Canada's Looking-Glass Genocide

Then... and Now

Now magazine, Toronto's free entertainment newspaper, has apparently gone full SJW.

Last week’s cover story: "Canada's Genocide"

The feature article inside, titled "Genocide Coverup," begins:

"It is no longer up for debate. Canada is guilty of genocide. The National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls has found that Canada has and continues to engage in ‘race-based genocide.’"

This claim that the debate is over is demonstrably false. The next piece in the newspaper, “The Media’s Odious Defense,” laments that the Globe and Star have both in official editorials rejected the “genocide” claim. Both publications are editorially on the left, and probably Canada's two largest-circulation English papers. So obviously it is still up for debate.

Insisting it isn’t is a transparent tactic when one knows one will lose any debate that might ensue.

The article goes on:

“Canada’s governments used premeditated acts like the mass distribution of smallpox-infected blankets and placing bounties on scalps to kill off indigenous peoples. They engaged in policies aimed at starving indigenous people to death to clear the prairies for settlement. Canadian governments have also engaged in covering up the disproportionate number of deaths of indigenous people in police custody and the over-incarceration of Indigenous people to keep them locked up and out of sight.”

None of these claims are true. They constitute a blood libel designed to promote racial hatred against non-indigenous Canadians. If the “hate laws” were applied justly, they would be actionable.

There is no evidence at all that any Canadian government ever distributed smallpox-infected blankets to Indians. Nor is this a likely way to spread smallpox. There is no evidence that any Canadian government ever put bounties on the scalps of indigenous people—and it would be very hard to do so without leaving any documentary evidence. Indigenous people, on the other hand, regularly scalped their enemies, indigenous or European. There is no evidence that any Canadian government attempted to starve indigenous people to death—rather, they sent food aid to the Indians of the Prairies at times of starvation. Before this, periodic famines and death by starvation were a typical aspect of the Indian experience. To charge “over-incarceration” of indigenous people is to assume that Indigenous people are imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, or are given harsher sentences than non-Indians for the same offenses. In fact, the opposite is true, by law. The so-called “Gladue rule” more or less requires judges to give Indigenous offenders lighter sentences. If you want to argue that the mere fact that a higher proportion of Indigenous than non-Indigenous people are imprisoned automatically proves intended genocide, then, to be consistent, you must also hold that the state is committing genocide against men. Far more men than women are in prison.

“The Indian Act was also created to make a legal definition of Indian that would result in the legislative extinction of Indians over time, by targeting Indian women and children for expulsion from their First Nations.”

Rather obviously, Canadian legislators of that day considered being a Canadian citizen a good thing, and thought allowing Indian women who married non-Indian men automatic full citizenship was a benefit, not a punishment. Just as they would not have thought it genocide against Jews to allow Jews to immigrate. Would Hitler have been equally guilty of genocide had he accepted Jews as fully German, with the same rights as other Germans? His inclination was rather the opposite.

The Indigenous author of a second piece, "The Media's Odious Defense," laments his personal dilemma. Because he was aboriginal, the CBC, his employer, gave him full control over the story when the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People report came out. Even though he was only a summer intern, and did not even intend to go into journalism.

Does this really show discrimination AGAINST aboriginal people? He was given a plum internship even though he was not interested in journalism. Then he was given full control over a story ahead of senior reporters—presumably all because he was indigenous. Poor fellow.

So what is his complaint?

His problem is that, when news reports are not sufficiently pro-aboriginal, Indigenous journalists like himself “are questioned by their communities about why these views would be published, why higher-ups at their outlet would think this way, and why they continue to work there.”

Transparently, what is the real problem? Is it the Canadian media lacking good intentions towards Indigenous people—or is it these unspecified “indigenous communities” lacking good intentions towards indigenous people? Who is trying to advance the careers and life situations of indigenous people, and who is trying to get them to sacrifice their careers and their best interests?

This author seems to be a victim of Stockholm syndrome. It is the reserve system that is holding indigenous people back.