People march to city hall in Quesnel, B.C., while singing and drumming,
First Nations in B.C.'s Cariboo region say they won't work with the City of Quesnel until Mayor Ron Paull steps down. His wife, Pat Morton, has been handing out a book that questions whether residential schools were harmful to Indigenous communities.
"We can't have a community that hands out hate literature and expect people to listen to us and to take it seriously."Three city councillors, several First Nations, and some locals are demanding the mayor of Quesnel resign after his wife handed out a controversial book about residential schools. But those efforts have been threatened after a March 19 meeting where council received a letter of concern from the Lhtako Dene about a book being distributed in the community by Morton.by authors C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan, contains essays that its publisher says challenge several assertions made about the harms of residential schools.
It also heard testimony that many of the children who attended the schools were physically, sexually or psychologically abused, ultimately characterizing the system as a "cultural genocide." "We have a whole room full of elders and survivors here," Chief Lebrun said during the meeting. "They could go on all night and tell you what they went through. It hurts them that much that they would relive that, just to let you know."Morton, the mayor's wife, also stepped up to the microphone to speak.
She accused the city of spreading misinformation because council had read a letter from the B.C. Assembly of First Nations into the record, which included a reference to unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Residential School.
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