Covering up genocide is now totes legal

[sabotabby]

Lost amongst the much bigger (but also, of course, disturbing) Panama Papers story is this article, about the decision of the Ontario Court of Appeals that records from the testimony of residential school survivors can be destroyed in 15 years.

Wait, what?

This fills me with so much rage I'm shaking almost too much to type.

I grew up knowing about residential schools. It wasn't exactly a secret, and it ended within my lifetime. I knew they were rape, torture, and death camps from a very early age. I've known about the FUCKING MASS GRAVES FULL OF CHILDREN'S CORPSES for at least a decade. I only recently found out that most settler Canadians claim to have only found out about it with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission findings, which I don't really believe because I tend to attribute to malice what I can't believe is stupidity.

So, of course, we're going to destroy the records. Thousands of people were brave enough to testify to the rape, torture, destruction of their language and culture, and horrific abuse they suffered at the hands of the state and church, and the state has decide this isn't worth keeping. Probably in another ten years, it can be entirely forgotten. If there's one thing settler Canadians are great at, it's forgetting.

Oh yes, they're claiming that they're going to contact the survivors and ask if they want their records archived rather than shredded (obviously they do, though, or they wouldn't have fucking testified in the first place, would they?) but since a lot of them are dead and they're aging in general and we're not exactly talking about a stable population, I'm guessing they'll say, "oh, we tried to call them but the phone was out of service, into the shredder with the testimony."

And then Canada can go back to pretending its a shining example of human rights when it instituted genocide on a mass scale and there are dead children buried in unmarked graves.

Comments

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

'Murricans are great at forgetting, with or without the records.

[sabotabby]

True, but I think y'all are louder and prouder about your genocide. Though maybe less so with all the government interference in textbooks these days.

[ironed_orchid]

It's unbelievable.

These things need to be kept in an archive somewhere, so one day there can there can be a reconciliation museum that shows them (without identifying the survivors) and everyone accepts it as a fact of Canada's history.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

They should be given to the police, so they can track down the surviving perpetrators.

Shouldn't be hard, just use the address on their federal pension cheques.

Hint: decades after his 1969 "white paper", one later became a Prime Minister.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Not that he was the worst, but basically the only ones that got charged were female teachers enforcing policy, not the men making the policy.

[sabotabby]

Naturally.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights already has a wide array of exhibits covering genocide and atrocities, and would be a good place to store the records of Canada's despicable acts.

Interestingly, the museum already offers free admission to Aboriginal peoples, as "every gallery in the Museum contains Indigenous human rights stories"

https://humanrights.ca/understanding-our-admissions-policy-relation-aboriginal-peoples

[ironed_orchid]

That's pretty great.

[sabotabby]

And also to bring the murderers and rapists to justice.

Because I'm pretty sure some of them are still alive.

[outcastspice.livejournal.com]

Yes wow that's Terrible.

[sabotabby]

Ayup.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

What can be done about this? Can any private concern access and duplicate the records for safekeeping?

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

That would be the best possible scenario; at least, the process of destruction needs to stop…now!

[sabotabby]

If I were a more conspiratorial type, I would think that this was a move by the government to ensure that First Nations activists, hardly the most well-funded group, are forced to pay to preserve the testimony out of their own coffers.

[kryss-labryn.livejournal.com]

Oh for fuck's sake. ><

You know, stuff like this doesn't really persuade me that our government has changed all that much in regards to how it treats our aboriginal population. At some level (if not most), it's still hoping the problems--and they--will all just go away.

We really need to do what New Zealand has done and fully integrate our government. Trudeau made a start on it with his cabinet, at least; but it really needs to happen across all levels, now.

You'd think if nothing else, enlightened self-interest would prompt immediate and better action; of all our population groups, theirs is the only one that is growing instead of shrinking. Which means (a) as time goes on, they will become a larger and larger voting block (and one that, now they have had a real effect on the outcome of a federal election, is more likely to continue voting in the future)--so it will look a lot better if they start treating them properly now instead of waiting until it is obvious that they are being catered to solely to garner votes (and not because it is the right thing to do or because collectively we owe them or anything, sigh); and (b) as our population ages and we have fewer and fewer young people of European descent to look after them, guess which growing segment of young people we will need to fill in the gap? Yes? So maybe let's not keep treating them like disposable trash, yes?

Besides, (c), they are human beings that our society has abused and treated horribly for well over a century. Could we stop doing that now, please? And maybe honour their experiences by not trying to forget they ever happened?

I am depressingly sure that if it was records of abuse suffered by Caucasian school kids at the hands of religious groups (say, to pull a random example out of thin air, Catholic priests), there wouldn't be a similar move to destroy the records. At the very least, I am sure the default would be to archive the records, although after fifteen years they might destroy ones that the survivor wishes to not remain part of the permanent record--although I personally would prefer that they simply removed the names of people wishing to remain anonymous, and left the record of their experiences intact.

Can you imagine if they decided to destroy the records of experiences of Holocaust survivors fifteen years after the Nuremberg trials? What on earth could they possibly be hoping to accomplish, besides doing their best to forget that it ever happened?

[sabotabby]

I'm pretty sure that's what they're hoping to accomplish.

Or, see above re: getting First Nations to pay for the preservation of the records so that the government doesn't have to.

I'm pretty sure if there were mass graves of raped and murdered white children, we'd all be up in arms ensuring that the surviving murderers spent the rests of their lives in jail.

[hano.livejournal.com]

bloody hell. Here in the UK we have little, if any, knowledge of this. Where's a good place to start finding out more?

[sabotabby]

Findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I admit I haven't read the whole thing yet but it's got all the research, survivor testimony, and recommendations.

Kevin Annett comes off as a bit of a crank, but that's only because he was likely the first to uncover actual records of the mass graves and no one believed him. Now we know it's true.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

It's not like we have a national library and archive institution which would be ideal for the safe-keeping of such documents...

[sabotabby]

That's just for white people I think.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

Shit.

[sabotabby]

Yeah.

[elsewhereangel.livejournal.com]

That's awful. Is there any way to stop it?

[sabotabby]

I'm sure there is, if people lose their shit enough. They tried to cover this up for decades but the truth got out.

[elsewhereangel.livejournal.com]

I sincerely hope they do. That is bullshit. (worse than bullshit)