by Michael Melanson
In the aftermath of the homicidal rampage at James Smith Cree Nation and Weldon, Saskatchewan, Winnipeg Free Press columnist and University of Manitoba prof Niigaan Sinclair looked for answers to explain how such a heinous event could happen. He didn't have to search further than his desktop because he already had a strong suspicion it was the fault of the usual suspects.
“In the wake, many have looked for something or someone to blame. There is one common denominator: trauma, the darkness in Indigenous lives. Every single Indigenous person carries trauma in this country, whether it be from poverty, bigotry, displacement or living under the Indian Act.”
In other words, Myles and Damien Sanderson were victims, too. They are victims because they were aboriginal and all aboriginal people have suffered under colonization, particularly the Indian Residential Schools (IRS).
“All are residential school survivors in one shape or another, whether it be experiencing that nightmarish system first hand or intergenerationally.”
At any point in the history of the IRS there was never more than a third of all aboriginal youth enrolled in the IRS and often less than a third. Sinclair repeats what has become a trope among aboriginal activists to explain all social pathologies existing within aboriginal communities: the Indian Residential Schools are the root cause of all aboriginal problems.
“As a result, many do not know our clans or communities, where our families and histories come from or speak our traditional languages. It instills a pain that manifests itself in shame, self-harm and legacies of silence. Frequently, this turns into addiction. Too many times, this turns into violence.”
Neither of the Sanderson brothers attended a residential school but Sinclair states. “The Sanderson brothers were born into trauma.” Did they ever have a chance, then? Does any aboriginal child have a chance if the cloud of residential schools hangs over every head?
Sinclair is writing to himself and only reinforcing things he believes. Consequently he wears ideological blinders that prevent him from looking beyond the stale causal narratives of aboriginal activism. He doesn't consider, for example, what kind of psychological environment this means for aboriginal youth who are being told that all of the problems they face are a result of things that happened to others before they were born. Ubiquitous aboriginal trauma becomes predetermination. How discouraging and depressing that must seem to an aboriginal child to have their private sorrows depersonalized as a general condition of being born aboriginal in Canada.
“Trauma is not an excuse but a fact of Indigenous life.”
Sinclair's narrative of trauma is one of disempowerment instead of empowerment. Given that curse as birthright, an aboriginal child is robbed of their innocence. Conversely, given that fact of being indigenous, how criminally responsible could the Sanderson brothers have been? The finding of 'reduced moral culpability' has become common in criminal sentencing for aboriginal people thanks to Gladue reports and it appears to have migrated into Parole Board hearings since, as Sinclair notes, Myles Sanderson was found to have been adversely affected by “an environment involving physical abuse, domestic violence and instability” that was caused by the “intergenerational impacts of residential schools.”
Thus Sinclair concludes: “What was perpetrated last week was a product of Canada’s history of mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. A genocide that returned home.”
For the uninitiated, Sinclair believes the Sanderson’s were victims of a genocide because he considers the Indian Residential Schools to have been genocide and since all indigenous people in Canada “are residential school survivors in one shape or another,” every aboriginal person in Canada is a victim of that genocide.
The accusation of genocide is preposterous. For one, where is the genocidal intent in educating someone? Educating a people presupposes their continued existence. If only a third of aboriginal children ever attended residential schools, how could that experience come to determine the general condition of all aboriginal people, including the unborn, and not the experience of the two-thirds whom did not attend the schools?
Sinclair isn't trying to explain the proliferation of social pathologies within the aboriginal population, he's trying to indict Canada. Operating from an ideological perspective of aboriginal nationalism, Sinclair doesn't only abstract the crimes of Myles and Damien Sanderson and all other aboriginal violent offenders, he also abstracts his solution to aboriginal trauma.
“The solution is found in supporting mental health for traumatized Indigenous communities and families — particularly children. The best way to do that is to support the rebuilding of Indigenous ceremonies, language revitalization and Indigenous-led organizations and governments.”
His solution is one of ethnic fundamentalism. In an age of global interaction and national multiculturalism, this is a highly dubious suggestion. Returning to a pre-industrial past isn't going to help anyone deal with the modern world. Rather it will encourage a retreat from the world. How would an aboriginal child today respond to being told that the answer to the trauma they inherited from a past they didn't live is to return to a past their parents didn't live nor probably even their grandparents? Is the net realization for that child that they don't have a future? Inherited trauma coupled exclusively to a return to the past equals an over-determined environment for the child's psyche and an over-determined environment is the bane of the human spirit.. It's no wonder why the oblivion of substance abuse would be sought by so many given such a profoundly nihilistic conception of being aboriginal in Canada.
Maybe Sinclair believes he's doing something good. He doesn't relate his own personal experience of intergenerational trauma but he has managed to become a professor, columnist and media personality. His example is one of integration rather than the dissociation he prescribes. Does he think he followed the wrong path as an aboriginal person if he is advising others to essentially go back to the reserve? One thing is certain, his elitism won't be threatened by the next generation if they listen to him.
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Thanks for reading. For more from Michael Melanson read - Bad Medicine
No surprises here. A very predictable response. Like father, like son. Default regressive thinking seems to be a common trait in many of the well educated indigenous activists which is neither beneficial to them or their people. There is a limit to the amount of mileage that playing the victim card can garner and I have to think most Canadians have reached ground zero. We had one indigenous family in our small community in the 1950s that integrated completely and was accepted without question or prejudice. The two boys made friends immediately and the younger daughter married the son of a long term residence. It speaks very well of the importance of assimilation.
That was an excellent article which I enjoyed reading very much. Thanks for sharing !!!
One cannot expect to get anything but a propaganda line from Woke apparatchiks in the same way & for the same reasons as one won't from Putin's men.
The Woke are in the business of maintaing & reinforcing their regime in the same way that Nazi spokesmen used/ imagined Jewish perfidy & conspiracies to justify their own behavior.
And they need to keep bolstering their narrative because their regime & their cultural policies have not been traveling well, are not stable & not enjoying the legitimacy they once had.
The Woke attack on the civilizational & reproductive heartlands of the society this humanities trained ascendancy is supposed to be serving is a result of its own unsustainable incompetence & malfeasance, which now threatens its authority as a social administrative class.
This ascendancy has been responsible for a protracted deregulation of the social system & the privatization of social accountability in the name of liberty & rights stripped of responsible agency, which has systematically wrecked this essential infrastructure it is supposed to be stewarding.
The bizarre behavior that is starting to irrupt out of the ruins of a once viable social culture has to be blame shifted & diverted to stop it coming back to its regime authors.
Any excuse, no matter how lame & transparently self serving will do in a storm, especially if it is made possible by control of most of the means of social information & administration, & repeated often enough.
All totalitarians over the last 100 years have done the same. And the authoritarian shrillness, irrational mantras & violence towards opposition that accompanies it are par for the course.