FOR more than a century, Canadian governments removed aboriginal children from their homes and put them in residential schools modelled on Victorian poor houses. Some 150,000 passed through 139 of these Dickensian establishments from 1883 to 1998. In the 1940s they housed nearly a third of aboriginal children of school age. Half were physically or sexually abused and around 6,000 died. Today Canada’s 1.4m aboriginal people have lower incomes on average and higher rates of incarceration, suicide and disease than the general population. Those brutal boarding schools are part of the reason.

In 2008 a “truth and reconciliation commission” was set up as part of the settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by survivors against the government and churches that operated the schools. The government has so far paid out C$4.4 billion ($3.5 billion) in compensation. On June 2nd, after seven years of sometimes excruciating testimony, the commission issued 94 recommendations. Together, they are meant to be a blueprint for reconciliation between non-aboriginal Canadians and the country’s three indigenous groups, the First Nations (who are like native Americans in the United States), the Inuit and the Métis (mixed-race descendants of French settlers).

Britain instituted the policy of forced assimilation, which Canada’s government continued after self-rule began in 1867. This tried to eradicate indigenous peoples as distinct legal, cultural and religious groups. The residential schools were part of that project, which the commission described as “cultural genocide”. Canada eventually abandoned the policy; the constitution enacted in 1982 recognises indigenous rights.

The commission wants an ambitious programme of reparation, which goes far beyond damage caused by the residential schools. Many of its recommendations address how Canada teaches history. They call for revision of textbooks to reflect aboriginal groups’ contribution to building the country, especially during the early years of colonisation, when European settlers needed their help to survive. This, and the later history of mistreatment, should be part of the curriculum in all primary schools, the commission says.

It calls on the government and churches to repudiate the “doctrine of discovery”, a 15th-century notion, once endorsed by the Catholic church, that Europeans were entitled to colonise lands they found. Breaking with the doctrine would not reverse the expropriation of indigenous lands but it would, the commission thinks, help aboriginal people come to terms with it. The commission wants the government to improve welfare for today’s indigenous children and to issue annual reports on aboriginals’ economic and social conditions.

In 2008 Stephen Harper, the prime minister, apologised for abuse in residential schools, raising hopes that relations between aboriginal Canadians and their fellow citizens could be mended. The commission’s chairman, Murray Sinclair, himself of aboriginal descent, is cautiously optimistic that Mr Harper will act on the report’s recommendations. But experience argues against it. The findings of a royal commission on aboriginal affairs in 1996 were largely ignored. This time, says Mr Sinclair, “words are not enough.”