Manitoba opposition leader confronts new Indigenous minister over residential school remarks
Manitoba’s leader of the Opposition confronted the province’s new Indigenous reconciliation minister Thursday over the new minister’s comments about residential schools.
NDP Leader Wab Kinew interrupted a press conference question-and-answer period Thursday after Alan Lagimodiere, who was shuffled into the new post an hour before, said he believed children were sent to residential schools to learn new skills.
“They thought they were doing the right thing,” Lagimodiere said of the residential school system. “In retrospect, it’s easy to judge in the past, but at the time they really thought that they were doing the right thing.”
“From my knowledge of it, the residential school system was designed to take Indigenous children and give them the skills and abilities they would need to fit into society as it moved forward.”
At that point, Kinew stepped in and firmly challenged the new minister’s statements.
“I cannot accept you saying what you just said about residential schools. It was the express intent of residential schools to ‘kill the Indian in the child,'” he said.
“It is not cultural relativism, it is not revisionist history for us to say that that was wrong.”
Lagimodiere apologized immediately after the press conference.
Please see my statement below. pic.twitter.com/tNzE5bSM6U
— Dr. Alan Lagimodiere (@AlanLagimodiere) July 15, 2021
Lagimodiere was shuffled into the position after Eileen Clarke, the former minister, resigned earlier this week.
Her resignation came after Premier Brian Pallister made remarks after the toppling of statues of queens Elizabeth and Victoria.
“It is not my intent to divide or be disrespectful, but I do feel transparency is required,” she posted on social media.
“Strong leadership is required to heal and bring our province and country together in harmony, it can not be done by one individual. Inappropriate words and actions can be very damaging.”
Last week, Pallister said people who came to Canada did not come to destroy things, but to build up communities.
“The people who came here to this country, before it was a country and since, didn’t come here to destroy anything. They came here to build. They came to build better,” he said.
“We need to respect our heritage just as we need to respect one another…. Not to find fault, not to tear down, not to highlight every failure, but rather to realize that we’re a complex country as we are made up of complex people,” Pallister said at a July 7 news conference, where he also added that the statues would be restored.
Hello, my name is Sazidur. I'm a freelencer from the Assam India.
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