Parks Canada omits word 'genocide' in latest residential school designation

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In its latest historic site designation of an Indian Residential School, Parks Canada has deleted all reference to “genocide,” according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

The move was made without comment and the agency as recently as last Feb. 12 called the schools “cultural genocide.”

In a notice of a plaque unveiling Thursday at Manitoba’s Portage la Prairie Residential School, managers acknowledged past assimilation policies without describing them as genocidal.

“Built in 1915, the former Portage la Prairie Indian Residential School functioned within the Residential School system whereby the government and certain churches and religious organizations worked together to assimilate Indigenous children as part of a broad set of efforts to destroy Indigenous culture and identity and suppress Indigenous histories,” said the notice.

The 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission was the first to describe the system as “cultural genocide,” which was accepted by then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who told the CBC: “I accept the Commission’s report including the fact they used the word ‘genocide.’”

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s father was principal of an Indian day school in the Northwest Territories in 1965.

Carney has not repeated the language since taking office March 14 or referenced allegations of schoolchildren’s hidden graves at Indian residential schools.

In 2021 the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation of Kamloops, B.C., said it had discovered the remains of 215 children at a former residential school.

But an internal Parks Canada memo on July 3 showed managers were skeptical of the claim based on ground-penetrating radar which “often throws up false positives,” wrote one consultant.

“None of these sites have been investigated further to determine that they are graves.”

No remains have been recovered to date though the First Nation received $12.1 million in federal funding for field work including “exhumation of remains.”