User:Gordon Laird/United Church and Natives

This will be the creation of a subsection on the United Church of Canada and Native People:--Gordon Laird (talk) 06:50, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

The United Church of Canada and Native peoples
To assess the history before Union June 10, 1925, requires assessing the history of the two major denominations which united to form the United Church in 1925: the Methodist Church of Canada and the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

The Methodist Church in Canada and the Presbyterian Church of Canada were active in the work with aboriginal people across Canada.

Some aspects of the work were the following: Creation of congregations  setting up of hospitals, particularly under the "Women's Missionary Society"  Residential Schools across Canada Indian Residential School Background

Introduction to United Church of Canada Schools
From roughly the turn of this century it was the policy of the Government of Canada to provide education to a portion of the Aboriginal Peoples in Canada through "Indian Residential Schools." The schools were part of the general assimilationist policy of the government that was explicitly stated even into the 1950s. Most of the schools were managed on contract by four churches: Roman Catholics orders, Anglican, Presbyterian and United. The Methodist and Presbyterian churches prior to union in 1925 each had started residential schools which then became part of the United Church. It is estimated that 100,000 children attended the schools, about 20 per cent of the potential status Indian students.

The number of United Church-managed schools ranged from a high of 13 in 1927, to six in 1951, and four in 1966. In 1969 the federal government completely took over managment or closed all of the United Church-related schools. These schools were predominantly in western Canada. They tended to be in regions where mission activity and churches had been started among Aboriginal Peoples, but there is no immediate correlation between a particular denominational school and given Aboriginal communities. Children from one community, or even one family, may have attended several different schools run by different denominations even at great distance from their homes. In 1927 the United Church ran 42 day schools in Aboriginal communities as well. Chronic underfunding by government was always a concern.

The United Church's involvement in Indian Residential Schools did not develop in a vacuum. They were one strand of the work undertaken by the church to make education accessible to children for whom there were no schools because of their class, gender, ethnic origin, or religion. For the forerunners of the United Church, access to education for children of low-income families was an important strategy in the struggle to secure greater justice and to subvert the privileges of established elites.

The churches explicitly supported the assimilationist goals in running the schools. Thinking began to change in the 1940s and 1950s about the harm to children in separating them from their families and the increasingly evident failure of assimilation in practice and as a policy goal. The Apology to Native Congregations was delivered by General Council in 1986. In 1990 the churches and Canadian society more broadly began to hear the stories of former residential school students and their families, which included descriptions of cultural, physical, psychological, sexual and other abuses. In 1994 the General Council of the United Church established The Healing Fund, a $1 million fund-raising and educational campaign to support healing initiatives of First Nations.

United Church-Related "Indian Residential Schools":

Name - Province - Opened - Closed - BHM/WMS  [see below] Mount Elgin Ontario  1849  1946  BHM Norway House Manitoba  1900  1967  BHM Portage la Prairie Manitoba  1886  1970  WMS Brandon Manitoba  1895  1969  BHM Round Lake Saskatchewan  1886  1950  WMS File Hills Saskatchewan  1889  1949  BHM Red Deer Alberta  1893  1919  BHM Edmonton Alberta  1923  1966  BHM Morley Alberta  1925  1969  BHM Coqualeetza B.C.  1888  1940  WMS Alberni B.C.  1891  1973  WMS <li>Ahousaht B.C.  1904  1939  WMS <li>Port Simpson B.C.  1874  1948  BHM </uL>

BHM = Board of Home Mission WMS = Women's Missionary Society

for comparison, Present article, which needs replacing
''One notable lack in the United Church (and its antecedent denominations)’s mission may have been a ministry to indigenous peoples. Apart from a notable mission among the indigenous people of the Queen Charlotte Islands and elsewhere in British Columbia, the United Church has not especially ministered to aboriginal Canadians. In the short run this has been a financial boon to the church in that claims against the Anglican Church and against Roman Catholic orders by persons who were abused by sexually disordered mission personnel have not correspondingly involved the United Church in so large a degree of humiliating and financially crippling litigation.[2] In the long run, the credibility of the United Church in speaking on behalf of the interests of indigenous Canadians may be limited since there are very few aboriginal United Church clergy and laity.[citation needed''

This article is wrong and misleading in these ways:

1. There have been United Church Missions across Canada, not just in BC 2. The claims have also been made against the United Church, not just RC and Anglican 3. The United Church has many aboriginal clergy and laity and has some credibility in speaking out.