In British Columbia, as late as this past century, Tsimshian and Gitxsan communities were being burnt and the much lauded doctor, Dr. Helmcken, was purposefully [ http://web.uvic.ca/vv/student/smallpox/doctors/rates.html ] inoculating the Tsimshian, Haida, Nisga'a and most other west coast tribes before sending them back to their remote villages. Read More Here [ http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5171 ] And in the bigoted Doctors own words, after reading from the previous links read this [ http://bcheritage.ca/salish/trad/jshelm.htm ].
Traders travelling through the interior brought infected blankets with them to spread disease and there is even a documented case this past century of businessmen and workers digging up and taking the blankets from the graves of Indians who died of smallpox to give them to more Indians.
The treaties which were signed were generally under extreme duress. It was the only hope the Indian leadership had to save the last remaining, the last surviving members of their race.
The Canadian government residential schools were instituted long after the initial genocide. The law to force Indian children to attend residential schools wasn't passed until 1920. Then in the 1930's another law was passed to allow the church run schools to sterilize the Indian children. Canadian and British history is replete with laws and journals of; politicians, bureaucrats and traders detailing how they desired to exterminate every surviving Indian.
This is the history not taught to Canadian children.
When journalists, such as those extreme 'white' wing fanatics on the Sun News network, express outrage at the Idle No More movement and accuse those who stand with the Indian people as suffering from "White Liberal Guilt", they ignore the reality. When people proclaim they shouldn't have to suffer and pay for the wrongs of their ancestors they too suffer from severe misunderstanding. It is this lack of understanding which is used to ferment hostilities. This appears to be the purpose of the Canadian media today. No one is properly educating.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued an apology for the residential schools system yet the last school closed its doors in 1996, only 16 years ago. All through the 1900's Indian people were being abused and subjugated. Every time the Indian people attempted to use the law, the legal processes, to forward their claims of wrong doing, they were punished and outlawed.
When they brought their claims direct to Ottawa and intelligently put forward a winning argument the government brought in harsher laws and penalties. It was after just such case, in the 1920's, the attendance to Residential schools became mandatory for all Indian Children, which was enforced by the RCMP and gunboats. Their children were seized for God's sake.
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