The colonial project of residential schools and foster care in North America could be seen as bureaucratic incompetence, given the damage to their students, but in retrospect, the practice seems far more intentional. Throughout history, from the Jewish Holocaust to the killing fields of Cambodia, genocides of different ethnic groups have been committed across the world. According to the United Nations, Article II (of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide), one aspect of this dehumanizing practice is the forceable transfer of children from one group to another. Deliberately inflicting living conditions intended to destroy a set of people physically or culturally is another. By that definition, Canada –and even the United States– has also been committing genocide

The Canadian and American governments have committed a crime that has affected more individuals than the Holocaust, yet it is rarely framed this way by textbooks or media. The irony is that indigenous people were and continue to be forced into schools and foster care systems that destroy their language and culture. Yet, there is so much European settlers—indeed all of us today—could learn from the wisdom of native people, especially when it comes to living harmoniously with the environment and taking care of our elders and ancestors. Rather than “killing the Indigenous peoples to save the man,” we would have been better off “saving the Indian in order to save ourselves!”

Because the Songhees people believed that they were interconnected to the objects they used, they believed that every plant and animal had an individual spirit that needed to be respected to exist in the universe. They would only take what they needed, and when they required a cedar tree to make boats, provide fuel and help to support the building of tipis in the community, they would hold a ceremony to thank the tree for its life before harvest. They planted seeds for new trees as they left each site. The Songhees people also venerated their ancestors and honored them in their songs and woven blankets. Considering the ravages to the environment caused by climate change and the effects of a North American culture in which senior citizens are not respected as they were by Songhees, it’s clear that there’s a lot we could learn from them.

Unfortunately, the impulse of the colonizers was to “improve” the lives of native populations by dismantling their systems of beliefs. If their goal was to eradicate those local people to solve the “Indian problem,” they were largely successful. The Songhees was estimated to be 8,500 in 1859. However, by 1914, due to the smallpox epidemic and colonial practices, the population had decreased to less than 200. Imagine how much cultural knowledge and wisdom about the land we have all ended up losing due to this invisible genocide.