Cultural Genocide

This month saw the completion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools, and the delivery of their final report. The process has been fraught with problems, beginning with the lack of cooperation from the government, and ending with the breach of privacy when the commission decided to preserve the private stories of victims who spoke up only on the guarantee that the records would be destroyed.

The final report has labelled the Residential School system a cultural genocide. This term seems like a fair way to sum it up. It doesn't have a legal meaning, and thus no required punishments, which is probably the only reason the commission was willing to go that far. Even so, it’s causing a lot of distress among those who would prefer to ignore history.

But the elephant in the room here is the more traditional Genocide genocide. You know, the kind that involves killing and starving and enslaving people. I think a compelling argument can be made that the treatment of Canada’s aboriginal peoples counts. Sure, the government would ignore such a finding. But let’s be honest, they’ll ignore the watered-down recommendations of the commission anyway.

Even if you ignore the rest of history and focus on the residential schools in isolation, it still looks a lot like genocide. The death rates in those schools were catastrophic.

I wonder if there will ever be a commission willing to address that.