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how did residential schools affect indigenous people
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The rights of many people versus the rights of an individual is certainly a vexing concept. Like a delicate balancing act; if one side is favoured over the other it causes a rift in the already strained relationship between the minority and majority. Evidently, the justification of taking any side must be valid, according to the theories of H.L.A. Hart. In the past, Canadian law has violated the rights of minorities; however, these violations have decreased in their severity as time has passed on. Some cases where the balance between minority and majority rights is questioned is in The Canadian Indian Residential School System, Bill 101, Equality in the Workplace and The Public Service Act.
To begin, Aboriginal rights have, historically, been largely ignored in Canada’s past. Even before Confederation, there were efforts to assimilate the Aboriginal People into “Canadian” society; the prevailing thought was that the Aboriginal population was decreasing and it would be best for them to adapt the way of “normal” society. The most popular way to go about this assimilation was to take the children of Aboriginal families and send them to residential schools. These boarding schools were run by the federal government and attendance was mandatory. The goal was to raise the children devoid of any Aboriginal beliefs and teach them proper European ways – the children were punished if they spoke in their own language or followed their traditions and culture; every aspect of their life was stripped from their culture and Europeanised. They underwent emotional, physical and sexual abuse. All of these were serious violations of individual rights, and has been referred to as cultural genocide. The BNA Act of 1867, allowed the federal government...
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...da, "Employment Equity Act Review: A Report to the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities." Last modified March 3, 2003. Accessed April 5, 2012. http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/lp/lo/lswe/we/review/report/main.shtml.
Canadian Human Rights Commission, "Settlement Examples for 2009." Last modified June 13, 2011. Accessed April 5, 2012. http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/disputeresolution_reglementdifferends/se_2009_ee-eng.aspx.
Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs Canada, "Lavoiev. Canada (C.A.)." Last modified April 3, 2012. Accessed April 5, 2012. http://reports.fja.gc.ca/eng/2000/2000fc24525.html.
Canadian Human Rights Commission, "Key Issues in Employment Equity in 2002." Last modified September 9, 2011. Accessed April 5, 2012. http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/publications/page8-eng.aspx.
"Criminal Code of Canada." Criminal Code of Canada. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2013. .
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was implemented 1982 has been essential in providing justice for all Canadian citizens. Countless amounts of cases have been decided to create the Charter that is well known in today’s society. Sharon Turpin and Latif Siddiqui were accused of first degree murder and according to the law, the trial was supposed to be tried by a judge and jury. The accused demanded a trial by judge alone because they believed that they were entitled to such a right. The R. v. Turpin case was a significant case that was tough to decide upon because there were many violations of different statutes such as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the Criminal
Blair, Annice. Law in Action: Understanding Canadian Law. Toronto, Ontario: Pearson Education Canada, 2003. Print.
Zhang, Colin, ed. “Canadian Criminal Code.” YourLaws. N.p., 11 Nov. 2013. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. .
"Timeline of Human Rights Development in Canada—Key." Timeline of Human Rights Development in Canada—Key. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 May 2014.
LaPrairie, C. (1998). The new justice: Some implications for aboriginal communities. Canadian Journal of Criminology. 40 (1), 61-79.
Alexis de Tocqueville discussed how he believed that majority rules in the United States. He writes about how the majority in America has control over the opinions of the masses and how people do not think for themselves. The latter part of that is true. The masses do not form many of their own opinions but these opinions are not given to them, like Tocqueville says, by the majority. These "ready made opinions" (Tocqueville 11) are given to American people by a powerful few. Tocquville's writing does not apply to the US today because several kinds of minorities wield inordinate amounts of power in modern American society.
Aboriginal people in Canada are the native peoples in North America within the boundaries of present-day Canada. In the 1880’s there was a start of residential schools which took Aboriginal kids from their family to schools to learn the Roman Catholics way of culture and not their own. In residential schools Aboriginal languages were forbidden in most operations of the school, Aboriginal ways were abolished and the Euro-Canadian manner was held out as superior. Aboriginal’s residential schools are careless, there were mental and physical abuse, Aboriginals losing their culture and the after effects of residential schools.
On February 21 and 22 of this year, the Supreme Court of Canada was asked to rule whether th...
Maidment, M. (2009). When justice is a game: Unravelling wrongful convictions in Canada. Canada: Fernwood Publishing.
“Honey, you’re not a person, now get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich!” If a husband were to say these words to his wife today, he would likely receive a well-deserved smack to the face. It is not until recently that Canadian women have received their status as people and obtained equal rights as men. Women were excluded from an academic education and received a lesser pay than their male counter parts. With the many hardships women had to face, women were considered the “slave of slaves” (Women’s Rights). In the past century, women have fought for their rights, transitioning women from the point of being a piece of property to “holding twenty-five percent of senior positions in Canada” (More women in top senior positions: Report). The Married Women’s Property Act, World War I, The Person’s Case, and Canadian Human Rights Act have gained Canadian women their rights.
Griffiths, C. T. (2007). Canadian Criminal Justice: A Primer (3rd Edition ed.). Toronto: Thomson Nelson.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted under the Pierre Trudeau government on April 17, 1982. According to Phillip Bryden, “With the entrenchment of the Charter into the Canadian Constitution, Canadians were not only given an explicit definition of their rights, but the courts were empowered to rule on the constitutionality of government legislation” (101). Prior to 1982, Canada’s central constitutional document was the British North America Act of 1867. According to Kallen, “The BNA Act (the Constitution Act, 1867) makes no explicit reference to human rights” (240). The adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms significantly transformed the operation of Canada’s political system. Presently, Canadians define their needs and complaints in human rights terms. Bryden states, “More and more, interest groups and minorities are turning to the courts, rather than the usual political processes, to make their grievances heard” (101). Since it’s inception in 1982 the Charter has become a very debatable issue. A strong support for the Charter remains, but there also has been much criticism toward the Charter. Academic critics of the Charter such as Robert Martin believe that the Charter is doing more harm than good, and is essentially antidemocratic and UN-Canadian. I believe that Parliament’s involvement in implementing the Charter is antidemocratic, although, the Charter itself represents a democratic document. Parliament’s involvement in implementing the Charter is antidemocratic because the power of the executive is enhanced at the expense of Parliament, and the power of the judiciary is enhanced at the expense of elected officials, although, the notwithstanding clause continues to provide Parliament with a check on...
Residential schools were first established in the 1880's to solve Canada's “Indian Problem”. Settlers in Canada thought of the First Nations people as savages, and the goal of the residential schools was to civilize them and integrate them in to white Canadian society. The first operators of residential schools thought of their forced integration as a benefit to native peoples. One of the overseers of residential schools wrote to the Sisters in charge of St. Joseph's Mission at Williams Lake that “It now remains for ...
Al-Waqfi & Jain (2008) examine racial discrimination trends in the employment circles in Canada using data that is sampled from randomly selected legal cases that are documented from the Canadian Human Rights’ groups. This article describes some of the major theoretical perspectives that describe racial discrimination. Of significant importance is the trend in such employment discrimination within the last two decades. Through the help of data from the documented legal cases, Al-Waqfi & Jain (2008) assert that racial diversity within Canada’s population as well as workforce has been on the rise. The two authors use reliable census data to demonstrate how the statistics of the victims of such discrimination have almost tripled in the last ...