PBS高端访谈:加拿大政府向土著人民拨款6亿美元

 　　Last month at the United Nations General Assembly, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to do more to help his country's 1.4 million indigenous¹ people.

　　He said there needed to be an effort to, quote, correct past injustices² and bring about a better quality of life.

　　On Friday, the Canadian government took a step to repair that relationship.

　　It agreed to pay $600 million in legal settlements for a program that for years forcibly separated indigenous children from their families and put them up for adoption³ around the country and around the world.

　　Ian Austen has been covering the story for "The New York Times" and joins me now via Skype from Ottawa.

　　Ian, let's first talk about how long running was this program? How many people would it affect?

　　We're not sure precisely⁴ how many it affected⁵ but the best guess is about 35,000 people and it started in 1965 in various parts of the country, petered out about 19, 20 years later.

　　How did the social workers determined⁶ whether a child needed to be taken out of their village, the reservation, their family?

　　Well, there were two huge problems from the outset.

　　As the federal government was planning this program, it was very much aware that there would be a danger of eroding⁷ indigenous culture.

　　So, it told the provinces that they should go and talk to leaders in indigenous communities about how social services should be provided to children.

　　For whatever reason, that was never done.

　　And what happened was, social workers were set up to these remote, often remote communities.

　　And they had no training about indigenous culture at all, and the biggest thing they didn't know about is indigenous culture has a heritage of communal⁸ child rearing.

　　I was told many years, the first time I went to a reserve, you never asked a kid who their parents are.

　　You say, where are you staying? Because they -- at that point, they might be staying with an aunts, they might be staying with a grandparent.

　　So, these social workers came up -- had no idea of any of this, looked around are around,

　　it was the antithesis⁹ of southern Canada, and for them the solution was to just take these kids away and have them adopted on

　　the thinking being that they would be better off anywhere else than they were in their homes.

　　So, what happened? They're adults now. I mean, did they sort of assimilate as the goal was or did they find themselves in a kind of weird¹⁰ no man's land

　　where they didn't fit in southern Canada, but then now they didn't fit back into the tribe?

　　This program took away -- took them right out of the reserves, took away their birth names.

　　They would get new names when they were adopted, often new given names.

　　And the court case that spurned¹¹ this settlement found that there was a terrible legacy¹² of emotional, mental and social problems affecting these people,

　　because they -- as kids, they were bullied¹³ by white kids at school.

　　So, they never felt, even if they were with a loving family, they never really felt part of white southern culture,

　　but they really couldn't go back home because they didn't know the language, you know, they had been completely pulled from that culture as well.

　　So, there are this -- there was this whole generation of people who grew up in kind of social, cultural, emotional limbo¹⁴.

　　Ian Austen of "The New York Times", joining us via Skype today from Ottawa, thanks so much. Thank you very much. undefined

1 indigenous   

adj.土产的，土生土长的，本地的

参考例句：

• Each country has its own indigenous cultural tradition.每个国家都有自己本土的文化传统。
• Indians were the indigenous inhabitants of America.印第安人是美洲的土著居民。

2 injustices   

不公平( injustice的名词复数 )； 非正义； 待…不公正； 冤枉

参考例句：

• One who committed many injustices is doomed to failure. 多行不义必自毙。
• He felt confident that his injustices would be righted. 他相信他的冤屈会受到昭雪的。

3 adoption   

n.采用，采纳，通过；收养

参考例句：

• An adoption agency had sent the boys to two different families.一个收养机构把他们送给两个不同的家庭。
• The adoption of this policy would relieve them of a tremendous burden.采取这一政策会给他们解除一个巨大的负担。

4 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

5 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

6 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

7 eroding   

侵蚀，腐蚀( erode的现在分词 )； 逐渐毁坏，削弱，损害

参考例句：

• The coast is slowly eroding. 海岸正慢慢地被侵蚀。
• Another new development is eroding the age-old stereotype of the male warrior. 另一个新现象是，久已形成的男人皆武士的形象正逐渐消失。

8 communal   

adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的

参考例句：

• There was a communal toilet on the landing for the four flats.在楼梯平台上有一处公共卫生间供4套公寓使用。
• The toilets and other communal facilities were in a shocking state.厕所及其他公共设施的状况极其糟糕。

9 antithesis   

n.对立；相对

参考例句：

• The style of his speech was in complete antithesis to mine.他和我的讲话方式完全相反。
• His creation was an antithesis to academic dogmatism of the time.他的创作与当时学院派的教条相对立。

10 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

11 spurned   

v.一脚踢开，拒绝接受( spurn的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Eve spurned Mark's invitation. 伊夫一口回绝了马克的邀请。
• With Mrs. Reed, I remember my best was always spurned with scorn. 对里德太太呢，我记得我的最大努力总是遭到唾弃。 来自辞典例句

12 legacy   

n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西

参考例句：

• They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
• He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。

13 bullied   

adj.被欺负了v.恐吓，威逼( bully的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• My son is being bullied at school. 我儿子在学校里受欺负。
• The boy bullied the small girl into giving him all her money. 那男孩威逼那个小女孩把所有的钱都给他。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 limbo   

n.地狱的边缘；监狱

参考例句：

• His life seemed stuck in limbo and he could not go forward and he could not go back.他的生活好像陷入了不知所措的境地，进退两难。
• I didn't know whether my family was alive or dead.I felt as if I was in limbo.我不知道家人是生是死，感觉自己茫然无措。