Suffer the Little Children

Drawing from her recent book Suffer the Little Children: Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State, Tamara Starblanket examines how genocide is operationalized in Canada. Focusing primarily on breaking the intergenerational transmission of Indigenous Peoples' national identities from parents to children by the forcible removals from the Indigenous Nations on Turtle Island to the residential school system and present-day removals in the child welfare system. She outlines the destruction which occurred as part of the effort to bring about such a wrenching change. This includes forcible indoctrination by means of massive and widespread death by disease and dilapidated living conditions, torture, forced starvation, forced labour, and sexual predation - collateral destruction to Canada's effort to absorb diverse original nations into one larger, alien and dominating body politic.