Canada’s premiers and territorial leaders are supporting First Nations chiefs as they seek to implement recommendations released last month by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The premiers and territorial leaders met with chiefs on Wednesday in Happy-Valley–Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Following the meeting Chairman Paul Davis, Newfoundland and Labrador’s premier, said he and his colleagues support all 94 Commission recommendations, aimed at achieving reconciliation.
The Commission described the suffering of generations of aboriginal children in once-mandatory residential schools as “cultural suicide,” and urged Canada to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a framework.
The Commission estimated more than 6,000 boys and girls, about one in 25, died in the institutions. Scores of others endured horrific physical and sexual abuse.
Premier Davis said the leaders and chiefs also had a wide-ranging discussion on missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls.
The RCMP estimates more than 1,200 aboriginal women and girls have been murdered since 1980 and scores are missing.
The 2011 National Household Survey suggests indigenous women make up 4.3 per cent of Canada’s female population. But police say they’re victims in 16 per cent of female homicides and account for 11 per cent of missing women.
The premiers meet Thursday and Friday in St. John’s. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is not attending.
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