Deja vu: Canada's 'Indian' Residential Schools ... and now the Roma children??

From article below:
“The [next] government’s agenda must include a program designed to gradually put as many Roma children as possible into boarding schools and gradually separate them from the life they live in their settlements,”

... HMMM! ... sounds an awful lot like this ...
"Their education must consist not merely training of the mind, but of a weaning from the habits and feelings of their ancestors, and the acquirements of the language, art and customs of civilized life."
Egerton Ryerson, 'father' of Canada's 'Indian' Residential Schools (1847)

... AND this ...
"I want to get rid of the Indian problem...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."
(Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1913-1932)

...AND this ...
Nicholas Flood Davin Report of 1879 noted that "the industrial school is the principal feature of the policy known as that of 'aggressive civilization'....Indian culture is a contradiction in terms...they are uncivilized...the aim of education is to destroy the Indian."

...AND this too?? ...
"It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habituating so closely in the residential schools and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this does not justify a change in the policy of this Department which is geared towards a final solution of our Indian Problem."
(Duncan Campbell Scott)
www.shannonthunderbird.com/residential_schools.htm

Boarding schools for Roma kids?

by Claire Ward on Wednesday, May 12, 2010 2:40pm - 2 Comments

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/05/12/boarding-schools-for-roma-kids/

In an attempt to integrate future generations of Roma into European society, the Slovakian government has controversially proposed to send children of Roma families to state-run boarding schools. Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico made the announcement in March following a damning report by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay during her annual address. Pillay slammed Slovakia for the “deteriorating” situation of its impoverished, widely unemployed Roma citizens, who represent around 10 per cent of Slovakia’s overall population of 5.4 million.

“The [next] government’s agenda must include a program designed to gradually put as many Roma children as possible into boarding schools and gradually separate them from the life they live in their settlements,” said Fico, whose left-wing Smer party is facing a June election. “It seems that there is no other system. Many things have been tried. If we don’t do it, we will raise another generation of Roma which will not be able to integrate.”

A recent EU summit in Spain focusing on the Roma situation in Europe concluded that tens of thousands of Roma children are currently sent to schools for the mentally disabled, and suffer from a widely adopted systemic racism that perpetuates the segregation problem. Fico’s solution hasn’t been rejected by the EU, on the condition that the schools are voluntary and temporary. The Slovak government has confirmed preliminary approval of the plan by top Roma officials, and that the schooling would be indeed offered on a voluntary basis.

But human rights organizations have decried Fico’s solution. “[The Canadian Roma community] are very upset about it,” says Ronald Lee, a Hamilton-based Roma-Canadian author and activist. “It’s like native children in Canada being sent to residential schools. It destroys the ethnicity, the culture, the language, the sense of identity. How are they going to be treated in these boarding schools? Prejudice over there is rampant.”

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Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group

GENOCIDE "Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
GENOCIDE@WIKI

Panel to pick new truth commission head 'Top-level' panel to pick new truth commission head: lawyer

1 hour ago

OTTAWA — Former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci is set to move on a streamlined process to choose the new head of the $60-million truth commission into abuse at native residential schools.

Sources close to closed-door negotiations say the embarrassing derailment of the key truth-telling forum should be ended and operations back on track by January.

The new head commissioner is expected to work with the two existing co-commissioners - not an expanded five-person panel as was promoted by some interests.

"The (selection) process has been agreed upon," said lawyer Pierre Baribeau, representing Catholic groups that once ran several of the now-defunct schools across Canada.

He is among lawyers working with facilitator Iacobucci to unravel a legal snarl created when Justice Harry LaForme quit as head commissioner Oct. 20.

A panel of "very high-level people" will preside over "a simplified process" to name LaForme's replacement, Baribeau said.

"Mr. Iacobucci has worked very hard, and I would say that almost everything is set up to bring this to a closure so that we're able to move on."

At stake is the much vaunted five-year Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to hear the good, bad and often harrowing stories of federal schools meant to "Christianize" native children.

Almost two months have passed since the forum was up-ended when LaForme, a judge on the Ontario Court of Appeal, suddenly resigned.

He accused his two co-commissioners of undermining his authority - something both Claudette Dumont-Smith, a native health care worker, and lawyer Jane Brewin Morley have denied.

Some native leaders have called for the two women to step aside to allow for a fresh start.

"We have no reason to believe that they committed any wrongdoing," Baribeau said. "They were trying to do their best in what they perceived to be the TRC mission."

LaForme was the unanimous choice for head commissioner in the initial selection process - meaning there's no short list of other candidates from which to choose, Baribeau said.

Those who will pick LaForme's replacement "are top-level people. And it will be helpful so that the parties and Mr. Iacobucci will be satisfied and the court will be satisfied," he said of the court-supervised settlement deal.

Any appointment is ultimately to be made by the government in consultation with the Assembly of First Nations.

Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl has signalled the commission will be revamped "soon" after a rocky start since June 1.

"The government is fully committed to the successful implementation of the commission," he told a national meeting of chiefs last week.

Ottawa admitted 10 years ago that isolated kids - often forced from their homes - faced beatings and widespread sexual abuse in schools run by the Catholic, Anglican, United and Presbyterian churches.

The truth commission was the cornerstone of a sweeping compensation package expected to top $4 billion. Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized on behalf of all Canadians last June.

Seven national events are planned to hear from a broad range of about 80,000 surviving students who can also tell their stories in writing. The commission is to produce a comprehensive record on what the federal government has called a sad chapter in Canada's history.

Time is of the essence because hundreds of people waiting to share first-hand accounts are sick or elderly.

Finding someone to take on the job of leading a process that has been tarnished by chaos and criticized as ill-defined may not be easy. The successful candidate is widely expected to be aboriginal.

Names mentioned in legal circles include Murray Sinclair of the Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench, Leonard Mandamin of the Federal Court, and Mi'kmaq lawyer and negotiator Bernd Christmas of the Membertou band in Nova Scotia.

Sharon Thira, executive director of the Indian Residential Schools Survivors Society, says former students are anxiously waiting.

"A lot of people are frustrated. They'd like to see things get going."

LaForme's resignation and the ensuing delay have cast a pall over a process already widely distrusted by former students, she said. "And the longer it goes on, the less faith people will have."

Thira cited a recent letter written by elders who work with her group.

"One of the things they asked was that the commission needs to acknowledge what's happened. They need to acknowledge the start that they've had and take responsibility for it. Because only in that way can they pave the road for people to start rebuilding some confidence in the commission."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5h09v2wZggBf-r-u7vRL8wN5Ni_RQ

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Copyright © 2008 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

AUSTRALIA: Claims of child abuse pretext for land grab, uranium mining This is a very horrible act of aggression by the Australian government, under a particularly egregious pretext. This is today ... now ... 2008 ... not 1908. Canada is no less guilty of continuing land grabs, under various guises. Mining and forestry alone consume billions and billions of acres of land worldwide, and total destruction and contamination is inherent in the business: Corporations have a way of sucking out the resources and then going 'bankrupt', thus unaccountable for human and environmental destruction in their wake. But I digress ... again ... This is a gem of a quote (from below), and it is EXACTLY true in Canada: OVER HALF of the budget of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada never leaves Ottawa. 'Canada' (INAC) uses it to pay the cost of defending itself from Aboriginal 'land claims'.

A pervasive white myth, that Aborigines leech off the state, serves to conceal the disgrace that money the federal government says it spends on indigenous affairs actually goes towards opposing native land rights. In 2006, some A$3bn was underspent "or the result of creative accounting", reported the Sydney Morning Herald. Like the children of apartheid, the Aboriginal children of Thamarrurr in the Northern Territory receive less than half the educational resources allotted to white children.

And that is also true in Canada. Do the math: Half the funding leads to half the graduating. nobrainer. Here's the full story from Australia ... http://www.abibitumikasa.com/forums/oppression-afrikans-generally/38400-australian-aboriginees-face-extinction-genocide.html Under cover of racist myth, a new land grab in Australia By John Pilger The Guardian, Friday October 24 2008 Claims of child abuse are proving a fertile pretext to menace the Aboriginal communities lying in the way of uranium mining Its banks secured in the warmth of the southern spring, Australia is not news. It ought to be. An epic scandal of racism, injustice and brutality is being covered up in the manner of apartheid South Africa. Many Australians conspire in this silence, wishing never to reflect upon the truth about their society's Untermenschen, the Aboriginal people. The facts are not in dispute: thousands of black Australians never reach the age of 40; an entirely preventable disease, trachoma, blinds black children as epidemics of rheumatic fever ravage their communities; suicide among the despairing young is common. No other developed country has such a record. A pervasive white myth, that Aborigines leech off the state, serves to conceal the disgrace that money the federal government says it spends on indigenous affairs actually goes towards opposing native land rights. In 2006, some A$3bn was underspent "or the result of creative accounting", reported the Sydney Morning Herald. Like the children of apartheid, the Aboriginal children of Thamarrurr in the Northern Territory receive less than half the educational resources allotted to white children. In 2005, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination described the racism of the Australian state, a distinction afforded no other developed country. This was in the decade-long rule of the conservative coalition of John Howard, whose coterie of white supremacist academics and journalists assaulted the truth of recorded genocide in Australia, especially the horrific separations of Aboriginal children from their families. They deployed arguments not dissimilar to those David Irving used to promote Holocaust denial. Smear by media as a precursor to the latest round of repression is long familiar to black Australians. In 2006, the flagship current affairs programme of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Lateline, broadcast lurid allegations of "sex slavery" among the Mutitjulu people in the Northern Territory. The programme's source, described as an "anonymous youth worker", was later exposed as a federal government official whose "evidence" was discredited by the Northern Territory chief minister and the police. The ABC has never retracted its allegations, claiming it has been "exonerated by an internal inquiry". Shortly before last year's election, Howard declared a "national emergency" and sent the army to the Northern Territory to "protect the children" who, said his minister for indigenous affairs, were being abused in "unthinkable numbers". Last February, with much sentimental fanfare, the new prime minister, Labor's Kevin Rudd, made a formal apology to the first Australians. Australia was said to be finally coming to terms with its rapacious past and present. Was it? "The Rudd government," noted a Sydney Morning Herald editorial, "has moved quickly to clear away this piece of political wreckage in a way that responds to some of its own supporters' emotional needs, yet it changes nothing. It is a shrewd manoeuvre." In May, barely reported government statistics revealed that of the 7,433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors as part of the "national emergency", 39 had been referred to the authorities for suspected abuse. Of those, a maximum of just four possible cases of abuse were identified. Such were the "unthinkable numbers". They were little different from those of child abuse in white Australia. What was different was that no soldiers invaded the beachside suburbs, no white parents were swept aside, no white welfare was "quarantined". Marion Scrymgour, an Aboriginal minister in the Northern Territory, said: "To see decent, caring [Aboriginal] fathers, uncles, brothers and grandfathers, who are undoubtedly innocent of the horrific charges being bandied about, reduced to helplessness and tears, speaks to me of widespread social damage." What the doctors found they already knew - children at risk from a spectrum of extreme poverty and the denial of resources in one of the world's richest countries. Having let a few crumbs fall, Rudd is picking up where Howard left off. His indigenous affairs minister, Jenny Macklin, has threatened to withdraw government support from remote communities that are "economically unviable". The Northern Territory is the only region where Aborigines have comprehensive land rights, granted almost by accident 30 years ago. Here lie some of the world's biggest uranium deposits. Canberra wants to mine and sell it. Foreign governments, especially the US, want the Northern Territory as a toxic dump. The Adelaide to Darwin railway that runs adjacent to Olympic Dam, the world's largest uranium mine, was built with the help of Kellogg, Brown & Root - a subsidiary of American giant Halliburton, the alma mater of Dick Cheney, Howard's "mate". "The land grab of Aboriginal tribal land has nothing to do with child sexual abuse," says the Australian scientist Helen Caldicott, "but all to do with open slather uranium mining and converting the Northern Territory to a global nuclear dump." What is unique about Australia is not its sun-baked, derivative society, clinging to the sea, but its first people, the oldest on earth, whose skill and courage in surviving invasion, of which the current onslaught is merely the latest, deserve humanity's support. John Pilger: Under cover of racist myth, a new land grab in Australia | Comment is free | The Guardian

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: Fantino and Ontario's duty in Indigenous protests

AMNESTY CALLS FOR PUBLIC INQUIRY: FANTINO AND TYENDINAGA (see below)

GRANNY AGAIN CALLS FOR THE RESIGNATION OF JULIAN FANTINO

Many have called for the resignation of OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino, due to his personal vendetta and aggression against the Mohawk community of Tyendinaga, using OPP tactical officers under his personal orders. Premier Dalton McGuinty defers, and hides from any discussion of Fantino's misuse of power.

WHY?

Dalton McGuinty says the OPP Framework for Police Preparedness for Aboriginal Critical Incidents will be followed in Ontario... but then...

OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino said during cross-examination in a provincial court that the Framework is "not a firm and fixed mandated way of doing business."

WHICH IS IT MCGUINTY??

Is it OK for Fantino to call an OPP tactical force in to Tyendinaga, under his direct orders ... to assist a developer? ... to create an incident? Is it acceptable for Julian Fantino to order OPP officers ... to hold Indigenous families at gunpoint for a day? Is it OK for tactical OPP officers to put a gun to a woman's head and scream in her ear because she is on the phone contacting Elders? Is it OK for tactical OPP officers to threaten to shoot anyone coming off the quarry site, including escorted Grandmothers just wanting to go home?

IS THAT OK MCGUINTY?

Fantino is directly challenging the power of Dalton McGuinty, the Liberal Party and the government in Ontario. IS ONTARIO UNDER THE CONTROL OF THE OPP INSTEAD OF THE ONTARIO GOVERNMENT? The government wants to keep the peace in Ontario. Fantino wants to fight Shawn Brant, one of his chosen personal enemies, and he doesn't much care how many women and children and Elders are terrorized in the process. SHAWN BRANT WAS NOT EVEN THERE when Fantino's personal officers were holding people hostage! Fantino thinks the power of the Commissioner of the OPP is absolute, and includes his personal vendetta. Fantino thinks he can't be touched because he has support 'in high places'. Fantino thinks he can order Premier Dalton McGuinty to do his bidding ... to support Fantino's personal aggression ... IS THAT TRUE MCGUINTY?

DOES MCGUINTY ANSWER TO FANTINO? IS FANTINO MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU?

Time to MAN UP McGuinty!

Tell your party pockets they will have to take a back seat to the 'public good' because in Ontario, the public good is best served if FANTINO IS GONE!! IMO granny

** please circulate widely ** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL OPEN LETTER: Ontario's duty to ensure rights are upheld in police response to Indigenous protests November 12, 2008 Ontario's duty to ensure rights are upheld in police response to Indigenous protests Open letter to the Honourable Rick Bartolucci, Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services Dear Minister: Amnesty International Canada is reiterating its call for the Province of Ontario to immediately: • Publicly affirm its support for the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Framework for Police Preparedness for Aboriginal Critical Incidents and commit to ensuring that officers are held accountable for any breaches of this Framework. • Work with Indigenous peoples' organizations to establish a timetable and process for an independent evaluation of the OPP Framework and appropriate codification of the Framework in provincial laws and policies. In light of very serious concerns that have been raised over the OPP response to land rights protests at the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory on June 28-29, 2007 and April 21-28, 2008, Amnesty International is also urging the Province of Ontario to establish an independent, impartial probe into OPP actions on those dates and to make the findings of such an investigation public. During the Ipperwash Inquiry, the Ontario Provincial Police described its Framework for Police Preparedness for Aboriginal Critical Incidents ("Framework") as the "centrepiece" of its commitment to respect the underlying rights at issue in Indigenous land protests and to minimize the potential for escalation and violence. However, three months after the Framework was strongly endorsed in the report of the Ipperwash Inquiry, OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino said during cross-examination in a provincial court that the Framework is "not a firm and fixed mandated way of doing business." Commissioner Fantino was being questioned about the large number of police deployed and the aggressive tactics used in response to a June 28-29, 2007 protest by activists from the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. The Commissioner's response raises serious questions about the amount of discretion being exercised by the OPP with respect to the Framework and whether the OPP is being appropriately held to account for full and consistent implementation of the Framework. Over the last 20 months, protestors from the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory have engaged in a series of actions intended either to directly protect their interests in the Culbertson Land Tract or to attract public attention and put pressure on the federal government to resolve this long- standing land claim. Some of these actions have involved rail and road closures. This has resulted in public inconvenience and created a complex policing challenge. At the same time, there is no indication that these protests presented any threat to public safety. Although a spokesperson at one protest publicly alluded to the possibility that the protestors had access to weapons, Amnesty International is not aware of any evidence to suggest that this was in fact the case. As such, it appears to us that these protests give rise to precisely the kind of situation the OPP Framework for Police Preparedness for Aboriginal Critical Incidents was intended to address, and with which the Ipperwash Inquiry dealt exhaustively. The Ontario Police Services Act states that: "Police services shall be provided throughout Ontario in accordance with...the importance of safeguarding the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Human Rights Code." Among the rights protected in law in Canada are rights to peaceful assembly and protest and the specific Treaty and Aboriginal Rights of Indigenous peoples. The OPP Framework is a critical tool for ensuring that officers respond to Indigenous land protests in a manner consistent with and supportive of these rights. As we said in a letter to you in August 2008, Amnesty International believes that any policing policy intended to uphold and protect human rights must be treated with extreme seriousness and consistency. Where such a policy is breached, it is important to determine why it was breached and whether the breach was in fact warranted and acceptable. In this light, we are deeply troubled that your government has not demonstrated real and serious concern over Commissioner Fantino's remarks about adherence to the Framework. According to testimony in the case of Regina v. Shawn Brant, OPP actions during Tyendinaga Mohawk protests on June 28 and 29, 2007 included placing a sniper unit on stand-by and preparations to deploy overwhelming force against the protestors, even as a negotiated end to the protest was proceeding. Concerns were also raised in court over the fact that Commissioner Fantino interfered with the work of trained OPP negotiators by contacting protestor Shawn Brant directly and that during his conversations with Mr. Brant he made aggressive and inappropriate comments including a threat that "your whole world's going to come crashing down" and that Mr. Brant would suffer "grave consequences" if he did not order an end to the blockade. Although the June 28-29th protest ended peacefully, it was followed by other incidents from April 21-28, 2008 during which there was again a massive deployment of OPP officers and equipment, including the Public Order Unit and the Tactics and Rescue Unit. In interviews with members of the Tyendinaga Mohawk community, including protesters and bystanders, Amnesty International has heard consistent and credible reports of police actions during the April 21-28 incidents that clearly require investigation, including reports that OPP officers pointed firearms at unarmed protesters and members of their families. Given the seriousness of these concerns, Amnesty International considers that your government's only public response to date – a statement by Premier McGuinty that he has "full confidence" in Commissioner Fantino and that the Commissioner's response to the Tyendinaga Mohawk protests showed "tremendous discipline" – is utterly inappropriate and inadequate. In August 2008, Amnesty International wrote to you urging the Government of Ontario to: • Publicly confirm that it supports the Ontario Provincial Police Framework for Police Preparedness for Aboriginal Critical Incidents and will ensure that officers are held to account for its breach. • Work with Indigenous peoples' organizations to establish a timetable and process for independent evaluation of the OPP Framework and appropriate codification of the Framework in provincial laws and policies. We were disappointed by your reply. In your September 12 letter, you inaccurately refer to our concerns as being about remarks "allegedly" made by Commissioner Fantino. In fact, there is no doubt about what the Commissioner stated as his remarks are a matter of public court record. Your letter makes no further comment on the Commissioner's remarks, offers no clarification of the province's position on police accountability for upholding the Framework, and does not address the specific recommendations we presented to you. Your letter states only that: "The Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services is undertaking a comprehensive analysis of the recommendations from the Ipperwash report, one of which is an evaluation of the OPP Framework for Police Preparedness for Aboriginal Critical Incidents." In the 2007 final report of the Ipperwash Inquiry, Commissioner Justice Linden called for the province to adopt, "as soon as it is practical to do so," a provincial peacekeeping policy based largely on the OPP Framework, in order to "codify the lessons learned at Ipperwash and reassure both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Ontarians that peacekeeping is the goal of both police and government in this province, that treaty and Aboriginal rights will be respected, that negotiations will be attempted at every reasonable opportunity, and that the use of force must be the last resort." Such a policy, the report stated, "will compel provincial or police officials who wished to pursue a more aggressive policing response in the future to explain publicly why peacekeeping is inappropriate. It will also be considerably more difficult for a provincial official to demand that protesters leave a site within a limited time period or to downplay the importance of negotiations. Police leaders, incident commanders, and individual officers will also have additional assurance that peacekeeping is the appropriate and justified strategy, irrespective of any real or perceived governmental pressure otherwise.' Commissioner Justice Linden also called for an independent evaluation of the implementation of the Framework with "significant and meaningful participation by Aboriginal representatives in the design, oversight and analysis of the evaluation." Minister Bartolucci, we are concerned by the fact that 1 1⁄2 years later your Ministry is still at the stage of merely reviewing the Inquiry's recommendations and has not yet moved with appropriate urgency to implement measures deemed vital to upholding rights and saving lives. Accordingly, we are reiterating our call for your government to immediately: • Issue a public confirmation that your government supports the OPP Framework and will ensure that officers are held accountable for any breaches of the Framework. • Work with Indigenous peoples' organizations to establish a timetable and process for an independent evaluation of the OPP Framework and appropriate codification of the Framework in provincial laws and policies. Concerns over OPP actions in June of 2007 and April of 2008 are extremely serious. Therefore, Amnesty International is also urging you to establish an independent, impartial probe into OPP actions on June 28 and 29, 2007 and April 21-28, 2008 with respect to Mohawk protests and occupations near Tyendinaga and to make the findings of such an investigation public. Yours sincerely, Alex Neve Secretary General Amnesty International Canada