Canada (English/French: Canada) is a north American land and sea country located in the north of North America, bordering the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Pacific Ocean to the west, alaska to the northwest, the United States mainland to the south, and the Arctic Ocean to the north. With an area of 9.98 million square kilometers, Canada ranks second in the world, and its climate is mostly subpolar continental climate and temperate continental humid climate, and the northern polar region is polar long cold climate. The capital is Ottawa.
Originally inhabited by Indians and Inuit. It became a French colony in the early 17th century and was later ceded to Britain. On 1 July 1867, the British merged the provinces of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia into the Commonwealth, becoming the earliest Dominion of the United Kingdom. Since then, other provinces have joined the Federation. In 1926, Canada gained diplomatic independence. In 1931, Canada became a member of the Commonwealth, and its parliament was given legislative powers on an equal footing with the British parliament, but still had no constitutional power. In 1982, the Queen of the United Kingdom signed the Canadian Constitution Act, and the Canadian Parliament was given full power to make and amend the Constitution.
Canada is one of the seven largest industrial countries in the West. Manufacturing, high-tech industries and service industries are developed, and resource industry, primary manufacturing and agriculture are the main pillars of the national economy. It is more dependent on foreign trade and is deeply affected by the United States economically. Canada has the longest national highway in the world.
Speaking of Canada, the country has long been proud that it did not treat Indians the same way as the American-made Indian Massacre. In fact, however, Canada, also a British colony, was not as benevolent as he described it. Over the generations, the Canadian government took a different approach, systematically and systematically and purposefully, destroyed the local Aboriginal Indian culture.
Just as the 70th International Children's Day is approaching, an appalling revelation of a forgotten past: on May 28, 2021, the remains of 215 Indian children were found at a former Indian boarding school in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada.
As soon as the incident came out, public opinion was in an uproar, and the Canadian genocide against indians was pushed to the cusp for a time.
Kamloops Indian Boarding School
Many places in Canada have launched mourning activities for children killed, and the Canadian government has also taken the words of Prime Minister Trudeau to acknowledge that such cases are not unique in Canada.
It can be said that what this incident revealed is only a microcosm of Canada's systematic genocidal policy against the Indians, and even more the tip of the iceberg of the great suffering brought by European colonists on the Land of North America.
▲ Canada lowered its flag to half-mast across the country to express its silence on the matter
But these boarding schools, which brought great suffering to the Indians, especially the Children of the Indians, all had a very dignified and seemingly righteous and pure surface, namely God. Boarding schools began under the banner of "spreading the gospel" and "helping Indians integrate into society", and everything seemed very legitimate and reasonable.
But in fact, more than 4,200 Indian children recorded in official archives alone have never been able to get out of school for various reasons. Estimates of tens of thousands of people, which have not yet been recorded in the archives.
How did these Christian schools, which were supposed to teach and educate, become "deadly demons", and why did these Christian schools, which were opened in the name of God, end up causing the deaths of so many Indian children and turning them into a terrible "hell"?
Canadians mourn the loss of Indian children
1. Visitors from afar
On December 23, 1620, off the coast of present-day Northeastern Massachusetts, a three-masted galleon appeared in the sight of the local Indians, and more than a hundred white immigrants from Europe came down from the ship.
In the face of these strangers from thousands of miles away, the local Indians showed surprising kindness, helped the immigrants, taught them to plant, hunted, and led them to the first harvest after arriving in the Americas.
But these good Indians could not have imagined how great an impact these distant visitors who celebrated the harvest with them would have on their lives.
▲ The Mayflower, unveiling the prelude to the large-scale Colonization of North America by Britain and France
Looking west, on the eastern shore of the Great Lakes, an Indian tribe called the Iroquois has lived here for thousands of years or more. Thanks to the rich land and rich fishery resources around the Great Lakes, the Iroquois who adopted public ownership and collective labor truly achieved "the tiller has his land, and the resident has his house", and by the standards of that time, the life of the Iroquois was still very happy.
But like all indigenous peoples living on the American continent, the peaceful life of the Iroquois was shattered by Europeans from distant continents. In 1535 A.D., similar to the story of the Massachusetts Indians more than 80 years later, a small fleet of ships appeared in the sight of the Iroquois living in the coastal area near present-day Quebec—the French arrived.
▲ The French explore the routes of Canada
According to the Records of the French, the first contact between the two sides was very friendly, and it was the local Iroquois who told the French that the land was called "Canada".
But when the French came back six years later, it was a completely different story: six years ago they were explorers, but six years later, they were colonists—explorers were just for exploration, and colonists were for profit. For the Iroquois, the French have brought about many changes, some good and some bad, some voluntary, and some forced.
▲ The range of Iroquois lives
The Iroquois soon realized that horses and muskets brought by the French were very useful things, and the French were happy to exchange these things for expensive furs in the hands of the Iroquois, and the business between the two sides was quite prosperous.
Beginning in the second half of the 17th century, as France accelerated its colonization of North America and began to drive out the Iroquois to occupy their lands, Iroquois had to form an alliance with the British against France.
▲ Fur merchants trade with Indians
But history has proven many times that Britain was not a good man, and when France was defeated in the Seven Years' War, the Iroquois immediately went from being allies of Britain to a stumbling block to the further expansion of colonial interests by white colonists, and almost all Indians, including the Iroquois, were expelled, concentrated in a few places, placed under white rule and deprived of the lands where their ancestors had worked, but for the Indians, more cruel things were still to come.
Indian children praying in boarding schools
2. In the name of God
For the Indians of North America, the two hundred years since the arrival of europeans has been a turbulent two hundred years.
At first, they were happy with the arrival of Europeans, willing to help immigrants and trade with immigrants to obtain the goods they needed; They then discover that whites want to take possession of their ancestors' lands, but an alliance with one white group can help them fight another; But now, the Indians are truly alone.
▲ Indian warriors armed with European horses and muskets
On the side of the British colonists, at first, in order to gain the support of the North American Indians in the war with France, they also introduced a number of policies and decrees to protect the independence and rights of the Indians. But now, having monopolized all of North America, they naturally did not have to make any compromises with the Indians.
With the independence of the United States, in the nascent United States and Canada, which still belonged to Britain, at the same time, forced assimilation of indigenous peoples began at the same time—because both sides believed that the elimination of Indian groups and the creation of a white society were important measures to consolidate white rule in North America.
So who is going to do that? The Christian church, which has always made it its mission to spread the "gospel of God" to the world, has stood up.
First, in Christian doctrine, preaching to unbelievers is God's responsibility to every Christian; Second, in Europe, which had already experienced the Reformation and the Enlightenment, the church had declined, and the relatively ignorant Americas naturally became the "ydy" for the church to grab greater power and benefits for itself.
Moreover, because the early colonial activities were often accompanied by the development of missionary work, and religion was also the main spiritual sustenance of early immigrants, the Christian church has always had a good foundation in the local area.
The Kamloops Indian Boarding School, which excavated the remains of Indian children on May 28, 2021, was established by the Catholic Church in 1890
Guided by this philosophy, an Indian living in Canada would experience the most painful and bizarre years of his life— celebrating the holidays he had been often celebrating since childhood would be against the law; The court refused to accept his case only because he had not converted to Christianity; He listened to white people talk about natural human rights, liberal democracy, but was told that they could not participate in the election vote unless they gave up their indigenous status.
These policies were all written in the Indian Act of 1876, which "does not renounce Indian status and has no right to participate in elections", "must be permitted by the government to wear their own national costumes", and "requires Indians to have names in European languages". and use it as an official name".
Various policies placed great restrictions on the Indian population who still adhered to traditional culture. But when an Indian decided to abandon all traditions and embrace white society, he discovered that even if he believed in God, spoke English, and wore a suit, the whites would still regard him as a second-class citizen.
▲ An Indian dressed in Western-style clothing
But such policies have not worked well, and few are willing to give up indigenous status in exchange for the right to vote. Whites soon realized that assimilation was difficult for mature adults, and that children were a blank sheet of paper on which he would become what he would become.
Thus, under the impetus of the church, the Indian boarding school system came into being. These boarding schools were first founded by the Christian Church, and most of them worked as church monks and nuns, with the aim of concentrating Indian children to isolate themselves from Indian society and turn them into "Europeans" and "Christians", as the founder of the first Indian boarding school put it, "kill the Indians in his heart and save him".
As for the reality of these boarding schools, it is not difficult to see one thing - there is now a proper term in Canadian society to refer to those who have survived from Indian boarding schools, "survivors", that is, survivors.
These "survivors" all had similar experiences, also under the Indian Act of 1876, which required Aboriginal children aged 7-14 to attend boarding schools. Therefore, or out of inducement, their parents voluntarily send them to boarding school; Or succumb to force, as Canadian police forcibly take children away from parents who refuse to boarding schools and send them to boarding schools.
Boarding schools forcibly take Indian children away from their mothers
But the suffering has only just begun. According to the recollections of some "survivors", when children enter boarding school, they are first cleaned by monks and nuns, cut off their traditional long hair, and then changed into Western-style clothing, marking their break with the "dirty Indian society". What follows is spiritual "purification."
Canada's first Prime Minister once said: "The goal of boarding schools is to assimilate Indigenous peoples in all aspects and integrate them into 'mainstream society'." ”
And these schools did just that, where students were strictly forbidden to use the indigenous language, but only English or French, and any use of the indigenous language was severely punished, as one survivor later recalled, "The nun beat me so hard that the Indian language was the inferior language."
But even so, corporal punishment is common in schools in any country, and to outsiders, these may be just a fairly strictly regulated school, not to mention that these are all church-run schools, how can so many children die in the name of God?
Indian children praying in boarding schools
The crux of the matter is that these schools are mainly run by Christian churches, and the only help the Canadian government can do to schools is to give a certain subsidy according to the number of children in the school. Thus, under the administration of the Already wealth-hungry Christian Church, coupled with a group of non-professional administrators who were entirely religious, these boarding schools became a tool for the Church to amass wealth.
Therefore, it is not difficult to guess what kind of level real life in school is. In order to save costs, schools often do not provide enough food for children, a Saskatchewan boarding school boy wrote to his father, "I am always hungry, the school treats us like pigs...", food shortage has caused severe malnutrition, many children are driven by hunger to flee, but most of them eventually lost in Canada's vast snow and forests.
▲ Interior scene of indian boarding schools, the rear staff is dressed in obvious Christian nuns' attire
In addition, because of the lack of supervision, in these almost extralegal boarding schools, corporal punishment, abuse, sexual assault are not uncommon, and the church treats these children as their own private property, and forced labor is almost every Indian child has to go through torture.
Coupled with the lack of medical care and the epidemic of diseases, the church often crammed the school with children in order to obtain more subsidies, and the mortality rate of the original resident children in the boarding school even exceeded the mortality rate of the soldiers on the battlefield of the First World War.
A survivor of Kamloops Boarding School recalls:
"When I was in school, I heard that people kept disappearing, and I heard that many babies were buried. I wanted to run away, but when I saw that many of my friends were caught again and punished more severely, I had to grit my teeth and endure. ”
In the eyes of the Canadian government at that time, Indian boarding schools were a means to help Indians integrate into Canadian society, and they were "civilized by civilization to barbarism", but their behavior was full of discrimination against Indian civilization and fanaticism for their own civilization, and the so-called "enlightenment" and "salvation" could not be an excuse for one civilization to genocide against another civilization, and Canada's behavior in any civilized society would be regarded as complete barbarism.
3. Is an apology useful?
If boarding schools can really help Indigenous children integrate into Canadian society, this may be a blessing in disguise for those who have experienced countless hardships, but in fact, boarding schools have not played any positive role for Indigenous children, bringing them only endless scars.
Until the closure of the last boarding school in 1996, during the more than one hundred years of the system's existence, about 150,000 Indigenous children were "educated" in boarding schools, accounting for more than one-third of the country's Indigenous children, and the number of deaths is estimated to exceed 10,000.
As for the effect, boarding schools basically break the spine of Indian cultural heritage, and Indigenous children who come out of boarding schools can only use English or French, do not know much about Indian history and culture, and cannot even communicate with their families, and have been unable to integrate into Indian society, but sadly, they have also not been able to integrate into white Canadian society, but have become "outcasts" of Canadian society.
▲ There are boarding schools in Canada
Because boarding schools were originally established to eliminate Indian civilization, indigenous children could only learn the language and then some very simple labor skills, and could not learn much of the means to establish themselves in modern society. Coupled with the long-term living in a harsh and high-pressure environment, the psychology of indigenous children has also been greatly traumatized.
In a survey with a time frame of 2006-2018, the crime rate, poverty rate, alcoholism rate, and suicide rate of Indigenous Peoples in Canada were much higher than those of non-Indigenous peoples, with only 4% (among Indian reservations) and 8% (outside Indian reservations), while the undergraduate degree rate in Canada was 23%, and the huge gap between them can only explain one thing - the Indian boarding school system is a completely failed policy. Both for the perpetrator, the Government of Canada, and for the Victims' Aboriginal people.
As early as the 1930s and 1940s, the Canadian government realized that such boarding schools would not help Canada maintain social stability, but would only bring more instability.
From this point on, the Canadian government began to gradually close boarding schools, increase the number of formal public schools, began to shift cultural policies from "assimilation" to "integration", and finally closed the last boarding school in 1996, before which few Indigenous children lived in boarding schools.
▲ A boarding school survivor was left in tears
At the same time, the Government of Canada has also undertaken a number of remedial measures. In 2004, the Canadian Police Department issued a statement of apology for the role of the police in the Indian boarding school system; The following year, the Canadian government set up a $1.9 billion compensation fund to compensate victims, and the cumulative amount of compensation has reached more than $3 billion.
In 2008 and 2017, Canada's prime minister twice apologized to Indians for their cultural genocide policies. Of course, these apologies are either sincere or just to ease the pressure of public opinion and maintain their status as a human rights pioneer, which is still an improvement over refusing to admit their mistakes no matter what.
150+ years of genocide
But how much can these apologies do? In today's Canada, "Indians" have been considered a racially discriminatory term, and the official appellations of Indigenous peoples have been changed to "First Nations" to mark them as masters of the American continent.
But for Indigenous peoples, such a designation may be just another form of discrimination, because it marks that the Canadian government still treats Indigenous peoples differently from later white immigrants.
▲ Canadian Indians who still live in improvised shacks
More importantly, verbal apologies, salutations, and material remedies do not make up for the huge gap in actual life, and the living standards of these "first nations" are far from reaching the level of "firsts."
Although the Canadian government has given many preferential treatment and privileges to Indigenous people in terms of taxation, franchising rights, etc., compared with the oppression and genocide of the past two hundred years, it is really only a drop in the bucket.
Moreover, the Catholic Church has never really expressed its apologies and remorse for the real initiators of the boarding school system, and has even refused to disclose the relevant files on the grounds of privacy to obstruct the investigation of this incident. It is very funny that the Canadian government has also criticized the church for refusing to apologize.
Trudeau and the Pope, Trudeau once asked the Pope to apologize to the Indians during the Pope's visit to Canada, but was refused
At the end of a biographical novel based on a Canadian Aboriginal boy, Thomson Heil, the protagonist harks "We are Indians, and like anyone, we have the right to hold our own religious ceremonies."
Although this slogan sounds very appealing, at the rate of today's demise of Indian culture, I am afraid it can only be a slogan. Ironically, the Canadian government, which has spent two hundred years basically destroying Indian civilization, is now investing a lot of resources and saving Indian culture every year.
"We are victims of genocide in Canada," an Indian boarding school survivor holds up a sign
When one day Indian civilization really dissipates from this world, whether sincere or not, what is the use of more apologies? Perhaps in the end, time will dilute all scars, but people should remember that no matter what time, one nation cannot use "advanced" or "civilized" as an excuse to destroy the culture of another nation.
The progress of civilization is premised on voluntariness, and there are many ways to help other peoples progress, but in any case, any coercive policy can only bring scars and pain, for both sides. It is precisely because Canada itself has done such a dirty thing that it has always believed that other countries are like him, doing such things as genocide.
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