Tamara Starblanket - Suffer the Little Children: Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State

Reviews for Suffer the Little Children

Throughout the book Starblanket demonstrates a broad knowledge of both history and law. The documentation is vast and precisea tour de force

Alfred De Zayas, former Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee, UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, International Indigenous Policy Review

The Residential School model existed in both Canada and the United States. It involved the systematic removal of Indigenous childrensome as young as fourfrom their parents. These children were housed in crowded boarding schools wherein addition to being subjected to an English only education and corporal punishment for any expression of cultural heritagethey were systematically demeaned and degraded, subjected to both physical and psychological torture (including wholesale sexual predation), denied [] adequate nutrition, medical care, or clothing, and typically impressed into manual labor (p. 22). As Starblanket demonstrates, precisely and conclusively, this programme of organized, racist, colonial violence amounts to genocide, as the crime has been defined in international law.

Darryl Barthe, Decolonization of Criminology and Justice

[B]elongs on the reading list of anyone concerned with social justice and addressing the ongoing colonialism on which the Canadian nation-state stands.

Aziz Choudry, Studies in Social Justice

Suffer the Little Children is a path-breaking text that rigorously and robustly documents the numerous ways in which the Canadian state has and continues to commit genocide against Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island.

Travis Hay, The Journal of Teaching and Learning

An effective analysis of the legal structures the Canadian state set up to accomplish its objective: the complete absorption of indigenous peoples into the dominant European culture, to solve the Indian problem

Christopher Black, International Lawyer, Anishinabek News

More Reviews for Suffer the Little Children

Starblankets book is an important, thought-provoking, and timely interdisciplinary contribution to the field of law, history, and Indigenous Studies that will push readers to reconceptualize colonization and the characterization of residential schools as genocidal.

Carling Beninger, BC Studies

Tamara Starblankets work is confident, clear and succinct; her work is ground-breaking and provides us with new ways of looking at how the states treatment of First Nations Peoples has gone unrecognised for its genocidal affect. This work provides an excellent critique on the exclusion of cultural genocide from how genocide is defined in international law.

Professor Irene Watson Research Professor of Law, University of South Australia

Tamara Starblankets book provides a much needed examination and critique of the residential school system that forcibly transferred Indigenous children from their families, communities, and nations into institutions run by the colonizer statein this case, Canada. Starblankets work brings this history and its legacy effects to our awareness and shows that the road home requires an emphasis on Indigenous self-determination.

Peter dErrico Professor of Law, University of Massachusetts

Settler-colonialism reveals the brutal face of imperialism in some of its most vicious forms. This carefully researched and penetrating study focuses on one of its ugliest manifestations, the forcible transferring of indigenous children, and makes a strong case for Canadian complicity in a form of cultural genocidewith implications that reach to the Anglosphere generally, and to some of the worst crimes of the civilized world in the modern era.

Noam Chomsky

Tamara Starblanket has skillfully taken on one of the most difficult and contentious issues, genocide. With intellectual courage and determination, she has approached the issue from the perspective of a Cree woman, scholar, and attorney who has firsthand knowledge of the deadly and destructive intergenerational impacts of Canadas domination and dehumanization of Original Nations and Peoples.

Steven T. Newcomb (Shawnee, Lenape), author, Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Christian Doctrine of Discovery

Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State

by

Tamara Starblanket

Clarity Press, Inc

2018 Tamara Starblanket

ISBN: 978-0-9986947-7-1

EBOOK ISBN: 978-0-9986947-8-8

In-house editor: Diana G. Collier

Cover: R. Jordan P. Santos

Photo credit: University of Alberta Libraries

The Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy is the result of the vision and generosity of Nora and Ted Sterling. In 1993, the Sterlings established an endowment at Simon Fraser University to honour and encourage work that provokes and/or contributes to the understanding of controversy.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: Except for purposes of review, this book may not be copied, or stored in any information retrieval system, in whole or in part, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Starblanket, Tamara, author.

Title: Suffer the little children : genocide, indigenous nations, and the Canadian state / by Tamara Starblanket ; foreword by Ward Churchill. |

Description: Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, Inc., 2018. |

Includes bibliographical references. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2018007845 (print) | LCCN 2018008085 (ebook) | ISBN 9780998694771 | ISBN 9780998694788 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Indigenous children--Legal status, laws, etc.--Canada.| Children and genocide--Canada. | Genocide (International law) | Crimes against humanity--Law and legislation. | Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948 December 9) |

Classification: LCC KE7722.I58 (ebook) | LCC KE7722.I58 S73 2018 (print) |

DDC 342.7108/72083--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018007845

Clarity Press, Inc.

2625 Piedmont Rd. NE, Ste. 56

Atlanta, GA. 30324, USA

http://www.claritypress.com

Foreword
Reconceptualizing the Law and History of Indigenous Peoples Genocide by Canada
By Ward Churchill

Introduction
The Colonizers Way of Genocide:
Confronting the Wall of Evasion and Denial

Chapter 1
Naming the Crime:
Defining Genocide in International Law

Chapter 2
The Horror:
Canadas Forced Transfer of Indigenous Children

Chapter 3
Coming to Grips with Canada as a Colonizing State:
The Creator Knows Their Lies and So Must We

Chapter 4
Smoke and Mirrors:
Canadas Pretense of Compliance with the Genocide Convention

Conclusion
The Way Ahead:
Self-Determination is the Solution

Afterword
Why the Children?
By Sharon Helen Venne

Figure 1
Domination and Dehumanization of Original Nations

Figure 2
Churchills Illustration of Genocide

Figure 3