[IPSM] The Harper ‘Apology’ — Saying ‘Sorry’ with a Forked Tongue

[willowtree at mts.net]

**/**/FYI..

http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=304


      /The Harper ‘Apology’ — Saying ‘Sorry’ with a Forked Tongue/

/Mike Krebs is an Indigenous activist in Vancouver and a contributing 
editor of /Socialist Voice/. Related Reading: //Roots and Revolutionary 
Dynamics of Indigenous Struggles in Canada 
<http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=227>/

    “I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter
    of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of
    people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue
    until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been
    absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and
    no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.”
    /—Duncan Campbell Scott, head of the Department of Indian Affairs
    and founder of the residential school system, 1920/

On June 11, 2008, Stephen Harper, prime minister of Canada and leader of 
the Conservative Party, issued an “apology” for the residential school 
system that over 150,000 Indigenous children were forced through. The 
hype before and after the statement was enormous, with extensive 
coverage in all major media.

This event had a strong emotional and psychological impact on Indigenous 
survivors of residential schools all across Canada, who suffered 
attempted forced assimilation as well as countless acts of violence, 
rape, and abuse. Descendents of those subjected to this system were 
equally affected. People packed into community halls and similar venues 
on June 11 for what was bound to be an emotionally triggering day for 
survivors, regardless of their view towards the meaning of the 
“apology.” Some survivors reportedly felt that the statement was a step 
forward, while many were highly critical.

In trying to understand the responses of Indigenous people across Canada 
to this “apology,” it is first important to address what it did not do. 
It must be judged in terms of the ability of Indigenous people to move 
forward in the process of true healing, not just from the effects of the 
residential school system, but from the entire process of Canadian 
colonialism. In this framework, the deficiencies of the “apology” are 
much greater than any positive impact it could have.

*A crime of genocide*

    “I don’t want to hear it. You know, you might as well send the
    janitor up to apologize…if it’s just empty words or a nicely written
    text.” — /Michael Cachagee, survivor of Shingwauk Indian Residential
    School/[1]

If there is one thing that Mr. Harper’s “apology” provided that could be 
considered groundbreaking or new, it’s the idea that there can be crimes 
without criminals.

You would think offering an “apology” means taking some sort of 
accountability for the residential school system. But Harper’s statement 
acknowledges that what happened is a “mistake” without dealing with it 
as a crime, and without any sense of any individual accountability for 
it. It views the residential school system as only a mistake.

No discussion of the residential school system can be meaningful without 
acknowledging that this was an act of genocide. For those who value the 
importance of international law and the United Nations convention of 
genocide, let’s look at the UN definition itself as outlined in the 
“Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 
adopted in 1948”:

    “Article 2. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the
    following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
    part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

    (a) Killing members of the group;

    (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

    (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
    calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

    (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

    (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Arguably all five of these criteria apply to the residential school 
system and other aspects of the Canadian government’s colonization of 
Indigenous people. And there can be no argument that parts (b) and (e) 
apply, as a number of Indigenous writers have pointed out.[2] It is 
important to note that guilt for this crime lies not only with the 
individuals who committed specific crimes against Indigenous people 
(i.e. sexual assault, physical violence, forced removal), but also with 
those who enacted the entire policy.

So even though Harper apologized for the residential schools as a 
“system,” it doesn’t absolve individuals who participated in the 
numerous criminal acts they committed. Yet, that is what Harper’s 
statement attempts to do by apologizing on behalf of “all Canadians,” 
deceptively hiding behind the false logic that “nobody is guilty if 
everyone is.”

This is similar to some of the ideas discussed by Cherokee activist and 
academic Andrea Smith in /Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian 
Genocide/. Smith uses Carol Adam’s concept of the “absent referent” in 
exploring various aspects of sexual violence against Indigenous women, 
as well as how this concept recurs throughout Western society, 
mythology, and history. One example is that of the “battered” woman, 
which makes women “the inherent victims of battering. The batterer is 
rendered invisible and thus the absent referent”.[3]

A similar tool of deception is at work in not only the “apology”, but 
the entire approach of the Canadian government in its “solutions” to the 
residential school issue. Aside from notorious cases like that of the 
Archbishop Hubert O’Connor,[4] and others who can be easily tarred as 
“bad people who did bad things,” in Harper’s statement the perpetrator 
of the crimes against residential school survivors has no tangible face, 
almost no concrete existence.

*Putting residential schools in historical context*

A second great weakness of the “apology,” related to the first, is that 
it attempts to separate the residential schools from the entire colonial 
project of the Canadian state. This further obscures a true 
understanding of why this crime was committed and a more real 
understanding than simply saying “we were wrong.”

The key role of the residential school system in the overall process of 
Canadian colonialism cannot be overestimated. The theft of Indigenous 
lands and resources, along with the destruction of Indigenous cultures 
and societies, were met with resistance. In many cases this resistance 
was well organized and proved difficult for the European settlers to 
quell, despite their supposedly more “advanced” weapons and military 
organization.

Rather than risking a resurgence of resistance in the various Indigenous 
communities that could result from allowing them to exist, the 
authorities adopted a policy of forced partial assimilation. Even if 
total destruction of Indigenous people could not be achieved, partial 
assimilation could weaken the resistance of Indigenous communities, 
while producing an underclass to perform menial wage labour in the 
Canadian economy.

This assimilation was partial in the sense that Indigenous people were 
not to be completely absorbed into the settler society as equals. Even 
to call these youth prisons “schools” distorts not only how these 
institutions functioned but what was actually being taught.

The residential school system had the effect of fostering complete 
self-hatred in most of those who went through it, building a collective 
psychology within Indigenous people that reproduced the colonizer’s 
image of them. Indigenous people were forced to internalize a conception 
of themselves as being drunken, lazy, and stupid. Weakening Indigenous 
communities, cultures, and nations was the primary goal, with little in 
the way of “education” even in terms of Western conceptions of learning.

*Challenging the Canadian state and the underlying settler project*

These political implications of the residential school project continue 
today. It has had such a disastrous effect on the inter-personal 
relationships of Indigenous people that its wounds are overcome only 
with immense individual and collective struggle.

Generations of physical and sexual abuse, alcohol and drug addiction, 
continued child apprehension by organs of the Canadian state, alarming 
rates of suicide — these are only the more visible of the many problems 
Indigenous people have been forced to work through because of the 
residential school experience. As a result, the ability of Indigenous 
communities to effectively organize against the continued theft of lands 
and resources is directly weakened.

Yet this resistance continues, and should be understood as one of the 
main factors influencing the decision of the Canadian government to 
issue this “apology.” Right now there are numerous struggles by 
Indigenous people within Canada over land and resources. These struggles 
are intensifying in response to the Canadian capitalist economy’s 
increased hunger for valuable resources such as platinum, uranium, and 
oil in a time of increasing prices, scarcity, and volatility in energy 
markets.

These struggles of Indigenous people, be it Haudenosaunee, Cree, Innu, 
Anishininimowin, or Tahltan, just to list a few examples, are only in 
part over who the land in question “belongs” to in the Western sense of 
private property. When Indigenous people assert sovereignty over their 
lands, this also challenges the legitimacy of the entire Canadian nation 
state and the settler project that underpins it.

More importantly, it involves struggles for the assertion of a different 
conception of land and of Indigenous worldviews that see the well being 
of humans and the state of the land and all its living beings as 
inseparable. This means a respect for the earth and valuing life in a 
way totally alien from the “market value” these things may or may not 
have under capitalist relations.

These struggles over the land mark a departure from engaging with the 
Canadian political establishment on the terms it tries to set. Evidence 
of this can be seen in the consistent criminalization that goes on 
whenever Indigenous people make stands for their rights. Organizers like 
Shaun Brant, the KI 6, Robert Lovelace, and Wolverine are presented by 
the mainstream media, the police, and politicians as “criminals,” while 
the actual political content and nature of their actions is hidden.

The “apology” of Harper, along with the entire “Truth and Reconciliation 
Commission” project, must in the end be understood in this context. For 
example, we are being asked to engage on the level of accepting whether 
the apology is “sincere” or not and whether the settlement money is 
“enough,” and to welcome the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” as a 
meaningful space in which to heal.

This is a direct attempt to reframe the direction of Indigenous 
struggles by looking for solutions, or at least dialogue, within the 
framework of the Canadian settler state as it exists today. Could there 
be a more fundamental attack on Indigenous sovereignty than this, given 
the direction in which many Indigenous struggles are heading all across 
Canada?

*Mixed reactions to Harper’s statement*

The “apology” certainly had an impact on survivors of the residential 
school system, and this is completely understandable. Even a small 
acknowledgement of wrongdoing goes a long way, given how many years the 
Canadian government has refused to show accountability for its crimes. 
Indigenous people are subjected to a large amount of crazymaking around 
the ways they have been negatively impacted by the residential schools 
and other criminal acts. In fact this crazymaking is itself yet another 
act working to undermine the struggle of Indigenous people to end 
colonial oppression.

Given this dynamic, the “apology” could certainly be expected to have an 
impact on Indigenous people, which was characterized generally in the 
mainstream media as “mixed” at best. This reflects the healthy level of 
distrust among Indigenous people as to the true intentions and meaning 
of the “apology,” all hype aside. While many survivors interviewed in 
the media appear to have accepted the apology, many have also completely 
rejected it, and very few actually believe it will be of much 
consequence in terms of the healing process Indigenous people are still 
going through.

*Towards ‘truth and reconciliation’ on Indigenous terms*

Whether it is over the ability to decide what will and will not happen 
on our own lands, or how we are to overcome the impact of the 
residential school experience and what to do with those criminally 
responsible, it is essential to carry out these struggles on our own 
terms. Time and time again this approach has proven to be the most 
effective way to move forward in our struggles.

For this reason, we have to recognize the inherent limitations to the 
upcoming “Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” Unlike the commission of 
the same name that took place in post-apartheid South Africa, this 
commission is being headed by the same racist institutions responsible 
for the crimes under study, not to mention the crimes it continues to 
commit.

With a power dynamic like this, we can’t expect real truth or 
reconciliation to come out of this commission. We especially can’t 
expect these things from the commission under the Harper government, the 
same government that voted against ratification of the UN declaration on 
the rights of Indigenous people, the same government which is still 
pushing for the extinguishment of aboriginal title (to mention only two 
of its main anti-Indigenous policies).

The most effective means of healing the wounds of the residential school 
experience will be to challenge the very foundations of its existence. 
This includes the grassroots work of survivors that have been fighting 
for several decades to see real justice for the perpetrators of the 
crimes of the residential school project. Without this effort the 
Canadian government would have never been put in a position to issue an 
“apology,” however weak and limited that apology was. This challenge 
also includes the struggles against the destruction of Indigenous 
territories going on all across Canada.

These struggles for sovereignty open up space for true healing, not just 
of the problems we face as a result of the genocidal residential school 
project, but all the problems we are forced to deal with as a result of 
Canadian colonialism.

**

*Footnotes*

[1] From interview with Al-Jazeera English, available at 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LJazWy0HHc4

[2] See for example /‘Healing begins when the wounding stops: Indian 
Residential Schools and the prospects for “truth and reconciliation” in 
Canada,’/ by Ward Churchill, 
http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/06/09/healing-begins-when-the-wounding-stops/.
See also /‘An Historic Non-Apology, Completely and Utterly Not 
Accepted,’/ co-authored by Roland Chrisjohn, Andrea Bear Nicholas, Karen 
Stote, James Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi), Tanya Wasacase, Pierre 
Loiselle, and Andrea O. Smith, 
http://www.marxmail.org/ApologyNotAccepted.htm

[3] Andrea Smith, /Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian 
Genocide/. South End Press (2005), Cambridge MA. p. 22.

[4] Hubert O’Connor was a Roman Catholic bishop of the British Columbia 
diocese of Prince George. He resigned after being charged with sex 
crimes in 1991. He was convicted in 1996 of committing rape and indecent 
assault on two young aboriginal women during the 1960s when he was a 
priest. He was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison, but was released on 
bail after serving six months.