Follow Us! Like Our Page!

Barbara Kay: ‘Genocide’ appropriation makes reconciliation harder – National Post

Doubtless many Canadians of Armenian, Rwandan, Bosnian, Ukrainian and Jewish descent were disturbed by the MMIWG report

I won’t pretend to professional detachment in my reaction to the MMIWG report’s deployment of “genocide” to characterize disproportionate violent crimes suffered by Indigenous women. The word cut to the quick, and Justin Trudeau’s endorsement of its use — slightly delayed while he calculated the political cost of refusing — added salt to the wound.

Yes, a number of Indigenous peoples have been systematically and purposefully annihilated by Europeans in the past. Those tragedies meet an international norm limiting assignment of “genocide” to acts “seeking the biological destruction of all or part of the group.” But the MMIWG situation falls wildly far of the mark by any objective metric. Apart from any other consideration, the MMIWG inquiry only investigated violence to individual girls and women. Genocides generally feature either bilateral slaughter, or wholesale slaughter of men, reserving women for wholesale rape.

Read More: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/barbara-kay-genocide-appropriation-makes-reconciliation-harder

NationTalk Partners & Sponsors Learn More