ABSTRACT
There is little academic and even less public discussion of genocide in relation to Aboriginal experiences of the colonization and settlement of Canada. This is likely a byproduct of the automatic association of the term genocide with mass killing events such as the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. In comparison to these cases, the destructive onslaught experienced by Canadian Aboriginal peoples appears on first glance of a different type. Although Canadian Aboriginal persons were at various times subject to massacre and deadly negligence, the most concerted effort to destroy them as groups came through policies of forced assimilation. For this and other reasons, in much historical, sociological, anthropological, and other work on Canadian Aboriginal peoples, the term genocide is either studiously avoided, or qualified as “cultural” genocide.
