Outraged at the fate of the Native Americans, the Raelian Movement proposes a peaceful gesture

In the wake of the recent horrific discoveries in Canada of the remains of children buried without a grave on the outskirts of what were once called “residential schools” as well as lawyers and Indigenous rights activists that have been killed in Mexico in a recent past, a U.S. Department of the Interior investigation report released last Wednesday, May 11, acknowledges the abuse of Native children, already referring to 500 children who died in these schools and suggesting that thousands more deaths will surely be discovered.

Today, as the magnitude of these horrors becomes clearer, many feel totally powerless to help stop these iniquities completely. The Raelian Movement, ardent defender of human rights since its foundation, urges once again to take peaceful action to resolve what can no longer be ignored. “It is only through education and strong gestures towards the culprits that we will finally be able to find peace between human brothers and sisters living in this territory,” says Jean F. Cyr, leader of the First Nations Fraternity Committee of the Raelian Movement.

There are no words to describe the inhumanity associated with the fate of the First Peoples of the Americas. The residential school system, founded by the government and implemented by the churches, was intended to settle the “Indian question”; the Native peoples were seen as a threat to the development of this invented country based on strictly European social and religious values.

Of course, we can never undo the past; the damage is done. The non-Native Canadian citizens, however, painfully understood that they had been kept in total ignorance of what was being imposed on the Natives by these governmental and religious authorities, convinced that these two respectable institutions could never hatch such genocidal schemes without their knowledge. What a bitter awakening from an imposed sleep!

Given the immensity of our ignorance, the very first step can only be to want to educate ourselves and learn about the true reality experienced by the First Nations. Several books, ideally written by Native people themselves, videos and documentaries tell us about the reality of these peoples living next to us even when we don’t notice them. When representatives of the Raelian Movement have clearly and publicly asked them what we could do to support them, one answer has always echoed: “Listen to us, get to know us!”

As a second legal and highly symbolic gesture, the Raelian Movement also encourages all citizens of the country who were baptized in these religions from which they have distanced themselves to officially and massively apostatize*. This peaceful gesture indicates to these churches that criminally refuse to acknowledge their wrongdoings that they have definitely corrupted the message of love of Jesus and that they must gradually disappear.

Rael, leader of the International Raelian Movement, has always encouraged the Indigenous people all over the world to return to their traditions, their customs, their religions and their territories, thus inciting all Indigenous people to apostatize from the religions that were forcibly imposed upon them by colonizers from Europe.

In support and as a positive and peaceful gesture in spite of our great indignation, let us massively refuse to collaborate with these criminal leaders by apostatizing today in the event of important condemnations by all the international judicial authorities.

* Apostasy: Official, voluntary abandonment of a religion. Apostasy form available on  www.apostasie.org