“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”
― Chief Seattle

"When we were created, we were given our ground to live on and from this time these were our rights. This is all true. We were put here by the Creator--I was not brought from a foreign country and did not come here. I was put here by the Creator."

-Chief Weninock, Yakima, 1915

European colonizers of the USA forcibly relocated many Indigenous peoples from their land, committing widespread atrocities in the process.  There were killings of native people on a massive scale, as well as disease and starvation, devastated the Indigenous peoples of North America.

The 2.5 million Native Americans in the USA are victims of long-term bias and discrimination - including disproportionately high rates of poverty, infant mortality, unemployment, and low high school completion rates.  There are many cultural issues for indigenous people related to the ability to maintain and pass on traditional religious beliefs, languages and social practices without fear of discrimination. Native Americans have long fought to protect their religious freedom from repeated acts of governmental suppression -- including the denial of access to religious sites, prohibitions on the use or possession of sacred objects, and restrictions on their ability to worship through ceremonial and traditional means.

"Truth is,  that if we had no lands, we should have fewer enemies." 

Old Tassel, Cherokee Leader

"We do not want schools....
they will teach us to have churches.
We do not want churches....
they will teach us to quarrel about God.
We do not want to learn that.
We may quarrel with men sometimes
about things on this earth,
but we never quarrel about God.
We do not want to learn that."

Heinmot Tooyalaket ( Chief Joseph), Nez Perce Leader

The human rights of women are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights.  Sexual violence against women is  a criminal or social issue, but it is  it is also a human rights abuse.  American Indian and Alaska Native women experience high levels of sexual violence. There is  a systemic failure to punish those responsible and official indifference to the women's  rights to dignity, security and justice.  There is a lack of proper law enforcement protection to Native Americans on Bureau of Indian Affairs land.  It is a shocking fact that American Indian women residing on Indian reservations suffer domestic violence and physical and sexual assault at rates far exceeding women of other ethnicities and locations.  American Indian women experience physical assaults at a rate 50% higher than the next most victimized demographic, African-American males.  These crimes are extremely difficult to investigate and prosecute because of conflicting jurisdictions and lack of adequate investigatory resources and training.  Indian women suffer crimes of violence which remain unresolved and unprosecuted.  Let us demand that Congress  fix this problem of unprosecuted violence committed by non-Indians in Indian Country.

Our Native American people deserve to live in a safe environment and to be able to seek justice when they have been victimized by crime. It is a national disgrace the level of criminal acts that are not investigated or prosecuted that occur on Bureau of Indian Affairs lands. We must do better by our Native people.

“The earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. We did not weave the web of life, we are merely strands in it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves.”

Chief Seattle

"And while I stood there
I saw more than I can tell,
and I understood more than I saw;
for I was seeing in a sacred manner
the shapes of things in the spirit,
and the shape of all shapes as they must
live together like one being."

Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks

"In the larger scope of history this is a small thing; in the smaller scope of conscience, it may be the biggest thing we have ever done."

— Congressman Morris Udall, October 1990 

Statement to the House of Representatives upon the passage of HR 5237

"When all the trees have been cut down,
when all the animals have been hunted,
when all the waters are polluted,
when all the air is unsafe to breathe,
only then will you discover you cannot eat money."

Cree Prophecy

"You have noticed that everything an Indian does in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything and everything tries to be round.

In the old days all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished. The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. The east gave peace and light, the south gave warmth, the west gave rain and the northwith its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance. This
knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion.

Everything the power of the world does is done in a circle.  The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls.  Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.  The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon  does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing and always come back again to where they were.

The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our teepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children."

Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux 1863-1950 Over a hundred years ago Black Elk had a vision of the time when Indian people would heal from the devastating effects of European migration. In his vision the Sacred Hoop which had been broken, would be mended in seven generations.  The children born into this decade will be the seventh generation.

50,000 children died in residential schools through Canada between 1800-1900s at the hands of Catholic, Anglican, and united officials with the help and aid of the Canadian government . Germ warfare was used upon the first nations children in an attempt to destroy a nation.

Canada's Indian Residential School system was responsible for the loss of culture and self-identity for hundreds of thousands of Aboriginal children. Recently, the government has made an apology to former students and the First Nations, in general, for the policy that was the root cause of many of the problems in aboriginal communities and with individuals, today.

In 1920 Federal legislation makes it mandatory for every Indian child to be sent to residential schools upon reaching seven years of age.

1928: Sexual Sterilization Act is passed in Alberta, allowing any inmate of a native residential school to be sterilized upon the approval of the school Principal. At least 3,500 Indian women are sterilized under this law.

1933: An identical Sexual Sterilization Act is passed in British Columbia. Two major sterilization centres are established by The United Church of Canada on the west coast, in Bella Bella and Nanaimo, in which thousands of native men and women are sterilized by missionary doctors until the 1980’s.

1933: Residential school Principals are made the legal guardians of all native students, under the oversight of the federal Department of Mines and Resources. Every native parent is forced by law to surrender legal custody of their children to the Principal - a church employee - or face imprisonment.

1938: Attempt by the federal government to close all residential schools and incorporate Indian children into public schools is defeated by pressure brought by Catholic and Protestant church leaders.

1946: Project Paperclip - a CIA program utilizing ex-Nazi researchers in medical, biological warfare and mind control experiments - uses native children from Canadian residential schools as involuntary test subjects, under agreements with the Catholic, Anglican and United churches. These illegal tests continue until the 1970’s.

1948 - 1969: Offshoot programs of Project Paperclip are established in United Church and government hospitals in Nanaimo, Brannen Lake, Sardis, Bella Bella, Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia; in Red Deer and Ponoka, Alberta; and at the Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital in Thunder Bay, Ontario. All of these programs use native children abducted from reserves, foster homes, and residential schools, with the full knowledge of church, police and Indian Affairs officials.

There have been legal cases - both individual as well as class-action which have presented allegations of abuse against individuals for physical, mental and sexual abuse perpetrated by staff at these schools.

Finally in August 2000 a Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada was formed by 48 native and non-native activists with Kevin Annett as its Secretary.  It's goal was to bring charges of Genocide against churches, the RCMP and the government of Canada.  In 2001 The Truth Commission published its six year study of Genocide in Canad "Hidden from History:The Canadian Holocaust."

Churches try to deny the claims of the residential school survivors and try to deny any direct responsibility for damages.  But new eyewitnesses came forward with first-hand evidence that native children were being used in a west coast pedophile ring.  In December 2001 the Roman Catholic Church disclosed that it hired a known convicted sex offender and murder, Martin Saxey to work as a dormitory supervisor at its Christie Indian Residential School in Tofino int the 1960's.   Saxey had raped and terrorized children for years at the school without ever being reprimanded or prosecuted.  

After many years of silence a television documentary chronicled the abuse at the Canadian Indian Residential Schools.  In December 2002 the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva confirms that they will be sending an official investigator to Canada to examine evidence of crimes against humanity committed against native peoples and complicity in Genocide.

On April 20, 2007, Canada and those churches involved 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 government has instituted dispute resolution processes to deal with cases of abuse, as a method of achieving healing.

In Canada, over the last decade, over 5,210 victims filed claims of physical and sexual abuse, cultural eradication, sterilizations, and genocide, involving over 72 residential institutions. Many children also died due to the severe negligence and physical abuse they received at the hands of their caregivers.

The Common Experience Payment (CEP) is a component of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. The CEP recognizes the experience of residing at an Indian Residential School and its impacts.  The Common Experience Payment, a landmark agreement involving the federal and provincial governments, the courts, First Nations groups, the communities and individuals to compensate every former Residential School Student in Canada for each year they spent in Residential School is well under way. It marked an historic point in Canadian history, a turning point in the treatment and recognition of Aboriginal people across Canada.

In the next several years, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission will begin hearings to bring about healing to those people who lost loved ones to the system, who were damaged physically and emotionally by their removal to Residential School, and to bring together the Native peoples and the rest of Canada.

April 27, 2002 - The first television documentary featuring eyewitnesses to murders in Canadian Indian Residential Schools is broadcast in Vancouver, on CTV's "First Story" program.

Additional Information Available:

The Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada
c/o 260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, B.C. Canada V9R 2H8
ph: 250-753-3345 or 1-888-265-1007
email: hiddenfromhistory@yahoo.ca OR kevin_annett@hotmail.com
website: www.hiddenfromhistory.org

" Indian gravestones are not made to last. Often they are made of wood, but they reflect our nature and our beliefs. Only the mountains and the stars last forever."

-Lame Deer, Minneconjou Lakota

Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust website:

http://canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org/

Canadian Holocaust

Laearn More: Voices of the Canadian Holocaust

http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/VoicesoftheCanadianHolocaust/tabid/57/Default.aspx

Witness to Murder - Harriett Nahanee , Pacheedaht Nation of Vancouver Island, survivor of the United Church's Alberni Residential School, Port Alberni, BC. Witness to the murder of 14-year old Maisie Shaw by Reverend Alfred Caldwell.   Listen

Witness to Torture - Virginia Baptiste, Osoyoos Nation of Oliver Island, survivor of the Catholic Residential School in Cranbrook, BC.   Listen 

Experimented On - Douglas Wilson, Haida Nation, survivor of United Church's Edmonton Residential School and of electro-shock experiments.  Listen

Sterilized - Sarah Modeste, Cowichan Nation, involuntarily sterilized by the Dr. James Goodbrand in Duncan, BC.  Listen

Sister Murdered - Bill Seward, survivor of Kuper Island Catholic Residential School near Duncan, BC. His sister Maggie was pushed out of a window and killed by a nun.  Listen

Experimented On - Dennis Charlie, survivor of Catholic School on Kuper Island, BC. Survivor of medical experiments and witress to the death of student Sandy Mitchell, who was used as a human guinnea-pig in drug testing experiments. Listen

"There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled,  which leads to an unkown, secret place.  The old people came literally to love the soil,  and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of  being close to a mothering power.  Their teepees were built upon the earth  and their altars were made of earth.  The soul was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing.  That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of
propping himself up and away from its life giving forces.  For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply  and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of  life and come closer in kinship to   other lives about him."

Chief Luther Standing Bear

"The first man holds it in his hands
He holds the sun in his hands
In the center of the sky, he holds it in his hands
As he holds it in his hands, it starts upward.

The first woman holds it in her hands
She holds the moon in her hands
In the center of the sky, she holds it in her hands
As she holds it in her hands, it starts upward."

-Navajo chant