The Diocese of New Westminster has had a long relationship with people of the First Nations within its boundaries, even before it became a diocese. However residential schools have not been part of that relationship. A brief history of our relations between Aboriginal people and the Diocese gives more details.

Having had no residential schools within its boundaries, the Diocese of New Westminster is now not directly involved in lawsuits claiming damages for proven abuse of children in some institutions. Neither have claims for damages been brought against the Diocese which the national church and some other diocese face, which have arisen from the federal government's assimilation policy in the schools that involved the national church. A diocesan update on the situation - a checklist of facts - is available. More information about the status of donations to the Diocese in the light of the lawsuits is also provided.

The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada (the national church) has a large amount of current information on its pages titled, Residential Schools, Legacy and Response. You can reach it here.

The Diocese of New Westminster has interacted with Aboriginal people since 1859 when it was part of the Diocese of British Columbia. It has been a mixed history. Missionaries worked hard to alleviate suffering amongst the First Nations - often caused by diseases that Europeans had brought and by poverty that came with the loss of land and other resources. 

Missionaries learned Chinook jargon and a few words in local languages in order to preach the Word of God. Founding bishop Acton Sillitoe's wife Violet wrote: "I used sometimes to think that the Indians were nearer to [the Bishop's] heart than any other members of his flock." And Sillitoe in the 1880s was criticizing the federal government's treatment of Indians as a "policy of promises… as unsafe as it is unjust…as cruel as it is short-sighted." 

But all Europeans came to North America - including ministers of the gospel - with inborn assumptions about Aboriginals and their culture. They were often extremely condescending about the "simple and happy" Indians. While Bishop Sillitoe did enjoy potlatches, he was very suspicious of Aboriginal shamans, and at least in one case brought in a medical missionary to curb a "medicine man's" influence. 

And during the 1800's until 1969, the Anglican Church of Canada, along with Roman Catholics, Presbyterians and Methodists, participated willingly in a federal policy of assimilation to "wean" Aboriginal children from their own culture by sending them to residential schools. Such a policy, one federal superintendent of Indian Affairs said in 1920, should "continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question…" A few residential schools were well run. Most were seriously underfunded, and in some - including Anglican schools - students were physically and sexually abused. 

In 1969 the churches pulled out of their association with the federal government in the running of residential schools. The General Synod of the Anglican Church adopted the Hendry report, a call for basic changes in attitudes toward First Nations peoples. "The Church must listen to the Native Peoples," it declared. 

In 1993, the Primate of the Anglican Church, Michael Peers, formally apologized for the church's role in the policy of assimilation, and for the physical, sexual, cultural, and emotional abuse that took place in residential schools. 

The brief history that follows comes from the Aboriginal History Project of the Diocese of New Westminster, and edited by consultant Shirley Harding, until recently Diocesan Consultant for Aboriginal Ministry, with research by Roberta L. Bagshaw. Original design work was done by Thomas Roach.