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Killing in the Names of Jesus and Canadian Imperialism
Diagnosing Canada’s appalling mistreatment of Indigenous people
To the extent that Canada has an image around the world and foreigners think about Canada at all, Canadians were known for being polite, compassionate, and rugged.
That image has perhaps become less pronounced over the last couple of decades, as much of Canada has retreated to vacuous platitudes of political correctness to kill cultural differences with kindness. That’s how Canadian multiculturalism is supposed to function, in contrast to the American variety. Americans have strong myths, sustained by the power of Hollywood storytelling, around which immigrants can orient themselves as Americans.
The Record of National Abuse
But the global stereotype of Canadian culture has become even less coherent and relevant, thanks to the discovery so far of over 1,000 unmarked graves at former Indigenous residential boarding schools that operated between 1863 and 1998.
More than 130 of these schools “were funded by the Canadian government, and until 1969 many of the schools were operated by Christian churches. These schools forcibly separated Indigenous children from their families and isolated them from their communities and cultures,”…
