Trudeau devotes UN speech to Canada’s shame over Indigenous Peoples
UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used the brightest stage in international politics to shine a light on the darkest corners of Canada’s story on Thursday, devoting a speech at the United Nations General Assembly to the plight of Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
He spoke of forced migration, broken treaty promises and family separations via residential schools. These left a devastating legacy on reserves to this day, in a country whose very existence, he said, came without the consent and participation of the Indigenous populations who lived there for millenniums.
“For Indigenous peoples in Canada, the experience was mostly one of humiliation, neglect and abuse,” he said.
“There are, today, children living on reserve in Canada who cannot safely drink, or bathe in, or even play in the water that comes out of their taps. There are Indigenous parents who say goodnight to their children, and have to cross their fingers in the hopes that their kids won’t run away, or take their own lives in the night. … And for far too many Indigenous women, life in Canada includes threats of violence so frequent and severe that Amnesty International has called it ‘a human rights crisis.’