As the Indian Residential School genocide narrative rolled out, no one questioned it but a handful of scholars. One of them is journalist Terry Glavin who has close and long-term associations with a number of aboriginal communities. One of the things Glavin brought to everyone’s attention is that China cleverly used the allegations of Indian Residential School genocide in Canada for a geopolitical power play..“… three weeks after the Kamloops story broke, China led a bloc of torture states that included Belarus, Russia, Iran, Syria and North Korea in a condemnation of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples. Beijing’s move pre-empted a Canadian initiative, three years in the making, assembling a coalition of countries to force the United Nations to investigate China’s trampling of human rights in Xinjiang..A week after that, in the Canadian senate, Beijing-friendly senators Yuen Pau Woo and Peter Harder used the pretext of the residential schools legacy to condemn a motion that would have replicated a House of Commons resolution declaring Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghurs of Xinjiang a genocide. China’s foreign ministry praised the no-vote senators as “people of vision.””.The Canadian ‘mass graves and genocide’ story took off with the Ground Penetrating Radar scan of land near the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Ground disturbances do not identify graves, coffins or bodies but only disturbances that indicate ‘something’ happened or ‘something’ is there. Claims of ‘disturbances, became discoveries of ‘unmarked graves,’ quickly escalated to ‘mass graves,’ and then to ‘bodies of 215 children’ and ultimately spun into ‘genocide’ as a flurry of other Ground Penetrating Radar activity around other abandoned gravesites developed across Canada..Curiously, in none of the media stories was there any mention of tuberculosis (TB,) the largest killer of all Canadians up until the 1960s. In fact, at the turn of the century, 1 in 4 people died of TB in North America. Infection and deaths rates were much higher in aboriginal communities, in part due to the sweeping changes in their lifestyle as nomadic life ended with the collapse of the buffalo on the plains and the beginning of settlement. TB had been endemic in aboriginal tribes, carried by bison and manifesting itself as visible ‘scrofula,’ a condition Palliser recorded while surveying the border in 1869..With the recent revelations of China’s interference in Canadian elections, it is fair to ask to what extent might Chinese operatives have engaged in amplifying the unfounded but more gruesome allegations related to Indian Residential Schools, in order to divide and conquer Canada. Why? We are a nation rich in resources and have the largest undefended border in the world — with the US — China’s nemesis. The perfect staging ground for a quiet invasion. An eternally ‘sorry’ people, Canadians are the ideal bunch to lay a guilt trip on as we will mostly accept the charge without resistance..As Sun Tzu said, “To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” .China easily capitalized on the many legitimate concerns aboriginal people have about past mistreatment, to evade a UN investigation into allegations of genocide against itself. By succeeding in tagging the formerly famous UN Peacekeeper Nation of Canada as guilty of ‘genocide,’ people were so aghast that few questioned the claim, largely because few people know the history of Canada to begin with..People may be equally aghast at this accusation against China, but recall that in the Allan Inquiry into the Tar Sands Campaign and foreign interference, aboriginal protestors were found to have been paid $100/day or $300 if they showed up “with feathers.” China is supplied with oil and gas by our competitor nations. Perhaps it is the proxy blocking Canadian access to market, exploiting aboriginal people and avid climate activists at ENGOs. Certainly there is clear evidence that Russia has been using environmental non-governmental groups (ENGOs) in this way in Europe; in fact, Europe has been financing Russia’s incursion into Ukraine..Intelligence officer Scott MacGregor lays out in his book “The Mosaic Effect: How the Chinese Communist Party Started a Hybrid WAR in America's Backyard.” He elaborates in this interview with the USA’s “Committee on Present Danger — China.”.There is a parallel shadow world to our daily affairs and China has taken a bold and unrelenting but inconspicuous place within Canada and the United States for its own explicitly stated goals of world domination by 2049. As noted in the book “War Without Rules: China’s Playbook for World Domination” by Robert Spalding, a retired US Air Force Brigadier General (who is fluent in Mandarin), any and all means are on the table for China, preferably those that don’t cost a lot of money nor those that need complex hardware; preferably ones that no one will really notice or question..It is very interesting that anyone in Canada who questions the ‘genocide’ narrative is given the ‘struggle’ treatment made famous under Mao Tse Tung during the Great Leap Forward, which resulted in the genocide…or rather democide… of about 40 million Chinese citizens..“In 1958, Xinyang’s Suiping County was given nationwide publicity for Great Leap production successes referred to as Sputniks, or ‘satellites.” These “grand achievements” were attributed to the “struggle against right-deviating conservatism.” In an atmosphere of extreme pollical pressure, anyone who dared question the accuracy of these reported crop yields risked being labeled a ‘doubter’ or ‘denier’ engaged in ‘casting aspersions on the excellent situation,” and anyone who exposed the fraudulence of the high yield model was subjected to struggle.” (Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958-62,” by Yang Jisheng.).People who bring forth historical evidence contrary to the ‘residential school genocide’ narrative are labelled deniers and doubters. They are subjected to ‘struggle’ – like scholar Frances Widdowson – a tenured professor terminated for speaking her mind, or high school teacher Jim McMurtry, fired for telling children that most of the.Over the course of about 116 years, some 150,000 children attended Indian Residential Schools in Canada. They had been registered for this education by their parents, who were often wait-listed. Do parents willing send their children to a ‘genocide’ year after year?.Contrary to popular belief, compulsory attendance was not instituted until the 1920s, as it was for off-reserve schools in most provinces. Compulsion was rarely enforced..That less than 800 children died at these schools, in that 116 year time period, while terribly sad for everyone involved, is remarkably low in light of the fact that pediatric medicine was not even developed as a practice until the 1930s, and modern medicine with antibiotics and TB treatments only took off in the late 1950s..For context, recall that more than a dozen children died of influenza in British Columbia in early December of 2022, despite being hospitalized and having access to modern medical care in the best facilities..As we saw with COVID, a contagious, infectious disease, the RCMP at the time in the early residential school days were empowered to forcibly remove people from a home under the Quarantine Act, so this lends credence to eye witness reports that children or others were forcibly removed; but more likely for reasons of saving a child from an infectious TB setting, or taking a parent or older sibling for TB treatment in sanatoria which were typically far away..Fear of such incarceration is still deeply embedded in aboriginal people today, as recorded in the paper “Until I started falling down…” which recounts the personal stories of present-day aboriginal people. Some 40-plus respondents were interviewed about how and when they realized they had TB. Most finally recognized it only when they were very sick and needed more than a Tylenol. They were loath to see a doctor, fearing that they had TB, and afraid that such a diagnosis would make them jobless or homeless or lead to their incarceration and isolation in a TB facility, as had happened to their elders..When we look at the historical record, education was a two way part of treaty negotiations. The government offered to provide education; the chiefs and councilors wanted to provide their youth with the tools to live well in an unfamiliar future..If genocide was the intent of the Canadian government, the North West Mounted Police would never have been sent west to chase down the murderous US Benton Gang that slaughtered the Assiniboine people in the Cypress Hills. The Mounties would never have been sent to defend the border against encroachments by the US Cavalry, which had been waging Indian Wars since 1844 (which only were formally ceased in 1924)..The residential schools were a practical solution in an impoverished time to provide education and consistent food to children who lived scattered across great distances, in a time when there were few teachers to begin with, and few people brave enough, tough enough and compassionate enough to try and bring children from a world of subsistence living through a time warp of 5,000 years..The most disgusting thing about the claim of genocide against Canada is that China exploited it to avoid investigation by the UN for genocide, based on far more serious evidence of brutal actions against the Uyghur people..Canadians must stop being useful idiots and wake up to the geopolitics of the day. This is the truth. Reconciliation must not be tainted by foreign actors for their own geopolitical gains..Michelle Stirling researched, wrote, and co-produced 41 x ½ hr historical shows about Southern Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Hugh Dempsey, then curator of the Glenbow Museum. She also researched and wrote a 6-hour mini-series (unproduced) about the North West Mounted Police and their trek west to stop the genocide of the Blackfoot Nation by whiskey traders. Stirling is a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists and the AAAS.
