Hidden from History:
The Canadian Holocaust

A Call for Help from many people, and from the Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada

Dear friends and supporters,

Yesterday, I received another two cries for help, from groups of aboriginal survivors of residential school atrocities, in Alberta and the Yukon. And once more, I had to helplessly say, "I'm sorry, I wish I could come and help you. But I can't afford the airfare."

One older woman told me she's been on the verge of killing herself because of the trauma of being sterilized by Anglican church doctors, until she read my book, "Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust". Now she's more angry than suicidal.

"I want them to answer for what they did to me and my little brothers. They were trying to wipe us all out."

Her band council chiefs are too scared to speak about the murders at Carcross "residential school", in the Yukon, where she was imprisoned. They've threatened her, telling her she'll lose her home if she speaks about the secret graveyard near the old school site. Last night, someone threw a rock through her window.

So she called me, hoping against hope that somehow I can change all that.

After speaking with this aging woman, I took my tears and frustration out into the back yard and walked among the trees, eventually screaming my anger at "God" and a deaf and uncaring world.

I demanded to know: With all the money and means in this world, why am I unable to come to this woman's aid?

Why must I beg and plead for help to do what so obviously must be done, if "justice" is something more than a nice idea?

Why can't every one of the hundreds of people who profess support for my work pledge even ten bucks every month towards a travel fund, so that I can answer such desperate cries and do what the Creator has placed before me, at the cost of my family, my safety, my very life?

I ask this question, repeatedly, in email requests that go unanswered. The last time I asked all of you for help, only two of you responded.

I have taken this indifference to mean that most of you consider renting a video movie or going out for dinner more important than helping me comfort the victims and bring the truth to light. So be it.

But surely there are enough of you out there whose principles amount to more than words, and who are willing to CONSISTENTLY fund the work I have been given to do?

I cannot do this work without such support. Time and again, my inability to get to people who need me has caused me to want to forget this work and do what most everyone else seems to be doing, and that's to live in a little pleasure-zone bubble cut off from the suffering around us. But my honour doesn't allow me to surrender like that.

I wish you could all experience what goes on when I visit a native community and speak at a healing circle or public event. Lives change. Voices are recovered, and long-hidden stories are shared. I have helped to save some peoples' lives.

I have never been good at self-promotion, but this isn't about me. It's about witnessing a miracle and helping to feed it.

When I returned from the prairies awhile ago, I brought with me some tobacco given to me by an Ojibway (Anishnaabe) elder. He was in tears when I left, and he said to me as we embraced,

"I will never be able to thank you for what you and your book has brought to my people. It is changing history and bringing us hope. We can finally tell what happened."

This elderly, gentle man told me of a vision he underwent in 1946, when he was transported to Ottawa to a meeting at which Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent and Lester Pearson were present. The topic of the meeting was how to "eliminate by any means" the remaining Ojibway people in order to get their land.

There are countless stories like his that are disappearing every day, because the eyewitnesses are dying quickly, and with them, any final hope of justice being done.

I can and will stop that from happening. But I need your help to do it.

If you believe at all in the truth of Genocide by Canadian church and state being documented and exposed, then please pledge a sustaining amount of money to my work and our Truth Commission every month. This will allow me to travel to wherever I am needed.

You can make a direct deposit to our bank account, and we will issue you a charitable tax receipt, even.

That account is:

Scotia Bank, City Centre branch, 65 Commercial St.,
Nanaimo, BC, Canada
Account of Lori O'Rorke
Account No.: 40220 00189 29

Or mail your cheques made out to Lori O'Rorke to:

260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, B.C.
Canada V9R 2H8

I hope your heart hears my words and your will propels
you into action to help sustain this work. For the
sake of these elders, and the children who died and
are still waiting for justice.

my thanks,

Kevin Annett

www.hiddenfromhistory.org