Canada Allows Denial of Cultural Genocide of Its Indigenous Population
The Spirit Catcher in June 2021, adorned with children’s footwear commemorating the 215 children found in an unmarked grave near Kamloops, British Columbia. Source: Wikimedia Commons, TheGoodAndHolyLord, CC BY 4.0
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.—Kipling
The Canadian Senate just rejected an amendment proposed by a female senator from Nunavut that would have criminalized denial of the state’s cultural genocide against First Nations children, thousands of whom died in residential schools, essentially child concentration camps, from starvation, beatings, disease, and physical abuse.
This shameful decision fits perfectly with the behavior of the ruling elite of this failed state, whose inhabitants are united only by hockey and mounted police.
The failed territory known as Canada has many shameful pages of history, which are gradually becoming known to the public.
A motley group of European immigrants, many with criminal records and adherents of various religious heresies, seized territories belonging to the indigenous population by force of arms, aiming to destroy their cultural identity.
By the early 20th century Canada—a dominion of Great Britain, the birthplace of the first racist theorists (Manuel Sarkisyanz, English Roots of German Fascism) and of concentration camps for the civilian population of South Africa during the Boer War—also created a gigantic system of concentration-camp reserves for 634 First Nations peoples.
Indigenous children were removed en masse from their families, sometimes as young as three years old, to accelerate their transformation into English-speaking cultural zombies, who had lost touch with their native culture but were not fully-fledged citizens of the pseudo-state of Canada due to their origins and appearance, which differed from Europeans.
The regime in residential schools, deliberately located hundreds of kilometers from their birthplace, was little different from that of a concentration camp and included malnutrition, abuse, corporal punishment, and, often, sexual violence, creating fertile ground for epidemics, mass deaths, escapes, and suicides.
Representatives of the three church denominations, entrusted on behalf of the state to run residential schools, were little different from Nazi concentration camp guards and were able to act out their basest instincts on underage children.
As in our time, the Catholic Church, with its celibacy and the sexual energy of its “priests” directed at children, was particularly notable for this.
After World War II, Canada harshly refused immigration to European Jews, whose mass extermination began in Western Europe, and, from 1941, in Eastern Europe.
At the same time, Canada hospitably opened its doors to the executioners of Jews and other European peoples from Germany, who arrived here in the tens of thousands almost without being checked by immigration authorities.
This is compelling evidence of the deep spiritual kinship between Nazism and the Canadian ruling class, which just rejected an amendment to the Criminal Code that would have criminalized the denial of the atrocities committed in residential schools for Indigenous children almost until the very end of the 20th century.
Denial of the genocide of the Jewish people, the Holocaust, is a criminal offense in 18 countries, including Russia, Israel, and Canada.
Canada itself, in 2015, called the residential school system a cultural genocide. As estimates of the number of First Nations children killed in these concentration camps show, this genocide was not only cultural but also physical.
As the Senate vote demonstrates, Canada has failed to awaken its dormant conscience—do its authorities even have one?
The call in the publication cited below to not criminalize the denial of what is already recognized as a crime sounds ridiculous.
Instead, it’s proposed to improve education for citizens who deny the history, whom the Canadian education system has failed to educate about their own history. What prevented you from doing this before? A guilty conscience and spiritual affinity with racists and Nazis?
Main Facts About Residential Schools in Canada
In May 2021, Canadians were shocked at the discovery of the remains of 215 children at the site of a former school in British Columbia. The bodies belonged to Indigenous children, some believed to be as young as three years old, who went through Canada’s state-sponsored “residential school” system. The schools, scattered across the country, were aimed at eradicating the culture and languages of the country’s Indigenous populations.
The findings have brought the world’s renewed attention to this shameful chapter of Canadian history, left deep wounds in hundreds of communities and sparked fresh demands for justice aimed at the Canadian government and the churches that ran the schools for decades.
As of September 2021, more than 1,300 unmarked graves have been found across the sites of five former residential schools. Most of the bodies discovered are believed to be children. With several ongoing investigations, new discoveries are expected.
Under the Indian Act, passed by Canada’s parliament in 1876, indigenous people were made to live on reserves and couldn’t leave without permission. Children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to live in institutions that had the explicit aim of stripping away their culture, language and identity.
For most of the 20th century, at least 139 residential schools were run by Catholic, Anglican and United churches, with financial support from the federal government.
An estimated 150,000 Indigenous children attended. They were prohibited from speaking their native languages and had to adopt their school’s religious denomination.
Many were beaten, verbally and sexually abused, and thousands died from disease, neglect and suicide.
The schools were designed to be deliberately far away from communities where the children lived, preventing their parents from visiting.
Some of the children who attended the St Eugene school near Cranbrook, British Columbia, were made to face journeys of more than 620 miles (1,000 km).
In 1956, survivor Jack Kruger was sent to the St Eugene school aged six. A police officer and a priest arrived at his home and took him to the train station. The journey was more than 300 miles. He was then put on a cattle truck, “stuffed like sardines” with other children.
He was at school for three years, but the abuse he suffered and witnessed remains with him.
He was beaten for speaking his language.
“I lost my language for 40 years because they told me it was the devil’s tongue. I was brainwashed.”
The latest discoveries suggest that the death toll at the schools, which was previously estimated at 3,200, is likely to be far higher.
As well as the 139 officially recognized schools, many others operated independently, without federal support. Only a fraction of the schools have been searched so far.
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which collected thousands of hours of testimony from survivors, determined that the residential school systems had amounted to a “cultural genocide” of Indigenous people.
The federal government formally apologized for the schools in 2008, but the recent discoveries of graves have prompted calls for an independent investigation, including the possibility of criminal charges against the government and the Catholic Church.
The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has pledged to take “concrete action” to help Indigenous communities in their searches, but the costs are expected to far exceed money offered by the government. A previous request of $1.5m in funding to search for the graves was denied by the federal government in 2009. Meanwhile, as the searches continue, the number of unmarked graves—and those who died attending the schools—is only expected to rise.
The Amendment Was First Accepted and Then Rejected
Senate votes down Sen. Nancy Karetak-Lindell’s proposal, leaving awareness the battleground against ‘downplaying’ harms.
Education—not jail time—should be the way to counter the denial of the harmful effects of residential schools after the Senate chose not to include it in changes to a new law against hate-motivated crimes.
Nunavut Sen. Nancy Karetak-Lindell made a strong case last week that the “condoning, denying or downplaying the Indian residential schools system” be added to a new list of Criminal Code offences in the government’s Combatting Hate Act, known as Bill C-9.
The amendment would have made it a crime to promote hatred against Indigenous Peoples by denying the harms caused by residential schools.
Nunavut’s lone senator compared residential school denialism to Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, and antisemitism as forms of hate requiring special treatment under the Criminal Code.
“The question before us is why Indigenous Peoples should be treated differently,” she told senators on June 3.
If passed, the amendment would have had people found guilty of residential school denialism face up to two years in jail.
A Senate committee voted for her amendment on June 1. But, two days later, the full Senate voted it down and passed the bill without it.
Bill C-9 makes it a crime to promote hatred against identifiable groups by publicly displaying racist symbols. It also makes it illegal to interfere with someone’s right to enter a place of worship. And it removes a defence of promoting hatred based on expression of religious views.
But the bill pitted the protection of vulnerable communities from hate against the right to freedom of expression.
In a free society that treasures freedom of expression, people must be able to express unpopular and wrong opinions.
Coincidentally, Gov. Gen. Louise Arbour this week pointed to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for the “peaceful management of our differences.”
“The Charter guarantees that our cherished individual rights are subject only to the reasonable limits necessary for life in a free and peaceful democracy,” Arbour said Monday as she was installed as Governor General.
Understanding the history of residential schools has been a painfully slow process for many Canadians, especially those who are not Indigenous.
The creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2008 was a big step in fostering an understanding. The commission’s 2015 report and calls to action advanced that progress, but slowly.
The location of unmarked graves at residential school sites—now five years ago—forced many Canadians to reckon with the tragic chapter in the country’s history.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action encourage Canadians to learn about the legacy of residential schools. Some occupations, including social workers, child-welfare investigators, lawyers, public servants, and journalism students are urged to learn about the impact of residential schools and consider it in their work.
June is National Indigenous History Month. The federal government promotes it as “a time to recognize the rich history, heritage and diversity of First Nations, Inuit and Métis.”
But it should also be a time for Canadians—especially those of us who are not Indigenous—to try to better understand the lasting, tragic legacy of residential schools.
Canadians need to be encouraged to learn about it, not punished for being ignorant about it.
Source: Nunatsiaq News
Further reading:
- ‘Cultural Genocide’: The Shameful History of Canada’s Residential Schools—Mapped (The Guardian)
- Canada Let in Thousands of Former Nazis. Files I’ve Seen Tell Why (The Tyee)
- Canada’s Residential Schools (Canadian Museum for Human Rights)
