Unrepentant - Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide (2006)

Unrepentant - Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide (2006) Files: 1) Documentary 2) ebook: Hidden No Longer Genocide in Canada Past and Present by Kevin D Annett.pdf - 425 pp 50,000 native children murdered in church/province run schools Unrepentant documents Canada's dirty secret - the planned genocide of aboriginal people in church-run Indian Residential Schools - and a clergyman's efforts to document and make public these crimes. First-hand testimonies from residential school survivors are interwoven with Kevin Annett's own story of how he faced firing, de-frocking, and the loss of his family, reputation and livelihood as a result of his efforts to help survivors and bring out the truth of the residential schools. This saga continues, as Annett continues a David and Goliath struggle to hold the government and churches of Canada accountable for crimes against humanity, and the continued theft of aboriginal land. Unrepentant took nineteen months to film, primarily in British Columbia and Alberta, and is based on Kevin Annett's book Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust. The entire film was a self-funded, grassroots effort, which is reflected in its earthy and human quality. Kevin D. Annett (aka. Kevin McNamee-Annett, and Eagle Strong Voice) is a Canadian writer and former minister of the United Church of Canada. He has authored three books about Canadian aboriginals - Love and Death in the Valley, Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust and Unrepentant: Disrobing the Emperor. His Ph.D thesis on the topic of the Canadian genocide was blocked by the establishment so he used it as source material for a video instead, publishing Unrepentant in 2007 and posting it on the WWW and achieving over 500,000 hits within a year[1]. His treatment at the hands of the Canadian establishment over his persistent, selfless advocacy for the indigenous populations of Canada, is an object lesson in the gross self-serving dishonesties, corruption and hypocrisies of power. Education and ministry In the 1980s, Kevin graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor's degree in anthropology and a Master's degree in political science. In 1990, he graduated from the Vancouver School of Theology with a Master of Divinity, and was subsequently ordained by British Columbia Conference of the United Church of Canada. In 1990-1991 he served in churches in rural Manitoba, and in 1991-1992 served at the Fred Victor Mission in Toronto, an outreach street-ministry of The United Church of Canada. He was appointed minister to St. Andrew's United Church in Port Alberni, British Columbia in 1992. Port Alberni ministry From early in his ministry Kevin was puzzled by the total absence of indigenous people from his church. He determined both to discover why this should be and to be as pro-active in his contacts with his indigenous parishioners, as with his traditional aging white flock. Unknown to Kevin at the time, he had embarked on a deeply traumatic Road to Damascus-type journey which, at its nadir, was to see his marriage and family torn apart, render him destitute and earmark him as a reviled outcast from his own 'Establishment' society. During his first year in Port Alberni, he "learned quickly who was the worst child sex offender in town, mostly from his victims or their families. The bastard was an elder at the nearby Anglican church. He was also the head of the local Rotary Club and led their charitable fund raising campaign every year. He was the buddy of the Mayor and a 'good Christian'".[2] Residential school work and writings Annett has written three books on the subject of residential school abuse in Canada. The first, Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust, was published in two editions: 2001 and 2005. A substantially updated, revised 3rd edition in September 2011 was retitled Hidden No Longer.[3]The second, Love and Death in the Valley, was published in 2002.[4] In 2006, Kevin produced a documentary on this topic: Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide which won the 2006 award for 'Best Director' at the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival [5]. It provided the title for his third book "Unrepentant: Disrobing the Emperor" published in January 2011 [6] Denied entry into England 2011 On May 29, 2011, Annett was denied entry into England at Stansted airport, and briefly held in an immigration prison before being deported. The only explanation offered was that giving public lectures was not an appropriate activity for visitors to UK. He had been scheduled to speak at a public rally in London against child trafficking by church and state.[7] The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State On 15th June 2010, Kevin Annett founded The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State. This is a network of activists who have given up on the legal systems of nation states and constituted their own. After a "Tribunal of Conscience" in Brussels in the fall of 2012, they reviewed the available evidence before indicting all 30 defendants on February 25, 2013 for perpetrating or concealing the Canadian genocide. These defendants included then Joseph Ratzinger (formerly Pope Benedict XVI), Tarcisio Bertone former Cardinal, Elizabeth Windsor "Queen of England" and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. _____ Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada’s Genocide Film review by Brent Erickson Unrepentant, Kevin Annett and Canada’s Genocide, Produced by Kevin Annett, Louie Lawless and Lori O’Rorke, 2006 _“Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to a high estate, disproportionate to their merits. It should be kept in mind that their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies.” -Bishop Bartolomé de Las Casas, from Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies, 1542. When Kevin Annett accepted the position of Minister at St. Andrews United Church in Port Alberni, BC, in 1992, he was a little naïve. After leading his first service he asked a colleague why no First Nations people attended the church, considering that over one-third of the city’s population was First Nations. Unsatisfied with the answer he received, Annett began a journey of discovery that would get him fired and physically assaulted, and destroy his reputation and marriage, but would produce a film that is of monumental importance to our country’s efforts to come to terms with its own history. Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada’s Genocide is a 106-minute documentary that chronicles the deliberate genocide of Canada’s Indigenous people, from early colonization and the first use of biological warfare, to church-run residential schools, to the ongoing theft of resource-rich Native land. Solid historical information and first-hand testimonies of residential school survivors are interwoven with Annett’s own story to create a powerful and educational film. Unrepentant is based on Kevin Annett’s self-published 2001 book Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust, an important and moving work in its own right. The Unrepentant project was a completely self-funded, grassroots effort, and the low budget is evident in the production quality of the film. Unlike other recent political documentaries, Unrepentant is not witty, cute, or campy. It has no ironic music, clever editing or technical wizardry, just a straightforward, stark, and often disturbing account of a people who survived over four hundred years of ethnic cleansing, and of a man willing to sacrifice everything to help tell their story. It may be difficult for many non-Native Canadians to come to grips with the information presented in Unrepentant, as it has been long suppressed and denied. Beatings, electric shocks, forced sterilization, medical experimentation, starvation, rape, and the deaths and disappearance of more than 50,000 First Nations children in residential schools—Annett’s film exposes the depth of Canada’s savagery towards Aboriginal people. Unrepentant draws on personal testimony and eyewitness accounts to bring this history to life, while drawing upon Annett’s own experiences to demonstrate the systematic denial of the historic and ongoing violation of Aboriginal people. “I witnessed the murder of Maisie Shaw,” testified Harriet Nahanee, Native Elder of the Pacheedaht Nation (1935-2007). In December 1946, Alfred Caldwell, then Principal of the Alberni Residential School, kicked fourteen-year-old Maisie Shaw down a flight of stairs to her death. Annett reported the Maisie Shaw murder the day he learned about it, in December 1995, but encountered a familiar resistance when requesting an investigation. “They had the same response to any of the deaths I reported, year after year. Complete refusal,” he says. But Kevin Annett wasn’t fired for helping to expose the murders of First Nations people. Instead, it was his exposure of the colonial lust for land and resources, which continues to define our society’s relationship to its Aboriginal people, that provoked such severe censure. As Annett states, “The Achilles heel here is the issue of the land.” In the course of my work with residential school survivors while I was still a Minister in Port Alberni,” he explains, “I stumbled over the fact that the church had engaged in the theft and speculation of Aboriginal land in Ahousat, B.C., in order to profit its corporate benefactor, the logging company MacMillan-Bloedel.” In October 1994, Annett wrote a letter to church officials expressing concern about the issue of stolen Native land. “A week later,” he says, “Presbytery officials began meeting secretly with my church board to arrange my removal as Minister at St. Andrew’s.” “_Unrepentant_ is many things, but for me it is a mirror, held up to my own Euro-Canadian culture and people,” he states. For Annett, our antipathy towards the original people of this land represents a deep and abiding disrespect of life itself. “I am counseling and speaking to the dying in this film: to the members of a collapsing culture whose ways are causing their own planetary self-destruction in the wake of their extermination of millions of Indigenous people.” With the film recently garnering a Best Director Award at the 2006 New York Independent Film and Video Festival, and winning the award for Best International Documentary at the 2006 Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, Annett’s efforts are finally being recognized.