Shame: remains of indigenous children in Canada
The reprehensible issue of what many deem “mass murder” of indigenous children in Canada’s Catholic school system has been in global headlines in recent weeks. But this should have been in the headlines decades ago.
The nearly
1,000 bodies of indigenous children in mass graves were recently found by
ground-penetrating radar, said the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First
Nations (FSIN) and the Cowessess First Nation.
A reported
150,000 indigenous children were abducted and imprisoned in the Catholic
schools, where they were tortured with the intent of erasing their culture and
language, as were also sexually abused, had needles driven through
their tongues for speaking their own language, were sterilized, among many
other horrific practices.
After these
findings made the news, people were rightly outraged. Catholic churches in
British Columbia and Alberta have since been vandalized and set afire,
including churches currently used by indigenous communities as meeting
places, acts met with disgust by many indigenous, saying vandalism isn’t
justice.
The
vandalism continued on Canada Day, with another 10 churches in Calgary
targeted.
The premier
of Alberta, Jason Kenney, denounced the vandalization of an African Evangelical
Church, noting that the congregation is “made up entirely of new
Canadians, many of whom came here as refugees fleeing countries where Churches
are often vandalized & burned down.”
While some
have justified the vandalization of the churches as a push for justice, others
questioned whether vandalized or burned mosques or synagogues would also
receive the same approval.
After Prime
Minister Trudeau spoke of “reconciliation” and how “our relationship with
indigenous peoples” has evolved, people rightly called out the government of
Canada for empty talk, noting indigenous communities around the country
frequently lack clean drinking water. Then, there’s the issue that aside from
an official apology, the government hasn’t charged or tried anyone for
these crimes.
A report first
published in March 2016 by the International Tribunal for the Disappeared of
Canada (ITDC) has since apparently been heavily censored and removed from
Google search results.
It
addressed the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” carried out by the government
and churches, calling it “a rapid in-house response by church and state
designed to present their own self-serving narrative of their Indian
residential schools crimes,” noting it “was created by the same institutions of
church and state that were responsible for the residential school crimes being
investigated.”
The
synopsis notes that the crimes were “legally authorized, sanctioned and
protected by every level of government, church and police in Canada,” and “amounted
to deliberate genocide.”
It refers
to horrifying facts that the average Canadian likely doesn’t know, including
that “Native children began dying in droves the very first year the residential
schools opened in 1889, at an average death rate of nearly 50%.” This, it
emphasized, continued for the next five decades, “despite constant complaints
and reports by doctors who inspected the schools.”
The deaths
were caused by “a continual denial of regular food, clothing and proper
sanitation to children interned in the schools, amidst a regime of routine and
systemic rapes, beatings, tortures and killings: conditions that continued
unabated for over a century, from 1889 to 1996.”
Why now?
While I fully stand with the push for justice for the manifold crimes committed against the indigenous peoples in what is now Canada, I do wonder, why is this making headlines now? It’s not like these are new revelations.
Ostensibly the reason these mass graves are in the news now is due to their recent discovery. But, others point out that indigenous have for decades said there were mass graves, but were met with silence.
Indeed, an article first published in May 2008 – and according to the author, rejected by Canadian media – spoke of a 1996 lawsuit launched by residential school survivors on the issue of the death and torture at residential schools. It noted that “residential school children were being buried ‘four or five to a grave’, and that the death rate in these schools stayed constant at fifty percent for over forty years.”
It rightly asked: “Why is the disappearance of tens of thousands of native children in these schools not the subject of a major criminal investigation?”
That was 13 years ago, the lawsuit over two decades ago.
Eva Barlett
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/528360-crimes-indigenous-canada
No comments:
Post a Comment