‘CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY’: Canada needs to investigate residential schools, says MKO

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The residential school system as an institution was a crime against humanity and should be investigated as such, a Manitoba grand chief says.

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Last week, Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee said MKO was reiterating calls for the government of Canada to commence an investigation into the Indian Residential School system as a crime against humanity under Canadian law.

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Settee recently presented MKO’s calls for an investigation during a Nov. 9 meeting with federal Justice Minister Arif Virani in Geneva, Switzerland at the United Nations. (UN)

“During MKO’s meeting with Minister Virani, I said that the circumstances of the Indian Residential School System meet the tests of crimes against humanity under the laws of Canada,” Settee said.

In Canada, the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act states that any person that commits or is an accessory to genocide, a crime against humanity, or a war crime is guilty of an indictable offence.

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The United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, including the killing of its members, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately imposing living conditions that seek to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group.”

More than 150,000 Indigenous people in Canada were forced out of their homes and separated from their families to attend residential schools while the system ran for more than a century.

Residential schools attempted to assimilate Indigenous children into western European culture by isolating them from their culture, religion, languages and families, and many of those children have reported being subject to physical, mental and sexual abuse while in residential schools.

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Settee said MKO believes one way to bring some justice to survivors and their families is to open a full criminal investigation into what happened in residential schools during the more than 100 years the system was operational.

Settee added if they don’t see progress on opening an investigation, MKO may refer the matter to an international court, saying they may ask that “the Human Rights Council refer the matter to the Security Council for potential referral to the International Criminal Court.”

University of Manitoba professor of sociology and criminology Andrew Woolford, who has spent years researching Canada’s residential school system, and topics of Indigenous genocide in North America, said there would likely be debate among legal scholars as to whether the residential school system would be considered a crime against humanity under Canadian law, but he said there is little doubt among those who have studied residential schools that the system was an attempt at genocide.

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“Certainly there is a case to be made for genocide,” Woolford said. “And I believe the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women really showed how Canada saw what they were doing with residential schools as an ambition and as a composite act.

“When you look at ways that groups can be destroyed, certainly denying groups of their culture and their very cultural existence is one way that a group can be potentially destroyed.

“The intentions were very clear.”

Woolford added that type of investigation would be expansive and could involve many who have since passed away or are elderly, and he wonders if an investigation would be focused more on charging individuals or on going after the government of Canada as an institution.

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“There would certainly be some people still out there who committed crimes in residential schools and who should be held to account, and could see individual cases brought against them,” he said.

“But there would also be a lot of symbolism in having something deemed a crime against humanity, because there is a lot of denial about the truth of residential schools that we see on social media, so something like this could also help to establish a basic ground-level truth.”

The Winnipeg Sun reached out to Justice Minister Arif Virani for comment, but so far has not received a response.

— Dave Baxter is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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