Chief commissioner Marion Buller and, left to right, commissioners Brian Eyolfson, Qajaq Robinson and Michele Audette prepare the final report by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Gatineau, Que., on Monday. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
It was an "inescapable conclusion" that genocide was committed against Canada's Indigenous peoples, said Marion Buller, the chief commissioner for the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, during a Monday news conference.
That conclusion has been reverberating across the country since news first surfaced on Friday that the inquiry had determined that thousands of those women and girls were victims of a "Canadian genocide."
The final report said Canada, from its pre-colonial past to today, has aimed to "destroy Indigenous peoples."
"Canada has displayed a continuous policy, with shifting expressed motives but an ultimately steady intention, to destroy Indigenous peoples physically, biologically, and as social units, thereby fulfilling the required specific intent element," said a supplemental report.
The inquiry based this partly on the UN's 1948 definition of genocide. According to the UN, genocide is any of five acts committed with the "intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." The acts are:
Killing members of the group.
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
"The Canadian state was founded on colonial genocidal policies that are inextricably linked to Canada's contemporary relationship with Indigenous peoples," said the supplementary report.
"Modern Canadian policies perpetuate these colonial legacies, and have resulted in clear patterns of violence and marginalization of Indigenous peoples, particularly women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual)."
A group of female students and a nun pose in a classroom at Cross Lake Indian Residential School in Cross Lake, Man., in a 1940 archive photo. (Library and Archives Canada)
The inquiry argues that the genocide continues through the over-apprehension of children in the child welfare system, the lack of police protection for Indigenous women and the continued existence of the Indian Act, first enacted in 1876.
"In addition to the premeditated killing of Indigenous peoples, there existed egregious colonial policies that caused serious bodily and mental harm to Indigenous peoples and deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Indigenous communities calculated to bring about their physical destruction," said the supplementary report.
The report cites as examples scalping bounties offered in Nova Scotia in the 1750s to reward the murder of the Mi'kmaq, the elimination of the Beothuk and policies in the 1870s to deny food to Indigenous people on the Prairies to clear the way for the Canadian Pacific Railway.
More than 150,000 First Nations children were forced to attend residential schools. An estimated 6,000 died there. (Department of Indian and Northern Affairs/Library and Archives Canada )
The report then moves to the 1880s and the beginning of government-sanctioned residential schools where Indigenous children were forcibly taken to face "starvation, deliberate infection of diseases, beating, torture, rape, solitary confinement, assaults and ill-treatment."
"These historical policies are appalling in their systematic destruction of Indigenous communities, but what is more appalling is that many of these policies continue today under a different guise," it says.
These acts and omissions "have had direct, life-threatening consequences."
The report cites scalping bounties offered in Nova Scotia in the 1750s to reward the murder of the Mi'kmaq. (Library and Archives Canada)
The inquiry quotes genocide scholar Andrew Woolford, a sociology professor at the University of Manitoba, who argues that Canadian scholars "have not given colonial genocide in Canada enough attention."
In an interview with CBC News, Woolford said that too often the experience of those targeted by genocide are deleted from timeframes used to determine what constitutes a genocide.
"Particularly when we are talking about settler colonialism, which stretches across hundreds of years, and it has all these shifts and changes in how it's enacted," he said.
First Nations people gathered at Boston Bar, a settlement in the Fraser Canyon, B.C. (Library and Archives Canada)
Woolford said he sees genocide like the inquiry did, as "not just as a matter of physical destruction, but in a sociological sense, as the destruction of groups."
When Canadian officials began discussing the "Indian problem," it's clear that Indigenous people were seen as barrier to overcome, he said.
"Indigenous people were represented as an obstacle to Canadian nation-building, as an obstacle to land possession.
"We see that a variety of different techniques put in place like residential schools, famine and forced removals."
Not all scholars believe the national inquiry made the case for genocide.
Tamara Starblanket, author of Suffer the Little Children, Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State, said the inquiry undercut its arguments by using a term like "Canadian genocide".
Andrew Woolford, a sociology professor at the University of Manitoba, argues that Canadian scholars 'have not given colonial genocide in Canada enough attention.' (Travis Golby/CBC)
"The deployment of the language in this matter domesticates the international legal question of genocide," said Starblanket, a Nehiyaw isKwew (Cree) from Ahtahkakoop First Nation in Treaty Six territory in Saskatchewan.
"There is no such thing as Canadian genocide because genocide itself is a crime in international law," she said.
Starblanket, whose book concludes Canada is guilty of genocide, said Ottawa shielded itself from that crime by only adopting two of the five acts included in the UN convention.
Under the Criminal Code, genocide includes only "killing members of the group or deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction."
No charge of genocide can proceed without the blessing of the attorney general, and the inquiry does not make any recommendations to amend the Criminal Code.
Starblanket said the inquiry "overstepped its mandate" with its genocide conclusion.
"The inquiry is a domestic inquiry and it has no mandate to deal with international legal questions. Their mandate is limited to Canadian law, which is the Criminal Code and Canada reframed genocide in its criminal code to avoid getting caught up in international law," she said.
Tamara Starblanket says the inquiry overstepped its mandate. (Facebook/Native Education College
This particular case looks like the government is trying to teach protesters a lesson as to what the consequences will be if they dare to disrupt or even oppose the status quo . 45 years for allegedly trying to burn a cop car ? Fuck that and fuck their system.
June 22 — The undersigned civil and human rights organizations, legal associations, and policy institutes condemn the excessive and politically-motivated charges that the federal government is leveling against two members of our community, Colin Mattis and Urooj Rahman, and its aggressive effort to keep them imprisoned and separated from their families pending trial.
Colin Mattis and Urooj Rahman.
In its attempt to use the courts and a case of alleged property damage to stifle a historic popular mobilization against systemic anti-Black racism, the United States Attorney’s Office only further exposes the injustices that gave rise to and sustain the mass protests.
George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25 has led to a critical moment of national reckoning with the institutionalized legacy of racial violence and white supremacy in the United States. Structural violence pervades the criminal legal system: from law enforcement, to prosecution, to sentencing, to incarceration. This is the system that killed George Floyd and threatens Black lives, while protecting police officers from accountability.
Attempt to chill popular protest
The Trump Administration is wielding the punitive force of this system against Colin and Urooj, who are Black and South Asian, respectively, in order to chill popular protest against the unjust status quo. On May 30, Colin and Urooj, both attorneys committed to social justice, joined tens of thousands of demonstrators in New York City in defense of Black lives.
That night, they were arrested and charged by the federal government with allegedly attempting to burn an abandoned police car and charring the interior. For this alleged property damage — a routine state law crime — they are facing federal charges carrying a mandatory minimum of 45 years in prison. These are the types of charges that generally accompany incidents with mass casualties.
If convicted, our colleagues, who are both in their early 30s, would be imprisoned for most, if not all, of the rest of their lives.
Coupled with the outrageous charges designed to stifle dissent, federal prosecutors are insisting that the young lawyers remain in permanent pre-trial detention in the Metropolitan Detention Complex (MDC) in Brooklyn. MDC is a federal jail infamous for its human rights abuses and inhumane conditions, where health risks are only exacerbated due to COVID-19.
Two federal judges decided Colin and Urooj could safely be released on bail, which they were, until the government made the highly unusual move to appeal the decision. Now the Second Circuit Court of Appeals will decide their fate.
Meanwhile, the police officer who is charged with murdering George Floyd is currently out on bail. The perverse system that treats two protesters of color demanding racial justice more punitively for an alleged property crime than it treats a white police officer charged with the murder of a Black man is precisely the injustice animating the calls of the Movement for Black Lives and protesters for fundamental change.
In our current system, Black defendants are far more likely to face charges that carry mandatory minimums than white defendants, and Black and brown defendants are far more likely to be held in pre-trial detention than white defendants.
As legal, advocacy and policy organizations with long histories of supporting movements for justice, we are well aware that, particularly at the tipping points of social transformation, the state will deploy maximum force to undermine momentum. The federal government’s cruel and unnecessary effort to keep Colin and Urooj in prison pre-trial, and potentially for the rest of their natural lives, is an approach guided by a political agenda rather than by law. It reflects the Trump administration’s animosity toward the powerful and growing Movement for Black Lives.
Such political prosecutions mirror historic attempts to undermine racial justice movements in this country and in authoritarian regimes throughout the world. We cannot allow the federal government to use this case to distract from or suppress the underlying demands for justice that has brought many thousands of people in every state in the nation to the streets.
We call for the immediate release of Colin and Urooj on bail and for the federal government to drop these excessive charges. Our community will be made safer upon their return home to their families, and when the state ceases to prioritize property over human life and our collective well-being.
Center for Constitutional Rights
Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law – New York University School of Law
There have been many moments of beauty amidst the struggle against racism and hideous trumpite fascism during these last few weeks, and here is one of them.....
Uniting in Struggle, Organizing for Revolution
Beautiful Rising in Santa Ana—Joyous, Internationalist, Revolutionary
| revcom.us
The sight of dozens of mainly Latino people marching through downtown Santa Ana, California, shouting “Black Lives Matter!” on Saturday afternoon, June 27, was absolutely beautiful. A unity march brought together the fight for Black Lives with the demand “No more kids in cages!” and also merged powerfully for a short time with a protest against the occupation of Palestine. It was initiated by a Latina from the area who had never led a protest before and reached out to the Revolution Club and other groups to take this up with her. The collectivity of groups and individuals that led this together was part of the beauty and power of it, and the large Revolution—Nothing Less! banner became the symbol of unity of the march and the speak-out afterwards.
The opening rally and march involved various groups putting forth different programs in an overall spirit of unity and appreciation including the Revolution Club, Free R Kids that has been leading protests all over the LA Region, Refuse Fascism, and a group of Brown Berets who drove all the way from Colorado. When it arrived at the Palestinian rally, both protests were really strengthened by this coming together, the unity was very real, people talking about their own experiences of oppression and about what they have learned about each other’s oppression and their struggles for liberation. There was a real indictment of America that was part of the Palestinian rally that strengthened that sentiment among everyone.
When the march arrived back at the park where it started, the Revolution—Nothing Less! banner was the backdrop to the rally and speak-out, where several people from organizations spoke as well as others in the crowd who wanted to talk. The people who spoke from Free R Kids made important contributions to the character of the whole thing. The founder of it talked about how people come here from all over the world because of what the U.S. does to their countries, and he talked about how we have to stand up for all children, Black, Brown, white, they are all our children. He said the R in the name is for revolution, but not one that tears everything down because you need a plan of what to do after that, instead it is a revolution of changing minds.
A speaker from the same group told the story of how she was jailed and separated from her mother by the immigration authorities when she was four years old. It was a heart-wrenching speech filled with determination to do everything possible not to let this happen to anyone else. An organizer who comes out of the street life brought up two really young guys from one of the neighborhoods in Santa Ana to point out they are part of this, and a bit later an older guy who lives nearby and was hearing the protest came over to say he was from a different and opposed neighborhood of those young guys but now we are coming together.
Michelle spoke again for the Revolution Club, indicting America and calling for people to burn the flag with the Revolution Club on July 4. She talked about how a new society is necessary and possible, and how there IS a plan for that, we have the leadership of Bob Avakian and the Constitution he’s written for a new socialist republic in North America. She gave people a sense of who this leader is and called on people to get with this, giving recognition to people there who had already put on the Revolution—Nothing Less! T-shirt during the march, including two young women who had come up to stand with her while she spoke.
Towards the end of the rally, Chantelle from Refuse Fascism spoke and made a really important contribution to the whole thing, bringing to life the need to stay in the streets and drive the fascist regime from power. The rally ended with a poem by the woman who had initiated all of this, conveying her love of the people for whom she is fighting.
When the rally was over, the Revolution Club told everyone that anyone who wanted to talk and learn more about the revolution could join the little meet-up happening right then. About seven new people stuck around to do that and three who have already started to get involved before that day. Some others who had also put on the T-shirts earlier had to leave, but gave a way to stay in contact. In this gathering, people went around in a circle and introduced themselves and said something about why they were there at that protest and why they were there in this revolution gathering. Several members of the Revolution Club were part of doing that as well, with a diversity of experience and thinking.
Just that process of going around and people meeting and hearing from each other in this kind of way was pretty precious. People were able to get a sense of a movement for revolution and stepping into that with other people. After that round of things, we told everyone about beginning plans for an anti-July 4th protest and celebration, and read quote 1:31 from BAsics to give people an introduction to Bob Avakian. Then we read out loud the “No More” flyer which gives people a way to know what to do now to start working on making revolution. And then we broke up the formal gathering and people talked with each other in smaller groupings for a while.
Without trying to get into everything, one thing that stood out from these conversations is how many people really are looking for what can put an end to oppression, even while they are working on many things short of revolution. A guy with a “Defund the Police” sign said he is generally more drawn to anarchism, but he is really happy to have found an organized group with a plan for how to make fundamental change. A guy who had joined from the Palestinian rally said he has been protesting for Palestine as long as he can remember, together with his parents, and it was refreshing to find a group that doesn’t ultimately lead people back to politicians and voting. Two women who came together said they have been talking about revolution and one said she thinks it will take war to actually put an end to this system. And they all had thoughtful questions about things and listened to each other and want to work together on the anti-4th celebration.
I just finished watching the amazingly intense documentary called Whose Streets , which was the starting off point for the Black Lives Matter movement. It tells the story of the murder of teenaged Michael Brown , who was gunned down by pig Darren Wilson , and the unrest and organizing that followed . This film truly lays bare the undisguised racism of the pigs in amerikkka , and by extension the real racism of the entire capitalist/imperialist system. Everyone should see it. Please do.
It's amazing the amount of awareness that has been raised around police violence and systemic racism in general. No matter what happens, voices have been heard and people have woken up. Some will take the struggle higher, others will go home, but no one will forget .
Juneteenth: ILWU shuts down 29 ports along the West Coast
Taking bold stands against systemic racism and oppression is nothing new for the Bay Area’s Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10. The union has organized work stoppages to protest many injustices from apartheid in South Africa to the police murder of Oscar Grant to the Israeli bombing of Gaza. Local 10 was instrumental in organizing the Million Worker March in 2004 and bringing back the militant tradition of May 1, International Workers’ Day, to the San Francisco Bay Area.
ILWU Local 10 President Trent Willis, with other union members, speaks on June 19 about their militant West Coast action. WW Photo: Judy Greenspan
When Local 10 put out a call for action on Juneteenth (June 19, 1865, is the date the Emancipation Proclamation reached Texas during the Civil War) to protest police terror against George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and all the victims of police brutality, every single ILWU local joined in to shut down the entire West Coast.
On June 19, longshore workers brought shipping commerce to a halt from Vancouver to San Diego. This work stoppage cost the ship owners and ports tens of million of dollars.
In Oakland, ILWU Locals 10, 34, 75 and 91 organized a march and a car caravan under the union banner: “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All.” On the morning of Juneteenth, thousands of people on foot, in cars, on bicycles and even on motorcycles showed up at the Port of Oakland.
The opening rally included speeches by “the real Clarence Thomas” — the retired ILWU Local 10 leader — as well as scholar and activist Angela Davis and actor/ activist Danny Glover, calling in from home. ILWU Local 10 President Trent Willis spoke and helped chair the opening rally.
Then the march and car caravan took off slowly toward downtown Oakland. Thousands of demonstrators wearing masks, many carrying homemade signs and banners, streamed across the Adeline Overpass down to the city streets. ILWU members and supporters stopped traffic to allow the huge protest to work its way up Broadway. On this day, not only did all work stop at the Port of Oakland — all traffic in Oakland ground to a halt!
First stop was the Oakland Police Department headquarters, where Michael Brown Sr., whose son was killed in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014; the parents of Oscar Grant; and other victims of police terror spoke out for a citywide campaign to defund the OPD and invest in Oakland’s communities. Cat Brooks of the Anti-Police Terror Project called on everyone to support this effort as well as the campaign by the Black Organizing Project to end the school police department, creating “police-free schools.”
Thousands of people crowd Oscar Grant Plaza for the final port shutdown rally on June 19. WW Photo: Judy Greenspan
Finally the march reached Oscar Grant Plaza (renamed by the people after Grant’s 2009 murder by Bay Area Rapid Transit police). The plaza was filled beyond capacity with thousands of demonstrators, and the streets were clogged with hundreds of cars from the caravan. Closing speakers included ILWU members, community activists and family members of those killed by police — all expressing solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
One special guest speaker was hip-hop artist, rapper and movie director, Boots Riley, who comes from Oakland. Riley talked about the political significance of the shutdown. He asked everyone to imagine what would happen if this wasn’t just a one-day shutdown of West Coast ports. He said the financial costs of an indefinite shutdown would be unimaginable, but that’s what would be needed to make change happen.
Riley said, “We need to show them we ain’t asking, we’re telling. We’ll stop the world and make them motherf—ers jump off.” (SFGATE.com, June 20)
It makes no difference who the president of the u.s. is, the hypocrisy surrounding "human rights & democracy " is never ending. Yes, they also have political prisoners just like any other country . Read this :
Free Muntaqim, Mutulu and all U.S. political prisoners!
Two prisoner liberation movements in the U.S. have finally awakened people to the fact that there are political prisoners in the U.S. The first is the international outcry during COVID-19 letting the world know that people are being held in prisons, jails and detention centers without personal protective equipment, adequate social distancing and quality health care.
Jalil Muntaqim
Dr. Mutulu Shakur
The second is the demand to free all aging, elderly and immunocompromised prisoners, including a large number of people who committed political actions on the streets decades ago and are dying inside U.S. prisons.
Jalil Muntaqim and Dr. Mutulu Shakur, both leaders of the Black Liberation struggle, are two such political prisoners, and they will die inside if they are not released immediately.
Jalil Muntaqim (aka Anthony Bottom) became active in the Black Panther Party as a teenager. In 1971, at the age of 19, he was arrested with several other Black activists and charged with the murder of two New York City police officers. The case came to be known as the New York 3, and Muntaqim, Herman Bell and Nuh Washington were convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in the New York state prison system.
As with many cases involving Black political activists, the government — through its FBI — was front and center in launching a Cointelpro-like campaign dubbed “NewKill,” which served to discredit, frame and incarcerate leaders of the BPP and the Black Liberation Army.
Muntaqim, an elder who is widely respected both inside and outside prison, has been incarcerated for 49 years in New York state prisons. Lawyers and supporters have been working to get a compassionate release for Muntaqim, who has suffered from hypertension, respiratory problems and heart disease.
In late May, Muntaqim contracted COVID-19 and supporters have been working overtime to win his release. According to a recent article in the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, “Jalil Muntaqim’s release is a public health imperative.” (May 26)
The article goes on to report that the majority of New York state’s 43,000 prisoners are Black and Latinx and that one-quarter of these prisoners are elderly and immunocompromised.
Dr. Shakur, freedom fighter
Similar to Muntaqim, Dr. Mutulu Shakur was a respected leader of the Black community and the movement for Black Liberation in New York City in the 1960s. He is also a well-known Doctor of Acupuncture who used acupuncture at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx to treat drug addiction and other medical problems. He is also the stepfather to the late, legendary hip-hop artist and activist Tupac Shakur.
Just like Muntaqim, Shakur was hounded and targeted by Cointelpro in the 1960s and 70s. He was later convicted of conspiracy charges relating to the escape and liberation of Assata Shakur, a member of BLA, and of the Brink’s robbery in upstate New York in 1981. He has served decades in federal prisons for his actions.
Shakur has been suffering from several chronic and serious health conditions like diabetes, glaucoma and hypertension, which led to a stroke several years ago. In 2019, after suffering for months with severe pain, he was finally diagnosed with advanced bone marrow cancer. He has developed cancerous lesions in his spine, ribs and pelvis.
According to the online petition to the U.S. Parole Commission, “Dr. Shakur is 69 years old, and aging in prison after 34 years of incarceration. He needs treatment and recovery in humane conditions immediately. We fear for his survival and his life.” Shakur’s supporters had a week of action for his release involving petitions and social media earlier this year. (tinyurl.com/y8tr486e)
The lives of both political prisoners depend upon their immediate release from prison. Not only are prisons the epicenter of the coronavirus for the most vulnerable populations, but they are well-documented institutions of medical neglect and abuse. Both Muntaqim and Mutulu have ongoing campaigns for compassionate release and long overdue parole.
It is high time to return these brave and heroic fighters back to their family, friends and community. Free Jalil and Mutulu! Free them all!
For more information about both prisoners’ campaigns, contact the National Jericho Movement at tinyurl.com/ybh2apvw/.
I just watched Knife Manual and Rival Gang live stream a show from the Victoria Events Centre , and it was so good to see those guys rock live again. I only wish it could happen with a live audience, but that will have to wait for now. Thanks to Tyler for telling me and sending me the link. Love & Respect to you all.
