To anyone scrolling by wanting to take an intro to Indigenous history crash course, Indigenous Canada is offered free through coursera and the University of Alberta. 12 modules over 2 weeks (flexible). Can recommend.
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I’m a bit mixed on this one.
Canada, and the US, right up to 1978, without a doubt enacted systemic genocide against the indigenous people of North America. And after this point, there was a systematic effort to avoid responsibility for it, while the victims were still dealing with the fallout.
In fact, you could argue that even the reservation laws (you needed to live on the reservation to claim indigenous status) were genocidal, especially as the reserves were often moved to places difficult to survive, and often places with limited available drinking water.
But the determination here appears to conflate avoiding responsibility with the actual act itself. This makes it much more difficult to get politicians to actually accept responsibility and ensure that the genocidal acts are stopped at the policy level and the immediate results of the policies are dealt with — because the list of reparations could be infinite.
In most cases, indigenous communities are actually asking for LESS in reparations than is warranted by the documented acts. But they’re not even going to get a recognition of wrongdoing if the result isn’t something that can be decidedly acted upon. And so everyone loses.
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This is horrible, what was done to the Indigenous peoples in Canada. It's horrible if done to any people. I think the word genocide is a bit strong in this case but, to open a can of worms, at what point are we no longer responsible for the sins of our fathers?
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Feels like a cheap use of the word genocide
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