“Reconciliation Education”- Part 8

Lies about the past, lies about the present

For new Woke Watch Canada readers: Welcome! This series is easy to get through, each installment takes only a few minutes to read. Start at Part 1. (And here’s Part 2 & Part 3 & Part 4 & Part 5 & Part 6 & Part 7).

By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher, commentator)

This will be my last instalment of this series. I have attempted to shed light on the poor quality of information students are receiving in Ontario schools with regard to Indigenous history and current issues. It is important to note that this is being done intentionally. It is to the advantage of the leaders of the Indigenous Grievance Industry to characterise Canada and the pre-Canadian colonies of this land as genocidal oppressors, and our politicians have exploited this situation for crass political gain. This was perhaps epitomised by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s photo op of himself holding a teddy bear in the proximity of a soil disturbance in a field at the site of a former residential school in Cowessess First Nation, Saskatchewan on Tuesday, July 6, 2021:

Are there actually human remains there? If so, of whom? Is this evidence of any kind of foul play? These are questions he was not about to bother to ask. Why would he, when such a golden opportunity to score political points presented itself?

We now know all this murdered Indigenous children stuff was a big hoax but don’t hold your breath waiting for Trudeau to issue an apology for staining the international reputation of Canada and triggering a knee-jerk vote by our Parliament declaring Canada a genocidal state and adopting the The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (more on that below). Undoing all this damage will be a herculean task. 

Just as students are fed simplistic, misleading, and false information about the past with regard to Indigenous people (the focus being the Indian Residential Schools) they are being presented with the point of view that human rights violations against the Indigenous people are ongoing, and are the reason for the poor quality of life in which such a disproportionate number of Indigenous people find themselves. 

The claim of generational trauma

On Apr. 27, 2010, speaking as chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and for the people of Canada, Sinclair told the Ninth Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues: “For roughly seven generations nearly every Indigenous child in Canada was sent to a residential school. They were taken from their families, tribes and communities, and forced to live in those institutions of assimilation.” 

This lie is promoted in the schools. It is the foundation of the generational trauma claim but in fact, during the IRS era, perhaps 30% of Status Indians (you can cut that figure in half if you include all people who identify as Indigenous) ever attended, and for an average of 4.5 years. 

Even if it were true that most Indigenous people who attended the IRS suffered trauma, there is no evidence or logical reason to believe that trauma could be transferred down the generations. If generational trauma is a thing, why have the descendants of the victims of the holocaust been doing so well?

If there is generational trauma, the culprit is alcohol. Alcohol abuse has been a major problem in Indigenous communities since first contact but rarely comes up these days, certainly not in schools. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), which occurs when a mother consumes alcohol during pregnancy, is also a major problem and the children born with it suffer from mental and emotional challenges throughout their lives. It impacts their social life, education and work. Girls who suffer from the condition all too often end up drinking during pregnancy themselves and the cycle continues.   

More and more apologies

Our government keeps apologising for things. They really need to stop doing that. When something bad happens to people, it is right to empathise and to try to help. But when today’s politicians blame governments of the past for something, it is just deflection and virtue signalling. It is harmful because it detracts from the telling of the truth of what happened. When kids in schools are told our government apologised for something, they obviously think there must have been an injustice.

Not only have governments apologised for the IRS, but they have apologised for the day schools which were set up to serve Indigenous communities. All these schools were set up at great expense to taxpayers in an effort to give Indigenous people the chance to participate in the modern world and were broadly supported by Indigenous people at the time. These schools were far from perfect- abuse and neglect in such institutional settings was sadly par for the course during that era, but it was a good idea in principle and many, arguably most, of the kids who attended them benefited. Nevertheless, the government has been handing out tens of thousands of dollars to anyone who ever attended any of these schools, regardless of what their experience there was. 

The sixties scoop  

“The sixties scoop” is presented in schools as an act of “cultural genocide”- kids who were doing just fine were scooped up and stolen away from their loving parents to be raised by non-Indigenous Canadians in order to assimilate them into Canadian society (or “whiteness” as it is called these days). 

The reality is that the IRS system had become a refuge for orphaned and abandoned Indigenous kids, many with severe learning problems such as the above mentioned FAS. By the 1950s, at some IRS, the majority of the kids there were suffering from such incurable conditions. As the IRS system was shut down, there was nowhere for these kids to go. Closing down the IRS system did not change the fact that social problems were rife in Indigenous communities, Kids were still being abused, abandoned, and orphaned at much higher rates than the general Canadian population, which remains the case today. That explains why such a high proportion of Indigenous kids are in foster care- 53.8% of all cases even though Indigenous kids only make up 7.7% of the total. The Sixties Scoop was an effort to mitigate a disastrous situation in the Indigenous communities, but is presented in hindsight as genocidal.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP)

On June 21, 2021, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act received Royal Assent and immediately came into force in Canada. Would this have happened, were it not for the claim, credulously accepted by our politicians, legacy media, and a large number of left-leaning, woke citizens, that thousands of IRS students were killed as a result of neglect and even murder, then buried in a clandestine manner, in some cases using forced IRS student labour? I am inclined to think likely not. But UNDRIP did come into force, and this will be disastrous for Canada's Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike.

The UNDRIP is a Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 13 September 2007. Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand resisted adopting it for many years as it was viewed (correctly) as a deference to an outside authority over what should be an internal matter. The UNDRIP consists of a preamble followed by 46 articles. 

There is no discussion in schools as to whether it was wise, or not, for Canada to have adopted, hook, line, and sinker, the UNDRIP in its entirety. 

I am quite certain that if you quizzed the MPs who voted to adopt it, many, if not most, would not be able to describe its articles and explain why concerns about them are unwarranted. It was more like “yikes- we’re genocidal; we better adopt this thing so people don’t think we’re still evil”. 

There are legitimate concerns around many of the Articles of the UNDRIP. It’s not that long. Give it a read. I have included 5 just to whet your appetite, along with a brief comment/question:

Article 3

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

What happens when this interferes with the economic, social, and cultural development of other Canadians? 

Article 4

Indigenous peoples, in exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions.

The “internal and local affairs” of Indigenous people cannot be insulated from the affairs of other Canadians. Their “ways and means for financing” inevitably involve reparations and rent-seeking. This has a huge and detrimental effect on other Canadians

Article 7 (1)

Indigenous individuals have the rights to life, physical and mental integrity, liberty and security of [the] person.

If the government of Canada is obliged to adhere to Article 3 (above) how can it ensure compliance to Article 7?

Article 8 (2e)

States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for any form of propaganda designed to promote or incite racial or ethnic discrimination directed against them.

If Indigenous people were to make baseless, incendiary claims against the government of Canada or Canadian religious orders, like, say, for example, that thousands of Indigenous kids were murdered at the IRS and then buried in a clandestine manner using other IRS children as forced labour- if they were to claim something like that with no credible evidence whatsoever, would disputing that claim be considered “propaganda”? 

Article 10 

Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option of return.

Land expropriations are rare, but do take place from time to time. This happens when the well-being of society demands it. This cannot be done arbitrarily, and people whose land is expropriated receive fair compensation. Excepting Indigenous people from this process essentially holds all other Canadians hostage to whatever compensation Indigenous groups demand. 

I could go on, but you  get the idea. Read the articles yourself and you will see that most of them present serious obstacles for the governments of Canada and the provinces to act in the best interest of all citizens. 

The UNDRIP was created by the General Assembly of the United Nations, most members of which represent countries who do not have an identified Indigenous population. For them, this is a cost-free virtue-signalling exercise. Is it wise to allow them to direct us as to how to manage our affairs, or should we be taking their point of view into consideration and making choices as to what is best for Canada? This is the kind of question we should be asking in classrooms, but we are not. In fact, to ask such things is considered “hateful” by our current federal government, who has gone all-in based on false and defamatory information. Some have even suggested disputing these false claims should be illegal. Opening a discussion on this topic in an Ontario classroom would almost certainly get a teacher disciplined for “causing harm”.

Canada embarked on a trajectory of parallelism in the 1970s which embraced Indigenous exceptionalism, establishing inherent rights for them and leading to ever increasing demands for reparations and rents from other Canadians while living conditions for most Indigenous people remain stuck at a level far below that of most other Canadians. It is fair to ask if this was a wise path to take, who is benefitting, and whether it is in fact sustainable. Shutting down such discussions in schools among students who, unlike school administrators, will have to live with the impacts of blindly following this path for decades to come, is the epitome of failure in an education system.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Ontario’s Ministry of Education has “No Policy” on Child Gender Dysphoria

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Woke Watch Canada Essentials:

1. James Pew contributed a chapter to the best-selling book Grave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers

2. A long-form essay by Dr. M - Fulcrum and Pivot: The New Left Remaking of Toronto School Policy

3.  For evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!