Kaiserschmarrn wrote:If you are not interested in semantics debates, you could drop the claim that Canada is committing genocide.
Again, I have specifically avoided using that word in connection with the MMIW report, specifically to avoid this irrelevant semantics debate.
I am arguing that the government of Canada is guilty of "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves" primarily through omission of services. Do you disagree?
I have no problem with no longer using the word after you explicitly state that it is not applicable in Canada's case. If you think the commission has gone beyond its remit by arguing that Canada is committing genocide, you need to take your disagreement up with it, not with me. It's the commission which has tried to make a legal case, after all.
Again, I have no problem with the report’s use of the word, because I read their clarification about what exactly they mean.
They mean that the government of Canada is guilty of "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves" primarily through omission of services.
I already mentioned that residential schools were part of an assimilation policy which was quite common up to the second half of the 20th century. Assimilation was the intent, .....
The intent was to kill the Indian in the child, and destroy indigenous cultures.
The executive summary of the TRC concluded that the assimilation amounted to cultural genocide.[4]:1 The ambiguity of the phrasing allowed for the interpretation that physical and biological genocide also occurred. The TRC was not authorized to conclude that physical and biological genocide occurred, as such a finding would imply a legal responsibility of the Canadian government that would be difficult to prove. As a result, the debate about whether the Canadian government also committed physical and biological genocide against Indigenous populations remains open.It seems that the mass graves plus the intent to exterminate communities is still not enough to convince westerners that their leaders sometimes do bad things.
Not providing "decent support" is not equivalent to wanting to exterminate people, especially if the spending goes up so dramatically, the population booms and indicators such as child mortality are sharply reduced. As for the wiki article, I already told you that it doesn't support your contention that the Indian Act in its current form is genocidal. I've given you an opportunity to make the case yourself, but you have refused so far and retreated to argue that it is oppressive.
This is just a point form rehashing if your previous unsupported claims.
I will go through them:
1. If you know that withholding support will result in death, and you deliberately withhold support, then nor providing decent support is effectively the same as wanting to exterminate people. You have yet to show how one is different from the other.
2. It does not matter if the spending went up dramatically if the spending is still not enough to deliver basic services. And this is the case in Canada right now. Until you provide the amount of money it would require to adequately support indigenous communities, this number does not tell us anything.
3. You have not shown that people in indigenous communities are improving and that this improvement is due to Canadian policy and spending.
4. The Indian Act included, and still includes, criteria that allow the federal government to determine who is and is not indigenous instead of allowing the communities to do so, which then was, and is, used to reduce the number of people who can claim status. And this is just one of the many ways in which this legislation is and was used to reduce the number if indigenous people. Also, I never claimed it was “genocidal” since you have such a high standard for that word when it comes to western governments.
Once you have acknowledged that Canada is not committing genocide or equivalent, we can talk about this. Until then I'll take it for what it is: a diversion tactic and retreat from your original claim.
Canada is committing genocide, if we define genocide as of "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves".
So now you are back to arguing that the welfare state does not actually benefit the people receiving its services. It seems very unlikely that you really believe that.
Considering what I know about lack of water treatment facilities, moldy schools, no hospitals, et cetera for indigenous communities, I understand the gulf between promising money and actually delivering services that have beneficial impacts.
I believe they promised money. They may even have spent some; some may even have have been spent on indigenous communities.
I don't think we agree, but if you do agree with me, then you have acknowledged that there is no genocide ongoing in Canada and neither is there a targeted campaign to annihilate an ethnic group.
Actually, you argued that people die all the time because of government neglect, and that governments also routinely ignore certain racial groups disproportionately, which is the equivalent of agreeing with me that Canada’s indigenous people are dying of neglect, and then going on to say that this is normal and acceptable.
And I am arguing that Canada is deliberately allowing indigenous people to die if neglect. So the only bit you ignored was the deliberate intent.
Do you agree or disagree that Canada acted with deliberate intent?
In that case every country is or has been trying to exterminate parts of its population, e.g. the poor. Or in other words, if everything is genocide, then nothing is, and we are back to my original contention that we need a new word for actual genocides or targeted campaigns to exterminate people.
If another country is also guilty of “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves" primarily through omission of services, then we should also hold them accountable.