The use of the word incorrectly is to stir up the "victims". It does nothing towards healing.
Indian residential school system an act of genocide: prof
- Thread starter gerryh
- Start date
The use of the word incorrectly is to stir up the "victims". It does nothing towards healing.
I think while part of healing is for victims to move on, I think part of healing is also for the victimizer to acknowledge what they were trying to achieve. So, what's the right word for what Canada was trying to acheive? Because assimilation isn't quite it. Assimilation doesn't usually require taking children away from their parents, or sterilizing people. So, what IS the word?
According to Wiki, and the United Nations as of 1948....
a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily 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."[3]
It was most definitely cultural genocide. Added to that are 50 thousand kids that disappeared and who knows how many that were sterilized and it starts to border on genocidal murder.
No matter how culturally these kids were assimilated, they were still visually aboriginal and considered inferior racially by the dominant culture. In the fifties they were still considered wild savages and people feared them even though aboriginal people were for the most part pacified by the assimilation process. They were discriminated by racism still.
No matter how culturally these kids were assimilated, they were still visually aboriginal and considered inferior racially by the dominant culture. In the fifties they were still considered wild savages and people feared them even though aboriginal people were for the most part pacified by the assimilation process. They were discriminated by racism still.
But, they didn't just try to get rid of the culture. They split up families and forced sterilization. The definition of genocide that has stood with the UN since 1948 states it's genocide. The intent was clearly to end the race, not just the culture.
To end the race all would have to be killed - Genetic base would still be there.
As to culture - Were all children placed in Residential Schools?
What reasoning did the Govt's use to keep this going?
What were the initial reasons to start this abhorrent program?
What results were they (Govt) looking for?
There are numerous other questions that are relevant. Unfortunately, in picking and choosing the 'relevant elements', you generate a scenario where you have a self fulfilling prophecy.
I find it interesting that no one is prepared to answer my question employing the scenario mentioned previously, yet are analytical on a minutae basis when supporting a different event.
I think over the almost 100 years the program was operated, goals changed with the times. Going back to the beginning you will see the attitude that Christianity was the only religion and that aboriginal beliefs were born of Satan. I have encountered similar beliefs even today with some of the evangelical types. In fact, I lost my family because my inlaws were evangelicals and they pressured my wife to leave me because I practiced aboriginal spiritual ceremonies - I was, to them, a minion of Satan and they told me that in no uncertain terms.
I believe that your scenario was answered by Karrie.
I know little about this program outside of the horrors inflicted on many.That is why the questions were asked. These things just do not suddenly leap of a desk and take root. There has to be a story behind why all this happened.
The 'legal' definition of genocide is problematic and political. The insistence from literal semantics that it must involve mass murder is not born out in the definition. Relevant to this topic, the legal UN definition of genocide includes forcibly transferring children from one ethnic group to another. So the -cide part is not taken literally. Nor is the geno- part as the attempted destruction of a religious group is included in the definition.
And that's when it gets political. Originally, the definition was meant to encompass political groups. Joseph Stalin objected to this because his reign of terror relied on the persecution and murder of political groups.
Declaring something a genocide under the Genocide Convention's definition has legal implications as well. Signatories of the convention are legally obliged to prevent, stop and punish any identifiable genocide. Which is precisely why, despite the decades after the convention's creation being full of genocide, the genocide convention has only ever officially identified two genocides - both after the fact. The international community is firmly committed to doing nothing about genocide, and will ignore ongoing genocides so as to not invoke their legal responsibilities.
Declaring something a genocide has powerful rhetorical and emotional implications, as well as legal ones. As the definition of genocide is steeped in politics and special interest groups have an insatiable lust to wallow in victimhood, you end up getting what should be a serious human rights issue being tossed around for rhetorical advantage.
And that's when it gets political. Originally, the definition was meant to encompass political groups. Joseph Stalin objected to this because his reign of terror relied on the persecution and murder of political groups.
Declaring something a genocide under the Genocide Convention's definition has legal implications as well. Signatories of the convention are legally obliged to prevent, stop and punish any identifiable genocide. Which is precisely why, despite the decades after the convention's creation being full of genocide, the genocide convention has only ever officially identified two genocides - both after the fact. The international community is firmly committed to doing nothing about genocide, and will ignore ongoing genocides so as to not invoke their legal responsibilities.
Declaring something a genocide has powerful rhetorical and emotional implications, as well as legal ones. As the definition of genocide is steeped in politics and special interest groups have an insatiable lust to wallow in victimhood, you end up getting what should be a serious human rights issue being tossed around for rhetorical advantage.
The point I am trying to make is that it is a slippery slope and a definition from a group by the UN is only as good as the latest version that is released.
Canada's goal was very similar to that of Australia.... to breed out rather than have to kill off the aboriginal population. As for why, do you seriously have to ask that given the costs of maintaining the treaties? I could do the research for you, but, well, it's just as easy for you to google the numbers and the techniques and policies used. What I will tell you instead, is the personal side of it, based on MY family.
I belong to two francoCanadian families. My mother's family and my husband's family are both very large, very Catholic. Both sides have First Nations relatives in them in different ways, and both have seen different impacts. On my mother's side, her sister married a native. My uncle is one of the most incredible men I've ever met, and despite my aunty's passing from cancer, is a huge part of our family. His family is 'illegitimate'. When his mother was sent away to a residential school, her records were destroyed, and her treaty status thus revoked. Without a legal marriage to a treaty man, she never was able to reclaim any rights, or claim any rights for her children.
On the other side, my husband's side of the family, 3 of his aunts and uncles are testament to the effectiveness of the efforts the government undertook. After sending kids off to residential school, beating them, abusing them, and having them 'raised' without love or care (btw, this is my white mother-in-law's recount of residential school as well, as not only native kids were sent in poor communities), they grew up to be incapable parents to the children they had. The foster system then placed those kids with families, and a whole generation of children 'grew up white'. My husband's family is one of the few exceptions who kept their fostered and adopted kids in contact with their birth parents, and helped in the healing process, helped keep them in touch with their roots, with their culture. They still 'grew up white' though, married their high school sweethearts, and assimilated.
I'm lucky to have these people in my family. And they don't bear grudges, don't whip out the victim card at every turn. But I can't ignore the fact that the way they came to be here, to be part of our family, was at the time a very concerted effort on the part of the government, to make sure that the number of people who have treaty rights declined rather than rose. That concerted effort WAS genocide by the UN's definition.
and with my family, my Great grandmother and her daughter, my Grandmother, were expelled from their village, bannished, and not by "whitey". They lost their status and taught their children and grandchildren how useless the "indians" were.That's how bad the blood was. That's how betrayed they felt.
uhm... k, see, I gave my examples to explain the way different issues in the targeted government efforts to eliminated treaty rights played out. While I don't want to imply your background isn't important, I'm not seeing how it factors into what was or wasn't government policy, or what is or isn't genocide.
I don't think it was genocide as the word is tossed around. It wasn't done to assimilate us into Canadian culture though. It was done simply to get rid of a problem the Crown knew was only going to get worse, as they wanted more and more resources, and we grew smarter and smarter about how things work.
Lets not forget, this policy came about after Canada and Britain were embarrassed by The Six nations being granted a chance to join the League of nations. Seeing as we met all the requirements, unlike Canada at the time.
Lets not forget, this policy came about after Canada and Britain were embarrassed by The Six nations being granted a chance to join the League of nations. Seeing as we met all the requirements, unlike Canada at the time.
Nope. They weren't trying to absorb our culture, they were trying to ex sponge it.
Or what they think wil get a rise out of someone that recently stepped on their toes.
What? I'm virtuous!
cultural genocide is not being claimed. Genocide, as in the killing of all Natives, is the claim that is asserted and the claim being made by commenters on aptn's facebook page.
That's because there were thousands of children that were, for all intents and purposes, gleefully murdered by your Church. At the behest of the Crown. i may not agree with the application of the word, but I can empathize.