Reconciliation is a two-way street

Reconciliation is a two-way street

 Re: Jeffrey Simpson
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/negotiation-and-reconciliation-is-a-two-way-street/article24919535/?service=mobile

Throughout our history with Indigenous Peoples in Canada, our 'agreements' have been full of weasel words, poison pills, sharp dealing, double talk and bald faced lies. The First Nations education 'deal' between Harper and Shawn Atleo was no different. 
-----
 /pamela-palmater/2014/04/ chief-shawn-atleo-should-tear-first-nations-education-act
" Then came the "deal" -- the promise of adequate funding, First Nation control and legislation that would recognize our Aboriginal and treaty rights to education. From the moment Atleo-Harper held their joint press conference, First Nations knew we were in trouble. Atleo sang songs about how he was saving our children from the status quo while Harper countered every point Atleo made -- although with great tact. When Atleo realized that Harper wasn't singing the same song, Atleo sent a strongly worded letter asking whether or not any of the promises Atleo made to First Nations were in fact going to be kept by Harper. The answer was no.
 ...
 Lawyers, academics, analysts and political commentators all seemed to come to the same conclusion: the Act did not reflect First Nation control or protect treaty rights, and even the funding was an illusion.   "The proof is in the act -- Bill C-33 which was supposed to be called First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act actually reads: An Act to establish a framework to enable First Nations control ..." "
-----
 Weasel words, poison pills, sharp dealing, double talk ... forked tongue.

Historically, 'Indian' Agents and other Crown agents have made 'deals' with whomever they could isolate and get to sign a paper, without the ratification by the whole community that is required by the Royal Proclamation 1763:
 "... at some public Meeting or Assembly of the said Indians, to be held for that Purpose"
 Many such historic 'deals' have now been overturned in land claims actions on that basis - the community never consented. With that history, the scene of Shawn Atleo and Harper working out some secret deal ... Atleo singing it's merits while Harper undermines every commitment it 'appears' to make ... deja vu to Indigenous communities. It was doomed to fail.

Jeffrey Simpsons 'analysis' is very lightweight, superficial, patronizing and colonialist. He doesn't address anything of substance at all, and makes no attempt to comprehend First Nations perspectives. And his poisonous words "radical aboriginals" ... referring to Dr. Palmater and others ... reveal pure racism. Jeffrey Simpson ' s racist diatribe reveals everything that is wrong with Canada.

 Where we are today, in the aftermath of the truth about the residential schools' genocide ... we have to do better:
Reconciliation is a two way street.

 TRC politics: John Milloy 'resigned' after giving this interview:

 Truth and Reconciliation: An interview with John Milloy

Written by Brett Throop and Graeme Johnson (interview by Graeme Johnson)
Monday, 22 March 2010 14:53

• 
• 
• 

How many Aboriginal children died in Canada’s state-funded, church-run Indian residential schools, which ran from 1879 to 1996? Where were they buried? How did they die? 

 These are some of the questions Trent history professor John Milloy will be working to answer as the director of Research, Historical Records, and Report Preparation with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. He was appointed to the position in January of this year.
In Milloy’s book, A National Crime, he describes how students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse and restricted from speaking their traditional languages. They were also severely malnourished. Students came out without the skills to live in either Canadian or Aboriginal society. In a January lecture, Milloy stated that the death rate of students at one such school was 64 per cent. Across Canada, a large number of students died at the schools or within a year of returning home.
As many as 150,000 Aboriginal children attended Canada’s 130 residential schools before the last one closed in 1996.
The Commission will pour over church and government records in order to produce an official historical record of Canada’s residential schools era.   
The Missing Children Research Project is only one part of Truth and Reconciliation Canada’s mandate, which is to inform all Canadians about what happened in Indian Residential Schools and to document the survivors’ stories and those affected by the schools’ legacy.
Arthur had the opportunity to talk to Dr Milloy about the Commission and his role as the Commission’s Director of Research.

Arthur: So what is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Milloy: [The Commission] was set up by the government, the churches and the Assembly of First Nations by way of an agreement that brought all litigation to an end. There were thousands and thousands of cases against the government and the churches.
Paul Martin and Phil Fontaine, who was then head of the Assembly of First Nations, sat down and said, “This is crazy; it’s costing millions of dollars, survivors are dying, and we’re not moving forward at any speed.”
So, they negotiated a settlement which meant that anybody who had been in a residential school and could prove this, would receive a payment for the years they’d been there, called a Common Experience Payment (CEP). [For example]: we were all in school, it was a dreadful thing, so put your hand up and say, “I was there for five years...” and we’ll multiply the years times the payment.
Then there’s an individual assessment process where you come forward, having gotten your CEP, and say, “I was sexually abused” or whatever. There’s a separate administrative process by which added amounts of compensation are paid.

Arthur: I remember hearing about that settlement and thinking the amount of compensation was completely inadequate.

Milloy: It is completely inadequate, but you have to ask yourself the question, ‘What is adequate?’ There’s absolutely no way of making up for lost youth, lost language, lost culture.
If you talk to survivors, what was most important to them wasn’t the Common Experience payment- what was most important was the recognition that what they had been saying all along was true.

Arthur: So, you were asked to be head of research for the Commission?

Milloy: Director of Research. Part of the agreement was that the churches and the government would give us copies of all their residential school files; then we would have copies given to the commission, we would digitize those records, and we would build a national research centre with that as the initial foundation collection.
Since the 1920s, or even before that, there’s been a growth of Aboriginal political organizations. Their papers sit in basements across the country and there’s no way they’re going to be giving them to the national archives of Canada. So, we’re thinking about the possibility of building a freestanding, Aboriginally-controlled archive that would have that collection.
Then on top of that we may be able to get the AFN (Assembly of First Nations) papers and other papers and build a fair-sized archive.
It would be an electronic archive so Aboriginal people sitting in Yellowknife with a laptop and internet access could actually read documents in the server in Winnipeg or Trent or wherever the hell the server ends up.
I’ve only got five years to do this job. I’ve got a digitization budget of $3 million – that’s a lot of digitization. There are 40 different sites across the country where church documents and government documents exist. 40 bloody sites. Then, in each of those sites are two or three archives, so it’s really 120-140 archive sites. We have to get people in there to look at every document, which has to be indexed – each document as if you’re building a library – then digitized, and then off you go to the next site. It’s a mundane project.

Arthur: And what’s the purpose of this research?

Milloy: I’m Director of Research and Report Writing, and there are two reports that have to be written: one two years from now and a final report in five years.
The first report is a history of the system, so we’ll do some research to increase the level of knowledge we have about how the system was built and operated. We don’t know how much the system cost or how much the federal government put into the system. We know they never gave the system enough money to provide decent food, housing, clothing, or qualified teachers, but we don’t know the actual number.
We also don’t know the number of children who went to the schools, for a whole series of reasons.

Arthur: Why aren’t these numbers known?

Milloy: If you were the principal of a school, you submitted what was called a Quarterly Report to the government for most of the life of the system. On that Quarterly Report, you listed all the names of the students and you got $X a head as a per-capita payment. You sent the document to Ottawa, they cut you a cheque, and on you went. So, theoretically, we should know every child who was ever in school because we would have all these Quarterly Reports.
But during the [Second World War] the government decided it needed paper and it wanted to recycle government documents. The word went out to various departments saying, “Give us documents you’re not interested in having any longer.” Why keep the Quarterly Reports, right? The cheque had already been cut.
So people who had been in the school, for example, and were applying for the Common Experience Payment would say, “Well, I’ve been in the school for ten years,” and the government would search the Quarterly Reports and say, “We only have records of you being there for five.”
I saw numbers yesterday. There were about 92,000 people who applied for Common Experience Payments and 23,000 of them were rejected. Nearly a third of the people who apply are rejected because, largely, the records aren’t there. So, the person who was already abused in one way now gets to be abused in another. There’s 23,000 liars out there? Give me a break.

Arthur: What other problems have there been in accessing this information?

Milloy: The government is being relatively cooperative; the churches are not being cooperative at all. Even though they signed the agreement saying they’d cough these things up, you go to them and they tell you, “We can’t give you that.”

Arthur: What are their reasons for that?

Milloy: Oh, privacy largely. They’re afraid of lawsuits under the Charter of Rights, for example.
The Catholics are especially wary. They might say, “if we give you the documents, John, and they’re the diary of priest so-and-so and this opens him up to liability” – because he was buggering boys in the basement and that sort of thing – “and he sues us (the church) we’re in all sorts of trouble.”
This is the reason they weren’t giving us the documents in the first place, because the documents prove they were not treating children in the way they should have been treated. They’re just scared shitless.
You go to the big meetings where all of the church reps are and they go on about how important this is; then you go to the archivists and you hear, “it’s private, piss off,” or you hear, “they haven’t given us any money.”
For example, the United Church archives in Winnipeg is only open three days a week, from lunch until the afternoon. So, it’s got a part-time archivist and she’s saying, “how am I going to do this? I have to go through every piece of paper in my archives to determine what’s relevant and then get these papers ready for you guys.” Then we’d go in and index and digitize. It’s a massive project. She said, “I don’t have any money to hire people. What am I supposed to do?”

Arthur: I thought there was money earmarked by the Commission for that?

Milloy: The money is earmarked by the churches. When they signed the agreement they all stuck their hands up and said, “We’ll do all this.” But the churches are dragging their feet.
Why would the guy who’s up on criminal charges provide you with the evidence that will convict him? Survivors are going to look at us and say, “What are you, a fucking fool?”

Arthur: Part of your research is also tracking down kids who didn’t survive the schools?

Milloy: It’s called the Missing Child Project. Families want to know where their kids are. They want to know where they disappeared and where they’re buried.
You have to sit down and you have to go through every piece of paper in every archive looking for indications that X-child died or went missing in a particular place for a particular reason.
And then where are these children buried? Many schools had graveyards, but not every graveyard connected to the school was the site for the burial of these children. I went to Qu’Appelle residential school in Saskatchewan and the school has been destroyed. The church is there, the graveyard was there, but there was not one marker for one Indian.
I said to one of the school survivors, a guy in his fifties, “What’s going on, why didn’t they give you guys markers?”
He said, “Oh they didn’t bury us there. We’re in a field across the lake.” So we’re dealing with an unmarked graveyard with unmarked graves, and that’s common right across the country.
Survivors come to me and say, “Here’s the graveyard John,” and it looks like someone stopped on the side of highway 7 and took a picture of a bush. All you see is brush, but there are Indian kids in there.
We’ll have to find the cemeteries and we’ll have to x-ray the ground to make sure there are bodies there and count them. Then we’re going to have to find collateral documentary evidence to tell us who’s in those graves - but we will never have a complete list.

Arthur: You mentioned that there will be a second report in five years. What will that cover?

Milloy: The second report will be much more contemporary. There’s nothing you can do about the schools because they’re closed. What we need to do is direct people’s attention to the problems Indigenous people face today as a direct result of the residential school system.
We can draw direct lines between students leaving (what they call ‘graduates’ in the file) and things like incarceration rates. Graduates had, on average, a grade three education, even though they’d been there for ten years, and current incarceration rates are just astronomic. More First Nations people are in jail in Manitoba and Saskatchewan than any other ethnic group in those provinces. And the Native percentage of the population is miniscule: the smallest population, the most unemployed, the most drug-addicted, the most alcohol-addicted, the most uneducated, and so forth, naturally produces the largest part of the incarcerated population.
We can actually go down one list after the other – health conditions, social dysfunction, unemployment – and you can draw lines between that and previous residential school participation.
The other thing is that when you sit in Ottawa and read the records, what’s not there in 95 per cent of the cases are the Indian voices. Not the voices of the parents and certainly not the voices of any children. So we expect to take 50,000 statements from survivors over the next five years.

Arthur: What do you think will come out of all this?

Milloy: We’re mandated to do seven national events in seven different places across the country. The first one is in Winnipeg this July.
It will be a four-day event. Commissioners will set up shop, CBC will be there, and thousands of people will come, many of them survivors. There will be a whole process of statement gathering. Some people will speak publicly, as in South Africa, sitting in front of the commissioners and telling their stories. Many, many more will give private sessions.
There will be all sorts of learning opportunities for non-Aboriginal people. We want to not only talk about the crises and the opportunities for reconciliation, but we also want to say, “We’re still here and we’re still determined to be here.”
What we’re trying to say to people is, “Look, if you really want to rebuild the relationship with First Nations people, then we need to talk about fulfilling treaty promises, issues of unemployment, and economic development, and we need to talk about bad water in Northern communities.”
The whole thing will be a disaster if it is only a few people complaining and white guys turning their back on it and saying, “so what?” We really have to work hard to get non-Aboriginal people involved.
Last Updated on Monday, 22 March 2010 15:33

http://www.trentarthur.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1895:truth-and-reconciliation-an-interview-with-&catid=17&Itemid=47

 

 

And then he was gone ... 

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/research-director-resigns-from-reconciliation-commission/article1636301/

In an interview, Dr. Milloy said his resignation had nothing to do with his remarks [yeah, right!], which included a comment suggesting the Roman Catholic Church was afraid of lawsuits against living priests if diaries reveal details about “buggering boys in the basement and that sort of thing.”

 

 

Kevin Annett on Sweden Radio

http://odeo.com/episodes/23497511-Kevin-Annett-Hidden-From-History-Canada-s-Genocide

TRUE: What about Eagle Place?

What is Canada?

It was just this year that the Canadian government apologized for the residential schools that were put in place to assimilate Native students into the mainstream Canadian culture. As evidenced by the deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott’s words, the goal of the Indian Act was for “Indians [to] progress into civilization and finally disappear as a separate and distinct people, not by race extinction but by gradual assimilation with their fellow-citizens.”

Unlike Joe’s claim, we were not always, “really, really nice.”

http://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/30657369.html

In the end, the cost of indifference is a world where people like George Bush and Stephen Harper are heads of state. It is a world where genocide makes headlines and continues to occur; it’s a world where large financial institutions get bailed out with government money that could have fed and sheltered millions of people.

It is a world that allows the Oka Crisis and residential schools to occur, a world with a climate changing for the worse, a world running out of natural resources.

http://www.theomega.ca/article/4988

Reel Youth

Residential Truth :: Unified Future

This is the first draft of this film. Created by 6 First Nation youth, Residential Truth :: Unified Future speaks of the impact of Canada's Residential Schools on their family and their own life.

http://blip.tv/file/1193433/

Truth commission tied too closely to government: aboriginal groups

Leaders raise questions about new executive director

Last Updated: Wednesday, October 8, 2008 | 11:47 AM ET Comments55Recommend23

CBC News

Aboriginal groups are concerned that a federal government bureaucrat who is not aboriginal has been chosen to be the new executive director of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Aideen Nabigon, who has worked for the federal government on issues arising from the legacy of Indian residential schools, has replaced Bob Watts, former chief of staff to the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

Watts, who was seconded from the assembly to work as interim executive director, said this week that he was surprised that he received a letter last month saying the commission was activating the termination clause in his contract.

"I'm really at a loss to figure out what's going on except it's quite likely they're not honouring the job offer they made me," he said.

"I've put my heart and soul into this process and made commitments to survivors across the country that I was going to work hard for their benefit and not having that opportunity is tough."

While Nabigon has treaty status, Watts is from the Mohawk and Ojibway Nations in Ontario. He was directly involved in negotiating the residential schools settlement for the assembly.

Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said this week that he is worried that the federal government is behind the change in staff and that the appointment is another example of the federal interference in the commission.

"The issue here is not colour. The issue is competence and understanding and experience. That's OK as long as the independence of the TRC is not compromised in any way," he said.

Edward John, a lawyer and member of the Union of B.C. Chiefs, said the appointment is raising questions because aboriginal leaders believe that the executive director of the commission should not simply be a federal appointee.

The commission is charged with examining the legacy of abuse in Indian residential schools.

"We certainly want to make sure there is someone there who understands residential schools, who understands survivors, and not just another mandarin from Ottawa," John said.

Chief commissioner Harry LaForme defended his decision to hire Nabigon, saying he should have the independence to hire the person he thinks is best for the job.

"When it's interference and influence that's being attempted through aboriginal organizations like the AFN, then it's just me being accused of getting into bed with the federal government," he said.

"And I will defend the independence of the commission from that kind of influence as much as I will from the influence of government."

LaForme said the commission needs to strike a balance between the federal government and aboriginal interest groups and be independent from both.

He said Nabigon is an excellent choice for executive director. "She's worked on many aspects of the settlement agreement. I'm satisfied," he said.

"She's working out marvelously. I'm quite delighted with her work."

Last summer, the assembly protested another hiring. It urged LaForme to reconsider a decision to hire lawyer Owen Young, who had last worked for the Ontario government in a court case against aboriginal leaders.

The federal government formed the commission as part of the court-approved Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement that was negotiated between legal counsel for former students, legal counsel for the churches, the federal government, the assembly and other aboriginal organizations.

The commission has been asked to provide former students with an opportunity to share their experiences in a safe and culturally appropriate manner.

Its purpose is to create a historical account of the residential schools, help people to heal, and encourage reconciliation between aboriginals and non-aboriginal Canadians.

The TRC has a budget of $60 million. It was formally established on June 1, 2008, and is expected to complete its work within five years.

*******

In my opinion

If Justice Laforme is making the selection then it is independent of government. He has already shown his commitment to that by blowing the whistle on INAC for siphoning off TRC funds.

Bob Watts was appointed by the governmentHarper and the fact that he is a government appointee and defender was apparent in his attempt to shut Kevin Annett down: He found out Kevin was speaking in London and called the organizers and simply INSISTED that he was coming too. He used the same old smear tactics the governments always have used against Kevin. Showed his true INAC colours, he did.

Despite the opposition, we were successful in forcing the government to create a TRC Task Force to look into the deaths of children in the residential schools, but not without opposition from the AFN, Band Councils, and the Canadian governments. Phil Fontaine and Ed John's credentials in 'independence' from government is entirely suspect, as they both operate within Canada's imposed 'Band Council' system, not traditional Indigenous governance. I would trust Justice Laforme to make an independent decision before I would trust them.

Now ... if Justice Laforme can detach himself and his budget from the dept INAC set up to spend his budget, then there is some hope of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission being independent, as it is ordered by the courts to be. I will continue to share my concerns about independence with influential Canadians and with the International Centre for Justice that oversees the process.

Personall

Canada's Secret Crimes
AllHipHop - USA
As early as November, 1907, the Canadian press was acknowledging that the death rate within Indian residential schools exceeded 50% (see Appendix, ...

UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide Screening on Tuesday, October 21, 2008 in London, U.K. Ritzy Picturehouse Brixton Oval Coldharbour Lane London SW2 1JG Tel: 0871 704 2065 7 pm Unrepentant; Kevin Annett and The Canadian Holocaust This extraordinarily powerful and evocative films explores the horrendous genocidal atrocities inflicted upon the indigenous children of Canada, forces into residential schools that systematically murdered, abused, infected and experimented upon them, and the very public denouncement and defrocking of one minister Kevin Annet that sought to bring these facts to light. By Louie Lawless. Canada. 110min+ Read and Hear the truth of Genocide in Canada, past and present, at this website: www.hiddenfromhistory.org “Kevin is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than many who have received it in the past.” - Dr. Noam Chomsky Institute Professor Emeritus Massachusetts Institute of Technology “A courageous and inspiring man." (referring to Kevin Annett) - Mairead Corrigan-Maguire Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Belfast , Northern Ireland The very lands we all along enjoyed they ravished from the people they destroyed ... All the long pretenses of descent are shams of right to prop up government. ' Tis all invasion, usurpation all; ' Tis all by fraud and force that we possess, and length of time can make no crime the less; Religion's always on the strongest side. Daniel Defoe, Jure Divino (England, 1706)

UNREPENTANT: Where are the missing children?

Skydragon Centre, Hamilton, Tues. Oct. 29 2008

Kevin Annett is a former United church minister, now a street minister in Vancouver's downtown east side.

In the 1990's, Kevin learned from some residential schools survivors about the many Indigenous children who did not survive the schools.

He opened his church to survivors to tell their stories, against criticism from non-aboriginal elders in the church and the senior administration in BC, who eventually removed him from the ministry and drummed him out of the church altogether.

It wasn't just because of the stories of children who died in the schools, but also due to other corruption he uncovered to do with native land held 'in trust' by the church.

From that time until the present, Kevin has taken his ministry to the street and has been harassed every step of the way, as Canadian institutions guarded their secrets.

Despite this he persisted in bringing this information to the Canadian public in his book Hidden from History, website www.hiddenfromhistory.org and now in a feature length award winning documentary film: UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide.

Kevin Annett joins us at Skydragon Centre
Tuesday October 28 at 7 pm
to show and talk to us about his film,
his personal journey
and his hopes for the future.

Free admission.
Donations encouraged.
Film DVD's available for sale.

The timing is very appropriate as Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission is set to begin. Under court supervision and International oversight, Canada must reveal the full story of the residential schools and engage Canadians in solutions for the future. The time for Canadians to learn the truths about Canada's 'Indian' Residential Schools is here.

But will our governments allow the full truth to be told?

Will they explain why half of the children in Canada's 'Indian Residential Schools did not come home?
Will they investigate these deaths and disappearances and inform the families of the fates of these children?

Inform yourself.

Understand the present issues by understanding the past, and join in influencing the future of Canada.

Mush Hole Remembered: R. G. Miller, Woodland Cultural Centre, Oct 19 to Dec 24 2008


Youtube Video "Mush Hole Bricks" by timmerbigeyes

The back walls of the Mohawk Institute - the 'Mush Hole' are covered with the carved names of students.


http://mail.google.com/mail/?attid=0.1&disp=emb&view=att&th=11cc9eed13df662c

SCOC affirms 40-year-old rape case at residential school

Top court refused to accept need for higher burden of proof in civil court

Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News Service

http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=886f9729-2a26-4ea9-87aa-db85abfcd9b6
Published: Thursday, October 02, 2008

OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada refused Thursday to make it harder for victims of childhood sexual assault to successfully sue their tormenters in a ruling that was a loss for a former Indian residential school supervisor who was found liable for raping a child in his care almost 40 years ago.

The court unanimously overturned a 2007 decision in the British Columbia Court of Appeal that found testimony of adult victims about events that happened long ago requires independent corroboration.

"Such evidence may not be available, especially when the alleged incidents took place decades earlier," Justice Marshall Rothstein wrote in the 7-0 ruling.

The court, in siding with a complainant identified as F.H., put to rest a percolating legal debate about whether the standard of proving liability in civil cases involving serious wrongdoing should be as high or even higher than it is for proving criminal guilt. The ruling reinforces the existing standard for being found liable in a civil suit - a judge must come to the conclusion that the wrongdoing probably happened.

"I think it is time to say, once and for all in Canada, that there is only one civil standard of proof . . . and that is proof on a balance of probabilities," wrote Rothstein.

In a criminal case, where there is a presumption of innocence and the freedom of the accused is at stake, the Crown must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. However, even criminal cases do not require corroboration of sexual assault, noted Rothstein.

The complainant, F.H., was a student from 1966 to '74 at the Sechelt Indian Residential School, run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and funded by the federal government.

Ian Hugh McDougall was a supervisor at the school and F.H. said at his 13-day trial that he was repeatedly sexually assaulted in the supervisors' washroom when he was about 10 years old.

The Supreme Court decision restores the trial judge's finding that F.H. had been raped by McDougall four times during the 1968-69 school year.

"In serious cases such as this one, where there is little other evidence than that of the plaintiff and the defendant, and the alleged events took place long ago, the judge is required to make a decision, even though this may be difficult," said the decision.

"Assessing credibility is in the bailiwick of the trial judge for which he or she must be accorded a heightened degree of deference."

F.H's lawyer, Allan Donovan, said the ruling means the two sides can negotiate compensation, now that McDougall has been found liable.

The decision, he said, also clears up widespread confusion on whether judges in civil suits, particularly those involving serious allegations ranging from fraud to sexual assault, should follow a higher standard of proof. "This is going to be helpful across the board," said Donovan, predicting the decision could have a greater impact on sexual assault complainants who did not attend residential schools.

Many residential school victims are involved in an out-of-court resolution process with the federal government that precludes filing lawsuits.

© Canwest News Service 2008

From suffering to healing ?

Canadian governments, after taking land from aboriginals and forcing them to live on reserves, have consistently stonewalled on treaty obligations.

From suffering to healing
How to repair damage to aboriginal communities
Mark Tremblay, Canwest News Service

Published: Sunday, September 14, 2008

Where the Pavement Ends

By Marie Wadden

Douglas & McIntyre, $36.95

View Larger Image

Prime Minister Stephen Harper listens as Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, speaks in the House of Commons on June 11 this year, the day that Canada formally apologized for residential-school abuses.

Chris Wattie, Reuters

The treatment of First Nations in this country has been a crime, and all non-aboriginal Canadians have inherited responsibility for this shameful legacy.

But acknowledging collective guilt, while an important first step, isn't sufficient. The real challenge remains how to make aboriginal communities whole again after so much has been done to tear them apart.

That's why Marie Wadden's Where the Pavement Ends is such an important book, particularly now, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins its five-year, cross- country series of hearings.

The commission received its funding as part of the residential-school-abuse settlement, and its hearings will try to "educate Canadians about the damage done to generations of aboriginal people as a result of this heinous government policy," Wadden writes.

From 1920 to 1996, aboriginal children across the country were, by law, routinely taken from their homes and communities and forced to attend schools often hundreds of miles away. Thousands of former students have testified to the physical and sexual abuse they suffered at these schools.

"Residential schools also robbed them of normal family life and of their native languages and cultural traditions. The result, for many, has been a lifetime of addiction and mental health problems," Wadden writes. (Aboriginal alcohol addiction and suicide rates are both estimated to be five or six times the Canadian average.)

Canadian churches and the federal government recently paid billions to settle lawsuits that aboriginal groups filed over all this.

But residential schools are hardly the only indignity aboriginals have suffered. Wadden, a CBC-Radio producer based in St. John's, recounts how Canadian governments, after taking land from aboriginals and forcing them to live on reserves, have consistently stonewalled on treaty obligations.

The latest example, she reminds us, is how cavalierly Stephen Harper's government has rejected the Kelowna Accord -- a deal negotiated between aboriginal leaders, the federal government, the territories and the provinces.

Wadden describes the psychological wounds perpetrated on aboriginals, making it much easier to understand their high rates of addiction, fetal alcohol syndrome, domestic violence and suicide today.

Many observers have commented on the plight of aboriginals and despaired over the immensity and seeming intractability of the problems they face.

But Wadden's primary purpose is not to despair -- it's to advocate ways to make things better, and this is why her book is particularly valuable. She chronicles some of the more interesting initiatives aboriginal communities have used to try to heal themselves.

The author has particular admiration for the non-profit Four Worlds Centre for Development Learning, which has gained much trust in aboriginal communities. She holds out their process for community development and healing as an important template that the federal government should be studying closely.

Common to the Four Worlds approach and to virtually all of the successful examples she cites is a "vision of grassroots community development, which encompasses social healing."

This is a necessary first step because without it, any attempt to kickstart aboriginal independence and self-sufficiency is almost certainly doomed to failure.

Wadden writes that many government programs and agencies fail because they are too top-down in their approach, never involving the whole community in the decision-making process.

"Community development, if done correctly, will create the conditions necessary for change: hope, jobs, higher educational achievement, greater self-esteem and a reduction in addictive behaviour -- partly by dismantling denial, since addressing addiction will be a key part of the process," Wadden writes.

The book is not a simplistic call to throw more money at the problem. The process Wadden recommends doesn't have to cost any more than Canadian taxpayers currently are shelling out, "because money can be saved elsewhere -- for example, by eliminating the ineffective programs that exist now ... and the high-salaried positions that go with them."

Wadden doesn't suggest that there's an easy fix. But her concluding chapter -- with recommendations and a 12-step action plan -- seems both reasonable and achievable. Her triumph is in making hope seem viable.

Where The Pavement Ends is not an entertaining or easy read. But for the sake of our country's collective soul, here's hoping it becomes a bestseller.

AFN plans national day of political action

BILL CURRY

Globe and Mail Update

September 23, 2008 at 3:53 PM EDT

The Assembly of First Nations is organizing a “National Day of Political Action” for Monday Sept. 29 in an effort to get native issues on the agenda during the week when federal leaders will be taking part in debates.

It is part of a broader campaign by the AFN called: “Vote '08, Change Can't Wait!”

An official at the non-partisan organization said the slogan is not calling for a change of government, but rather a change in the government's approach to First Nations issues.

Details are still being worked out, but the AFN envisions the day of action will feature rallies across the country and community meetings in which local candidates outline their party platforms and how they will affect aboriginals.

This will be the third AFN-sponsored Day of Action. The first, in June of 2007, featured a large march in Ottawa while native protesters from Tyendinaga simultaneously shut down Highway 401 east of Toronto.

A second day of action was held in May and featured far less confrontation. The day was largely a series of peaceful rallies across the country calling for action on native poverty.

The Assembly of First Nations is largely funded by the federal government. It acts as the main voice for native Canadians and its policies and leadership are approved by the chiefs of Canada's roughly 633 reserves.

Flesh Trade Targets Natives

According to research conducted by gang expert Michael Chettleburgh, 90% of the teenaged, urban prostitutes in Canada are Aboriginal.

... let's just start acknowledging that this issue is human trafficking and not just sex work."

"The average age of Aboriginal girls who are human trafficked is between seven and 12 years old."

Flesh Trade Targets Natives

Young Aboriginal women used as a sex commodity in cities across Canada

By TAMARA CHERRY, SUN MEDIA

Last Updated: 29th September 2008, 3:54am

On the street corners of Canada's largest cities, thousands of women are bought and sold every night.

Most of them, experts say, are aboriginal and an alarming number are trafficked.

"There's a total myth that Aboriginal women either consent to or are born into the sex trade," says Jo-Ann Daniels, interim executive director for the Metis Settlements General Council in Edmonton. "The average age of Aboriginal girls who are human trafficked is between seven and 12 years old."

In a four-part series running across the country this week, Sun Media looks at Canada's hidden trade in people; at the failure of this country to live up to its international obligations on human trafficking, to prosecute human traffickers and meaningfully help victims.

"It is Aboriginal girls and women who are specifically targeted in this country to be trafficked, in such huge numbers that it does not compare to any other population," Daniels says. "We believe that it is the root source of Aboriginal women ever being involved in the sex trade. We believe that Aboriginal women and Aboriginal girls have been domestically trafficked now for, I would say probably since the '50s when there began to be Aboriginal movement into urban areas or there were more contacts between Aboriginal communities and towns."

Aboriginal trafficking has been identified as a unique problem in government reports, non-governmental newsletters and at human trafficking conferences.

Poverty, abuse, racism and troubled historical relations have all been cited as reasons for the Aboriginal population falling victim to Canada's flesh trade at a far higher rate than non-Aboriginals.

FEW ARE LISTENING

But those in the know suggest few are listening and little or nothing is being done to deal with the indiscriminate exploitation of this population.

Members of the Institute for the Advancement of Aboriginal Women (IAAW) in Edmonton began to hear stories from Aboriginal women about how they got involved in sex work after publishing their 2006 Crime Against Aboriginal Women report, says Daniels, a former policy analyst for IAAW.

"There was so few of them who had consented. There were so few of them who got any support to even recognize that they had been domestically trafficked," Daniels recalls.

Given the total lack of statistics gathered on domestic trafficking in this country, it is no wonder there is nothing to accurately illustrate exactly how many Aboriginal people are being trafficked. But this is what is known:

- More than 500 Aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered in Canada over the last few decades.

- According to research conducted by gang expert Michael Chettleburgh, 90% of the teenaged, urban prostitutes in Canada are Aboriginal.

- About 75% of Aboriginal girls under 18 have been sexually abused, says Anupriya Sethi, who has researched the issue. Of those, half are under 14 and nearly a quarter are younger than seven.

"According to the Department of Justice and other witnesses, Aboriginal girls and women are at greater risk of becoming victims of trafficking within and outside Canada," notes the February 2007 report on human trafficking from the Standing Committee on Status of Women.

The report noted accounts from several experts about poverty, abuse and poor living conditions driving Aboriginal women into trafficking.

"Basically their handlers start them in Vancouver," Chantal Tie, a lawyer with the National Association of Women and The Law, told the committee.

"They work for them there for awhile, then they're sold to someone in Winnipeg and then to someone in Toronto, and so on down the line as they get moved around the country."

The RCMP's National Aboriginal Policing Service wanted to examine the issue further, the report noted, but lacked the funding and human resources to do so.

Later that year, the First Peoples Child and Family Review published a report by Sethi after she spent five months interviewing 18 "key informants," who ranged from trafficking victims to front-line service providers for sexually exploited women.

Sethi identified trafficking triangles through which Aboriginal victims are moved: Saskatoon-Edmonton-Calgary-Saskatoon; Saskatoon-Regina-Winnipeg-Saskatoon.

"These triangles are linked and they're spread all across Canada," Sethi says in an interview from Ottawa. "One of the trafficked women who I spoke with said that you sleep in the night and you're in Montreal and in the morning you wake up and you're in Vancouver."

"I don't know if there are international linkages," she says. "Once you're in Vancouver, are you taken? Once you're in Toronto, are you taken to New York or do you go to Los Angeles? I don't know. It hasn't been explored."

In big cities like Montreal, Aboriginal girls from northern communities are plucked right from the airport, Sethi says.

"Traffickers often know someone in the community who informs them about the plans of the girls moving to the city. Upon their arrival at the airport, traffickers lure the girls under the pretext of providing a place to stay or access to resources," she notes in her report.

'YOUNG, NAIVE'

Sethi quotes an Aboriginal outreach worker as such: "Girls tend to believe in the promises of the traffickers as they are young, naive and vulnerable in a new and big city. They are unsuspecting of the motives of the traffickers, since they belong to communities that have a culture of welcoming strangers."

Experts cite various reasons these girls are leaving their communities.

"Aboriginal communities are facing huge issues, whether it's poverty or homelessness, sexual exploitation," Sethi says. "If you escape all that and there is this person who is targeting you... (who) offers you a shelter, offers you a job or better prosperous life, it's very easy to buy in."

"I haven't seen the image that I think people have in their head about people being scooped off reserves and taken other places," says Anette Sikka, who is researching the issue at the University of Ottawa.

"Chronic runaways are a real issue with trafficking in the Prairie Provinces," she says. "It tends to be if a young girl has run away a number of times, people stop looking." Experts interviewed by the Sun agree common factors that contribute to non-Aboriginal victims being forced into the sex trade -- such as poverty, drugs and abuse -- are much more prevalent in Aboriginal communities.

"There's a lot that unites us as Canadians, whether we're African Canadian, white or Aboriginal. But there are some distinctions with the Aboriginal community that I don't think most policy makers truly understand," says Chettleburgh. "The generation of young at-risk Aboriginals we have right now, many of them are the product of parents that went through the residential school experience and they've lost that touch with what makes them Indian."

"THIS IS ALL THEIR FAULT'

"I think there is a conception in people's minds that Aboriginal people aren't doing anything, this is all their fault, without making a connection to the whole issue of colonization and what colonization has done to harm the healthy development of Aboriginal people," says Marlyn Bennett, director of research for the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada in Winnipeg. "You have parents who don't know how to be parents."

Like international trafficking cases, in some Aboriginal communities, the exploitation is familial -- fathers and uncles exchanging incest for food and shelter, Sethi says.

"It's the whole bigger picture and if you miss it, then you'll miss the point," Sethi says. "How many Aboriginal men healing centres have you heard about?"

While experts have cited instances of Aboriginal victims being recruited by Asian and Somali gangs, says Chettleburgh: "There's no shortage of Aboriginal on Aboriginal victimization in the country." He points to Winnipeg where large gangs such as Indian Posse, Native Syndicate and Red Alert "are definitely running the girls on the street."

"I could take you to north Winnipeg, show you a street corner in the middle of a Monday afternoon, you'll have three girls, 12, 14, working the corners. Obviously they're being pimped out by gang members, but their customers are white guys driving middle class sedans that have come from the 'burbs, who are paying for their $20 (sex acts) in back alleys and they disappear back to where they came from."

In Hobbema, a notoriously crime-laden reserve south of Edmonton, young women who have identified themselves as Indian Posse Girls claim to run the prostitution rings, Chettleburgh says.

"And largely their customers aren't the domestic demand," he adds. "It's these guys that are driving through the community looking for a score."

"Things like this don't happen without racism being the core cause," Daniels says with emphatic frustration. "The number one killer in this country for Aboriginal women isn't diabetes or cancer. It's rape-slash-murder. It can grow to such horrific heights and still, what's happening? Where's the human outcry? If it happened to soccer moms, it would be a completely different story all together."

"Just simply being an Aboriginal woman puts you at risk. I can go and stand on the corner of 108th St. and Jasper Ave. (in Edmonton) waiting for a ride to come along and I will get solicited," she says. "Aboriginal women who smoke, they'll go out on the side there, away from the entrance of their business buildings, of their offices, and they'll get solicited. It's a real problem. That's how racialized the sex industry is in this country.

'TARGETS ABORIGINALS'

"It just so targets Aboriginal women."

Asked for an estimate of the number of Aboriginal women and girls being trafficked in Canada, Daniels pauses.

"At this point, I would say hundreds," she says. "If we say thousands, I don't know if that's 99,000 or 3,000. So just hundreds at this point."

"The women out there now, tragically are --" her voice trails off. "I don't know how to say this. There's just a lot of Aboriginal women and girls out there."

Those who care have made several recommendations to the government: Look closer. Come up with a plan. Save our children. But where is the response?

Even the U.S. State department acknowledges the problem, noting it in their 2008 Trafficking in Persons report: "Canadian girls and women, many of whom are Aboriginal, are trafficked internally for commercial sexual exploitation," the report says.

The Aboriginal issue hasn't been ignored, Winnipeg MP Joy Smith, who co-chaired last year's Status of Women report, says just days before the federal election is announced. The only reason Smith, who has passionately taken on the issue of human trafficking for several years, can give for her government not addressing Aboriginal trafficking is that they can't get anything done with a minority government.

Human trafficking can't be ruled out when considering all the missing Aboriginal women in this country, Bennett says.

"Where are all these women? Where are they? Are they dead?" she says.

"Whether these women are being moved around, we don't know that and we need to look at that and we need to find out."

"It's very rare with regards to the Aboriginal population that somebody goes in for money into voluntary sex work," Sethi says. "Unless we take a step back and see why it's happening, we'll never be able to get through this problem. We'll always see it as voluntary prostitution and their problem."

"Either it's ignorance or it's stereotype or it's total indifference or it's racism or it's a mix of all these factors," she says. "Before we go any further into prevention and targeted initiatives, let's just start acknowledging that this issue is human trafficking and not just sex work."

The Children Who Did Not Come Home
From Canada’s ‘Indian’ Residential Schools

Excerpts from media sources provided below:

INTENT

As Chrisjohn explains, the glitch in Canada's garden begins with the problem that, according to European law,
title to most of the land in Canada still belongs to its original inhabitants.

_Globe and Mail's Independent investigation, "The Lost Children of Our Schools." April 28, 2007.
"The myth ... Canada meant well ... That myth may at last fall when Canadians take a close look at the abysmally high death rates among children ... in the schools"

FACT
_Gary Merasty, MP, House of Commons of Canada, 2007
”I stand here for numerous victims whose stories will never be told, whose remains are scattered across our land in unmarked graves, scars on the land and even larger scars on our nation's psyche."

Accounts in native communities across Canada tell not only of abuse but also of a classification of people usually associated with dictatorships in Latin America or other parts of the world: the "disappeared," or the lost children.

RESPONSIBILITY
_Dr. Roland Chrisjohn, St Thomas U, NB
You have a responsibility as a citizen of the world to know what your government is up to and resist [their] unlawful actions," he says. "The crime of genocide is being covered up. Now it's a double crime."

...

Self-determination and self-governance are key issues for indigenous peoples’ human rights. Self-government means aboriginal people regaining control and management over their own land and resources, education, health, employment and justice systems.
http://issues.takingitglobal.org/indigenous

FACT

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG)

Article 2

In the present Convention, genocide means
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.
  

"I could argue all five, but the fifth one is a slam dunk," says Chrisjohn. "There is absolutely no way Canada can deny that they legislated the transference of children from their parents to the church authorities."

On May 21, 1952, when Canada's Parliament ratified the Convention, bringing it into the Canadian Criminal Code, they omitted sections b) and e) of Article Two. A further amendment in 1985 removed section d). It was around this time when accounts of the involuntary sterilization of Native women began to surface.

Stephen Harper, Canada's Apology, June 11 2008

Tragically, some of these children died while attending residential schools and others never returned home.

That's one way of destroying peoples ... 'lose' half of their children ... unaccounted for to this day ...

"In 1960, with nobody having asked for it, Indians were declared to be citizens of Canada. It wasn't an act of generosity. They were already working on the [ICCPR*] and they wanted to make sure that the Indians wouldn't be able to go to an international court and bring a charge against the Canadian government."

And that's another way of destroying Indigenous Peoples ... Nations ... just legislate them out of existence.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by
General Assembly resolution 2200A (XXI) of 16 December 1966

entry into force 23 March 1976, in accordance with Article 49

Article 1 General comment on its implementation

1. All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

2. All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.

3. The States Parties to the present Covenant, including those having responsibility for the administration of Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall promote the realization of the right of self-determination, and shall respect that right, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.

Canada (as 'the Crown') holds land 'in trust' for Indigenous Peoples, the 88% of Ontario not yet private, for example, and some lands are in dispute, like Caledonia and Brantford, Ontario.

That's another way of destroying Indigenous Peoples ... denying their right to sustain themselves from the land ... failing to respect the Duty of the Crown "consult and
accommodate"

Indigenous land rights:

"A say in development" to ensure that the land will be able to sustain anyone, in the face of the development-mining-logging feeding frenzy on Indigenous land, currently in motion all across Canada.

"A share in resources" to sustain themselves from their land ... where they allow us to live by treaties they honour.
http://grannyrantson.blogspot.com/


TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION "won't shy away from the truth"

(Justice) LaForme says he doesn't know whether the commission will call what happened to these children and their communities "genocide" under United Nations human rights law, or whether forensic scientists will dig for evidence in places where, allegedly, bodies of children have lain buried for decades in unmarked graves.

Accounts in native communities across Canada tell not only of abuse but also of a classification of people usually associated with dictatorships in Latin America or other parts of the world: the "disappeared," or the lost children.

LaForme says he won't shy away from the truth and hopes there will be a "cosmic shift" through the reconciliation he hopes will occur.

Ottawa Watch
http://www.firstperspective.ca/fp_template.php?path=20080824ottawa

August 24, 2008 — By Simon Doyle

TRC tells government: hands off budget
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission says the federal government is trying to unnecessarily control the flow of money in its $60-million budget, Justice Harry LaForme, a Mississauga Indian and chair of the TRC, told Ottawa Watch in an interview.

Canada subverts TRC ... granny

http://residentialschooldeaths.blogspot.com/2008/09/canada-subverts-trc-it-is-apparent-that.html

IT'S OUR RESPONSIBILITY.
TELL THEM WHAT YOU THINK.
g

trc-cvr@irsr-rqpi.gc.ca
layton.j@parl.gc.ca ,
Harper.S@parl.gc.ca ,
Dion.S@parl.gc.ca ,
Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca ,
strahl.c@parl.gc.ca ,

...
Full quotes and sources ...

FROM _PWMartin, Professor, University of Vermont http://pwmartin.blog.uvm.edu/archives/2007/05/residential_sch.html

(Globe and Mail, "The Lost Children of Our Schools." April 28, 2007.)

The myth of Canada's residential schools for native children holds that the schools had a paternalistic purpose, and that even after all is revealed about them — the physical and sexual abuse, the forced relocation of children, the ban on speaking native languages — Canada meant well. The country was simply limited by the assimilative vision of the times. That myth may at last fall when Canadians take a close look at the abysmally high death rates among children, from tuberculosis and other causes, at the schools. They did not die in one great epidemic; they died over many years — at least 40 — as the federal government ignored warnings from its own medical advisers. The full story of those deaths has not entered the Canadian consciousness. The Canadian Encyclopedia says nothing about tuberculosis under “residential schools” or “native education.” When the Canadian government apologized in 1998 for sexual and physical abuse at the schools, it said nothing about the deaths of children.

_GLOBE AND MAIL APRIL 2007 RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS: INVESTIGATION

Natives died in droves as Ottawa ignored warnings. Tuberculosis took the lives of students for at least 40 years BILL CURRY AND KAREN HOWLETT http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/s....pageRequested=1

OTTAWA -- As many as half of the aboriginal children who attended the early years of residential schools died of tuberculosis, despite repeated warnings to the federal government that overcrowding, poor sanitation and a lack of medical care were creating a toxic breeding ground for the rapid spread of the disease, documents show. A Globe and Mail examination of documents in the National Archives reveals that children continued to die from tuberculosis at alarming rates for at least four decades after a senior official at the Department of Indian Affairs initially warned in 1907 that schools were making no effort to separate healthy children from those sick with the highly contagious disease. …

_Rev. Kevin Annett Mr. Annett, as well as some academics, argue that the government's handling, combined with Canada's official policy of removing children from their homes for 10 months each year to attend distant schools, does indeed fit the United Nations definition of genocide. The UN definition, adopted after the Second World War, lists five possible acts that qualify as genocide, of which killing is only one. The fifth act is described as "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." But transcripts of debates in 1952 of the House of Commons external affairs committee, reviewed by The Globe, show public servants advised politicians not to enshrine a definition of genocide into law, despite Canada's promise internationally to do so. In 2000, four years after the last residential school closed, the government finally adopted a limited definition of genocide, excluding the line about forcible transfer of children. But (Canadian) courts have rejected native claims of genocide against Ottawa and the churches because Canada had no law banning genocide while the schools were operating.

_Roland Chrisjohn, Professor "It's another crime," said Roland Chrisjohn, a professor of native studies at St. Thomas University who has written extensively on the subject. "Canada can't define genocide to suit its own purposes." …

_Harry Lucas, Survivor Although most students from this period are no longer alive, some who attended later recall sharing sleeping quarters with dying children. "I've known some students that died there and I don't know how they died. All we know is we had their funeral service," said Harry Lucas, 66, who attended Christie Indian Residential on Vancouver Island from 1948 to 1958. "There were quite a few grave sites there that I always questioned. We were able to sleep next to a person that was dying. They didn't put them away in separate rooms. That was always kind of spooky for me.”

_Jim Prentice, former Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, Canada

"It is unimaginable to any parent that your child would go away to school and not return," he told reporters yesterday. "It is one of the saddest chapters in Canadian history. And obviously it will be incumbent on all of us to come to grips with it."

_Phil Fontaine, AFN Phil Fontaine, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, welcomed Mr. Prentice's proposals but increased the pressure on Ottawa to issue a full apology for the century of assimilationist policy. Mr. Fontaine, who was one of the first former students to go public with a personal story of abuse, described the federal policy yesterday in a way he has avoided until now. "We're dealing with an issue that meets the definition of genocide," he said.

_TORONTO STAR May 29, 2008 Seeking truth about lost children Native judge chairing hearings on residential schools expects trauma Linda Diebel National Affairs Writer An aboriginal judge whose father was called a "smoked ham" and driven out of university by racism says his goal is to help restore pride of identity in native people. … Is the June 11 apology for the schools Prime Minister Stephen Harper plans to extend to native people enough? … LaForme demurs from answering that question. However, he says he can understand why the apology is being given before his commission's investigation has been undertaken. He explained: "We already know how bad things were – we just don't have all the details. But one can still apologize. "We know people put names to things and this is called `the black period' in our history." Few things have been decided. The commission, which has a five-year mandate and is expected to make recommendations, will have coast-to-coast hearings with a timetable yet to be determined. As well, LaForme says he doesn't know whether the commission will call what happened to these children and their communities "genocide" under United Nations human rights law, or whether forensic scientists will dig for evidence in places where, allegedly, bodies of children have lain buried for decades in unmarked graves. Accounts in native communities across Canada tell not only of abuse but also of a classification of people usually associated with dictatorships in Latin America or other parts of the world: the "disappeared," or the lost children. LaForme says he won't shy away from the truth and hopes there will be a "cosmic shift" through the reconciliation he hopes will occur. It is important, he added, for native people to be proud of their identities and he believes the commission can play a role in that.

_THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: May 31, 2008 Chuck Strahl, Minister of ‘Indian’ and Northern Affairs Canada From: Canada begins examination of abuses at church-run schools for Indians http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/31/america/NA-GEN-Canada-Indian-Schools.php “Our residential schools system was probably more systemic and more generational than even in Australia,” Strahl said. “The reason it was particularly horrible was that it lasted so long. It just didn’t happen to a group of people for a few years, this was in many cases multigenerational and the results are still being felt.” Canada’s nearly 1 million aboriginals remain the country’s poorest and most disadvantaged group.

_MUSLIM MEDIA NETWORK http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/?p=899 The church people were worshipping the devil, not us. They wanted the gold, the coal, the land we occupied. So they terrorised us into giving it to them. How does a man who was raped every day when he was seven make anything out of his life? The residential schools were set up to destroy our lives, and they succeeded. The whites were terrorists, pure and simple. (Testimony of Bill Seward to Kevin Annett and IHRAAM observers, Duncan, BC, August 13, 1998)

_EPOCH TIMES Native Group Says Churches Holding Children's Bodies: Churches and government say no records of residential school deaths. By Joan Delaney Epoch Times Victoria Staff Apr 12, 2007http://en.epochtimes.com/news/7-4-12/54008.html Many former students of the residential schools say the apologies and monetary payouts that came from the government and churches following a flood of lawsuits that began in 1996 only applied to former students who had been raped or physically abused. They say crimes of psychological abuse and murder have not been addressed, and that the government and churches have been keeping information about these crimes sealed. The churches say there are no records of any deaths in the schools, and for the most part their archives are open to the public. Church officials say Annett's allegations are groundless. But Annett says he found such death records at the Koerner Library at the University of British Columbia. "I have published them in my book, and hence they've been in public circulation since 2001. We regularly send the churches these records."
Valerie Heche, spokesperson for Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada, the federal government department responsible for negotiating with the natives who attended the schools, also says there are no records of any deaths. Still, the Department of Indian Affairs is willing to "explore this issue in more detail" and meet with representatives from FRDRSC, she says.

_OTTAWA SUN April 14, 2007 Native remains lost? Destroyed files leave remains anonymous.
http://ottsun.canoe.ca/News/National/2007/04/14/4013007-sun.html
The United Church of Canada says it can do little to help relatives seeking the remains of Native children buried on the grounds of Indian residential schools because identification records have been lost or destroyed. ...

_Mike Cachagee, president of the National Residential School Survivor Society, remembers the funeral of a five-year-old girl who died from tuberculosis. She was placed in a handmade box and buried in a hand-dug grave. “You had children burying children," said Cachagee.

_Sharon Thira, executive director of Indian Residential School Survivors Society, said repatriation is essential for healing. “Their spirits can't return ... They are still there and suffering," she said.


Further Reading:

Like Weeds in a Garden

Genocide, International Law & Canada's "Indian Problem"

by Pierre Loiselle

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

Canada's solution to what was once casually referred to as its "Indian problem" has been a strategy of social engineering known as assimilation.

Not all of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) made it into the Canadian Criminal Code. The following parts of Article Two, which define the crime of genocide, were omitted when the Convention was ratified and became law in 1952: "Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group" and, "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." Dr. Roland Chrisjohn, director of the Department of Native Studies at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, says that the omissions are not a coincidence. The original two omissions correspond directly to Canada's official policy of abducting Native children and keeping them in residential schools, where many were subject to gruesome and well-documented abuse and torture.

"Modern genocide is an element of social engineering, meant to bring out a social order conforming to the design of the perfect society," wrote Zygmunt Bauman in his 1989 book 'Modernity and the Holocaust.' "This is a gardener's vision... Some gardeners hate the weeds that spoil their design... Some others are quite unemotional about them: just a problem to be solved, an extra job to be done."

As Chrisjohn explains, the glitch in Canada's garden begins with the problem that, according to European law, title to most of the land in Canada still belongs to its original inhabitants.

Canada's solution to what was once casually referred to as its "Indian problem" has been a strategy of social engineering known as assimilation which began with the 1857 'Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes of the Province;' its modern-day equivalent is the Indian Act. Serving as head of the Department of Indian Affairs during the development of the residential school system, Sir Duncan Campbell Scott summarized the agenda of Canadian policy towards Native people: "Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian problem."

The Genocide Convention

Rafael Lemkin, who coined the word genocide and was responsible for drafting the CPPCG, explained in 1945 that "the term does not necessarily signify mass killings... More often it refers to a co-ordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight."

"The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion," Lemkin wrote in 'Genocide - A Modern Crime.'

The CPPCG went through two drafts before it was approved by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948. Earlier versions of the Convention included means to establish an international court and many definitions reflecting the substance of genocide, including a provision that condemned forcible citizenship. These parts were removed in the final draft. According to Canada's representative at the UN, the Canadian stance was that, "a more limited interpretation of the term 'genocide' would be preferable." Objections primarily from Canada and the US eviscerated the final version of the Convention.

In his book 'The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada,' Chrisjohn writes that even in its watered-down form, Canada is in violation of the CPPCG. Residential schools were run from the 1800s to the 1990s where children were removed, by force of law, from their communities and sent to institutions run by the churches.

In the words of Scott, residential schools were designed to "take the Indian out of the Indian."

Chrisjohn explains that under the CPPCG, residential schools were clearly genocidal according to Article Two, which 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:

"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."

"I could argue all five, but the fifth one is a slam dunk," says Chrisjohn. "There is absolutely no way Canada can deny that they legislated the transference of children from their parents to the church authorities."

On May 21, 1952, when Canada's Parliament ratified the Convention, bringing it into the Canadian Criminal Code, they omitted sections b) and e) of Article Two. A further amendment in 1985 removed section d). It was around this time when accounts of the involuntary sterilization of Native women began to surface.

"They left out three-fifths of International law," says Chrisjohn, "that specifically would make in Canadian law what they were doing to First Nations people, from 1948 until the present day, the crime of genocide."

"It's not a coincidence. This is all too convenient."

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

At first glance, a new international agreement seemed to bring about a means of holding those who commit genocide accountable.

"In the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)... there is provision for establishing International Criminal Courts in which Crimes Against Humanity could be brought to an impartial judge," Chrisjohn explains, referring to the Covenant passed in 1966 that came into force in 1976. The covenant affirmed that participating countries could not "derogate in any way from any obligation assumed under the provisions of the [CPPCG]."

"Canada couldn't allow that to happen, so in the Covenant there is a little provison..." says Chrisjohn. "That is, minority populations of a country are considered citizens of the country and when the country does something to its own citizenry, that's considered an internal matter...So a citizen cannot sue his own country in international court."

"In 1960, with nobody having asked for it, Indians were declared to be citizens of Canada. It wasn't an act of generosity. They were already working on the [ICCPR] and they wanted to make sure that the Indians wouldn't be able to go to an international court and bring a charge against the Canadian government."

"All Canadians were made 'genociders' by their government," states Chrisjohn pointing to Article Three of the CPPCG that also defines complicity in genocide as a crime. "You have a responsibility as a citizen of the world to know what your government is up to and resist [their] unlawful actions," he says. "The crime of genocide is being covered up. Now it's a double crime."

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/original_peoples/2006/10/12/like_weeds.html
http://kjrbuilders.com/?p=179