No Truth, No Reconciliation
A couple weeks ago I put up a post on the claims by a group of fringe anarchists, claiming to represent Canada’s Aboriginal communities. These people were claiming to have found mass graves accross Canada and evidence supporting their hypothesis of a Canadian genocide.
While I wouldn’t want to dismiss the possibility of there being mass graves somewhere in Canada - I do absolutely dismiss the idea of a Canadian genocide. Anyone who thinks that such a thing happened, does not understand the word ‘genocide’.
As part of their campaign to publicize their hypothesis, these people founded their own ‘International Human Rights Tribunal’ (IHRT) to prosecute the supposed perpetrators of this mythical crime. Here is what I wrote on this two weeks ago:
The fact I care about right now is the fact that you self-centred bigots just now learned of this crime from a press release. Every single one of you should be ashamed of yourselves for not having known this long before.
As for the fringe group and their “International Human Rights Tribunal” that their press release is promoting - they have been disowned and repudiated by the Assembly of First Nations because they fear that it will diminish the real work of the legitimate ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’. That thing won in hard fought negotiations between natives and the Federal government.
But you racists probably didn’t know about that either, did you?
I was responding to the reaction the IHRT people had inspired in the left blogosphere. My response was mostly instinctive. Something about the name of the IHRT’s leader - Eagle Strong Voice - set off my ‘bullshit’ detector. The hyper-politicized text of their press release only heightened my suspicions.
Vancouver reporter Terry Glavin has come out with more information on the IHRT group and it’s leader - Eagle Strong Voice. Before I quote him at length on Eagle Strong Voice (aka Kevin Annett), let me first try to preempt some of the inevitable accusations of racism against Terry Glavin. Mr. Glavin is a stalwart ally of First Nations. He’s written about them and advocated for them for more than a decade. On a personal note - when I was a teenager he worked for our reserve band council, he worked with my aunts, he ate at my mother’s diner, I believe he even attended the smokehouse. He was a well-respected member of our very traditionalist Salish community.
Why do I even need to say that? From Glavin:
if you persist in pointing out the spectacular unlikelihood that any of [Eagle Strong Voice's] Annet’s stories are true, you will almost certainly find yourself accused of “smearing” him. That’s what happens if you’re white, anyway. If you’re aboriginal, you may find yourself called a “police informant” or a “provocateur,” or you’ll be accused of having been a “collaborator and abuser” during your time in residential school. Annett has levelled just these accusations against his detractors.
He has accused them as well of complicity in “a criminal conspiracy to perpetrate and conceal acts of war, genocide, murder, ethnic cleansing, slave labour, sterilization, land theft, pedophilia” and other such crimes, and accused of conspiring to assault Annett, defraud him, and defame him in order to conceal those crimes.
Among those individuals who stand accused of these things are several Canadian journalists, judges, and corporate executives, former prime minister Jean Chretien, the RCMP, the United Church of Canada, former United Nations’ Human Rights Commission chair Mary Robinson, former New Democratic Party cabinet minister John Cashore, and the Nuu-chah-nuulth Tribal Council. Even Annett’s ex-wife has been implicated.
This man, Annett, matters because, as I said two weeks ago, his group’s extravagant claims risk the success of the hard won Truth and Reconciliation Commission:
Meanwhile, after a generation of bitter and hard-fought struggle, the Assembly of First Nations, the Canadian churches that ran the schools and the federal government have embarked upon a $2 billion settlement process that includes the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
On April 28, Justice Harry S. LaForme, a judge on the Ontario Appeals Court and a member of the Mississauga Nation, was appointed its chairman. The commission, inspired by the post-apartheid stabilization process in South Africa, will soon begin its hearings.
Among ordinary Canadians, there already exists a perfectly understandable but stubborn reluctance to believe the heart-rending truth about what actually did happen in some of those institutions. The abuse and the cruelty was sometimes almost beyond belief. And there is no shortage of pundits in this country who are all too eager to encourage that tendency to disbelieve the survivors’ stories.
If the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gets dragged into the strange, alternative reality where Annett and his followers thrive, the commission’s purpose could be easily defeated. If that happens, we will have lost an historic opportunity to see justice properly done in finally turning the page on one of the darkest and most disgraceful chapters in Canadian history.
Imagine how difficult it would be to tell the history of the holocaust today, if the records of it were intermingled with the lies of paranoid fabulists. Imagine if the deniers could point to dozens of blatant lies and finally imagine what that would do to the willingness of the public to come to terms with their country’s crimes.
We can’t give credibility to Annett, and we can’t let him make a mockery of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The survivors are getting old - if we don’t come to an accounting now, we never will.
You can read the rest of Glavin’s article here. More info can also be found on his blog.
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You know, Robert, it’s possible to call for an investigation under suitable auspices without being in one camp or another. Glavin’s extended ad hominem worries me, just as some of Annett’s more spectacular claims arouse my deepest skepticism.
Incidentally, you should try to avoid strawman arguments. I, for one, haven’t bought into the notion of organized genocide, even though the concerns of the chief medical officer of Indian Affairs in the early 20th C.(Peter Bryce) are disturbing. (He thought that sick and healthy children in the residential schools, which had horrendous death tolls, were deliberately kept together.) Nor do I think that Glavin is a racist–in fact, I don’t know who does.
More on all that here. You should know, by the way, that “Eagle Strong Voice” (and I winced almost audibly when I first saw that) was not a name Annett gave to himself.
There is an investigation - it’s the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This side show, this fiasco, undermines it and the preposterous claims of those calling for the “International Human Rights Tribunal” will do nothing but give ammunition to a future generations of deniers.
As for ad hominems - I think they are called for when you’re dealing with shysters who make unsupportable claims whose veracity rests on the claimant’s credibility.
“The fact I care about right now is the fact that you self-centred bigots just now learned of this crime from a press release. Every single one of you should be ashamed of yourselves for not having known this long before”
How the hell are we supposed to know about these things? Magic? Most of this stuff happened long before I was born, and I was never told about it, never found out about it on television, It wasn’t in any of the the thousands of books that I’ve read, really, where are we going to find out about these things except from a blog posting relaying information from a press release?! I won’t pretend to know even now what’s going on, but at least I admit this. How does this make me a bigot?
I consider myself ahead of the curve as far as knowing things generally go; I try to actually go out and research things just because…if I can’t find out about these things sufficiently fast for you what possible hope does the average person have?
You ever watch the news? The settlement between natives and the government over the residential schools happened in 2005 and 2006. The money to survivors was sent out last year. It wasn’t exactly a state secret.
I really haven’t watched television in almost a decade(and I never really did), so no I don’t watch what you probably mean by “the news”, and I certainly missed it if they covered anything actually important in 2005-2006, which as far as I’m concerned, is pretty much statistically meaningless compared to the sheer amount of crap that’s usually on television. I have never even owned a television–that money could be better spent elsewhere, like on food so I don’t have to live on handouts like I am right now.
But what the hell did I do in 2005-2006? In 2005 I was working my ass off at various jobs to make sure that I could have a roof over my head and enough ramen noodles/kd to get by on, and to make sure I was passing my university classes. (I also admittedly met and fell in love with my girlfriend around that time too).
2006 wasn’t much better; I had two major CS projects that kept me awake for days at a time, and soaked up literally months of my life. I spent the vast majority of 2006 either studying, coding or passing out from heat and lack of available food(ask my g/f if you think I’m kidding). But at least I was able to read a little bit.
The children who did not come home from the residential schools must be acknowledged. That is the truth, no matter who is saying it. I understand Phil Fontaine is saying that now too.
http://residentialschooldeaths.blogspot.com/
Thank you Mr. Jago for blogging about this. Any more information that you have is greatly appreciated. As a Canadian living outside Canada I was shocked to hear Kevin Annett’s claims. The residential school system is already a story of profound Canadian colonial shame, not just for the abuses, but that it was a program of acculturation and assimilation from the outset. Annett is definitely not helping the healing and reconciliation process.
After reading Terry Glavin’s article, I’m not sure how a reader would fail to see that the only way to criticize someone who produces no material evidence is ad hominem. The claims that Annett makes are mysteries to those living in the effected communities.
In the facebook group about the alleged mass graves, it is implied that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s purpose is to stifle the voices of the victims. This can’t possibly help.