Manitoba’s verdict on sad history

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/07/2015 (3785 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Words can be overused to the point of losing their meaning. But in the process of understanding the terrible things that take place in the world, words matter so much because they frame our collective understanding of specific events.

When Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist, recently entered Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., and killed nine people, there were many calls to define his horrific deed as an act of terrorism rather than the act of a depraved loner.

The FBI defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” Prior to the shooting, Roof published a rambling manifesto in praise of racial segregation and indicated he committed this act because he felt African-Americans were “taking over the country” and he wanted to start a race war.

Was Roof’s act one of terrorism? By the textbook definition, it certainly was, as it targeted a specific group of the civilian population to further certain (odious) political objectives. However, when we are conditioned to think of terrorism, we think of events such as 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing. Indeed, the FBI has ruled out charging Roof with committing terrorism, which smacks of an unfair double standard. As James Downie wrote in the Washington Post, “If Dylann Roof were Muslim and had been accused of killing nine Christian Americans to start a ‘holy war,’ the (U.S.) Justice Department would have charged him as a terrorist in a second.”

Another controversial word that has been much debated of late is “genocide.” And the context in which it was used makes many Canadians uncomfortable, since the use of the word equates something that happened in Canada with some of the most horrific acts committed in history, such as the Holocaust and the “ethnic cleansing” committed in the Balkans and Rwanda in the 1990s.

The executive summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report argues Canada committed “cultural genocide” by forcibly placing indigenous children in residential schools. The TRC defines cultural genocide as “the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group,” which is distinguished from “physical genocide” (which is the mass killing of members of a targeted group) and biological genocide (which destroys their ability to reproduce).

Genocide, however, is a precise legal term set out in international law. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide defines genocide as a number of specific acts committed with the intent of destroying a particular group, including a) killing group members, b) causing them serious bodily or mental harm, c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

One could argue the forcible removal of children from their communities and their placement in residential schools constituted genocide, but the deliberate erosion of cultural practices — the wrong and misguided policy of “removing the Indian from the child” residential schools practised for many years — does not meet the traditional definition of genocide as spelled out in international legal conventions.

Because the use of the term “genocide” in this context is clearly very controversial, we wanted to understand whether Manitobans viewed the residential school experience as genocide or rather as “forced assimilation,” which is the traditional definition of what happened in residential schools.

A Probe Research survey released today confirms the majority of Manitobans agree what Canada did to successive generations of First Nations children was tantamount to genocide. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed agree placing children in residential schools constituted cultural genocide (63 per cent, including 33 per cent who strongly agree). Only 27 per cent disagreed with this description of the enduring impact of the residential schools tragedy.

Even though it is a very small sample of the overall survey, it is important to note First Nations and Métis Manitobans — many of whom are either survivors of residential schools themselves or the descendants of those who were taken from their homes and placed in these schools — are far more likely to share strong views that Canada carried out a genocidal policy (57 per cent strongly agree versus 31 per cent strongly agree among non-indigenous Manitobans).

Still, even among non-indigenous Manitobans, a majority accept the notion that their country committed a heinous act by forcibly removing First Nations children from their home communities and placing them in a situation where they were deprived of their family and identity — to say nothing of the horrific physical and sexual abuse many of them suffered in the process.

If slavery is America’s original sin, manifested today in the evil of racial inequality that led to the Charleston shooting, then Canada’s original sin is its historic treatment of First Nations children.

As painful and as uncomfortable as it may make Canadians to admit this, our country committed genocide. And the first step toward reconciliation, and absolution, is admitting this openly and honestly.

Curtis Brown is the vice-president of Probe Research Inc. His views are his own.

curtis@probe-research.com Twitter: @curtisatprobe