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Canadian Judge rules residential schools a form of genocide

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Shinobu

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Judge calls residential schools a form of genocide | CTV News

WINNIPEG — The chairman of Canada's truth and reconciliation commission says removing more than 100,000 aboriginal children from their homes and placing them in residential schools was an act of genocide.

Justice Murray Sinclair says the United Nations defines genocide to include the removal of children based on race, then placing them with another race to indoctrinate them. He says Canada has been careful to ensure its residential school policy was not "caught up" in the UN's definition.

"That's why the minister of Indian affairs can say this was not an act of genocide," Sinclair told students at the University of Manitoba Friday. "But the reality is that to take children away and to place them with another group in society for the purpose of racial indoctrination was -- and is -- an act of genocide and it occurs all around the world."

About 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were forced to attend the government schools over much of the last century. The last school closed outside Regina in 1996.

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My problem with this is that; who says they are not treated well? REAL genocide is when they give kids guns and make them shoot people, like in Darfur and Sierra Leone.
 
Did you read the rest of the article? Over 25,000 people who had been students were interviewed.

Regardless, the fact that residential schools were terrible places has been known for a while.
 
Well, I apologize then. I didn't read the rest of the article, and I wasn't under the impression that they were not good places.
 
The UN's Definition of Genocide said:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(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;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
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Eeeeeeyup.
 
This is all fine and dandy, but who's going to be held accountable for it all? From what I'm understanding of the article, the groups this judge is talking about are numerous and span many generations. From what I can see, he's just making noise. I doubt he'll even get an admission of wrong-doing from any member of the Canadian government, and that would be the least that could be done.

Would I be wrong in assuming that this kind of stuff has been viewed as wrong by the Canadian government and stopped, or is it still going on?

It all just seems silly to me, to be honest.
 
P N N K said:
Well, I apologize then. I didn't read the rest of the article, and I wasn't under the impression that they were not good places.
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According to the definition of "genocide" that this is referencing, it doesn't matter whether they are good places or not.
 
Well, words can be misconstrued, depending on the circumstances. But, I won't push the issue any further.
 
Caitlin said:
This is all fine and dandy, but who's going to be held accountable for it all? From what I'm understanding of the article, the groups this judge is talking about are numerous and span many generations. From what I can see, he's just making noise. I doubt he'll even get an admission of wrong-doing from any member of the Canadian government, and that would be the least that could be done.

Would I be wrong in assuming that this kind of stuff has been viewed as wrong by the Canadian government and stopped, or is it still going on?

It all just seems silly to me, to be honest.
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To answer these questions and give a little more background:
Attending residential schools was manadatory for First Nations people from 1884 to 1948. They still existed after this until the last one closed 1998.

There have (fortunately) been ongoing efforts to reconcile, including reparations. A couple years ago a formal federal government apology was issued. This can be considered part of the process of ensuring accountability in these efforts.
 
This is all fine and dandy, but who's going to be held accountable for it all? From what I'm understanding of the article, the groups this judge is talking about are numerous and span many generations. From what I can see, he's just making noise. I doubt he'll even get an admission of wrong-doing from any member of the Canadian government, and that would be the least that could be done.

Would I be wrong in assuming that this kind of stuff has been viewed as wrong by the Canadian government and stopped, or is it still going on?
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It has indeed been stopped, and this commission is part of a broad settlement on the issue reached in 2006. Along with it came a formal apology from the prime minister both for the excesses of the system and the very creation of the system (2008) as Shinobu noted. The head of the RCMP, and various other figures in the Canadian government and public institutions have also apologized for the parts played by their institutions.

The aim of the commission is not so much to punish the guilty (most of them being dead in any event), but to provide a framework for all Canadians to understand just what happened during those years, and understand how others feel about it. The same settlement that created the commission also attributed 1.9 billion to compensation to the victims, and there may be more.

The judge here isn't saying "Horrible things happened." That something horrible happened is well known and not seriously contested. What he's saying is "This is what Canada needs to know about the horrible things that happened."
 
I just wanted to add: From what I have seen being discussed, part of the ongoing reparations process for residential schools is to have a portion of grade-school social studies teach about this in Canadian schools.
 
That's a good improvement over what school was like back when I was there.
 
Please note: The thread is from 14 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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