Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the United Nations Thursday as part of the organization’s annual gathering of world leaders.
As expected, he focused on the treatment of Canada’s Indigenous peoples and his government’s plans to address their grievances and struggles, including the long-standing and chilling legacy of residential schools, established in the late 19th Century to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture.
An estimated 150,000 First Nation, Inuit and Metis children attended the schools. An estimated 3,200 children died from tuberculosis, malnutrition and other diseases resulting from poor living conditions.
The last residential school closed in 1996 and Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a public apology in 2008.
Trudeau said Canada came into being without the consent and participation of the Indigenous populations who had lived on the land for millenniums.
“For Indigenous peoples in Canada, the experience was one mostly one of humiliation, neglect and abuse,” Trudeau said before laying out his government’s plans to rectify the problems: better infrastructure and housing on reserves, signing the UN Declaration of Indigenous Peoples and dismantling the old Department of Indian Affairs.
“Canada remains a work in progress,” he said. “For all the mistakes we’ve made, we remain hopeful.”
Other parts of his speech focused on climate change and international trade rules aimed at helping workers.
The address came as Canada continues to seek one of 10 rotating non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council in 2021-22, a seat, Trudeau said, that Canada deserves.
On Wednesday, Trudeau held seven bilateral meetings with other leaders, including Tajikstani President Emomali Rahmon, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
With files from Canadian Press, CBC, Huffington Post and the Globe and Mail.
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