@Pants-of-dog thank you, although what you quoted does not mention any specific instances of current actions by Canada that would amount to genocide. Instead, it claims it is ongoing because of the consequences of past policies like residential schools and the like:
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c) Canada’s Policies as Elements of the Actus Reus
The unique nature of colonial genocide, perpetrated by a state through the establishment and maintenance of policies over lengthy periods of times, implies a pattern of “domination and dehumanization”94 which enable a myriad of genocidal acts to take place. The National Inquiry does not intend to elaborate on all of the elements of the genocidal actus reus that took place in Canada over the years in application of state policies. The National Inquiry is not a tribunal nor a court of justice and could not directly hear the considerable body of evidence this assessment would require. However, genocidal acts permeate the thousands of testimonies heard by the National Inquiry in the course of its mandate.
Stories of violence against women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people are rooted in past events and refer to the lasting, generational consequences of these events. Testimonies of survivors suggest that colonial structures and policies, “evidenced notably by the Indian Act, the Sixties Scoop, residential schools and breaches of human and Indigenous rights, [directly led] to the current increased rates of violence, death, and suicide in Indigenous populations.”95
In particular, truths heard by the National Inquiry shed light on “deaths of women in police custody; [Canada’s] failure to protect Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people from exploitation and trafficking, as well as from known killers; the crisis of child welfare; physical, sexual, and mental abuse inflicted on Indigenous women and girls in state institutions; the denial of Status and membership for First Nations; the removal of children; forced relocation and its impacts; purposeful, chronic underfunding of essential human services; coerced sterilizations; and more.”96 The National Inquiry considers that those acts, in addition to numerous others and those mentioned below in the mens rea section, qualify as elements of the actus reus of genocide as defined above.
It further notes that its findings are consistent with those of previous commissions established by the Canadian state, such as the 1991 Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the 2001 Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission and the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Within their respective mandates, these commissions highlighted past and current forms of violence perpetrated by the Canadian state against Indigenous peoples, as well as the lasting effects of the colonial policies and structures maintained until now. The lack17 of implementation of many, if not most, of their recommendations is further evidence of Canada’s continuing violation of its international obligation not to commit genocide. These prohibited conducts, which match one or more of the prohibited acts within the definition of genocide, coupled with the specific intent to destroy discussed in the next section, leads the National Inquiry to conclude that there are serious reasons to believe that Canada is responsible for committing genocide against Indigenous peoples. 18
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Having all sorts of social issues or even policing issues is not the same as committing genocide, even if they arose from a past genocide. This would be akin to claiming the Holocaust is still ongoing, because the global Jewish population is still, in 2023, below what it was in the 1930s.
In fact, the only concrete, specific examples of genocidal actions you sent me are from 100+ years ago:
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...As examples of documented factual occurrences, throughout the 1700s, colonial troops participated in “biological warfare”133 by distributing blankets infested with the smallpox virus throughout Indigenous communities, “with the effect of reducing the populations of specific Indigenous Nations by upwards of 50 percent.”134 In the 1750s, scalping bounties were offered in Nova Scotia, by legal proclamation, to entice and reward the murder of its Indigenous peoples, the Mi’kmaq.135 Many other Indigenous nations were persecuted and murdered, including the Beothuk who are believed to have been completed eliminated by the late 1820s.136
In addition to the premeditated killing of Indigenous peoples, there existed egregious colonial policies that caused serious bodily and mental harm to Indigenous peoples and deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Indigenous communities calculated to bring about their physical destruction. In the 1870s, colonial troops “denied food as a means to ethnically cleanse a vast region from Regina to the Alberta border as the Canadian Pacific Railway took shape.”137 In the 1880s, government-sanctioned residential schools were created and Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families to face starvation, deliberate infection of diseases, beating,24 torture, rape, solitary confinement, assaults and ill-treatment within the Indian residential school system. In the early 1900s, government doctors subjected Indigenous children to inhumane medical experiments at the residential schools, including purposefully exposing healthy children to children infected with tuberculosis, which “led to mortality rates of 30 to 60 percent amongst the children who were forced to attend those schools.”138
These historical policies are appalling in their systematic destruction of Indigenous communities, but what is more appalling is that many of these policies continue today under a different guise. The National Inquiry’s findings expose contemporary policies that are clearly linked to the colonial era and ongoing colonial violence, demonstrating a “manifest pattern” attributable to present-day Canadian state conduct with Indigenous communities. This conduct includes both proactive measures to destroy, assimilate, and eliminate Indigenous peoples,139 as well as omissions by the Canadian government to ensure safety, equality, and access to essential services which have had direct, life-threatening consequences on Indigenous communities, in particular on women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people.
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All of that is indeed despicable, but those policies are not currently in place. The most recent one, residential schools to assimilate indigenous children, ended in 1997 with the closing of the last school.
- By Fasces
- By Pants-of-dog
- By litwin