An international panel of human rights experts has accused Canada of committing genocide against its indigenous population after a week-long hearing in Montreal.The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), an opinion human rights tribunal, ordered to look into "the missing and disappeared indigenous children and unmarked graves, and the forced and coerced sterilisation of indigenous women" in Canadian indigenous communities.They claimed to base their judgement on "international law for the crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity."The PPT's final decision came Sunday, with seven judges comprising the panel and adopting several policies they deemed were "crimes against humanity" with "genocidal intent," including the "concrete manifestation of Canada's colonial policies," namely residential schools. ."Between 4,000 and 6,000 children are known to have died in these institutions, or shortly after leaving them (sometimes running away) in the century and a half up until 1997, when the last institution, Kivalliq Hall in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, closed," claimed the judges' statement.To understand these claims — let's look at one case study — the most famous case still talked about today: the case of Kamloops, BC.Five years ago, the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, claimed they had discovered over 200 "graves" in Kamloops on the old apple orchard site that coincided with the former Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds.Although many claim indigenous children died and were buried in "graves" detected via a ground-penetrating radar survey (GPR), none have been discovered to date, according the most recent update on Kamloops "graves" published on the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs' (UBCIC) website..Why have no graves been found yet?Burial sites detected by GPR cannot be confirmed without excavation — something confirmed to the Western Standard by Dr. Frances Widdowson, an ex-professor at Mount Royal University, who studied Canadian Aboriginal policy, and the site of the Kamloops 215 "graves."Widdowson says she has had "quite a few discussions and has conducted a ground-penetrating radar survey (GPR) myself with a geoscientist, and we did excavate."Regarding how GPR detection works, she says usually what the radar detects is "non-unique."."That means that you get a signal, it's sort of a parabola shape — it's like a curved shape — and that's it coming into some kind of contact with either a change in soil density, rocks, a pipe, or something.""It could be a variety of things that cause that signal on the GPR machine, and you have to excavate to be able to determine what that object is."Then, what happened to so many of the indigenous children that went missing at the Kamloops Residential School?Explained in an analysis by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (FCPP), if one sifts through the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) death certificates of a list of the 51 children who died at the school (publicly available online), show their causes of death included disease and a few accidents, with some dying at home, and some dying at hospitals..It also states most were buried on their home reserves — with their deaths being properly recorded and Catholic funerals with family present. FCPP states there is no credible evidence of the children dying under sinister circumstances, or going missing and never being found or buried secretly, arguing the deaths were properly recorded with a place of burial, and "the fact that many people lie in untended graves that became 'unmarked' with the passage of time is nobody’s fault."Many of the children also came from reserves with high rates of tuberculosis.Dr. Peter Bryce, chief medical examiner of the period, stated children arrived at the school already infected with tuberculosis, infecting others at the school..Tribunal judge Valmaine Toki said in the decision Canada bears "legal, moral and political responsibility" for its "systemic policy of assimilation, dispossession and destruction."She claims Canada is doing "just enough" for improving its relationship with indigenous people but failed to "to investigate the crimes against residential school survivors.""Residential schools are a shameful part of Canada’s colonial history whose painful legacy continues to be felt across the country today,” stated Pascal Laplante, a spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.According to the Fraser Institute, residential schools were sometimes deemed beneficial places for indigenous families, providing access to top medical care for children. .Dr. Eric Schloss, who has documented the history of the Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton, explains Indian Residential School facilities had small clinics but most students with serious problems were often transferred to Indian hospitals for intensive care.Schloss worked at the Camsell, described the hospital as delivering "state-of-the-art medicine" considering it probably better than the care available to most children in Canada at the time.Greg Piasetzki, a Toronto lawyer and historian explains how "Canada Wanted to Close All Residential Schools in the 1940s. Here’s why it couldn’t.”He details how for many indigenous parents, especially single parents, or those with a large number of children, residential schools were the "best deal available.".They also offered employment to large numbers of First Nations people as cooks, janitors, farmers, healthcare workers, and even teachers and principals.The PPT trial was requested by the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal in 2024.
