Suffer the Little Children: Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State
Tamara Starblanket
Apr 2020 · SCB Distributors
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About this ebook
Originally approved as a master of laws thesis by
a respected Canadian university, this book
tackles one of the most compelling issues of our
time—the crime of genocide—and whether in fact
it can be said to have occurred in relation to the
many Original Nations on Great Turtle Island now
claimed by a state called Canada. It has been
hailed as groundbreaking by many Indigenous
and other scholars engaged with this issue,
impacting not just Canada but states worldwide
where entrapped Indigenous nations face
absorption by a dominating colonial state.
Starblanket unpacks Canada’s role in the removal
of cultural genocide from the Genocide
Convention, though the disappearance of an
Original Nation by forced assimilation was
regarded by many states as equally genocidal as
destruction by slaughter. Did Canada seek to
tailor the definition of genocide to escape its own
crimes which were then even ongoing? The
crime of genocide, to be held as such under
current international law, must address the
complicated issue of mens rea (not just the
commission of a crime, but the specific intent to
do so). This book permits readers to make a
judgment on whether or not this was the case.
Starblanket examines how genocide was
operationalized in Canada, focused primarily on
breaking the intergenerational transmission of
culture from parents to children. Seeking to
absorb the new generations into a different
cultural identity—English-speaking, Christian,
Anglo-Saxon, termed Canadian—Canada seized
children from their parents, and oversaw and
enforced the stripping of their cultural beliefs,
languages and traditions, replacing them by
those still in process of being established by the
emerging Canadian state.
a respected Canadian university, this book
tackles one of the most compelling issues of our
time—the crime of genocide—and whether in fact
it can be said to have occurred in relation to the
many Original Nations on Great Turtle Island now
claimed by a state called Canada. It has been
hailed as groundbreaking by many Indigenous
and other scholars engaged with this issue,
impacting not just Canada but states worldwide
where entrapped Indigenous nations face
absorption by a dominating colonial state.
Starblanket unpacks Canada’s role in the removal
of cultural genocide from the Genocide
Convention, though the disappearance of an
Original Nation by forced assimilation was
regarded by many states as equally genocidal as
destruction by slaughter. Did Canada seek to
tailor the definition of genocide to escape its own
crimes which were then even ongoing? The
crime of genocide, to be held as such under
current international law, must address the
complicated issue of mens rea (not just the
commission of a crime, but the specific intent to
do so). This book permits readers to make a
judgment on whether or not this was the case.
Starblanket examines how genocide was
operationalized in Canada, focused primarily on
breaking the intergenerational transmission of
culture from parents to children. Seeking to
absorb the new generations into a different
cultural identity—English-speaking, Christian,
Anglo-Saxon, termed Canadian—Canada seized
children from their parents, and oversaw and
enforced the stripping of their cultural beliefs,
languages and traditions, replacing them by
those still in process of being established by the
emerging Canadian state.
Ratings and reviews
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1 review
About the author
Tamara Starblanket is Spider Woman, a Nehiyaw iskwew (Cree woman) from Ahtahkakoop First Nation in Treaty Six Territory. Tamara holds an LLM (master of laws) from the University of Saskatchewan, and an LLB from the University of British Columbia. She is the Co-Chair of the North American Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus (NAIPC). She presently coordinates and teaches in the criminology program at Native Education College in Vancouver, BC
Ward Churchill is a former professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1990 and author of numerous works on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States government.
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