By Mike Krebs
Socialist Voice
June 29, 2008
Mike Krebs is an Indigenous activist in Vancouver and a contributing editor of Socialist Voice. Related Reading: Roots and Revolutionary Dynamics of Indigenous Struggles in Canada
“I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.” -Duncan Campbell Scott, head of the Department of Indian Affairs and founder of the residential school system, 1920
On June 11, 2008, Stephen Harper, prime minister of Canada and leader of the Conservative Party, issued an “apology” for the residential school system that over 150,000 Indigenous children were forced through. The hype before and after the statement was enormous, with extensive coverage in all major media.
This event had a strong emotional and psychological impact on Indigenous survivors of residential schools all across Canada, who suffered attempted forced assimilation as well as countless acts of violence, rape, and abuse. Descendents of those subjected to this system were equally affected. People packed into community halls and similar venues on June 11 for what was bound to be an emotionally triggering day for survivors, regardless of their view towards the meaning of the “apology.” Some survivors reportedly felt that the statement was a step forward, while many were highly critical.
In trying to understand the responses of Indigenous people across Canada to this “apology,” it is first important to address what it did not do. It must be judged in terms of the ability of Indigenous people to move forward in the process of true healing, not just from the effects of the residential school system, but from the entire process of Canadian colonialism. In this framework, the deficiencies of the “apology” are much greater than any positive impact it could have.
A crime of genocide
“I don’t want to hear it. You know, you might as well send the janitor up to apologize…if it’s just empty words or a nicely written text.” - Michael Cachagee, survivor of Shingwauk Indian Residential School[1]
If there is one thing that Mr. Harper’s “apology” provided that could be considered groundbreaking or new, it’s the idea that there can be crimes without criminals.
You would think offering an “apology” means taking some sort of accountability for the residential school system. But Harper’s statement acknowledges that what happened is a “mistake” without dealing with it as a crime, and without any sense of any individual accountability for it. It views the residential school system as only a mistake.
No discussion of the residential school system can be meaningful without acknowledging that this was an act of genocide. For those who value the importance of international law and the United Nations convention of genocide, let’s look at the UN definition itself as outlined in the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted in 1948″:
“Article 2. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Arguably all five of these criteria apply to the residential school system and other aspects of the Canadian government’s colonization of Indigenous people. And there can be no argument that parts (b) and (e) apply, as a number of Indigenous writers have pointed out.[2] It is important to note that guilt for this crime lies not only with the individuals who committed specific crimes against Indigenous people (i.e. sexual assault, physical violence, forced removal), but also with those who enacted the entire policy.
So even though Harper apologized for the residential schools as a “system,” it doesn’t absolve individuals who participated in the numerous criminal acts they committed. Yet, that is what Harper’s statement attempts to do by apologizing on behalf of “all Canadians,” deceptively hiding behind the false logic that “nobody is guilty if everyone is.”
This is similar to some of the ideas discussed by Cherokee activist and academic Andrea Smith in Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Smith uses Carol Adam’s concept of the “absent referent” in exploring various aspects of sexual violence against Indigenous women, as well as how this concept recurs throughout Western society, mythology, and history. One example is that of the “battered” woman, which makes women “the inherent victims of battering. The batterer is rendered invisible and thus the absent referent”.[3]
A similar tool of deception is at work in not only the “apology,” but the entire approach of the Canadian government in its “solutions” to the residential school issue. Aside from notorious cases like that of the Archbishop Hubert O’Connor,[4] and others who can be easily tarred as “bad people who did bad things,” in Harper’s statement the perpetrator of the crimes against residential school survivors has no tangible face, almost no concrete existence.
