Stephen Harper Continues Canada’s Legacy of Genocide and Denial
Stephen Harper Continues Canada’s Legacy of Genocide and Denial
By: Dr. Pamela D. Palmater
Indigenous protesters march towards Canada's parliament building before the start of a
meeting between chiefs and Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa January 11, 2013.
| Photo: Reuters
Institutionalized racism in Canada is perpetuating the crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women.
Seven years ago Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the assimilatory residential school policy which sought to “kill the Indian in the child” and caused so much suffering for generations of Indigenous peoples. However, the following year in September 2009, Harper declared to the world, “We also have no history of colonialism.” Apparently, Harper forgot about the rape, torture, and abuse of Indigenous children in those schools. He forgot that this policy of assimilation treated Indigenous children like inmates, tied them to electric chairs, conducted medical experiments on them, and saw over 7,500 children die in those schools. If ever there was evidence of colonialism in Canada, the death camps in residential schools would be it.
But this isn’t the first instance where Canada’s Prime Minister has shown signs of a deluded reality when it comes to the disastrous effects of colonialism on Indigenous peoples. On May 7, 2014, the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous peoples noted Canada’s long history of “devastating human rights violations” and called on Canada to address the current crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women recommending a “comprehensive, nation-wide inquiry.” Harper’s response to the numbers of Indigenous women that kept being murdered was: "We should not view this as a sociological phenomenon. We should view it as crime.” As a result, there was no commitment for a national inquiry, nor was action taken to protect our women.
In December of 2014, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) found a direct link between Canada’s discrimination against Indigenous women, their poor socio-economic status and the disproportionate rates of violence they suffer. IACHR concluded that police failures to prevent and protect Indigenous women, and Canada’s failure to address their impoverished socio-economic conditions both make Indigenous women vulnerable to violence. Harper’s immediate response was that a national inquiry on murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls “isn’t really high on our radar, to be honest.”
But Canada’s failure to act did not go unnoticed. In March 2015, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women issued a report finding Canada guilty of “grave violations” of human rights for Canada’s “protracted failure” to take action on discrimination against Indigenous women, police misconduct, impoverished socio-economic conditions, and inter-generational trauma from colonization which all make Indigenous women more vulnerable to violence. Again, Canada failed to take any substantive action on the crisis.
More:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Stephen-Harper-Continues-Canadas-Legacy-of-Genocide-and-Denial-20150624-0001.html