Manufacturing a Genocide

The Balkanization of Canada

Photo by Rose Butler on Unsplash

By Michelle Stirling

There’s a remarkable 2017 news story about James Louie’s 2007 quest to have the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues declare Canada guilty of genocide regarding forced assimilation, generally ascribed to Indian Residential Schools. Louis is from the Lil’wat Nation in British Columbia which never had a treaty with Canada.

Way back then, 16 years ago, Canada had not signed the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).  Now we have signed on and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act received Royal Assent on June 21, 2021. On June 20, 2023, Justice Canada issued a glossy Action Plan to implement UNDRIP, one which appears set to turn Canada upside down and Balkanize it, break it and bankrupt it.

Too harsh?

Let’s see what happened with Louie’s original request.  The APTN article states: “He asked the forum to use the Declaration to augment the UN’s convention on genocide. Specifically, Article 7 of UNDRIP which reads:

“Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to another group.”

Louie argued that his nation was sovereign and thus all of Canada’s actions to assimilate his people were illegal.

APTN reporters consulted with Kathleen Mahoney, a legal expert on genocide, who pointed out that there is no retroactivity in the UN Genocide law signed in 1948.  However, the article explained that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is designed to prosecute states for such crimes, but another state would have to make the charge. 

Well, well, well. Guess what happened on June 22, 2021? China accused Canada of genocide!  Remarkable timing, considering UNDRIP had received Royal Assent the day before.  And what prompted China to do this?  Was it just payback since Canada and several western nations had called for an investigation into China’s treatment of the Uyghur people as possible genocide? Or is there a bigger picture? 

The genocide charge by China against Canada may be difficult to prove, as intent would have to be proven, often quite difficult.

A further prompt for China was that on May 22-23, 2021, the Kamloops Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation claimed to have found the unmarked graves of 215 children at the former Indian Residential School, making reference to Knowledge Keepers’ comments that these children were murdered by priests and nuns and secretly buried by six-year-old classmates in the middle of the night.

By May 30th, Canada’s flag was flying at half-mast, a form of self-incrimination, where it stayed for half a year. Canada Day celebrations were cancelled as a consecutive series of discoveries of unmarked graves proliferated across the country with remarkable, impeccable timing.

Remarkable timing.

Coincident to all this, on July 26, 2021, a new Governor General, Mary Simon, was appointed – the first Indigenous Governor General in Canada’s history.  On August 15, 2021, the newly installed Governor General approved the request of the Prime Minister to dissolve parliament, abandoning the next fixed election date of Oct. 2023.  Likewise, the Conservative party’s demands to see unredacted documents related to the abrupt firing of two scientists at Winnipeg’s Level 4 biolab, where allegations of a possible security breach or espionage related to allegations of improperly sending samples of deadly Ebola and Henipah viruses to China, as reported June 10, 2021, collapsed upon the election call. 

But back to the efforts to have Canada charged with genocide. The APTN 2017 article about James Louie’s quest also explained Mahoney’s view that though it might be possible to charge Canada under various human rights legislation, like that adopted by Canada in 2000, Canada would have to declare itself guilty of genocide, which, at the time, Mahoney thought was quite unlikely. 

Surprise!

Oct. 27, 2022, the entire House of Commons voted unanimously to declare Indian Residential Schools as genocide, without a shred of evidence.

On June 8, 2022, Kimberly Murray had been appointed Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools. 

On January 30, 2023 Murray made a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People. On March 03, 2023, a copy was sent to the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

The document opens with these three points: 

1. The existence of unmarked graves and burial sites of children who died while being forced to attend Indian Residential Schools1 in Canada is a stark reality of the ongoing harm of assimilative government laws and policies that have targeted Indigenous Peoples. The Indian Residential School System was put in place for the express purpose of “killing the Indian in the child” and has been characterized as genocide by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC, 2015), Canada’s National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG National Inquiry, 2019) and by the Canadian House of Commons (2022). 

2. For over 100 years, more than 150,000 First Nation, Inuit and Métis children were taken from their parents and communities and placed in state-funded, church-run Indian Residential Schools. Based on significant documentary evidence and Survivor testimony, the TRC concluded that many children who were forcibly taken to these institutions were subject to neglect, malnutrition, substandard health and living conditions, exposure to contagious diseases, mistreatment, medical experimentation, and extreme physical, sexual, spiritual and mental abuse by those entrusted with their care.

3. Unfortunately, many First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were never returned home from Indian Residential Schools. Survivors have shared testimonies of children who were there one day then disappeared the next, of newborn babies being put into incinerators, of being forced to dig the graves of children who died, and of knowing where on former Indian Residential School grounds children are buried in unmarked graves.

In all three of the foregoing statements there are serious errors or exaggerations and for statement 3. there is no evidence of any of these horrific claims, only statements from former residential school students, decades after their attendance at school as children.

And sure enough, in March of 2023, UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights came to Canada for 10 days to investigate, leaving with a statement that residential schools are an ‘appalling legacy.’  His final report will be out in September (just in time for the House of Commons to resume and for Truth and Reconciliation Day!) Seems pretty obvious what his report will say.

As we have seen throughout history, nations guilty of genocide have to pay staggering reparations.

Canada began reparations for Indian Residential Schools back in 2007. In 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in Canada and in 2015 the final report was released to the public.  The TRC was an activity within the largest class-action settlement claim in Canadian history, for the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. Though the TRC work was substantial, it was not comprehensive, gathering only the recollections of participants. The people not subject to cross-examination nor were they required to present evidence or witnesses. While this may have been cathartic for former students, a legal standard of evidence was not met. The 6,500 statements represent about 4% of all students who had ever gone to Indian Residential Schools. The published reports are only a fraction of the entire testimonies given, according to a fellow researcher. Sources report that the budget to interview former teaching staff was substantially cut, and many potential witnesses with positive stories to tell were concerned about retaliation. Thus, the report is imbalanced.

Contrary to Kimberly Murray’s statement to the UN Special Rapporteur and UN Expert Mechanism, nowhere in these thousands of recollections in the TRC are there statements of students disappearing.  Though claims were made of murders, and subsequently the claims of unmarked graves began popping up across the country, no criminal investigations began.  The alleged crime scenes have not been cordoned off by the RCMP, but by First Nations bands themselves.

As journalist Terry Glavin pointed out, in his article “The Year of the Graves” of May 26, 2022, virtually all of the alleged ‘unmarked gravesites’ were well-known to the communities and well-documented for many years prior. They were often the common burial grounds for all members of the community from early times.  The wooden crosses or headboards had simply disintegrated over time.  No one cared about these graves at all, until a sudden confluence of interests, trying to frame Canada as being guilty of genocide.

Now the Kimberly Murray document, “Sacred Responsibility…” released June 16, 2023, includes erroneous claims in individual cases of Marieyvonne Alaka Ukaliannuk and Betzie Osborne, claiming they were forcibly taken from their homes to Indian Residential Schools, when this is not what the documented evidence shows.  There are many other false or misleading claims in this document which experienced historical researchers ferreted out within hours of the report’s release.

Kimberly Murray wants to shut down any questions about the unmarked graves issue, despite there never having been any criminal investigation into any one of the gravesites, and despite the fact that in her own report, she claims there are first-hand witnesses to the heinous murders described in lurid detail.

Kimberly Murray is a lawyer.  She should surely appreciate that murder…or on a grand scale…genocide, is a criminal offense. The first step in a criminal matter is to immediately secure the alleged crime scene, open a criminal investigation, question the witnesses, gather evidence and begin excavations to determine what is at these locations.  

Yet Kimberly Murray did not call for such action once appointed, nor does her report call for such action.  

Instead, Kimberly Murray calls for people like me, who bring forth the facts in this Kafka-esque ordeal, to be criminally treated like a Nazi Holocaust denier with fines or jail. Both Justice Minister and Attorney General David Lametti and Marc Miller, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations have expressed agreement on that in public statements and on social media.

It should be noted that in an interview published by The Hub, featuring David Frum, he pointed out that the need to silence dissenting voices probably stems from the money involved for compensation of those declared victims of Indian Residential Schools. Most Canadians are likely unaware that this is on the order of Cdn $60 billion, more than the current Canadian defence budget.  On top of that, the Canadian government has big plans for “Nature-based Climate Solutions” – basically the hawking of untouched forests, lands and waters for sale as carbon credits while pretending to be saving the planet – deals which could be in the hundreds of billions or ultimately trillions of dollars. Most of this land is on or near Indigenous claimed territories. The test case appears to have been the Great Bear Rainforest, which Canadians co-funded but do not financially benefit from.  

It is deeply concerning that the Justice Ministry’s “UNDRIP Action Plan,” issued June 20, 2023, just days after the Kimberly Murray report, makes the following statements:

In addition to the measures set out under the “Oversight and Accountability” and “Monitoring and Reviewing” elements of the “Legislated Priorities” section, the Government of Canada will take the following actions in consultation and cooperation with Indigenous peoples:

107. Support the ongoing work of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children

and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools and act

upon her recommendations, including with a view to aligning federal laws with the UN

Declaration. (Justice Canada)

108. Support an independent Advisory Committee that will provide guidance on prioritization,

standards and recommendations on approaches to sharing different types of Indian Residential School documents, and to lead a whole-of-government process to scope and develop a federal approach to identify and share Indian Residential Schools-related documents with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. (Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada)

109. Develop distinction-based mechanisms to formalize participation of Indigenous peoples’ representative institutions throughout the Government of Canada’s processes for: ongoing implementation of Canada’s obligations under international human rights treaties; monitoring and reporting on Canada’s obligations under those treaties; followup on recommendations by international human rights bodies; and consideration of adherence to international human rights treaties to which Canada is not yet party. (Canadian Heritage) 

There was no time for critical review between the issuing of the “Sacred Responsibility…” and the publishing of Canada’s UNDRIP Action Plan. There is no criminal investigation or evidence to back up the claims of murder and genocide. And yet there is Kimberly Murray’s urgent demand that historical researchers who show evidence debunking fatuous claims of disappearing or missing students should be treated as Holocaust deniers. The entire process appears to be built on sand.  

What Canadians don’t see coming is the demand for more reparations for the unproven ‘genocide’ – which, based on recurring comments from those at the presentation ceremony of “Sacred Responsibility…” will include a lot more of money and a lot of ‘land back.’  Maybe all of it!

Based on my view of UNDRIP implementation and the Indian Residential School genocide claims, if you thought the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s was troublesome, you ain’t seen nothing, yet.  Canada has 630 distinct First Nations communities, 50 nations and 50 languages, not to mention the Metis and Inuit as separate peoples. 

The Kimberly Murray report and the submissions to the UN Expert Mechanism and UN Special Rapporteur are seriously flawed and lack evidence and should be withdrawn. But the impetus of Kimberly Murray’s demands for immediate change in law, without waiting for her final report (due in September 2024) to outlaw “residential school denialism” and to lockdown “Indigenous data sovereignty” suggests there is no desire for accurate inquiry, evidence or facts on the part of the federal government or other actors.

Meanwhile, those Canadians who are concerned about China meddling in elections, should zoom out and see China’s hand tipping the balance in this vast geopolitical passion play, one that begins with a pretend genocide, but may end with a real one, or with violent internal conflict.  

What most Canadians don’t see at all is that Canada is full of all the rare metals and energy that China needs to implement its publicly stated plan of #MadeInChina2025 – where it will become the dominant global manufacturing centre for all high-tech and advanced industries, all of which require the critical minerals we have, most of which are located on land adjacent to Indigenous areas. In fact, as Guillaume Pitron has documented, there’s a rare metals war going on. We’re in it. We just don’t know it. It’s a war without rules.

Recall that a Chinese vessel made an unannounced and therefore illegal landing at Tuktoyaktuk in 1999 and since then has announced it plans to use the Northwest Passage for shipping.  In 2017, the Liberal government gave approval for China to sail through the Arctic on grounds that the ship was on a research mission.

So how could the implementation, or non-implementation of UNDRIP be problematic for Canada?

In a 2011 academic paper by Frances Widdowson, titled: “Aboriginal Rights and Our Common Future: The Perils of Endorsing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” she writes:    

“It was maintained that recognition of a right to self-determination for indigenous peoples also could have a significant impact on a state’s prosperity because “if indigenous peoples constitute a “people‟ for the purpose of self determination, they may have the right to freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources. This could have far-reaching implications for the economic well-being of a state, especially where the group concerned is territorially cohesive, concentrated in an area rich in natural resources, and claiming the right to self-determination in order to secede from the state.”

Widdowson, then a tenured professor at Mount Royal University, long a critic of the aboriginal industry of Canada and the Indigenization of universities, the impetus for which stems mostly from the reconciliation recommendations of the flawed and narrow TRC report, was summarily fired by MRU and labelled a heretic by society.  Had the TRC included more personal testimonies like that of Pauline Gladstone Dempsey, it is unlikely that UNDRIP would have been adopted in Canada.  And had more Canadians understood Widdowson’s critical review of aboriginal affairs, that it is creating a two-tiered society that is separate but unequal and unsustainable, it is unlikely Canada would be facing international charges of genocide or reparations in the billions, the threat of land back demands or extortionary violence.

Following news reports of the alleged 215 unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, some 71 churches in Canada were vandalized or burned down by arsonists. 

Also remember that in winter of 2020, Indigenous activists shut down Canada’s road and rail infrastructure for two months in well-planned, well-coordinated activity that nearly cratered the economy. That activity was initiated at the February 2019 “PowerShift” 5-day conference in Ottawa.  Seems like such a coordinated shut down could easily happen again.  That action was related to the Wet’suwet’en rejection of pipeline development on their territory which they say contravenes their Indigenous sovereignty and tribal laws.  This kind of world view is endorsed by UNDRIP.  Thus, Canada’s conventional rule of law becomes irrelevant.

Canada is guilty of geopolitical naivety, but we’re not guilty of genocide.  From James Louie's first attempt in 2007 a real case for claims of genocide against Canada has been made, manufactured, one might say, by various parties that filled in the blanks that he was missing.  It's no wonder that a small sidebar throughout the UNDRIP Action Plan says: "Ajuinnata (Inuktitut meaning: A commitment to action/to never give up.)"  It is coincidental, perhaps, that this is also a word near and dear to Governor General Mary Simon, as reported on her Wikipedia page: “Simon considers the concept of ajuinnata as an important theme for her mandate as governor general.”

We’re about to be Balkanized by UNDRIP. 

One side is determined to never give up; the other is asleep.

( Note: A reader has offered some additional information - Comments - Manufacturing a Genocide )

End.

Michelle Stirling is a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists. She researched, wrote, and co-produced historical shows about Southern Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Hugh Dempsey, then curator of the Glenbow Museum.  

References to Unrestricted Warfare:

http://airforceapp.forces.gc.ca/cfawc/eLibrary/Journal/Vol1-2008/Iss1-Spring/Books/Unrestricted%20Warfare-Chinas%20Master%20Plan%20to%20Destroy%20America_e.pdf 

Unrestricted Warfare 

https://ia600201.us.archive.org/0/items/Unrestricted_Warfare_Qiao_Liang_and_Wang_Xiangsui/Unrestricted_Warfare_Qiao_Liang_and_Wang_Xiangsui.pdf 

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read The Forgotten Tuberculosis Plague

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