Government funding restored to Aboriginal healing group
The Charlottetown-based group Aboriginal Survivors for Healing will resume its work this week after a one-month hiatus that it was forced to take when its government funding was cut.
The group, which provides counselling to survivors of the residential school system and their families, had been getting $200,000 a year from the federal government through the Aboriginal Healing Foundation for the past 10 years, but that funding ran out at the end of March.
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“Traditional services are not available anywhere else in this province,” said project co-ordinator Tarry Hewitt on Monday. “After 100 years of residential schools, they expected those issues to be addressed in 10 to 15 years. It’s just not realistic.”
Canada’s church-run, government-funded residential schools, which operated from the 19th century up until 1996, aimed to assimulate aboriginal children into white society. Children were not allowed to speak their native language and often endured physical and sexual abuse.
