The Chief of the Anaham First Nation says he hopes that the recommendations made from Tuesday’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission report in residential schools are lived up to.
Tsilhqot’in Tribal Chairman, Chief Joe Alphonse says First Nations have always maintained residential schools as cultural genocide.
“You know just because a report comes out and said it, now it’s become real,” he said.
“We’ve known and we’ve lived that.”
“Residential schools were there to strip our culture and language from us, but as First Nations, we also have to be proud that we’ve survived and now we have to try and move on and establish a better future for our children and grandchildren. ”
Alphonse says although he has not personally viewed all of the report’s 94 recommendations, including a call for new aboriginal legislation to protect languages and cultures, they are truthful.
Other key recommendations include the creation of a public inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls, fewer aboriginal children in foster care and for a statutory holiday to honor residential school survivors.
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