’s threatening vibes. The end results could become detrimental for all parties involved, especially if a transformation of the witness happens. These people could very easily change, from being a witness role, to a victim’s role through their desires to accommodate the time restriction imposed on them.
Finding a justice system that encompasses all races and ethnic back grounds means that our law makers must create a new justice system, by rewriting the current one and making it more flexible to encompass everyone, or they must reinforce a justice system that is currently excluding people.
The challenge of creating a legal system that would encompass the beliefs and laws of everyone who partakes directly or indirectly within the main stream justice system, has been an in surmountable obstacle for our law makers, many of whom, come from the old colonization education system that does not work in today’s changing world.