Residential Schools In Canada Summary

The title of the secondary source is called The Genocide Question and Indian Residential Schools in Canada and the authors of the article are David B. MacDonald and Graham Hudson. The main point of this article is to question whether residential schools were a form of genocide towards Indigenous peoples of Canada. The United Nations Genocide Committee’s is used to interpret claims of genocide. This article looks at the different interpretations of the term genocide. The article then takes those different interpretations, and applies them to the residential school system. The article concludes with the term cultural genocide as the term to use for the residential school system because they believe that genocide “cannot be definitively settled at this time.” This article’s main thesis statement is “In short, the IRS system is an example of cultural genocide and maybe more. We also consider whether the UNGC should include cultural genocide, while relaxing its …show more content…
The fence sitting position weakens the argument. The use of the word “maybe” in the thesis statement is a weak argument. Another example where the argument is weakened is the use of the genocide definitions and then flipping to the term cultural genocide, although the terms connect there is difference in them and the difference weakens the argument because of the focus on the definitions of genocide and not cultural genocide. The article also states that it is “difficult to argue that genocide occurred over the long history of the IRS system in Canada.” Since the terms genocide and cultural genocide are connected, using the idea of no proof of genocide to prove cultural genocide is confusing. The article uses the international and Canada laws on genocide to also to show that genocide is not what the residential school system can be classified at the moment based on the