I am moved to write this blog because of Minister Duncan's outrageous remarks that residential schools were NOT cultural genocide. This has led to discussions about whether or not the murder, torture and abuse of Indigenous peoples in this country "qualifies" as genocide, given the more recent, and much more distant atrocities committed in countries like Rwanda. Rwanda gained international attention because upwards of 800,000 people died in less than a year by brutal means. The Srebenica genocide resulted in the murder of approximately 8,000 Bosnian men and women in 1995. The holocaust of millions of Jewish people is likely the most famous of all.
These events all took place far away from our shores in North America and allowed Canadians and Americans to point across the sea and shake their heads in horror and disgust. North Americans have been able to rewrite their own histories so that they don't have to face the atrocities committed here at home. They have the benefit of majority power which means that their teachers speak of peace and friendship with the Indians, their priests speak of saving Indians, and their politicians speak of things like reconciliation. Meanwhile, the horrors committed against our peoples, which resulted in the largest genocide in the planet's history is a story that never gets told.
As a lawyer, a professor and someone who does alot of public speaking about issues impacting our peoples, I am often faced with the question of whether genocide really happened here in North America (a place we call Turtle Island and includes Canada and the United States). When I answer unequivocally yes, the first reaction is usually - "You can't seriously compare colonization with the vicious murders in Rwanda"? I agree - there is is no comparison. It was a different place, at a different time, with different methods and results. What I am saying is that what happened to our people on Turtle Island fits EVERY criteria of the international definition of genocide.
In 1948, after the atrocities committed against the Jewish people in WWII, the United Nations passed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The Convention declared that genocide was a crime in international law regardless of whether it was committed during a time of peace or war. Any punishment is NOT limited by time or place and there is no immunity for public bodies, government officials or individuals. They defined genocide as follows:
"The Convention defines genocide as any of a number of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:
- killing the members of the group;
- causing serious bodily harm or mental harm to members of the group;
- deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and
- forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
That is not my definition -- that is the definition by international law standards for which ALL nations are bound and Canada and the United States are no exceptions. Canada signed this Convention on November 28, 1949. The United States signed on December 11, 1948.
Thus, in order for an act to be considered genocide, it does not require that all components be present, nor does it require that the entire group be eliminated. However, in both Canada's case and that of the United States, ALL components of genocide are present. Specifically here in Canada:
(1) killing members of the group
- the deliberate infecting of blankets with small pox and sending them to reserves;
- the enacting of scalping laws which encouraged settlers to kill and scalp Indians for a monetary reward;
- the deliberate infecting of Indigenous children with infectious diseases in residential schools which led to their deaths;
- the deliberate abuse, torture, starvation, and denial of medical care to Indigenous children forced to live at residential schools which resulted in as many as 40% dying in those schools;
- the killing of our people by police and military through starlight tours, tazering, severe beatings, and by unjustified shootings;
- the killing of our people resulted in severely reduced populations, and some Nations completely wiped out;
- in the U.S., some groups were exterminated by up to 98%;
(2) causing serious bodily harm or mental harm to the members of the group;
- think of the torture and abuse inflicted on Indigenous children in residential schools like sexual abuse, rape, sodomy, solitary confinement, denial of food and medical care, and severe beatings for speaking one's language, etc;
- imagine the mental harm to Indigenous families and communities when their children were forcibly removed from them and left to die in residential schools;
- even when residential schools were starting to close, social workers in the 1960's onward stole children and placed them out for adoption in non-Indigenous families;
- the torture and abuse of Indigenous peoples in order to force them to sign treaties and agreements;
- the loss of language, culture, traditions, practices, way of life, beliefs, world views, customs;
- the imposed divisions in families, communities and Nations through the Indian Act
(3) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- think of the deliberate and chronic underfunding of essential social services on reserve like housing, water, food, sewer and other programs fundamental to the well-being of a people like education and health;
- the theft of all the lands and resources of Indigenous peoples and their subsequent confinement to small reserves where the law prevented them from leaving and providing for their families and so were left to starve on the rations provided by Canada;
- or the relocations of Indigenous communities from resource rich areas to swamp lands where they could not provide for themselves;
- Indian Affairs who divided large nations into small communities, located them physically away from one another,
- the Indian Act led to the physical separation of Indigenous women and children from their communities through the Act's assimilatory registration provisions;
(4) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- the forced sterilizations of Indigenous women and men, most notably in Alberta and British Columbia;
- the Indian Act's discriminatory registration provisions which prevent the descendants of Indigenous women who married non-Indian men to be recognized as members of their community thus keeping their births from being recognized as part of the group;
- the discriminatory INAC policy which prevents the children of unwed mothers from registering their children as Indians and part of their communities (unstated and unknown paternity);
(5) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
- the long history of residential schools which had an express stated purpose - "to KILL the Indian in the child" and to ensure that there were no more Indians in Canada;
- the 60's scoop which saw the mass removal of Indigenous children from their homes and adopted permanently into non-Indigenous homes;
- the prevention of children from being members in their communities due to the discriminatory Indian Act registration provisions;
- the current high rate of children removed from their families which out numbers residential schools and 60's scoop combined.
Unfortunately, I could provide many more examples, but there is no need to do so when what is listed above more than meets the definition of genocide. So, when the Minister of Indian Affairs says that residential schools were NOT a form of cultural genocide, he is not only undoing what good the public residential schools apology did, but he is denying all of the horrors committed by Canada on our peoples -- in essence, he is denying our lived realities.
Watch the clips of Minister Duncan on APTN's InFocus show that we just did on Nov.4, 2011 on the issue of assimilation and genocide in Canada:
Part 1 of APTN InFocus:
http://aptn.ca/pages/news/2011/11/04/november-4th-part-1/
Part 2:
http://aptn.ca/pages/news/2011/11/04/november-4th-%e2%80%93-part-2/
I find it hard to believe that while the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is going around Canada, that the Minister of Indian Affairs would be so disrespectful. Not only were residential schools "lethal" for some languages, cultures and family relations, it was literally "lethal" for almost half the children that attended. How much more lethal would he want it to be? 60%, 70%, 80%?
The Prime Minister should immediately remove Minister Duncan from his position. That won't happen of course, because the Conservative government STILL has a policy objective of assimilating Indians. The Indian Act's registration provisions are modern day evidence of that.
I invite you all to watch the documentary entitled: The Canary Effect. It is only one hour long, but is very difficult to watch. It hurts the spirit in so many ways and I imagine will be difficult for uninformed non-Indigenous people to accept. While it relates primarily to genocide against our Indigenous peoples in the United States, much of what is said applies equally in Canada.
We are in the fight of our lives and we need to turn the tide of this war around. We have to stop blaming ourselves and believing the lies that we were told. We are not inferior, we are not genetically pre-disposed to dysfunction, our men are not better than our women, and we certainly did not EVER consent to genocide against our people. All the dysfunction, addictions, ill health, suicides, male domination and violence is all the result of what Canada did to us. We are not each others' enemies. We have to forgive ourselves for being colonized -- none of that is who we really are as Indigenous peoples.
Our people are beautiful, proud, strong, and resilient. We honour our ancestors by surviving. Now we have to honour our future generations by thriving. Our children carry our ancestors in their hearts and minds. They carry the strength, honour and passion of our ancestors in their blood. Our generation must find a way, despite all the barriers in our way, to love, support and nurture our children so that we can rise up and take back our sovereignty, our honour, and our future.
Our children will still go through the pain of knowing what has been done and is currently done to our people by Canada, and all the dysfunction that it has created, but maybe they will finally know where to direct the anger and stop turning it inward and hurting themselves. That anger can be focused into passion which can then be channelled into action for our people.
Our future depends on our children loving themselves and having hope. We can't ever let them lose that. Canada may want us to disappear, but we don't have to let it happen.
All my relations...
The idea that being the victim of persecution ***doesn’t excuse persecuting others is completely valid.
Norman Finkelstein, who for his writings has been virtually blacklisted, noted in "The Holocaust Industry" that the Jewish Holocaust has allowed Israel to cast itself and "the most successful ethnic group in the United States" as eternal victims.
(um, shouldn't it be Native Americans being USA's biggest victims? Then the black slaves?).
Finkelstein, the son of Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, goes on to argue this status has enabled Israel, which has "a horrendous human rights record," to play the victim as it oppresses Palestinians or destroys Lebanon. This victim status has permitted U.S. Jewish organizations (the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and others) to get their hands on billions of dollars in reparations, much of which never finds its way to the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors.
Finkelstein’s mother, who was in the Warsaw ghetto, received $3,500, while the World Jewish Congress walked away with roughly $7 billion in compensation moneys. The organization pays lavish salaries to its employees and uses the funds to fuel its own empire.
For many the Nazi Holocaust is not used to understand and deal with the past, and more importantly the universal human capacity for evil, but to manipulate the present.
Finkelstein correctly writes the fictitious notion of unique suffering leads to feelings of unique entitlement.
http://www.armenews.com/article.php3?id_article=26124
The idea that being the victim of persecution ***doesn’t excuse persecuting others is completely valid.
"Our generation must find a way, despite all the barriers in our way, to love, support and nurture our children so that we can rise up and take back our sovereignty, our honour, and our future."
Love how said this! And I enjoyed this article very much! thank you for writing it.
We think on the same wave. In 2009 I was asked to give a brief speech on Columbus Day at the Summit for Courageous Conversations in Baltimore. I acused the US and Canadian governments of still participating in genocide today, based on the UN convention of Genocide. Take a look at the link below to see my speech
http://rantonracism.blogspot.com/2009/10/do-i-want-to-speak-on-columbus-daylet.html
Good article.
The Bryce report, which was made public in the 1920s found death rates between 30% and 60% at those concentration camps which some call schools. The report covered the years 1905 to 1920. An investigation following the release of his report turned up similar rates.
Dr. Peter Bryce also documented cases of children being deliberately put in contact with other children infected with tuberculosis. as well as cases of falsification of death records.
it is important to note that the Canadian government knew, and the information was available to the general public in 1923 that around half the children who were forced into that institution wound up dead.
As for smallpox. There is only one documented case of deliberate infection with smallpox - by British soldiers during the siege of Fort Pitt in 1763.