(Saskatoon) The House of Commons has given its unanimous consent to the tabling of a motion by an NDP MP calling on the government to recognize as genocide what happened in residential schools for Aboriginals in Canada.
Posted at 5:44 p.m.
Manitoba MP Leah Gazan calls the gesture “historic.” His motion, introduced Thursday after question period, referred to the UN Genocide Convention, adopted in 1948.
This international convention defines genocide as the act of killing members of a group, causing them serious physical or mental harm, intentionally inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part, measures to prevent births, or forcibly transfer children to another group.
An email from the office of Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller says residential schools were part of a “shameful and racist colonial policy” that removed Indigenous children from their communities and denied them their families, language and their culture.
The government accepts the finding of the 2019 Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls that this residential school system constitutes genocide, the statement said. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau previously said in 2019 that he accepted these findings.
The MP for Winnipeg Center introduced a similar motion last year, shortly after the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced that alleged unmarked graves lay at the site of the former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. British. His notice of motion did not receive the unanimous consent of the House. This time, M.me Gazan believes Pope Francis has made a significant difference.
During his six-day visit to Canada in July, the pope repeatedly apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in residential schools and other Indigenous assimilation policies. When asked by a reporter about the flight back to Rome, the pope acknowledged that it was genocide.
It is estimated that over a century, 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend federal residential schools. More than 60% of these boarding schools were run by Catholic religious congregations.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission detailed the abuse of children in these residential schools, including physical and sexual assault, not to mention emotional abuse.
The commission’s final report, published in 2015, called what happened there a “cultural genocide”. But in the years that followed, many indigenous leaders and experts felt that one should speak of genocide pure and simple, no longer “cultural”.
Mme Gazan said she spoke briefly with members of the Liberal government about next steps moving forward. For her part, she wants consultation with the Aboriginal peoples on the best way to proceed.
“I think these things need to be done in a thoughtful and careful way, so that survivors can get the justice they deserve,” she said.