The chief of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation says National Aboriginal Day on Tuesday would be an appropriate time for the premier to make a formal apology on behalf of the Yukon government for the brutalities experienced by generations of Yukon residential school students, their families and communities.

“I think that would be a wonderful day for the Yukon government to make an apology, but if they are going to make an apology it has to be sincere,” Chief Doris Bill said in an interview earlier this month.

Tomorrow will be the 20th National Aboriginal Day in Canada.

The day recognizes the heritage and diverse cultures of Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples, and is celebrated with music, food, dancing and special events across the country.

Premier Darrell Pasloski is in Vancouver today for a meeting of Canadian finance ministers (see story, p. 11), and could not be reached for comment.

The premier was going to miss National Aboriginal Day in the Yukon, but changed his plans suddenly this morning. He will now be in Whitehorse for the holiday, but it is unclear how he will participate, or if he intends to make an apology that day.

The premiers of Alberta and Ontario have issued formal apologies for provincial government policies that supported the residential school system, and government silence in the face of harm inflicted on indigenous peoples as a result of these policies.

Student deaths, as well as the physical, sexual and psychological abuse, were ubiquitous in residential schools, and residual trauma continues to be felt in indigenous communities today.

“Although the province of Alberta did not establish this system, members of this chamber did not take a stand against it,” Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said in June 2015.

“For this silence, we apologize.”

Kathleen Wynne, the premier of Ontario, delivered her apology in the provincial legislature on May 30. That was nearly one year after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released a summary of it’s report on the residential school system, and its 94 Calls to Action to redress the harm and begin to heal as a country.

“I apologize for the province’s silence in the face of abuses and deaths at residential schools. And I apologize for the fact that the residential schools are only one example of systemic, intergenerational injustices inflicted upon indigenous communities throughout Canada,” said Wynne.

“The act of apology is not the end, nor is it the beginning. It is but one step on the journey to reconciliation and healing that we are committed to walking together.”

Former prime minister Stephen Harper apologized for residential schools on behalf of the Canadian government and Canadians in 2008.

“To the approximately 80,000 living former students, and all family members and communities, the Government of Canada now recognizes that it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this,” he said. 

“We now recognize that, far too often, these institutions gave rise to abuse or neglect and were inadequately controlled, and we apologize for failing to protect you.”

The day after Harper made his apology in 2008, Todd Hardy, the then-leader of the Yukon NDP, called on the Yukon government to make a similar gesture.

“I’m hoping that maybe this fall, we could build on this and move forward from a territorial perspective and make a very formal apology in the legislative assembly,” he told the CBC at the time.

During a sitting of the legislature in 2008, the late NDP leader urged the government to issue a formal apology for residential schools in the Yukon to Yukon First Nations.

Dennis Fentie, who was the Yukon Party premier at the time, amended Hardy’s motion so that instead of issuing its own apology, the territory would “acknowledge and fully endorse” Harper’s apology, and the legislative assembly agreed.

Pasloski has not made a formal apology on behalf of the Yukon government, but he has acknowledged the sordid legacy of residential schools in the territory.

“All Canadians have a responsibility to understand the impact of residential schools and our role in the healing process,” the premier said in a statement last June, a week after the TRC came out with its 94 Calls to Action.

“The Yukon government is committed to the ongoing work of building a healthy and optimistic future for all Yukoners.”

The TRC commissioners determined that the residential school system was a central component of the “cultural genocide” that Canada committed against its first peoples.

Residential schools intentionally sought to destroy the language, culture and indigenous identity of students, in part through removing children from their families and traditional ways of life.

There were four residential schools and two hostels for indigenous children in the Yukon, and one in northern British Columbia that was attended by Yukon First Nation students.

At these residential schools, as at residential schools across Canada, children suffered physical, sexual and psychological abuse at the hands of those who were charged with caring for them and teaching them. And there were deaths.

The TRC called the Canadian government’s apology “a necessary first step,” but reconciling with the dark history of the residential school system, and healing from it, will take much much more than words.

“The words of the apologies will ring hollow if Canada’s actions fail to produce the necessary social, cultural, political, and economic change that benefits aboriginal peoples and all Canadians,” the TRC report reads.

“Reparations for historical injustices must include not only apology, financial redress, legal reform, and policy change, but also the rewriting of national history and public commemoration.

“In every region of the country, survivors and others have sent a strong message, as received by this Commission: for reconciliation to thrive in the coming years, Canada must move from apology to action.”