The Americas, South, North and Central have been stages for the dispossession and slaughter of native populations by white colonial Europeans. Canada’s peculiar, and no less vicious, version is the residential school program that resulted in the kidnapping by the RCMP and the forcible confinement of indigenous children at faraway schools run mainly by the Catholic Church. The Government of Canada is calling on the Church to acknowledge and repair the damage to whatever extent possible, but a further reckoning needs to be done by the RCMP and the government itself, both of which colluded in the enterprise.
This latest outpouring of grief and recrimination has been brought about by the discovery of 215 native children in unmarked graves at a residential school in Kamloops, BC. This atrocity is no surprise to those who have been claiming for years that thousands of children across Canada died at these schools, victims of disease, violence, and sexual abuse by the priests and nuns. But there’s nothing like the discovery of the real, the actual bodies. Indigenous people in the Americas were wrongly convicted of being who they were and laying claim to the land they lived on for thousands of years.
In particular, the RCMP, in physically capturing the children, as if they were runaway slaves, and transporting them to distant places was conceived in this state of sin. The organization has never and will never recover from its origins. It will always be corrupt at the core because its actions lack moral legitimacy. When it is accused of systemic racism, the leadership tries to foist off responsibility on the bad apples. But it can no more deny systemic racism than autocratic govenrments can deny violence against their own people. When a state election is subverted and overturned by illegitimate force, the result can never be ‘legitimate’ or legitimated. A real election is needed. When the RCMP was founded on facilitating the displacement and exploitation of native north Americans, it can never escape its origins.
The time for a reckoning is here. The time to defund and decommission the RCMP has also arrived. Congratulations to Mayor McCallum of Surrey for bravely following through on his promise to create a local police force. The RCMP is a corrupt, brutal, sexist, racist organization that has outlived its purpose. (I do make a disclaimer here in that I am not referencing individual officers.)
For pragmatists, I’d recommend you take a look at its crime fighting record. One dismal failure after another.