Truth and Reconciliation... Legitimacy

[jacee]

I'm not dictating anything. All I have done, repeatedly, is point to the accepted, legal, international definition of genocide.

The term "genocide" to most people regardless of any new or specialized legal definition MEANS at least: an attempt to annihilate the gene pool of a particular group of people and understood as a pejorative term referencing mass murder. ".

It's really of no consequence what uninformed people think.

Precisely. Particularly when their 'ideology' means they actively avoid information.

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Edited June 3, 2015 by jacee

[Scott Mayers]

The intent is to destroy them as distinct peoples, remove any rights and identities "as such". Mass murder is only one strategy.

Destroying cultures is about gaining control of their assets and especially removing any distinct rights they may have.

It's about what is taken away - Aboriginal rights - not what is added.

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When using terms that the mass public adapts, you have to reduce it to the most common understanding in use. As such, "genocide" is a term understood to both define mass murder and the emotive associations of those involved from historical references in the conscious mind of the public at large. To add the conjecture that culture itself can be murdered is very poetic (using the term, "cultural genocide" )and descriptive to arouse the emotions tied to the speaker using it is NOT simply a phrase meaning, "doing acts that impose others to alter or adapt to the contemporary culture"; "Cultural genocide" is intended to imply the meaning, "acting purposefully with hateful intent to destroy the traditions and cultures of some people who are disliked on the basis of such culture to the degree of mass murder."

Can you not see how the rhetoric of the phrasal word creates a claim of actual hatred and intent to do harm? As such, using it assures us that the one using it believes that hatred and harm were intended. But then the onus should be up to such people to prove this. Do you Jacee have proof of even ONE crime and further justice (charge AND conviction) of a particular person or persons who acted this way? Of course, this wouldn't simply be enough since the accusation is upon the WHOLE of the Residential School system. Thus, you'd also have to follow this up to demonstrate that such abuses was the norm in the same legal manners AND show how this is UNIQUE (that, for instance, it isn't simply about the fault of "boarding school" abuses that can be found in other similar places.)

[On Guard for Thee]

ALL individuals have the rights to life, physical and mental integrity (whatever that is) and liberty and security of the person. So? How is this related to anything?

As far as "forcibly removing children from the group to another group' that was never done. The citation has in mind stealing kids and giving them to the families of other ethnicities to raise as their own. In this case we have evidence the natives wanted their kids educated in the White mans' ways, and that two thirds were educated on the reserve while another third, probably the ones in the really tiny, rural reserves, had to go to boarding schools. But then they went home again just like all the white kids who attended such schools.

Well if you actually paid any attention to what is actually going on, you would hear actual accounts, and many of them, by people who were in fact forcibly removed from their homes. If their parents resisted they were imprisoned.

[bush_cheney2004]

So when did the Gradual Civilization Act and Indian Act expire ? Has the Canadian government rescinded this legislation ?

[Je suis Omar]

I don't think focussing on the meaning of a word is focusing on 'actual issues'. I want to know what changes are being done, what benefits, and so on.I would rather talk about helping first nations get healthy than talk about history.

Here we are, just getting to the end of the TRC, and the central issue, genocide, that has long been avoided comes to the fore, which, in all fairness, it should. The changes that ought to come have to be premised on what actually happened.

It is disingenuous of you to suggest that all of a sudden your overwhelming desire is to "help[ing] first nations (no caps) get healthy". Are there other threads here at MLW that show over the years of this commission where you addressed these issues that now command your attention?

[Scott Mayers]

Article 7

1. Indigenous individuals have the rights to life, physical and mental

integrity, liberty and security of person.

2. Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom,

peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to

any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly

removing children of the group to another group

If these are literal, it begs the question: Do we NOT ALL have these rights or is this something that these people deserve apart from the rest of us? If so, this reinstates "apartheid" as a legitimate function.

Edited June 3, 2015 by Scott Mayers

[Je suis Omar]

When using terms that the mass public adapts, you have to reduce it to the most common understanding in use.

No, you most certainly do not, Scott. You don't perpetuate ignorance. You seek to remove it. If it requires pointing out that many people believe in a fiction, that's one thing, but to reinforce a fiction serves no sensible purpose.

[On Guard for Thee]

If these are literal, it begs the question: Do we NOT ALL have these rights or is this something that these people deserve apart from the rest of us? If so, this reinstates "apartheid" as a legitimate function.

I guess what various governments tried to take away, this resolution tried to put back.

[Je suis Omar]

You act as if aboriginal people were in perfect harmony in the past, with a perfect system of government...one completely devoid of democracy.

What do you think would have been the result at the Nuremberg Trials had this "defence" been raised by the Nazis, Smallc, substituting "Jewish people" for "aboriginal people"?

[Scott Mayers]

No, you most certainly do not, Scott. You don't perpetuate ignorance. You seek to remove it. If it requires pointing out that many people believe in a fiction, that's one thing, but to reinforce a fiction serves no sensible purpose.

Well, I consider myself, "atheist". But I know that the majority of people in certain crowds presume the meaning, "someone who denies the existence of God" to which doesn't match my personal meaning. As such, while it is NOT fair, I have the onus in such a crowd to restate my definition in a way that communicates what I mean if I continue to choose using that word. (one who asserts a lack of belief in a God or gods...)

So when any media (including the Internet) uses a term, if its intended audience is general, the words it uses is intended also to speak to the minds of those listening.

[Je suis Omar]

If these are literal, it begs the question: Do we NOT ALL have these rights or is this something that these people deserve apart from the rest of us? If so, this reinstates "apartheid" as a legitimate function.

Canada's Apartheid program ended in, I believe, 1960.

Another sordid chapter in Canadian history that seems to have been swept under the carpet.

[Je suis Omar]

Well, I consider myself, "atheist". But I know that the majority of people in certain crowds presume the meaning, "someone who denies the existence of God" to which doesn't match my personal meaning. As such, while it is NOT fair, I have the onus in such a crowd to restate my definition in a way that communicates what I mean if I continue to choose using that word. (one who asserts a lack of belief in a God or gods...)

So when any media (including the Internet) uses a term, if its intended audience is general, the words it uses is intended also to speak to the minds of those listening.

I'm certain you will be able to bear up under these onerous conditions that have been placed upon you, Scott.

[Argus]

Well if you actually paid any attention to what is actually going on, you would hear actual accounts, and many of them, by people who were in fact forcibly removed from their homes. If their parents resisted they were imprisoned.

Yes, it was required that your child attend school. That was the same for rural Canadians who had to send their kids to boarding schools too since there were too few children in many areas to make building a school viable.

[Je suis Omar]

Yes, it was required that your child attend school. That was the same for rural Canadians who had to send their kids to boarding schools too since there were too few children in many areas to make building a school viable.

Is this just disingenuous or something worse, Argus?

[cybercoma]

But people play fast and loose with terms when they are looking to invoke an emotional response, and we end up with all these nearly universal epithets.

Then there's the fact that thousands of indigenous people were killed. Entire tribes exterminated. But hey, let's pretend it was just the "natural" order of things and there weren't programs in place to wipe these people out.

[Michael Hardner]

Agreed.

So what are your thoughts about the Principles of Reconciliation, Michael?

http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums/topic/24578-truth-and-reconciliation/?p=1059571

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It doesn't sound to me that it goes far enough.

"How about Canada must invest significant resources towards new solutions that First Nations will design to edify their communities"

[Michael Hardner]

Are there other threads here at MLW that show over the years of this commission where you addressed these issues that now command your attention?

I have been here over ten years, I think, so there likely are a few threads. I'm not sure what you're getting at, though.

[On Guard for Thee]

Yes, it was required that your child attend school. That was the same for rural Canadians who had to send their kids to boarding schools too since there were too few children in many areas to make building a school viable.

I think you have glazed over the issue again. Going to school was indeed required. Being beaten for speaking your native tongue or abused by some child molesting Catholic priest was not.

[Smallc]

I think you have glazed over the issue again. Going to school was indeed required. Being beaten for speaking your native tongue or abused by some child molesting Catholic priest was not.

That happened to many more people that weren't aboriginal. That's kind of been the point here - it was awful, just not genocide, and not even that unique. My own ancestors were a persecuted minority. No apology needed.

[Je suis Omar]

I think this is highly instructive of what is going on, not only in this thread, but also in both Canadian and American societies at large, especially as it relates to honestly, or more realistically, dishonestly, addressing our own war crimes, our own terrorism, our own hypocrisy, our own ... .

His studies also found that his scale for Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) or whats commonly called conservatism, was exhibited the most strongly by fundamentalists (and, in the Soviet Union, those fundamentalists took as their inerrant Scripture not the Bible, but instead Marxs Das Capital). Moreover, as one would expect from persons of faith (even of an atheistic one; i.e., belief in an atheistic inerrant Scripture), people of high RWA tended to make incorrect inferences from evidence, accept internal contradictions within their own beliefs, oppose constitutional guarantees of individual liberty, believe more strongly in sticks than in carrots to correct a persons behavior, and were closed-minded to criticism of themselves.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/social-science-findings-about-conservatism.html

The more serious, the more malevolent, the more evil, the more criminal a behaviour becomes, the more conservative people become, in the sense of restricting or completely closing down the thinking processes.

This is especially true when the evil includes and affects "one's" own circle, those of an individual's in-group, however large that group may grow to be.

Edited June 3, 2015 by Je suis Omar

[Michael Hardner]

It is disingenuous of you to suggest that all of a sudden your overwhelming desire is to "help[ing] first nations (no caps) get healthy". Are there other threads here at MLW that show over the years of this commission where you addressed these issues that now command your attention?

You have no idea about now sincere I am, so it's more than bad form to suggest I am disingenuous. Also, the term 'all of a sudden' is less meaningful to a new MLW poster than one who has been here for a long time. I was curious as to whether indeed we had had a long discussion on here on the topic of First Nations. In fact, a few years ago there was a 22+ page discussion on Attiwapiskat:

http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums/topic/22176-where-did-all-the-money-go-to-attawapiskat/page-22

We got into some depth there.

[Je suis Omar]

That happened to many more people that weren't aboriginal. That's kind of been the point here - it was awful, just not genocide, and not even that unique. My own ancestors were a persecuted minority. No apology needed.

Your own ancestors weren't subjected to a Canadian government policy of genocide. Where they were subjected to such horrors, as in the planned starvation by Stalin, they became an aggrieved people just like Canadian and American natives.

Edited June 3, 2015 by Je suis Omar

[poochy]

Why is there more interest in talking about the meaning of 'genocide' than talking about what to do with this report moving forward ?

It is impossible to have a realistic solution to problems if you don't start with realistic conversation. It was a bad thing, but it wasn't genocide, and the people who ignore that and all of the other realities of that time period, things like mortality outside of residential schools, abuse in other religious but non native schools, etc etc etc, serve only to show their true colors, it is they who don't want a conversation, they want a dictation. That gets us nowhere, this is Canada now, the country isn't going to be given back, nor can we retroactively fix everything, and what we have been doing isn't working, and no, it's not just about not enough money, or the white man, there is blame to be found everywhere, until some people choose to admit that nothing changes.

The grand chief was on power and politics today, and frankly he embarrassed himself, everything was genocide, it was a sad display from an alleged leader, lead your own people to better lives, demand better from them and stop reinforcing dead end victim hood, stop demanding that someone else provides a better life to them, it doesn't work.

Edited June 3, 2015 by poochy

[Je suis Omar]

You have no idea about now sincere I am, so it's more than bad form to suggest I am disingenuous. Also, the term 'all of a sudden' is less meaningful to a new MLW poster than one who has been here for a long time. I was curious as to whether indeed we had had a long discussion on here on the topic of First Nations. In fact, a few years ago there was a 22+ page discussion on Attiwapiskat:http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums/topic/22176-where-did-all-the-money-go-to-attawapiskat/page-22We got into some depth there.

I too, am curious, Michael, but it's hardly my memory we should be relying on.

Let me explain my contention that you are being disingenuous. I am completely willing to withdraw it and offer copious apology if you illustrate I am in error.

A discussion raged, {nicely } for a good long time yesterday that extended well into the evening. You weren't there, which doesn't in and of itself, point to anything. But since you have reentered the fray, you, and certainly not you alone, have studiously avoided the G word.

The G word has become the new 911.

The detractors of genocide were a small group of individuals who refused to look at the definitions that the world has used for genocide for over half a century. You have done the same.

I have described what I believe explains this pattern of disingenuity in another post in this thread and in another thread.

[Michael Hardner]

It is impossible to have a realistic solution to problems if you don't start with realistic conversation.

Am I right in assuming that you don't want to work with people who don't use realistic conversation ? If so, I think that this insistence is a good way to block any forward progress.

they want a dictation. That gets us nowhere

I think that's kind of what I talked about above, but from the other side.

until some people choose to admit that nothing changes.

Sounds like a dictation.