 MNN. Dec. 16, 2002. Former Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Chief, David Ahenakew, made comments which have the Canadian press and a few politicians howling for blood.Ahenakew started his career in the army and served Canada exceptionally well. Canada gave him and Order of Canada. All his life he fought for a better life for Indigenous people. Like everyone else who fought for the First People, he hit a brick wall – time and time again. Akenakew is reported as saying, among other things, “I don’t support Hitler. But he cleaned up a hell of a lot of things, didn’t he?”Suddenly the publicity hounds are calling for application of S. 319 of the Criminal Code. Why? This must be one of the most ignored parts of Canadian Criminal Law. Indigenous people have been suffering from the willful promotion of hate crimes for years. Canada refuses to address the Canadian genocide that is ongoing. No one who calls us down has ever been charged.The British paid generous bounty money for native scalps – more for women because they didn’t want us to “breed”. Settlers took what they said was empty land and helped themselves to all our resources.Canada was an inspiration to Hitler. Our holocaust led to the loss of thousands of nations and over 100 million of our people throughout the Western Hemisphere after the European invasion. This is the worst holocaust in all humanity. For those of us who survived, Canada then worked along with the United States to pioneer racial segregation. We were put in barbed wired concentration camps, on reserves and left to sicknesses and starvation. Our children were kidnapped and sent to residential schools. 50% died. They were medically and socially experimented on, sexually abused and used as forced labor. Hitler used this tactic too. That’s why taking children from their parents is a crime defined in the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Hitler admired this “removal policy”. He thought it was a great way to promote racial purity and to eliminate the people he called “eugenically deficient”. We weren’t allowed to leave the reserves without passes. The Jews were forced to wear the Star of David. Hitler used propaganda too. Anti-Indian propaganda in the media and in the schools conditioned people to accept the lies they were told about us. This conditions the dominant society to mistreat us and allow us to be abused. They labeled us as primitives. They said we were a dying race. Our versions of history are never taught in their schools. Academics who want to present our point of view find themselves in a professional dead end. Decades after signing the convention on preventing genocide, Canada continues its genocidal habits. Nobody prosecutes the provincial governments for the lies and hate propaganda about Indigenous history taught in their education system. Canadians are always eager to investigate genocide that happened thousands of miles away. They refuse to look at the evidence of ongoing genocide on their doorsteps. How can leaders be so shocked when 500 native women have disappeared in the last decade and have not been investigated? Don’t daughters of native people have the same right to walk around our land in safety as the daughters of the immigrants? Canada is an enthusiastic promoter of international agreements to help other people clean up their human rights abuses. Its government officials, judiciary and legal profession don’t follow the principles of the conventions it signs. Before sicing your bloodthirsty dogs on a heart-broken native elder, Canadians should clean up their own act. They should face the truth about their own history of promoting genocide and hatred. Kahentinetha Horn | ||
| poster: Thahoketoteh | ||
