Dignity: A Journal of Human Rights

2011-01-26T02:08:00.000-08:00

Canada given deadline by International Tribunal to repatriate the dead, prosecute the guilty

2010-10-25T21:47:00.000-07:00

Breaking News - Monday, October 25, 2010

Ottawa, Canada - A newly formed International Tribunal has informed the government of Canada that, in partnership with aboriginal people, it will commence forensic excavations at twenty eight mass grave sites near former Indian residential schools across Canada after March 1, 2011, if Canada continues to refuse to prosecute those responsible for the deaths of thousands of children in these schools.

In a letter to Prime Minister Steven Harper today, the Acting Secretary of the six-nation International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State, (ITCCS) Reverend Kevin Annett, gave Canada and its churches four months to begin repatriating the remains of children who died in these schools, and bring to trial those responsible for their deaths.

Rev. Annett stated that his group had been approached and invited to conduct such an inquiry by "very many" aboriginal survivors of Indian Residential schools across Canada.

“After March 1, 2011, our Tribunal will intervene and conduct any inquiry and forensic study which Canada refuses to do, at the invitation of survivors of Indian residential schools” stated Rev. Annett.

“The evidence is there, that many thousands of children died in residential schools. The continued refusal by Canada and its courts to prosecute those responsible is a clear obstruction of justice, and makes Canada an accessory to a crime against humanity.”

On September 29, Judge Murray Sinclair of Canada’s “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” stated publicly that “Thousands of children died in the schools, and their parents were never informed of how they died or where they were buried.”

The ITCCS will be issuing a Public Summons to Prime Minister Harper and other church and state officials to appear before a London Tribunal during the week of April 4-8, 2011, to answer charges of crimes against humanity.

The ITCCS has already issued such a Summons to Pope Benedict, Joseph Ratzinger, and six senior Cardinals at the Vatican. The ITCCS consists of member groups from Canada, the USA, Ireland, Australia, England and Thailand.

A copy of the ITCCS letter to Prime Minister Harper is attached.

For more information contact the ITCCS at: genocidetribunal@yahoo.ca .

Kevin Annett, ITCCS Acting Secretary

1-250-753-3345 (Canada) www.hiddenfromhistory.org

October 25, 2010

Prime Minister Steven Harper

Government of Canada

Dear Mr. Harper,

I am writing to you in my capacity as the Acting Secretary of The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS) to inform you that as of March 1, 2011, our organization will commence an independent investigation, including forensic excavations, at suspected mass grave sites near former Indian Residential Schools across Canada, if your government continues to refuse to investigate these sites and prosecute those responsible for the deaths of children in these schools.

The statement from your Office in February, 2008 which declared that, although criminal acts occurred in these schools, no criminal charges would be laid, indicates a clear policy by your government to officially exonerate the churches and persons responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of children.

Such a policy makes you and your government accessories to a crime under international law, and a pariah body in the Community of Nations.

At the request of survivors of Indian residential schools, our Tribunal will commence our own Inquiry into these deaths as of March 1, 2011, if your government has not done the following:

Publicly disclose all the evidence held by you and the Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada regarding the deaths of children in Indian residential schools, and the location of their buried remains.

2. Begin a public and unconditional process of repatriation of
those remains to their families for a proper burial.

Commence criminal legal proceedings against the persons and institutions responsible for these deaths.

A copy of this letter has been issued to the world media and major governments.

I hope to receive a reply from you no later than November 15, 2010.

Sincerely,

(signed in the original)

Rev. Kevin D. Annett, M.A., M.Div.

Acting Secretary, The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS)

260 Kennedy St.

Nanaimo, B.C.

Canada V9R 2H8

250-753-3345

Email: hiddenfromhistory@yahoo.ca genocidetribunal@yahoo.ca

www.hiddenfromhistory.org

A Brighter Side of the Olympics: Illuminating Canada's Darkness

2010-02-01T10:29:00.000-08:00

This is an excellent article from Jonathan Fowlie of CanWest:

"Olympic Torch Lights Highway of Tears in Journey Across B.C."

However you may feel about the 2010 Olympics, this indicates there is great hope for Canada's future, because some very strong people are ready to bring light to the darkness they have faced. CanWest needs more stories like this.

2009-09-02T17:42:00.001-07:00

Your Crime is Not Diminished by Time, or Apology:

Why Nothing has Changed for Victims of Church Torture, or for the Victimizers
By Rev. Kevin D. Annett

It’s worse now, because I’m supposed to be healed. They get away with everything and I’m still here on the corner.
Bingo, a homeless native survivor of Catholic Indian Residential schools, Vancouver, August 10, 2009

Here in Canada, I have an odd déjà vu feeling these days that I’m working again on the Intensive Ward of the UBC Psychiatric Hospital, except somehow the patients have taken over.

It’s a feeling that’s reinforced whenever a smiling government or church official announces that the residential school era has “finally found closure” now that a few words have been uttered, and a bit of money thrown around. Somehow, these guys mistakenly believe that their liability and guilt as been diminished by their lawyers.

To stay sane, I stay close to people like Bingo and the many thousands of others who imagine they survived the electric shocks, the beatings, the sodomizing and starvation and tortures that were daily residential school life. It was official policy in Canada to destroy innocent children. Probably one hundred thousand children died at the hands of priests and nuns and other clergy, and their minions, many of whom still walk around free.

“Then I saw the priest take that little baby and throw him into the furnace. I heard a little cry and heard his body go pop in the flames. We weren’t ever supposed to tell.”

Irene Favel saw the burning alive of a newborn baby in the summer of 1944, not in Auschwitz, but in Lestock, Saskatchewan, at the Muscowequan Catholic Indian school. And she described it live on a national CBC television broadcast on July 3, 2008.

After the broadcast, no-one protested, save a handful. No outraged editorials responded with passion or appeal. No church official was ever charged or brought to trial.

In May of this year, an aboriginal woman named Charlotte Stewart and her sister Beryl held a press conference in Vancouver where they described watching their sister Vicky, age nine, get murdered in Edmonton by a United Church residential school employee named Ann Knizky.

“We want the United Church held responsible” said Charlotte to the two reporters who showed up.

“We want this woman brought to trial and the church to admit what happened. Vicky needs a memorial site so she won’t be forgotten.”

The church said all the predictably correct words, in a letter to Charlotte a month later, written only after the Stewarts threatened church officials with a lawsuit. But no-one is being held responsible, and the police are refusing to investigate.

On a national scale, this protection of perpetrators has been guaranteed by the Canadian government’s refusal to bring criminal charges against the churches for their killing of all those children. And the same guilty churches have even helped to choose the “Truth and Reconciliation” commissioners who will pretend to “investigate” the residential schools while promising that no names will be named or wrongdoing reported.

This kind of miscarriage of justice is called “healing and reconciliation” in Canada.

I won’t ask the obvious question anymore, which is how can church and state get away so easily with such a huge and monstrous crime. We know exactly how. The question is not even why might makes right, or how religion can sanctify murder, for history teaches us why.

Instead, what is suddenly confronting all of us, including the Pope and the Queen of England, is the realization that we cannot escape ourselves, or our own history.

We try to evade ourselves, of course, all the time. Many Canadians now really believe that we have somehow made better what happened at our hands to Indians, as if money and words ever heal anything. For every lawyer-crafted “apology”, every bit of hush money doled out anonymously, is designed to do something more basic than protect blood-soaked institutions, and that is simply to continue our own self-deception.

You don’t have to stand next to a residential school survivor, or a United Church clergyman, for more than five minutes to know that nothing has changed, for any of us. The survivor is still as crushed as ever, and the clergyman is just as stupidly self-justifying. And little Vicky Stewart still lies, unavenged and unremembered, in the cold earth.

And yet while nothing really has changed for us, the truth is finally out there, like a pesky virus in our body politic, threatening to germinate in our soul and change us.

Jesus once compared the kingdom of heaven to a tiny mustard seed, a very strange but compelling metaphor, since such a seed transforms any garden into a mass of weeds that chokes out all other contenders. The truth is like that, which is why we fear it so.

Nothing has been resolved, or reconciled, or healed. The churches and governments that planned and carried out horrible crimes against children are still as liable and guilty as they ever were, regardless of “compensation” and court-ordered gag orders. Native people continue to die in droves, and their land keeps being stolen. And it is the simple job of anyone who knows and love the truth to say and show this to the criminal parties, and dislocate them.

I watched with wondrous joy this summer when thousands of Irish men and women crowded the streets of Dublin with their outrage that the church could absolve itself, and be absolved, of its violence and murder against children. And I wait, and wait, for Canadians or Americans to demonstrate a similar clarity and courage.

And yet we can reverse our complicity, simply by understanding, and declaring, that the residential school crimes are not resolved, that the process of justice, cleansing and moral accounting has just begun, and that the churches and governments and persons responsible for genocide must and will be brought to public trial and sentencing.

We did so at Nuremburg, against other people. Can we do it now, against ourselves? And by doing so, find ourselves again?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Kevin Annett is a former minister with the United Church of Canada who was fired without cause in 1995 when he questioned the church over its killing of children in its Alberni Indian residential school. He is the author of two books and the co-producer of an award-winning documentary film on genocide in Canada. He is the Secretary of The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared, and lives and works with aboriginal and low-income people as a community educator and minister in Vancouver, Canada.

For more information contact Kevin at: hiddenfromhistory@yahoo.ca or through his website at: www.hiddenfromhistory.org

Kevin Annett
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, B.C. Canada V9R 2H8
Ph: 250-753-3345

A letter from Eliza Stewart to the United Church of Canada

2009-06-02T21:11:00.003-07:00

Letter of Demand to the Moderator, the General Council and Officers of The United Church of Canada

May 29, 2009

We, the members of the Stewart family, make this public demand to you, the fiduciary and responsible officers of the United Church of Canada, regarding the murder of our sister, Victoria Kathleen Stewart, who died at the hands of a paid employee of your church, Ann Knizky, on April 10, 1958, at the Edmonton Indian Residential School, operated by your church.

On or about April 9, 1958, Ann Knizky did strike Victoria on the back of the head with a wooden two by four on the grounds of the said school, and this unprovoked attack caused Victoria to die the next day in the Charles Camsell Hospital .

Miss Knizky was never tried for her killing of our sister. We were not allowed to know the events surrounding her death. Your church officers protected Ms.. Knizky and lied about the murder, by claiming publicly that Victoria had died of "TB meningitis". Your church is therefore guilty of colluding in Victoria 's murder and of obstructing justice.

Under the doctrine of Vicarious Liability, established by the Supreme Court of Canada in relation to Indian residential school crimes, you are responsible as an institution for all of the acts of your employees. Thus, you are doubly responsible for this murder.

We are writing this Letter of Demand to you to put you on notice that we hold you collectively and individually responsible and liable for the murder of our sister Victoria and for all of the loss, pain and suffering we have endured as a family because of Victoria 's death.

Prior to possible legal action against you, we therefore notify you through this Letter of our following demands. We call upon you to do the following:

1. Publicly admit to this crime and take unqualified responsibility for it.

2. Come to us and in front of our entire family, issue a public apology for the murder of Victoria , and explain why you colluded in this crime and suppressed knowledge and evidence of it.

3. Identify the whereabouts of Ann Knizky and help bring her to justice to be charged with murder, along with any accomplices or accessories.

4. At your expense, erect a public memorial to Victoria at the site of her murder, and at her gravesite in Kitkatla, B.C.

5. Issue reparation payments to our family, in an amount determined by us.

6. Present yourselves before a Public Commission of Inquiry and a court of law to answer charges of murder and obstruction of justice, not only regarding Victoria but the thousands of other children who died in your Indian residential schools.

Your church is continually speaking of wanting "healing and reconciliation" with residential school survivors. Here is your chance to actually do so. We want justice and accountability, not rhetoric.

You have thirty days as of this date to respond in writing to these demands. If you fail to do so, or fail to grant what we ask, we will proceed with direct actions against you.

Sincerely,

(signed in the original)

Eliza Charlotte Stewart

on behalf of the Stewart family and all the relatives of Victoria Kathleen Stewart

c/o The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, B.C. Canada V9R 2H8

Eyewitness to Murder at Indian Residential School Names Kill

2009-05-28T15:31:00.001-07:00

From Kevin Annett and Friends of the Disappeared:

The family of a child murdered at the United Church's Edmonton Indian residential school went public today at a downtown press conference in Vancouver, and named her killer.

Eliza Charlotte Stewart described the murder, and played a recording from her sister Inez Beryl Spencer, who personally witnessed the attack on their sister Victoria that caused her death.

Victoria, age nine, was struck on the head with a wooden two by four by a residential school staff member named Ann Knizky. Victoria died the next day.

"First I was hit on the back, and then Miss Knizky hit Vicky because she wasn't coming into school fast enough. She fell down some stairs" said Inez in her statement.

"That night Vicky started complaining about head aches and she died the next day in the Camsell hospital. Miss Knizky never was tried for killing her."

Eliza Stewart commented,

"Vicky was shipped back to us in a burlap sack and her brain was missing, so we think they did an autopsy and removed her brain to hide the injury done to it. They never told us anything. And the church then claimed she died of TB, but she never had it."

Eliza Stewart and her brother Moses called upon the United Church to identify the whereabouts of Ann Knizky so that she can be charged with murder, along with the church itself.

"They're not off the hook, just 'cause it happened years ago" said Moses Stewart.

"Even if Miss Knizky is dead, we want the United Church to stand trial too for how they covered this all up and protected a murderer."

The Stewart family will be issuing a formal Letter of Demand to the United Church of Canada and its officers this week, which will require them to surrender Ann Knizky and identify her accomplices, publicly admit its responsibility for the murder, erect a memorial for Victoria, and compensate the family for her loss.

The Stewarts will also be calling on the police to open a criminal investigation into Victoria's death.

The press conference was sparsely attended. Of sixteen media outlets contacted, only two reporters were present. Among the absent media was the so-called "Aboriginal Peoples' Television Network" (APTN).

In a final statement approved by the Stewarts, Kevin Annett of The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared said,

"Thousands of children died in this manner in the Indian Residential Schools, and not one person in Canada has ever been charged for the death of a child there, or brought to trial. The government is even forbidding names of perpetrators to be named. We will not allow these churches to get away with murder. We call upon others to come forward and name those responsible for the death and torture of innocent children in the residential schools."

Further updates will follow once the police and United Church respond to the Stewarts, or fail to.

(A longer story along with pictures and video recordings of the event will be posted later this week on the website: www.hiddenfromhistory.org).

For information contact: hiddenfromhistory@yahoo.ca or 1-250-753-3345

Real Truth and Reconciliation

2009-05-26T22:20:00.000-07:00

For Immediate Release:
Eyewitness to Murder at Indian Residential School to go Public and Name Killer at Press Conference this Wednesday

Breaking News: May 24, 2009
Vancouver, Canada

The sister of a nine year old girl who was murdered at an Indian Residential School in Alberta will go public this Wednesday with an eyewitness account of her sister's death at the hands of a staff member, who will be publicly named.

Charlotte, an aboriginal woman living in Vancouver, will hold a press conference this Wednesday, May 27 at 10:00 am in classroom no. 2, third floor of the Carnegie Centre at Main and Hastings st. in downtown Vancouver.

Charlotte will share evidence at this event, including a recorded statement from another sister, who lives in Terrace, B.C. and who witnessed the killing and knows the identity of the perpetrator.

The sisters and their family will be issuing a letter to the church that employed the perpetrator and that has allegedly concealed the murder since it happened. Their evidence will be submitted to international human rights agencies.

This event is sponsored by The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared, and will be monitored by The International Human Rights Tribunal into Genocide in Canada and its overseas affiliates.

For more information -
email: hiddenfromhistory@ yahoo.ca
ph: 1-888-265-1007
www.hiddenfromhistory.org

-----------

My thoughts and best wishes are with this brave woman. I have known the identity of the accused for about a year now, and it has been difficult for me to sit on that information until she and/or the other eyewitness was ready to come forward - so I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for these women to suffer in silence for so many years.

Naming names is the only way for Canada's First Nations residential school survivors to move forward. The Truth and Reconciliation committee that has been set up does not offer that opportunity; its mandate specifically states that the names of alleged abusers are not to be mentioned by survivors who give their testimony.

Those who are named can defend themselves and clear their names, or (if there is any actual justice in our justice system) face prosecution for their alleged crimes. Many survivors are reluctant to report abuse they suffered to the RCMP or other authorities, because law enforcement was a vital part of the residential school system. Going public with their stories is the only option left to them.

It's time for real truth and reconciliation in Canada.

Action Alert: Leonard Peltier Is Being Maltreated in Prison

2009-01-22T11:31:00.000-08:00

Leonard Peltier, recently transferred to Canaan Prison, has been severely beaten by fellow inmates. Because he will not name his attackers, prison authorities are limiting him to one meal per day even though he is diabetic. Whether you believe he is guilty or innocent doesn't matter; this is cruel and unusual punishment by any standards, and a serious threat to the health of a U.S. prisoner. We don't need any more Gitmos.
Please read this alert from Mr. Peltier's sister and consider doing what you can to help:

URGENT ALERT

A New Year's Message from Kevin Annett

2009-01-08T22:22:00.000-08:00

Note from blog administrator, S.M. Elliott: This blog does not necessarily endorse specific recommendations made in the following document, but wholeheartedly supports its message. Please share it freely, as per Mr. Annett's request.

Looking Back, Looking Forward:
The Political Consequences of Uncovering Genocide in Canada
By Kevin D. Annett (Eagle Strong Voice)
Squamish Nation territory

2008 was the year the impossible happened in Canada .

Our national network known as The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared made history this past year, and forever changed the political landscape of Canada. In the words of Dora, an elderly survivor of the Kamloops Indian Residential School,

“You’ve finally put our people on the map. They can’t ignore us, ever again.”

In a nutshell, we have forced Canada to admit to its genocide of native people, issue a formal apology for the residential school crimes, and acknowledge that thousands of children died in these schools. Our allied hereditary chiefs proclaimed sovereignty over indigenous land and issued eviction orders against the churches responsible for genocide.

Quite simply, after years of effort, we have forever changed the image of Canada in the world and ended an official regime of Holocaust Denial.

It has been a joy and an honor for me to help win such a moral victory for people who have never been “on the map”. But what has this victory meant for such people?

On Palm Sunday, March 16, 2008, fifty of us - natives and "whites" - walked quietly to the front of the Holy Rosary Catholic Cathedral in downtown Vancouver and stood there, facing the congregation, holding a banner that read, “All the Children Need a Proper Burial.”

We had been warned to stay away from that church. But I remember walking unafraid to the front of the sanctuary with all our people, led by three clan mothers. Among us were William Combes, Rick Lavallee and Bingo, homeless survivors of hideous tortures at Catholic residential schools.

That moment was a pinnacle for me, and for the survivors, for in the very heart of that which had tried to kill them, they were able to face it and say, We are still here, and we want our friends returned to us.

Past the angry threats of the priests, and the police who later descended on us, we were reaching out and touching the hearts of people in the Catholic church that day.

And it worked. For, after a few minutes, as our procession left the sanctuary led by the drumming of the clan mothers, the entire congregation rose spontaneously as we walked by.

It was then that I knew we had won. And sure enough, the walls began coming down after our moral victory that day.

In the wake of our March action, the missing residential school children have, for the first time, preoccupied the conscience and public discourse of Canada . It is as if the entire dominant culture is now standing, as did the Catholic parishioners, to acknowledge what they know is true, in remembrance of the missing children.

In opposition, both church and state have done their best, since that day, to belittle our work and downplay the reality of murders in Indian residential schools, and their responsibility for them. But such is always the behavior of those with their backs to the wall.

If our simple act of speaking of the dead and holding up the survivors has begun to shake loose centuries of Holocaust Denial in Canada , it has also caused us to ask ourselves, Where do we go from here?

We are no longer asking for anything from the churches and state that are responsible for genocide. Rather, all our actions in 2008 have laid the groundwork for an even greater step: drawing the broader political consequences of our exposure of Canada as a colonial and genocidal settler state, and creating an altogether new society.

Who are We and What Can We Become?

Our exposure of the Canadian genocide has simultaneously indicted the social order that gave rise to it. Euro-Canadian Christian society as a whole stands condemned in the dock alongside those persons who ran the residential schools, sterilized and murdered children, spread smallpox, and dug the mass graves.

Despite their best efforts to ignore this fact and contain the whole matter with pseudo “apologies”, the Canadian government and its partner Catholic, Anglican and United churches now face the same kind of historical reckoning that Nazi Germany did after its defeat in 1945: an awakening to their own criminal nature.

On April 20, 2007, Canada and those churches suffered a fundamental moral defeat in Parliament, when the first cabinet minister in Canadian history publicly acknowledged that untold thousands of children had died in Christian Indian residential schools.

The extent of this defeat has yet to be appreciated by most Canadians, or even indigenous people. But its impact is nevertheless reverberating throughout every level of society and undermining the very basis of Canada ’s existence.

The question now is how to draw the larger conclusions of this defeat in order to reinvent Canada from the top down, and the bottom up, with a basic purpose: the establishment of a decolonized, secular, and genuinely democratic federation of sovereign nations – the Republic of Kanata .

Shedding the Past, Creating a Future

Canada has never been allowed to become a sovereign and democratic nation because of its historical role as a resource base and captured market for first the British and then the American empire. That dependency required that Canada remain frozen as a colonial, church-dominated, semi-feudal society: a condition that has caused the sustained genocide of indigenous peoples and the destruction of their lands, and now threatens the lives of all of us.

The two attempted democratic revolutions in our history – the abortive rebellions in 1837 in Upper and Lower Canada, and the Metis Insurrection of 1885 in the Red River basin – had as their aim the ending of an Imperial oligarchy and the creation of a democratic Republic in which aboriginals and Europeans could co-exist equally. The crushing of both rebellions ensured that oligarchy and apartheid would remain the political norm in Canada .

And yet, the same vision of freedom that propelled these revolts had been originally offered by the eastern Six Nations to the arriving Europeans through the “Two Road Wampum” Great Law of Peace, in which both cultures would share the land and not seek to dominate or conquer the other.

That offer was rejected not by Europeans as a whole, but by the religious and commercial elites who ran the foreign policy of both the French and British Empires, especially during the European Religious Wars of the formative 17th century.

Time and again, the Catholic and Protestant churches subverted peaceful relations between whites and natives, and among aboriginal nations such as the Huron and Iroquois, as part of their plan to exterminate all non-Christian peoples and take their land. In the words of the Jesuit missionary Jean Brebeuf,

“There can be no peace or parity between the savages and Christians. This is required by our Faith and the fur trade.”

Canada as we know it has arisen on the basis of this basic philosophy of Christian Superior Dominion.

There is still no equality between natives and non-natives in Canada because of an apartheid Indian Act that relegates “Indians” to a separate and inferior status, and holds most of them in a state of permanent sickness, landlessness and poverty on their own land. Such permanent internal colonialism is required by the foreign and domestic corporate interests that run Canada as a fuel pump and watering hole.

Quite simply, in a neo-colonial regime like Canada , where “the Crown” legally owns all the land, native people must continue to be killed off, legally and methodically, for such theft to continue. A constant aboriginal death rate twenty times the national average is the deadly proof.

This genocidal reality will never change in Canada as it is presently constituted, since the maintenance of natives, and the poor generally, as a disempowered cash cow for others to exploit is an institutionalized part of Canadian society.

The nine billion dollar Indian Affairs industry requires a sick, dependent aboriginal populace, and a compliant class of collaborating native elites to administer this sickness. For the resulting totalitarian control of native people at every level is precisely what resource-hungry corporations need to take the last remnants of oil, timber, minerals and water from what is still aboriginal land.

Such a structurally criminal regime cannot be tinkered with or reformed, resting as it does on the oppression of most of the population, whether native or non-native. The existence of Canadians as “subjects of the Crown” under the ultimate authority of one person – a Governor-General accountable only to a foreign monarch – amounts to a state of legal slavery utterly repugnant to democracy and sovereignty.

“The only way to reform a colonial system is by dismantling it” said the great Irish nationalist, Bernadette Devlin. And the key to dismantling the Canadian oligarchy is to establish responsible government by severing ties with the English monarchy and creating a federated and secular Republic of sovereign indigenous nations with full public ownership of the economy, the land, and all its resources.

In short, every vestige of the system that spawned genocide in Canada needs to be abolished, if we are serious about ending its legacy and doing justice to aboriginal people and residential school survivors.

A Program for Ending Genocide

Legal genocide in Canada has rested historically on three pillars: a colonial political oligarchy under the authority of the English Crown; a powerful, unaccountable and state-protected religious oligarchy in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, and later, the state-created United Church ; and a foreign-controlled, dependent economy.

To dismantle the root causes of genocide in Canada, we must replace all three of these systems, through a process of active de-construction and reconstruction: undoing what caused the wrong and building an altogether new political and social regime in its place.

To commence, our general aim must be the following steps of “decolonization and de-construction” in order to lay the basis for a true democratic and secular Republic:

I. Politically: Active disaffiliation from the English Crown and the Canadian state and its courts;

II. Spiritually: Disestablishment of the Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada ; and

III. Socially: De-corporatizing our economy and the creation of local, self-sufficient economies under public ownership.

A real Program of Justice for all victims of genocide in Canada must restore social equality, the health of the land, and democratic sovereignty of all nations within Kanata , through these and other measures:

I. Politically:

1. Abolish the Governor-General and issue a formal Declaration of Independence from the British Crown.

2. Abolish the Indian Act, the federal courts, the Senate, the RCMP and the Indian and Northern Affairs department.

3. Reconstitute Canada as a federated and secular Republic of Kanata , based on a recognition of the root title sovereignty of all indigenous nations and of the common ownership by all citizens of the economy, wealth, lands and resources of Kanata .

II. Spiritually:

1. Tax the churches: Revoke the charitable tax-exempt status of the Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church, nationalize all church property and land, audit and assess all payments owed by these churches to the people and indigenous nations since their inception, and return all lands and effects stolen by these churches from native people.

2. Revoke the legal charters and legislation governing the Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada, and thereby end their official, legal status.

3. End diplomatic recognition of the Vatican and expel the Papal Nuncio.

4. Separate church and state: no funding for religious schools or churches, no religious oaths or functions connected to the state, no state protection for clergy or churches (ie, revoke sections 176 and 296 of the Criminal Code of Canada).

5. Establish a public, international inquiry into crimes of these churches against native people, including in Indian residential schools, with the power to subpoena, try and jail offenders.

III. Socially

A Jubilee Campaign to restore the land and economy to the people:

1. Cancel all debts and mortgages, and return all land to its original owners.

2. Place banks, money supply and credit under public ownership and control.

3. Impose a 100% tax on all wealth gained by inheritance, interest and speculation, and the abolition of all income tax.

4. Establish a maximum wage and redistribute all surplus income to the lower paid.

5. Collect all back taxes owed by corporations and a special tax on the super wealthy and on corporate profits.

6. Abolish foreign ownership of the economy.

7. Abolish all land speculation and the commercial trading in land.

8. Nationalize all resources.

9. Socialize all housing, medicine, education and transportation, freely available to all.

A Gaia Campaign to restore the health and harmony of the land:

1. Impose a Green Tax on all privately owned vehicles.

2. Abolish nuclear power and the uranium industry.

3. Develop wind, solar and tidal energy industries.

4. Phase out petrol vehicles, and replace with non-polluting, mass-transit systems.

5. Immediately nationalize all polluting industries and abolish or eco-convert them.

6. Legally limit the size of all land ownership to 100 hectares.

7. Collectivize all farming and agriculture, and abolish all pesticides and herbicides.

8. Abolish the sale and commercialization of water: Provide free, universal access to water through the establishment of public ownership over all water resources.

Acting on this Vision and Program

These proposals are but a beginning in a long process of social and spiritual emancipation from corporate genocide.

Our purpose as a de-colonizing movement is to create a new society within the shell of the old: to bring about a parallel social order in opposition to “Canada” through a massive democratic movement from below. We can only succeed through a conscious, activated citizenry who take control of their lives and the land.

Consequently, we reject any reliance on or involvement in the existing parliamentary or electoral system, which is based on an undemocratic allegiance to a foreign monarch.

Instead, we will seek to create new popular assemblies and courts through which the people can express their will freely and openly, justice can be directly enacted, and the present political system can be overturned. We will use mass civil disobedience, strikes, withholding of taxes, and other direct actions to undermine and replace Canada and its institutions with a truly democratic republic.

To coordinate and lead this campaign, we look to a mass revolutionary party to engender but not dominate our movement. The creation of a democratic and secular Republic of Kanata will unleash the greatest freedom and diversity among the people, who will learn through their own struggles the meaning of self-government.

Our underlying recognition is that true democracy and sovereignty cannot come into being or survive without the complete public ownership of all of Kanata by all the people. The poorest person has as equal a right to the land and its wealth as the richest, and we shall work to create a society where all class distinctions and the private ownership of the economy have been abolished.

We encourage you to share this Program and Vision, and begin to act on it.

As a first step, we call upon all people who are in agreement with this Vision and Program to take the Pledge of Allegiance to Kanata (below) and to form organizing committees in their communities to prepare for the formal launching of the Republican Party of Kanata.

In solidarity and hope for our common future,

The Elders and National Council of the Republican Movement of Kanata, in alliance with traditional Squamish Chief Siem Kiapilano
………………………………………………………………………………

Pledge of Allegiance to the Republic of Kanata

I do solemnly swear allegiance to the Federated Republic of Kanata, and to the principles of sovereignty, natural law, unconditional democracy, and public, collective ownership for which Kanata stands.

I swear to defend the Republic of Kanata against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to sever all ties and allegiance to the British Crown, and to the government known as Canada. I pledge to stand in solidarity with all those who take this oath and to defend them unconditionally.

I take this pledge freely, without coercion, mental reservation, or ulterior motive, according to my honor and freedom as a natural and sovereign person.

(Name, Address and Date)

Please send a copy of your signed Pledge to:

The Secretary, RPK
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, B.C.
V9R 2H8

Acting under the authority of traditional Squamish Chief Siem Kiapilano, on his territory

1 January, 2009

www.hiddenfromhistory.org

"Leave it to Jehovah"

2009-01-06T19:54:00.000-08:00

A middle-aged sex offender, dressed conservatively enough to impress, trudges from house to house in an unfamiliar neighborhood. He rings doorbells and quietly delivers his memorized spiel to any adults who answer.

He's not fulfilling his legal obligation to notify new neighbors that he's a convicted sex offender. He's a Jehovah's Witness. He has never spent a day in jail.

As reported by CBC's investigative news program the fifth estate ("Spiritual Shepherd"), Jehovah's Witnesses are experiencing many of the same child-molestation issues as the Catholic Church, thanks to a lax policy in reporting child sexual abuse to the proper authorities. Church elders are routinely instructed to contact their country's JW headquarters when alleged abuse is reported to them. The legal department will then instruct them to follow official protocol: Ask the accuser and accused if the allegations are true. If the accuser confesses, he/she should be counselled to repent. If the allegations are denied, "Leave it to Jehovah." The only way an alleged abuser can be considered guilty without confessing to his/her crime is if at least two witnesses saw the abuse occuring. This policy, in most U.S. states and throughout Canada, violates laws requiring citizens to report suspected child abuse to child welfare and/or police.

This policy - though denied by the church - has apparently been in place for decades, and is still in place today. Victims of sexual abuse have reported that their claims were minimized, refuted, or ignored by church authorities, and they're speaking out.

Accused child molestors who are not considered guilty by church authorities are still allowed to proselytize door-to-door, and to work one-on-one with children.

What to do if you suspect a church member has or is abusing a child:

1. Do not rely on church elders to resolve the problem. Go directly to the proper authorities. Jehovah may be in charge, but it's your legal responsibility to report suspected child abuse. If you don't, you may be aiding and abetting the sexual exploitation of children. This applies even if the suspected perpetrator is your own spouse, sibling, parent, friend, church elder, etc.

2. Notify church authorities after you've contacted child welfare or the police. Request that the accused not be allowed one-on-one contact with children in the church until the matter has been legally resolved, for the protection of the children and the church. If you are told that the matter should be resolved only within the church, point out that this is in violation of the law and could leave the church vulnerable to legal action.

3. Find out your church's policy on abuse claims. If it is not in line with the law, demand changes. Tell your fellow church members about the policy and encourage them to demand changes, as well. This is in the best interests of your children, your spiritual community, and your community in general.

What to do if have been or are you are a victim of sexual abuse by a church member:

1. Do not expect action from church authorities. Go to a social worker, trusted friend or family member, teacher or school staff member, a doctor or health worker, child welfare, the police, or other authority figure outside the church first. You can go to the church after you have turned to someone who is in a position to help you legally.

2. If someone in the church, even an elder, tries to minimize the abuse you have suffered, accuses you of lying, or tells you that it is in the best interests of everyone to keep the abuse a secret, do not accept this. You are the victim of a crime. You deserve to be heard and to have your claims investigated in a timely, legal, appropriate fashion.

3. If questioned by a church member about details of the abuse, do not give information you are not comfortable giving. You are not obligated, legally or spiritually, to give details that you do not want to reveal.

For more information on Jehovah's Witness child abuse, please visit silentlambs.org. This is an online community by and for victims of abuse whose claims were covered up or ignored by church authorities, and it provides a wealth of information on the issue. This is not just a JW problem. It affects our children and our communities. It's up to all of us to make sure that child sexual abuse is not tolerated for any reason.

2008-12-10T04:08:00.000-08:00

Today is Human Rights Day, and the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Please take some time out of your day to read or review this historic document, and renew your commitment to preserving and protecting the fundamental rights of all people.

Did You Save Your Receipt?

2008-11-28T23:50:00.000-08:00

The problems that can result from foreign adoptions have little to do with the children.

I saw an immensely disturbing story on 20/20 tonight, about American couples who adopted Russian children, then had second thoughts.

The program focused on Michael and Tanya Mulligan, a Florida couple who adopted three Russian children, two girls and a boy. The boy suffers mild brain damage and sometimes acts out violently. The girls are better-behaved, but have sibling rivalry issues and some minor behavioral problems. The Mulligans are currently suing their adoption service because, as Michael Mulligan so delicately puts it, "When it comes down to dollars and cents, you're basically buying a child." And they feel that the three children they "bought" are defective merchandise.

Unable and/or unwilling to parent these children as they agreed to do, the Mulligans have dumped them off at a Montana ranch run by a woman who takes in adopted children and teens (mostly Russian and Eastern European) that other people don't want. The ranch accomodates 40 children at a time, and it's always full. It's like the SPCA for Russian adoptees. Foreign adoptees whose "parents" can't afford the boarding fees at the ranch or at boarding schools end up in an already overtaxed foster care system, in federally funded programs like Job Corps, or back in Russia.

One Russian child at the ranch, a 9-year-old, was placed in psychiatric care after only 5 weeks in the U.S. because her family was alarmed by the way she ran around their house "touching everything", and by her temper tantrums. She now appears to be a wholly socialized and normal child.

Would you place your 9-year-old in a psych ward for "touching things" and having tantrums? Probably not. Even if you wanted to do so, the system doesn't make it that easy for biological parents to cop out on their responsibilities. So why do we make it easy for adoptive parents?

Faced with the fact that her youngest adopted child is brain-damaged, Tanya Mulligan whines that she'll have to take care of him for the rest of his life. She also whines that non-adoptive parents can't understand her situation, "People don't understand. These kids come at you every day … many times a day. It's like a battering ram and they just keep at you and keep at you and keep at you." She wonders where things went wrong.

I think I might have some answers for you, Mrs. Mulligan...

1. You "buy" children from a foreign country, probably with the expectation that they will be extremely grateful to you for "rescuing" them from a life of squalor.
2. You don't bother to learn a single word of Russian. The children, of course, do not know any English. Why would they? They didn't know they were going to be purchased by Americans.
3. You encounter situations (rebellion, tantrums, brain damage, sibling rivalry) that can and do arise in biological families. Rather than accepting such travails as challenges of parenthood, you see them as evidence that you aren't getting your money's worth. Much like those middle-aged men who order desperate 20-year-old wives from Russia, then can't understand why they're dumped after the ladies' green cards arrive.

This is not to say that some adoption agencies/agents aren't unscrupulous, dishonest, or even criminal. Some are, and should be held accountable. But shouldn't there be some accountability for adoptive parents who abandon their children when things don't go their way? And isn't it time we teach people to carefully weigh the merits and downsides of foreign child-buying adoption before encouraging them to jump into it? Should books like Adoption for Dummies really be on our library shelves?

The program mentioned that 15 Russian children have been murdered by their American adoptive parents since the early 1990s, and described the death of Nina Hilt in 2005. The 2-year-old was severely beaten by her alcoholic adoptive mother, who became enraged when the toddler tried to "attack" her other adopted daughter. Nina died during a Fourth of the July vacation the following day. Peggy Hilt gave police and prosecutors a sob story about being so overwhelmed by caring for a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old that she simply had to drink a 12-pack of beer every day.
Rather than making an example of Hilt, a court recently reduced her sentence. A Newsweek story on the murder actually begins, "Peggy Hilt wanted to be a good mother". Would anyone say this about a woman who pummeled, shook, and kicked her biological toddler to death? God, I hope not.

This list of Russian-adoptee murders shows that in every case, the child had been in the U.S. for less than a year. In most of the cases, the murderers were middle-class, educated people with no history of violence. A notable exception is the case of Brenda and Bob Matthey, who seemed to enjoy sadistically punishing the 7-year-old Russian boy, Viktor, whom they froze to death by locking in an unheated crawlspace. The Mattheys were outwardly religious people who insisted that Viktor's Reactive Attachment Disorder and tantrums drove them to duct-tape his mouth, lock him in a crawlspace without access to a toilet, and force-feed him uncooked or salty food without water as a punishment. They also whipped their other six children (4 biological sons, plus Viktor's twin brothers) with a cat o' nine tails. According to one website, Viktor might have been a victim of controversial "attachment therapy" techniques.

Renee Polreis tried to convince a court that her 2-year-old Russian adopted son, David, beat himself to death with a wooden spoon. When that failed to convince, her attorney produced a pathologist who said the bruising could have been caused by pneumonia. Polreis insisted David had severe Reactive Attachment Disorder, despite a psychologist's testimony that he had watched David hug and kiss her a month before his murder.

I don't know how many Russian mail-order brides like Anastasia Solovieva have been slaughtered by their husbands, but I fear that number isn't good, either.

Why is this happening? Is it possible that some people don't feel the same empathy for their adopted children than they do for their own children? Some of these cases remind me of the torture death of Sylvia Likens at the hands of other teens and children, egged on by her guardian. This woman, Gertrude Banishewski, was not known to abuse her own 7 children, yet she had no difficulty beating, burning, starving, and molesting another child in her care. Similarly, the Mattheys did not lock their own children in unheated rooms when they misbehaved. Is it really the children who have attachment disorders in these instances?

While people like the Mulligans aren't abusive toward their adopted children, I wonder about the emotional trauma that could result when children are forcibly removed from their home countries, made to live in households in which no one speaks their languages, and abandoned if their reactions to their new environments become bothersome. It is painfully obvious that many adoptive parents aren't prepared for any sort of parenting, much less foreign adoptions.

Some choices are meant to be permanent. If you can't live with their consequences, then you shouldn't be making them.

The Greyhound Bus Terminal

2008-08-16T11:17:00.001-07:00

My friend Joseph from New York sent me a postcard to ask what I think of the Greyhound Bus Terminal incident. This was my reply to his query:

Hello Joseph,

How are you? I hope you are doing well. I do have an interesting view of the bus incident, and it is definitely NOT like the mainstream median!:D

I give you a few examples of the subtle symbolism's I noticed with regards to the organizations involved in the event. The event itself I give to black majix performance, with the new moon of that day attempting to make a significant if not permanent change within our rule of law. Leo is the grand organizer, whom can pull strings to maintain a showmanship effect.

The colours of blue and red where significant, if one can consider whom the media looked to for guidance. Greyhound, Walmart (the accused' former work place), the RCMP, the local Manitoba Police, every media outlet, had colours blue&red. Trauma based mind control: the people insist that SOMETHING must be done. These 'organizations' respond.

This is just the beginning to use the north american union excuse to 'control' the masses because there is utter 'chaos'. I wish humanity would wake up and realize, but then again, I think they may have us by the balls under this whole economic structure. I hope Planet X comes to encapsulate these demons that are plundering our Earth at the moment. I'd like to believe that Planet X may return and have on it the Suns of the Serpent that have previously dealt with this menace. The cities feed off of the human race which I believe are the red & white blood cells of the earth, and the white blood cells come out to fight off disease when the global body has been infected. Anyone can watch a legend like movie where there is a civilization of white fighters defending an approaching enemy. Through the Hollywood-like thing called MK-ULTRA, we have been conditioned to believe that someone is going to come rescue us and it gives humanity a sense of dis-empowerment. We have lost our way, like Ron Paul will tell you. We must get back into strengthening the earth, therefore, strengthening ourselves. Also, the more the red blood cells for our Mother Earth, the HEALTHIER we are!!!!! So all non-white races must remain more plentiful than the white, otherwise Mother Earth will continuously be fighting off a disease that is within ourselves. This depletes the resources of the immune system for our planet.

If you can imagine, I'm told by other people everyday, 'crazy'. Then they move on with their day.

In Canada, the global empire is very apparent now, as we even have the stupid 'queen' on our $20 bill. I write a message on every talisman I get, attempting to inform through an unexpected median. I will be involved in a phone in to jam the telephone lines of my member of parliament to protest a north american union in September. I can forward the email I just received if you are so empowered to share in this experience. I can keep you updated with any information that you may require.

Love,
Rebecca

The Cure for Cancer Has Been Suppressed

2008-08-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

The Honourable Justice Felix A. Cacchione
Supreme Court of Nova Scotia
The Law Courts
1815 Upper Water Street
Halifax, Nova Scotia
B3J 1S7
PH: 902-423-1791

Rebecca Lee Bodo
402-8920 165 St. NW
Edmonton, Alberta
T5R2R9
PH: 780-644-0435

RE: Amherst, Nova Scotia - March 17, 2008AMHERST - Rickey Logan Simpson has twice been convicted of drug charges and has twice been a free man the same day as his sentencing.

To: Mr. Cacchione,

On Thursday August 14, 2003 at approximately 4:10pm, the power grid blew in Toronto as it is part of the Eastern Seaboard. For the first time in a long time, there was absolutely no reliance on Big Brother for a 24 hour period. For the first time in a 2 year period of living in Toronto, I met my neighbors. We met & barbequed all our spoiling meat, even drank wine together. It was a warm, wonderful night that anyone could look up into the sky to see the stars. For the first time in Toronto, we could see the stars!

I wish I could say the same thing for Rick Simpson’s situation. How can big brother play such a destructive role in the lives of Canadians? BIG BROTHER: DO NO HARM! The choices that are being made in Canadians’ names are atrocious. The human condition is being used for all the wrong reasons within this insidious mind control unit: the government.

I really don’t understand why the government has declared war on a plant. There have been other marijuana judgments in various parts of Canada that have challenged the status quo and been vindicated for meaningless charge of having a herb in their possession. Why is it so difficult for our Establishment to vindicate a plant's ability to save a life? This is insanity, and the red-neck janitors are holding executive office at the moment. Please excuse them, looks like the janitors need a cigarette break. Please don’t give them any hemp oil to cure their eventual lung cancer, nor any of their family members who may also have a cigarette habit.

This is all people want: informed choice. Any tangible learning process of the natural world SUSTAINS the natural world. Canada is unfortunately moving into a time period of tyranny. What are you going to tell your generations when the whole world turns into the police state you are helping to create?

Sincerely,

Rebecca Bodo

Please allow me to explain this letter as it hasn't been sent yet. After viewing the film Cannabis Cures Cancer - "Run From The Cure" The Rick Simpson Story
@http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7331006790306000271&ei=ezGZSJ-qFoWE4QKTjL0p&q=Rick+Simpson+Story&hl=en, I have yet another ideal to strive for. This movie has me convinced that something bigger than our Government is running things around here. I realize the antagonists are a Masonic group that like the colours red & blue on every coat of arms, such as the Government (liberal red & conservative blues), the Royal Canadian Legion, and the RCMP. The judge is just a pawn in the game of life it seems.

The problem for marijuana is the ignorance of the benefits of the plant. There has been lots of proven research as to the validity of the the health benefits. Please allow me to report scientific information regarding the benefits:

Professor Xia Zhang, and his neuropsychiatry research unit team at the University of Saskatchewan, in 2005, found that rats treated with HU-210, a potent synthetic cannabinoid, on a regular basis showed neurogenesis - the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus. The effect is the opposite of most legal and illicit drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, heroin, and cocaine. "Most 'drugs of abuse' suppress neurogenesis," Zhang says. "Only cannabis promotes neurogenesis." As a medicine, the plant is used to ease pain in multiple sclerosis patients, combat nausea in cancer patients, and stimulate appetite in people afflicted with AIDS. It has also been used to treat epilepsy and stroke.

June 18-20, 1999 Acapulco, Mexico. Professor Manuel Guzmán’s research teams at Complutense University and Autonoma University in Madrid, Spain found that cannabis’ active ingredient, THC, killed tumor cells in advanced cases of glicoma, a quick-killing cancer for which there is currently no effective treatment. Guzman says that the experiment, published in the March 2000 issue of Nature Medicine, tested THC at very low doses and at a late stage. He predicts that THC should work better if given earlier. Guzman's team says, “the drug …provoked a death spiral in cancer cells.” He injected the active cannabinoid compounds directly into the brain cancers after laboratory studies showed that THC killed glioma cells while leaving normal brain cells unharmed.

The plight of Rick Simpson has been an uphill battle. Mr. Simpson has developed an actual hemp oil that when ingested, has cured cancer. He has been jailed repeatedly for administering a medicine that contains THC. This movie gives testimonials regarding the state of the Cancer Establishment from the Rebels' point of view. Please watch this movie, and I'll discuss with myself if I should send this damned letter.

Cheers,
Rebecca

Update on Charles Camsell Hospital Site

2008-07-03T15:02:00.001-07:00

(see post below this one for the story)

This is the first email I've received in response to my queries, and it gives me a small amount of hope that someone cares about this.

"Thank you for your concern regarding the possibility that this property may contain the unmarked graves of children that died at the hospital. We have researched this as best as we can but can find no evidence of graves at this time. However, care has been taken that all site work be stopped should any evidence of a grave be found.
We would appreciate your contact information so we can provide you with any useful information.
Regards,
Chetan Lalh
on behalf of the Owners of
1106088 Alberta Ltd.
10315 - 109 Street
Ph: (780) 425-2506
Fax: (780) 425-2212
Fax: (780) 428-7814
email: fiveoaks@caisnet.com"

Possible Graves of Residential School Victims are Being Destroyed: Your Help is Needed

2008-06-19T19:36:00.000-07:00

1. South-facing view of Charles Camsell Hospital (closed in 1996)

2. Possible site of the grave(s). Survivors of residential schools in Western Canada reported seeing and learning about unmarked graves in this area, near a staff garden.

URGENT ACTION ALERT:
Edmonton Residential School Grave Site Threatened with Destruction

Edmonton, June 19, 2008: A mass grave site on the grounds of the former Charles Camsell Hospital is threatened with destruction by the architectural firm Dub Architects Ltd., which has begun excavations and new construction on the site of the graves.

According to a list made public by The Friends of the Disappeared (FRD) on April 10, a mass grave containing the remains of children who died in this hospital and in its partner institution, the United Church's Edmonton Indian Residential School, is located immediately adjacent to the site of the former hospital. This site is now under excavation by Dub Architects, who apparently were sold the land by the Alberta provincial government sometime after the release of the mass graves list and its reporting in the Edmonton Sun in mid April.

This is urgent! Please rally opposition to this desecration of the remains of innocent children, and of crucial evidence for a genuine human rights inquiry into residential school crimes.Contact Dub Architects and demand that they cease all further excavation at the Camsell Hospital site until the remains of the children buried there can be salvaged and returned to their homes. Send a similar protest to Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach with copies to the media (below).

For more background information see: http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/

Sincerely,

The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared (National)

hiddenfromhistory@yahoo.ca, pager: 1-888-265-1007

Dub Architects Ltd http://www.dubarchitects.ca/ 10315 109 Street NW, Edmonton, AB T5J 1N3, (780) 428-7888

Contact Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach at: Office of the Premier, Room 307, Legislature Building10800 - 97th Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta T5K 2B6
Phone: (780) 427 2251
Fax: (780) 427 1349

Edmonton Journal 10006 -101 Street Edmonton, ABT5J 0S1 (780) 429-5100 Main Switchboard (780) 429-5200 Newsroom John J. McDonald III - Publisher, (780) 429-5129, http://us.mc320.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=jjmcdonald@thejournal.canwest.com

Allan Mayer - Editor in Chief, (780) 429-5201, http://us.mc320.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=amayer@thejournal.canwest.com

Edmonton Sun:
News tips:(780) 468-0281 or http://us.mc320.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tips@edmsun.com
Newsroom Fax:(780) 468-0139
Letters to the Editor: - Fax to (780) 468-0139.- Email to http://us.mc320.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=mailbag@edmsun.com.
DAVID BLACK, Publisher and CEO http://us.mc320.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=david.black@sunmedia.ca
GORD SCHWINGHAMER, Advertising Director http://us.mc320.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=gord.schwinghamer@sunmedia.ca
GRAHAM DALZIEL, Editor-in-Chief http://us.mc320.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=graham.dalziel@sunmedia.ca
DONNA HARKER, Managing Editor donna.harker@sunmedia.ca

Charles Camsell Hospital was originally a Jesuit boys' college, established in 1913. Between 1942 and its closure in 1996, it passed through incarnations as a U.S. Army hospital, a tuberculosis hospital/ research center for Inuit and First Nations patients (many of them forcibly removed from their communities and loaded onto "hospital ships"), and an adjunct facility to Edmonton's residential school located on the hospital grounds (this facility burned down in 2000).

In 1928 the Alberta Legislature passed the Sexual Sterilization Act, allowing any residential school inmate to be involuntarily sterilized under authority of the principal (after 1929, school principals were the legal guardians of all students). It remained in effect until 1973, and at least 8500 women and children were sterilized under this law. In 1933 B.C. passed an identical law. The three major sterilization centres became R.W. Large Hospital in Bella Bella (B.C.), the Nanaimo Indian Hospital, and Charles Camsell Hospital.

As documented in Kevin Annett's book Hidden from History (2nd ed., 2005), Cold War medical experiments were allegedly conducted on students of the Edmonton residential school. Survivors have described being exposed to X-rays for more than 5-10 minutes at a time, several times a week. Haida elder Doug Wilson, a student during the late '50s, says he was on "burial detail", helping to dispose of bodies of Native children on the hospital grounds before being subjected to electric shocks that interfered with his memory. Survivor Sylvester Greene has described how he and other students were enlisted to bury a fellow student, an Inuit boy, in 1953. He says they were ordered by principal Jim Lunford to keep the burial a secret. To date, these reports have not been officially investigated.

Asked about these allegations at a June 23rd town hall meeting, MP Laurie Hawn dismissed them simply as "Internet conspiracy theories".

- SME