A Brief Commentary by Doug Draper
By now, anyone who still gives a shit about what has been happening to this once-proud, sinking ship called Canada– if you have any moral compass left for this once decent land – might feel some shame over the report released early June, 2015 by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada on residential schools.
An image of a residential school in Canada. Don’t the kids look like they are having fun? Many of them did not come out alive and were buried in unmarked graves.
If you are a Canadian and you still don’t know what a residential school is or was in this now-bullshit excuse for a country of ours then then fuck you!
And if you think that my use of the words shit and fuck are obscene, I could go a hell of a lot further on the bad word scale and it still wouldn’t add up to the disgusting obscenity Canadians of European background put hundreds of thousands of first nation, aboriginal people – people who lived her thousands of years before we showed up with our diseases – in Canadian-government sanctioned residential schools that were not much better than Nazi-run concentration camps.
Of course, those of us who grew up through are cappy public and Catholic elementary and secondary school systems in this country were never taught anything about that.
That God-damned drunk, John A. McDonald, we were told, was our founding father, according to our school propoganda. Never mind that he supported policies to starve native people to death.
And the whole history of residential schools going back more than 100 years up to the 1990s – well we weren’t taught anything about them at all, were we? Not about the tens of thousands of native children kidnapped from their homes and never allowed to communicate with their parents again, or made to lick their own vomit off the floor or anything like that.
This is what we should be taught. But not in our schools, which are all about teaching us to be good little consumers and be obedient to our corporate masters. That is what our educational system is all about.
What it should be about is teaching our children about the true, heroic history of First Nation, aboriginal peoples on this continent, rather than continuing to marginalize them or, at worst, characterize them as savages.
For those of you still with me here, let me also say that we have a federal election in this country this coming October, and we should try to elect a government that treats aboriginal Canadians with the same respect as the rest of us.
A Harper government that continues to refuse to hold a public inquiry over why there is still no justice around more than 1,000 missing aboriginal girls and women should have no place in a first-world country that has prided itself in being a leader for human justice.
I urge you to read the full Truch and Reconcilliation Report. Read it and judge for yourself.
To read the report, click on – http://trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=890 .
(Niagara At Large now invites anyone of you who dare to share your real first and last name to also share your views on this post in the comment space below.)
Niagara At Large 
A welcome voice of passion and integrity! Thanks you Mr. ‘D” for speaking the truth with such vehemence.
I made the mistake of reading a post today written by the Huff Post hack, Mitch Wolfe. While his post clearly shows his total disdain for our native people what I found even more disturbing was the comments that followed his post. I really thought we truly were the kinder gentler nation. In reading the comments today I am appalled to learn the bigotry, and vile attitude towards the native population is as pervasive as it was when native children were being snatched from their families to suffer and die at the hands of a corrupt church and government. For what purpose? Because they were different and the whites thought they were so much better? Wrong.
I am astounded by the utter contempt that emanates from people whom I had thought intelligent, decent, knowledgeable and good. To say I am disappointed would be a gross understatement.
I stand with you and again thank your for voicing your opinion.
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I noticed at the end of the report where the gentleman said….”Cultural genocide”, everyone in the room stood up and applauded EXCEPT the “honourable”…hahahaha, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs”. It looked like Mulcair, who was beside him, wanted to pound him. I hope this does not mean the report will be filed under “G” by the arrogant Harper government.
The stories of children being humiliated, stripped of their culture and language, raped and beaten and the odds of death in the Residential Schools being greater than that of Canadian soldiers in wartime was appalling yet we wonder why there is rampant alcoholism, drug abuse and violence in the aboriginal community? I have friends who taught in the far north and they are heartbroken at the wasted lives.
Throwing money at it is not working because many of the tribal chiefs, not unlike our own so called leaders, just funnel the money to themselves. It needs to go to curing the social ills, addictions, housing, facilities and poverty among the band members, not buying Escalades & expense accounts for chiefs. Some are worth millions of our dollars while their band members are desperate. The chiefs MUST be held accountable for the money they are given because it is not reaching the need. That does not currently occur.
We must be taught what was done to the aboriginal people. Sure we were not part of it personally but our history cannot be swept under the rug. It WAS a genocide and must be recognized as such. An intentional effort to erase the culture of a group of people and make them assimilate is no less a genocide in its own way than lining people against a wall and shooting them because the eventual result is the same. We need to teach our children the good, the bad and the ugly, not just the nice stuff.
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I must reply. You are right, as always, Doug, about ‘the issue’. It is our Issue and we Must Own it. I have two points to make of a personal nature.
Former librarian that I am (much to the derision of some of your readers who think that librarians are little ladies who love to shelve books and read Harlequin romances — On the contrary, we often make up a great part of social activism in this country.) That said, may I exhort all to read Thomas King’s “An Inconvenient Indian” which lays it out straight as an arrow as to how we have degraded ourselves, our nation, and the aboriginal owners of this land.
My second point is entirely personal. Our child, adopted in the early 70’s, was ‘branded’ by the local Family and Children’s Services (FAC services ) as ‘unadoptable’ — a category they chose to include any child with —you name it — a birthmark, a serious medical problem of course, but ours was because of the part native ancestry.That’s it. End of story. The local FACS made the category. No one asked.
We are delighted with our smart, creative, productive tax-paying child. A real Canadian, more than most of us. In fact.
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A lady about 20 years my senior once asked me how the use of “God damned…” added to the strength & logic of my argument. Perhaps, she suggested, it even made my audience less likely to listen.
Perhaps it could even cause less Canadian civility in discussing & solving serious issues.
I really want to read your column….
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A rare time for truth-telling re: Canada’s role in shaping an unjust society. When I illustrated the first primer for Carrier-speaking elementary school children in northern BC back in the 70’s I wondered how to interpret things like ‘water’, ‘land’, ‘peace’ and ‘respect’. Now I look forward to helping in some way – with a new language for reconciliation and healing.
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I too wish to help. Please share your thoughts and ideas.
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Having been chastised many times in the past for being over zealous in comments and descriptions of events, happenings and in particular the greed of elected people I……….. IN THIS CASE …….I find myself in truth and total accord with every single word used by Doug in his article… Yes!! Doug and a few other Sane, Compassionate Canadians feel Disgust and Anger and react differently but when we hear and see the total Arrogance and inane Ignorance of some brainless uneducated Canadians How are we to act? Mere polite words fall short in descriptive force when disgust and anger is rampant ……..Thus…….. Thank you Doug. Linda, Gail and Julia……. and may those who are practicing bigots….. rot in your own hell..
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The Scottish, Irish and the Welsh understand about cultural genocide. That’s why alot of them got out from under English control and went to North America and elsewhere.
Welsh kids if caught speaking Welsh were routinely punished with the strap and made to wear a dunces hat , sitting in the classroom corner , until they were made into little English school boys. Now in Wales the language is learned along with English in the schools of Wales, my nephews and nieces back in Wales converse in Welsh. but it took the threats of separation to get that done, my wife’s maternal great grandmother was a native and this subject was a secret that was kept very quiet for generations.
The cruelty of what was done to our native Canadians makes me ill just thinking about it. Our fellow native Canadians need a new deal, first teach their native language as well as English/French in school , give them the skill set to survive in the modern world. In Fort Erie, our natives are doing a lot to bring back their culture using bingo dollars to run their Community Centre., native pride is slowly coming back.
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Just when we think we may have heard it all, just when we think there really is going to be an end to the racist treatment of Aboriginal people, and just when we are led to believe that true reconciliation might be possible, we get the news that our government has a hoard of close to one billion dollars of money allocated to Aboriginal support: money that has not been used as intended. Is this money contributing to our “balanced budget”?
The fund has built up over a five year period under Conservative Government care. Now the Minister responsible wants us to believe that this money is just there, building up, so it can be used in the future. Meanwhile deteriorating Aboriginal housing in many parts of Canada bring shame to our country. Adding to the disgrace, is the neglect of social support systems needed to address the isolation, poverty, poor health care, and drug and alcohol abuse often resulting from years of neglect of our native peoples by our Federal Government, by racist decision-makers, and yes, in some cases by the mismanagement — if not the outright fraud — by some native leaders.
This nearly one billion dollars was rightly promised to Aboriginal people. By keeping it “hidden” away and not spending it as intended, is our government not actually “stealing” from our native peoples? Shame on the federal government; shame on all of us for letting this state of affairs continue.
Can there be any other revelations still to come respecting the vanishing ethical standards in Ottawa and elsewhere, provincially and municipally?
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