The Socially Corrosive Myth Of Indigenous Genocide

A Rational Response To The Irrational

Niigaan Sinclair

This is another guest post by Independent writer Michael Melanson.

I was wondering when Niigaan Sinclair would try and respond to recent essays and editorials challenging the extraordinary claim of thousands of unmarked graves containing the bodies of children allegedly gone missing from former Indian Residential Schools.  Sinclair has long since argued that the IRS constituted an unqualified genocide unlike his father, Murray Sinclair, who concluded his Truth and Reconciliation Commission with the verdict that the schools were a 'cultural genocide.' 

Predictably Niigaan Sinclair's strategy is to claim there was a genocide and that anyone who says there wasn't is a denier¹

The first question is: does anyone have the right to declare the worst of all crimes took place without any police investigation or criminal trial?  What is the evidence that a genocide took place at any of the schools?  So far there is none and that is a bitter pill for Sinclair to swallow but he forges on: "What happened is obvious. No one should really need much more, nor be shocked when more information is unearthed."

Courts need more.  The accused, Canada, deserves more and is entitled to the presumption of innocence as much as anyone especially when the allegations are of murder and genocide.  Is the truth that Sinclair is shocked to learn that no graves or remains have been discovered?  He has invested heavily in the genocide narrative and now when the absence of evidence is becoming evidence of absence, he can only sputter insults and petulantly demand belief.

"If anyone does need more, though, there are the testimonies of residential school survivors, many of whom identify deaths by disease, shoddy living conditions, and, yes, murder, did in fact happen."

How did Sinclair determine that murder, did in fact, happen?  Only by oral testimonies? Considering that there is no statute of limitations on either homicide or genocide, why isn't someone facing prosecution for this supposed murder?  Nor can genocide be a crime of neglect.

Sinclair resents anyone who challenges the claim of genocide at residential schools and unable to abide dispassionate critical examination of his claim, he has to attribute it to a pathology:

"This is what happens a year after one of the most important and uncomfortable struggles with addictions in Canadian history: denial."

For some reason only known to himself, Sinclair chooses the analogy of addiction to relate to critics of the genocide narrative.  Maybe it's really Sinclair who is addicted to the genocide narrative and when faced with crushing critical scrutiny, Sinclair resorts to demeaning the messengers rather than dealing with their messages.  

The claim is that genocide was committed and that claim hasn’t been proven according to the otherwise globally accepted standards established by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.  Demanding such proof isn’t denialism; it’s merely due diligence on the part of citizens. Were proponents of the claim ever to submit their claims to criminal investigation and prosecution, they would find the standards of due process even more demanding.  Sinclair would have a particularly difficult time proving there was genocidal intent with the schools since educating a people presupposes their continued existence.

"Well, rock bottom for Canada comes in the form of old, irrelevant, out-of-touch and harmful academics, historians and columnists, it seems."

Obviously, if these assorted intellects are reporting on the most recent findings, or the lack thereof, they're very much staying up-to-date. What is harmful about critical examination of bold claims?  Rather, it is what is being harmed: Sinclair's personal investment in a narrative of absolute victimhood.  What is being denied about residential schools?  With Sinclair all we have is the conceit of genocide, not the case.  He seems offended that anyone would dispute the claim of genocide and I suspect that is why he can be so hastily contented to call people like us 'denialists', as if it was immoral to ask if the schools violate the UN Convention on genocide.  It is notable that in this piece Sinclair never once explains where the schools are in breach of any of the articles of the Convention.   He seems to associate assimilation with genocide but he unwittingly proves the absence of genocidal intent: assimilating a people presupposes they will continue to live amongst your people.  Rock bottom for Canada is hot-house demagogues who mistake moral zeal for academic rigor and who want to appropriate the moral authority of a Holocaust survivor without bothering to make either the academic or legal case.  Because Sinclair's activist persona is built on the absolute victimhood of genocide, he can't bring himself to even consider what any honest intellectual would; that maybe he is wrong.

There is a conspicuous historical fact that should provide Sinclair enough of a spark of cognitive dissonance to make him pause and reconsider the validity of his arguments.  After 1980, most of the few residential schools that remained open were taken over by Indian bands themselves.  I doubt very much that any band council, aware of the genocidal nature of the schools, would have taken them over.  It would be like Jews taking over Auschwitz and turning it into a yeshiva.

"The past year has seen some of the most informed, competent, and critically aware journalism, research and commentary in Canadian history on residential schools — precisely because most writers, academics and reporters have listened to Indigenous Peoples."

Yes, such as the journalists who initially reported that mass graves of dead children were being found. 

"Part of the inescapable truth Indigenous peoples are saying is residential schools is a part of a genocide and much of this violence continues today."

In a nutshell, that is how the belief in being a victim of a genocide has become a foundation of aboriginal identity.  What violence is continuing today that Sinclair believes to be genocidal?  As Carl Sagan famously said, 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.'  Sinclair is asking us to accept the claim of genocide on faith.

"No one enjoys discomfort, but change ain’t easy. So, as deniers make one last-ditch attempt to catch your attention, know that the work to bring the stories of unmarked graves, residential schools and what to do next is worth it, because it’s a path away from addiction and towards growth."

If there was a mirror in Sinclair's house of cards, that would be good advice for him to take.  No doubt that when the Kamloops story broke a year ago, followed by other such stories, Sinclair was thrilled that finally there would be physical proof of the genocide he was sure that happened.  It can't be easy for him to reckon the utter failure to produce even one grave out of the thousands said to be found. Whether or not a genocide occurred shouldn't be a matter of belief but when you have no evidence, believing it's true is all you have.  And Sinclair is more than happy to call you a denier if you don't believe.

Were this just one crank, this blood libel could be ignored.  But the view that Canada committed genocide (and is committing genocide if you accept the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Inquiry's conclusion), is socially corrosive.  If the residential schools were a genocide, then they would constitute history's longest-running genocide for which no one was ever prosecuted.  At the very least the genocide narrative provides a reason for many people to divest wholly from Canadian society.  At worst, an unpunished and unrelenting genocidaire evokes an imperative of justice but if the case is never tried in a court of law, it falls to the judge and jury of individuals like Sinclair to also be the executioner.  Witness the church arsons last summer and ask yourself, is this justice enough for genocide?

1. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/pushing-through-residential-school-denial-no-easy-task-576552852.html?fbclid=IwAR31Q0xKnZ1oa4GrXjLZhB_n6TRbfUt5b3RM0bUPtrUi-Rnq4GsPz89U5O