Even though it has 231 calls for justice, people got hung up on the report’s use of the word genocide. Critics of the term argue that since Indigenous people in Canada weren’t rounded up into concentration camps and executed by the millions, as was done to Jewish people and others during the Holocaust, we can’t use genocide to refer to Indigenous experience. They also say that what happened to Indigenous people doesn’t parallel the Rwandan genocide, another reason to not use the word.

Except these critics are wrong.

Merriam-Webster defines genocide as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group”. As does the Random House Unabridged Dictionary. The Collins English Dictionary defines it as “the policy of deliberately killing a nationality or ethnic group”. The Oxford Dictionary uses “The deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.”. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “the murder of a whole group of people, especially a whole nation, race, or religious group”.

Now keep in mind that dictionaries don’t dictate what words mean; they just report how the general public uses them. To find out what words actually mean, rather than how people generally interpret them, we must consider academic sources.

In 1944, Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin coined genocide in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, combining the Greek prefix genos– and the Latin suffix –cide, creating a word that literally meant “race (tribe) killing”.

In his book, he specifically states:

“Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”

During the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the UN codified genocide as a crime, defining it as committing any of 5 acts “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

Those 5 acts are:

1. Killing members of the group
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Marion Buller, the inquiry’s chief commissioner, in relation to genocide in Canada, referred to it as the

“persistent and deliberate pattern of systemic racial and gendered human- and Indigenous-rights violations and abuses, perpetuated historically and maintained today by the Canadian state, designed to displace Indigenous people from their lands, social structures and governments, and to eradicate their existence as nations, communities, families and individuals.”

The report itself, which the critics either haven’t read or choose to ignore, specifies their usage of genocide:

“The truths shared in these National Inquiry hearings tell the story – or, more accurately, thousands of stories – of acts of genocide against First Nations, Inuit and Métis women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. This violence amounts to a race-based genocide of Indigenous Peoples, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, which especially targets women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. This genocide has been empowered by colonial structures, evidenced notably by the Indian Act, the Sixties Scoop, residential schools, and breaches of human and Inuit, Métis and First Nations rights, leading directly to the current increased rates of violence, death, and suicide in Indigenous populations.”

It goes on to define genocide over 2.5 pages, including:

“Considering the application of genocide on both legal and social fronts also means examining the historical record in light of the particular ways in which the programs aimed at subjugating and eliminating Indigenous Peoples were enacted, and the contemporary effect of these structures in the ways that many programs and pieces of legislation continue to be administered. In the Canadian context, and in reference to Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people, some examples include: deaths of women in police custody; the failure to protect Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people from exploitation and trafficking, as well as from known killers; the crisis of child welfare; physical, sexual, and mental abuse inflicted on Indigenous women and girls in state institutions; the denial of Status and membership for First Nations; the removal of children; forced relocation and its impacts; purposeful, chronic underfunding of essential human services; coerced sterilizations; and more.”

It’s clear that genocide is an accurate term to describe the violence and disproportionate death rates of Indigenous peoples in what is now called Canada.

Read the entire report.

First, the idea that they all share a common Israelite ancestry is unprovable. DNA evidence conflicts with that narrative. Archaeological and anthropological evidence doesn’t support it. And even the LDS church is moving away from the idea that these Indigenous people are exclusively descendants of Lehi.

Second, it contributes to panindigeneity, the idea that Indigenous people are homogenous, that they aren’t separate nations with different languages, cultures, beliefs, customs, and so on. It erases their cultural individualism.

Third, the idea that people indigenous to a place are merely just immigrants to a place, similar to Europeans, is a way for white people to justify their claims to land and resources. Saying that a people have been in the Americas, for example, for only 3,000 years, instead of tens of thousands of years minimizes their right to exist on this land, and maximizes the right of white people to exist on this land.

Finally, no matter how much you try, there is just too much racist language tied up in the term “Lamanite”. Through much of the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites are portrayed as filthy, lascivious, primitive, violent, and base, as people who needed saving from white Nephites. You can’t erase that. No amount of effort will ever make “Lamanite” a positive term.

My mind has been somewhat taken up with the news of the deaths of these poor baby girls in Saskatchewan, left to freeze and die in the cold snow, in -50 degree weather, this week. My heart breaks for them, for their loved ones, including the young father who left them (and again we don’t know all the details) because in spite of the mistakes he made, in taking them out without proper clothes, and leaving them, because he wasn’t aware of all he was doing, he is suffering for the choices he made. It looks as though something precipitated this, which caused a string of ill advised choices, fueled by alcohol and stress. I am not judging either, but just feeling pain for this family and these poor babies.The comfort is that I know Heavenly Father sent his angels to hold these innocents, to bring them home and maybe maybe to take away the suffering from the cold. Maybe the cold didn’t cause them too much physical anguish? I don’t know much of what freezing to death is like, and I don’t want to find out that they suffered excruciating pain, so young as they are. Children, especially the smallest ones need and are to be protected. So many children for many different reasons are not, and I know this hurts the Lord, I don’t question why He doesn’t always interfere, because He is wiser than I am.

What I feel, as a mother (and even just as a human being) is this urgency, to protect and save the suffering babies. Right now, this is the current one in my mind, these little girls who had little protection from the elements.

I am not thinking (as I know some are) that it is just more evidence of problems on the reserves. No, it is a human problem. The choices made by the father he will regret for the rest of his life. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain and sorrow he is experiencing, and their mother as well, that because of a fight, she was not there to watch over and keep her girls safe. The tragedy just transcends all blame at that end.

I do think there is some responsibility for a government that does not regulate the sale of alcohol better. Yes, this father (and so many other alcoholics) made his own choice to purchase and consume alcohol, but evidence shows that First Nations people are genetically more prevalent to substance addiction. The government makes too much money, though to not control the purchase of alcohol or the accessibility of it, better. Do they think of the victims of alcoholism? The innocents, who because of this freedom to drink yourself into a stupor, suffer, and sometimes pay, as in this case, with their lives.

See, children have a right to be protected, to be cared for. They cannot care for themselves. If a puppy or a kitten had been left out there, that animal may have had a better chance of survival. But if an adult is at risk, then how much more are a 3 year old and a baby barely over the age of a year unable to look after themselves? Especially in the debilitating cold.

But the government does not want to lose the revenue they gain through the suffering of others. Our governments (provincial and federal) who are supposed to do their best for the citizens make poor decisions that affect the lives and well being of those who do not choose to even participate in that. These little girls were not a part of the decision their father made to drink, nor a part of the decision to sell the alcohol, to create easy access to it’s sale, to make it in the first place. Adults, people who are supposed to have the intelligence to make responsible choices designed to promote the well being and safety of those they have stewardship over, were the ones who made the decision that resulted in the suffering and death of two little girls.

All I know is that a loving Saviour held them in His arms, this I know, brought them home and ended their suffering and kept them safe and I am sure, wept tears because of His great love, not only for them, but for all involved.

Anyhow, The Age had this, in part, to say:

Last year he published a rebuttal of the Book of Mormon teachings that Native American and Polynesian ancestors came from ancient Israelite tribes who had migrated to the Americas centuries before Christ.

In all the years I’ve read the Book of Mormon?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùin all the times I’ve read it from cover to cover?¢‚Ǩ‚ÄùI must have entirely skipped over the part where it teaches “Native Americans” and “Polynesians” are descended from Israelite tribes.

Maybe if Southerton focused more on what was in the Book of Mormon and less on how members of the Church have traditionally extrapolated the Book of Mormon, it wouldn’t be an issue that he “is facing possible ex-communication”.

I wonder why didn’t wait another week. If he had, he could have done double duty by bringing about press for his new book, and celebrating the first anniversary of the last time he brought this up.

This seems to be a thorny issue for Southerton. He left the Church because there seemed to be no conclusive evidence that supported the widely held notion among Latter-day Saints that Pacific Islanders and indigenous people of the Americas were descended from the Lamanites.

First, I find it unbelievable—actually, I can believe it, but it still is dumbfounding—that someone’s conviction to the Church can be swayed by scientific evidence. The Book of Mormon is not a scientific journal. It does not establish scientific fact and does not even heavily support scientific theories. It is nothing more than a spiritual record—interspersed with select historical information—of a distinct, isolated group of people.

Second, there is no indication whatsoever in the Book of Mormon that the Lamanites and Nephites were completely alone in the Americas. To say otherwise is nothing more than speculation. It is entirely plausible and even likely that the Lamanites and Nephites encountered—and even mingled with—other peoples already present in the Americas. This alone would reduce any existence of Israelite DNA. As well, it is entirely plausible that the Lamanite population died off or were exterminated; after all, the record of their history is incomplete.

Third, popular belief among Latter-day Saints does not equal doctrine. Just because many Latter-day Saints hold on to the archaic notion that all people indigenous to the Americas are descended solely from Lehi, does not make it church doctrine. I wish more people would understand this one principle. Tradition is not doctrine.

The Book of Mormon is primarily a religious book containing teachings and doctrine about God and Jesus Christ. To treat it primarily as anything else is to treat it as a very shaky foundation.

That being said, it only take a smidgen of logic to see that DNA research does not disprove the Book of Mormon. One would think a scientist like Southerton would understand that.