Perpetrated? Yes.

Instigated? No.

While it is true that the Catholic Church did start schools to teach Indigenous peoples before Canada became a country attendance at those schools were volunarty, and abuses were not conducted on the children. It was not until after Canada came into existance that the genocidal nature of Canada's residential schools truly began under the guidance of the First Canadian Government.

Let me point you to the statements made by Canada's Founding Father Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's First (and third) Prime Minister and the author of Canada’s genocide of Indigenous people.

In a letter from 1870 he wrote;

>We should take immediate steps to extinguish the Indian titles … and open it for settlement. There will otherwise be an influx of squatters who will seize upon the most eligible positions and greatly disturb the symmetry [organization] of future surveys.

Between 1880 and 1885, the population of Plains First Nations dropped from 32,000 to 20,000, according to analysis by the Cree-Saulteaux academic Blair Stonechild. Most of that was due to starvation while under the care of the Canadian government under Macdonald.

>The executions of the Indians … ought to convince the Red Man that the White Man governs,

Macdonald wrote to Edgar Dewdney.

In 1885 he wrote;

>…..we have been pampering and coaxing the Indians; that we must take a new course, we must vindicate the position of the white man, we must teach the Indians what law is; we must not pauperise them, as they say we have been doing.

​

>I have reason to believe that the agents as a whole … are doing all they can, by refusing food until the Indians are on the verge of starvation, to reduce the expense,

Macdonald told the House of Commons in 1882.

In 1887 he wrote;

>The great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are fit to change.

The schools were run by churches yes, but they were designed and funded by the Canadian government.

Also the Canadian government performed horrific experiments on the children who attended the schools and perpetrated the Sixties Scoop which was a period (1950-1983) in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which they would be adopted by white families.

The Canadian government not only knew what was happening at the residential schools they actively took a role in perpetrating some of the abuses at those schools.

Biggest Catholic Church in Canada at that time was from British controlled Ireland. Catholic emancipation of 1829 legalized Catholicism in Ireland, however Brits had influence over the church and handed the previously independant church, who organized risings and rebellions against them, to Rome. The Papal states were pretty well puppets of the monarchs of empire since the 1300s. Annexed by France and released by Coalition against Napolean in 1814, if I remember the year correctly of the top of my head. The Roman Catholic church in Ireland then imposed the Inquisition which had not been in Ireland up til then, and used it as a tool to stop further Rebellion. Roman Catholic Church was a effectively a puppet used to achieve their aims. Inquisition was first imposed by the French government to prevent heresy within the church in newly conquered territory. Papal States were annexed in the wake of the rise of Italian Nationalism around 1870s or something like that. The Vatican was released by Mussolini in 1929. Pope didnt even have full control of the papal states themselves, highly unlikely they were really running stuff in the colonies. Missionaries also helped teach the Natives European agricultural practices to sustain themselves in the wake of the destruction of their way of life due to colonial settlers converting their hunting grounds to farmland.

Edit: Also after the Catholic emancipation they started to actually enforce the Penal laws. They had not had much success because the Catholics in Ireland stirred stuff up if they did. Thus in my family, my Nana’s father was Irish and Protestant and her mother was a British Catholic. The men in the family were protestant and their wives were Catholic so the men could own land.

People thought differently, it was believed that bringing civilization was their duty a social responsibility, resistance to assimilation was a rejection of civil society and indicative of a "savage" nature than needed to be tamed or brought to heel. Tearing kids away from their families and putting them into regulated western schools( with religion) was considered a good way of breaking this "behavior". Eugenics, phrenology, racial based discrimination, etc. was all considered acceptable at different points in the relevant history related to these events.

"allowed"? No, the Government facilitated it, partnered in it and enforced it. Let's be crystal clear on this. On top of that, we have enshrined it in law through the constitutional documents that are the Indian Act.

We need to fix this, correct it and stop electing dithering idiots who pay lip services over it and do nothing in actuality.

"something" would be to get rid of the indian act, get rid of the reserve system, honour the treaties that are unhonoured, return lands to the peoples who claim them and move forward as a guest.

It's heinous that there has been nothing but a pack of shiftless self centered fools in office for near 160 years on this subject.

Canada was literally bullied, stolen, cheated, negotiated in ill faith away from the true keepers of the land who were then bullied, killed off and rendered near dead as a culture in the name of the crown.

Fuck!

Absolutely frozen brains.

Awarded to the Catholic Church (Jesuits mostly) by the Government

Exactly. This was intigated, organized, ordered and funded by the Canadian government. They shouldn't be trying to push responsibility off to a different organization. Take responsibility.

> the Catholic religion

Or, as it is otherwise known to the rest of the world, Christianity.

> this shit will never happen in the US.

The USA already apologized and paid reparations to Japanese internment victims under fucking Ronald Reagan back in the 1980s. What makes you think something like this "will never happen" in the US?

The U.S. has began their ownFederal investigation into their Indian Boarding School system last year. This investigation was prompted by Canada's settlments and the TRC as well as the finding of unmarked graves at former residential schools.

Admit what? That we killed a bunch of natives?

Genocide is not a binary condition, there's a scale and while it's not as obvious or inhumanely atrocious as the two you mention, what happened at the schools is definitely further along that scale than you think.