MNN. May 14, 2006. Canadians do not like to think that their country is founded on genocide, or that there was ever a genocidal incident in Canadian history. They “white wash” everything! In recent years they have persistently denied the genocidal character of the residential school scheme. Today is the 250th anniversary of one of Canada’s founding genocides.
The following proclamation predates the modern formation of Canada. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were originally called “Gespegawaidh”, by the Mi’kmaq people who have lived in the area through at least two ice ages. It means, ”the end of the land”. This is the source of the name “Gaspe”.
The first colonizers were the French. Then Gespegawaidh was claimed by the British during their colonial wars with France. The Anglo Canadian regime began with proclamations in the early stages that made it legal to kill any Indian, even a baby. Worse, they even offered rewards. That’s how the big families became rich. The full horror does not seem to sink in with the majority population of Turtle Island, mostly because knowledge of this appalling behavior is suppressed. It’s not part of the history that Canadian school children learn. It’s treated as a side note. Only specialists know about it. Even they refuse to pause and think about the horror.
As part of their strategy to claim Gespegawaidh, on May 14th, 1756, the Governor of Nova Scotia put out a proclamation that anyone could kill an Indian without impunity. Read it for yourself in the first R v Marshall 1999 case, 3 SCR. 456, available at http://www.canlii.org/ca/cas/scc/1999: “Only 6 years prior to the signing of the treaties, the British Governor of Nova Scotia had issued a Proclamation [May 14, 1756] offering rewards for the killing and capturing of Mi’kmaq throughout Nova Scotia, which then included New Brunswick”.
The second reference is in the same case in paragraph 15: “In 1749, following one of the continuing wars between Britain and France, the British Governor at Halifax had issued what was apparently the first of the Proclamations “authorizing the military and all British subjects to kill or capture any Mi’kmaq found, and offering a reward””.
The Supreme Court of Canada has acknowledged that this is part of Canada’s historical heritage that founded the Canadian state. In the Supreme Court’s version of history, the policy died out and was forgotten after a series of treaties was signed with Mi’kmaq people between 1760 and 1761.
Three years later Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the commander-in-chief of the British forces, embarked on his famous killing spree. He was knee deep in state sanctioned genocide. “One hundred thousand Ohio Natives, including a high percentage of Ongwehoweh, died as a direct result of Amherst’s pox upon their Longhouses”[Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide, 153, 154].
“In each case, the object was to bring about a massive fatality rate, not just among native combatants but within the target population as a whole. Without exception, the desire was if not to obtain the complete liquidation of given populations during the conduct of “wars” per se, then to take a longer view: extinction might be reasonably expected to claim any survivors, converted as they were into an atomized cloud of refugees, unable to feed, clothe, or house themselves through a combination of starvation, exposure, and consequent lowered resistance to all manner of diseases”. [Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide, 150].
No full study has been done of Canada’s complicity in the North American Indian holocaust, the biggest in all humanity [over 120 million]. It did happen. There has also been no proper public recognition that genocide was part of British policy in the European “peopling” of Turtle Island. The idea that Turtle Island was made “unpeopled” by killing the original people is horrific, to say the least!
There must have been something terribly wrong in the way people were living in Europe so their own land could not support them. They were probably out of balance with the land. Now the whole of Turtle Island is becoming unbalanced. The environment has been damaged and polluted. Many areas have become a “no man’s land” where neither humans nor animals can survive. At Akwesasne some animals have been found with so many toxins they qualify as toxic waste.
They came here. They refuse to let us survivors have anything! We have been pushed to a point that is absolutely unacceptable. Canada must stop their atrocious unlawful behavior. Can’t they see that their own survival depends on it? Let this day be in memory of the 99% of our people who were killed off.
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
www.mohawknationnews.com
kahentinetha2@yahoo.com
