By David Webster
“Words have meaning,” CBC commentator Michael Enright declared in an editorial broadcast over the national radio network. He objected to the way one word, “genocide,” was used by the national commission of inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women.
In this, Enright is far from alone – top media figures and publications fell over one another to deny the commission’s conclusion that Canada has committed genocide of Indigenous peoples. The word doesn’t apply, they shout in near-unison.
In doing so, they are themselves trying to redefine a word with a very clear meaning. In doing so, they are demonstrating the continuation of Canada’s colonial project and upholding a version of Canadian “niceness” that denies truth.
The commission’s use of the world “genocide” and the backlash against it recalls an earlier conversation, but is much more defensive and vicious towards Indigenous people.
This piece draws on research into truth and reconciliation and the way media narratives are constructed, and is informed by recent twitter exchanges. It does not decolonize: it simply uses traditional Western historical methods to outline the building of backlash by the Canadian media. Far more insightful pieces have been penned by Indigenous scholars, by survivors of violence inside what is now Canada, and by legal scholars. This piece simply describes.
In 2015-17, I coordinated a research project into truth and reconciliation in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Within the scope of that project, student research assistant Cynthia Roy analyzed the media coverage over a three-month period (April-June 2015) around the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada report, which used the term “cultural genocide” to describe the Canadian residential schools system. Her findings, published here on activehistory.ca, summarized a database of all mainstream media coverage that she compiled.
She found that the words “cultural genocide” sparked debate, but saw it as a “conversation.” Only one commentator, former right-wing media baron Conrad Black, wrote with anger and indignation. Others accepted the term and the need for reflection. Columnist Richard Gwyn disliked the term, but still conceded that Canada “botched it all with the residential schools — hugely, outrageously, brutally, inhumanly and utterly ineptly.” Other media commentary tended to accept the term and the need for Canada to do better.
Cynthia argued that the conversation was relatively respectful because respected Canadians, beginning with chief justice of the Supreme Court Beverly McLachlan, used the term in advance of the TRC report release. This was not in her conclusions, but it’s also worth mention that Australia’s National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families was quite comfortable more than 20 years ago using the word genocide: “The Australian practice of Indigenous child removal involved both systematic racial discrimination and genocide as defined by international law.”
What a difference four years makes. Continue reading →
Calgary Strike Bulletin, 2 June 1919. Library and Archives Canada. 
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, Wheat City Lodge #464. Courtesy of S.J. McKee Archives, Brandon University. 
