US to review Native American boarding schools’ dark history

2021/06/24 Leave a comment

Of note as USA also confronts this sad part of its history:

The federal government will investigate its past oversight of Native American boarding schools and work to “uncover the truth about the loss of human life and the lasting consequences” of policies that over the decades forced hundreds of thousands of children from their families and communities, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced Tuesday.

The unprecedented work will include compiling and reviewing records to identify past boarding schools, locate known and possible burial sites at or near those schools, and uncover the names and tribal affiliations of students, she said.

“To address the intergenerational impact of Indian boarding schools and to promote spiritual and emotional healing in our communities, we must shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past no matter how hard it will be,” Haaland said.

A member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo and the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, Haaland outlined the initiative while addressing members of the National Congress of American Indians during the group’s midyear conference.

She said the process will be long, difficult and painful and will not undo the heartbreak and loss endured by many families.

Starting with the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, the U.S. enacted laws and policies to establish and support Indian boarding schools across the nation. For over 150 years, Indigenous children were taken from their communities and forced into boarding schools that focused on assimilation.

Haaland talked about the federal government’s attempt to wipe out tribal identity, language and culture and how that past has continued to manifest itself through long-standing trauma, cycles of violence and abuse, premature deaths, mental health issues and substance abuse.

The recent discovery of children’s remains buried at the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school has magnified interest in the troubling legacy both in Canada and the United States.

In Canada, more than 150,000 First Nations children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to assimilate them into society. They were forced to convert to Christianity and were not allowed to speak their languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died.

After reading about the unmarked graves in Canada, Haaland recounted her own family’s story in a recent opinion piece published by the Washington Post.

Haaland cited statistics from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, which reported that by 1926, more than 80% of Indigenous school-age children were attending boarding schools that were run either by the federal government or religious organizations. Besides providing resources and raising awareness, the coalition has been working to compile additional research on U.S. boarding schools and deaths that many say is sorely lacking.

Interior Department officials said aside from trying to shed more light on the loss of life at the boarding schools, they will be working to protect burial sites associated with the schools and will consult with tribes on how best to do that while respecting families and communities.

As part of the initiative, a final report from agency staff is due by April 1, 2022.

Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, which had about 80 boarding schools, called the announcement encouraging and said anything that can be done to address those “troubling chapters of history” is a positive thing.

“I hope we don’t discover gruesome incidents like were discovered in Canada. I just think it’s good in this country to have conversations about what happened to Native American children,” Hoskin said.

Navajo Nation President Nez also offered his support for the initiative, noting discrimination against Native Americans continues today on many fronts — from voter suppression to high numbers of missing and murdered people.

“Last week, Congress and President Biden established ‘Juneteenth’ as a national holiday, in observance of the end of slavery, which I fully support as a means to healing the African American community,” Nez said. “Now, from my perspective as a Navajo person, there are so many atrocities and injustices that have been inflicted upon Native Americans dating back hundreds of years to the present day that also require national attention, so that the American society in general is more knowledgeable and capable of understanding the challenges that we face today.”

This is not the first time the federal government has attempted to acknowledge what Haaland referred to as a “dark history.”

More than two decades ago, Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Kevin Gover issued an apology for the emotional, psychological, physical and spiritual violence committed against children at the off-reservation schools. Then in 2009, President Barack Obama quietly signed off on an apology of sorts that was buried deep in a multibillion-dollar defense spending bill; the language had been watered down from the original legislation introduced years earlier.

Source: US to review Native American boarding schools’ dark history

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Rioux: L’assimilation

2021/06/19 Leave a comment

All too true in the early days but unclear whether the early largely peaceful environment would have survived if France had remained an imperial power in North America and had evolved from the fur trade to agriculture. After all, the early days of the British empire in Canada were also based on the fur trade and cooperation with Indigenous peoples:

« La civilisation espagnole a écrasé l’Indien ; la civilisation anglaise l’a méprisé et négligé ; la civilisation française l’a étreint et chéri ».

— Francis Parkman

Nous vivons une étrange époque où l’humanité se rêve une et indivisible avec tout ce que cela recèle d’esprit totalitaire. Les Américains ont été esclavagistes, voilà que les Occidentaux se bousculent comme des enfants à la maternelle pour crier : « Moi aussi ! » L’impérialisme américain fait son mea culpa et, dans tous les stades du monde, on met le genou par terre.

Rien de tel pour éradiquer un peuple que de supprimer son histoire propre. Si la citation de l’historien américain Francis Parkman est réductrice, elle a l’avantage de montrer que nous n’avons pas tous eu la même histoire. À l’heure où l’on s’interroge sur les pensionnats autochtones qui ont eu pour mission d’assimiler les Amérindiens du Canada, il n’est pas inutile de donner la parole, non plus aux militants, mais aux historiens. Nombreux sont ceux qui ont estimé que, même si le choc civilisationnel a été partout le même, les colonisateurs français n’ont pas eu le même rapport aux Autochtones que les colonisateurs espagnols et anglais.

C’est la thèse que défend notamment le biographe américain de Champlain David Hackett Fischer. On connaît la célèbre citation du fondateur de Québec rapportée par le jésuite Paul Le Jeune : « Nos garçons se marieront à vos filles, et nous ne ferons plus qu’un seul peuple. » De l’alliance avec le chef montagnais Anadabijou (1603) à la Grande Paix de Montréal à laquelle participèrent une quarantaine de tribus (1701), les Français n’auront eu de cesse de nouer des alliances avec les Amérindiens et d’apprendre leurs langues pour explorer le continent. Exégète de Champlain et responsable de ses œuvres complètes, l’historien français Éric Thierry voit dans celui-ci un humaniste.

D’autres historiens ont souligné que ces alliances étaient une nécessité compte tenu de la faiblesse démographique de la colonisation française. Reste que, contrairement aux colons anglais, les Français se sont alliés aux Amérindiens au point de former au Manitoba une nation métisse, « seule société où Blancs et Amérindiens réussiront à vivre ensemble », écrit Denys Delâge (Le pays renversé, Boréal). Et l’historien de conclure que si « le pouvoir politique canadien » écrasa la société métisse au XIXe siècle, c’est qu’« elle était son antithèse. »

Sans prétendre à une quelconque supériorité morale, des auteurs comme Gilles Havard ont montré que les Français d’Ancien Régime ont cultivé avec les Amérindiens certaines affinités qu’on ne retrouve pas chez le conquérant anglais où le capitalisme était déjà plus avancé et les rapports plus contractuels. Pensons au goût des festins, au sens de l’honneur, du sacrifice, de l’apparat et à l’importance des cadeaux, de la parole et des discours. De Radisson, surnommé l’« Indien blanc », au baron de Saint-Castin, devenu chef Mic Mac, l’histoire unique en Amérique de ces mœurs partagées émaille les récits des voyageurs de l’époque.

« Si tous les Européens partageaient un sentiment de supériorité culturelle vis-à-vis des Indiens et si le désir d’assimilation reposait partout sur la négation de l’Autre […] la Nouvelle-France ne s’en ouvrait pas moins aux Indiens, les intégrait dans son système politico-culturel, quand les colonies anglaises bien souvent les excluaient », écrit Gilles Havard (Histoire de l’Amérique française, Flammarion).

La Conquête aura donc sur eux des conséquences terribles, souligne Denis Vaugeois : « Aussi longtemps que la rivalité anglo-française avait duré en Amérique du Nord, les Indiens […] avaient eu une carte à jouer. En quelque sorte, ils détenaient une forme de balance du pouvoir. Dans les années qui suivirent, ils étaient à la merci du vainqueur. […] Ils sont devenus tout simplement encombrants. » (L’impasse amérindienne, Septentrion).

S’instaura alors une forme d’apartheid où l’Indien deviendra un être inférieur, pupille de l’État colonial britannique. Dès le rapport Darling (1828), les pensionnats sont promus dans le but de sédentariser, « civiliser » et assimiler les Autochtones qui sont alors encore semi-nomades. Avant d’être reprise par la Loi sur les Indiens, trois commissions d’enquête viendront confirmer cette véritable politique d’assimilation dont l’esprit est identique à celle que Lord Durham avait préconisée pour les Canadiens français.

Est-ce un hasard si ces pensionnats furent si peu nombreux au Québec où, à deux exceptions, ils n’apparurent que dans les années 1950 ? Les conditions matérielles y seront donc bien meilleures et leur durée de vie très courte. Ce qui n’exonère évidemment personne, notamment les Oblats actifs ailleurs au Canada, des sévices qui purent y être commis. Les 38 morts recensés au Québec semblent sans commune mesure avec les 4134 recensés au Canada Anglais. Dans son livre Histoire des pensionnats indiens catholiques au Québec (PUM), Henri Goulet offre un portrait beaucoup plus nuancé que ce qu’on peut lire dans les médias. L’histoire de cette époque reste pourtant largement à écrire.

Mais, ce serait se leurrer que de s’imaginer que cette politique d’assimilation inscrite dans l’ADN du Canada est chose du passé. La détresse des peuples autochtones ainsi que l’assimilation florissante des jeunes Québécois dans les cégeps anglais en sont la preuve éloquente. Des pensionnats autochtones à l’Université Concordia, le résultat est le même : l’assimilation !

Source:

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MPs’ study of systemic racism in policing concludes RCMP needs new model

2021/06/19 Leave a comment

Yet more indication of the RCMP’s challenges with no easy or quick solutions:

It’s time for Canada to have a “reckoning” about the RCMP, says the chair of a House of Commons committee that studied systemic racism in policing.

John McKay, a Toronto Liberal MP and chair of the House public safety committee, said the Mounties are a globally known Canadian icon, but it’s time to acknowledge the RCMP’s “quasi-military” existence is not working for all Canadians.

“There is a season and a time for a reckoning for every country and its institutions,” McKay said at a news conference Thursday.

“This in my judgment is a time for Canada to have a reckoning with itself and with its premier institutions.”

The public safety committee began the study of systemic racism in policing in June 2020, after weeks of protests in Canada and the United States following the murder of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.

Floyd’s death also turned a spotlight on racism and police in Canada. Jack Harris, the NDP public safety critic, moved a motion to study systemic racism in policing on June 23, 2020, and the committee agreed. The report was issued Thursday, based on 19 meetings, testimony from 53 witnesses and more than a dozen written briefs.

The report says MPs on the committee can conclude only that “systemic racism in policing in Canada is a real and pressing problem to be urgently addressed.”

But the MPs also admit that this report is just the latest in a long list of studies and reviews that concluded the same thing, none of which led to much change.

Harris said Thursday “it is more clear than ever before that the RCMP needs transformational change” but is worried because he says the Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “has a history of failing to act on reports.”

“The time is now to take serious and concrete action. The RCMP needs to move away from the paramilitary colonial model to a police service model with strong civilian oversight.”

The committee also calls for mandatory data collection on excessive use of force, better training on de-escalation and responding to people in a mental health crisis, more diversity in police forces and oversight bodies, and better funding for Indigenous police forces, including in urban areas with large Indigenous populations.

The MPs also want better parameters for when force is permitted to be used by police, and “serious consequences” for RCMP officers who use force excessively.

The Conservatives, in a supplementary report, urged more work on that front, saying it is not clear from the witnesses whether the problem is in guidelines for use of force, or a lack of training and enforcement regarding those guidelines.

The committee has requested that the government provide a “comprehensive response” to the report.

Moya Teklu, executive director and general counsel at the Black Legal Action Centre in Toronto, said the “most promising” recommendations in the report are decriminalizing simple possession of drugs, offering pardons to people previously convicted of simple possession, and ensuring police discretion to offer alternatives to the courts be used equitably for Black and other racialized youths.

She is less enthusiastic about the impact of more training and oversight for the RCMP, saying there isn’t much evidence they’ll help.

“Demilitarization is an important step,” she said. “But only if it also means spending less money on policing.”

Teklu said the report’s findings are not new for Black and Indigenous communities.

“An acknowledgment of the existence and reality of systemic racism at different levels of government is important,” she said. “A reduction in the Black and Indigenous prison populations, and a reduction in the number of Black and Indigenous people that are stopped, questioned, surveilled, arrested, beaten and murdered by police is more important. That is the real change we want to see.”

Quebec Liberal MP Greg Fergus, who chairs the Parliamentary Black caucus and participated in the committee’s study, agreed the existence of systemic racism is not a revelation.

But he said the committee has done valuable work in listening and responding to multiple witnesses who were able to speak about the issue in depth.

“What’s also new is that there’s a road map now, because of this report, this unanimous report of parliamentarians from all walks of life,” he said. They have laid out a very clear process forward to make the changes, “not only in the RCMP but in police services across the country which can be inspired by this.”

“That’s what’s new. That’s what’s important. That’s what’s necessary.”

Source: MPs’ study of systemic racism in policing concludes RCMP needs new model

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Indigenous names can be reclaimed on passports and other immigration documents: Ottawa

2021/06/16 Leave a comment

Of note. Will be interesting to see take-up among Indigenous peoples:

First Nations, Inuit and Métis people can reclaim their Indigenous names on passports and other government documents, the federal government has announced.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said Monday that the change will include things such as travel documents and citizenship certificates, adding that the service will be provided free of charge for five years.

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said the use of traditional names is intrinsic to Indigenous languages and cultures, as well as to identity and dignity. He said the decision is in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) call to action 17, which referenced passports.

But the department decided to go further to include a host of other documents, Mr. Mendicino said, adding that the work will be done with Indigenous leaders and communities to ensure the process is smooth.

“Our names are among the first things we receive,” he said. “They’re individualized, unique. They speak to our past, honouring those who came before us, and reflect our family’s history. Naming children is a profoundly important tradition across many different cultures and communities. The traditional names given to Indigenous children carry deep cultural meaning. Yet, for many First Nations, Inuit and Métis people, colonialism has robbed them of these sacred names.”

Indigenous children who were taken from their families and forced into the residential school system also had their names stolen from them, Mr. Mendicino said, pointing to the testimonials of survivors in the TRC’s final report.

IRCC said it is working on two other calls to action, including an update of the Citizenship Guide that will include the role Indigenous peoples played in the development of Canada and an amendment to the Oath of Canadian Citizenship that will refer to the rights of Indigenous peoples and treaties. Last week, a bill designed to amend the Citizenship Act to change the oath of citizenship passed third reading in the Senate. It is now awaiting royal assent.

In the past two weeks, Ottawa has faced pressure to further advance reconciliation in Canada after Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc First Nation in B.C. said it had discovered the remains of 215 children, former students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, in unmarked graves. The finding touched off vigils and commemorations and demands that provincial governments and the federal government do more.

On Monday, Ottawa also announced appointees to the new Office of the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages. Ronald Ignace will serve as the commissioner, with Robert Watt, Georgina Liberty and Joan Greyeyes as directors. The office will support Indigenous people to ensure their languages can be shared and spoken for years to come.

The federal government said the directors and commissioner were selected for their knowledge and understanding of Indigenous communities, cultures and languages.

“We celebrate this day where we breathe new life into all of our Indigenous languages for the future,” Dr. Ignace said. “Our languages will no longer stand in the shadow of other languages here in our land. Let us always honour our Indigenous languages.”

Source: Indigenous names can be reclaimed on passports and other immigration documents: Ottawa

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New Zealand apologizes for 1970s raids on Pacific people

2021/06/16 Leave a comment

Of note, reflecting similar experiences of Indigenous peoples and others in many countries:

Aupito William Sio recalled the terrifying day during his childhood when police officers holding German shepherd dogs turned up at his family home before dawn and shined flashlights into their faces while his father stood there helpless.

Now the minister for Pacific peoples, Sio and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Monday the government would formally apologize for an infamous part of the nation’s history known as the Dawn Raids.

It’s when Pacific Island people were targeted for deportation in the mid-1970s during aggressive home raids by authorities to find, convict and deport overstayers. The raids often took place very early in the morning or late at night.

Sio became emotional as he and Ardern discussed the apology at a news conference.

“We felt as a community that we were invited to come to New Zealand. We responded to the call to fill the labor workforce that was needed, in the same way we responded to the call for soldiers in 1914,” Sio said.

But he said the government then turned on the Pasifika community when it felt those workers were no longer needed.

Ardern said that at the time, people who didn’t look like white New Zealanders were told they should carry identification to prove they weren’t overstayers, and were often randomly stopped in the street, or even at schools or churches. She said Pacific people were often dragged before the courts in their pajamas and without proper representation.

“Not only were they targeted, they were targeted using a process and a practice that was really dehumanizing, that really terrorized people in their homes,” Ardern said.

She said that when computerized immigration records were introduced in 1977, they showed that 40% of overstayers were either British or American, groups that were never targeted for deportation.

“The raids, and what they represented, created deep wounds,” Ardern said. “And while we cannot change our history, we can acknowledge it, and we can seek to right a wrong.”

In Sio’s case, he said his family were legal residents who owned the home but a couple of his father’s nephews from Samoa were staying with them and were taken away by the police without their clothes or belongings, and later deported.

He said the nephews had been working at a factory and their visas had expired. He said they had been preparing to go home and wanted to do a few more overtime shifts before they left. Sio said his father helped advocate for them to get back their clothes and money so they could leave New Zealand with some measure of their dignity intact.

The formal apology will be held at a commemoration event on June 26 in Auckland. The apology doesn’t come with any financial compensation or legal changes, but Sio believes it is an important first step. He said the trauma is still fresh for many and it’s good to address the issue and prevent such a situation happening in the future.

Ardern said it’s just the third time the government has made such an apology.

The previous apologies were for imposing a entry tax on Chinese immigrants in the 1880s and for introducing the deadly influenza pandemic to Samoa in 1918, which killed more than one-fifth of the population.

Source: New Zealand apologizes for 1970s raids on Pacific people

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Paris: The discovery of the unmarked graves brings us face to face with our suppressed history

2021/06/15 Leave a comment

Erna Paris’s book, Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History, inspired the Canadian House of Commons motion to apologize, on behalf of the government, to survivors of Canadian residential schools

Good commentary, with an appropriate caution regarding erasing history.

Money quote:

“But history neither begins, nor ends. It is a cumulative record of people, events and changing ideas that cannot be buried. It can only be managed – with factual truth, contextual understanding and a commitment to change direction. This will be best accomplished by adding interpretative material to disputed monuments to enhance a layered comprehension of our country’s less-than-honourable past.

We are again reminded that the forced assimilation of devalued peoples will always fail, for humans cannot change their inner selves the way a snake sheds its skin. In his 2008 statement, former prime minister Stephen Harper said, “The apology today is founded upon … the recognition that we all own our own lives and destinies, the only true foundation for a society where peoples can flourish.””

Two Solitudes. That was the title of Hugh MacLennan’s famous 1945 book about the chasm between Quebec and the “Rest of Canada” – a fault line that has been negotiated continuously since the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759. But what if there were three solitudes all along, the third being the Indigenous nations that were suffering cultural decimation far below the radar of most Canadians? I was born and raised in Ontario and never heard, or read, a word about residential schools during close to two decades of schooling. Textbooks referenced the original Indian wars, but what happened to the Indigenous populations as the entity known as Canada emerged was obscured.

Over the past two decades, Canadians have gradually learned the fate of the 150,000 children who were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in residential schools run by often abusive religious authorities, mainly Catholic. The purpose of the schools was to forcibly assimilate the children by all means possible – language, dress, culture – and to be in breach of the rules was to court punishment. We now know that the children living in these 139 institutions were underfed, that many were subject to sexual assault, and that disease, neglect and abuse killed at least 6,000 of them.

On June 11, 2008, the government of Canada mounted a moving spectacle to apologize for the treatment Indigenous Canadians had received. The apology was meant to be a symbolic turning point. It even had a follow up: a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose primary goals were to acknowledge and record the residential school experience, including its consequences; to provide emotional support for individuals wishing to come forward with their stories; and to educate the Canadian public about this previously occulted history.

The broadcast sessions of the TRC were affecting. But there was a structural flaw: they included no accountability for what had occurred. The Stephen Harper government had carefully excluded legal culpability from the Commission’s formal mandate. The TRC would “not hold formal hearings, nor act as a public inquiry, nor conduct a formal legal process…”

What this meant was that the perpetrators – primarily the Catholic churches – were paradoxically allowed to behave like social workers, comforting the survivors as they completed their personal testimony. Yes, individual bishops had issued apologies, but the Catholic Church, the Vatican, had not, and no one was accountable. How much more compelling it would have been had Canadians been allowed to watch the upper echelons of the clergy testify about what they knew about gross breaches of human rights and possible criminal behaviour, even if the original perpetrators were dead? The Harper government may have rightly feared evidence that Canadian governments knew about these abuses and did nothing. It is to be noted that as early as 1907 a lawyer who conducted a review of the schools told Duncan Campbell Scott, then deputy superintendent-general of Indian Affairs, “Doing nothing to obviate the preventable causes of death brings the Department within unpleasant nearness to the charge of manslaughter.”

Fast forward to June, 2021, and more words of remorse by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. A radar search had uncovered the remains of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School and it is widely assumed that there are thousands more elsewhere.

The discovery of the bodies of maltreated nameless children has unleashed a cascade of grief among Canadians, as though the truth of what was revealed at the TRC hearings has only now become visceral. The deaths of children abused and neglected by their caregivers touches a chord. That this continued for a century in our land of “peace, order, and good government” has elicited outrage that will be assuaged only by a process of accountability. A group of Canadian lawyers has already asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the Vatican and the Canadian government for crimes against humanity. According to Asad Kiyani, assistant professor of law at the University of Victoria, there might also be grounds for domestic prosecutions for manslaughter.

In my own study of five countries that had to confront shame-producing historical truths, Canada may be unique. Unlike those who participated in authorized attacks on devalued minorities, or watched as bystanders, then struggled to create a narrative of who they were in light of what was done, Canadians were kept in the dark by successive governments that opted to efface history by means of isolated residential schools and sanitized text books. Today, there is little, if any, debate in this country about the need to make substantive amends. This does not absolve us from knowing that what was done to Indigenous children was done in our names, nor does it erase the reality of continuing racism – a prolongation of the 19th-century attitudes that produced the schools in the first place. There has been progress since the TRC issued its report in 2015, but in light of what we have recently learned, we must put pressure on government and the churches to provide all requested documentation to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Anything less than full disclosure will be seen as stonewalling.

Unsurprisingly, the question of what to do about monuments that honour those who initiated human rights abuses has intensified. A statue to the 19th-century educator, Egerton Ryerson, who helped create the residential school system and is the namesake of a Toronto university, was torn down earlier this week. Just days earlier, a picture circulated of a statue of Sir John A. MacDonald being carted away in Charlottetown, looking not unlike the French monarch, Louis XVI, in a tumbrel en route to the guillotine. There are persuasive arguments for removing the late Ryerson, although, to his credit, he was also known for promoting free education. But we, too, should be careful about excising history. Although he operated according to the repugnant “White Man’s Burden” ideology of his age, MacDonald was the lead figure in the creation of Canada and our first prime minister. To “remove” him is to reject the origins of a shared country. The French revolutionaries also believed they could sluice away history: they even devised a new calendar, starting with Year One. In our own day, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama fantasized that the Cold War victory of liberal democracy indicated “the end of history.”

But history neither begins, nor ends. It is a cumulative record of people, events and changing ideas that cannot be buried. It can only be managed – with factual truth, contextual understanding and a commitment to change direction. This will be best accomplished by adding interpretative material to disputed monuments to enhance a layered comprehension of our country’s less-than-honourable past.

We are again reminded that the forced assimilation of devalued peoples will always fail, for humans cannot change their inner selves the way a snake sheds its skin. In his 2008 statement, former prime minister Stephen Harper said, “The apology today is founded upon … the recognition that we all own our own lives and destinies, the only true foundation for a society where peoples can flourish.”

These were fine words, but words will no longer suffice.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-discovery-of-the-unmarked-graves-brings-us-face-to-face-with-our/

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Canadian citizenship oath could help newcomers learn more about Indigenous people

2021/06/05 1 Comment

Suspect the forthcoming guide along with news coverage will be more significant but nevertheless, important:

Sharon Nyangweso says she first heard of Indigenous people in Canada when she was eight years old. Her family had just moved to Canada for her mother’s job at the Kenya High Commission in Ottawa. At one of the gatherings, a guest approached her mom upon learning they just arrived in the city.

What happened next stuck with Nyangweso.

The person told her mom to avoid Rideau Street because Indigenous people were there and “they were always drunk.” This memory unsettles her to this day, because the comment came not from a naturalized Canadian but from someone in her own circle.

“That came from another immigrant,” she said in a telephone interview Thursday. “Not just another immigrant but one that had intimate knowledge of what it meant to be part of a colonized nation.”

Nyangweso said there’s a wide gap when it comes to dissemination of information to immigrants about Indigenous Peoples and cultures in Canada. One that, she said, causes the perpetuation of misconceptions resulting from the country’s history of colonialism.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which examined the history and legacy of residential schools in Canada, issued 94 recommendations, or calls to action. Numbers 93 and 94 urged the federal government to update the Canadian citizenship guide and test, as well as the oath, to reflect a more inclusive history of Indigenous Peoples and a recognition of their treaties and rights. This way, newcomers and immigrants to Canada would have a more thorough understanding about First Nations, Metis and Inuit, as well as their cultures.

On Thursday, the House of Commons was set to adopt Bill C-8, which would amend the Citizenship Act to update the oath in line with what the TRC recommended.

The new oath would read: “I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada, including the Constitution, which recognizes and affirms the Aboriginal and treaty rights of First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples, and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen.”

The House of Commons unanimously agreed to fast-track the proposed legislation, on Tuesday.

At a committee meeting Wednesday, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino thanked all members of Parliament for supporting the passage of the bill, saying he looks forward to working with colleagues in the Senate to ensure it becomes law.

His press secretary, Alexander Cohen, said: “Reconciliation is a whole-of-government initiative.”

Cohen also said the Liberal government is still revamping the content of the new citizenship guide to make it more inclusive. The new guide will have 10 chapters and will paint a diverse image of Canada. It will include stories of Black Canadians, LGBTQ Canadians, francophones and Canadians with disabilities. It will also have a chapter on residential school. There’s still no schedule as to when the updated guide will be released.

Matthew Norris, board president of the Urban Native Youth Association in Vancouver, B.C., said recent immigrants to Canada are in a good position to be allies to Indigenous people.

“I think newcomers to Canada have a role to play to understand where the society has come, where to go, and to be voices of support for Indigenous people, as we’re constantly trying to fight for our rights,” said Norris.

Norris said he encourages people and stakeholders to also look at other TRC calls to action, particularly regarding the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Bill C-15, which deals with that, is currently before the Senate.

Stronger calls to recommit to the project of reconciliation have emerged after Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation announced last week that ground-penetrating radar located what are believed to be the remains of 215 children in an unmarked burial site on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

Over more than a century, some 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were forcibly sent to government-funded, church-operated schools, where many suffered abuse and even death.

“We talk about Indigenous history but it’s also the Indigenous presence,” Norris said. “Residential schools weren’t that long ago. It’s affected our family members. It’s affected younger generations. Intergenerational trauma is continuing to rear its ugly head throughout our lives.”

Nyangweso, who just took her citizenship test recently, said adequate information about Indigenous lands, peoples and cultures will help newcomers and immigrants to better engage in civic processes and become better allies for Indigenous rights.

She added she hopes teaching newcomers about Indigenous people and cultures should not just start and end with the citizenship guide or the oath.

She said good information, that’s accessible outside of the citizenship guide, will equip immigrants and new Canadians to be more respectful inhabitants on Indigenous lands.

Source: Canadian citizenship oath could help newcomers learn more about Indigenous people

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Should statues of Sir John A. Macdonald be taken down? Canada’s minister of Indigenous services says no

2021/06/04 Leave a comment

Of note and right approach:

As shock waves continue to reverberate following the discovery of a gravesite of 215 Indigenous children, Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller spoke out Wednesday against taking down the statues of the prime minister responsible for creating the residential schools that led to their deaths.

Miller said removing statues of Sir John A Macdonald from public display would amount to Canadians taking their eyes off the brutal history and legacy of the schools.

“Knocking things down, breaking things is not my preferred option. Turning my eyes away from things is not my preferred option,” Miller said during a news conference in a government building named after Macdonald.

“Looking at things as painful as they are, explaining why they are, is my preferred option.”

Across the country, institutions and local governments are resuming efforts to remove statues of Canada’s first prime minister, and to rename streets and schools whose namesakes have a direct connection to Canada’s residential school program.

Similar such movements have become flashpoints over the last several years, including last summer in the wake of global Black Lives Matter protests, when Miller and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke out against taking down the monuments.

But the outpouring of anger now is more directly targeted at the heart of one of Macdonald’s legacies: the residential school system.

The revelation last week that 215 children were buried in unmarked graves on the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. is leading to fresh rounds of soul-searching about whether and how Canada must come to grips with the deadly effect of those schools, which were initiated by Macdonald’s government in 1883.

During the century that followed — the last school closed in 1996 — about 150,000 Indigenous children were removed from their homes and forced to attend what Miller called “labour camps” that were built for the express purpose of eradicating their culture.

At least 4,000 children are known to have died while attending residential schools. Following the discovery of the graves in Kamloops last week, those estimates have begun to climb, with some now speculating the number could be as high as 25,000.

“We know there are lots of sites similar to Kamloops that are going to come to light in the future. We need to begin to prepare ourselves for that,” former senator Murray Sinclair said in a written statement late Tuesday.

“Those that are survivors and intergenerational survivors need to understand that this information is important for all of Canada to understand the magnitude of the truth of this experience.”

What must be done with that information is a debate taking many forms, be it the removal of Macdonald statues or the demands for the federal government to move much faster to implement the calls to action on missing children and burial information contained in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report on residential schools.

In 2019, some $27 million was set aside to respond to those calls, but the funds were redirected to address the impacts of the pandemic and to finish off virtual engagement sessions on the response to the TRC, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett’s office said Wednesday.

Some money began to flow last year. On Wednesday, Bennett announced communities that want to begin the work of documenting, locating and memorializing missing children could apply anew and the money would flow on an “urgent” basis.

How that work is done must be determined in consultation with communities, Bennett and Miller have insisted.

The ministers said on Tuesday it is also important to listen to those who speak out against Macdonald.

However, Miller said the debate over renaming buildings or taking down statues has become too partisan, and misses the point.

“I respect the meaning and the expression of people saying we need to take this down, rip it down,” he said.

“It’s an expression of pain. I understand. I’m not a proponent of it. I think we have to keep explaining. We have to keep explaining so that we don’t repeat those errors.”

Conservative politicians have also spoken out against the need to tear down statues, though for different reasons, arguing doing so amounts to so-called “cancel culture.”

Conservatives including Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and federal Leader Erin O’Toole have also said removing statues of people like Macdonald would also erase all acknowledgment of the benefits they provided to Canada.

Source: Should statues of Sir John A. Macdonald be taken down? Canada’s minister of Indigenous services says no

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Nicholas: L’amnésie du Canada missionnaire

2021/06/04 Leave a comment

Important reminder of the cultural genocide impact of missionaries:

Ce sont d’abord les noms qui m’ont mis la puce à l’oreille. Les porte-parole de la Nation Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, où l’on a retrouvé les restes des 215 enfants du pensionnat de Kamloops, en Colombie-Britannique, s’appellent notamment Baptiste, Jules, Casimir, Michel, Gosselin, Antoine, Lampreau. Pourquoi ?

J’ai donc replongé dans Le Canada français missionnaire de Lionel Groulx, paru pour la première fois en 1962. « En bref, je voudrais raconter la grande aventure d’un petit peuple qui, à peine né, se jette dans la conquête religieuse de l’Indien en Amérique du Nord », commence-t-il. La phrase décrit bien le projet de l’essai, qui recense la longue liste des missions catholiques canadiennes-françaises au fil des siècles, de l’Atlantique au Pacifique à l’Arctique et aux États-Unis, puis celles de l’Afrique, de l’Asie, de l’Amérique latine, de la Caraïbe. Tout y passe, méticuleusement. Il s’agit, pour le chanoine Groulx, de démontrer que l’esprit impérialiste fait toujours partie de l’âme des gens d’ici, malgré la Conquête : « Son empire de jadis, il semble […] qu’il le veuille reconstituer sur un plan supérieur, le plan spirituel cette fois, avec des frontières indéfiniment extensibles ».

L’essai débute au temps de la Nouvelle-France, où il vante « l’audace conquérante » des premiers missionnaires, qui a persisté sous le régime anglais. Il déplore qu’au XIXe siècle, « les épreuves ou misères n’ont que très peu changé depuis le temps de la Nouvelle-France. Le Sauvage reste encore sauvage, ou peu s’en faut : homme-enfant, léger, fantasque, incapable d’efforts soutenus, mal débarrassé de son vieux paganisme ». Il ajoute : « Comme aux temps anciens l’alcool le fascine ; le concubinage sévit ».

Les descriptions racistes ne sont pas accessoires au livre, mais une partie importante de l’argumentaire. C’est qu’il n’y aurait pas autant de noblesse dans le missionnariat si les Autochtones n’étaient pas dépeints comme des sous-humains en attente de rédemption. Par exemple, le chanoine nous décrit les Dénés (Territoires du Nord-Ouest) comme « barbares, presque sataniques », mais tient à nous rassurer. Au contact des missionnaires, « les infanticides, le cannibalisme, souvent provoqués par la misère, disparaissent ».

Dans son récit, le chanoine Groulx insiste sur le rôle des Oblats de Marie-Immaculée, ordre français que l’évêque de Montréal Ignace Bourget invite, en 1841, à s’établir près de lui pour recruter activement au sein de la population du Bas-Canada. Les Oblats « se livrent aux missions indiennes avec une véritable fougue évangélique », nous assure Groulx. Ainsi des missions sont lancées un peu partout au Québec et au Canada bien avant l’ouverture officielle des pensionnats autochtones. Lorsque ceux-ci sont mis en place, on se porte volontaire pour les faire fonctionner. Ainsi, au moins 57 des 139 pensionnats financés par le gouvernement du Canada ont été gérés par les Oblats durant leurs années d’opération. Riches de leur expérience dans l’Ouest, ils font d’ailleurs pression sur les députés francophones du gouvernement Mackenzie King, dans les années 1930, afin que des pensionnats soient aussi ouverts au Québec.

C’est ainsi que des religieuses de la vallée du Saint-Laurent partent nombreuses « à l’aventure », notamment dans l’Ouest. Les frères emploient les Sœurs de l’Assomption de la Sainte Vierge pour s’occuper du pensionnat de Onion Lake, en Saskatchewan. Les Sœurs missionnaires du Christ Roi, après avoir géré des camps de concentration pour les Canadiens d’origine japonaise durant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, sont assignées aux « écoles indiennes ». Les Sœurs de Sainte-Croix et des Sept-Douleurs ouvrent quant à elle un pensionnat à Moricetown, au nord-est de Prince Rupert. Et les Sœurs de Sainte-Anne, originaires de Saint-Jacques-de-l’Achigan, dans Lanaudière, se chargent notamment des « écoles indiennes de Kamloops, de Kuper Island et des Songhees », en Colombie-Britannique.

Finalement, on commence à comprendre le pourquoi de ces noms à consonance francophone des membres de la Nation Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, où ont été retrouvés les 215 enfants du pensionnat de Kamloops.

On commence à comprendre qu’on avait peut-être tort de présenter la découverte macabre des restes des enfants de Kamloops avec une plus grande distance, ici, parce que « l’Ouest, c’est loin de nous ». On commence à voir que ce qui s’est passé au Québec comme dans les Prairies, le Grand Nord ou l’Ouest s’est déroulé avec la participation de certains de nos grands-oncles, de nos grands-tantes, dont le lien avec l’Église faisait la fierté et l’orgueil de bien des familles d’ici. On aperçoit aussi que l’amnésie collective sur les pensionnats autochtones est bien étrange, alors que certains de nos intellectuels les plus célèbres et célébrés se sont même vantés du rôle de l’Église canadienne-française dans leur établissement, afin d’y puiser un sentiment de fierté nationale.

Cette Église, et cette vision du nationalisme, bien des Québécois en ont un souvenir douloureux, et s’en sont dissociés à l’époque même des pensionnats et de Lionel Groulx, et bien sûr ensuite. Mais la dissociation peut-elle justifier les trous de mémoire ? L’anachronisme qui sépare l’Ouest canadien de l’histoire des francophones ? La prétention que ces administrateurs coloniaux ne font pas partie de nos histoires familiales ? Le détachement de ce qui s’est passé ici même au Québec ?

Rappelons-nous que la commission qui a fait la lumière sur les pensionnats s’appelle Vérité et Réconciliation. Et cette vérité inclut que les idées du chanoine Groulx fassent écho à une vision sociale et politique qui a influencé, pour le meilleur et pour le pire, les rapports entre les peuples autochtones et les francophones de partout au pays pendant plusieurs décennies. Sans vérité, quelle réconciliation est possible ?

Source: L’amnésie du Canada missionnaire

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We can’t have Indigenous reconciliation without closing the employment gap

2021/06/03 Leave a comment

Good piece:

There’s a fine line between patient, incremental progress and leaning on a lethargic, long-term plan as an excuse for inaction, especially when it comes to grappling with the legacy of the residential school system.

Glenn Nolan is on the right side of that line.

He is the vice-president of government affairs for Noront Resources Ltd., and a member of the Missanabie Cree First Nation with a reputation in the mining world as an executive who knows how to bring Indigenous communities and economic development together.

His grandparents were both residential school survivors. In Nolan’s words, they were self-destructive, alcoholic and neglected their children. His grandfather told his father about seeing a youngster beaten unconscious in front of the class when he was in grade 4. The child was never heard from again; the teacher was simply transferred.

For the next generation, life was difficult, but not as difficult. His father was angry but quit drinking in his 30s. Nolan became the first in his family to get a post-secondary education. And he can hardly believe his luck these days at being able to spend the pandemic in his long-time home by the lake near Atikokan, Ont.

“It affected all of us,” Nolan says, reflecting on the generations since the residential school experience snaked through his family history. “But the valleys aren’t as deep, and the climb up out of it wasn’t as steep. So we’ve actually been very successful.”

At a society-wide level, however, progress in vanquishing the economic fallout of residential schools — poverty and inequality — is harder to see.

Statistics Canada published data in April that drew from the 2016 census, and its numbers are harsh. About 76 per cent of non-Indigenous working-age people were employed in 2016, the same as in 2006, the report shows. But for First Nations people living on reserve, the employment rate was just 47 per cent in 2016, which was actually a decline from the 50 per cent noted in 2006. The situation was slightly better for First Nations people living off reserve, with 60 per cent employed — compared to 62 per cent a decade earlier.

So, a huge gap, and getting wider.

As for the unemployment rate, it was 23 per cent on reserve in 2016 and 14 per cent off reserve, compared to just six per cent for the non-Indigenous population.

Income rose for everyone between 2006 and 2016, but the gap between non-Indigenous and First Nations people remains enormous. The median employment income for a non-Indigenous person was $34,000 in 2016 — double that of a First Nations person.

Similarly, poverty rates have declined for everyone over the decade, but the gap is outrageous. About 48 per cent of people on reserve were considered to be low income, compared to 14 per cent of non-Indigenous people.

There’s some hope in education. The gap is huge, but it’s getting narrower.

A 2019 report by the National Indigenous Economic Development Board compiled a whole range of pertinent indicators to assess progress over time, and found that “in general, outcomes for Indigenous peoples in Canada are improving and some gaps are decreasing, but to varying and sometimes small degrees.”

Right now, though, we have a pivotal moment.

The public is mortified by the discovery of the remains of 215 undocumented children by the Kamloops Indian Residential School, and the painful realization that there may well be thousands and thousands more bodies out there.

The calls from politicians, Indigenous leaders and people across the country to take urgent action, mitigate the harmful generational effects of residential schools and seek justice for the missing children are loud and clear.

At the same time, we have a federal government that proposes an aggressive attempt to rebuild the post-pandemic economy in a more just way, investing for inclusive growth that will not just repair the damage of the pandemic recession but also addresses the glaring inequities of the past.

And we have a private sector that anticipates labour shortages in the near future.

It’s a moment where federal policy and fiscal power could turn incremental, or sometimes invisible, progress into something more meaningful.

Yes, there were measures in the spring budget — $140 million for lending to small Indigenous businesses as well as $1 billion to ramp up rural broadband services.

And the federal government already supports numerous training, community and employment initiatives, Nolan points out.

The Indigenous economic development board has done some thorough research on economic reconciliation, and points to a few key areas where governments could do more and make an outsized difference in enabling Indigenous communities to develop their own strengths: beefing up procurement practices, improving access to capital, expanding education and training opportunities, and enabling Indigenous stakes in natural resource development. 

These are all practical suggestions that have the added benefit of ramping up existing support systems and encouraging local initiative — scaffolding, rather than starting from the ground up.

Nolan warns about moving too fast, when well-meaning help for economic development that doesn’t come with proper supports only sets up communities to fail.

“When you build a business, you can’t be the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company right away,” he says. “Businesses fail unless they have all the parameters in place.”

And that’s where the fine line is — finding that place between a lethargic status quo and patient progress that will, one day, take us all closer to reconciling with the past.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2021/06/01/we-cant-have-indigenous-reconciliation-without-closing-the-employment-the-gap.html

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