[PEN-L:355] corrected 3b judicial findings

["James Michael Craven" <cravjm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

     Then there is the
     ?perhaps-we-were-misguided-but-we-had-honest--as-opposed-to
     criminal-intent? argument. This is referred to as the ?Standard
     Account? by Chrisjohn et al.:
           ?Residential Schools were created out of the largesse of
           the federal government
             and the missionary imperatives of the major churches as a
             means of bringing the advantages of Christian
             civilisation to Aboriginal populations. With the benefit
             of late-20th century hindsight, some of the means with
             which this task was undertaken may be seen to have been
             unfortunate, but it is important to understand that this
             work was undertaken with the best of humanitarian
             intentions. Now, in any large organization, isolated
             incidence of abuse may       occur, and such abuses may
             have occurred in some Indian Residential Schools...
-10-

                 ...In any event, individuals who attended Residential
                 Schools now
              appear to be suffering low self-esteem, alcoholism,
              somatic disorders, violent tendencies, and other
              symptoms of psychological distress (called ?Residential
              School Syndrome?.) While these symptoms seem
               endemic to Aboriginal Peoples in general (and not
               limited to those
                  who attended Residential School), this is likely to
                  have come about
               because successive generations of attendees passed
               along, as it were,
                their personal psychological problems to their home
                communities
               and, through factors such as inadequacy of parenting
               skills, perpetuated the symptomology, if not the
               syndrome. In order to heal the rift the Residential
               School experience may have created between Aboriginal
               Peoples and Canadian society at large, and in order to
               heal those individuals who still suffer the
               consequences of their school experiences, it is
               necessary and appropriate to establish formally the
               nature of Residential School Syndrome, causally link
               the condition to Residential School abuses (physical,
               sexual or emotional) determine the extent of its
               influence in Aboriginal populations, and suggest
               appropriate individual and community interventions that
               will bring about psychological and social health.?
               (Chrisjohn et al, 1997, pp. 1-2)


     This ? Standard Account? was found in many of the testimonies
     about Residential Schools in Canada (not part of the Royal
     Commission on Aboriginal Peoples) and in the ?apologies?
     presented by some of the Churches and the Government of Canada.
     For some, myself included, this appears to be another crime
     rather than any substantive act of contrition. Without full and
     competent inquiry, full discovery and accountability, willingness
     to disclose all, commitment to change and removal of systemic
     imperatives and interests that produced the Residential School
     experience and other horrors for Indigenous People, no real
     Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation or Prevention of Future
     Abuses is possible.

Chrisjohn, et al. (whose competent report was not included in the
RCAP) give a ?Non-Standard Account which goes like this:

       ?Residential Schools were one of many attempts at the genocide
       of the Aboriginal
        Peoples inhabiting the area now commonly called Canada.
        Initially, the goal of obliterating these peoples was
        connected with stealing what they owned (the land, the sky,
        the waters, and their lives, and all that these encompassed);
        and although this connection persists, present-day acts and
        policies of genocide are also connected with the hypocritical,
        legal and self-delusion need on the part of the perpetrators
        to conceal what they did and what they continue to do. A
        variety of rationalizations (social, legal, religious,
        political, and economic) arose to engage (in one way or
        another) all segments of Eurocanadian society in the task of
        genocide. For example,
-11-

          some were told ( and told themselves) that their actions
          arose out of a Missionary Imperative to bring the benefits
          of the One True Belief to savage pagans; others considered
          themselves justified in land theft by declaring that the
          Aboriginal Peoples were not putting the land to ?proper?
          use; and so on. The creation of the Indian Residential
          Schools followed a time-tested method of obliterating
          indigenous cultures, and  the psychosocial consequences
          these schools would have on Aboriginal Peoples were well
          understood at the time of their formation. Present-day
          symptomology found in Aboriginal Peoples and societies does
          not constitute a distinct psychological condition, but is
          the well-known and long-studied response of human beings
          living under conditions of severe and prolonged oppression.
          Although there is no doubt that individuals who attended
          Residential Schools suffered, and continue to suffer, from
          the effects of their experiences, the tactic of
          pathologizing these individuals, studying their condition,
          and offering ?therapy? to them and their communities must be
          seen as another rhetorical maneuver designed to obscure (to
          the world at large, to Aboriginal Peoples, and to Canadians
          themselves) the moral and financial accountability of
          Eurocanadian society in a continuing record of Crimes
          Against Humanity.? (Chrisjohn, et. al, 1997, pp. 3-4)

     These are some future lines of inquiry I would propose for future
     Tribunals in other places. Out of the deepest and most profound
     respect for the victims I heard and all of those I did not get to
     hear, and out of respect for their anguish, pain and suffering, I
     beg that future Tribunals be thoroughly and competently designed,
     constructed, set-up, executed and followed-up upon. There is
     simply too much at stake. Out of respect for the victims and what
     is at stake, I cannot and will not endorse ?fruits of an
     essentially poisoned tree?--which only seve those who wish to
     compound the past and present crimes with the further crimes of
     cover-up and false contrition.

References:

Chrisjohn, Roland, Young, Sherri and Michael Maraun, ?The Circle Game:
Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in
Canada?, Theytus Books Ltd, Penticton, 1997

Churchill, Ward, ?Indians Are Us?: Culture and Genocide in Native
North America?, Common Courage Press, Monroe, ME, 1994

Churchill, Ward, ?A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in
the Americas 1492 to the Present?, City Lights Press, Monroe, OR, 1997

 James Craven
 Dept. of Economics,Clark College
 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663
 jcraven@xxxxxxxxx; Tel: (360) 992-2283 Fax: 992-2863
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"Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality
of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and
United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in
South Africa and for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised
to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination--by
starvation and uneven combat--of the 'Red Savages' who could not be
tamed by captivity." ("Adolf Hitler" by John Toland, p. 702)

"Set the blood-quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid
definition of Indians, let intermarriage proceed...and eventually
Indians will be defined out of existence. When that happens,the
federal government will finally be freed from its persistent
Indian problem." (Patricia Nelson Limerick, "The Legacy of
Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West" p338)

*My Employer  has no association with My Private and Protected Opinion*
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