Graves of Indigenous youth provoke outrage in Canada
https://themilitant.com/2021/06/12/graves-of-indigenous-youth-provoke-outrage-in-canada/
BY JOHN STEELE
Vol. 85/No. 24
June 21, 2021
MONTREAL — The discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous children in an
unmarked mass grave on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian
Residential School in British Columbia, confirmed May 27, has provoked
outrage among working people across Canada.
Vigils to mark the deaths have been held by Indigenous people and
supporters. Pairs of children’s shoes have been placed symbolically in
front of government buildings, churches and former residential school
sites. Indigenous organizations and the Alberta Federation of Labor have
called on the government to make funds available to search for mass
graves at all 130 former residential schools.
Under a policy of forced assimilation, some 150,000 children of
Indigenous people were seized from their parents and placed in
residential “schools” from the 1870s to 1996. Many were subjected to
malnutrition, forced labor and sexual abuse. More than 4,000 “students”
died or disappeared. Today there are about 80,000 living survivors.
“They would just start beating you and lose control and hurl you against
the wall,” Geraldine Bob told the government’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission in 2015, recalling her experience at the Kamloops school.
The revelations helped spur protests by Indigenous groups on other
abuses. Some 1,000 Indigenous people and supporters marched in
Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, June 2 to protest the death of Joyce Echaquan, a
member of the Atikamekw nation in a Joliette, Quebec, hospital last
year. An hour before she died, Echaquan recorded hospital staff yelling
racist abuse at her while she was appealing for her family to take her
home because she was not getting the care she needed.
Oppression of Indigenous peoples
Totaling 1.6 million, Indigenous people compose 4.9 percent of Canada’s
population of 38 million. But they are about one-third of the federal
prison population. Twenty-three percent live in poverty, twice as high
as the rest of the population. Many still do not have access to clean
water on reservations.
Following the discovery of the graves, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
called for “reconciliation” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
people. The deaths of children at the institutions “is the fault of
Canada,” he said.
“Trudeau’s attempts to blame ‘all Canadians’ for the oppression and
discrimination of Indigenous people is designed to cover up the reality
that it is the capitalist system and its governments that are the root
cause,” Philippe Tessier, Communist League candidate for mayor of the
Montreal borough of Ville St-Laurent, told the Militant June 3.
The rulers seek to profit, Tessier said, by fostering “divisions among
working people and undermining working-class solidarity.”
“Workers and our unions need to fight for a government-funded public
works program,” the CL candidate said, “to generate millions of jobs —
building houses and hospitals and providing services working people,
especially Indigenous people, need. We need to fight for affirmative
action measures for Indigenous people in all union contracts to ensure
they have access to union-scale jobs.”
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--
Irvin D. Yalom “Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through
disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were
so! Your patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply
a child's wish—and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the
eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory
scientifically demonstrates God's redundancy—though Darwin himself had
not the courage to follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely,
you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now
have killed him.” ― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept