Leseprobe

4 2 0 C A N A D A There are a number of monuments in Canada commemorating communist crimes and their victims, although Canada itself was not the scene of these crimes. The catastrophic famine of 1932 /33 in Ukraine is commemorated, as is the 1940 Katyn´ massacre, during which more than 22,000 Polish military personnel and civilians were murdered by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, on Stalin’s orders. These monuments were initiated and created by the very sizable exile communities. Most of them are in central locations in Canadian cities. While Canada is willing to commemorate crimes committed in other countries, a general memorialisation and commemoration in public spaces of the victims of Canadian state policy towards the “First Nations” is striking by its absence. For decades from the 1930s, indigenous peoples were subjected to severe persecution and repression in the form of forced assimilation measures. Children were taken from their parents and communities at four years of age and sent to “residential schools”. There they were forbidden to use their indigenous names; their hair was cut off, and the use of their own language was forbidden. Mistreatment and sexual abuse were the order of the day in these schools, most of which were run by the church and, rather than educating the children, served instead to force them to assimilate and to alienate them from their families and communities of origin. The consequences of this policy have been dev- astating. Not only have traditional family and community structures in indigenous societies been permanently destroyed, but these societies are still afflicted by the highest suicide rates among Canadian young people and children, the highest rates of alcoholism, a lack of educational opportunity and inadequate health care. In very many reservations, the inhabitants still have insufficient access to both power and water. The last of these schools was not closed until 1996. Two years later, the Canadian government set up a fact-finding commission to investigate the “cultural holocaust” of the indigenous pop- ulation and make recommendations on compensation for the crimes committed and their con- sequences. Since 2007, the Canadian government has provided funds to mitigate the effects of forced assimilation.