“Imagine that a group of bandits entered your house without permission and booted you and your family members out. Afterwards the bandits continue to occupy the house, but they graciously allow you and your family to stay in the cellar. Would you accept such a state of affairs? Would you not want your house back in its entirety? And would you not want the usurpers evicted?” – Kim Peterson (May 20, 2018) [1]
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According to the internationally recognized definition, genocide is a broad term that encompasses not only mass killing of members of a specific national, ethnic, racial or religious group, but also:
- the Causing of serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
- the Deliberate inflicting on the group of conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
- the Imposing of measures intended to prevent births within the group
- and the Forcible transferring of children of the group to another group
By this definition, the entities known as Canada and the United States of America owe their very existence as nation states to a genocide perpetrated against the original peoples of the continent. Going all the way back to the arrival of Christopher Columbus, Indigenous communities were subjected to torture, terror, sexual abuse, systematic military occupations, massacres, and relocations. In American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present, authors Erin McKenna, Scott L. Pratt report a 90-95% decline in the Indigenous population of the Americas between 1491 and 1691. [2][3]
In Canada, this genocide was facilitated by the creation of the Canadian National Railway, and the consequent destruction of the buffalo, a critical component of Indigenous life and culture. There was also critically, the 1876 Indian Act, and the system of Indian Residential schools it enabled. This system ripped children away from their parents and put them into institutions designed to assimilate them instead into Canadian society, the stated intention being ‘to kill the Indian in the child.’ [4][5]
It is no small coincidence that the genocide has been beneficial for elite corporate interests, both domestic and foreign, seeking to profit from the land base over which various Indigenous peoples have title and sovereignty.
On the occasion of National Indigenous Peoples Day, recognized in Canada on June 21st, this week’s Global Research News Hour radio program is a special broadcast recognizing the past and ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples against the forces seeking to exploit them and extinguish their resistance.
The episode opens with an excerpt from the National Community Radio Association’s Resonating Reconciliation Project, produced by CITR 101.9FM in Vancouver on the traditional and unceded territory of the Musqueam Nation.
We complete the first half hour with an interview with Bruce Clark, an author, scholar and former lawyer who has spent forty six years defending the rights of Indigenous peoples across North America. In this discussion, Clark elaborates on his fundamental position that the legal system has been twisted and contorted to deliberately suppress Indigenous sovereignty to the advantage of wealthy elites, and is therefore aiding and abetting a genocide.
Our second guest, Reuben George, is a member of the Tsleil Waututh Nation on the West Coast of Canada that is vowing to contest the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, recently approved by the Canadian federal government. He outlines the heart of his peoples’ concerns, the problems with the government’s consultation process, and his conviction that the pipeline project will not be completed.
Finally, Intercontinental Cry founder and editor John Ahniwanika Schertow returns with reports on genocidal actions being carried out against the forest-dwelling Adivasi in India, and the Yezidi in Syria and Iraq.
Bruce Clark holds an MA in constitutional history and a PhD in comparative law jurisprudence. A scholar specializing in the legal history of the evolving relationship between Natives and Newcomers, he is the author of a number of essays for Dissident Voice, and of the 2018 book, Ongoing Genocide caused by Judicial Suppression of the “Existing” Aboriginal Rights. Dr. Clark’s site is ongoinggenocide.com
Reuben George is manager of the Tsleil Waututh Nation Sacred Trust Initative, which is mandated to stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion from happening.
John Ahniwanika Schertow is an award-winning journalist and multimedia artist of Mohawk and European descent. He is the founder and lead editor of Intercontinental Cry, an on-line media source of news of world-wide Indigenous struggle and resistance. As a poet and freelance journalist, John’s work has been featured in the Guardian, Toward Freedom, the Dominion, Madre, Swerve Magazine and many other publications.
(Global Research News Hour Episode 265)
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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .
The Global Research News Hour now airs Fridays at 6pm PST, 8pm CST and 9pm EST on Alternative Current Radio (alternativecurrentradio.com)
Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:
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Radio Fanshawe: Fanshawe’s 106.9 The X (CIXX-FM) out of London, Ontario airs the Global Research News Hour Sundays at 6am with an encore at 3pm.
Los Angeles, California based Thepowerofvoices.com airs the Global Research News Hour every Monday from 6-7pm Pacific time.
Notes:
- https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dispossession-of-canadas-first-nations-and-the-kinder-morgan-pipeline/5641139
- http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/162804
- American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present; Erin McKenna, Scott L. Pratt; Bloomsbury; 2015; Page 375
- Timothy J. Stanley (January 7, 2015), ‘John A. Macdonald’s Aryan Canada: Aboriginal Genocide and Chinese Exclusion’, Active History; activehistory.ca/2015/01/john-a-macdonalds-aryan-canada-aboriginal-genocide-and-chinese-exclusion/
- (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, p. 130; http://nctr.ca/assets/reports/Final%20Reports/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf
