What is the intended purpose of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission?
Truth and Reconciliation is a governmental project to follow up on the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and is mostly to collect and preserve the facts that indigenous people suffered in the Residential Schools in Canada.
Residential Schools in Canada were a governmental project of cultural genocide aimed to convert all indigenous people into Christians by coercive force. Indigenous people suffered in the process of this colonialism policy. This is a historical fact that produced a prolonged impact on our society, especially on our indigenous peoples. However, we want to transform the fact into a narrative of “Truth” so as to avoid the use of the phrases of imperialism and colonialism.
So the fact is constructed into such a “Truth”:1) We are sorry about the suffering of the indigenous people. We understand that residential schools were wrong because they wiped out the indigenous culture. 2) The European colonists created residential schools out of “goodwill”, as they deemed European culture to be superior to indigenous culture. The colonists believed they were “helping” the indigenous.
Now we need to reconcile the good and bad. How can a truth be both good and bad at the same time for such a long time? Reconciliation has two levels of meaning: reconcile the indigenous people with the descendants of European colonialists and reconcile the mind-boggling contradiction of the “Truth” as good and bad at the same time.
The reconciliation is going like this: Indigenous people should join us to glorify imperialism and should love the colonialists even though the colonialists abused their human rights and genocide their culture.
I would say that such reconciliation insults the indigenous people, deprived their basic dignity as a human, and abuses their human rights the second time.
Why all Canadians, including indigenous peoples, should glorify imperialism? Because our allies in international politics are exercising imperialism. If another country has a different system from ours, then we are right and they are wrong, just as colonialists thought about the indigenous culture. And we are still using our military power to impose our will on other people, just as colonialists imposed theirs on indigenous people.
The whole scheme of the Truth and Reconciliation is to softly coerce the indigenous people to glorify imperialism and love colonialists even though they are the victims of imperialism and colonialism. This is a colonialist education process and colonialism is racism in international politics.
When our scholars, our academics, our textbooks, and our schools refuse to condemn imperialism and colonialism and our foreign affairs still pursue imperialist policies, the human rights of the indigenous people will be abused time and again. Without condemning imperialism, the Truth and Reconciliation are doing indigenous people more harm than good.
Our ally, the US, used the excuse of WMD to invade and occupied Iraq in 2003. This is imperialist international politics. Yet we still glorify the US, saying the US is doing a good thing with good intentions even though the Iraqi people suffered from never-ending chaos and terrorist wars. This is repeating the dark history of Residential Schools in Canada by our ally. Our allies, NATO, bombed Libya so to turn Libya from the most advanced country in Africa by the human development index into a country the slave market returned. We still glorify the NATO action as democracy and freedom even though the Libyan people suffered from the consequence of the NATO bombing operation. We support our allies to repeat the same dark history of Residential Schools in Canada. China since 1840 had been a victim of repeated imperialist invasions and colonialists’ control and influence. China has developed since its independence in 1949. Yet we condemn China as communist, totalitarian, authoritarian, or dictatorship. We use all excuses to interfere with China’s internal affairs, we are trying to repeat the dark history of Residential Schools in Canada in China together with our allies to use gunboat policy to resume the imperialist and colonialist influence in China.
When our scholars, our academics, our textbooks, and our schools refuse to condemn imperialism and colonialism and our foreign affairs are still pursuing imperialist policies, we are denying the wrongdoing of Residential Schools in Canada, enforcing a colonialism education, and sustaining the systematic racism in our society.
We have had The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms since 1982, yet indigenous people still suffer racist discrimination together with the minority groups who immigrated to our country from countries of the previous victim of imperialism and colonialism. This is because not only do we never condemn imperialism and colonialism but even we glorify imperialism and ask the victims of colonialism to be loyal to colonialists.
Today we are in an era of abundant materials. This is different from a century ago. The rich can get rich without the need to make others suffer. The poor can live a decent life without getting rich. Imperialism and colonialism are to get rich by letting others suffer. Because of advanced technology and production power, our national interest does not necessarily let other countries suffer. The winner-takes-all mentality of imperialism and colonialism is endangering world peace and dividing our society.
Today we are in an era of abundant materials. This is different from a century ago. The rich can get rich without the need to make others suffer. The poor can live a decent life without getting rich. Imperialism and colonialism are to get rich by letting others suffer. Because of advanced technology and production power, our national interest does not necessarily let other countries suffer. The winner-takes-all mentality of imperialism and colonialism is endangering world peace and dividing our society.
On the surface value, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) is to eradicate racist discrimination toward the indigenous people; however, in its hypocritical process, it prolongs the systematic racism in our government because it is part of the colonial education process.
