Past And Present Oppression of Aboriginal Population In Canada

by Reginald Angus Argue

Erasmus Darwin once stated, "He who allows oppression shares in the crime." The danger of permitting fundamentalist religions or corporations from getting away with past crimes of suppression or inflict their own personal beliefs again upon the Aboriginal people have riddled Canadian history. From these enormous miscarriages of justice there have been an environments created in which a gigantic void has been allowed to silence so many of these once proud and independent people.

Past Biological Warfare Against Aboriginals


The evidence of oppression against the Aboriginals has existed since the seven-year war in 1760’s within North America. It first started when the British feared the Aboriginal population was going to join with the French and throw them out of Canada. To solve this problem, the British gave the Aboriginal Tribes gifts such as blankets. Yet, the British failed to tell the Aboriginals that these blankets were from a hospital in Britain that was contaminated with small pox. These actions of bio warfare, overnight gave the British the advantage in numbers over the French and the Aboriginals (see http://www.ualberta.ca/~pimohte/ClashofWorlds.html)

Genocide of Beothuks

Chains of this genocide continue to be seen in other parts of Canada, as people are pulled through time and space. In one particular case, which involved a Tribal group of Aboriginals from New Foundland called Beothuk. The Beothuks were hunted down and used as slaves or "shot on sight by the English." These actions continued until this group of Aboriginals no longer existed, as they were wiped off the earth. The last surviving person in this Aboriginal Tribe, who died in 1829, was called 'Shanawdihit.' Before Shanawiddihit death people were able to learn a little of her language and culture. No longer will the little children be running around and playing. Now we only have memories of a lost tribe and questions of what great mysteries or secrets that this Tribe will forever hold silent. (see http://www.native-languages.org/beothuk.htm)

Residential Schools

In 1857 a church-inspired legislation called "the Gradual Civilization Act" was passed in Upper Canada, which defined aboriginal culture as inferior, stripped native people of citizenship and subordinated them in a separate legal category from non-Indians. Shortly, after Confederation of Canada, in 1874 this first Gradual Civilization Act was used as a foundation to draw from and was used as an excuse to establish Residential Schools. It included "the legal definition of an Indian as, an uncivilized person, destitute of the knowledge of God and of any fixed and clear belief in religion" (Revised Statues of British Columbia 1960). (See http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/canada.html)

With this official view of the Aboriginals in these miss guided people’s heart, and with the excuse that "conversion of any surviving native people to Christianity" came the creation of Residential School in 1890 that lasted until 1984. The reason for the creation of these schools, which were modeled off of the Industrial Schools out of the United States, was to assimilate the Aboriginals (who were viewed as being savages at that time) into society.

In order to permit the churches from taking the children from their parents, the Canadian Federal Government passed laws, which legally allowed the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) to enter in Aboriginal Reservations and take the children. The children were then taken to Residential Schools, where in the period of existence of these schools over "50,000 corpses have literally and officially gone missing." One witnessed reported to say that, "No one came to check in on us." This ideology of not knowing, not seeing created an environment where pedophiles flourished unopposed in. In addition reports of torturing, medical experiments, and even sterilization in some of these Aboriginal children showed that some considered these children to be second-class citizens and below them.

Submitted are five different quotes that come from Nexus: Canadian Holocaust (http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/canada.html), which will unfold to people examples of how Aboriginal children were treated:

Mary Anne Nakogee-Davis of Thunder Bay, Ontario, was tortured in an electric chair by nuns at the Catholic Spanish residential school in 1963 when she was eight years old. She states: "The nuns used it as a weapon. It was done on me on more than one occasion. They would strap your arms to the metal armrests, and it would jolt you and go through your system. I don’t know what I did that was bad enough to have that done to me" (from The London Free Press, London Ontario, October 22, 1996).

A recurring and regular torture at the residential schools themselves was operating on children’s teeth without using any form of anesthesia or painkiller. Two separate victims of this torture at the Alberni School describe being subjected to it by different dentists, decades apart. Harriett Nahanee was brutalized in that manner in 1946, while Dennis Tallio was "worked on by a sick old guy who never gave me painkiller" at the same school in 1965.

"…this aim was genocidal, for it planned and carried out the destruction of a religions and ethnic group: all those aboriginal people who would not convert to Christianity and be culturally extinguished. Non-Christian natives were the declared targets of the residential schools, which practiced wholesale ethnic cleansing under the guise of education."

Legislation permitting the sterilization of any residential school inmate was passed in BC in 1933 and in Alberta in 1928 (see "Sterilization Victims Urged to Come Forward" by Sabrina Whyatt, Windspeaker, August 1998). The Sexual Sterlization Act of BC allowed a school principal to permit the sterilization of any native person under his charge. As their legal guardian, the principal could thus have any native child sterilized. Frequently, these sterilizations occurred to whole groups of native children when they reached puberty, in institutions like the Provincial Training School in Red Deer, Alberta, and the Ponoka Mental Hospital. (Former nurse Pat Taylor to Kevin Annett, January 13 2000).

Expressing the 'virtues' of genocide, the principal of the Untied Church school in Ahousat on Vancouver Island’s west coast, wrote in 1938: "The problems with the Indians is one of morality and religion. They lack the basic fundamentals of civilized thought and spirit, which explains their child-like nature and behavior. At our school we strive to turn them into mature Christians who will learn how to behave in the world and surrender their barbaric way of life and their treaty rights which keep them trapped on their land and in a primitive existence. Only then will the Indian problem in our country be solved" (Rev. A. E. Caldwell to Indian Agent P.D. Ashbridge, Ahousat, BC, November 12, 1938).

Presently, there are an estimated 87,500 adult Aboriginals who are still alive that went through these Residential schools. 13,000 individual claimants have sought compensation within the court system and alternative dispute resolution projects (As of November 2, 2004; See www.irsr-rqpa.gc.ca). At this time, that is 14.8% of the Aboriginals, who attended Residential Schools that are still alive.

Quoting the words from Harriett Nahanee, "The residential schools created two kinds of Indians: slaves and sell-outs. And the sellouts are still in charge. The rest of us do what we’re told. The band council chiefs have been telling everyone on our reserve not to talk to the Tribunal and have been threatening to cut our benefits if we do (Harriet Nahanee to Kevin Annett, June 12, 1996). (See www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/canada.html).

Present day Chemical Experiments on Aboriginal Peoples

Even right up to the 21st Century there are still chemical experiments going on in Aboriginal reserves within Canada. In one case that takes place on the Sto:Lo First Nations, which is a reserve in the Mission and Chilliwack area of British Columbia. In this Reservation, "Xyolhemeylh Health and Family services program is in fact doing the opposite, to the point where it is actually engaging in GENOCIDE through the administration of highly dangerous vaccine, along with calculated withholding of information necessary for families to be able to make their own choices regarding whether or not to vaccinate their children." (See http://www.iahf.com/20001117.html)

Paraphrasing a website called "Vaccination Genocide Exposed in Canada" written by Candance Hill (http://www.iahf.com/20001117.html): "Side effects from vaccines maybe due to the bacterial toxin or virus component of the vaccine, or the chemicals used in the preparation and preserving of the solution. These chemicals include mercury, formaldehyde, aluminum, and a variety of other know toxic materials…Indigenous people have been subjected to many vaccinations. (Let us be aware that they are difficult to beat into submission and they own vast tracts of land which the authorities would like to have for their own benefits)."

Are we not supposed to be in the 21st Century? Also, aren’t all Canadians supposed to be equal under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? In addition under this Charter, "Everyone has the right not to be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment or punishment." (See http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/charter/)

With this last point in mind, why have a few been able to use human beings as test subjects, within a nation that is suppose to be recognized world wide as being caring and understanding to all? Although the hardest question would have to be, why haven’t government representatives and even representatives within Aboriginal Reservations not step in and stop this obvious unethical experiment?

Conclusion

On September 22, 2004 Prime Minister Paul Martin called for specific United Nations rules for early intervention to protect people. In this article, Mr. Martin was quoted as saying, "Our common humanity should be a powerful enough argument and that is precisely what is missing. Put simply, there is still no explicit provision in international law for intervention on humanitarian grounds."

Where is the humanity in how Canadian churches, corporations, and even members within past federal governments have been legally able to get away with the genocide against the Aboriginals in Canada? First we must address the situation with the Aboriginals in Canada, before we are able to look at other Nations horrific conditions.

As the late Former Prime Minister Trudeau once stated, "The State has no business in the bedrooms of the nation." The churches should have no right within the politics of Canada. There should be separation of Church and State. This way we are not put in a similar situation in the future, where possible future genocides may be permitted to take place all in the name of religion. In our times we the people must realize that a real leader will put the interest of his nation’s people before even his own.

Here is a question that is directed at you, Prime Minister Paul Martin, are you going to stand apart from past Canadian leaders and be the leader that Canada now more than ever desperately needs?

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