(Originally Posted on my Facebook on June 10, 2010)
Below is a chronology of events relating to what some may term genocidal and assimilationist policies used by the Canadian, Provincial, and pre-confederation governments in dealing with, as Duncan Campbell-Scott stated, "the Indian Problem." This chronology only looks into a small aspect of a disturbing history and if you look closely you will see that some of these actions continued well into the 1980s. This is why many of us fight for accountability for the Canadian government and will most likely never stop. It is also just part of the reason why I am involved with politics and education as I want healing and an optimistic path for all of us ... this can only be done with understanding the past in hopes to prevent it from occurring again or continuing....
(Note: Although the wording can be deemed in a biased and angry manner the information is still accurate. Please take the anger with a grain of salt and remember why it exists in the first place ... only we can bring forth a more positive future and relationship.. a relationship back to the two-row wampum belt philosophy) - (The tagging was also done randomly... and geographically ;))
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1857: The Gradual Civilization Act is passed by the Legislature of Upper Canada, permanently disenfranchising all Indian and Metis peoples, and placing them in a separate, inferior legal category than citizens.
1874: The Indian Act is passed in Canada’s Parliament, incorporating the inferior social status of native people into its language and provisions. Aboriginals are henceforth imprisoned on reserve lands and are legal wards of the state.
1884: Legislation is passed in Ottawa creating a system of state-funded, church administered Indian Residential Schools.
1905: Over one hundred residential schools are in existence across Canada, 60% of them run by the Roman Catholics.
1907: Dr. Peter Bryce, Medical Inspector for the Department of Indian Affairs, tours the residential schools of western Canada and British Columbia and writes a scathing report on the "criminal" health conditions there. Bryce reports that native children are being deliberately infected with diseases like tuberculosis, and are left to die untreated, as a regular practice. He cites an average death rate of 40% in the residential schools.
November 15, 1907: Bryce’s report is quoted in The Ottawa Citizen’s headline.
1908-1909: Duncan Campbell Scott, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, suppresses Bryce’s report and conducts a smear and cover-up campaign regarding its findings. Bryce is expelled from the civil service.
November, 1910: A joint agreement between the federal government and the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist churches establishes the structure of Indian Residential Schools and the contractual obligations of churches running them. Duncan Campbell Scott refers to the policy of the government as that of seeking a “final solution to the Indian Problem”.
May, 1919: Despite an escalating death rate of Indian children in residential schools from tuberculosis - in some cases as high as 75% - Duncan Campbell Scott abolishes the post of Medical Inspector for Indian residential schools. Within two years, deaths due to tuberculosis have tripled in residential schools.
1920: Federal legislation makes it mandatory for every Indian child to be sent to residential schools upon reaching seven years of age.
1928: Sexual Sterilization Act is passed in Alberta, allowing any inmate of a native residential school to be sterilized upon the approval of the school Principal. At least 3,500 Indian women are sterilized under this law.
1933: An identical Sexual Sterilization Act is passed in British Columbia. Two major sterilization centres are established by The United Church of Canada on the west coast, in Bella Bella and Nanaimo, in which thousands of native men and women are sterilized by missionary doctors until the 1980’s.
1933: Residential school Principals are made the legal guardians of all native students, under the oversight of the federal Department of Mines and Resources. Every native parent is forced by law to surrender legal custody of their children to the Principal - a church employee - or face imprisonment.
1938: Attempt by the federal government to close all residential schools and incorporate Indian children into public schools is defeated by pressure brought by Catholic and Protestant church leaders.
1946: Project Paperclip - a CIA program utilizing ex-Nazi researchers in medical, biological warfare and mind control experiments - uses native children from Canadian residential schools as involuntary test subjects, under agreements with the Catholic, Anglican and United churches. These illegal tests continue until the 1970’s.
http://www.gpc.edu/~shale/humanities/composition/assignments/experiment/paperclip.html
1948 - 1969: Offshoot programs of Project Paperclip are established in United Church and government hospitals in Nanaimo, Brannen Lake, Sardis, Bella Bella, Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia; in Red Deer and Ponoka, Alberta; and at the Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital in Thunder Bay, Ontario. All of these programs use native children abducted from reserves, foster homes, and residential schools, with the full knowledge of church, police and Indian Affairs officials.
1969: Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chretien tables his White Paper in Parliament, which reaffirms the "assimilationist" policy of the past century that denies sovereignty and equal status to native nations. As a token gesture, Chretien assigns a limited control over Indian education to local, state-funded band councils. Many residential schools are phased out altogether or simply taken over by band councils.
1984: The last Indian residential school is closed, in northern British Columbia.
1990: State-funded leaders of the Assembly of First Nations discuss “abuses” in residential schools for the first time publicly.
1994-95: Eyewitnesses to murders at the United Church’s Alberni residential school speak out publicly, from the pulpit of Reverend Kevin Annett in Port Alberni. Annett is summarily fired without cause within a month, and is expelled from United Church ministry without due process during 1996.
February, 1996: The first class action lawsuit of Alberni residential school survivors is brought against the United Church of Canada and the federal government. The church responds with a counter-suit and an attempted “gag order” on Kevin Annett, which fails.
1996-7: Further evidence of murder, sterilisations and other atrocities at coastal residential schools are documented by Kevin Annett and native activists in public forums in Vancouver. The number of lawsuits brought against the churches and government by residential school survivors climbs to over 5,000 across Canada........and it continues (check canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org)
2005/2006 - The court case regarding live-in residential schools for Canada, excluding Newfoundland and Labrador, reaches an agreement. The government of Canada issues an apology in June which is quickly questions be racial comments made be a rookie MP.
2009 - September - Stephen Harper announces that "Canada has no history of colonialism." (Note: To Stephen Harper - Explain the previous points!)
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