Canadians aren't sorry for genocide: 'Intentions were good'

When reading the book 'Hidden from History', I came across one of its most salient points: that although Canadians acknowledge "mistakes" were made in the process of dealing with Aboriginals, they don't apologize for the acts of colonization, genocide and cultural destruction themselves.

"... what Indian Affairs Superintendent Duncan Scott referred to as "The Final Solution of our Indian Problem" in 1910 --the legal eradication of Aboriginals and their culture-- had to occur under a mask of legitimacy; namely, the so-called "educating and civilizing" of a "lesser people". Surprisingly few Canadians, including critics of the residential school system, have been able to penetrate this fog of apparent "benevolent concern" that hid a murderous system." (p 15) 

Canadians are "sorry" for the "excesses and abuses" of the institutions which harmed and killed Aboriginals, but not once have they apologized for their very existence in the first place.

"Accordingly, within the mindset and legal regime of this dominant culture there exists no basis to expose or prosecute the system who killed and tortured native children in the residential schools, since that murder originated precisely within these present-day institutions ...  

... As in post-war Europe, therefore, any justice for aboriginal victims of the residential schools must ultimately originate from outside Canada, and be based on international legal principles. For no institution is capable of condemning and prosecuting itself, let alone its leaders." (p 16)

Here's an example: Ottawa spent a million and a half dollars locating over 5,000 abusers of children (identified by aboriginals) but did nothing. From CBC:

 "Investigators hired by the federal government have located thousands of people accused of physically and sexually abusing students at Canada's Indian residential schools — though they may never face criminal charges.  

As part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement agreement, the government located 5,315 alleged abusers, both former employees and students. Seventeen private investigation firms were contracted, at a cost of $1,576,380, beginning in 2005, according to information provided by Indigenous and North Affairs Canada (INAC).  

The alleged perpetrators, however, weren't tracked down to face criminal charges — it was to see if they would be willing to participate in hearings to determine compensation for residential school survivors. The Independent Assessment Process (IAP), not involving the courts, was set up to resolve the most severe abuse claims."

So the government has evidence of over 5,000 abusers, yet sits on it and does nothing. Why? Because to take action would open a can of worms for the caker government and they can't have that in the middle of the 'settlement process'!

Instead, the government asked politely for the abusers to come forward and participate in the hearings, which of course 4,450 so far have declined to do. Furthermore:

"The identity and names of alleged perpetrators who want to participate in the IAP are kept on a secure server with other data related to IAP claims. They are not disclosed to anyone, other than the adjudicator in each specific claim, and to the Department of Indigenous Affairs. 

... Through the history of residential schools — which lasted over a century, with tens of thousands having suffered abuse — fewer than 50 people have been convicted for crimes related to the schools."

Let's take another look, this from the Toronto Star:

"...St. Anne’s is probably most infamous, however, for having a homemade electric chair that was used to punish children. Edmund Metatawabin, today an author, unfortunately experienced the chair. In a 2013 affidavit to Ontario Superior Court, he wrote, “I cannot describe how intense the pain was. I could not scream. At St. Anne’s, if you were being beaten, you could not scream or cry or the punishment would keep up.”  

These were not isolated incidents: Children of the Broken Treaty reports that an OPP investigation nearly a half-century after the abuses took place collected 860 complaints of children being raped, sexually assaulted, tortured, beaten, and otherwise physically abused by 180 identified perpetrators. What took place at St. Anne’s could only be described as a crime against humanity. What kind of people would defend that? 

The answer, painfully enough, is the Canadian Department of Justice — in the present day. Under the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) that was created as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the Department of Justice is in the strange position of having to defend Canada against these accusations while also having to prepare evidence for the hearings on behalf of the survivors in order to determine their settlements.

More government cover-ups:

When asked about these allegations, however, what the lawyers did was to claim that there were “no known incidents found in documents regarding sexual abuse at Fort Albany [Indian Residential School].” Yet they were holding back documents including all the information about the 180 named perpetrators, and the 860 complaints. Angus writes that Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt wrote to him that “of course” the government was aware of the evidence. But instead of handing it over, as it was mandated to do, it appears it simply lied to survivors of child rape because it allowed the government to save money paid out to compensate for ruined lives.  

So survivors sued, and the Ontario Superior Court compelled government lawyers to release the documents that proved the crimes had been committed. Sault Star commentator Tom Mills noted at the time that though the court did not conclude the lawyers had acted in bad faith, they were nonetheless employing “highly adversarial civil law procedures to residential school compensation hearings, which are supposed to be non-adversarial.” ..."

These are just two examples. The government has withheld evidence and acted in both a prosecutory and defensive role - a complete conflict of interest. And not just in these examples, but in virtually the whole process of so-called "reconciliation". After a century of crimes and tens of thousands of victims, less than 50 people have faced prosecution when the government itself holds thousands of names, depositions, statements, accusations and records!

This is a cover up. An informal one to be sure; one done in plain sight. But cakers aren't able to distinguish that because again, in their eyes these institutions are 'legitimate' and what they did was legitimate even though they "made mistakes along the way".

To actively prosecute criminals who were sanctioned by church leaders, and the government itself - could potentially lead to questions regarding the prosecution of government entities. Thus we see that the caker kingdom wants "reconciliation" and a financial "settlement" without actually doing anything to effectively de-legitimize its past conduct.

The press can shed a few crocodile tears over 'bad apples' and 'bad conduct' and sweep the whole issue under the rug. Once official settlements have happened, it's likely aboriginal people won't be able to legally prosecute officials or the government later on.


Conflicting the matter are aboriginal leaders. Many former students have made accusations against leaders in the aboriginal community and government. None of these have been properly investigated (they have been dismissed as 'absurd'), and as such, there is no incentive for these "leaders" to actively pursue justice, nor can their downtrodden victims who have been threatened, harassed and worse. More from Hidden from History:

"Sadly, the two-tiered system of collaborators and victims created among native students at the schools continues to the present, as some of the state-funded band council officials --themselves former collaborators-- appear to have an interest in helping suppress evidence and silence witnesses who would incriminate not only the murderers but themselves, as agents of the white administration." (p 20)

And so it can all be summed up in this:

"Christian European culture in Canada still sees nothing fundamentally wrong with its invasion and occupation of the New World and its destruction of aboriginal societies; it simply regrets the "excesses" of that process. No wing within any of the mainline Canadian churches is challenging the Christian missionary effort per se, merely aspects of it, such as the sadism of particular school staff, or the "cultural insensitivity" of missionaries to First Nations.  

... And these attitudes are still defended today by leading church officials, like former United Church moderator Bruce McLeod, who stated on a CBC interview in the spring of 2000, "The residential schools as a whole were well-intentioned experiments." (p 26)

No, cakers are not sorry about conquering, subjugating and mass murdering aboriginal peoples, nor for taking their land; they're sorry about the 'mistakes' made by 'well-intentioned' institutions.

A caker today is likely to say, "it was a long time ago! I wasn't around when that happened, so it's time to get over it." And yet, if he's a French Canadian he's likely to moan to Ottawa about the injustices Quebec has experienced and demand 'nationhood' and 'special recognition', without even noticing his own hypocrisy. Or if an Anglo - complain about his "hardship" in having to be sensitive and allot federal funding money for Aboriginals. 

Destroying aboriginal culture was 'an unfortunate event' of the past, yet the government will spend billions forcing the French language on the population of Canada: including the indigenous, mentally disabled children and remote Inuit villages (previously).

Cakers complain about the "Asian invasion" in Western Canada; bitter that Asian immigrants have brought over their language, hire their 'own people' and drive up real estate prices. Apparently this is some kind of outrage, yet aboriginal people need to 'get over it' when it comes to mass murder and genocide.

I for one, openly welcome the Chinese to come and invade Canada. Feel free to force white Canadians to live on small patches of land; make Mandarin the official language, Cantonese the second; take their children away to live in Chinese-run state schools and murder tens of thousands of them.

Thirty years from now I will smugly remind cakers that "it's in the past and we all need to move on."

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Canada won't face the murder of its children

I am going to review an article with some pretty typical caker attitudes so you can see what we're dealing with here. The article is about Kevin Annett and the documentary Unrepentant (viewing it will help to better understand this post).

The following are quotes from residential school survivors featured in the documentary.

These are some of the stories relating to murder. Other stories include: sexual abuse, rape, physical abuse; electric-shocking, being experimented on; witnessing burials, finding bodies, being asked to dig graves; children freezing to death; babies being killed after birth - as the result of sexual intercourse between students and school patrons.

Virginia Baptiste (St. Eugene Residential School 1955 - 1963)

"I know a lot of you people out there, don't understand. But, there's a need for the world to know about this. Because the church is hiding and the government is hiding ... there is a lot of people that died in those places."

Rick LaValle (Portage La Prairie Residential School)

"My brother died because of a cattle prod - of a shock - of the cattle prod. When he was fi-- when he was four years old, they dragged him by the hair and they cut it, they cut his skin right off his head, the pastors did that, with a whip - like a horse whip. It was sharp, with these little blades on it. And when I was in there, I heard him scream for help. And right away there was a lot of blood on the floor and they wouldn't take him to the hospital or the nurse, or nothin'. What happened then, what happened when I was in there - I heard him still scream for help 'Rick! Help! They're torturing me! I'm gonna die!' So he died right away. Like that. He was my only, uh, my only, uh best friend and my only brother that I always loved."

"I witnessed the death of Maisie Shaw."

"So I watched, and she was standing at the top of the stairs and he [principal] kicked her. She went rolling down the stairs. She ended up, she was, she was uh, laying like this [motions to her head], her eyes were open but she wasn't moving, she wasn't crying. So, I see that all the time." 

Lillian Shirt (Bluequills Residential School)

[Pointing in crematory] "But this is where we found those uh, we seen those little skulls ... we found them in here ... there was coal, like coal, see ... we weren't allowed to come here."  

[Later] "Jennie would cry out and then all of a sudden, this blood just spurted all over the place, it was on her back, the small part of her back here [crying] and it opened up, it opened up wide, then the blood came. Oh god! That's the last time I ever saw my sister."

Constable George Brown 

[Tells story of a rebellious student whose teacher drove a pencil through his hand]

"I'm 100% sure that we were used as guinea pigs in these local hospitals, for some unknown reason."

Bill Seward (Kuper Island Residential School)

"Her name was Maggie. She was two years older than me. And she was murdered in there, by a nun, pushed out the window, second story up and she died. But nothing was done about it, we weren't allowed to see a lawyer or nothin'. They just covered this up."

[Written statement]  Steven H (St. Paul's Catholic Day School)

"When I was six years old, I saw a little girl killed right in front of me by a nun, Sister Pierre, whose real name was Ethel Lynn. The girl she killed was Elaine Dick, who was five years old. The nun kicked her hard in the side of the neck and I heard this terrible snap. She fell to the floor and didn't move. She died right in front of us. Then the nun told us to step over her body and go to class. That was in 1966."

Beverly Breber [on her brother at Kuper Island Residential School]

"He said 'You know what sis', he says, 'I can't wait to get out of this hell hole, I'm gonna tell everything', and then the phone went dead, uh, people, at Kuper Island always listened to our phone calls and censored our letters back, you know, coming in and going out, so, you know, like, I was afraid for him but I didn't think it was going to be as bad as it was, turn out as bad as it was. Two days later we got a phone call saying that  he hung himself - committed suicide - but I never ever, ever ever believed it in my heart, that he'd ever do that. They had them walk through the gym while Richard was still hanging, and told them that it could happen to them."

Truly disgusting stuff. Now we come to this article in The Tyee: Truth and Native Abuse

1.

"But if you do believe these things, I'm afraid there are quite a few more things you are going to have to believe, because you can't have it both ways. If Kevin Annett really is prize-worthy and courageous, you will also have to believe this: 

-One of Canada's most respected First Nations' leaders is trafficking in children from Northern British Columbia in a profitable pedophilia ring that's run out of the West Hastings Street premises of the swish Vancouver Club. His clients are Vancouver judges, politicians, and church leaders."

What is so unbelievable about this? According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: 

"sexual exploitation is by far the most commonly identified form of human trafficking (79%) ...

By and large the exploitation of women tends to be visible, in city centres, or along highways ... 

... most trafficking is national or regional, carried out by people whose nationality is the same as that of their victims."

According to Statistics Canada on human trafficking:

"The majority (91%) of victims of human trafficking reported by police between 2009 and 2014 knew the person accused of the crime. More specifically, the most common relationship between the victim and accused was a business relationship (23 %), followed by a casual acquaintance (22%), and a non-spousal intimate partner (18%)." 

 The vast majority of these victims were female (93%). Victims of human trafficking were generally young. Among victims of human trafficking reported between 2009 and 2014, close to half (47%) were between the ages of 18 and 24. Additionally, one-quarter (25%) of human trafficking victims were under the age of 18."

Regarding high-profile clientele, this is not unheard of. A quick Google search will show countless scandals involving establishment figures in both politics and entertainment. See also:

 A ‘big political cover-up’ of 1980s pedophile-ring in U.K. Parliament (Washington Post)

The Child Sex Ring Around West Minister's Neck (Foreign Policy)

Britain shocked by growing soccer child abuse scandal (Reuters)

Norway pedophile scandal: Politicians, police reportedly among 20 arrested suspects (RT)

This could go on and on, but a few links will suffice to prove the point. Does this mean the First Nations' leader is guilty? No. But does it exonerate him? Not at all, as plenty of history and current events show the absolute possibility of the claim; it's not at all 'unbelievable'. Who would be a better choice of victim than poor, neglected Aboriginal children? (But I guess Terry thinks that Bill Cosby is just some nice old dad too, right?)

2.

"Back in the 1930s, a team of German doctors arrived at the Kuper Island Indian residential school and began conducting strange medical experiments on the children. Employing large hypodermic needles, they injected some sort of toxin directly into the chests of the school's young inmates, and several were killed as a result."

In the 1930's within the United States was the 'German-American Bund': a pro-Nazi, quasi-military organization made up of supporters with mostly German ancestry. It was most active in the years preceding the USA's entry in the Second World War.

Aside from this organization there were many others, and non-formal fascist Nazi-supporters in both the US and Canada. (Now this is where the cakers say "we had no Nazi sympathizers!" - just like their were none in the KKK, right cakers?)

Wrong! There was the Deutscher Bund Canada (a pro Nazi party):

"... established for the so-called Volksdeutsche (Germans who had been born outside the Reich). The Bund held monthly meetings for its members and staged pro-Nazi celebrations such as Hitler birthday parties; it imported and distributed Nazi propaganda materials to Germans and non-Germans alike ; it joined with other indigenous German-Canadian organizations and clubs to organize social events and to establish German language schools. 

The second arm of the Canadian Nazi movement was a separate Nazi party organization (NSDAP). This group was composed of non-naturalized German Canadians and Reichsdeutsche (Germans born in Germany proper) residing in Canada who had applied for and been accepted into the National Socialist Party. Although frequent contact existed between the NSDAP units and the Bund (the two groups often combined to hold public displays and to promote common causes), efforts were made to keep the memberships separate." 

"The Canadian ranks of the Nazi Party were filled with persons born outside Canada. Reichsdeutsche made up the vast majority of the membership (seventy-eight of the eighty-eight). With regard to the members' birthplace in Germany, Canada's Nazis reflected a general balance. All the major German states such as Bavaria, Prussia, and Saxony as well as most of the important cities were represented."

So what do we have here? We have pro-Nazi and Hitler sympathizers residing in Canada in the 1930's, as well as American sympathizers down south. Is it possible they were willing to experiment on children? Well, it's not out of the realm of possibility as in the early 1930's the Nazis were already sterilizing the 'undesirables'  and by the end of the 30's they would be euthanizing the disabled.

"German proponents of eugenics were part of an international phenomenon... German biologist August Weissmann’s theory of “immutable germ plasm,” published in 1892, fostered growing international support for eugenics ...  

... Eugenicists more successfully promoted sterilization laws in individual provinces, cantons, or states in Canada, Switzerland, and the United States."

And again, just because the survivors now assume they were German, doesn't mean these doctors were. They could have been other foreigners or people with heavy accents. A young, barely educated Native child is not going to know the difference, especially in a state of fear and shock.

Considering the general eugenics movements world wide at the time, and later events (I'll touch on) does that mean we can state with certainty these things happened? No. But again, it's not outside the realm of possibility. 

3.

"As recently as the 1950s and 1960s, aboriginal children at a Vancouver Island medical research facility were tortured with electrodes implanted in their skulls. At least one child was beaten to death with a whip fitted with razors."

Consider the following history just south of the border: forced sterilizations of minorities (which included Native Americans into the 1980's, and Mexican women into the 1970's).

Eugenics champions existed in North America:

"In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples." 

"The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz."

In the 1950's-60's these programs took place in the US:

- infecting women and disabled children with viral hepatitis

- injecting live cancer cells into prisoners

- testing nerve gases and toxic chemicals on US ships and their passengers

- radiation experiments

- giving iodine to babies

- Project GABRIEL

- Project SUNSHINE

-whole body radiation experiments on poor black cancer patients

"From 1950 through 1953, the U.S. Army sprayed chemicals over six cities in the United States and Canada, in order to test dispersal patterns of chemical weapons. Army records stated that the chemicals which were sprayed on the city of Winnipeg, Canada, included zinc cadmium sulfide, which was not thought to be harmful."

This isn't even a full list. And, as with the Nazi party and KKK, if it was happening south of the border there's no reason to assume it wasn't happening in Canada on at least a smaller level; especially considering American involvement in subjecting Canadian residents to testing without their knowledge.

As for 'electrodes implanted in skulls' ... I doubt very much a child has the mental capacity to understand medical testing, especially when terrified or in a state of shock. What a survivor may remember can constitute abuse, even if he doesn't have the specific medical terminology or recall of exact testing-details. Given the era, I don't find the idea of medical testing on poor Indian children to be beyond reasonable doubt.

4.

"At the Hobbema and Saddle Lake Indian residential schools in Alberta, children were incinerated in furnaces. At St. Anne's Indian residential school in Fort Albany, Ontario, children were executed in an electric chair. At McGill University in Montreal, there is a mass grave containing the bodies of aboriginal children killed in experiments undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency's top-secret MK-ULTRA program."

I don't know the exact details of this, so I can only comment on what I've seen in the documentary until I research further. I do know that Nazis managed to kill and incinerate millions of people, so the prospect of a cover up (burning bodies) at some schools isn't beyond reason. I sometimes meet Holocaust deniers who love to say "but where are all the bodies?"

All one has to do is google "MK Ultra" to read all about it. Quoting from the McGill Daily:

"Cameron’s experiments, known as MK-ULTRA subproject 68, were partially funded by the CIA and the Canadian government, and are widely known for their use of LSD, barbiturates, and amphetamines on patients. In the media, they were known as the “mind control” studies done at McGill and were reported as a brainwashing conspiracy from the CIA and the Canadian government. For journalists, the story was a goldmine. LSD use in a CIA experiment was an angle no sensationalist media could reject, especially in the anti-drug frenzy of the 1960s. However, these studies were much more complex than a Timothy Leary scare in la belle ville.  

At its worst, the prolonged periods of sensory deprivation and induced sleep used in the experiments left many patients in a child-like mental state, even years after the experiments were finalized. Even today, remnants of Cameron’s experiments at the Allan Memorial appear in torture methods at places like Guantanamo Bay. 

 ... In a report to the Canadian government in the mid 1980s, sources reveal that Cameron was “ruthless, determined, aggressive, and domineering … He seemed not to have the ability to deeply empathize with their [patients] problems or their situation.”  

When the whistle blew on Allan Memorial, Cameron’s stern portrait turned into the  evil stare of a “mad scientist,” as media reports explained the nature of his research. 

... The experiments done at McGill were part of the larger MK-ULTRA project led by Sidney Gottlieb of the CIA. In 1963, the year in which MK-ULTRA ended, the CIA compiled all the research into a torture manual called the Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation Handbook. Yes, a “torture manual” that would eventually define the agency’s interrogation methods and training programs throughout the developing world."

Could Native children have been exposed? It's possible ... at this point, I wouldn't suggest laughingly (like some) that it wasn't. Could children who were killed through neglect or otherwise have been 'disposed of' in a manner as to hide evidence? Sure, it's entirely possible.

5.

"These are just a few of the stories Annett has been circulating since the early 1990s. He has failed to produce a shred of evidence. RCMP investigators who have looked into Annett's allegations always come up empty. Some of these stories the RCMP hasn't investigated because nobody's reported them, for reasons Annett explains as a distrust of the police."

First, I'm quite sure that when you've been mocked, laughed at and disregarded your whole life - you aren't going to want to share your story with the people who have neglected or openly opposed you. If these survivors have undergone all of that in the name of 'government and authority', it's quite understandable why they would have issues trusting authorities, namely the police.

In fact, right here in front of us we have a whole article essentially mocking their claims (they made on video tape, in a documentary about their experiences) and suggesting it's ridiculous. Is it any wonder they have lost faith, and don't reach out for help?

As for the investigations, I would love the details! Perhaps the RCMP can fill us in. I know children and women that have been molested or raped and made formal complaints the same year as the incidents occurred - yet nothing was done because "there was no evidence" and therefor formal charges wouldn't stick.

I'm not sure how people expect the victims in this situation to come up with evidence 40 to 50 years after the fact? The Native children didn't have access to paper records and there's no doubt the institutions likely destroyed most of what was incriminating, if it was ever marked down to begin with.

The writer then goes on to say:

"It matters because the thousands of aboriginal people who really did suffer unspeakable torment in residential schools deserve something rather more from us than our complicity in the act of dumping their very real suffering down a rabbit hole into the same parallel universe where you'll find alien abductions, Masonic plots, crop circles, and 9-11 conspiracies."

I'm not sure how it qualifies as a 'conspiracy theory' when it's an assertion made by an individual (or group) who claims to have witnessed it first-hand? Which brings us to a fork in our conclusions: 1) either they are crazy lying drunk ol' Indians, or 2) they are telling the truth, as best they can remember it.

So which is it? While we're busy "respecting" the survivors of residential schools that fit the government narrative - what about the ones who are claiming to have witnessed murders, to have buried bodies, to have seen children killed and know there are unmarked graves?! How do we "respect" their truth? Right, by dismissing it! Wouldn't want the cakers to look bad, would we?

Then we get to the crux of the issue: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

"If the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gets dragged into the strange, alternative reality where Annett and his followers thrive, the commission's purpose could be easily defeated. If that happens, we will have lost an historic opportunity to see justice properly done in finally turning the page on one of the darkest and most disgraceful chapters in Canadian history."

Wouldn't want to interrupt that government-settlement process, eh? Wouldn't want to disrupt the "closing of this chapter" so we can all merrily move on, eh?

"It matters to me because I can count several old friends and colleagues among the people who show up as villains, collaborators and stooges in Annett's conspiracy, and I know a thing or two about Annett from when we were both young socialists, back in the 1970s."

Right, because people we know personally can't possibly commit crimes, can they? Just like the serial killer next door with a dozen bodies in the basement and the neighbor goes, "but he was such a nice fellow!" 

"One does not need to exaggerate or embellish anything about what happened in those places."

No, one does not. And if this were Annett saying it alone, I would be more skeptical. But when individuals come together and make these claims I highly doubt they are embellishing their own stories - to what end? But it comes full circle again: whether you choose to believe people who claim to have lived certain events, or not. He goes on:

"There were front-page stories a century ago, too. In 1897, senior Indian Affairs officials started blowing the whistle on the cavernous, shoddily-built, creaking institutions, pointing out that you couldn't have built more efficient incubation vectors for contagious disease, and for mass death, if you tried.  

Back then, P.H. Bryce, the Indian department's chief medical officer, conducted a study of 1,500 children interned in 15 different Indian residential schools across Canada. He found that one in four of the children never made it out alive. A separate study of the Kuper Island school found that four of every 10 children sent there over a 25-year period never survived to graduate.  

This is sufficiently damning. It is not necessary to assert, as Annett does, that infectious diseases were deliberately employed as part of a plot to "cull" Canada's aboriginal population. Everybody knows what happened. It is no secret, and is not even a secret that there are mass graves."

No ... not everybody knows what happened. What an ABSURD assertion! In fact, I would venture to guess that 90% or more Canadians do NOT know there were "mass graves". As for Bryce:

He himself said "conditions are being "deliberately created" to spread disease. It doesn't get much clearer than that. 

His contemporary Duncan Campbell Scott said:

“It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habituating so closely in the residential schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards a final solution of our Indian Problem.”

We can go back all the way to Jeffrey Amherst:

"Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them."

Bouquet replies:

"P.S. I will try to inocculate [sic] the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard's Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine."

Amherst in response:

"P.S. You will Do well to try to Innoculate [sic] the Indians by means of Blankets, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present."

But the writer goes on to dismissively wave off "conspiracy theories" about the purposeful extermination of Indians through disease ... because if the cakers don't have log books with date stamps and signatures on them then "it didn't happen" in their fevered pro-Canadiana dreams.

Finally the warbling is rounded down to one comment I can agree on:

"After all this suffering, the very least we owe the dead, and the living, is the truth."

Indeed. And I do believe the survivors and their stories. If they say they were molested and raped - I believe them. If they say their friends went missing or showed up dead - I believe them. If they claim to have witnessed something as shocking as murder - I believe them. If even a portion of them think there are still unanswered questions, cover ups, or purposeful disinformation - I support them in their quest to uncover the truth, whatever that may be.

And in the meantime, if one man has ventured to help these people and expose crimes, tell their stories - then I don't want to kick him down for being an 'inconvenience' to Canadian officials, the government, the media or those he's accused.

Even if he has gotten paranoid or is wrong about some things ... at least he's trying which is more than 99% of cakers in the caker-kingdom. And one must ask: where did he get these ideas from in the first place? If from Natives, are those Native people lying? If they're not - why can't we listen? And if they are - what benefit do they gain?

One thing is for certain: smug, patronizing caker attitudes stink!

O Canada!

Post Script - For more witness testimonies & documentation read: Hidden from History (PDF)

Also see: Government won't prosecute child-abusers

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Nearly half of murdered indigenous women did not know or barely knew killers

Article from The Star:

"In the seemingly ceaseless tragedy of murdered indigenous women, the country has been left with one crystal-clear impression: the overwhelming majority of those women were in some sort of relationship with their killers.

This is not true.

A Toronto Star analysis suggests 44 per cent of the women were victims of acquaintances, strangers and serial killers. This finding is based on a Star review of publicly available information on more than 750 murder cases. Of that number, 224 murders remain unsolved.

There are many public lists of murdered and missing indigenous women in Canada. The Star compiled those lists into a single database then set out to verify as much information as possible. Relying on newspaper clippings and court documents, the Star’s database includes 1,129 names, dates and, when a case was solved, some information on the offenders.

Our review found 420 cases where details of the relationship between victim and offender were known. Some of them date to the 1960s. Of those:

Half of the victims were domestically related to the perpetrator. This includes all types of family and partner connections.

16 per cent of the offenders were acquaintances; 15 per cent were strangers; and 13 per cent serial killers.

Aboriginal leaders who reviewed the Star’s findings say they show that the killers cannot be easily profiled and that reasons why indigenous women make up a disproportionately high percentage of homicide victims are not so neatly diagnosed.

The Star also obtained details through an access-to-information request to suggest the “solved” rate is not as clear-cut as the public RCMP report into missing and murdered indigenous women suggests.

In two reports, the Mounties said the “known-to” category includes spouses, family members and acquaintances. The latter category can mean “close friends, neighbours, authority figures, business relationships, criminal relationships and casual acquaintances.”

What is a casual acquaintance? A friend of a friend or someone met online? In how many cases did the victim know the perpetrator only briefly, meeting them only once?

The RCMP will not say.

From the start, Alberta’s Cold Lake First Nation Chief Bernice Martial has not believed most indigenous women knew their killers and that they were mostly indigenous men: “I want the facts. I want the data. I want to see proof.”

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde wants the definition of “known to” clarified.

“It could be the corner store grocery man, or whoever brings milk to the door. It doesn’t necessarily mean the boyfriend,” Bellegarde says.

“You need to break this down further and define it. The way you looked at it, only 50 per cent are in relationships. If the RCMP said it was 90 per cent — well, there is a discrepancy already. It is alarming — the transparency and openness.”

In April, then aboriginal affairs minister Bernard Valcourt told First Nations chiefs that, in 70 per cent of the cases of murdered and missing aboriginal women, indigenous men had been the perpetrators.

“The notion of First Nations women only being killed by their boyfriends and spouses is a myth,” said Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which represents 49 northern Ontario First Nations.

Carolyn Bennett, the new indigenous and northern affairs minister, said she was “appalled” by Valcourt’s remarks.

“It was misleading for him to characterize it that way and I, at the time, was furious,” Bennett said.

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson confirmed the number citing their database — even though the report issued by the Mounties last year had not noted the ethnicity of perpetrators. But Paulson added a caveat.

“It is not the ethnicity of the offender that is relevant, but rather the relationship between the victim and offender that guides our focus with respect to prevention,” Paulson wrote to Martial.

Most homicides involving female victims of all ethnicities involve family or intimate partner violence, Paulson added, but the rate is actually lower for aboriginal women — 62 per cent compared to 74 per cent for non-aboriginal women.

In its follow-up report, the RCMP said in the past couple of years, the offender was known to the victim in every solved homicide of an aboriginal woman in RCMP jurisdictions.

Since the RCMP found that aboriginal women are significantly more likely than other women to be killed by an acquaintance — 17 per cent of the aboriginal female homicides involved casual acquaintances and 7 per cent criminal relationships — uncertainty surrounds hundreds of cases.

“You need to break this down further and define it,” said Bellegarde.

Are police forces working together, asks Bellegarde, by sharing correct information? And are there protocols to improve communications?

“This all speaks to the bigger realm of why there needs to be an inquiry coupled with an action plan,” he said.

Bennett, one of the ministers charged with establishing the national inquiry, said cases that involve family violence should be viewed through a wider lens.

“We’ve got to go way back upstream to actually look at the effects of colonization and residential schools on the indigenous population in Canada,” Bennett said.

Secrecy and the list

The Star shared its database findings with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police two months ago and on two occasions since to check the accuracy of its research. The Star also asked several questions about how the RCMP arrived at its findings.

In May 2014, the Star made an access to information request for the RCMP’s database of murdered and missing indigenous women and girls.

In early October 2015, some 16 months later, the RCMP released 2,000 pages related to work that led to its 2014 report. All names and personal details of the women and girls were redacted.

The RCMP cited several reasons for redacting information, including personal information, law enforcement investigations and information obtained in confidence. Their 2014 report notes that the Mounties were asked to sign an “Undertaking of Confidentiality” to obtain data from Statistics Canada and that other police services had to agree that Statistics Canada could share their data.

On Nov. 13, after more questions from the Star, Janice Armstrong, deputy commissioner of RCMP aboriginal policing, welcomed media efforts to investigate, saying the cases of murdered and missing aboriginal women require “a co-ordinated response that addresses the underlying root causes of violence.”

Yet none of our questions was answered. The RCMP database — notwithstanding the RCMP’s already published interpretations of it — remains a secret.

Seeking clarity on a local level presented its own challenges. On Aug. 13, the Star contacted the Winnipeg Police Service requesting an interview with Project Devote, an integrated task force between the RCMP and Winnipeg police charged with the investigation of unsolved homicides and missing persons in Manitoba involving exploited and “at risk” persons. Ethnicity and gender are not predetermining factors for inclusion.

Across a period of more than three months, two trips to Winnipeg and repeated communications, including with the RCMP, Winnipeg police denied the request on Nov. 20. On that date, Winnipeg police did send a list of cases under investigation, but would not indicate which cases involved indigenous persons. Of a current case load of 28, including one male, the Star’s own research found 22 cases involving missing and murdered indigenous women. The number could be higher.

The lack of co-operation highlights the barriers to capturing accurately the necessary data. Asked how many members of Project Devote are indigenous, Winnipeg police responded via email that the “heritage of the investigators on the task force is irrelevant.”

The Ontario Provincial Police were also reluctant to answer questions about the deaths and disappearance of women in northern Ontario.

Police secrecy masks the scope of the problem, said Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler.

“What is the scope of the problem?” asks Fiddler. “There is really no definitive picture. If there was a collaborative effort we could get an accurate picture. There is no databank somewhere, no central place where you can find some answers. There is no co-ordinated effort. We know the Ontario Provincial Police has numbers, the RCMP has numbers and even the Native Women’s Association of Canada has numbers,” said Fiddler.

No one can answer simple questions: What is the status of these investigations? Which force is handling the investigations — the RCMP, the OPP or the Thunder Bay Police? Are they actively investigating these cases?

As of November, the Star’s research had identified 1,129 cases where an indigenous woman or girl was either murdered, died in suspicious circumstances, or is missing. It is by no means a complete list. In some cases, the Star could not verify details. For those reasons, the Star is sharing an aggregate level analysis of the cases.

In 130 cases — 78 of which were from British Columbia — the Star could not find information to verify the type of case (murdered or missing), nor any information to exclude them. Of the total, 937 cases are from 1980 to 2015. Looking at the solve rates of homicides, the annual ratio of unsolved to solved cases was higher during the 1980s and 1990s, and is gradually decreasing.

Overall, there are 768 murder cases with 20 identified as murder-suicides. Two hundred and twenty-four are unsolved and, of those, 186 involve killings since 1980.

The Star can’t verify the RCMP’s claim that 88 per cent of all aboriginal female homicide cases have been solved. The Star’s analysis suggests a solve rate of 70 per cent.

The Star analysis also identified 180 unsolved cases between 1980 and 2012; the RCMP cited 120 cases.

The Mounties provided no explanations for the discrepancies.

The RCMP data came from police-reported figures from more than 300 different agencies. The Star analysis is based largely on media reports.

In her letter to the Star, Janice Armstrong, deputy commissioner of RCMP aboriginal policing, said commenting on the discrepancies would be “inappropriate,” citing differences in methodology and data sets.

A possible explanation can be found in the fine print of the 2014 RCMP report, which says solved cases include those where the suspect was “chargeable” but not charged. In other words, the police recommended the prosecutor lay charges but a charge may not have been laid.

How many homicide cases stalled with no one charged, tried or sent to jail? The RCMP will not say.

The phrase “suspect chargeable” appeared throughout the heavily censored 2,000-page document the Star obtained from the RCMP.

Should police lump such cases into the same category as those that came with convictions and certainty for the families of victims?

“When you take that strict interpretation of solved — that becomes an issue unto itself. This does not bring any peace to the family, if they are charged and not convicted. Basically, when they do that, there is no justice or healing or closure for the family. The family’s pain and hurt is still ongoing. . . . That has to be reviewed,” said Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde.

Behind the numbers

There are many public lists of murdered and missing indigenous women in Canada, some more detailed than others. The Star compiled a single database from those lists and then went about verifying as much of the information as possible.

Five Star journalists and two Star librarians searched and read through thousands of news stories, obituaries and online legal documents to check the status of cases.

New cases were added and some were removed after the research revealed, for example, that a missing woman had been found or that a murdered woman was not indigenous.

At time of publication, the Star’s research had identified 1,129 cases where an indigenous woman or girl was either murdered, died in suspicious circumstances, or is missing.

It is by no means a complete list. In some cases, the Star could not verify details. For those reasons, the Star is choosing to share an aggregate level analysis of the cases.

Star reporters David Bruser, Jim Rankin, Joanna Smith, Tanya Talaga and Jennifer Wells; librarians Astrid Lange and Rick Sznajder; database specialist Andrew Bailey; and demographic experts Hidy Ng and Matthew Cole were involved in the research and analysis.

Caveats, data at a glance

In 130 cases — 78 of which were from British Columbia — the Star could not find information to verify the type of case (murdered vs. missing), nor could the Star find any information to exclude them.

Of the 1,129 cases, 937 are from 1980 to 2015. Looking at solve rates for homicides, the ratio of unsolved to solved cases, by year, was higher in the 80s and 90s, and is decreasing graduallly.

Overall, there are 768 murder cases, of which 20 were identified as murder/suicides. Of the murders, 224 are unsolved, with 186 of those cases involving killings since 1980.

Solved totals in the Star analysis do not include cases where an accused was acquitted, but they do count cases where an arrest has been made and a trial is pending, or in instances where an accused has died. The Star also included as solved cases where the outcome was unclear, such as a case where there was a trial but the outcome could not be determined.

There are 171 missing women and girls in the Star database, which is nearly identical to RCMP figures from 2014, which tallied 164 missing cases, dating back to the 50s.

Between 1980 and 2012, the solved rate in the cases of murdered indigenous women compiled by the Star is 70 per cent, which is much lower than the 88 per cent solve rate the RCMP reported in its groundbreaking 2014 report for the same time frame. The RCMP report cited a solve rate for non-aboriginal female homicides to be 89 per cent, based on an analysis of Canada-wide homicides from 1980 to 2012.

The ratio of unsolved to solved murders is decreasing. Murders of aboriginal women and girls peaked in 2005.

Another difference between the Star research and RCMP findings is the number of unsolved cases. The Star analysis identified 180 cases between 1980 and 2012. The RCMP cited 120 cases for that same time period.

It is unclear why there are such large differences. The RCMP data came from police-reported figures from more than 300 agencies. The Star analysis is based largely on media reports.

The Star shared a findings package with the RCMP and flagged the differences in letters to Commissioner Bob Paulson.

In a letter to the Star, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Janice Armstrong cited the differences in source material as a factor and wrote that it would therefore be “inappropriate” to comment on the differences.

The RCMP did not answer a long list of questions posed by the Star.

Armstrong, in her letter to the Star, said the RCMP welcomes “actions that result in positive outcomes in the lives of Aboriginal women and girls” and expressed appreciation that the Star conducted an independent investigation that can “further raise awareness among the public as to the reality of this tragedy. We commend your efforts in this endeavor.”

Unless stated otherwise, figures for murdered and missing indigenous women in Gone are for all years."


https://www.scribd.com/doc/292110316/Murdered-and-missing-indigenous-women-in-Canada-2015

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