ABORIGINAL MUSEUM IS FORCED TO DISPLAY
EVIDENCE OF THE CANADIAN GENOCIDE
"You don't stand a chance against my prayers
You don't stand a chance against my love
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
But we shall live again" ~ Robbie Robertson
On many levels this is a wonderful achievement.
First, it spreads the word "holocaust" to an indigenous people and tells the world that the Holocaust suffered by Jews is not the only Holocaust in town.
Second, if you remember, when Stephen Harper made a formal apology to the Native peoples of Canada over this issue, he spoke as if he was chewing and swallowing nails, forced to speak against his personal wishes.
Second, if you remember, when Stephen Harper made a formal apology to the Native peoples of Canada over this issue, he spoke as if he was chewing and swallowing nails, forced to speak against his personal wishes.
Exposure of the Canadian genocide has simultaneously indicted the social order that gave rise to it. Euro-Canadian Christian society as a whole stands condemned in the dock alongside those persons who ran the Indian residential schools, sterilized and murdered children, spread smallpox, and dug mass graves.
Despite their best efforts to ignore this fact and contain the whole matter with pseudo “apologies”, the Canadian government and its partner Catholic, Anglican and United churches now face the same kind of historical reckoning that Nazi Germany did after its defeat in 1945: an awakening to their own criminal nature.
On April 20, 2007, Canada and those churches suffered a fundamental moral defeat in Parliament, when the first cabinet minister in Canadian history publicly acknowledged that untold thousands of children had died in Christian Indian residential schools. I still find it hard to believe that this was not common knowledge and had to be introduced in Parliament!
The extent of this defeat has yet to be appreciated by most Canadians, or even indigenous people. But its impact is nevertheless reverberating throughout every level of society and undermining the very basis of Canada ’s existence.
I do not live in "Canada the Good", a fictitious concept if ever there was one. Name ONE imperialist country that is "good" to the people the land is stolen from! Canada is no different than any others only now, the tip of its dirty undergarments is being seen.
An Update, with thanks to Jim Windle of Teka News
May 13th, 2011
May 13th, 2011
At this residential school in Manitoba
the parents must camp outside
for a glimpse of their children
For the first time in Canadian history, a public museum will exhibit evidence which makes reference to overtly genocidal policies by both the churches and government of Canada towards indigenous people, including in the deadly Indian residential schools.
Relying primarily on the research gathered by Rev. Kevin Annett in his book Hidden No Longer: Genocide in Canada, Past and Present (2010, www.hiddennolonger.com), the aboriginal advisory committee of the new Peel Region Heritage Museum in Brampton, Ontario convinced the Museum designers, Vilnis Cultural Design Works, to establish a display that shows that genocide, according to the United Nations’ definition of the crime, did occur in the Indian residential school system.
TRY NOT TO CRY ~ THE CANADIAN HOLOCAUST ~ This is a beautiful film that also showcases not only these horrors, but also music that will make you weep. I hear also in this song, the tears of Palestine, another oppressed people.
TRY NOT TO CRY ~ THE CANADIAN HOLOCAUST ~ This is a beautiful film that also showcases not only these horrors, but also music that will make you weep. I hear also in this song, the tears of Palestine, another oppressed people.
The schools were established and run jointly by the Vatican and the Crown of England in 1834, and continued until 1996. According to government statistics, nearly half of the 150,000 children in these schools died because of treatment and conditions there.
The decision to document this genocide in the new Peel Region Museum was forced by the Advisory committee’s chair, Allan Jamieson of the Haudenosaunee Nation, who faced major opposition from Vilnis to include the term “genocide” in the Museum displays.
“We want to tell our story about what happened to our people, and is still happening in Canada, and we want Canadians and others to learn about it, and we don’t want to sugar coat it” said Jamieson to Teka News this week.
“As victims of this genocide, we have a right to characterize for ourselves how we have been, and still are mistreated. The committee’s work does not include having to convince the Vilnis team of genocide in Canada … It is truly tiring and demeaning to have to try to convince learned people about accurate history.”
Allan Jamieson, who has consulted Rev. Annett in the past, has also learned that Canadian government agencies make up about one third of Vilnis’ business. Their list of clients includes companies that also benefit from the dispossession of First Nations lands including a home builders association, a mining association, and a pulp and paper company.
Until now, not a single Canadian Museum has displayed the evidence of the massive mortality level in Indian residential schools or of their deliberate murder and crimes, documented in archived letters and testimonies published by Rev. Annett since 1998.
“It’s an incredible breakthrough” commented Rev. Annett today in London, England, where he is working with an International Tribunal to bring charges against Canada and its churches for genocide.
“Thanks to the persistence of Allan Jamieson and his people, the truth of crimes against humanity in Canada is finally being formally acknowledged, and taught to the next generation. The walls of denial are tumbling, and a huge leap has now been made towards bringing those responsible to justice.”
The London-based International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS) has been endorsed by over thirty organizations, including survivors of child abuse in nine nations, as well as seven different indigenous nations across Canada.
~ information from the files of Teka News, Brantford, Ontario, Vol. 42, issue 19, May 11, 2011.
MORE:
And just because I love this song:
GHOST DANCE by Robbie Robertson
GHOST DANCE by Robbie Robertson
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