“Someday the Prime Minister will apologize for Human Rights Commissions,” writes Deborah Gyapong:
Just as human rights commissions represent “the best progressive thought” brought to us by the new social sciences that have replaced traditional notions of the human person with a reductionist, scientific construct, so was the assimilationist policy of previous governments the best progressive thinking of that time. There was a big difference between church-run religious schools that answered a need for education and acted within the church’s mission of evangelization and a government-hijacked system that used state power to coerce attendance and mandate certain assimilation policies.
It was grievously wrong to deliberately break up aboriginal families, and deliberately try to “cleanse” vulnerable children of their culture and community bonds.
Just as it is grievously wrong to deliberately try to force people like Stephen Boissoin to violate his conscience and religious beliefs with a state-imposed apology that would be about as meaningful as those conversions to Islam by kidnapped journalists.
