SUBSCRIBE

Get new posts by email:

How to Use this Blog

CHANGES to format AGAIN - click older posts!
BOOZHOO! We've amassed tons of information and important history on this blog since 2010. If you have a keyword, use the search box below. Also check out the reference section above. If you have a question or need help searching, use the contact form at the bottom of the blog.

PLEASE follow this website by clicking the button above or subscribe.

We want you to use BOOKSHOP! (the editor will earn a small amount of money or commission. (we thank you) (that is our disclaimer statement)

This is a blog. It is not a peer-reviewed journal, not a sponsored publication... The ideas, news and thoughts posted are sourced… or written by the editor or contributors.

Blogger forced a change to our design so please SCROLL past the posts for lots more information.

Support Info: If you are a Survivor and need emotional support, a national crisis line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week: Residential School Survivor Support Line: 1-866-925-4419. Additional Health Support Information: Emotional, cultural, and professional support services are also available to Survivors and their families through the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program. Services can be accessed on an individual, family, or group basis.” These & regional support phone numbers are found at https://nctr.ca/contact/survivors/ . THANK YOU MEGWETCH for reading

NEED HELP WITH AN ADOPTEE SEARCH? Have questions? Use comment form at the bottom of this website.

email: tracelara@pm.me

SEARCH

Monday, February 4, 2013

Canada's unstated paternity policy amounts to genocide against Indigenous children


By Dr. Lynn Gehl Gii-Zhigaate-Mnidoo-KweJanuary 29, 2013

Source: http://rabble.ca/news/2013/01/canadas-unstated-paternity-policy-amounts-cultural-genocide-against-indigenous-children


Canada commits genocide of 25,000 Indigenous children through Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada's (AANDC) unstated paternity practice, yet relies on language -- unstated paternity -- that blames their mothers.

In 1943, Raphael Lemkin first coined the term "genocide" and proceeded to define the term. Interestingly, what many people do not know is that Lemkin defined genocide in cultural terms rather than in terms of killing and mass murder. More specifically, Lemkin defined genocide as having two stages. The first involves the denial of an oppressed group's national pattern; and the second stage involves the imposition of the oppressor's national pattern.

When the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations in December 1948, Lemkin's definition was included within the definition. Article 2 of the Convention codifies five genocidal practices and states that any of these acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, constitutes genocide. These five practices are: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and, forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

That said, when I think about the issue of unknown and unstated paternity and the Indian Act, specifically about AANDC's unstated paternity policy, or internal practice or whatever they want to call it, I realize it is in fact genocide. As many know, Indian status is delineated into two subsections of section 6 of the Indian Act: subsection 6(1) and subsection 6(2). While mothers registered under subsection 6(1) are able to pass on status to their children in their own right, this is not the case with mothers registered under subsection 6(2), also known as a weaker form of status. In the event that a father’s signature is missing or not found on a child’s birth registration form, the Registrar of AANDC assumes a negative presumption of paternity, meaning the Registrar assumes non-Indian paternity. This means that the children born of mothers registered under subsection 6(2) are vulnerable as their children are now considered to be non-status and thus not entitled to their treaty rights such as health care and education rights, First Nation band membership, and First Nation citizenship.

Many know by now that Indigenous women are victims of a higher rate of sexual violence such as incest, rape, gang rape, sexual slavery and prostitution. This situation has been brought on through the oppression of colonization, the denial of our rights as Indigenous people, the denial of our land and resources, the residential and day school systems, and the criminalization of our cultures and Indigenous knowledge systems. In any sexist and racist society young Indigenous women are particularly vulnerable. Research has shown that 45 per cent of the children born to status Indian mothers 15 years of age or younger do not have their father’s signature on their birth registration form.

It is precisely at this moment where Canada's practice falls within the parameters outlined in the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Specifically, when a father's signature is not placed on a child's birth registration form and the mother is registered under subsection 6(2) of the Indian Act, AANDC's unstated paternity policy transfers [read commits the genocide] these children from their First Nation community into mainstream Canadian society.

It is crucial that I point out that in the process of committing genocide Canada relies on language that blames mothers, as in "unstated paternity." While AANDC's unstated paternity policy targets Indigenous mothers for the lack of the father's signature, there are many instances where a mother, for very legitimate reasons, may refuse to obtain a man's signature, such as in the unfortunate situations of incest and rape. In addition, there are many situations where a father will not sign a birth registration form as they seek to avoid child support payments or because they need to preserve a previous relationship. Clearly, terms such as unreported, unnamed unacknowledged, unestablished, unrecognized, and unknown paternity are better signifiers of women's realities.

AANDC's genocidal policy continues to exist today despite the fact that section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was put in place in 1982 and is supposed to protect Indigenous women from sex discrimination. Furthermore, this genocidal policy exists today despite the long-time heroic efforts of Mary Two-Axe Early, Jeannette Corbiere-Lavell, Yvonne Bedard, Sandra Lovelace, and Sharon McIvor. It is clear to me that legislative change, such as the changes to The Indian Act that took place in 1985 and 2011, is not an avenue for Indigenous women. Clearly the government of Canada has merely manipulated moments of legislative change in their favour: genocide.

Through their unstated paternity policy, Canada perpetuates the sexual violence imposed on Indigenous women and commits genocide on their children. Since 1985, when this AANDC policy emerged, I estimate that as many as 25,000 Indigenous children have been affected by this genocidal practice.

In April 2012 Canadians celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Do you feel protected? Did you feel fuzzy and warm? I certainly did not and I am sure many Indigenous women and their babies stand with me on this.

Dr. Lynn Gehl is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe from the Ottawa River Valley. She has a section 15 Charter challenge regarding the continued sex discrimination in The Indian Act and she recently published a book titled Anishinaabeg Stories: Featuring Petroglyphs, Petrographs, and Wampum Belts. You can reach her at lynngehl@gmail.com and see more of her work at www.lynngehl.com.

 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please: Share your reaction, your thoughts, and your opinions. Be passionate, be unapologetic. Offensive remarks will not be published. We are getting more and more spam. Comments will be monitored.
Use the comment form at the bottom of this website which is private and sent direct to Trace.


Happy Visitors!

They Took Us Away

They Took Us Away
click image to see more and read more

SIXTIES SCOOP NEWS

Blog Archive

Most READ Posts

Bookshop

Canada's Residential Schools

The religious organizations that operated the schools — the Anglican Church of Canada, Presbyterian Church in Canada, United Church of Canada, Jesuits of English Canada and some Catholic groups — in 2015 expressed regret for the “well-documented” abuses. The Catholic Church has never offered an official apology, something that Trudeau and others have repeatedly called for.

You are not alone

You are not alone

What our Nations are up against!

What our Nations are up against!

To Veronica Brown

Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.

Did you know?

Did you know?
lakota.cc/16I9p4D

WATCH THIS

Diane Tells His Name


click photo

60s Scoop Survivors Legal Support

GO HERE: https://www.gluckstein.com/sixties-scoop-survivors

Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines

Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines
click to read and listen about Trace, Diane, Julie and Suzie

ADOPTION TRUTH

As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.”
The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

NEW MEMOIR

Original Birth Certificate Map in the USA

Why tribes do not recommend the DNA swab

Rebecca Tallbear entitled: “DNA, Blood, and Racializing the Tribe”, bearing out what I only inferred:

Detailed discussion of the Bering Strait theory and other scientific theories about the population of the modern-day Americas is beyond the scope of this essay. However, it should be noted that Indian people have expressed suspicion that DNA analysis is a tool that scientists will use to support theories about the origins of tribal people that contradict tribal oral histories and origin stories. Perhaps more important,the alternative origin stories of scientists are seen as intending to weaken tribal land and other legal claims (and even diminish a history of colonialism?) that are supported in U.S. federal and tribal law. As genetic evidence has already been used to resolve land conflicts in Asian and Eastern European countries, this is not an unfounded fear.

GOOGLE

In some cases, companies may even take it upon themselves to control the narrative according to their own politics and professed values, with no need for government intervention. For example: Google, the most powerful information company in the world, has been reported to fix its algorithms to promote, demote, and disappear content according to undisclosed internal “fairness” guidelines. This was revealed by a whistleblower named Zach Vorhies in his almost completely ignored book, Google Leaks, and by Project Veritas, in a sting operation against Jen Gennai, Google’s Head of Responsible Innovation. In their benevolent desire to protect us from hate speech and disinformation, Google/YouTube immediately removed the original Project Veritas video from the Internet. - https://desultoryheroics.com/2023/11/12/internet-censorship-everywhere-all-at-once

Google Followers