Bill Collier- Canada has a long and ongoing history of the government dictating sociocultural norms at the end of a gun barrel. Today Canada is grappling with a horrendous “discovery” that doesn’t surprise anyone in the Native community: potentially thousands (over 1000 so far) of unmarked graves of Native children who died while in residential schools meant to brutally obliterate their culture, language, and way of life.
The Bible say of the Disciples that people will oppress them and think they are doing a service to God (see John 16:12), thus revealing the depths of evil and hypocrisy human beings are capable of. And with the cultural genocide waged by Canada from 1874 until 1996, tearing children from their parents and assaulting their Native culture at its core, this was the case. The oppression and abuse were done in the name of Christ, who most certainly did not author such evil.
What happened was children of Native parents were forcefully taken from their homes and placed into residential shcools where they could not speak their language, were forced to convert to “Christianity”, and were treated generally very harshly, especially if they showed any of their Native culture like language, religion, or dress.
Invariably, and perhaps owing to harsh conditions, some children died. They were then buried, never sent home, and often in unmarked graves or in graves where markers were later removed.
This wasn’t the government alone. The state did force these chidlren into these schools, but the schools were run mostly by Catholic and Anglican churches, with 70% being Catholic. Thus, the institutions affiliated with Christ, and in His Name, actively conducted this cultural genocide in a brutal manner. This let to many premature deaths and the traumatic experiences scarred generations of Native children.
Those who would oppress others need only the slightest pretense. The pretense here was an alleged need to assimilate Native children into the broader Canadian society. The people doing this may have convinced themselves they were helping these kids and, worse, doing a service to God.
As Canadians grapple with this brutal history, the question remains, has the spirit of oppression in the very name of things like God, or Christ, or Justice, or whatever, been exorcized from the heart of the country? With tables turned, it is now Christians in Canada who face “forced assimilation” through the “human rights commission” that forces acceptance of practices condemned in the Bible.
The same churches that went along with the religious persecution of non-Christians are now being oppressed and having what they say over the pulpit dictated by the government. That they may garner little sympathy for their fate is owing to their own history of being an instrument of oppression.
Canada has no “Bill of Rights”, and whether it is locking up Native children or Christian pastors, all in the name of forced assimilation to what sociocultural milieu the state favors, the long tradition seems to be a gross disrespect for human rights and human dignity.
The use of Christ as a banner of oppression is certainly baneful to the Native peoples of Canada and it is morally repugnant to any true follower of Christ, first because of the victims and also because it is a abominable taking of the Lord’s Name in vain.
Canada must search its very soul and ask why whatever its government decides the sociocultural norm must be always becomes something one either submits to or is brutalized for refusing to conform thereto.
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