The Associated Press

Thu, May 15, 2008 (5:42 p.m.)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will deliver a public apology for a decades-long government policy requiring Canadian Indians to attend state-funded church schools _ often scenes of physical and sexual abuse.

"The apology is a crucial step in the journey towards healing and reconciliation," Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl said Thursday.

He said that Harper will make the apology in Parliament on June 11 to Canada's First Nations, a collection of Indian groups that have been seeking such an acknowledgment for years.

From the 19th century until the 1970s, tens of thousands of aboriginal children were required to attend church-run schools in a painful attempt to rid them of their native cultures and languages and integrate them into Canadian society.

The federal government admitted 10 years ago that physical and sexual abuse in the once-mandatory schools was rampant.

Many of the surviving former students recall being beaten for speaking their native languages and losing touch with their parents and customs.

That legacy of abuse and isolation has been cited by Indian leaders as the root cause of epidemic rates of alcoholism and drug addiction on reservations.

The apology is to coincide with a truth and reconciliation commission examining abuse in native residential schools that will begin its work June 1.

The commission will spend five years traveling across the country to hear stories from former students, teachers and others involved in the so-called residential schools. The goal is to give survivors a forum to tell their stories and to educate Canadians about that dark chapter in the country's history.

In 2005, the federal government earmarked $1.7 billion in payments for aboriginal victims of sexual and psychological abuse during the forced Christian schooling.

Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First nations, did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment. He helped broker the compensation deal and hoped to help draft the apology. Fontaine raised the prospect in recent weeks that First Nations might reject the apology if it was used as a political ploy to mute a national day of protest on May 29.

In Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology in parliament in February to the so-called Stolen Generations _ thousands of Aborigines who were forcibly taken from their families as children under assimilation policies that lasted from 1910 to 1970.

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On the Net:

Assembly of First Nations: http://www.afn.ca

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada: http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca