I'm mad as hell about this. My father was the executive director of Anishinaabe Community Counseling, a mental health services non-profit set up by the federal and provincial government in North Western Ontario. I spent a lot of time on and around the reserves, and it's not like this stuff was unknown. People told stories often about the residential schools, people wouldn't go near certain areas because they knew what was there. I can't believe I'm saying this, but as a Canadian I would echo Chinas call for a full human rights inquiry at the international level. If Canada is seriously about truth and reconciliation, we need to do more than just continue to publish reports acknowledging the wrongs committed, we need real change in Canadian society. The recommendations put forward by the government never go far enough, and frankly, the Indian Act is stain on our country.
As I pointed out in the last thread about this, various similar things have occurred in Catholic orphanages in Europe, as well, and in greater numbers.<p>My point somehow got lost the last time but I will say it again: if you let an organization "do its own books," it can go corrupt and stay that way. When it comes to orphanages and places where children are removed from their parents, that means mass unmarked graves.<p>Not too long ago, in my state, some parents killed their kids and buried them in the back yard. But they were caught, and swiftly, because someone else was doing the books, someone else was keeping an eye out. Institutions that become accountable only to themselves will <i>continue</i> their actions, unimpeded.
For those unaware of the history here, 'Residential School' is a misnomer for what these institutions were. There are plenty of details on Wikipedia [1] for those seeking more information.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...</a>
I'm not in favour of controlling language, but it's far past the point that it's evident these institutions were not really schools. I'm sure some learning occurred, and perhaps some functioned in ways we might recognize as schools. However it seems like a disservice to allow such an elevated label for such a low and destructive institution.<p>Again, I'm not advocating controlling what people are allowed to call them. Just, the word "school" implies this was somehow positive or even positively intended. But these were not that, or enough were not such that it seems we could have a more honest term for what they were and what happened.<p>I'm not an indigenous person in Canada so I can't speak for them, and I'm not trying to. Perhaps most of them are fine with "residential school" and prefer to be more honest about the history of it. It's just so egregiously incorrect to me to continue to call them schools.<p>Perhaps the word 'residential' in association is enough to remind people, as we expose more about them, that they weren't actually a place meant to foster growth and learning and success. I don't know. It just seems like such a bizarre name to continue using.
My great grandparents survived an Indian School in the US. They grew up with none of their traditional culture as a result -- they were forced to be "white". I sometimes wonder what culture they could have passed down to me as a child, had they been allowed to partake in it themselves. Instead it just feels like a fragment of my family's genealogical culture that has been lost to intentional destruction.
As a result of these discoveries, the US will be starting their own investigation into similar institutions: <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/us-boarding-schools-to-be-investigated" rel="nofollow">https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/us-boarding-schools-to-b...</a>
It's always strange to see the Canadian shame over the memory of residential schools when a slightly better version still exists in the US.<p>Rather than run by the government, they're generally run by a church where they make millions of dollars in profit to put Native American children in foster homes and send them to public school. They still often lead to abuse, only tolerate a sterilized version of their culture, and they use the scummiest fundraising methods to allow all this. Fewer hidden deaths, not truly forced, but still a disgusting practice.
Child mortality rates were high in those days. Just to add some numbers, 30% of Canadian children died before reaching the age of 5 around the year 1900[1]. Presumably at a school the mortality rate would be lower because the children were older. But this is not necessarily an unreasonable death rate for a school that operated many decades. Especially for undernourished native kids who would've been much more vulnerable to diseases they had no historic immunity to. This would have been common in other countries and other Canadian schools too. The difference, of course, is usually a boarding school would contact the parents to notify them.<p>People are spinning this story like this was a death camp for native kids. It's not. It was a real tragedy that children were removed from their parents forcibly and the institutions couldn't be bothered to report if your kid freaking died...<p>Given the period in time and lack off oversight, I don't doubt there was abuse too, and let's not forget this is the Catholic church, which has a poor record, but it's clueless to account these deaths to abuse just on the basis of possible graves existing on ground penetrating radar. We're not even sure these are all graves, you have to excavate to have an idea what the error rate is.<p>One last thing to keep in mind is at this point in time the government barely existed. There were no social safety nets or programs and hardly any government oversight out west. It's called the wild west for a reason. The church was operating these schools as a charity because the government had neither the resources not inclination to do it themselves.<p>Things were different back then, and they often don't look good judged through our modern eyes. That's a sign of how far we've come in less than a century.<p>To us today this looks about the same as what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs. Definitely not a moment in history to be proud of.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-time-child-mortality-rate/" rel="nofollow">https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-time-...</a>
It seems like time to pull out the ground-penetrating radar at, well, anywhere the church-y types have been allowed custody of children. The Irish "homes for fallen women", for example.<p>It's amazing, in Australia, how religious types are still by default trusted with children and welfare in general, and even state-subsidized to continue doing what they do. We've had a raft of scandals like this (and rape scandals, and child abuse scandals), yet the taxpayer continues to fork over major $$$ to subsidize religious schools and charities. It's one of the things the USA got broadly right, by contrast.
Similar things happened in Ireland (but for unmarried mothers and orphans, rather than indigenous people):
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/mass-grave-of-babies-and-children-found-at-tuam-orphanage-in-ireland" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/mass-grave-of-...</a>
We are outraged by the conduct of people in prior generations. What evil are we perpetuating now that our descendants will be outraged by? That is what we should be focused on.<p>It's much easier to look at evil from a safe distance; we can feel righteous. When the evil is in the mirror, there's no feeling righteous; it's much more complicated; but we can do much more good by actually stopping it now and rather than feeling bad about it later.<p>(I completely support also researching and addressing what happened at the residential schools. I'm saying that's the easy part.)
> Last month, the Cowessess began to use ground-penetrating radar to locate unmarked graves at the cemetery of the Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.<p>Hundreds of unmarked graves found at cemetery?
I recently came to learn—for those also unaware—that it wasn't just indigenous people that were put into residential schools. There were also the Doukhobors among probably other groups.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doukhobors" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doukhobors</a>
"Cowessess First Nation is 'optimistic' that the church will work with them in investigating further, he said."<p>"It has not yet been determined if all the unmarked graves belong to children"<p>It's best to wait for a full joint investigation before jumping to conclusions, especially in an atmosphere when accusations are made very lightly and emotion run hot and tensions are high. Justice presupposes truth; it would be unjust and irresponsible otherwise. We don't yet know the reasons for these graves. Recall that child mortality, disease, lack of money or means to transport remains, etc, etc, all played a role historically. They could have played a role here as well. Let's wait for the investigative reports.<p>Also, beware of Trudeau's feigned outrage. The man is as smarmy of an opportunist as they get.
These children should be exhumed, autopsied, identified, and returned to their communities wherever it is possible to obtain the permission of local native communities to do so.<p>There are too many questions about what went on in residential schools. It's time to address those questions.
These stories are essentially fake.<p>I'd be willing to bet the technology behind "Last month, the Cowessess began to use ground-penetrating radar to locate unmarked graves " is fake.<p>This is hard to do, most at the commercial level only detect disturbance.<p>No one is releasing the data or even having it checked so far I can see.<p>Unmarked graves are normal, this many in one spot and allegedly unknown is not.<p>This to me says it's a graveyard, and this is just a survey. Nothing strange -<p>> "This is not a mass grave site. These are unmarked graves," said Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme.<p>If you think schools back then were killing or allowing students to die at levels higher than normal for the time you are delusional.<p>If you claim the parents were not told about all these deaths, more than what we already know, prove it with the new info, but it's nothing to do with unmarked ground disturbances.
What I don’t understand is why the government doesn’t have special investigators that can demand the records that, to date, the church has “refused to release.” How can they simply refuse?
The most depressing thing is the lack of prosecution for the perpetrators of these crimes.<p>It sends a clear message that this sort of thing <i>is</i> something the country can live with.
I find it very strange how little the genocide and forced re-educations of Native Americans is focused on in schools. Winners really do write all the narratives.
Canadian schools are pure trash. The only people surprised by all of this are as always Canadians.<p>They treated left handed people pretty shitty too but luckily they didn’t get the chance to send us to concentration camps to die.<p>I’m definitely never sending my kids to Canada, I’ll send them to Beijing way before that.
> Between 1863 and 1998, more than 150,000 indigenous children were taken from their families and placed in these schools. The children were often not allowed to speak their language or to practice their culture, and many were mistreated and abused.<p>This is still going on in Europe today. Denmark has a large scale cultural genocide program similar to what Canada did to their indigenous population, except it targets Muslim children instead. The openly stated goal is to sterilize Muslims in Denmark of their own culture and force them to be acceptably Danish. The Europeans seem to be entirely fine with it, apparently, judging by the near complete lack of serious political effort to try to make Denmark stop the attack on Muslims and their culture.
Props for Canada for caring about this issue, other places wouldn't give two craps about what happened in the past. On the other hand this looks like a festering wound that will never heal and will plague Canadian society endlessly, including being exploited by authoritarian communist dictatorships like China.<p>I wonder if there's anything we can do to, in a way or the other, to leave the past in the past. Honestly I think it will be forever suffered by people who never lived throught that, exploited for financial and political gain, and punished upon the ones who never enforced nor supported. Much like US slavery, despite the 750k dead on the war to end slavery.