An international tribunal has ruled that the Government of Canada’s current policies constitute an ongoing genocide against Indigenous Peoples, following a grueling week of hearings on intergenerational trauma.
Seven judges of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal — an international court of opinion which investigates human rights violations — issued the interim ruling on Friday.
The tribunal began its week-long investigation into missing Indigenous children and unmarked graves linked to residential schools on Monday at the daphne art centre in Montreal.
Requested by the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal in 2024, the panel has spent the week hearing evidence regarding Canada’s responsibility for the residential school system and its associated human rights violations.
Throughout the proceedings, witnesses detailed the devastating, multi-generational impacts of forced family separation and cultural destruction. They also recounted brutal physical and sexual abuse by school staff and clergy, which forced children to psychologically disassociate.
Canada’s treatment of Indigenous people ‘constitutes genocide,’ tribunal’s interim ruling says
Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada said that the Government of Canada would not be participating in the proceedings.
CBC News contacted the federal government for comment on the ruling but did not immediately hear back.
Reading the preliminary statement, Māori barrister and solicitor Valmaine Toki said Canada “bears legal, moral and political responsibility” for its actions and omissions, which the tribunal identified as part of a systemic effort to destroy Indigenous people.
“This trauma and psychological harm has a collective dimension, affecting successive generations of children, families, and communities,” Toki said.
“The stigma, cultural shaming and guilt of survivors has silenced them.”
Fellow judge Seánna Howard, an Indigenous Peoples law and policy professor at Arizona State University, pointed to what she described as a “continuing disdain for Indigenous lives, denial of Indigenous sovereignty over their data, their land and their bodies and other violations of Indigenous peoples’ rights.”
“This pattern reveals clear indications of a continuing genocide,” Howard said.
“This consistent pattern of conduct implies that Canadian authorities have sustained a strategy to evade accountability under international law.”
Christa Big Canoe, an Anishinaabe lawyer and the lead prosecutor for the tribunal, welcomed the ruling, calling it a “hopeful preliminary decision” for residential school survivors and families whose children never returned.
She also urged Canadians to push back against residential school deniers whose demands for unmarked grave excavations undermine survivor testimonies.
“It’s time to support Indigenous people that have experienced these crimes against humanity and genocide,” Big Canoe said.
“So if nothing else, please challenge. Challenging denialism is the least you can do.”
The interim ruling follows Thursday’s testimony from expert witness Fannie Lafontaine, a human rights lawyer and professor who authored A Legal Analysis of Genocide, a supplementary report to the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Lafontaine testified that while the term “genocide” often evokes concentration camps or events like the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the Bosnian genocide, the legal concept is not limited to mass killings within a short period.
“The interpretation of genocide needs to be moved beyond this sort of Holocaust paradigm (i.e., genocide is just murdering a number of people) … genocide is not only that,” Lafontaine said.
Under the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is committing any of the following with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Those acts include:
The judges are expected to render a full decision on Sept. 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
A national 24-hour Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available at 1-866-925-4419 for emotional and crisis referral services for survivors and those affected.
Mental health counselling and crisis support are also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat.
