My favorite part is where they continue to argue with my banned ass, knowing full well I can’t respond. The only way to win for them, I suppose.
Edit: Looks like there was some confusion regarding cross-posting in the original link so I’ll just put the Modlog link here that displays the removed comment and ban, with the thread itself linked here. I’d rather add than change for the sake of the post’s integrity and preventing confusion.
I’m in Canada, my grandmother was Mi’kmaq, and I agree with the post above.
In Canada, indigenous children were taken from their parents to be given a “proper” education in residential schools, usually against the wishes of the family. Some parents never saw their children again, who where forced to speak english (and/or french,) and stripped of any indigenous cultural practices in favor of modern Christianity. They were even given Christian names. Many kids were tortured, sometimes to death.
I’m just scratching ther surface here as we’re still uncovering new atrocities if you follow Canadian news. APTN and Indigenews occasionally write about it and the other bullshit indigenous peoples have survived.
But I agree, that was/is a cultural erasure and not a genocide. You could make comparisons to genocides, including other shit that was done to the OG people here, it’s just a different degree of bad.
Transferring children is literally one of the definitions for genocide.
What you have described is genocide. Weasel words like cultural erasure should not be used to refer to the destruction of an ethnic group.
The children forced to go to these schools largely were returned to the region they came from, when their residence was ended. The schools also tended to operate in the region of the people they put through the system. The Trail of Tears, however, is the kind of thing where displacement is considered to be a genocide, these things are both horrible, but they are not the same.
The House of Commons has literally stated it is a genocide, based on the findings of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Council. The TRC was chaired by Murray Sinclair a member of the Ojibwe Nation, while Willie Littlechild a Cree Chief and Grand Chief of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations acted as commissioner.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/44-1/INAN/report-13/page-42
Cultural genocide is not recognized as a genocide internationally, or within the ICJ. So there is no consensus on cultural erasure, as genocide, where as there is in fact one with the others. Some countries, and ngos, considered what China is doing as genocide too, most don’t. This also stands with world wide standards for any type of cultural erasure. Similar systems in other countries of the west do not agree with Canada’s ruling.
So, like I said, there are academics that argue for it, and I understand their reasoning, but there are plenty who classify it differently, and I agree with their reasoning.
I didn’t see that definition on the list. You may mean that’s an aspect of genocide.
Let’s not downplay cultural erasure.
Article II on the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.pdf
Let’s not downplay genocide.
From the UN articles on genocide. I don’t agree with that definition because “in part” is too broad and difficult to prove.
Edit: And because those acts need to be taken with intent to destroy a people. The residential school system was undertaken to erase a cultural identity to integrate indigenous children before they became “too native.” The primary intent was never to kill them off.
But splitting hairs over the definition of something so broad and contentious is missing the point. I fight for restorative justice and believe, like you, these acts were/are detestable. Whether we agree on the definition of a word is moot.
A friend of mine, back in my school days, is a native american guy. His name is Eagle Boy, and when he started school where I was the teacher straight asked him what his “real” name was, and when he said that his legal name is Eagle Boy, she said “No, your christian name”. He also got shit for his hair, and it was a constant point of contention vs their dress code. They knew this type of discrimination was illegal, they just didn’t give a shit, and there was very little chance they would suffer any consequences for it.
Eagle Boy is a fucking awesome name. I hope he never gave in despite that horse shit.
I saw a lot of the same stuff in school, it’s ridiculous when the bullying comes from the teachers… and a life lesson.
Loved the Chinese kid named Quang (pronounced Wang) who refused to change his name for anyone and owned it. I hope he’s doing well.
Right?! That name goes fucking hard. These days he generally goes by E.B. His older brother is named Sunbear, though he goes by his middle name, which is more common. The youngest got European common names.
They did not put up with this shit. The school was a Kafka-esque nightmare, and many other people had major problems. I was almost in a lawsuit with them, but they settled for covering my tuition to go to another school, an awesome school at that.
Talking to him, apparently there is (or was, at the time) some level of controversy within their tribe over this type of naming. I guess there is a portion of the population that thinks they are being stereotypical, and it hurts the native image in some way. Some said if they wanted those names they should have used the native language, rather than english, however there was some problem with that, I can’t remember what. So that was an interesting insight.
I think there’s a pretty notable difference between what your grandmother went through and China’s policies in Xinjiang. The Canadian cultural erasure program was a blanket program to try and erase the culture of all indigenous people. In Xinjiang, the vast majority of Uyghurs haven’t been affected by the anti-extremist program. It’s a much more limited scope and they mostly target older, chronically underemployed economically vulnerable people to put into a vocational program so they can get employment and get deradicalized from the ETIM ideology. The whole point of the program was to protect all the other people in Xinjiang province from an extremist group, not to integrate them into Han Chinese culture.
I’ll leave you with The Xinjiang Atrocity Propaganda Blitz as further reading, but this focuses more on the semiotics and ideology behind this narrative than the actual facts. There used to be a Google Doc called “Notes on China Uighur Controversies” that I read some years ago that explained the full situation with the ETIM and CIA backing of the ETIM very well, sadly it seems it’s now down and I don’t remember what their sources were (I think many of them were Chinese sources which I can’t read anyway).
I was responding to the above posters comment on residential schools in North America.
Yeah you’re good, just wanted to say that there isn’t a 1:1 comparison between that and the thread topic.
I wouldn’t say anything is. Thanks for providing more information, regardless.