NEWS: Million Pledged, Unmarked Graves, Secretariat Investigation

 

Wauzhushk Onigum receives 'long overdue' $3M to search for unmarked burials at former residential schools - read here

(August 14, 2021) The chief of Wauzhushk Onigum says elders in the northwestern Ontario First Nation have been telling stories for decades about unmarked graves and the children who never came home from St. Mary's Indian Residential School.

"It's time to listen to their stories and educate non-Indigenous Canada, educate the world on what happened to our people," Chief Chris Skead told CBC News.

He hopes the $2.9 million in funding announced Thursday by the federal and provincial governments will help the First Nation find "the entire truth."

• Ottawa commits $321M for residential school searches and support services for survivors

• Ontario pledging $10M to identify and commemorate residential school burial sites

**

Former TRC director to head 'secretariat' investigation

(August 13, 2021)

Kimberly R. Murray

 

The former executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has been hired to help create a “survivors’ secretariat” to oversee a search for graves at the former Mohawk Institute residential school.  Kimberly R. Murray, a Mohawk of Kanehsatake, will act as executive oversight lead. In addition to her work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Murray was the first assistant deputy Attorney General of the Indigenous Justice Division at the Ontario of the Attorney General.

Six Nations has put $1 million into the creation of the survivor secretariat.

The Mohawk Institute operated for 142 years from 1828 to 1970. More than 15,000 children, most of them from Six Nations, were forced to attend.

 

MORE NEWS:

Indigenous leaders, community bless site for national TRC centre |Winnipeg Free Press

Indigenous art show explores role of kinship in culture while works convey pain, hope, beauty

A description of this painting reads: 'Unmarked depicts the loss of culture, language and of course children through the historical implementation of the Residential School system in Canada. It was created as a reflection of my own feelings of sadness resulting from this loss and has become a timely harbinger of what is currently occurring with the increased discovery of children's Unmarked graves on the grounds of Canadian Residential Schools.' (D. Ahsén:nase Douglas) READ MORE

 

There’s a new federal holiday in Canada in September. What does it mean for you?

By Allison Bamford 

For the first time, Sept. 30 will mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Files / Global News

 

For the first time, Sept. 30 will mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

In June, Ottawa declared it a federal statutory holiday that is meant to give public servants an opportunity to recognize the legacy of residential schools.

We are not supposed to know

Editor Note: I have said this before in a non-fiction book I wrote in 2018. We are not supposed to know or care about Native People. It's obvious we have a century of bad history to rewrite and write right...

Why Do Native People Disappear From Textbooks After the 1890s?

edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-why-do-native-people-disappear-from-textbooks-after-the-1890s/2021/08

August 16, 2021

Joshua Ward Jeffery, who is not Native, is an assistant professor of history and Diné studies at Navajo Technical University, a public, tribally-controlled university of the Navajo Nation in Chinle, Ariz., and the editor of H-High-S, a national online network of high school social studies educators, historians, social scientists, and K-12 teacher educators. He also is the academic coordinator for the Navajo Nation Police Academy.

OPINION

The current manufactured controversy over critical race theory in American schools that has been roiling parts of the nation this summer has exposed two truths: Most K-12 teachers do not teach CRT, but they absolutely should. And while anti-education conservatives claim that CRT teaches things like “race essentialism” and that all white people are racist, the academic framework does nothing of the sort.

What it does is demand that we compare our ideals about law, justice, and the way government works with the lived experience of racial and ethnic minorities within those systems.

CRT, then, examines how America actually is in comparison with how we think it ought to be. When applied to history, critical race theory demands that we examine the American reality instead of the American mythology that has often masqueraded as history in classrooms.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s recent visit to the former site of the government-run Carlisle Indian School highlights some of that destructive American mythology. Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo of New Mexico, is the first Native Cabinet secretary in U.S. history. Last month, Haaland visited the graveyard on the U.S. Army’s Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania during a ceremony to repatriate the disinterred remains of nine Rosebud Sioux children who died over a century ago at the school.

Historically, the United States committed itself to a policy of cultural genocide in the early part of the 19^th century, and it created an education program for which Native children were removed from their parents—sometimes violently. The schools then compelled the children to give up their culture in favor of American norms, including by forcibly cutting students’ hair, replacing their names, prohibiting them from speaking their own language, and restricting their visits home. This boarding school period of Indian education continued until the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978, a law aimed at preventing the forced removal of Native children from their families and tribes. Understandably, many Native people remain skeptical of educational systems designed and run by the federal government.

Problems with Native education continue today. Because the land making up a reservation is generally owned by the United States and held in trust for the tribes, there is no tribal property-tax base to fund tribally-run schools. That means Native nations rely upon the Bureau of Indian Education to manage or fund the vast majority of their schools. However, for years, the BIE has ignored accountability and transparency mandates in the Every Student Succeeds Act that require schools to report the educational progress of students.

Further, because of the lack of funding, only a small percentage of Native students have access to important early-learning programs, meaning that Native students are already struggling to “play catch up” when they arrive in kindergarten. This early disadvantage could be ameliorated if Congress were to fund Head Start and similar programs on reservations at the same rate it does elsewhere.

In fact, many students are actually surprised to learn that Native peoples still exist."

In addition to present-day educational disparities, Native American history is neglected in most K-12 classrooms. In fact, many students are actually surprised to learn that Native peoples still exist. It is almost as if Gen. Richard H. Pratt, the founder of the Carlisle School, was successful in his attempt to “Kill the Indian, and save the man.” Many non-Native students assume Native people must have died off since they largely disappear from textbook narratives after the 1890s. (They also make up about 1 percent of the national student population, so it’s possible that many non-Native students might not have been exposed to their Native peers.)

Students do not learn that many Native people don’t have access to running water or electricity. They do not learn that the U.S. Supreme Court has limited how tribes can exercise their governmental power—such as police power—to serve and protect their citizens. They certainly do not learn about the inequalities in the educational system between predominantly white schools and those serving Native students. If they did, then they might question how we treat our Native neighbors.

Where I live on the Navajo Nation—which straddles Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico and is about the size of West Virginia—about a third of the population lives without running water or electricity. In 1936, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration, the program only offered electrification loans to states and counties, not to tribal governments. The result was that while most rural Americans quickly gained electricity in the next decade or so, many living on reservations did not.

Even before the pandemic, my college students told me stories about charging their laptops in their cars overnight and then traveling to the closest town for Wi-Fi to turn in their homework. These same students travel 20 miles to the closest gas station to get ice to keep food cold, which they cook on gas-powered camping stoves. They use outhouses. They drive several miles to windmill-powered water tanks. They drive 30 miles to the closest truck stop about once a week to take a shower. While this is difficult under normal circumstances, it is nearly impossible to overstate the burden that a lack of electricity and running water has created during the ongoing spread of COVID-19 on the reservation.

Like much of America, my neighbors also have urgent, albeit different, complaints about the police. The Navajo Police Department does not employ a single white officer, so racism in law enforcement on the reservation manifests itself in different ways from how it does in the rest of the country. Instead, Navajo people complain about a lack of police because of funding and the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has limited the effect of tribal criminal jurisdiction on non-Native Americans. So, when someone on the Navajo Nation dials 911, there is a high probability that police will be unavailable for help. And, if officers are available, in most cases, they are limited in their ability to arrest and charge non-Native suspects for violations of tribal law.

Policymakers have good reason to protect the mythological narrative of America that their political power is rooted in. If American K-12 teachers used critical race theory to inform their social studies curriculum, students might learn the real truth about the country’s failures to live up to its own ideals.

THIS LAND: Season 2 Podcast Debuts August 23

 LISTEN:  Here

This season is all about the Indian Child Welfare Act and the federal attacks on it.

ALM – as referred to in court documents – is a Navajo and Cherokee toddler. When he was a baby, a white couple from the suburbs of Dallas wanted to adopt him, but a federal law said they couldn’t. So they sued. Today, the lawsuit doesn’t just impact the future of one child, or even the future of one law. It threatens the entire legal structure defending Native American rights. 

In season 2 of This Land, host Rebecca Nagle investigates how the far right is using Native children to quietly dismantle American Indian tribes. 

Tune in beginning August 23rd.

Some White supremacists don't know we can REALLY SEE what they are doing

Shawnee Indian Mission

The Shawnee Indian Mission, from 1839 to 1862, was a manual training school for children from the Shawnee, Delaware, and other American Indian tribes, and is now a state historic site. Its founder was Thomas Johnson, the namesake of Johnson County, who held at least seven enslaved individuals at the mission in the 1850s. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector)

 The hidden history of Kansas is the story of enslaved people. Let’s say their names.
Max McCoy, August 15, 2021, Kansas Reflector


Shawnee Indian Mission is a bit of the 1850s frontier in the midst of one of the richest suburban neighborhoods in the country. Just a block away is the buzz of traffic on Shawnee Mission Parkway, and the homes in the area cost more than most of us can afford. But for $5, Wednesday through Saturday, you can visit the historic site with its three original brick buildings and its 12 pastoral acres and imagine what life might have been like for the missionaries, the Shawnee and Delaware children who boarded at the school, and travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, which ran just a few hundred yards north.

What you can’t do, unless you already know about them, is imagine what life must have been like for the enslaved persons who helped build the mission and were bound to Thomas Johnson, the Methodist preacher and pro-slavery advocate who founded the school.

These enslaved persons aren’t mentioned in the 2015 video shown to visitors. Only one of the interpretive displays mentions them. By one account, it says, Johnson “owned at least six slaves at the mission,” with perhaps another 10 who were children of the enslaved. The display includes a reproduction of an 1856 bill of sale, from David Burge to Johnson, at Westport, Missouri, of an enslaved girl named Martha, of about 15 years, “sound in body and mind and a slave for life.”

...

In addition to 2020’s summer of George Floyd, there have been discoveries this year at boarding schools in the United States and Canada of hundreds of unmarked graves of First Peoples children. The Shawnee Indian Mission is attempting to address the latter, at the urging of tribal leaders, with a ground-penetrating radar survey of the mission’s cemetery. The cemetery is separated by a few blocks from the historic site and is locally known as Johnson Cemetery, because that’s where Johnson and some of his family are buried.

continue

How Native students fought back against abuse and assimilation at US boarding schools #TakeLand #LandBack

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Portrait of Ernest Knocks Off. John N. Choate/Cumberland County Historical Society, CC BY-NC-SA

LINK

As Indigenous community members and archaeologists continue to discover unmarked graves of Indigenous children at the sites of Canadian residential schools, the United States is reckoning with its own history of off-reservation boarding schools.

In July 2021, nine Sicangu Lakota students who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania were disinterred and returned to their homelands at Whetstone Bay in South Dakota.

One of these young people was Ernest Knocks Off. Ernest, who came from the Sicangu Oyate or Burnt Thigh Nation, was among the first group of students to arrive at Carlisle, in 1879. He entered school at age 18 and attempted to run away soon after arriving. He ultimately went on a hunger strike and died of complications of diphtheria on Dec. 14, 1880.

My new book “Writing Their Bodies: Restoring Rhetorical Relations at the Carlisle Indian School” explores how Indigenous children resisted English-only education at Carlisle, which became the prototype for both Indian schools across the U.S. and residential schools in Canada. Ernest Knocks Off was 18 when he arrived at the Carlisle boarding school in 1879. He was one of many young Native people who fought – in his case, to the death – to retain their language and culture.

Native American students at the Carlisle Indian School, circa 1899. Library of Congress/Corbis Historical Collection/VCG via Getty Images

A tombstone of a young Oglala Lakota student buried at the old Carlisle Indian School cemetery. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis News Collection via Getty Images

Pratt and his supervisors at the Bureau of Indian Affairs hoped that they could break up tribes by disrupting the transmission of language and culture from one generation to the next. By destroying tribal identities, they hoped to take land in communally held reservations and guaranteed by treaties.

PLEASE READ: How Native students fought back against abuse and assimilation at US boarding schools

 

Here is a record from Carlisle:

Notice: Howard Slow Bull (age 18) goes to the institution in 1886, is sent to farmers in PA in 1888 and dies in 1893 at age 25. These are the mysteries we still need to solve... so their souls can rest...   These were not schools but DEATH CAMPS and these children were hostages.... Blog Editor

American Bar Association Calls on Congress to Investigate America's Indian Boarding Schools | Vatican fundraising

MORE NEWS HERE

 

CHICAGO — In a resolution with multiple requests, the American Bar Association House of Delegates, a 597-member policy body, is calling on Congress to conduct oversight hearings on Indian boarding schools. The resolution was adopted by the ABA Monday evening.

GOOD: American Bar Association Calls on Congress to Investigate Indian Boarding Schools | Currents

 Looks like lawyers will get in on the action here in the US... Blog Editor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canadian Bishops convey commitment to healing and reconciliation 

The Permanent Council of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) released a statement on Friday noting its support to Bishops of Saskatchewan who are have issued an “Appeal for Support of Healing and Reconciliation” in favor of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. The project aims to generate fundraising to promote healing and reconciliation. It also foresees cemeteries on the sites of former residential schools, as well as educational and cultural support. The goal of the campaign, according to the Bishops of Saskatchewan, is to "support Indian Residential School survivors and their communities, and to engage more deeply in our own ongoing commitment and response to the Truth and Reconciliation process." - Source: Canadian Bishops convey commitment to healing and reconciliation - Vatican News

 

The world's richest church needs to ask others to pay for their actions? Blog Editor

 Not just in Canada, American has a bad history problem, too...

Against Residential School Denialism

Residential school denialism is not the outright denial of the Indian Residential School system’s existence, but rather the rejection or misrepresentation of basic facts about residential schooling to undermine truth and reconciliation efforts.

Residential school denialists employ an array of rhetorical arguments. The end game of denialism is to obscure truth about Canada’s residential school system in ways that ultimately protect the status quo as well as guilty parties.

Residential school denialists begin and end with a firm belief in innate Indigenous deficiency and settler innocence, often rooted in Christian triumphalism. Their ranks include missionary apologists, writers and academics, right-wing and anti-Indigenous editorialists, and relatives of residential school staff who uncritically refer to personal memory and work to defend their family reputations. These are neither informed nor objective commentators.

GOOD READ: Against Residential School Denialism | The Tyee

New Hope for Answers (and ground-penetrating radar)

wsj.com/articles/at-schools-where-native-american-children-died-new-hope-for-answers-11628679600

August 11, 2021

For years, alumni from the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma have been searching for information about the students who died at their old boarding school, one of hundreds once set up by the U.S. government to assimilate young Native Americans.

Sifting through archived records, the volunteer group has compiled 67 names, but with little funding for more research, they have no way of knowing how many of the children are buried in Chilocco’s cemetery, which bears only a single marked grave.

Theirs is one of numerous efforts by tribal historians and researchers over the past several years to uncover evidence of Native Americans who died at the boarding schools. Until now, these grass roots investigations have been stymied by limited resources and logistical hurdles.

Now, those leading the projects are hoping a new federal investigation can shed light on a mystery that has haunted Indian Country for generations. In June, Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland launched a review of Native American boarding schools, hoping to figure out how many students died at the institutions—whether from disease, accidents or mistreatment—and where they are buried. The move was spurred by the recent discovery of mass graves of indigenous children at boarding schools in Canada.

“The government abandoned this sacred site when they closed Chilocco in 1980,” said Jim Baker, the alumni group’s president. If the Interior Department provides resources, he added, “then we can do a comprehensive ground-penetrating radar survey.”

KEEP READING

READ ABOUT THE SCHOOL here

How Much Does Ground Penetrating Radar Cost?

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Written by:  Howmuchisit.org Staff

Last Updated:  August 9, 2018

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Ground penetrating radar, also known as GPR or impulse radar, is an electromagnetic technology operating on the physics of the earth to capture images of the subsurface using pulses from the radar.

This technology is diverse and can work on pavement, rocks, ice and even freshwater.  This technology was first used in the early 1970s when several different teams of scientists began to develop radar for viewing into the earth.

This radar was first developed for military applications such as locating tunnels under the DMZ between North and South Korea.

Most of the time, these machines are purchased by companies rather than by individuals.

How much does ground penetrating radar cost?

Traditionally, a GPR system can cost anywhere from $15,000 to $90,000 brand new.   A simple system will tend to be less than $10,000, while those that are over $35,000 will require an experienced user.

For instance, a forum member on this TreasureNet.com forum thread claimed that they saw a GPR sell for $3,600 on eBay.  Another forum member on this same thread claimed that you should be prepared to spend at least $30,000 on a brand new device.

AccurateLocators.com, for instance, sells a unique GPR and the software for about $15,000; however, the antenna system will have to be purchased separately.  The average antenna, depending upon the frequency, can cost $2,500 to as much as $6,500.

US Radar, Inc., according to their official website, starts pricing around $14,000, depending on the specific model.  The costs include the cart, tablet, battery and the software to do basic utility locating.

On eBay, we were able to find slightly used radar equipment for $8,000 to $12,500. Accessories, such as additional antennas or a survey wheel that can control the readings, can cost $600 or more.

 

researchgate.net

TRUE OR FALSE: Abuse Against Men

Submitted by StrongHearts Native Helpline

 

 

There are many myths around intimate partner violence, particularly around victims who identify as men. Myths about violence are harmful. Myths keep people silent, add to shame and guilt, make people doubt the violence and can even perpetuate violence. The truth is anyone can be a victim of intimate partner violence.

 

FALSE: Abuse only happens to men who are in same-sex relationships.

 

TRUE: Abuse can happen to anyone. Abuse happens when one person uses a pattern of violent and coercive tactics to gain and keep power and control over another partner. Sexual orientation does not dictate abuse. Men can be abused by a person of any gender. 

Twenty-six percent of gay men, 37 percent of bisexual men and 29 percent of heterosexual men have experienced physical violence, experienced rape and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime (Ncadv.Org, 2021).

 

FALSE: Men will always be mistaken as the abuser if they report the violence and they won’t be welcome at domestic violence shelters or programs.

 

TRUE: While women are more likely to be the victims of abuse than men, that is not always the case. When there is abuse in relationships between men and women, it is untrue that men are always the abusers. 

It is well documented that there is a need for more Native-specific shelters throughout the country. However, many shelters house anyone who is a victim of violence, including men. Some shelters may provide accommodations for men outside of their traditional shelter, such as at an extended stay hotel. StrongHearts advocates can help male victim-survivors find a shelter that is safe for them and their dependent children.

 

FALSE: Men should just tough it out.

 

TRUE: This myth is particularly insidious as it denies the violence and abuse, minimizes the real effects of violence and perpetuates harmful ideas about rigid gender roles.

Tribal gender roles were once as diverse as the tribes and cultures themselves. During colonization, Native peoples’ understanding of their place within their tribal community was disrupted and destroyed. Traditional gender roles were lost, harming future generations.Predominant American culture teaches boys a harmful definition of masculinity. They are often taught to suppress their emotions and that controlling others is strength. This toxic messaging harms men who are experiencing intimate partner violence, as it discourages them from seeking the support they need and further makes them feel inadequate because of the abuse.

The impacts and experiences of violence are very real. In addition to physical harm, victims may experience depression, anxiety, disconnection from friends, family and themselves and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of abuse. These impacts and experiences cannot just be toughed out.

 

FALSE: Native men are "wife-beaters.”

 

TRUE: Native women experience a disproportionately high rate of violence; however, studies show most violence against Native women (and men) is not caused by Native men. Of all Native women who have experienced violence, 97% had an interracial perpetrator, meaning the violence was done by someone who is not Native. (National Institute of Justice, 2021). 

Stereotypes like this are unfounded and racist. They harm Native women as much as Native men as it distracts from the reality of their situation and does nothing to address the root causes of violence against Native peoples.

 

FALSE: Men can't be abused. They are bigger, stronger, tougher.

 

TRUE: Untrue. 

Men are abused. No matter someone’s size or strength they can experience abuse. Intimate partner violence can take many forms and men can experience physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, digital abuse, and cultural abuse. Most people experience many if not all of the above forms of abuse. 

●      One in seven men report having experienced severe physical violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime (Cdc.Gov 2021). 

●      38 million men have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime (Cdc.Gov 2021). 

●      One in 10 men have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner (Cdc.Gov 2021).

Emotional abuse is the most common form of abuse reported to StrongHearts Native Helpline. Emotional abuse is intentional tactics that cause someone psychological, mental, or spiritual harm, especially as a means of control over that person. Emotional abuse against men can include:

●      Questioning where they’ve been and questioning where they’ve been and with whom.

●      Calling them names, belittling them.

●      Enforcing unhealthy gender roles and expectations: saying they aren’t man enough, shaming them if they are not the main financial contributor to the household, pressuring them into sexual activity to prove their manhood, etc. 

●      Constantly accusing them of cheating. 

●      Limiting their time with friends and relatives. 

 

StrongHearts Native Helpline is here for all Native Americans and Alaska Natives, whatever their gender or sexual identity. If you think you are being abused, StrongHearts can help. StrongHearts advocates take a Native-centered, empowerment-based approach to every contact. Services are anonymous and confidential. Call or text 1-844-7NATIVE (762-8483) or visit strongheartshelpline.org for one-on-one chat advocacy 24/7.

Prosecuting crimes at Indian residential schools in Canada poses monumental legal challenges

OPINION

Students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School were required to embrace Catholic traditions.

Sarah Leamon: Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act is largely uncharted legal territory

by Sarah Leamon on July 2nd, 2021

The discovery of three mass burial sites at former residential schools has left the Canadian public reeling. The grim—but sadly unsurprising—news has resulted in calls for action, with a number of Indigenous groups calling for accountability in the form of criminal justice. 

Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme has described the unmarked gravesites at the former Marieval Indian Residential School as a “crime scene”, while Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Chief Bobby Cameron described the situation as a “crime against humanity”. The Native Women’s Association of Canada is demanding charges as an essential step toward reconciliation.

Their position is that the criminal charges are not only appropriate, but necessary. It is a concrete, unambiguous position. Seeing it through, though, will be anything but.

The first hurdle on the road to criminal prosecution will be building a case.

(left) Vancouver lawyer Sarah Leamon writes a regular column on Straight.com

The discovery of these mass gravesites is not enough on its own. Even when combined with first-hand accounts of the abuse that happened at residential schools, more evidence will likely be required to proceed with a criminal prosecution.

Canadian police have exclusive jurisdiction to investigate crimes and to recommend criminal charges to the government as a result of their findings.  In this case, the RCMP would need to begin an investigation of the burial sites.  This would be an intense exercise that would likely not just involve physically pulling these sites apart, but also examining documents and interviewing witnesses in order to determine what actually happened.

The passage of time, combined with the general unreliability and/or unavailability of supporting  records and documents, could make securing the evidence required tenuous at best.

If enough evidence is uncovered, the next stage would be to lay charges.  However, there will likely be a number of practical complexities associated with doing so.

For example, naming parties to the proceeding could present a significant challenge.

Given the age of these gravesites, it is logical to conclude that many of the individuals responsible are deceased. Living parties to the crime may be difficult to locate. Bringing them within the jurisdiction of our courts could be a near-impossible task.

Given these realities, some have suggested that the entities responsible for the schools—not the individuals who carried out the abuse—should be charged. After all, we know that these so-called schools were run by the Catholic Church and funded by the federal government.

While an incorporated body is a legal person, capable of being criminal charged, this approach is still potentially fraught with difficulty.

Consider that criminal charges in this country are almost always laid by the Crown.  Government-employed lawyers prosecute crimes as agents of the Crown.

If charges were to be laid by the Crown against the federal government, an unprecedented legal quagmire would arise. The government would be prosecuting itself.

Although private prosecutions are technically possible, which would help sidestep this impractical and improbable situation, the circumstances under which they occur is narrow and complicated. Navigating such a prosecution would be exceedingly circuitous, why may explain—at least in part—why they are so exceedingly rare.

Then arises the question with respect to the appropriate legislation. It seems that acts of this nature would be more appropriately prosecuted under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act than the more commonly used Criminal Code.

This piece of legislation is just 20 years old—a relative baby compared to the Criminal Code—and with very few charges having ever proceeded under it, it is largely unchartered legal territory. 

Moreover, proceedings under this act must only proceed with written personal consent from the attorney general. Obtaining such consent could be a laborious effort.

Finally, like in all criminal proceedings, the standard for a successful prosecution is high. In order to secure a conviction, Crown must prove their case beyond any reasonable doubt. This is the highest legal standard of proof available. It is one that presents challenges to Crown, sometimes even in seemingly straightforward cases.

Underpinning all of these complexities is the government’s extremely poor record when it comes to the treatment of Indigenous people.

Many have pointed out the RCMP’s complicity in the operation of residential schools. Bearing this context in mind, there is a looming concern that any police investigation or government action in relation to this tragedy would be disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst.  

Given the seemingly enormous odds against a domestic prosecution, the International Criminal Court may be a more pragmatic forum for such a proceeding.  

There is no indication that this matter has been referred to this court as of yet.

Sarah Leamon is a criminal defence lawyer. She holds a master of arts in women’s studies from UBC. Follow her on Twitter @SarahLeamonLaw and find her website here. The Georgia Straight publishes opinions like this from the community to encourage constructive debate on important issues.

 

Stories from Survivors | Long History of Crimes Against Humanity

 

John Jones was just 7 years old when he was forced to attend the Alberni Residential School in Canada. Stories from survivors of Canada’s residential schools.

LISTEN: Stories From Canada's Indigenous Residential School Survivors

 

 

Residential schools were a key tool in America’s long history of Native genocide

Why we need to grapple with these past atrocities.

The recent discovery of unmarked mass graves of 1,300 Indigenous children buried in five former residential schools has forced Canada to come to grips with a legacy of cultural and physical genocide against Native people.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, 150,000 children were separated from their families, language and culture and placed in 150 government-funded residential schools. There, children were subjected to torture, trauma and death to “kill the Indian in the child.” Thousands of children died — 4,100 according to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the residential schools, although the actual number may have been as high as 15,000. And we can only imagine the trauma these children experienced, including those who were forced to bury their classmates and build their coffins.

The disturbing news from Canada was a reminder that the United States maintained its own system of 367 Indian boarding schools from 1860 until 1978. The two countries’ systems were intertwined, with the United States providing a model that Canada would adopt and emulate.

Responding to events in Canada, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — the first Native American to hold a Cabinet position and a granddaughter of people forced into these boarding schools — announced an investigation of residential schools. She noted that most Americans would be alarmed to learn that “the United States also has a history of taking Native children from their families in an effort to eradicate our culture and erase us as a people.” But, she emphasized, “it is a history that we must learn from if our country is to heal from this tragic era.”

She is right. Just as America is being forced to address its legacy of enslavement, segregation and systemic racism, the nation must confront the genocide of Indigenous people — who are rendered all butinvisible in society — and the role of settler colonialism in building the country. Native American genocide, like slavery, constitutes America’s original sin.

From the earliest colonial days, violently clearing the land of Indigenous people — like slavery — was critical to the formation of the country. And, as with slavery, Christianity played an instrumental rolein advancing violence against Indigenous communities.Three papal edicts — known together as the Doctrine of Discovery — provided a religious justification for colonial conquest and exploitation of non-Christian people and paved the way for the West African slave trade, slavery and Indigenous genocide.

These beliefs permeated the Declaration of Independence, which referred to the original inhabitants of this land as “merciless Indian savages.” And with U.S. expansion came Native American dispossession, death, forced relocation and containment in reservations. In fact, it was public policy. In 1819, Congress enacted the Civilization Fund Act, which authorized the president “in every case where he shall judge improvement in the habits and condition of such Indians practicable” to “employ capable persons of good moral character” to introduce tribes to the “arts of civilization.” In 1824, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was established to administer the fund, which paid Christian missionaries to “civilize” the Indians.

The creation of residential schools were part of the broader settler colonial project to exterminate Native American culture and separate them from the land through war and violence. The first government-run boarding school for Native American children was the Carlisle School, which opened in Pennsylvania in 1879 for the purpose of “civilizing” by forcibly assimilating the children into White society. Founded by a Civil War veteran, Gen. William Henry Platt, who was in charge of Native American prisoners of war, its mission was clear. “A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres,” Platt said. “In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

Of the 10,000 children who attended the Carlisle School until it closed in 1918, more than 180 died amid abuse, malnourishment and disease related to substandard living conditions. After 100 years, the bodies of 10 of these children were returned to their families in June 2021.

Nevertheless, Carlisle came to serve as a model for other residential schools. Employing Platt’s assimilationist and genocidal philosophy of eliminating Native American culture, these schools adhered to policies forcing children to speak, dress and behave according to White American values, focusing on individualism and materialism, private rather than communal property and the monogamous nuclear family structure. Boys received industrial training, while girls learned home life skills in regimented environments, suffering under living conditions the Native American Rights Fund described as “somewhere between dungeons and death camps” in a 2019 report.

Between one-third and 40 percent of the Indian boarding schools in the United States were operated by Christian denominations. Churches believed that “civilizing” and converting Indigenous people to Christianity was their only hope of salvation from a “dying” culture. Missionaries regarded Indigenous spirituality as witchcraft and Christianity as the only acceptable moral law for a civilized society.

But, in fact, the boarding school system is now recognized as a form of genocide designed to forcibly remove children from their homes and separate them from their families, culture, clothing and language. Their hair was cut in a humiliating manner. Sadistic missionaries punished them for speaking their native tongue by washing out their mouths with soap, lye and chlorine. They were neglected, denied food, beaten and raped, sometimes leading to death —all for the sake of destroying Indigenous culture.

And their influence spread across the northern border. Nicholas Flood Davin, the architect of the Canadian residential school program, visited Indigenous boarding schools in the United States in 1879 and was impressed with what he saw, particularly with the Carlisle School and its solution to the “Indian problem” through an “aggressive civilization” policy that deconstructed Indigenous children.

“The experience of the United States is the same as our own as far as the adult Indian is concerned. Little can be done with him,” Davin wrote in his 1879 report to the Canadian government. “He can be taught to do a little at farming, and at [live]stock-raising, and to dress in a more civilized manner, but that is all. The child, again, who goes to a day school learns little, and what little he learns is soon forgotten, while his tastes are fashioned at home, and his inherited aversion [avoidance] to toil [work] is in no way combated [stopped].” In Canada, residential schooling was made compulsory for all First Nations children in 1920.

Most of the schools ceased operations by the mid-1970s, with the last one closing in the late 1990s. With the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement in 2007, Canada paid reparations to the survivors of residential schools and issued an apology.

Lawyers in Canada have requested the International Criminal Court investigate the Canadian government and the Vatican for alleged crimes against humanity. While the Canadian government identified 5,300 abusers, none have been charged under a federal law addressing war crimes and crimes against humanity. A few priests have faced sexual assault charges but not homicide. Out of more than 38,000 reports of abuse at the residential schools, there were fewer than 50 convictions.

The mass graves in Canada are a wake-up call for the United States to seize the opportunity and get on the right side of human rights. As a country with a long, unresolved and traumatic history of genocide and mass graves, of family separation and the erasure of children, America must heal itself by accounting for its past.

READ: Residential schools were a key tool in America’s long history of Native genocide - The Washington Post