Hidden from History:
The Canadian Holocaust

The Untold Story of the Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples by Church and State in Canada

by (Rev.) Kevin Annett

Microsoft Word version of the full report:

Kevin Arnett's Web Pages on the Canadian Indigenous Genocide:

http://canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org/index.html

http://hiddenfromhistory.org/

Late 2004 Additions to Kevin Arnett's Web Pages:

• Genocide In Canada Lecture Series Begins November 15 - October 28, 2004

• Vigil for Justice outside a "church" with blood on its hands - September 12 - September 6, 2004

• The Truth Commission is rising again! - Upcoming General Meeting - Please Post and Circulate - August 27, 2004

• A Call for Help from many people, and from the Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada - June 25, 2004

• Control of Water = Control of People
  This is the plan to control the water.....and you - June 25, 2004

• Olympic Boycott - Demand Justice for Indigenous Peoples in Canada! (please reprint and circulate) - June 22, 2004

• Duplessis orphans call for exhumations: Aim to show children were experimented upon - June 19, 2004

• Canada and its Churches are Accused of Genocide by Major Guatemalan Indigenous Organizations - May 31, 2004

• Let Justice Begin in your own Back Yard, and Church Yard: An Open Letter to the United Church of Canada - March 23, 2004

(Added December 27, 2003)

Canada and the United States: 

Soul Wound: The legacy of Native American Schools

[About the rape and torture with impunity of Canadian and United States indigenous youth in government and church-run residential schools.]

[In addition to the true history of the sexual assault perpetrated against indigenous Canadian girls and boys for decades, it must be noted that a similar system existed, on perhaps a lesser scale, within the United States.  This article addresses both 'systems' of the systematic rape and torture of children.]

[In Canada:]

A more complete history of the abuses endured by Native American children exists in the accounts of survivors of Canadian “residential schools.” Canada imported the U.S. boarding school model in the 1880s and maintained it well into the 1970s—four decades after the United States ended its stated policy of forced enrollment. Abuses in Canadian schools are much better documented because survivors of Canadian schools are more numerous, younger, and generally more willing to talk about their experiences.

A 2001 report by the Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada documents the responsibility of the Roman Catholic Church, the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the federal government in the deaths of more than 50,000 Native children in the Canadian residential school system.

The report says church officials killed children by beating, poisoning, electric shock, starvation, prolonged exposure to sub-zero cold while naked, and medical experimentation, including the removal of organs and radiation exposure. In 1928 Alberta passed legislation allowing school officials to forcibly sterilize Native girls; British Columbia followed suit in 1933. There is no accurate toll of forced sterilizations because hospital staff destroyed records in 1995 after police launched an investigation. But according to the testimony of a nurse in Alberta, doctors sterilized entire groups of Native children when they reached puberty. The report also says that Canadian clergy, police, and business and government officials “rented out” children from residential schools to pedophile rings.

The consequences of sexual abuse can be devastating. “Of the first 29 men who publicly disclosed sexual abuse in Canadian residential schools, 22 committed suicide,” says Gerry Oleman, a counselor to residential school survivors in British Columbia.

Randy Fred (Tsehaht First Nation), a 47-year-old survivor, told the British Columbia Aboriginal Network on Disability Society, “We were kids when we were raped and victimized. All the plaintiffs I’ve talked with have attempted suicide. I attempted suicide twice, when I was 19 and again when I was 20. We all suffered from alcohol abuse, drug abuse. Looking at the lists of students [abused in the school], at least half the guys are dead.”

The Truth Commission report says that the grounds of several schools contain unmarked graveyards of murdered school children, including babies born to Native girls raped by priests and other church officials in the school. Thousands of survivors and relatives have filed lawsuits against Canadian churches and governments since the 1990s, with the costs of settlements estimated at more than $1 billion. Many cases are still working their way through the court system.

[In the United States:]

Rampant sexual abuse at reservation schools continued until the end of the 1980s, in part because of pre-1990 loopholes in state and federal law mandating the reporting of allegations of child sexual abuse. In 1987 the FBI found evidence that John Boone, a teacher at the BIA-run Hopi day school in Arizona, had sexually abused as many as 142 boys from 1979 until his arrest in 1987. The principal failed to investigate a single abuse allegation. Boone, one of several BIA schoolteachers caught molesting children on reservations in the late 1980s, was convicted of child abuse, and he received a life sentence. Acting BIA chief William Ragsdale admitted that the agency had not been sufficiently responsive to allegations of sexual abuse, and he apologized to the Hopi tribe and others whose children BIA employees had abused.

(Added December 30, 2003)

British Columbia, Canada

Native Men Tell of Rape

...A hushed BC Supreme Court heard a 44 year-old native man tell Monday of being raped by a dormitory supervisor at the Alberni Residential Shool when he was 10 years old. Dennis Thomas was testifying at the first day of the second phase of the lawsuit by two dozen former students. They're seeking compensation for sexual and physical abuse. In the first phase, the federal government and the United Church of Canada were found "vicariously liable" as the employer/operator of the school for the assaults. The second phase deals with direct liability and the issue of knowledge...

(Added December 27, 2003)

Canada:

The Indian Residential School Survivor's Society

[About the rape and torture with impunity of Canadian indigenous youth in government and church-run residential schools.]

...Psychological and emotional abuses were constant: shaming by public beatings of naked children, vilification of native culture, constant racism, public strip and genital searches, withholding presents and letters from family, locking children in closets and cages, segregation of sexes, separation of bothers and sisters, proscription of native languages and spirituality. In addition, the schools were places of profound physical and sexual violence: sexual assaults, forced abortions of staff-impregnated girls, needles inserted into tongues for speaking a native language, burning, scalding, beating until unconscious and/or inflicting permanent injury.

**

Psychological and emotional abuses were constant: shaming by public beatings of naked children, vilification of native culture, constant racism, public strip and genital searches, withholding presents and letters from family, locking children in closets and cages, segregation of sexes, separation of bothers and sisters, proscription of native languages and spirituality. In addition, the schools were places of profound physical and sexual violence: sexual assaults, forced abortions of staff-impregnated girls, needles inserted into tongues for speaking a native language, burning, scalding, beating until unconscious and/or inflicting permanent injury.

They also endured electrical shock, force-feeding of their own vomit when sick, exposure to freezing outside temperatures, withholding of medical attention, shaved heads (a cultural and social violation), starvation (as punishment), forced labor in unsafe work situations, intentional contamination with diseased blankets, insufficient food for basic nutrition and/or spoiled food. Estimates suggest that as many as 60% of the students died (due to illness, beatings, attempts to escape, or suicide) while in the schools.

**

...Today, approximately 90,000 survivors in their thirties and older are trying to understand, heal from, and move beyond this devastating experience. About 14% are involved in some form of litigation while the other 86% are living out their lives as best they can.

"What I remember of that time was passing Muncho Lake on the trip up north, [to residential school] and imagining I was drowning. That is where I left my life; I drowned in Muncho Lake. I haven't forgiven my parents to this day because...they weren't there to protect me."

Survivor, Kamloops School
2000

It is generally accepted that the forced removal of children from their families was devastating for Aboriginal individuals, families, communities and cultures. This is regularly being confirmed by researchers today.

First Nation communities experience higher rates of violence: physical, domestic abuse (3x higher than mainstream society); sexual abuse: rape, incest, etc. (4-6x higher); lack of family and community cohesion; suicide (6x higher); addictions: drugs, alcohol, food; health problems: diabetes (3x higher), heart disease, obesity; poverty; unemployment; illiteracy; high school dropout (63% do not graduate); despair; hopelessness; and more.

The Indian Residential School Survivors Society was formed to provide help, hope, healing and honor for those adult children who are still seeking resolution in their lives. If you wish to email any of our staff please go to our staff and email page.

(Added December 27, 2003)

Canada: 

Abuse in the aboriginal residential schools in Canada & the Mushkegowuk Cree of Fort Albany, Ontario - Abstract

[About the rape and torture with impunity of Canadian indigenous youth in government and church-run residential schools.]

This is a 10 page paper discussing abuse in Aboriginal residential schools in Canada and in particular that in Fort Albany, Ontario. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in Canada, the federal government in partnership with a number of religious organizations ran over 130 “residential schools” for Aboriginals. 

Originally intended to promote the assimilation of the Aboriginal people within white society, by the time the majority of the schools closed in the 1960s and 1970s, it soon became obvious that in addition to religion and education being promoted within the schools, so too was a horrific amount of physical and sexual abuse being performed. Generations of Aboriginals who passed through the schools have suffered a great deal from the abuse and are trying within their own communities to heal from their ordeals.

(Added December 27, 2003)

Canada: 

Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools in Canada

[About the rape and torture with impunity of Canadian indigenous youth in government and church-run residential schools.]

There are a huge number of court cases coming through in this area. The abuse of children was so widespread, that it has formed part of Canada's general history. With newspaper reports of payments to exceed one billion dollars. But the cost in human life, in human suffering - is beyond any words that I can write. Native Law does not provide legal counsel. This page is for educational (bibliographic) purposes only.

[This document contains over 90 bibliographic references to to Canadian residential school sexual assault issue.]

Apri 27, 2003 

Ex-residential school student files suit. CANADA: A middle-aged Yukon man is suing the federal government and the Catholic Church for abuses he says he suffered at the hands of priests responsible for his care during his days at the Lower Post, B.C. residential school. The lawsuit was filed with the Yukon Supreme Court earlier this month. In it, the 57-year-old first nation man says he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by two boys' dorm supervisors over an eight-year period. The man would have been five or six when the abuse started in September 1952. It didn't end until June 1960. While he's suing the Attorney General of Canada, the Catholic Episcopal Corporation of Whitehorse, four religious orders and the priest in charge of the school, it's the two dorm supervisors who were responsible for the abuse, the lawsuit alleges. 

-- Whitehorse Star, "Ex-residential school student files suit," 

From: www.whitehorsestar.com/ , by Sarah Elizabeth Brown, (Poynteronline, Posted by Kathy Shaw, Apr 27 03)

May 14, 2003

Denomination Thwarts Bankruptcy 

From: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/005/14.25.html

Christianity Today: CANADA: The Anglican Church of Canada has made a deal with the Canadian government that leaders hope will keep the denomination from bankruptcy. The agreement, signed on March 11, caps the church's financial responsibility at $25 million for lawsuits alleging physical and sexual abuse in Indian residential schools (CT, Jan. 7, 2002, p. 20). The Anglican Church will be responsible for 30 percent of compensation awarded in validated cases of abuse; the federal government will pay the other 70 percent. Although only 11 dioceses ran schools, all 30 are taking responsibility for compensating victims. "I'm very pleased and, in a way, amazed that dioceses so quickly could mobilize themselves to make decisions," said Archdeacon Jim Boyles, the church's general secretary and chief negotiator. The agreement puts pending court cases into an alternative dispute resolution process. This will include counselling, pastoral care, therapy and legal advice, says Anglican Archdeacon Larry Beardy, a member of the negotiating team.

Canada - October 5, 2002 - Poverty leads to prostitution

EDMONTON -- A large number of aboriginal women work in the sex trade out of poverty -- and their children follow in their footsteps, say outreach workers.

1-Subject: Young Indian Children in Saskatchewan, Canada Sexually Exploited

From: cmg_jr@ix.netcom.com

Date: 01/28/01 09:55:34

Subject: Young Indian Children in Saskatchewan, 

Canada Sexually Exploited

 8-year-old prostitutes stun Saskatchewan politicians

 © 2001 Toronto Globe’s Mail, Canadian Press, Regina  

2-Subject: Aboriginals make up majority of young prostitutes (About the report "Sacred Lives, Canadian Aboriginal Children & Youth Speak Out About Sexual Exploitation" - see article #4 also.)

12/06/2000 - © 2000 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Date: 12/06/00 00:40:28

Subject: Indigenous youth make up 90 percent of

Canada's child, teen prostitutes.

Dear friends of human rights - FYI. 

Chuck Goolsby

Date:    12/06/00 00:08:27

Subject: Re: Aboriginals make up majority of young prostitutes

Hi L.,

Thank you much for this information.  I guess you know that I have, in the past, made the same point.  Not a nice point to make, and one that goes against cultural currents that stress covering up any reality that can cause an individual embarrassment within those cultures.

In the age of HIV/AIDS, those codes of silence have to end, or the sexual oppression of indigenous youth, which is common throughout all regions in the Americas, will cause a permanent end to the indigenous peoples affected.  To stop that result, people must begin to speak up and defend our young people.

People of conscience everywhere need to

understand that reality as it relates to youth of

all racial and ethnic backgrounds.  

 - Chuck Goolsby

Aboriginals make up majority of young

prostitutes

© 2000 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Dec 4, 2000

OTTAWA - A government report has found that

up to 90 per cent of child and teen prostitutes in

Canada are aboriginal.   The 97-page report,

called "Sacred Lives," says the aboriginal

community faces unacceptable risks of being

dragged into the commercial sex trade.  

Risk on the street

The study, which includes interviews with 150

aboriginal youth who have been sexually

exploited, says it's vital for them to re-establish

cultural connections.  The report was done by

Save the Children Canada and the federal

government and released on Monday.  

The authors, Cherry Kingsley and Melanie

Mark, found that widespread racism,

declining culture, and crushing poverty

are among the reasons native youth end

up on the streets.  

One native youth interviewed in the report

said they're targets for prostitution because

they're vulnerable and used to the exploitation.

Kingsley and Mark, who are both native,

travelled across Canada for five months to do

the study.  

"It was a really haunting, gruelling

experience," Kingsley said on Monday.

"These young people came forward with the

hope things would be different and they

deserve a response," she said.

The report recommends a series of round-

table discussions and building a national

youth network.

"There's no sex trade in the world that can

survive unless we let it collectively, and it's

thriving," Kingsley said.

Last month, an international report suggested

a lack of government planning is turning

Canada into a hot spot for the sexual

exploitation of children.

Subject: Indian Lawsuits on School Abuse

May Bankrupt Canada Churches (Excerpt)

Date: 11/02/00 12:30:28

Subject: Canadian indigenous boarding school rape victim lawsuits to bankrupt Canadian churches

Dear friends of human rights,  

The use of violent sexual assault as a tool of the oppression of indigenous (Indian/Native) women, minor girls and boys and even men, has been a feature of life in the Americas since 1492.  Within the U.S., numerous government and church run boarding schools have been the location of mass rapes of Indian children.  Several years ago, over 400 children in a

school in the Southwest were the victims of such assaults.  A Lakota psychologist found, in the 1970's, a school in the U.S. Northwest where 80 of the 120 girl boarding school students had been raped by non-Indians from the local town.  All over Latin America, many indigenous women and minor girls continue to

suffer the fate that their mothers and grand-mothers have suffered since 1492 at the hands of men who rape them with impunity.  

These policies, together with the actions of the U.S. Indian Health Service in their forced sterilization campaign against indigenous women, in which 70,000 women were victimized in the 1960's and 1970's,

represents genocidal violence that has been perpetrated with impunity.

A couple of years ago, a Canadian indigenous chief spoke on CBC, the Canadian Broadcast System, heard locally in DC on WAMU FM, a public radio station.  This chief related how he, after being forced to go to a religious run boarding school, was subjected to routine beatings, electric shock and RAPE, from the

age of 12, perpetrated by clerics at the school.

Please find here below an excerpt of the beginning of an article from the November 2, 2000 edition of the New York Times regarding this issue in Canada.  

As the descendant of Catawba and Muskogee Creek peoples who also faced this racist madness, I encourage all of you to act, in this day and age, to assist the women and minor girls in our local communities who continue to suffer sexual assault from men who act with brazen impunity.  Why?  In many cases, it is because indigenous women and girls are not viewed as having even the right to their own bodies, nor to the human dignity and protection from crime that we take for granted.  

Sincerely,

- Chuck Goolsby

Other Resources from www.ReligiousTolerance.org

• Chronology of actions by churches and govermnents in reaction to the Canadian Aboriginal Boarding Schools Crisis.

Books on residential schools:

• Constance Deiter, "From Our Mothers' Arms."  Out of print but may be available through public libraries.

• Suzanne Fournier and Ernie Grey, "Stolen From Our Embrace: The abduction of First Nations children and the restoration of aboriginal communities," Out of print, but a used copy can often be ordered

• Agnes Grant, "No End of Grief: Indian Residential Schools in Canada," Pemmican Publications, (1996). Read reviews / order this book.

• Jim Miller, "Shingwauk's Vision," University of Toronto Press, (1996). Read reviews / order this book safely from Amazon.com online bookstore.

• John Molloy, "A National Crime: Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986," Can be ordered from http://www.chapters.ca

• Ruth Teichroeb, "Flowers on my grave : how an Ojibwa boy's death helped break the silence on child abuse," HarperCollins,  Read reviews / order this book. This book describes the brief life of Lester Desjarlais, (1974-1988).

• Books by the Williams Lake, B.C. Cariboo Tribal Council:

  • "A conspiracy of silence: The care of the Native students at St. Joseph's residential school," (1991).

  • "Victims of benevolence: discipline & death at the Williams Lake Indian residential school, 1891-1920," ISBN 0969663900. 

• Grant, Peter R. "Settling residential schools claims: litigation or mediation" in Aboriginal Writes, Canadian Bar Association National Aboriginal Law Section, 1998-JAN.

• Sexual abuse at Roman Catholic church-run schools in Canada

• Suicide among Canada's Native people

  • The extermination of Canada's Innu people

• Martin O'Malley, "Canada's Oldest Nations," Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, at: "http://cbc.ca/news/indepth/aboriginals/ 
• "Choosing Life: Special Report On Suicide Among Aboriginal People," Royal Commission on Aboriginal People., Ottawa: Canada Communication Group Publishing, 1995. 
• "Quotes from our Native Past," at: http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/quotes.html 
• Ward Churchill, "A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present," City Lights Books, (1998). Read reviews and/or order this book

Other Related Issues in the Americas