Canadian Indian residential school system

Canada, June 11, 2008: Stephen Harper's apology to former students of residential schools Delivered four months after Australia's, and built on a legal settlement rather than ahead of one. The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, in force since September 2007, already provided compensation; Harper's apology acknowledged that 132 federally supported schools had separated more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their families. Its most lasting product was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission the settlement created, which gave survivors a public record far fuller than the apology itself. Read the two together to see the difference between saying sorry and accounting for what happened.