McCRAE: Needed, a moment of truth on 'murdered children'

James C. McCrae is former attorney general of Manitoba and Canadian citizenship judgeWill the nightmare ever end? Indigenous families across Canada have been lied to about their history for a long time. Their greedy leaders have been feeding their grief with new allegations of cruelty almost daily — and exploiting it — for the purpose of extorting billions from Canadian taxpayers.For too many ordinary indigenous families, the consequence has been anger, anxiety, distrust of all politicians — their own included — and continued dependence on taxpayers for their very existence. When a child has a nightmare, caring parents soothe the child by explaining that nightmares are not real. They are not true. Telling a child the nightmare is real and true is simply abuse. Good parents don’t do that.But the abuse continues. Our governments treat indigenous Canadians as children, and they do it badly. This has been so from the beginning of European contact. That it continues in 2024 is a national disgrace. As one very angry indigenous woman shouted, “We are human beings!” Human beings don’t treat other human beings the way indigenous leaders and our governments continue to treat Canada’s first people.What other group of Canadians is singled out for the “special treatment” that has been the lot of indigenous people for generations? Since 1876, status Indians have endured the emotional, economic, and physical obstacles imposed on them by the paternalistic Indian Act and the treaties that followed it. They have been hived off on uneconomic Indian reserves, away from their non-indigenous fellow citizens, where they have been denied property ownership, denied employment opportunities, denied the possibility of building creditworthiness, denied the integration that is required for people to live together in peace and harmony.Perhaps most damaging, they have been denied caring, responsible leadership. After all these years, how is all that working so far? Did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. teach us nothing at all? Was Nelson Mandela’s 27 years in prison a meaningless waste of time and sacrifice?Sure, Canadians are truly sorry for the wrongs of the past. There have been sincere apologies and financial compensation, the go-to responses to virtually every demand made by the Aboriginal Industry, no matter their justification. The “Aboriginal Industry” comprises chiefs, activists, consultants, lawyers, TRC commissioners, and judges — yes, judges! The mainstream media has also been an essential part of the 'Industry' for years, certainly since the May 27, 2021 announcement that alleged the “discovery” of 215 murdered indigenous children secretly buried by six-year-olds in a former residential school apple orchard. The allegation remains unproven, but that doesn’t matter to people (the Aboriginal Industry, governments, and legacy media) who insist on continuing the nightmare. It is important to remember that that false Kamloops announcement — never corrected — is a key component of Canada’s national nightmare.We have a national collective guilty conscience, and the Aboriginal Industry is taking enormous — and obscene — advantage of it. Has there been any recognition on the part of the Industry that ordinary Canadians — in spite of their governments — want to hear words of forgiveness, hopeful expressions about a future when all Canadians are equal, respected, and partaking fairly in our nation’s bounty? There has not, and more and more Canadians now realize why: money, power, and influence held by the few and withheld from the many indigenous Canadians who — at long last — deserve much better. They deserve to be treated as human beings.Aboriginal Industry leaders demand respect each time they have the ear of government and media, which is often. But ordinary Canadians are finding it harder and harder to respect people who simply refuse to forgive, instead demanding more, more, more.But let’s not confine the blame only to those parts of the Aboriginal Industry referred to above. Successive governments, federal and provincial, have been lavishly feeding this nightmare, especially since the failure of the 1970 White Paper on Aboriginal Peoples. Titled “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy”, the paper would have given status Indians a fighting chance to join Canada as equal citizens. Pierre Trudeau’s government understood that the nearly 100-year-old apartheid system was working against rank and file status Indians, and that the equality of indigenous people was the obvious and only path to a better future for them. But who stopped implementation of the White Paper? Who prevented indigenous equality? The Aboriginal Industry, of course. Why would more than 600 First Nations chiefs give up the power, money and influence that the status quo bestowed on them? Look at the treaties, folks. The biggest benefactors by far have been the chiefs and First Nations councillors, not the women, children, and ordinary indigenous souls they falsely claim to represent. And the judges of this country have ensured that the treaties have been interpreted so as to continue the inequality which hurts indigenous individuals so much, but benefits their leaders generously.In the 54 years since 1970, two more generations of young indigenous Canadians have been willfully betrayed by their leaders and by Canada’s home-grown apartheid. Real people — Canadians — have been condemned to the dependence, subjugation, and hopelessness imposed by the Indian Act and the treaties.That the Act and the treaties are described by some as “sacred” is an abomination. The cry that “we are human beings” has been consistently ignored for years, as chiefs and their friends have basked in the fruits of the national guilt they have cultivated so well, and for so long.Who will bring the nightmare to an end? A federal election is coming. Can indigenous Canadians dare to hope that real change will follow? Can they hope that the human equality, which should always have been their birthright, will at long last begin to become a Canadian reality?James C. McCrae is former attorney general of Manitoba and Canadian citizenship judge.

McCRAE: Needed, a moment of truth on 'murdered children'

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