User:Aefmra/sandbox

The use of cultural genocide is used to differentiate from the Holocaust: a clearly accepted genocide in history. Some argue that this description negates the biological and physical acts of genocide that occurred in tandem with cultural destruction. When engaged within the context of international law, colonialism in Canada has inflicted each criteria for the United Nations definition of the crime of genocide. However, all below examples of physical genocide are still highly debated as the requirement of intention and overall motivations behind the perpetrators actions is not widely agreed upon as of yet.

Canada’s actions towards Indigenous peoples can be categorized under the first example of the UN definition of genocide, “killing members of the group,” through the spreading of deadly disease such as during the 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic. Further examples from other parts of the country include the Saskatoon’s freezing deaths, the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirited people, and the scalping bounties offered by the governor of Nova Scotia Edward Cornwallis.

Cover page of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions final report.

Secondly, as affirmed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the residential school system was a clear example of (b) and (e) and similar acts continue to this day through the Millennium Scoop, as Indigenous children are disproportionately removed from their families and placed into the care of others who are often of different cultures through the Canadian child welfare system. Once again this repeats the separation of Indigenous children from their traditional ways of life. Moreover, children living on-reserve are subject to inadequate funding for social services which has led to filing of a ninth non-compliance order in early 2021 the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in attempts to hold the Canadian government accountable.

Subsection (c) of the UN definition: "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” is an act of genocide that has historic legacies, such as the near and full extrapolation of caribou and bison that contributed to mass famines in Indigenous communities, how on reserve conditions infringe on the quality of life of Indigenous peoples as their social services are underfunded and inaccessible, and hold the bleakest water qualities in the first world country. Canada also situates precarious and lethal ecological toxicities that pose threats to the land, water, air and peoples themselves near or on Indigenous territories.

Red Dress MMIW - Missing and murdered Indigenous women - The Mohawk Warrior Flag, designed by Louis Karoniaktajeh Hall - Justice For Regis - Not Another Black Life rally and March - May 30, 2020

Indigenous people continue to report (d), the "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group,” within more recent years. Specifically through the avoidance of informed consent surrounding sterilization procedures with Indigenous people like the case of Alisa Lombard from 2018 in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Examples such as the ones listed above have led to widespread physical and virtual action across the country to protest the historical and current genocidal harms faced by Indigenous peoples.