Cultural genocide in northern Canada

Danilo Anton

Long ago I had the opportunity to work on an environmental impact assessment of a uranium mine in Northern Canada. Wollaston Lake in northern Saskatchewan. It is on the edge of the tundra with the boreal forest. Very few people, the density is very low (perhaps less than 1 inhabitant per km2), it is inhabited by natives of the Dene nation. The local Dene communities live in 2 towns and have (according to the last census) 1,300 inhabitants in total. Wollaston Lake is a large lake (2,500 km2) with its own waves but hardly used by the Dene who live along its banks.

About Dene Nation
In the province of Saskatchewan there are 120,000 natives belonging to the Algonquian and Atabaskan ethnic groups. Other 120,000 live in Manitoba, Alberta, Northwest Territories and Alaska. The Atabaskan constitute about half. Among them there are approximately 50,000 Denes (no exact figures are available).

A reference to the abduction of indigenous children in Canada
Since colonial times the Dene communities were displaced from their land,  and discriminated.
The Canadian government took thousands of children from their parents to exclude them from traditional indigenous life, away from their families. These children were forced to pray to other gods and to forget their language and culture. These policies lasted from 1876 to 1996. Several thousand Dene children were victims of this genocidal process.

Nowadays
Today things have begun to change. Assimilation schools were closed. The Dene nation is organized and active, has its own website, it has achieved that a Atabaska-dene languages have been considered a official languages in the Northwest Territories.

The fight is not over. Actually it is just beginning. At some point in the future Dene will be able to recover and enrich their own culture, together with the rest of the Atabaskan groups finally will get the recognition of their rights and dignity.