People pay tribute to the murdered aboriginal children in Ottawa, Canada, on June 4. Photo: Xinhua
This week, 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former indigenous residential school in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan were found, which shocked Canada and the international community. It comes weeks after the remains of 215 indigenous children were found at a similar residential school in British Columbia.
The question is: how many more graves are there in Canada and how many indigenous children suffered from extreme mistreatment and died during the process of forced assimilation?
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a media statement expressed his sorrow. At first glance, his statement was full of sympathy, but on closer look, one can sense that such sympathy was embedded in political opportunism.
Trudeau’s statement skipped a fundamental issue: how to hold these shameless killers accountable and how to compensate the Canadian indigenous people who are still alive.
It is widely known that the land of Canada belonged to the indigenous Indians and Inuits. European immigrants grabbed their land and fortune through killing and expulsion and established the whites-led order by force and forced assimilation. The whites continue to take up most resources — from land to properties — in Canada, and the indigenous people continue to suffer from systematic discrimination and exclusion. Canada was founded on cultural and ethnic genocide. If today’s Canadian government has a conscience, it should compensate the indigenous people.
It should return the land grabbed from the indigenous people. If the land is used by public facilities or cannot be returned for complicated reasons, the government should consider financial means. If it still cannot be solved, the government should explain it. The eventual outcome of this series of measures should be to fundamentally change the conditions of indigenous people.
So many crimes were committed in history and the consequences of those crimes remain. The Canadian government should not try to realize so-called reconciliation with a simple apology. The establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is an attempt by the Canadian government to abruptly end the colonial history and make indigenous people accept their destiny. The Canadian government hopes that indigenous people can be touched by its apology and accept reality, while the government does not pay any costs and lets the tragedy fade away.
The Trudeau government still retains cultural and power arrogance over the indigenous people. It continues to forcefully lead the process and means of “reconciliation” and hopes the indigenous people would be grateful with what the government does. It has never thought of investing a large amount of funds and resources to truly compensate the survivors of the indigenous people. It even wants to exploit political gains and make it look lofty.
The Trudeau government is so arrogant that it feels morally satisfied with its “proper” handling of the genocide scandals that surfaced one after another, and even points an accusing finger at the affairs of China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Such political shamelessness is the real attitude of the Trudeau government when the country found new remains of indigenous people. Trudeau’s humbleness was pretence. He did not speak out, but everybody can feel his real attitude is that Canada is always right despite genocide, and that it will always stand on the moral high ground.
The indigenous people are not easily fooled. They are fighting for their dignity and rights. The international community needs to support them to achieve justice, though belated. The world should also investigate the matter and urge the regimes that enjoy the colonial fruits to feel ashamed.
By Global Times
