Acknowledge
The Truth
There’s a genocide in Canada
Subscribe to get a free copy of our plain language guide to genocide, "Genocide in Canada," by Fannie Lafontaine and Chloloula.
If you are an educator who would like to teach this in school,
contact teachthegenocide@nwac.ca
Looking to do more right now?
Send a letter to decision-makers
It may be hard to admit,
but it’s not up for debate;
Canada has committed genocide
against Indigenous people.
For a crime to be considered genocide
it has to have three elements:
To commit intentionally one of the 5 prohibited acts:
- Murder
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm
- Inflicting on the group conditions of life that can lead to it's destruction
- Preventing births within the group
- Transferring children of the group to another group
In Canada, Indigenous people, a protected group, were systematically murdered, harmed, assimilated, sterilized, and stolen with the intent to destroy the group.
So not only did Canada’s actions against Indigenous people have all three elements required by the definition, but it also committed all five prohibited acts.
Take the Indian out of the child
- Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister
I want to get rid of the Indian problem… Our objective is to continue until there is not an Indian that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department
– Duncan Campbell Scott, Oversaw the operation of Residential Schools
Residential "Schools" (1880-1996)
- 150,000 children forcibly removed; beaten, tortured, starved, raped
- Prohibition to speak their language
- Thousands of deaths
While there are many examples of the genocidal acts Canada committed, the one that’s been in the news most recently is the practice of taking children forcibly from their families to attend Residential schools. We now have evidence of what Indigenous people have always known, thousands of children died at these schools from disease, abuse, neglect, and starvation.
But all that is in
the past right?
Wrong.
The legacy of past genocidal acts still exists today through intergenerational trauma and the numerous policies that have devastating effects on Indigenous communities. The following are just a few.
The Indian Act was created to control and assimilate Indigenous people and their communities and is still in effect today.
Indigenous women in Canada are over-represented in the prison system, accounting for 42 percent of all federally sentenced women in Canada, and 50 percent of maximum-security placements for women.
In 1951, revisions to the Indian Act granted provincial child welfare agencies authority on reserves, which led to Indigenous children being taken away from their families at a staggering rate. Despite recent apologies from the government, these actions have resulted in more Indigenous children in the child welfare system today than during the peak of the residential school system.
Indigenous women, girls, transgender, gender-diverse, and Two-Spirit people continue to go missing and are murdered at an alarming and disproportionate rate.
What’s worse?
The genocide isn’t over…
In 2019, the result of the government’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was released with the conclusion that the thousands of victims were part of a Canadian genocide.
How do we end this genocide?
To start we need to…
Implement:
- The 231 calls for justice of The National Inquiry on MMIWG
- The 94 calls for action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
- Spirit Bear Plan
- UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
- Joyce's Principle
- and more
How can you help?
Acknowledge and spread the true history of Canada. Only through admitting past wrongs can we have reconciliation.
This National Indigenous History month, we're asking governments to commit to adding this history to high school curriculums. If you’d like to participate, please fill out the form below to send a letter to federal and provincial politicians to let them know you think the true history of Canada should be taught in school. You will also receive a copy of the letter.