Kevin Annett, the pastor turned activist who forced Canada to acknowledge its genocide of native people this year, is taking his truth campaign on the road on February 12. But now he’s “upping the ante” on the institutions responsible.

 Annett, an award-winning author and film maker, announced on January 1 a new campaign to politically challenge church and state in Canada through the launching of a broad-based “anti-colonial republican movement” committed to the establishment of a federated, secular Republic of Kanata that would sever ties with the British Crown and legally disestablish the Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada.

 “To finally heal the scars of genocide, we need to end what is causing it, starting with the oligarchic institutions responsible” said Annett in a media statement.

 “As long as those unelected bodies - the Crown and its churches - remain the legal power in Canada, there can be no justice for any of their victims - and no democracy for anyone.”

 Annett’s call was quickly endorsed by indigenous elders and activists across Canada.

 Since 1995, Annett has worked to document and expose the planned genocide of native people in church-run Indian residential schools across Canada, including by the release of two books and an award-winning documentary film on the issue, UNREPENTANT.

 On June 11, 2008, largely as a result of Annett’s tireless public campaigning, the government of Canada issued a formal apology for the Indian residential Schools, and, picking up on Annett’s call, announced the creation of a Missing Children’s Group to identify the burial sites of an estimated 50,000 children who died in the residential schools.

 Annett’s work has earned him nominations for the Order of Canada and the Nobel Peace Prize from such figures as Dr. Noam Chomsky, Irish peace activist and Nobel laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, and Amnesty International co-founder Dr. Jennifer Wade.

 However, the continued refusal of the government and churches of Canada to hold themselves accountable or face criminal charges for the residential school crimes has prompted Annett and his network to “raise the stakes by getting explicitly political”, to quote Annett’s statement.

In the wake of Annett’s public vindication by the June 11 apology, his campaign is gaining new momentum, and new allies.  Hundreds of people across Canada have recently taken a public “Oath of Allegiance” to a new Republic of Kanata, and plan to establish local branches of a Republican Party of Kanata.

 Annett’s speaking tour is geared to win international support for the new movement and force a final reckoning with the churches and government of Canada over their proven crimes against humanity.

 As part of his tour, Annett will cross Canada and the United States, meet with dozens of aboriginal and human rights leaders, speak at public forums, and hold public rallies including at the United Nations.

 Later in the spring, Annett will travel to Europe to help convene a public War Crimes Tribunal against the British Crown and the Vatican for their responsibility for the deaths of more than 50,000 children in Indian Residential Schools in Canada.

 To arrange a speaking engagement, interview or meeting with Kevin Annett in your community, contact him c/o 250-753-3345 (Nanaimo, Canada) or hiddenfromhistory@yahoo.ca or kevin_annett@hotmail.com.

 To learn more, including about the January 1 Declaration, read this website: www.hiddenfromhistory.org .

This statement is endorsed by the Provisional Council of the Republican Party of Kanata.

Read and Hear the truth of Genocide in Canada, past and present, at this website: www.hiddenfromhistory.org

“Kevin is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than many who have received it in the past.”
- Dr. Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor Emeritus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“A courageous and inspiring man." (referring to Kevin Annett)
- Mairead Corrigan-Maguire
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Belfast , Northern Ireland

The very lands we all along enjoyed
they ravished from the people they destroyed ...
All the long pretenses of descent
are shams of right to prop up government.
' Tis all invasion, usurpation all;
' Tis all by fraud and force that we possess,
and length of time can make no crime the less;
Religion's always on the strongest side.

Daniel Defoe, Jure Divino (England, 1706)