Taking the Children Away: Recent Genocides in the English Settler Nations

Based on the evidence compiled in the four optional but strongly recommended documentaries informing this topic, it appears to be definitive: each of the three largest English settler nations, Australia, Canada, and The United States of America, had long-standing policies of forcibly removing Indigenous children from their families to place them with white families. This is a clear violation of Article 2(e) in the Genocide Convention.

This practice of systematic state-sponsored genocide continued into the 1970s in all three countries. Since 1978 US federal law has prohibited such genocide. The documentaries show that a non-systematic, insidious form of state-sponsored genocide has been documented in Canada and the United States well into the 2000s.

There is some evidence that this non-systematic form of genocide is continuing in parts of the United States to the present day, but no one is gathering the evidence to know. The United States has not yet organized a Truth and Conciliation commission to investigate the issue. However, evidence from Maine, Wisconsin, Canada, and Australia suggests that the results of such an initiative would be eye-opening.

Our group exploration will attempt to make sense of the evidence for these recent genocides in all three English settler nations. We will look at the Genocide Convention which was unanimously adopted by the United Nations on 9 December 1948 and which has been a fundamental principle of international law since its implementation on 12 January 1951.

What does it mean that three countries who ostensibly are among the leaders in the advocacy for human rights around the world are themselves guilty of the most heinous crime of state-sponsored genocide possibly to the present day.

We will look at the difficulty of monitoring, detecting, and protecting against genocide. We will consider the implications of learning about genocides that happened in our own country during our lifetimes.

Main Questions for our Exploration

• Did government agencies in Australia, Canada, and The United States of America practice a policy of taking the children away from Indigenous peoples during the 20th century?

• Do these governmental policies constitute a violation of the UN Genocide Convention?

• What lessons should we learn from discovering that countries that customarily reprove other nations about human rights abuses have themselves harbored heinous acts of genocide against peoples living within their borders?

• Can genocide be prevented by international law? Is there any way to protect our children from being taken away by the next act of state-sponsored genocide? Is the human right of protection from genocide meaningful given how readily and blatantly it has been disregarded in the English settler nations?

• What can be done to ensure that genocide does not happen ever again? Or is genocide a natural part of the fabric of civilization? Should we come to terms with genocide as "normal"? Or should we redouble our efforts to eradicate the practice here and elsewhere around the world?

List of Four Recommended Documentaries

➊ Report on the Australian National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families
http://y2u.be/Sl82VMuuKI0

➋ CBC program on How Residential Schools affected survivors and their children and grandchildren.
http://y2u.be/vdR9HcmiXLA

➌ "First Light"
https://vimeo.com/141218300

➍ "Missing Threads - The Story of the Wisconsin Indian Child Welfare Act"
http://y2u.be/ZCLUbS4FxWo

Context and Commentary for the Four Recommended Documentaries

Archie Roach is a Australian musician who, at the age of 4, was forcibly removed along with his sisters from his parents by government agents. His 1990 debut single "Took the Children Away" (http://y2u.be/aaAXPq0EAr0) won the Human Rights Achievement Award. The song is the anthem for our topic. You can read more about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Took_the_Children_Away

Starting in May 1995, The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission conducted a National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Watch this 32 minute video report of the commission's findings: http://y2u.be/Sl82VMuuKI0 (➊)

In the video report, Sir Ronald Wilson, President of Australia's Human Rights Commission, says, "It was genocide. I didn't know it at the beginning, but I since have no doubt that it was genocide. One of the definitions of genocide, is the fifth clause in the definition in the Genocide Convention, and it says 'The removing of children from their communities with a view to extinguishing their culture'.

You can read about the Genocide Convention at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention

The full text is available at http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html

Based on the Australian National Inquiry as reported in the above video, do you concur with Sir Ronald Wilson, were the "Stolen Generations" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations), the children forcibly removed from their parents by acts of parliament to "civilize" them, an act of genocide committed by the governments of Australia?

Do you agree with the UN definition of genocide? Should genocide include an injunction to not forcibly transfer "children of the group to another group"? Is this kind of genocide important? Should more effort be exerted to educate citizens everywhere that genocide includes the removing of children from their communities?

Why is our commonplace notion of child welfare to protect the child even if that means removing them from their parents on such a slippery slope to genocide? Is our notion of child welfare erroneous? Is there ever sufficient cause to remove children from "harmful" parents given that the designation of "harmful" may be racist? Is it, perhaps, always an act of genocide to remove children from their parents?

If there are cases of abuse which warrant the removal of children from their parents, what controls are necessary to ensure that it isn't a violation of the Genocide Convention? How should we weigh the judgments of social workers about child welfare versus the judgment of the Genocide Convention against "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group"?

Is the zeal of Christian missions and adoption agencies to place displaced children in Christian homes fundamentally an act of genocide? In all cases? Sometimes? Never? Why? Why not? Are there any other groups, besides Christians, who engage in this genocidal(?) practice of rearing children from other cultures as part of their religious value of conversion of heathens?

The final report of the Australian commission was released in 1997 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bringing_Them_Home). Since 26 May 1998, Australia has held "National Sorry Day" "to remember and commemorate the mistreatment of the country's Indigenous peoples, as part of an ongoing process of reconciliation between the Indigenous peoples and the settler population" (according to Wikipedia).

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights held a hearing on the Stolen Generations in July 2000. On 13 February 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized for the mistreatment of the Stolen Generations.

What do you think of the time line of discovery, regret, and apology in Australia's coming to terms with its genocidal mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander children? Does the government need to investigate itself to discover genocide? Is that the only way such abuses can come to be redressed?

Why is the UN a trailing voice instead of a leading voice? Why were the highest levels of Federal government the last to acknowledge the abusive system? Why is it that musicians were the first voices of conscience at the leading edge of human rights awareness while most the rest of society failed to recognize heinous acts as they were taking place?

Is it important for governments to acknowledge and apologize for past genocides?

What kind of conciliation or reconciliation is warranted in a society whose government commits systematic genocide?

Separated from Australia by the world's largest ocean, Canada, has now come to realize their their residential schools program violated the human rights of their Indigenous peoples. The story is told in this 19 minute program from CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Centre): http://y2u.be/vdR9HcmiXLA (➋)

How do we undue the trauma caused a brutal system state-sponsored genocide?

Between 2008 and 2015, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was active. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission_of_Canada

According to the executive summary of the report of the Commission https://nctr.ca/assets/reports/Final%20Reports/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf
"Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group. States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated and destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next. In its dealing with Aboriginal people, Canada did all these things."

On June 11, 2008, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered an apology.

Did Canada's system of Indian policies also constitute genocide?

According to the film "First Light" (➌) https://vimeo.com/141218300 (see also https://upstanderproject.org/firstlight/), in 1879 "The first federal off-reservation boarding school opens in Carlisle, Pennsylvania". The film also reports that in 1958, "The Indian Adoption Project begins, funded by the federal government".

Wikipedia reports 'In 1958, the Indian Adoption Project (IAP) was put in place by the help of the United States federal government, the Child Welfare League and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The IAP replaced the institutionalization of Native Children within Boarding School "with a policy of placing Native children for adoption into white homes."'

How can it be that the first US President after the passage of the Genocide Convention would begin funding of this systematically genocidal policy? How could it be that the Eisenhower administration failed to realize that their policy violates Article 2(e) of the Genocide Convention? Or did they realize it and commit genocide intentionally?

In 1978, President Carter signs the Indian Child Welfare Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Child_Welfare_Act). Despite its objective to keep Indigenous children with their families, in the state of Maine, removal of Indian children from their families continued. We know this because Maine was the first and only state in the USA to form a truth and reconciliation commission (though its purview was restricted to child welfare).

The Maine Wabanaki-State Truth and Reconciliation Commission (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_Wabanaki-State_Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission) was established on 12 February 2012 and issued its final report on 14 June 2015 (http://www.mainewabanakitrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TRC-Report-Expanded_July2015.pdf)

According to Wikipedia, 'They also concluded that their findings constituted cultural genocide as defined in the 1948 United Nations Convention on Genocide by “Causing serious bodily or mental harm” and “Forcibly transferring members of the group to another group.”'

How should we interpret the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation commission in Maine about the continued cultural genocide against the Wabanaki people?

What do you think of the haunting statement of one of the women testifying in the documentary who says, "You can't heal someone who has gone through hell."

Can we heal those who have gone through hell? Should we at least acknowledge their Truth and their pain?

How could we have lived our whole lives while genocide took place in our society without even realizing what was happening?

Why aren't on-going genocides reported in our newspapers? Especially when they are happening within our national borders?

Can you fathom that genocide happened in the state of Maine in the 20th and the 21st centuries?

Can you fathom that the cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples may be on-going around the United States to this day?

How does one stop a genocide?

Why was this genocide so difficult to identify and acknowledge? Are all genocides of this type invisible because there are no mass graves?

Should genocide only refer to situations with mass graves so the occurrence and the condemnation can be crystal clear and universal? Are these difficult to identify cases of genocide worth calling genocide?

What process of healing would you recommend?

What process of change would you recommend?

The documentary "Missing Threads - The Story of the Wisconsin Indian Child Welfare Act" http://y2u.be/ZCLUbS4FxWo (➍) describes the process that resulted in the unanimous December 2009 passage of the Wisconsin Indian Child Welfare Act (http://dcf.wisconsin.gov/wicwa).

Is the training discussed at the end of the documentary necessary to ensure that acts of genocide against Indigenous children stop happening?

Do you think that the unanimous passage of the Wisconsin Indian Child Welfare Act ended the genocide that evidently took place in Wisconsin before 2010?

Or did it continue into the 2010s when the last social workers were finally adequately trained to protect Indigenous children? Or is it still on-going because of the likelihood that some social workers and judges continue to harbor racist instincts?

I only know of Maine and Wisconsin having done the work to end the genocide in their states. Do you know if the genocide is continuing in other states?

How confident can we be that genocide is no longer taking place in the United States?

How can we know if a government's policies or their implementation are effecting genocide or not?

Since the UN failed to notify the world about the genocides in Australia, Canada, and the United States, can we expect them to notify us of future genocides?

What governance system might be needed to ensure that genocide does not go unnoticed for so many decades, even in countries like Australia, Canada, and the United States that are signatories of the Genocide Convention?

The video mentions that Minnesota and Iowa had codified the federal Indian Child Welfare Act before Wisconsin. Does this suggest that Maine and Wisconsin were laggards in protecting their Indigenous children? Or because Maine and Wisconsin have documented their efforts to address past wrongs, should we consider them the cutting edge of empathy and compassion in our country? If that is so, might it be that other states continue to perpetuate genocide to this day?

In 2013, the American Bar Association resolved the urging of "the full implementation of, and compliance with, the Indian Child Welfare Act (25 U.S.C. §§1901-63)." https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law/resources/attorneys/indian-child-welfare-act-resolution/

In March 2015, Casey Family Programs published a report on Measuring Compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act (https://www.casey.org/measuring-compliance-indian-child-welfare-act/). It states "At present, no federal agency is tasked with ensuring state compliance with the protections mandated by ICWA. Without federal oversight, state legislatures, public child welfare authorities and courts are left to interpret ICWA provisions and definitions of “active efforts.” Despite overall decreases in rates of out-of-home placements, Indian children remain disproportionately represented in the foster care system, at more than twice the rate of the general population, though this varies among states."

How do you interpret these findings?

Is the American genocide of Indigenous people continuing?

When will it end?

I could not find any other systematic efforts to ensure that the "taking the children away" genocide has ended in the United States.

Does America need a Truth and Conciliation initiative in order to definitely end the recent genocide in our country?

Do you think America continues taking Indigenous children from their families in violation of the Genocide Convention? Why? Why not?