I am not the greatest at making threads, but here goes.
Canada in collusion with the church is guilty of genocide, it is a fact that many Canadians seem to be unaware of, and many deny out of ignorance. At
least I hope it is ignorance, and not malice. To be able to recognize genocide, you must first understand what genocide is. So I guess that should be
the first issue to tackle.
According to the United Nations, genocide is
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
So, I guess the first task at hand, is to show intent, on the part of the Canadian Government. There are many examples to be found out there, but the
most blatant, outspoken and prejudice example I have come across is Duncan Campbell Scott. He led the push to eliminate local day schools in favor of
residential boarding schools. He believed that the purpose of the Department of Indian Affairs duty was to eliminate the Natives' culture and way of
life completely. He purposely manipulated funds to favor residential schools for that purpose. The Canadian government was a huge fan of the way the
US was handling their "Indian problem" and even went as far to send an official to the US to learn their methods.
I cannot cite any online sources for this, as most of my knowledge comes from books. A good one documenting Scott is called "A Narrow Vision: Duncan
Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada". I highly recommend reading it, maybe someone here knows of a place online it can
be found and can point it out.
Next I will go into the residential schools on the health aspect. Dr. Bryce was the Chief Medical Examiner of Canada from 1904-1921. In all accounts I
have read, he was an honorable man, who challenged many of the prejudices of the time about Natives and their "racial inferiority". Many Canadians at
the time, and sadly even until today, believe that Natives are naturally more prone to mental disorders and alcoholism. He proved through surveying
the population, that those problems were low in the Native population, as compared to the general population. Most of the disease problems the Natives
were facing, was actually tuberculosis. Communicable diseases was very high in the Native population, as compared to the general population.
In 1907 Dr. Bryce went and visited 35 of the residential schools. He made reports of terrible sanitary conditions in these schools. The ventilation
was inadequate when it was open, and in winter months it was closed to save money on the heating costs. There was no attempt to isolate infected
students, that coupled with the crappy ventilation it was "as if the prime conditions for the outbreak of epidemics had been deliberately created."
His recommendations stemming from the report was ignored, and the churches that ran schools began trying to hide or under-report the numbers of
infected children.
In 1909 Dr. Bryce conducted a study that was based in Alberta, and learned that 28% of the students had died from disease. Around the same time,
another doctor named Lafferty reported a district in Saskatchewan had over 90% of students suffering from diseases. Nationwide 24 percent of all the
students who had attended the schools were known to be dead, with rates as high as 75 percent in one school. Scott just refused to spend the money to
do anything worthwhile to help the schools fight off the disease. The government was more interested in shutting Dr. Bryce up, and limiting his
duties.
In 1921, Dr Bryce published a report "The Story of a National Crime: An Appeal For Justice For the Indians of Canada", documenting the work he tried
to do in his capacity of Chief Medical Examiner. In his report, even as late as 1922, the death rate among the Natives was still way higher than the
rest of the populations. One in seven were still dieing. In his report he made another series of recommendations, that were ignored as per usual by
the Canadian government. The school that was alarmingly high at over 90% infection in Saskatchewan, was still over 90%. He pointed out that the Native
population had been allotted a total of $10,000 toward medical, Ottowa which was similar in population was given over $30,000 for hospital
patients.
Despite all his efforts, there was little improvement, throughout his entire career.
Residential schools fall under letters b, c and e of the definition of genocide.
You can hear in these videos, firsthand experiences of the physical, mental, and sexual abuses that went on. They can tell their stories better than I
could. There are many more stories out there on record as well.
edit on Sat, 12 Apr 2014 09:40:00 -0500 by TKDRL because: (no reason given)
Ummm....All governments are somewhat guilty of that. Forcing their vision of what society should be down people's throats and try to condition all
citizens to follow the path that they think is the right path. At least the Canadian government's path isn't so full of corruption as the one in
the USA. Either you accept what is considered normal here, which is half deceit, or you are suppressed. I guess this is no different than most
governments do, even the Russians have their tendencies which need to be adhered to. The judges in the court have to interpret the law by the laws
that are written, so they inforce this practice. Now stealing is bad no matter which society you enter and so is killing of innocent people.
Technically though, this is not genocide as all people have to adhere to these policies, they are not legally targeting one group even though that
group is effected the most by their policies.
S&F Good subject. It is an unfair practice that should be discussed.
Canadian confederation happened on July 1, 1867, however this was not a declaration of independence as Canada was part of the Commomwealth under the
monarchy of Great Britain. There was a repatriotism of the Constitution in 1982, but Canada remains a constitutional monarchy, though for all
practical purposes it functions as an autonomous country.
Strange it appears that the British dictated policy for quiet a while... Soooooooo your thread is invalid. Also.. Since your American.... MAYBE,
you shouldn't cast the first stone there my friend.... Hows your First Nation population? Oh wait... Nvm
BTW we have taken big steps in trying to heal old wounds. Why don't you research a little on what we have done..
Canada in collusion with the church is guilty of genocide, it is a fact that many Canadians seem to be unaware of, and many deny out of ignorance. At
least I hope it is ignorance, and not malice.
I call BS, I have served all over this country, and we are WELL aware of what happened.
They did the same thing here in the USA, I don't know if there was an actual act that they passed here though. The government here has also put kids
into reform schools throughout the years to stop behavior that was not socially acceptable. We also had church schools and sunday school classes to
direct people down the path, if you went to these you usually had a better chance of getting employment in the area if the locality had businessmen
that went to church...which most did in the area I grew up in.
Some of the shunning comes from society itself, it is part of the structure of society. Consensus of the time rules. People try to change this
practice but is changing it in the best interest of all in society? I saw where people didn't approve of the fact that a cake store wouldn't make a
wedding cake for a gay couple and they got slammed. Is that actually right, you should be able to choose who you give your services to if you are
busy. I was a builder, I worked for people I liked, if I didn't like their attitude, I tried to avoid working for them. I had to turn down half the
work I was offered, why turn down work for someone that was nice for someone who was crabby and overpowering. I suppose this is discrimination
against people who were jerks. There weren't many of these that I ran into but I learned to avoid working for this type of people.
That is a Social choice, if the government of Canada was trying to promote people getting along with each other it was sort of right, but their
tactics weren't always the right way. We have people here who still hate the Indians because they have special rights. That is unfounded though, we
constantly screwed their people in the past. This went on till in the late fifties, and it is still going on on a limited basis today. For the good
of the people we stole the oil and gas under their land and now people complain when they are getting reimbursed by the government because the
government allowed and promoted this action.
I know many Native Americans, I avoid the crabby ones though, I stick with socializing with the regular people, not the leaders. The Medicine men and
keepers of the fire are pretty decent though.
Yes, the US did the same thing, there was in fact an act and a governing body put in place, same as Canada. Like I said, Canada modeled a lot of their
"dealing with the indian problem" on the policies done in the US.
The Royal Commissions Report (1992) that the Canadian Government has put on a shelf to collect dust and be ignored while certain creative writers
twist and turn the truth about what happened in new books is only a attempt to make void what should happen .If the Govt. really wanted to heal they
need to look at that report and address the many suggestions that were made .Until then ,they will only be spinning the truth away from the facts
...peace
It varies. In this case your quoting information that is at least 60 years old. A LOT has changed and the views expressed by the writer are outdated
and irrelevant now.
Views of today, don't change the actions and views that took place in the past. If anything, people would probably be more critical of the dude than
they were back then. Seems to me you are nitpicking. Attack the messenger and all that jazz.
You act like Canadians don't know this already.... We know our government gave Aboriginals virus infested blankets and clothes, We also know about
the residential schools, we also know that our government conducted sick starvation experiments on certain aboriginal tribes back in the day.
This is not news to any Canadian as we all grew up learning about how awful our government was to Natives.