Irish Centre for Human Rights Blog

Emily Williams (she/her) holds a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Human Rights and Criminology from St. Thomas University, Canada. She is currently a LL.M. in International Human Rights Law candidate at the ICHR and is interested in the domestic implementation of international human rights law.

–

This past summer, Canada began to publicly recognise and discuss its bloody history with Indigenous peoples, including the devasting impact of residential schools. Residential schools were a tenet of the federal government’s assimilation policy towards Indigenous peoples. Children were forced from their homes to attend schools (often in communities hundreds of kilometres away), prohibited from speaking their native language and subjected to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. The last residential school did not close until 1996. In June 2021, the graves of over 200 Indigenous children, victims of residential schools, were found in Kamloops, British Columbia. To date, this number has surpassed 1300 across Canada.

Since this discovery, discussion regarding residential schools and Canada’s broader history with Indigenous peoples has grown in media coverage, political debates, and the general public. An unfortunate discourse that has emerged is that the tragedies of residential schools are limited to the past and exist independently from the issues Indigenous peoples face today. The theory of framing is illustrative of how individuals can perceive human rights issues differently. It plays a role in the government conceptualization of residential schools and Indigenous issues, as it involves selecting elements of different issues to portray what exists, what happens, and what matters. As defined by Goffman, framing is “the process through which socio-political actors use rhetorical lenses to present information in an effort to construct meaning or influence perceptions and opinions”. In doing so, it highlights what is perceived to be the fundamental element of an issue. Consequently, framing can directly influence how individuals make connections (or a lack thereof) between different issues. In the Canadian context, emphasizing residential schools as an isolated historical event and disregarding the link between residential schools, intergenerational trauma, and the disparities Indigenous peoples face today is a selection that focuses on its historical nature at the expense of its connection to current Indigenous realities. This framing is dominant in the political and societal narrative of Canada. It is detrimental to achieving the path of true reconciliation, as it serves the governmental interest in maintaining the current system, which benefits white settlers to the disadvantage of Indigenous peoples.

Recently, political and legal milestones in the reconciliation process occurred only following the discovery of the Indigenous children’s graves. For instance, Bill C-15, An Act respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples received royal assent less than a month after the initial discovery, following the failure of a previous iteration of the bill to be passed before the 2019 federal election. On its face, this legislation is a promising step forward, as section 4 explicitly notes that the purpose of the Act is to “affirm the Declaration as a universal international human rights instrument with application in Canadian law”. However, this Act does not specify exactly how the federal government intends to achieve this, other than consulting with Indigenous groups (section 5) and creating an action plan to achieve the objectives of the Declaration (section 6). Additionally, the preamble is largely concerned with issues of the past and does not explicitly mention the systemic oppression that Indigenous peoples face today. In this regard, it is vital to recall that Canada originally voted against the Declaration, alongside the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

To complement the reconciliation efforts behind Bill C-15, Bill C-5, An Act to amend the Bills of Exchange Act, the Interpretation Act, and the Canada Labour Code (National Day for Truth and Reconciliation), established a federal day of mourning to honour survivors of residential schools annually on September 30. The day of mourning was originally included in the 94 Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) (whose mandate was to collect information from the residential school system from survivors and promote awareness of the system to the Canadian public) as one component of the reconciliation process. The Assembly of First Nations, a national advocacy organisation comprised of Indigenous leaders, has tracked the implementation of the Calls to Action, noting little progress in key areas, including justice, equity in the legal system, and church apologies and reconciliation. Without accompanying action and implementation of all Calls to Action, the day of mourning will simply be an example of tokenistic redress, rather than concrete measures towards reconciliation.  

The Canadian frame also excludes the fact that the current and historical circumstances of Indigenous peoples fulfil the definition of genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention). This treaty includes five definitions of genocide: 1) killing members of the group; 2) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; 3) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 4) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and 5) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. From separating children from their homes in the residential school system and today with the child protection system, forcibly sterilizing Indigenous women without their consent, politicians issuing scalping bounties for Indigenous scalps, the introduction of disease (i.e. smallpox) with the arrival of the first European settlers, to a persistent lack of clean water and lack of an adequate standard of living on reservations, it is evident that Indigenous peoples face a historical and on-going genocide in Canada. Despite this mass of evidence, politicians and the public have been hesitant to recognise the situation as such. For example, the 2015 final report from the TRC described the situation as cultural genocide, which is excluded from the definition of genocide under domestic criminal law. Crucially, the definition excludes “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”, which was the defining characteristic of residential schools.

The TRC’s finding of cultural genocide has been frequently cited in political debates and is now a distinct feature of the Indigenous frame in Canada. At its core, the frame highlights the distinction between cultural genocide and genocide. For example, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (a public inquiry mandated to investigate all forms of violence against Indigenous women and girls) identified the systematic violence against Indigenous women and girls as genocide and issued a specific report dedicated to the legal analysis of the issue. Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he accepted their finding of genocide, he believes that the term cultural genocide is more appropriate to use. Former Conservative Party of Canada leader and current Member of Parliament Andrew Scheer merely stated that it should not be labelled as genocide. Romeo Dallaire, former major-general of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, said he was uncomfortable with the label, based on what he saw there. Noted Canadian international human rights lawyer, Irwin Cotler, does not believe the term fits the events covered by the inquiry’s mandate.

These statements demonstrate how powerful political and societal actors frame Indigenous issues in a way that serves the interests of the Canadian government, an institution that upholds settler-colonialism by its inherent nature. When politicians and the general public use the term cultural genocide and view the residential school system as a historical event, they frame the issue to match how they want it to be perceived by the Canadian public. In the most recent federal election (2021), only the New Democratic Party (centre-left) expressly mentioned that Indigenous peoples face a historical and ongoing genocide in its party platform.

Unfortunately, most individuals remain unaware of their frames and how they affect their understanding of different human rights issues. As Canada enters into a new so-called era of reconciliation, rethinking our frames and how we perceive Indigenous issues is essential for the journey to true reconciliation. The language used by political actors throughout Canadian history has constructed false dichotomies and created polarisation between Indigenous peoples and white settlers. The original treaties that the first settlers entered into with Indigenous peoples are often regarded with disdain, even though the various treaties (e.g., Treaty of Peace and Friendship 1760; Treaty or Articles of Peace and Friendship Renewed 1752) benefit both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. These treaties remain in force today, although public attention has focused on how they inconvenience white settlers, such as in the case of the current Mi’kmaq fishing dispute in Mi ‘ kma ‘ ki (Nova Scotia). Accordingly, a new frame must acknowledge the relationship between historical injustices and current disparities. It is only at this point that Canadians will holistically understand Indigenous issues and be able to move forward with reconciliation.