Canada’s hypocrisy: Recognizing genocide except its own against Indigenous peoples

[beijingwalker]

Canada’s hypocrisy: Recognizing genocide except its own against Indigenous peoples
June 5, 2021 2.20am AES


The Canadian Parliament is sometimes at the cutting edge of genocide recognition and human rights.

Earlier this year, the House of Commons passed a non-binding motion to recognize China’s treatment of Muslim Uyghurs as genocide. It was a principled and courageous stand and Canada was just the second country in the world to take this position.

A report by a prominent British legal team documented crimes of the genocide which included “evidence of Uyghur children being forcibly removed from their parents,” placed in orphanages and mandatory boarding schools.

It also said children “are deprived of the opportunity to practise their Uyghur culture…are sometimes given Han names, and are sometimes subject to adoption by Han ethnic families.” The report concludes there is enough evidence that their forced removal is carried out with the intention of “destroying the Uyghur population as an ethnic group.”

Shameful history of residential schools
Similar descriptions could be applied to what churches and governments in Canada did to Indigenous children who were sent to Indian Residential Schools.

Is it a double standard for Canada to recognize the Uyghurs and not Indigenous people? It’s a question that needs to be considered once again after the recent announcement by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation that a ground penetrating radar specialist had discovered the buried remains of 215 children who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School.


In addition to the February motion against China’s treatment of its Uyghur population, Canada recognizes seven other genocides: the Holocaust during the Second World War, the Armenian genocide, the Ukrainian famine genocide (Holodomor), the Rwandan genocide, the Srebrenica massacres, the mass killing of the Yazidi people and the mass murder of the Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar.

Recognition of our country’s own genocide against Indigenous people is long overdue.

A violation of UN convention
There have been calls for Parliament to recognize the Indian Residential Schools as a violation of the United Nations Genocide Convention, in particular of Article 2e which prohibits “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Almost two decades ago, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) described the residential school system as “the forcible transfer of children from one racial group to another with the intent to destroy the group.” AFN National Chief Atleo made reference to genocide in 2011, as has current National Chief Perry Bellegarde, who reiterated his views on genocide after the announcement of the discovery of the graves in Kamloops.

There is ample evidence in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission final report of state intentions, legislation, actions and legacies of genocide.

Sen. Murray Sinclair regularly discussed the Indian Residential Schools system as violating Article 2e and stated that he would have put this in the TRC’s Final Report, had it been permitted.

As he explained in an interview with me for my book The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation:

“I had written a section for the report in which I very clearly called it genocide and then I submitted that to the legal team and I said, can I say this, or, can we say this? And the answer came back unanimously no, we can’t as per our mandate, because we can’t make a finding of culpability, and that’s very clear. So, we did the next best thing.”

The TRC ultimately concluded that cultural genocide had been committed in the Indian Residential School system, while also making hints throughout the report that the government was culpable of more.

Preventable deaths
The discovery of the graves of 215 Indigenous children makes it clear that preventable deaths were always a part of the Indian Residential School system. We are now at the beginning of compiling the evidence of mass deaths in the schools.

Ground radar scans will help us get to the truth, and Sinclair believes the death toll may reach 15,000 lives. But we need not wait for the results of these investigations to make a conclusion of genocide. We have ample evidence of violations of Article 2e.

Remember that Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, was clear that genocide need not mean killing. In 1944 he wrote:

“The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.”

Killing marks only the final stage of genocide. Lemkin was clear that “the machine gun” was often “a last resort” instead of the primary means of destruction.

In 2016, MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette, with help from Maeengan Linklater, a Winnipeg man whose parents went to residential schools, introduced C-318 “An Act to establish Indian Residential School Reconciliation and Memorial Day.” It called for Parliament to recognize that “the actions taken to remove children from families and communities to place them in residential schools meets this (UN) definition of genocide.”

Never debated
This private member’s bill didn’t make it to the committee stage and was never debated or discussed in the House. Bills have a long and complex route through Parliament to be enacted into law.

A motion, like the one about the Uyghur genocide, is a much shorter and simpler process and can be passed quickly. However, a motion in Parliament must pass unanimously; there can be no votes against. In the Uyghur case 266 voted for genocide recognition and the rest chose to abstain, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and most of the cabinet.

Within days of the news about the discovery in Kamloops, the Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council at Keeshkeemaquah, Man., recommended that “the Parliament of Canada should recognize the Indian Residential School system as an act of genocide.”

I wholeheartedly agree. A motion to recognize the Indian Residential School system as a violation of Article 2e of the UN Genocide Convention can go some way towards establishing a ground floor of truth on which we can build for the coming generations.

Canada’s hypocrisy: Recognizing genocide except its own against Indigenous peoples

Canada has officially recognized eight genocides that have happened around the world. It has not done the same for its own treatment of Indigenous children who they sent to Indian Residential Schools.

theconversation.com

 

[beijingwalker]

Source: TRT World

Explained: Canada’s 'cultural genocide' of Indigenous people

• 25 JUN 2021

Most recently, the Indigenous community discovered 751 unmarked graves belonging to mostly children in Saskatchewan, unearthing another terrible evidence of Canadian persecution.

For centuries, Indigenous people have lived across North America from today’s Canada to the US and Mexico, dominating the continent with their simple, nature-friendly lifestyles.
But with colonialist European nations’ coming to the region in the late 16th century, things changed radically across North America as the British, Spanish and French empires began occupying large swathes of the continent, forcing Indigenous populations to abide by their laws and accept their culture.
In the process of brutal European colonisation, many Indigenous people have incrementally disappeared due to illnesses and epidemics, most of which were brought to the Americas by colonialists, as well as forced migrations and armed attacks imposed by colonial powers.
Canada’s Indigenous people also got their share of those brutal colonial policies, losing many members of their communities alongside their beautiful landscapes to both French and British colonialists. While in the past they were the only people living across today’s Canada, under forced assimilation policies their population decreased considerably, currently making up nearly 5 percent of the country’s total population.
Two recent discoveries of hundreds of unmarked graves in Canada’s Catholic Church-run boarding schools have brought new attention to the country’s past assimilation policies for Indigenous people and its brutal consequences.
Canada’s boarding schools, where thousands of Indigenous children forcibly separated from their families were kept under inhumane conditions, had been long used as means of assimilation, turning Indigenous-origin people into a Canadian-European way of life.
Thousands of Indigenous children, who ended up in those boarding schools, went missing while many survivors lost their national identity. Recently discovered unmarked graves in those former school fields are horrific testimonies of Canada’s past assimilation policies.

Former Indigenous student Alex Auigbelle watches the apology made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper on television to people affected by the Residential Schools at the River Cree Resort and Casino in Enoch, Alberta, Canada on June 11, 2008. (The Canadian Press, Edmonton Sun, Jason Franson / AP Archive)
Canada’s assimilation policies
Since the 18th century, Canada’s colonial and post-colonial authorities have used different assimilation tactics to subjugate Indigenous people into the Canadian-European state’s political identity.
As it happened in the British-led American colonies and later under the independent US government, religion and education have been two important tools for Canadian authorities to assimilate Indigenous populations. Laws like the Gradual Civilization Act and the Indian Act were implemented by the Canadian state to impose its political project of assimilation step by step in the name of civilising “savage Indians”.
Despite Canada being a secularist state, these laws kept non-Christian Indigenous people out of the justice system, banning them to testify or have a case across the country’s courts. The discriminatory laws also prohibited Aboriginal people to wear their traditional dress or dance like their ancestors did, seeing those practices as non-Christian acts.
The laws also aimed to develop a sedentary lifestyle for nomadic Indigenous tribes. The Canadian government initially appeared to aim to create farming villages for its Aboriginal population, bringing them into areas close to cities, but the project failed.
Then, the creation of Indian reserves, which resembles open prisons, came into existence, where Indigenous people could not vote, drink alcohol or hunt enough. They could not also visit other community members living in other reserves.
But there was even worse to come.
Residential school system
The Indian Act was also instrumental to create a school system, which still hovers on the country’s history, keeping its discriminatory legacy alive. In an open manifestation of colonial mentality, the school system aimed to educate the so-called "savage" communities and immerse them in "higher civilization" of Canada.
For this purpose, thousands of Indigenous children were separated from their families, ending up in church-run residential schools, where they were subjected to religious missionary, particularly by Catholic Church priests and nuns. They were also banned from speaking their own native language in a clear attempt to make them lose their cultural roots. Their names were also changed into European ones.

Canada's residential school system aimed to assimilate Indigenous children. The picture is from the Bishop Horden Memorial School, a residential school in the indigenous Cree community of Moose Factory, Ontario, Canada in 1950. (Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre / Reuters Archive)
By converting Indigenous people into either Catholicism or Protestantism, two major religions in today’s secularist state of Canada, and teaching them English and French, two major languages in the North American country, Ottawa mapped out a plan of subjugation of its native populations.
One of the survivors of those residential schools, Florence Sparvier, did not lose her Indigenous identity against all odds. Sparvier, now an elder of the Cowessess First Nation, attended Marieval school, where one of the recent discoveries of unmarked graves was found.
“They [Catholic nuns] were very condemning about our people. They told us our people, our parents, our grandparents didn’t have a way to be spiritual because we were all heathens,” she remembered her days in the residential school.
Recent discoveries of unmarked graves is the result of ongoing efforts of Indigenous community organisations and leaders to demonstrate the native people’s spiritual loyalty to their past and their losses despite having gone through intergenerational trauma and survived Canada’s past racist policies.
But those Catholic priests, who orchestrated abuse and other inhuman assimilation practices against Indigenous children in residential schools were not so spiritual, impregnating many girls during the process. According to the Catholic doctrine, priests could not have any sexual interaction with women or men. A considerable number of newly discovered unmarked graves were believed to be belonging to infants, whose Indigenous mothers were impregnated by Catholic priests.
‘Cultural genocide’
While Canada’s assimilation laws’ implementation evokes memories of Hitler’s Nazi Germany’s Holocaust policies toward the Jews during WWII, there have been no Nuremberg Trials to punish those who were responsible for the disappearances of many Indigenous tribes and the destruction of their culture and lifestyle.
But instead, in 2008, the Canadian state allowed the formation of a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate forced assimilation practices committed across Canada’s 150 residential schools, where an estimated 150,000 Indigenous kids did their time between 1883 and 1996.
In the end, the commission found that the practice amounts to “cultural genocide”. According to the commission’s president, more than 10,000 kids went missing after they ended up in those residential schools.
Despite the commission’s recommendations, in 2009, the Canadian government refused to finance search efforts to locate missing Indigenous children. While Justin Trudeau’s liberal government promised to take all recommendations of the commission seriously, there has been no real progress.
But the Indigenous community, who has been long schooled by the Canadian state’s political delay tactics, decided to take the issue of searching for the remains of children into its own hands. In May, they found a mass grave of 215 children near the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.
“It’s a harsh reality and it’s our truth, it’s our history. And it’s something that we’ve always had to fight to prove. To me, it’s always been a horrible, horrible history,” said Chief Casimir, an Indigenous leader, during a news conference.
Despite several requests from Canada’s Indigenous community, Pope Francis refused to apologise for Catholic Church’s past wrongdoings across residential schools.

Explained: Canada’s 'cultural genocide' of Indigenous people

Most recently, the Indigenous community discovered 751 unmarked graves belonging to mostly children in Saskatchewan, unearthing another terrible evidence of Canadian persecution.

www.trtworld.com

 

[beijingwalker]

We want to know how many more dirty secrets are still under the evil Canadian ground.
China should demand sending an investigation team to dig in Canada, we don't trust Candian government who kept this dirty secret for almost a centry till now.

 

[Hack-Hook]

We want to know how many more dirty secrets are still under the evil Canadian ground.
China should demand sending an investigation team to dig in Canada, we don't trust Candian government who kept this dirty secret for almost a centry till now.

well ,law of mathematic state if they found 215 disposed of children there are 9785 more to find. sadly in west they don't like to build movies about their own Final solution , they never dramatize it .

 

[beijingwalker]