Mood:
brightTopic: Crime and Punishment
Human rights inquiry scheduled
(Raven's Eye)
Paul Barnsley, Human rights inquiry scheduled. Vol. 2, Raven's Eye,
1998
An organization which monitors human rights abuses for the United
Nations
will look into Canada's Indian residential school system during a
hearing scheduled for Vancouver's Maritime Labor Centre in mid-June.
The International Human Rights Association of American Minorities
(IHRAAM) is one of 1,356 non-governmental organizations in the world
with the standing to issue reports for the United Nations High
Commissioner
on Human Rights and the Economic and Social Council of the United
Nations. A United Nations official confirmed that IHRAAM is one of
the 666 organizations world-wide listed on a roster of organizations
consulted by the Economic and Social council.
Rudy James, the tribal leader of the Kuiukwaan people of southeastern
Alaska and a tribal judge with the Combined Tribal Court of Thlingit
Law, is the North American director of IHRAAM whose northwest regional
office is located in Seattle, Washington. James told Raven's Eye
a former United Church of Canada employee named Kevin Annett asked
IHRAAM to investigate potential human rights abuses connected to
the residential school system. After recording seven hours of
interviews
with victims of abuse at the Port Alberni school, James decided an
inquiry into the system, and Canada's treatment of the victims of
the system, was appropriate. Lawyers, law professors and judges from
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities will be asked to sit as
members of the tribunal which will consider the charges against Canada.
The human rights infractions that Canada, several churches,
organizations
and individuals associated with the schools will be asked to explain
are: forced removal from traditional lands and waters, institutional
racism., psychological warfare, genocide and murder. Prime Minister
Jean Chretien, Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart and church
officials
have been asked to appear as witnesses.
An organization with consultative status does not work at the direction
of the United Nations and is not funded, but it is fully screened
and follows a written mandate.
James said Canada and the churches will be asked to answer for what
look like serious human rights abuses.
"No one can punish a nation," James said. "But, so much of what is
done by our organization is done through world public opinion. After
the tribunal is done, a report will be sent to the High Commissioner
and the Secretary General. Canada could be asked for a formal response
to the report in the General Assembly. If Canadian authorities haven'
t done a full investigation, on the murders especially, Canada will
be exposed to international embarrassment."
James offered opinions about the $350 million healing fund established
this year by the federal government.
"It would impress me and allow me to write a favorable report if
Canadian
authorities assisted in identifying people who suffered from these
atrocities and then took direct action," he said. "If Canada made
a determined effort to go right to the victims themselves, not the
people treating them, and said 'What can we do for you?' they would
come across as a Nation that is honest and willing to do something
about a mistake it made."
Organizers of this tribunal make no secret of the fact that they are
not impartial. Lead judge George Suckinaw James, Jr. Rudy James'
brother said his family is part of an unrecognized tribal government
with its own history of oppression at the hands of colonizing forces.
The Kuiukwaan people were forcibly removed from their ancestral home,
Kuiu Island in southeastern Alaska by the United States Coast Guard
in the 1930s.
Paul Barnsley, Human rights inquiry scheduled. Vol. 2, Raven's Eye,
06-01-1998, pp 2.
--
The man who will write a report to the United Nations on Canada's residential school system said he has seen evidence that the system was an example of forced assimilation, genocide and forced removal of peoples from their traditional lands
http://sisis.nativeweb.org/resschool/jul98tri.html
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