Cultural Genocide

Beginning in 1834, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate negotiated Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as “cultural genocide.” The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources. As its willing accomplices the Roman Catholic, Anglican, United Methodist and Presbyterian churches were recruited and paid to administer the residential school system. Taken from their homes, stripped of their belongings, and separated from their siblings, residential school children lived in a world dominated by fear, loneliness, and lack of affection. Physical abuse, sexual abuse, lack of appropriate diet and general inhumane treatment were the hallmarks of this government policy which lasted well into the 1990’s and resulted in over 3,200 deaths. This series of prints is both a tribute to the thousands of victims of colonization and an effort to continue to focus on the continuing inhumanity of the Canadian government and the Roman Catholic Church, which continues to ignore its moral and financial obligations to this day.