Introduction
The guide Studying Genocides presents nine genocides recognized by the UN, Canada, or Quebec. Here, discover the case of the genocide of the Indigenous Peoples in Canada, presented through four sections: the first section provides context for the study with a map, highlights, and a timeline; the second offers a problematization of the case under study; the third examines essential elements of the historical context; and the fourth section describes the genocide according to the six stages of the genocidal process.
EXCERPT FROM AN ACCOUNT
“All the members of my family attended residential school. . . . Each of them had experienced an institution that tried to scrape the Indian off of their insides, and they came back to the bush and river raw, sore, and aching. The pain they bore was invisible and unspoken. It seeped into their spirit, oozing its poison and blinding them from the incredible healing properties within their Indian ways.”
Timeline
Highlights
- Implementation by the Canadian government of a policy of forced assimilation of the Indigenous Peoples in Canada aimed at destroying their social, political, territorial and cultural organization, as well as their food self-sufficiency. The Indian Act, the creation of reserves and the Indigenous residential school system were pillars of this policy
- Forced sterilization of thousands of Indigenous women
- Repeated violence against Indigenous women, girls and members of the TwoSpirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual (2SLGBTQQIA) community
- Removal of thousands of Indigenous children from their families by youth protection services. These children were then put up for adoption or sold
- Thousands of Indigenous people died as a result of the implementation of this forced assimilation policy
- In the territories that now make up Canada
- Since the start of European colonization, intensifying in the 19th century.
- The actors accused of genocide are the Canadian government, to which the Indigenous Peoples were subject, Christian churches involved in managing the residential schools, and the provincial governments (in particular as of the 1950s).
- Victims were mainly First Nations and Inuit people, who had been living on the territory for thousands of years. Métis were also victims of genocide
The full Story
We have developed a comprehensive document that outlines and summarizes the entire narrative. Please download, print, and utilize it for your teaching and study purposes.
Pictures
Testimonials
They took away our clothes, and gave us clothes... we all looked alike. Our hair was all the same, cut us into bangs, and straight short, straight hair up to our ears... They took away our moccasins, and gave us shoes. I was just a baby. I didn’t actually wear shoes, we wore moccasins. And so our identity was immediately taken away when we entered those schools.
We were incarcerated for no other reason than being Indian. We were deprived of the care, love, and guidance of our parents during our most critical years of childhood. The time we could have learned the critical parenting skills and values was lost to the generations that attended residential schools, the effects of which still haunt us and will continue to have impacts upon our people and communities.