“No Pride in Genocide”

Canada Day Marred by Unfounded Accusations

By Michelle Stirling

On Canada Day, Twitter was dotted with numerous memes from various Indigenous activists and supporters.  One of the prominent ones was “No Pride in Genocide.”  Despite the fact there has been no investigation or charges laid vis a vis this claim, people now just assume that Canada is guilty of genocide because of a few things.

One thing is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports.  There are dozens of heart-breaking recollections of former Indian Residential School students throughout these reports.  But the claims are of alleged abuses; none have been investigated. The former students would have to lay charges and be questioned by police, and then later cross-examined in court where the alleged perpetrator would also have a right to a proper defense lawyer.  Evidence would be needed to substantiate the claims.

Of course, people then point to the now hundreds of unmarked graves, said to be of missing Indigenous children, that have been found across Canada, often in… graveyards.  In some cases, Indigenous Knowledge Keepers and former students aided teams of Ground Penetrating Radar operators to identify areas or ground disturbances, claiming these are graves of missing children and they are unmarked due to contempt or criminal reasons, not neglect.

But we are generally talking about historical events of 50 or 60 years ago.  To date, we have no archival records of children being reported missing by Indigenous parents in those years.  Since Status Indians were entitled to financial supports for their children, which were either paid to the family or paid to the residential school when the child was there, the documentation of former students was quite precise.  Graveyards that once had wooden crosses or headboards, if untended, over time would become unmarked graves.  So, even if there are unmarked graves found in these graveyards, or even graves outside of known graveyards, this is not proof of anything without evidence of coffins, bodies, forensic assessment, and evaluation as to how the deceased might have died and who they were.

If a person died of Tuberculosis (TB), this is not murder, especially when, in 1908, one Canadian died every hour of the day from TB, and two Canadians died every hour of the night from TB. 

Other reasons why people think there was a genocide is that some famous people have said so.  Murray Sinclair said so in 2012 to the Globe and Mail.  The Pope is claimed to have said so in a discussion with a reporter on the way back to Rome.

That’s kind of funny.  People who burn down Catholic Churches to protest the unproven genocide, rely on a statement from the elderly Pope, as evidence of genocide, when he was wearied from extensive travel and had been badgered by a reporter to ‘say it.’  Because his Holiness said so? That doesn’t constitute genocide, either.  His Holiness said at his speech in Maskwacis: “An important part of this process will be to conduct a serious investigation into the facts of what took place in the past...”

No one wants to report that, but the Pope is absolutely correct.

Genocide is a crime.  Thus, a serious investigation into this alleged crime must take place.  Former students must be interviewed by police, burial sites must be excavated to determine if there is evidence there (such as a coffin or human remains) and then the coffin or remains must be exhumed.  If deemed to be one or more suspicious deaths, and sufficient evidence warrants the charges, then there must be a trial.  This is not a time to “Respect Indigenous law” as Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray claimed in a recent interview in the Canadian Bar Association magazine.  This is about a claim of mass murder! Genocide.  Evidence is required.

Until these parameters have been met, along with appropriate legal proceedings, there has not been a genocide in Canada.

Not even a cultural genocide charge can stick – mostly because the children who went to Indian Residential Schools went there because their parents enrolled them in the school; orphans were also rescued. Most of Indigenous parents had already chosen Christianity long before the establishment of Indian Residential Schools and children were thus enrolled according to the relevant family denomination.  The schools were established in the first place, because the treaties promised education and the chiefs and council who signed the treaties demanded education so their young people could find a place in a rapidly changing world.  There was mutual agreement.

That’s not genocide.  That’s enculturation and education.

Individual cases of abuse are not representative of all the children who went to Indian Residential Schools for 10 months of the year, who were driven or flown home to their families by the government for summer vacation (or festive times like Christmas, where possible), and then returned to school in the fall.  Parents don’t keep signing up their kids for schools if they think that large numbers are missing.

Murray Sinclair casually says 10,000 to 25,000 children are missing. Where is the evidence to support this claim? 

The only way this issue can be resolved is to follow the Pope’s advice and this other thing called rule of law. “An important part of this process will be to conduct a serious investigation into the facts of what took place in the past..."”

You can’t claim there are graves with murdered children in them, and eyewitnesses to the burial, as is the claim at the Kamloops former Indian Residential School, and then not allow the RCMP to investigate.  You can’t claim the ground is sacred here and there and untouchable while making heinous accusations, criminal defamations, against an entire nation and thousands of dedicated people who cared for and taught over 150,000 students in times of poverty and deprivation over the course of 113 years. 

Hard to claim there was a genocide when, if a child died at an Indian Residential School or hospital, there was an inquiry, a death certificate, and an appropriate funeral – either on reserve, or at the community graveyard of the mission and school.  Hard to claim it is a genocide when just 432 students have records of their deaths while at residential schools. (Sadly, 423 students out of 150,000 students did die at these schools over 113 years history. Another 818 passed away at hospitals, sanatoriums or at home, having been released from due to incurable conditions such as TB.) The ‘unnamed’ register of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission may contain duplicate names (Indigenous names were often anglicized or some individuals were known by several different names) so there is some confusion of exact numbers, but within a relatively small range.  

Source: Truth and Reconciliation Report.

Rotting cross at St. Paul’s gravesite on the Kainai Reserve, 2012.

Hard to claim these unmarked graves at or near Indian Residential Schools are evidence of nefarious activity or that they are a sudden revelation, when, as veteran reporter Terry Glavin pointed out, most First Nations were well aware of these gravesites and the markers had simply disintegrated with time.

You can’t even claim it was a cultural genocide when only one-third of eligible Status Indian students ever attended Indian Residential Schools (or only one sixth of all Indigenous kids. Indigenous includes status, non-status, Inuit and Metis). 

You also can’t claim loss of linguistic culture because the reason aboriginal languages were retained – which were originally strictly oral languages - is that Oblate fathers created syllabics and dictionaries; many spoke and taught in aboriginal languages and many schools encouraged student activities that celebrated their Indigenous culture...while still teaching practical skills and English or French for living in a world that was undergoing the ‘just transition’ of the time.

By Skookum1 at en.wikipedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16944468 

Shown above example of “Kamloops Wawa” a shorthand method of writing the Chinook language and teaching literacy to local Indigenous people, developed by Father Lejeune.

1890 By Vancouver Archives - https://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/bishop-durier-father-lejuene-and-very-rev-j-m-fayard-with-large-group-of-native-indians-outside-roman-catholic-church-at-north-bend-b-c, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=125445810 

Some students were harmed at Indian Residential Schools. These are individual crimes and violations.  Many of those victims of abuse have previously been compensated. Few Canadians realize that there is already in process, an enormous financial compensation payout to all those who attended (Common Experience) and additional specific sums to those claiming to have been harmed by serious physical or sexual abuse (Independent Assessment Process).  In Chapter 3 in Clifton and DeWolf, “From Truth Comes Reconciliation” the compensations are described as follows: Common Experience: (for attending), $10,000 for the 1st year, $3,000 for each subsequent year.  Average payment was for 4.5 years, a little over $20,000. The Independent Assessment Process (IAP) was on a sliding scale depending on what the person claimed happened. (See page 38). There was no cross-examination of the person. According to Clifton and DeWolf, the average payout was over $125,000.

So, it is not like the individual claimants in Canada who have suffered harms have been ignored, forgotten, or offered paltry compensation. But these are individual cases and not evidence of genocide.  Only about 4% of the Indian Residential School students over time are represented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission documents.

Overall, the Canadian government has committed to about $60 billion in payments (2023 d0llars) thus for school claims, foster care, Sixties Scoop, etc., as explained in the report: From Reconciliation to Reparations: Exploiting a Noble Idea (fraserinstitute.org). That’s a little over half the GDP of the country of Guatemala (2022), home of José Francisco Calí Tzay, a Maya Kaqchikel, appointed in 2020 as UN Special Rapporteur on Rights of Indigenous People.  Calí Tzay is presently investigating Canada for the alleged human rights violations, ergo the underpinnings of the crime of genocide. For context, Guatemala has a population of 17 million people; many of whom suffered through an actual physical genocide, rife with extreme violence, in which >200,000 people were killed or ‘disappeared,’ during a civil war waged from 1960-1996, which was specifically targeted against Mayan rebels.  

Canada’s Indigenous people number about 1.8 million. We only have claims of missing children, but no evidence to date.

Thus, it seems like the as-yet unfounded claim of ‘genocide’ is some kind of ‘top up’ theme to create the need for a larger form of reparation for this as yet, uninvestigated crime.  The reparations bandied about are ‘land back’ - and this meme was also prominently displayed on Twitter on Canada Day.  Even Ben and Jerry’s ice cream from the USA entered the fray, claiming Canada is ‘Our home on stolen land.’  Never mind that US Indian Wars raged on from 1622 to 1924!!

Few Canadians realize that the ‘genocide’ accusation has been capitalized on by China, which has, with other terror bloc nations, accused Canada of genocide at the UN.  Shall we self-incriminate our country, as MPs did in the House of Commons on Oct. 27, 2022, that Canada is guilty of genocide at Indian Residential Schools – without a shred of evidence – thus pushing our country into whirlpool of global sanctions, trade embargoes, perhaps criminal trials at the Hague for a crime that presently exists only in claims, not evidence.

You may have heard that Indian Residential Schools were set up to “kill the Indian in the child.”  This is a statement that no Canadian leader ever said. It was a made up quote by historian John Milloy in his 1996 report “Suffer the Little Children” – but not even his source for those words is accurate! 

What was said by Canadian Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs Duncan Scott is this: “I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone…”

That’s a view many Canadians share today.

Indeed, according to Robert MacBain’s work “Their Home and Native Land” - “The assistance that was to be provided to the Indians west of Thunder Bay by the Canadian government under the terms of the treaties that were negotiated between 1871 and 1877 was intended to be a short-term measure – sort of a bridge over troubled waters -- to help them make the difficult transition from their nomadic lifestyle of hunting, fishing and gathering to supporting themselves by farming and/or raising cattle.”

He is referencing the 1880 book, “The Treaties of Canada with the Indians,” by Lieutenant-Governor Alexander Morris – who negotiated four of the seven treaties entered into between 1871 and 1877 – and who said: “I look forward to seeing the Indians faithful allies of the Crown while they can gradually be made an increasing and self-supporting population.” 

After agreeing to a modest increase in cattle and farm equipment that would be provided after the treaty was signed, Lieut.-Gov. Morris re-emphasized that, after three years, the Cree’s would be entirely on their own.

“I closed by stating that, after they settled on the reserves, we would give them provisions to aid them while cultivating, to the extent of one thousand dollars per annum, but for three years only, [emphasis added] as after that time they should be able to support themselves ….. We told them that they must help their own poor, and that if they prospered they could do so.”

Seems like a long 3 years.  And a long way from $1,000.

Indian Residential Schools taught people how to live in contemporary society, rather than only living off the land.  They taught people how to live on the land, moving from hunter-gatherer to rancher-farmer, and more.

Time to stop focusing on ‘survivors’ and look at the ‘thrivers’ – those graduates of Indian Residential Schools who, by dint of their education and personal hard work, distinguished themselves in business, education, agriculture, the arts and medicine.  There are many out there, no doubt silent in the face of cancel culture.  

Ironically, it was Mao’s cancel culture that allowed the real Chinese genocide of ~36-40 million people to take place. 

So, let’s learn from history.  Speak up. Celebrate successful Indian Residential School students. And investigate the genocide claims.  

There’s no pride in self-flagellation over unfounded accusations.

Happy Canada Month!

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.  

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, Manufacturing a Genocide

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