Michelle Stirling

By Michelle Stirling ©2023

Most governments, at least those of the West, abhor genocide – a heinous crime described by the UN Geneva Convention as:

 The definition contained in Article II of the Convention describes genocide as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. It does not include political groups or so called “cultural genocide”.

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

The consequences for participating in a genocide can be imprisonment or execution.

So, it is strange that the government of Canada – the entire House of Commons – accepted NDP MP Leah Gazan’s motion of Oct. 27, 2022 to ‘describe’ Indian Residential Schools as genocide, without debate or evidence presented.

Stranger still that the federal government is pumping millions of dollars into the University of Manitoba for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), when all that organization appears to be doing is falsifying and rewriting Canadian history and it has not even managed to make public the provincial death records that were handed over to its predecessor – the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – in 2014. 

A decade later, the NCTR, an organization operated by the University of Manitoba, with a mandate to make all such public records available to the public, still has not done that.

Why?

Is it because the facts of history would destroy the genocide narrative?

The historical documents show that most children enrolled in Indian Residential Schools were enrolled by their parents. Rather than thousands of deaths as alleged, there are 423 who died at Indian Residential Schools.  That’s out of 150,000 attendees over the course of 113 years.  Some genocide.

So, the historical documents show that what Marie Wilson, Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in 2015 is not true:

Parents had their children ripped out of their arms, taken to a distant and unknown place never to be seen again, buried in an unmarked grave, long ago forgotten and overgrown.^[6]

The records show that parents voluntarily enrolled their children to these schools.  Parents were allowed to visit (though sometimes distance precluded that). Children returned home for festive and summer holidays – unless the children were orphans or if their home was dysfunctional and dangerous.  In that case, those children might have been apprehended – ‘ripped out of their arms’ – to protect the child from serious alcoholism, physical or sexual abuse, or simple neglect in the home.

Even dysfunctional parents love their children, but can society allow small children to remain in a home alone when the parents might be gone either trapping or drinking for days on end?

Independent researcher Nina Green has painstakingly analyzed the death records by Indian Residential School and band in British Columbia. She has identified the cause of death and where the child’s body was buried (with few exceptions) and created an excel chart that anyone can review. (See the two files below)

The death records from the provinces that Nina has compiled for British Columbia show that the children were accounted for and most of those who sadly passed away, were sent home for burial on reserve.  In extenuating circumstances, they were buried in the mission or community graveyard near the school with full burial rites according to their family’s denomination, and with a marker, that has disintegrated over time.  The cause of death is also noted.

How can an individual researcher like Nina Green accomplish this work alone when a multi-million-dollar tax-funded operation, soon to occupy a multi-million-dollar edifice on the University of Manitoba campus, fails to even get the death records posted and available to the public as per their mandate?

Why is the federal government and a major tax-funded Canadian university driving the genocide narrative on Indian Residential Schools – in flagrant opposition to the evidence – creating strife, division, mistrust, fear and complicated grief for so many Canadians, especially Indigenous people.

Why would the federal government push such a narrative when China has accused Canada of genocide at the UN, along with a handful of other terror states?

Why wouldn’t the Canadian government and all politicians at all levels of government want to defend this country and our citizens from false charges?

Now it is clear why key players in this drama are urging the government to make Indian Residential School ‘denial’ – and the presentation of facts like these – a criminal offense.

Is it to cover up the falsification of history and the fact the Canadian taxpayer is being defrauded?

What is the end game? We don’t know.

According to Nina Green’s research, the Memorial Register of the NCTR includes names of people who died unrelated to Indian Residential Schools, thus creating a false impression that thousands of children died there or are missing. Screenshot above from this CTV News story of Sept. 30, 2019.

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Michelle Stirling is a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists. She researched, wrote, and co-produced historical shows about Southern Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Hugh Dempsey, then curator of the Glenbow Museum. She also researched and co-wrote a documentary on genocide; the factual content so dark the producer decided not to release it.

Note: I know that many people are suffering from many losses. Please see “Ambiguous Losses: Epidemics, Orphans and Unmarked Graves” for more historical context and insights.

Here’s a bizarre anomaly – 22 Canadian lawyers petitioning to have Canada brought before the International Criminal Court.