Harper must extend funding to Aboriginal Healing Foundation: Ashton

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Tue, 03/30/2010 - 11:29am

NDP

OTTAWA – New Democrat MP Niki Ashton (Churchill) is making a last-minute appeal directly to the Prime Minister to extend the funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

"The Aboriginal Healing Foundation has given healing and hope to survivors, their families and their communities for ten years but the need for healing is not over,” says Ashton. “We are appealing to the Prime Minister to save the Aboriginal Healing Foundation."

The AHF provide resources which promote reconciliation and encourage and support Aboriginal people and their communities in building and reinforcing sustainable healing processes that address the legacy of physical, sexual, mental, cultural, and spiritual abuses in the residential school system, including intergenerational impacts.

Funding for the AHF expires March 31, 2010. This would mean ending up to 131 community based projects in every province and territory in Canada.

"The importance of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation is its work in communities, on the ground. The loss of such programming would be devastating," says Ashton.

Ashton, who has been spearheading a National campaign to save the AHF, will be presenting petitions signed by thousands of Canadians in supporting the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

"First Nations, Metis and Inuit and non Aboriginal people from coast to coast to coast have spoken out. We are asking the Federal Government to follow the legacy of the National Residential Schools Apology and its commitment to reconciliation by saving the Aboriginal Healing Foundation."

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