DELIBERATE GENOCIDE OF ABORIGINAL PEOPLE IN CANADA –

THE FACTS
Evidence of the intent by government and churches to commit genocide against
native people, reflecting a national policy and plan (documents are available):

a. The report of Dr. Peter Bryce, summer 1907, in which a constantly high
death rate of between 30%-50% was found in most western residential
schools because of a practice by staff of “deliberately infecting children with
infectious diseases”. This death rate stayed constant for over 40 years (Globe
and Mail, April 24, 2007).

b. Statistical Tables from the federal government reveal a net de-population of

native people across Canada between 1904 and 1917 of nearly 25%, and
again during the 1920’s. This decline was directly attributable to widespread
and untreated tuberculosis.

c. Despite this huge mortality level in the residential schools, the federal
government passed a law in 1920 requiring compulsory attendance in these
schools by every native child, on pain of imprisonment and fining of their
parents.

d. The same year (1919-1920), all medical inspection of these schools was
abolished by a federal government order-in-council. Deaths of native
students from tuberculosis rose dramatically immediately following this
abolition of medical inspection.

e. During the subsequent decade (1920-30), natives were stripped of their legal
rights and power to hire a lawyer (1927), formal legal guardianship of native
children was transferred from the federal government to residential school
Principals, i.e., the churches (1929), and involuntary sterilization laws were
implemented by which any native child in these schools could legally be
made infertile (1929-1933).

f. One third to one half of residential school students continued to die on

average for nearly fifty years (1900-1950), despite repeated studies and
warnings to the churches and federal government.

g. The policy of the federal government was not to hospitalize Indians and Inuit
people suffering and dying from tuberculosis. (Globe and Mail, May 29,
1953)

h. Numerous accounts exist of native children sick with tuberculosis being

admitted en masse into residential schools and deliberately housed with the

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 healthy, causing subsequent deaths. No segregation of sick and healthy was
practiced.

i. Native children consistently died at a much higher rate within residential

schools than outside them, because of conditions within the schools that
"weakened ... their constitution". Despite knowing this, government officials
took no action. (Letter of M. McKay to D.C. Scott, April 1910)

j. Native children infected with smallpox and tuberculosis were deliberately

sent back to their homes and into native villages by residential school staff
and doctors (e.g., Mission Catholic school, 1923).

k. Two distinct standards of health and medical care were practiced by

government and church doctors at the residential schools, along clear racial
lines. Native children received a consistently lower standard of attention and
treatment (e.g., letter of Dr. F. Pitts, Lejac school, 1934).

l. Government officials, including the heads of Indian Affairs, authorized these

practices through a policy that legitimated lack of care and widespread
deaths on the grounds that “a high death rate from tuberculosis and other
diseases is to be expected … among Indian children” (DIA Superintendent
D.C. Scott, 1918).

m. Extensive residential school records were deliberately destroyed by federal

government “document destruction teams” throughout the 1950’s and ‘60’s
across Canada (Ottawa Sun, May, 2007). Government and church officials
suppressed evidence of deaths and other crimes in residential schools
consistently for nearly a century, and as recently as the 1960’s. (Province,
October, 1998)

Source:
Documents from the RG 10 series on Indian Residential Schools, federal Department of
Indian Affairs, Ottawa, (Vols. R 7733), reproduced in Hidden from History: The Canadian
Holocaust (2005, 2nd ed.) by K. Annett

http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org

For more information, contact Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared-Toronto at

FRDToronto@yahoo.ca.