Is Canada an Apartheid Genocidal Colonial Country?
Is Canada an Apartheid Genocidal Colonial Country?
In the almost two months that I have been in Canada the country has been rocked by the discovery of the unmarked graves of hundreds of mostly indigenous children at residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Clearly for readers in the US that statement needs a little unpacking.
On June 7 the New York Times reported, “ The remains of 751 people, mainly Indigenous children, were discovered at the site of a former school in the province of Saskatchewan, a Canadian Indigenous group said on Thursday, shaking a nation grappling with generations of systematic abuse of Indigenous people.
The discovery, the largest one to date, came less than a month after the remains of 215 children were found in unmarked graves on the grounds of another former boarding school in British Columbia.
Both schools were part of a system that took Indigenous children from their families over a period of about 113 years and housed them in boarding schools, where they were prohibited from speaking their languages.
The dual discoveries give new impetus to the nation’s debate on how to atone for its history of exploiting Indigenous people. Many are asking how so many children could have wound up in those burial spaces.”
From around 1883 until 1996, it is estimated that about 150,000 children were forcibly taken from their families to be “educated” at these residential schools. They were run for the Canadian government by Christian religious organizations. There was much abuse, physical and sexual, as well as malnutrition and many diseases that led to deaths. Families were lied to about where the children were and those who died had their deaths covered up. Many who survived were traumatized for life and for many that trauma was often passed down to the subsequent generation.
The purpose of the schools was not to give these children a better education but to “knock the Indian out of them”. They were not allowed to speak their native tongue or practice their native religion and culture. They were to be turned into a close proxy of white British Christian Canadians.
In 2008 the Canadian government formally apologized to Native Canadians and formed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and established a large fund to help the survivors of the residential school system. Some of the changes have been formalistic so that in Whistler every municipal meeting and formal announcement begins with, “The Resort Municipality of Whistler is grateful to be on the shared, unceded territory of the Lil’wat people, known in their language as Lilwat7ul and the Squamish people known in their language as Skwxu7mesh. We respect and commit to a deep consideration of their history culture stewardship and voice.” Some have been substantial in terms of money and government resources to help a population that is amongst the poorest in the country with the highest per capita suicide rate and high unemployment. Yet the discovery of so many unidentified bodies has shaken the country to its core and raised questions about who or what is Canada all about?
What it has not done is spark a worldwide outrage against Canada, calling Canada an apartheid country for having indigenous people living in reservations. It has not called out for Canada to be brought to the International Criminal Court on charges of ethnic cleansing or genocide? It has not called Canada a colonial power and most importantly it has not demanded that Canada return the land to its indigenous owners from whom it was clearly captured by white Colonial British and French.
The extreme leftists from all over the colonial world have not protested in the streets or on twitter for a full return of most of Canada to the indigenous population. Canadian trade unionists who called for a boycott of Israel have not said a word on the illegitimacy of Canada. Palestinian Canadians, and many Islamic Canadians have been conspicuously silent. College professors have not called on their schools to return the land on which their schools stand. While we are at it the same could be said for Australia who tried to eliminate the culture of its indigenous population with similar type schools. Americans can ask themselves the same questions. They too are a colonial power that captured much of the country and where it suited them, they evicted their native Americans from the land they held for millennia and sent them to reservations. America, an apartheid country? The sound of silence is overwhelming when it comes to any country but one and that is Israel, and even there the hypocrisy is glaring.
Jewish Israel, accused as a colonial country who prosecutes the indigenous population and is trying to ethnically cleanse them, holds the distinct singularity of being run by the oldest existing indigenous population who were thrown off their land and while never fully leaving or ceding their land, returned, and purchased land back from the Colonial Ottoman Empire. The Arabs who lived there were hardly indigenous, as they did not arrive in Palestine until almost 2000 years after Jews arrived. How are Zionists colonialists? Nevertheless, Jews recognized the existence of others in what became their country, given to them by the United Nations, and established Arabic as an official language and funds Arab speaking schools, municipalities etc. And if holding lands that they conquered in a defensive war is a crime and needs to be returned to a people who have vowed to destroy them, then Canada the United States, Australia, Russia, all of South America and many other countries need to return their lands as well.
Many anti-Zionists claim to not be anti-Semites, but their select criticism of Israel and their silence of their own country leads to the opposite conclusion. As it says in the New Testment, “ He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her”.
If you can’t see the colonial discrimination in your own country yet you go out of your way to protest Israel, it can lead to only one conclusion.