Photo: The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal presented its full verdict on September 30 at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
By Marcus Bankuti
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Eastern Door
At the presentation of the final judgment of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, Sam Achneepineskum wondered if the government is waiting out residential school survivors like himself.
“Even though overwhelmingly people have recognized that it happened and that we need to do something about it, I think they’re waiting for a time when our voices will become silent,” said Achneepineskum, who is from Marten Falls First Nation. But survivors’ voices have only grown louder across decades, he said.
He is just one of the witnesses whose testimony was considered by the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal in Montreal in May, sharing his story so that the truth about a dark chapter in Canadian history may one day be fully reckoned with.
The result was an interim verdict that Canada is guilty of an ongoing genocide against the Indigenous Peoples of this land.
Real action is needed now, the Tribunal’s panel of seven judges argued in their full verdict, released on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Their judgment delivered a detailed legal analysis, taking account of domestic and international laws and treaties to support its conclusions that Canada has engaged in genocide and crimes against humanity in its treatment of Onkwehón:we, continuing through the present day.
“When you have generations of survivors and Indigenous people calling it this, it’s important that we keep naming it what it actually was,” said Christa Big Canoe, who led the prosecution team. “And here’s the other important part of this decision: it’s ongoing genocide. It’s not something that happened in the past. It’s ongoing.”
The expansive judgment comes at a time when advocates point to sluggish implementation of Calls to Action and other recommendations from Canada’s most high-profile domestic investigations to date, monumental efforts to document and report on the legacy of abuses and discrimination against Indigenous people in Canada, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In connecting historical contexts and multiple threads of atrocities suffered by Onkwehón:we that are sometimes separately examined, the judges make their case that Canada is shirking its international obligations and failing to put a stop to crimes they suggest are woven into the fabric of Canadian society.
“These acts persist not because Canada continuously reiterates a murderous intent toward Indigenous Peoples. Instead, they reflect ‘relations of genocide’ driven by government efforts to maintain the settler status quo,” reads the judgment in the section analyzing the legal case for genocide and crimes against humanity.
Advocates hope the document produced by the panel under the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, an international opinion tribunal that has been ruling on violations of human rights since 1979, may finally spark meaningful action.
Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel, one of the seven judges, presented the judgment’s preamble virtually at the morning’s announcement, which took place at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, before delivering a forceful speech at the Every Child Matters March in Montreal that afternoon.
“It is time that we make changes. That we stop just the rhetoric,” she told the crowd at Cabot Square following the march. “It is time for all of us to get off the warm seats that we have been sitting on and apply universally without discrimination the human rights of Indigenous Peoples who have far too long, for centuries, been saying, ‘Look at us. Hear us. We are human.’”
She referred to a quote from John A. MacDonald, the first prime minister of Canada, that was included in the judgment to demonstrate the philosophy underlying the residential school system.
“When the school is on the reserve the child lives with their parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write his habits, training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. … Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men,” reads the 1883 quote.
“Based on this policy,” the judges continued, “approximately 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and territories, and experienced the degradation of their languages, cultures, moral values, disconnection from Indigenous legal orders and systems of governance, and acts of violence that violated their bodily autonomy, which had long-lasting and intergenerational traumatic impacts.”
Gabriel told The Eastern Door she believes Canada knows what it needs to do but hasn’t done it.
“It has created a form of systemic apartheid. It continues to dispossess our lands. It has not included in its domestic legislation enforced disappearances and apartheid simply because they know they are guilty of it,” she said.
Part of the judgment’s goal is to highlight that and educate people, she said, to move from shame and tears to action.
“We always talk about the faces not yet born, and it’s not just our obligation, but it’s also every settler who has made their home here on Turtle Island to make sure that the Indigenous people flourish now. We’ve been struggling for centuries now, and it’s time for us to flourish as well,” she said.
The panel of seven judges also came from the UK, New Zealand, and Spain and included lawyers and other professionals with extensive experience in human rights and Indigenous issues worldwide.
The judgment reviews evidence heard by the Tribunal in relation to missing and disappeared Indigenous children in the residential school system and unmarked graves; Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls; forced sterilization; land grabs; and discrimination in the child welfare system. These were put in the context of intergenerational trauma and the impact on survivors and communities.
The legal analysis that follows explores genocide and crimes against humanity. The crimes enumerated are sweeping and include enslavement, sexual violence, and apartheid, among others.
“The Tribunal finds that the system of band membership as established by the Indian Act, maintained as a prerogative to be adjudicated on ethnic biological grounds, constitutes an institutionalized system of racial discrimination, and therefore a crime of apartheid,” the judgment reads.
The judgment also argues that Canada has failed to act and even sought to avoid accountability for international crimes by failing to sign key international agreements intended to confront human rights abuses.
“The Tribunal finds that Canada is failing to comply with its international legal obligations to investigate and punish the crimes revealed by Survivors and by families who have lost their relatives,” the conclusion begins.
The judgment ends with nine pages of recommendations for governments and other authorities and organizations operating in Canada, such as the Catholic Church, aimed at uncovering and preserving truth and reversing colonial harms.
“I think the only thing I can say is read the judgment because it covers a wide scope of subjects and crimes against humanity,” said Gabriel. “It really addresses the issues that I think have been normalized in our communities in regards to the cultural genocide that has happened to our people, in regards to the physical killings of our people, in regards to the social structures of apartheid that has kept us bound into the small postage stamp-sized pieces of reserve.”
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal took up the topic of missing and disappeared Indigenous children and unmarked graves in Canada for its 57th session at the request of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, led by executive director Na’kuset.
“I am thrilled that they came up with the judgment that Canada has committed crimes against humanity and genocide. That is huge,” said Na’kuset. “It’s also an ongoing genocide.”
Now people need to read the judgment and figure out how its findings and recommendations will be implemented, she added.
Na’kuset said she will be working with the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on next steps.
“It’s not over,” said Na’kuset. “We’re going to be meeting again and strategizing how we use this judgment and how we make a strong enough impression that they actually are embarrassed and will implement it. That’s what we need to do.”
In her comments following the presentation, she laid out this intention.
“There can be no truth without confronting power, and there can be no reconciliation while the systems that created these harms continue to reproduce them. The Tribunal has delivered its judgment. Canada has been held responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity. What matters now is whether the recognition leads to meaningful change,” she said.
“It should never have taken this long,” said survivor Roberta Hill following the verdict. “We’ve been saying this for a long, long time.”
Achneepineskum said the knowledge of what he went through at residential school – and the healing journey that followed – is being passed down.
“We speak to our children and our grandchildren about it, so they know,” he said. “They know where I come from and who I am, and same with my partner. She went to school longer than I did, so her children know. Her grandchildren know. And so they always acknowledge the fact that we are survivors and that we carry those stories with us, and we’re always willing to share those things.”
Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada did not provide a response to the judgment on behalf of the federal government to The Eastern Door before deadline.
The federal government did not send any representatives to participate in the proceedings in May.