Shame. That is all that I and most other Settler Canadians (non-Indigenous) have been feeling this week. Shame and horror, but not shock. This blog post isn't going to be about reconciliation because Canada doesn't deserve it, nor is it about what we can be doing better for Indigenous Canadians, as I'm not qualified to write on that. Rather this is about the reckoning we need to have in order for us to earn reconciliation.
The Kamloops Indian Residential School was established in 1890 and operated first as a Catholic Church-run school, and then as a Federal Government-run school until 1978 when it was closed. This was one of hundreds that were established for the express purpose of ethnic cleansing of Indigenous children. Children were taken from their homes using a variety of pretexts, and sent to these schools to destroy the Indigenous cultural practices they held. They were forbidden to practice their religion or speak in their language, and were punished for doing so. This strategy, like many of its kind, was very successful in destroying or severely damaging entire language and cultural practices. The Secwépemc language, which was until the establishment of this school the predominant regional language, is now endangered. According to the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, prior to this discovery it is estimated that some 4,100 children died in these facilities. This latest find is not unexpected as the death tolls are likely significantly higher than this estimate. Other scholars and groups estimate the death toll of the Residential Schools to be in the realm of 25,000 children.
The Residential Schools are just one part of this horror, of course. Aboriginal practices, ceremonies and traditions were rendered illegal. In British Columbia, for example, the potlatch was outlawed, the regalia confiscated, and the practitioners subjected to jail sentences. These policies were all inflicted upon a conquered people by the conquerors, as a way to subdue the populace and enforce assimilation. To destroy a culture, wipe it out as an identity, as a very concept. This was practiced as outright genocide. There is no historical basis now, or then, to justify what happened in Canada, and the Americas as a whole, after Europeans arrived. What the Europeans of all nations did in the course of "discovering" the Americas amounts to one of the most successful, sustained, and long-term genocides in the history of the world. Entire societies disappeared forever. Some have made progress in returning to viability, others have not. It is important at this juncture to recall what John A. MacDonald said about the Residential Schools: “When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write." This is the smoking gun. A blatant signal from the very House of Parliament describing the ethnic cleansing rationale.
I know what you're thinking: either we didn't practice genocide or we did, but it was a long time ago. If you live in this country, you are the direct beneficiary of genocide. I am sitting writing this on land that was once the land of the Algonquin and they didn't give it up willingly because I'm such a great guy. The horror that we as Canadians feel for the discovery in Kamloops is disingenuous, not that it shouldn't exist but that we need to change our perception of it. This is not a horrifying reminder of a legacy of genocide, but a reminder of the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Canada that our elected and appointed officials are in change of. Our government is five years late in its promise to provide clean water to all the First Nations Reserves in Canada. The cost is minuscule compared to what our overall government budget, and the cost is irrelevant anyway. If we as a nation cannot afford to provide clean water to all our citizens, then we clearly can't afford any of the other nice things we like to spend money on. If we reduce the requirement from 15 new navy frigates to only 12, for example, we could use that money to fix every single clean water issue but we don't.
This discovery of a mass grave is just one event in a history of abuse, murder and genocide that is still going on. The ongoing murders of indigenous women that the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Enquiry gave light to remain unsolved. Most of the resulting calls for justice went unanswered. Hate crimes against First Nations fishermen in the Maritimes, ostensibly over fishing treaty rights, involving arson and attempted murder, were committed last year with a conspicuous lack of help by the RCMP. Death by the hands of the police has been an under-reported issue with a huge amount of resistance to any reform coming from the police. Since Justin Trudeau took a knee in honour of George Floyd, most police budgets in Canada have gone up, not down. In Quebec there is an ongoing inquest in the death of Joyce Echaquan in hospital care. She taped the staff mistreating her, using racist language, and denying her care until she died in the hospital untreated. These are not, and cannot be, isolated incidents. These are a pattern of racist oppression we have been heaping upon Indigenous peoples. We are choosing this.
This is where the shame that I bring up must now be felt. This is a stain on all of us, and it is our collective fault. We don't care enough to demand change, and we benefit too much by our continued refusal to change. It's not addressed like this of course. Rather it takes the form of deliberate ignorance, and disregard towards the issues at hand. The Wet'suwet'en solidarity protests in 2020 that took the form of the blocking CN Rail lines was one such example; just like in the George Floyd protests, the entire talking point became "You can protest this, but not like that!", as if protests are supposed to be convenient for all involved. We as a nation had a choice in that moment, and each other moment, to prioritize the rights, ways of life, and land of Indigenous Canada, but decided instead that gas prices were going too high.
We as Settler/Immigrant Canadians need to do much better and it needs to start now. First and foremost, end the legal arguments with survivors over their compensation. Give them whatever they want and fire the people who suggested taking them to court in the first place. What a hideous message to send: let’s spend taxpayer’ millions hauling them through the courts. What elected lunatic thought this was a good idea? Optics! After this we need to start hunting down anybody who worked in any capacity for the Canadian Residential School System, but especially the one in Kamloops, and we need to start recommending charges to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for trials for crimes against humanity. The Catholic Church must also be prosecuted in the same court as being both complicit in these crimes, and as a perpetrator of them. These trials must be made mandatory coverage on all Canadian networks. We need to be sat down and made to see what we have done, as the Allies did to the people of Germany in 1945. We need to be confronted full on with the horrors we chose to commit, and the horrors we continue to support. While this is going on, we need to demand the termination of any government official involved in any part of the Residential School system in any form. Remember, it was 1996 when it ended, so let's keep that in mind when we look for signatures in the records. If you were, in 1995, thinking that it was OK to ethnically cleanse Canada, then you are simply unfit to ever serve in our government. That goes for some of the mental midgets like Pierre Poilievre who seemed to think the schools used to be a good thing. We can no longer tolerate this sort of idea inside our government.
Apathy is what caused so much of this, and it is the enemy now. We need to insist on massive, concrete change starting immediately. To merely stand up and say "This is not what I support" is not helping one iota. It actually does harm. By saying this, one distances oneself from our collective responsibility. Imagine for a second Holocaust survivors asking Germans in the wake of World War II about what they had done to their people and being told "I never did it, nor did I support it." It's callous, dismissive, and apathetic. It tells anybody who listens that genocide and ethnic cleansing are tolerable, provided one is not made to personally witness them.
So, we are at a crossroads. We can choose to continue down this ever-dark path of abuse, trauma and guilt, or we can choose not to be. We as Settler Canadians have some serious soul searching ahead of us. We are the perpetrators, we are the unforgiven, because it is we who still, after all of this, think we don't need to be forgiven. Instead, we lean on our entirely unearned "nice guy" persona (itself an American invention) and do nothing new. This must end right now. We ourselves must locate and bring to justice all who have committed these wrongs, and we all need to learn from this. We need to be the ones who realize for ourselves that we have done wrong. We need a complete stop on all buildings on unceded Indigenous land. We need to commit massive economic investments into First Nations territory. We need to settle all the current ongoing court cases against survivors at the highest applied-for number. After we've done all of this, we can ask Indigenous Canadians if we have earned the right to even begin to talk about reconciliation.
Ian, June 6th 2021