Why We Are Not Sorry for Our Crimes:
The Residential Schools Settlement Farce by Kevin D. Annett, M.A., M.Div. The perpetrators of the worst crime in Canadian history are absolving themselves of that crime and feeling quite good about it. That's essentially what's going on these days in courtrooms across Canada, in what is developing to be the greatest travesty of justice in our sordid history. In the spring of 1996, when I was asked to be an advisor to the first group of men and women who were suing the government and the United Church of Canada for their torture at the so-called Alberni Indian Residential School, I assumed, like most Canadians, that electrically shocking six year old children and driving nails through their tongues was a crime. I also assumed that when half of the children in a school consistently die every year, and their bodies disappear, those responsible would have to answer for such barbarities, like any serial killer. But what I didn't realize was that when the victims are aboriginal, and the perpetrators are Christians and their clergy, a completely different standard applies, and the murderers, quite literally, are above the law. I have had to come to this conclusion after hard and bitter experience, after twelve years of recording hundreds of survivors' stories, publishing corroborating proof of crimes against humanity in Indian residential schools, and trying, and failing, to win justice for these survivors in the Canadian courts. I have had to conclude that the deliberate genocide that killed more than 50,000 children in these "schools" is not considered a crime by Canada and its churches, either legally or morally. Since the commencement of the residential schools lawsuits a decade ago, not a single fiduciary officer of either the government or the Anglican, Catholic and United Churches which ran these schools has ever been charged or brought to trial, and not one person has been charged with genocide, murder or any other crime more serious than "physical and sexual abuses". This is, frankly, astounding, considering that deliberate acts of murder, involuntary sterilization, torture, slave labour, medical experimentation and germ warfare went on in these schools as a matter of state and church policy, and not as the result of supposed random acts of individuals, acting alone. The evidence of this deliberate genocidal policy is considerable, beginning with statements of senior civil servants like Indian Affairs Superintendent Duncan Campbell Scott, who said on record in the spring of 1909, "It is true that Indian children die at a much higher rate in our Indian boarding schools from communicable diseases ... But such is in keeping with policy of this Department, which is geared towards the Final Solution of the Indian Problem." One of his employees, department medical officer Dr. Peter Bryce, commented after his tour of western residential schools, "I believe the conditions are being deliberately created in the Indian schools to spread infectious diseases. The death rate often exceeds fifty percent. This is a national crime." (Oct. 9, 1907) All of this evidence, including the exhaustive first-hand, eyewitness testimonies of survivors of these crimes, has been completely ignored by the fraudulent court process that has pretended to bring acknowledgement and "healing" to the thousands of survivors of the residential school nightmare. With the help of compliant state-funded native "leaders" of the Assembly of First Nations, the government and churches have absolved themselves of their criminal acts by shifting the legal issue away from one of criminal liability to financial "compensation" to their victims. This travesty has killed any hope of justice for aboriginal people. For example, in the latest "settlement" offered by Ottawa, the churches are completely freed of any liability for the harm done to children under their legal guardianship in the residential schools, including the deaths of thousands of them; the original "apology" for the residential schools is abolished; and survivors must legally gag themselves and refrain from any future legal action, as must their descendents, in order to receive the whopping sum of $10,000 for a lifetime of torture and ruination. Would any "white" person, be they politician or church official, accept such a deal if he or she was sterilized, tortured, or endured the trauma of seeing friends and relatives murdered in front of them? I wonder how much Prime Minister Harper would demand if such crimes had happened to him? Of course, we're dealing with Indians, who have always been an expendable class of people on this continent. A ninety five percent extermination rate doesn't lie, after all. As a member of the culture that committed the worst genocide in human history, and continues to ravage this land and its indigenous people for its own profit, I find it quite crazy that my people, Christian or otherwise, can do such things and yet drape themselves in a self-righteous sense that we somehow regret or are sorry for what we did, and are doing. Why don't we put that myth to rest, once and for all. As a minister, I have had the chance to see close-up how people behave when they are truly ashamed or sorry for the harm and murder they have committed on others. They mourn, and tear at themselves, and are irreconcilably despairing. They don't talk about throwing a bit of money at their victims, or mouthing meaningless verbal "apologies" to those who will never recover. And they don't get fancy lawyers and PR guys to cover for them. I have yet to see a single official of the churches or government publicly mourn, or cry, for what they did to thousands of innocent native children. None of them have come on their knees and begged forgiveness to the residential school survivors. Despite all the churches' Sunday morning rhetoric, none of their clergy have closed their churches as a sign of true repentence, and mortgaged their billions of dollars in property in order to "give away all that they have to the poor" - to those they have wronged - as Jesus prescribed. On the contrary; the response of these "Christians" has been utterly inhuman. All of that tells me that my culture and former religion is a dead shell with no moral or spiritual substance left in it. We cannot heal anyone, let alone ourselves. And so, ironically, the final victory belongs to those aboriginal people who we tried to destroy: the ones who have kept their soul, and not bartered it away for the riches and power of this world, as we have done. So let's stop pretending that we sympathize for our residential school victims. Let us mourn, instead, for ourselves: for all that we have lost, and can never recover. Let us close the doors of our churches and Parliament, those dead and blood-soaked institutions, and try to find whatever is left of ourselves, shorn of our false gods and riches. Let us look for that tortured and forgotten Christ who was the first innocent we murdered in the service of Empire. .................................................................................................................... Kevin Annett 260 Kennedy St. Nanaimo, BC V9R 2H8 ph: 250-753-3345 or 1-888-265-1007 www.hiddenfromhistory.org |