Suffer the Little Children: Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State

Originally approved as a master of laws thesis bya respected Canadian university, this booktackles one of the most compelling issues of ourtime—the crime of genocide—and whether in factit can be said to have occurred in relation to themany Original Nations on Great Turtle Island nowclaimed by a state called Canada. It has beenhailed as groundbreaking by many Indigenousand other scholars engaged with this issue,impacting not just Canada but states worldwidewhere entrapped Indigenous nations faceabsorption by a dominating colonial state.Starblanket unpacks Canada’s role in the removalof cultural genocide from the GenocideConvention, though the disappearance of anOriginal Nation by forced assimilation wasregarded by many states as equally genocidal asdestruction by slaughter. Did Canada seek totailor the definition of genocide to escape its owncrimes which were then even ongoing? Thecrime of genocide, to be held as such undercurrent international law, must address thecomplicated issue of mens rea (not just thecommission of a crime, but the specific intent todo so). This book permits readers to make ajudgment on whether or not this was the case.Starblanket examines how genocide wasoperationalized in Canada, focused primarily onbreaking the intergenerational transmission ofculture from parents to children. Seeking toabsorb the new generations into a differentcultural identity—English-speaking, Christian,Anglo-Saxon, termed Canadian—Canada seizedchildren from their parents, and oversaw andenforced the stripping of their cultural beliefs,languages and traditions, replacing them bythose still in process of being established by theemerging Canadian state.