Genocide in Canada
Usually when I'm stumbling around with Stumble Upon I'm looking for entertainment. Yesterday I found two really important sites that are worth noting. One is a self publishing site that helps you with aspects of publishing your own manuscripts. Wordclay. You can pay for cover design and such but you it seems like a very easy and free (or cheap) way of getting your book published. This may be important in the future. Ever since I hyphenated my name I thought, that would look really cool on a book I'll write.
On a more serious note, I discovered Hidden From History between the Canadian government and the church run schools on-going, systematic crimes were being committed against the native people and it's been kept quiet on purpose. Kevin Annett was a minister in a small town with a large population of indians (or indigenous people) and he innocently wondered why none of them attended church services. He reached out to them and encouraged them to attend his church. In his church, after the serman, anyone was allowed to speak. People began to share stories about their abuse at the Residential Schools. At first it was hard to believe, and then later it was hard not to believe. After Kevin Annett discovered that the native's land, cared for by the church was sold to outside logging corporations he confronted the United Church of Canada. He was fired without cause in an effort to silence him. The more he spoke out the more he was threatened and blocked at every avenue. His Phd. program fell through. His wife divorced him with a $250,000 bribe from the church. More stories came out of the natives that were too shocking to believe.
Through the Indian Act, Residential Schools were one way to kill many indian children. Children as young as 3 were taken from their parents and put on gun boats and taken away to school. Abuse was common. Some were outright murdered, pushed down the stairs or out windows. Some were killed through disease and it's non-treatment, putting tuburcular students in with non-tuburcular students to encourage the disease to spread. The death rate at these schools was 50%. At one school it was 67%. Mass graves were discovered full of dead children. Article
I had heard stories about how whites had given blankets from small pox victims to indians, in the documentary I watched there were pictures to go along with it. I remember reading Lewis and Clark had smallpox vaccine on their travels (though it was a fiction book, Sacajawea but that it probably true). Vaccine did exist. Germ warfare was going on. I'm sure it was going on in the U.S. also.
In the 1970's medical experiments were done on children at those schools. The doctors sterilized boys and girls both in and out of the schools. Children were sexually abused.
Some things must still be going on today. Why the hush up? Why the blocking from the government and the church? Apparently they appologized, apparently, that's not enough for the natives. One woman said, she just wanted to look at someone (official) who said that it happened. She had testifiyed about the girl getting pushed down the stairs. Virginia died two days later. Murdered by the Roman Catholic Church
It made it more real to me when I read the list of mass graves found and one was in Alert Bay where the low carb study had been done.
At the end, nothing can be done for the people except to tell the truth. Perhaps if everything wasn't so hidden, people could learn from this and make sure that nothing like it happens again. Sometimes I lose faith in humanity, crimes like this have happened throughout human history, over and over again.
Who'll be a witness?
