LSBC moving forward with First Nations reconciliation plan – Canadian Lawyer Magazine
14 December 2015
The Law Society of British Columbia wants all its member lawyers to read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada report, says LSBC president Ken Walker.
Walker says that by reading the report and its 94 recommendations, lawyers will gain a fuller understanding of the cultural genocide the report speaks of as it chronicles the injustices that occurred to First Nations forced into state-sponsored and church-run residential schools. “We hope that all lawyers will perhaps start to understand the wrongs to the indigenous people in Canada and how we can work to facilitate reconciliation,” he says.
Integral to the report is the role police and lawyers played in responding to complaints of abuse of children in residential care, but it also argues for greater intervention to reduce over-represented numbers of youth in custody and in the foster care system, the victimization of indigenous people, a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, and the over-represented numbers of First Nations people in prisons.
