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.
"people wouldn't go near certain areas because they knew what was there"
Right. Everyone knew. There have been a number of inquiries on this. The deaths at residential schools has never been a mystery. There is nothing new being unveiled.
This is an absolute tragedy, but there is a bit of a lie happening in the presentation of it, with each "discovery" being treated like it is unveiling some dark secret. No, it is a dark, but very well known, truth that has been in the open for the entirety of the program. And the truth is that mortality across the entire demographics of Canada was bad in that time period (3 out of 10 children under 5 died across the country), so it isn't entirely atypical.
"we need real change in Canadian society"
What does this even mean? Should the country abolish the residential school system, despite it being long abolished?
The residential schools are gone, but their goal -- getting rid of indigenous culture so that they stop being a hindrance to resource exploitation on their land -- is still going strong.
Let's also not ignore the fact that the sixties scoop[1] was a thing as well and that children in indigenous households are more likely to be taken out of their families than other groups (except blacks who have it worse).
Somewhat related, since it also points to deep institutional racism in Canada, but this made me think about the "starlight tours" Saskatoon police would bring First Nations peoples on. It's just horrifying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatoon_freezing_deaths
Also somewhat related. The courts in Canada ruled the native population had a right to "subsistence"(or some other key word)fishing b/c of treaties. This meant the natives could crab or maybe it was lobster out of season. The white local fishing fleets have been very violent with the police just standing around and letting it happen. Plenty of video multiple confrontations and illegal acts of white on native crime and violence.
children in indigenous households are more likely to be taken out of their families
Children in households affected by poverty are more likely to be at risk, and indigenous households are more likely to be affected by poverty.
What would you have child services do, leave children who are determined to be at risk where they are, just because they're indigenous? Because that has happened, and children have died as a result.
I don't actually disagree that it's likely that child welfare actions are more likely to be justifiably taken against indigenous households but the sixties scoop was pretty clearly not based on household stability alone. But, at the heart of the matter, if this minority is much more likely to live in poverty[1] then that itself is a problem we need to solve. But, the sixties scoop wasn't so long ago and, honestly, I think an in depth investigation of child services today would reveal that biases are still quite present.
Right, I'm not defending the sixties scoop at all. Just pointing out that comparing statistics on youth taken into care in the 21st century based on ethnicity without adjusting for confounders is highly misleading and potentially lethal for the children involved.
Yes, indigenous poverty is absolutely something which should be addressed -- but it's not a simple matter. One obvious "solution" would be to say "pack your bags and move to a big city" -- rural communities across Canada are poorer than urban communities -- but of course that would mean leaving traditional territories behind.
Something to keep in mind when talking about confounding variables is that all preindustrial cultures, including European cultures, had a GDP of less than $1000 per capita per year, measured in 1990 USD. The default state of humanity is deep poverty. Industrialization brought gradual growth of economic output per capita to the tune of 10-100x compared to the preindustrial era, and the extravagant riches by historical standards the average Canadian enjoys today.
The huge question: how to lift populations / cultures from their natural state of deep poverty. This effort by necessity involves radical changes in culture, which may take decades if not longer. One can't live a traditional lifestyle of fishing, hunting or subsistence farming and afford a modern heated house with indoor plumbing, driving a modern automobile to the supermarket for fresh produce in the middle of the winter.
> The huge question: how to lift populations / cultures from their natural state of deep poverty. This effort by necessity involves radical changes in culture, which may take decades if not longer.
Imagine aliens from Alpha Centauri arriving on earth and say your words, but referring to the entirety of human culture, and a need to forcefully "uplift" humans, without asking us humans what we think.
...I now understand why someone said History is the sci-fi's author secret weapon - I'm sure a half-decent author could make most readers empathize with the poor, subjugated humans who may be a little unenthusiastic about being uplifted (into a hive-mind, perhaps), and having their children shipped off to a different star system as wards of a "Galactic College" to cure them of their humanity.
There have been several Star Trek episodes about this, notably centered around the conceit of the Prime Directive[0], which states that a starfaring society should not interfere with the development of a system- or planet-bound society. What makes it a useful conceit is the stories that can be told about when or if that directive should be broken. Should first contact be made if it would save a civilization from collapse, for example?
Another issue that is touched on in some episodes is that non-interventionism as a blanket rule disadvantages the members of the community that might in fact want to be "uplifted", whether because they are currently oppressed in that community or because they simply are drawn to new and different things.
I think the key thing, for me, is that each individual should be entitled to make the decision about how (or if) they choose to be "uplifted" for themselves, and they should also retain the right to withdraw from that process at any time.
Indeed, the process might have been quite traumatic for the natives. On the flip side, the aliens might have had the best of intentions, alas executed with significant flaws. It so happens that boarding schools are (were?) a major tradition in the alien British culture.
> Boarding schools in Britain started in medieval times when boys were sent to be educated at a monastery or noble household, where a lone literate cleric could be found. In the 12th century, the Pope ordered all Benedictine monasteries such as Westminster to provide charity schools, and many public schools started when such schools attracted paying students. These public schools reflected the collegiate universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as in many ways they still do, and were accordingly staffed almost entirely by clergymen until the 19th century. Private tuition at home remained the norm for aristocratic families, and for girls in particular, but after the 16th century, it was increasingly accepted that adolescents of any rank might best be educated collectively. The institution has thus adapted itself to changing social circumstances over 1,000 years.
> It so happens that boarding schools are (were?) a major tradition in the alien British culture.
A very harmful tradition, IMO, even in elite schools like Eton.
In my hypothetical, the aliens consider a hive-mind as an ideal as it would wipe out all wars and conflict, and improve collaboration (imagine if all 20th century mathematicians had a Erdős number of 1, and all his insights retained after the death of his biological unit). All this progress would come at the cost of getting rid of "individualism" - a very backward, romanticized, but inefficient notion that is clearly outweighed by the benefits (in the aliens mind).
But you could just ask. If the natives don't want a modern lifestyle, that's ok. If they do want it, you should definitely give them a chance to work and earn it. The same applies in the alien-earth case too.
At the very least, if you insist your way of treating less advanced cultures, democracy should never be spread to countries that were previously authoritarian, because that was their natural way of living.
I think there's also a legitimate question of whether we should lift cultures from their natural state of deep poverty - I don't think that even that point can be decisively settled. Removing that traditional lifestyle and encouraging office work is better for the individual but will erode and destroy those cultural traditions over time without a lot of careful stewardship.
I love this philosophical point. There is a sense of imperialism in forcing cultural and lifestyle changes over «your way of doing things is objectively wrong because of reasons so and so (child mortality, income, age expectancy etc)». And that’s even if there are only honest intentions behind forcing a minority (indiginous, in this case) culture to change, with no side effects that work towards the self-interest of the stronger culture.
Iain Banks makes this point about human nature many times in his books. Many people will voluntarily choose a more painful lifestyle even when more comfortable options are available.
I’d largely go as far as saying it’s a fundamental human right to decide what lifestyle to follow, as long as it’s consentual and doesn’t step on the huma rights of others.
One of the reasons I am rather fond of the Amish as a group (even though their lifestyle isn't for me) is that while they do have pretty strict religious tenants, they also[1] strongly embrace and celebrate the fact that offspring are given a free choice of whether to stay within the community or leave it - it allows the individual to make the choice that's right for them but it does potentially erode the survival of the culture. The Shakers eschewed procreation as part of their culture and relied on adoption and voluntary adult membership to continue on and died out quite a while back so this sort of cultural extinction is quite a real possibility.
That's where I think this gets muddled and especially difficult. Will there be people struggling in this traditional culture that really wish to live a life more in tune with western values but feel constrained by their local community to remain in a traditional setting.
When it comes to children and which path the next generation takes - that's where this problem gets really hard to think on. Just the other day on HN there was a discussion of transgender rights and part of it included considerations on whether children should be able to freely elect to have non-reversible surgery (that is something of a strawman since it is an extremely rare desire in child but :shrug:) and it's a place I feel torn because developing minds are still trying to learn their identity.
1. Seem to at least from everything I've read and Pennsylvanians I've spoken to - I wasn't raised Amish and can't give a first hand account.
Adults can choose of their own free will how to live. But do they have the right to force a child into a life of disease, malnutrition and lack of education? What if the rest of society has to pay for the consequences of that choice?
Parents are and should be deciding the set of values and skills their children acquire. As the Amish demonstrate, there are ways to mix tradition and modernity in a functional package.
However, it is highly likely that indigenous American parents would rather choose a modern education for their children. The myth that the indigenous American parents, given an informed choice, would somehow condemn their children to a life of deep poverty, malnutrition and disease outside of the industrial society is just a myth. Like indigenous Europeans, the vast majority of indigenous Americans would rather join the modern culture and enjoy the fruits of its incredible wealth generation structures. Small isolated pockets, like the Amish, notwithstanding.
To those glamorizing preindustrial lifestyles, take a summer off your cushy six figure office job and go live in an unelectrified hut on some remote mountain, living off the land. With your spouse and kids. Wake up as soon as the sun rises, do hard labor all day long (e.g. manually mow a meadow with a scythe), eat polenta and maybe a bit of cheese, crash for the night, lather, rinse, repeat. Chances are you'll last less than a week. How do I know? I lasted about 10 minutes.
Not trying to be sarcastic but looking at the child obesity rates and educational crises, medication rates etc; disease, malnutrition and lack of education are adjectives that also fit the US.
This is exactly why “we know the right way, why won’t you just follow it” is just as an imperialistic and honestly arrogant point of view.
So your argument is “things aren’t perfect in the US, so the US has no right to claim its approach is better”?
That’s an absurd statement. That’s like saying “well people still die of cancer with modern medicine so you can’t criticize my use of essential oils to treat my brain tumor”.
Based on childhood mortality alone, let alone any other measures of childhood development, the current western approach is objectively the far better one.
> So your argument is “things aren’t perfect in the US, so the US has no right to claim its approach is better”? That’s an absurd statement.
The core of the problem is exemplified with cherry-picking a few metrics and generalizing it to a sense of superiority.
In other words, the real absurdity is reducing complex multidimensional problems to a single "better than" metric, and acting as the world's savior based on that self-aggrandizement.
US is by far not the best in many of childhood related metrics, yet have a disproportionate amount of arrogance regarding the superiority of its approaches. You are welcome to check PISA scores, ADHD diagnosis and medication rates, childhood obesity rates , adverse childhood experiences, single parenthood, juvenile delinquency etc. among the first world countries and see where US lands.
Again, it's entirely irrelevant if the US has continued problems. It's not "cherry picking" a few metrics when the metric is childhood mortality as in "less of our children died before they are 5".
I can't imagine any civilization that would say that isn't an objectively superior outcome. Well maybe the Aztecs are willing to make an exception for child sacrifice?
Not sure why everyone is so afraid to say one civilization has superior outcomes to another. To claim they don't is just hiding the truth and setting back the human condition.
How would you even know if you are correctly setting it, even against what you think are your own standards ?
What if your worldview is extremely warped, but you can't realize it, because you haven't ever looked outside of yourself ? What if you don't even know how to ?
And what if, by chance, if by inheritance, you're very powerful ?
Wouldn't that make you an immature inconsiderate ignorant twisted bully thinking he knows better ?
If you’re arguing that “fewer dead children” is a standard that is culturally subjective, shouldn’t be applied to other civilizations, and might not be “the right standard” then I don’t know what to tell you.
Your answer shows that either I used the wrong method in conveying my message (maybe incompetent, quick and dirty application of the Socratic method), or, that my comment was actually on point.
TLDR:
Your make a lot of unfounded assumptions, you assume intentions and then you project implications. In so doing, you answer to a question which wasn't asked (see further below how).
Similarly, in stumbling while believing to be running, a "civilization" thinking the same way you do might be unknowingly crushing children dead itself. Which is why such though pattern are dangerous at large population sizes, when judged against their own values.
"Hell is paved with good intentions", as the proverb says.
Of course, if you see actual children dying, go save them because children are precious, period. Do not mix some "civilization level" morality judgment into the mix, or justify your helping them with it.
----
In more detail:
If you want to bear with me, I'll repeat the same as in my original comment, under a different form. This time I'll err on the side of verbosity to make sure nothing is lost.
What I responded to specifically was our last paragraph: that one gets to judge superiority of "civilizations", or judge whether how an act sets the human condition ("setting back", "advancing", "better", etc), and that the western is "objectively" better, even in the face of what you believe is a correct measure of the number of dead children.
What I _wasn't_ commenting on is the Canadian situation, or dead children. I wasn't implying _anything_. That is you projecting on me. I believe I was quite direct that it was about _you_: you'll note I used the word 15-20 times. I was explicitly NOT saying anything about dead children being a culturally subjective standard. Those are your assumption.
I'd argue that the same way you just projected upon me your assumptions wrongly, believing there were implications where there weren't, you do the same at the civilization judgment level in your comment I responded to. That is benign at in individual level, but terminally dangerous when societal.
Note: as a premise to what follows I do not deny that a one-, two- or multi-dimensional measuring scale which _may_ be imagined or that in the absolute, somebody _may_ compare two large groups of humans (tribe, nation, peoples, NOT a civilizations), or even pronounce a assessment _in the abstract_, NOT a judgment.
---
What I strenuously object to in your point of view is :
- That one even _can_ be objective in such things.
One may be suffering, while not being conscious of it, from historic or contemporary factual ignorance, as well as cultural, moral, and ethical myopia. Basically, being victim to the Duning-Kruger effect in such matters.
- That consequently one _should_ even judge such things in practice.
If you "haven't done your homework" value/morals/ethics wise, tried to counteract your ignorance or myopia, explicitly going through perspectives not your own, or even not western, how do you know you are fit to judge ? Maybe you lack the mental model to do so, because you are prisoner of your limits, which you are not conscious of. If you are not reasonably sure you are fit to judge, how can you allow yourself to judge ? And I'm not even talking about facts here, even though I should.
- That using a concept as broad as "civilization" is useful in such matters.
How do you circumscribe a civilization historically ? Last 20 years ? Last 50 ? Last 100 ? Last 500 ? How do you circumscribe its values ? How do you circumscribe constitutive peoples ? What about exchanges of values btw. civilizations ? Of knowledge ? What if a Civilization's internal "good" depends on external "bad" ? At the level of a Civilization, does a good today here neutralize a bad yesterday over there ?
- That inferiority or superiority are valid concepts in such matters. If you can't describe fundamental elements of a problem (see 3 points above), and you limit yourself in your methods of thinking (same), you won't be able to say in what direction you missed the mark. The mark is still in the box.
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What I conclude to is you shouldn't make standards for "civilizations". One should refrain of making such arguments even if only for practical reasons.
In the Western though, such defective superior/inferior arguments have perennially been explicitly used as justification for actions against others in the last 200 years (from the individual to nations).
Yet, the measurable results of these actions were precisely the opposite of what the foundational values of said arguments would describe as desirable. So such arguments are counter productive much more often than not. They are used as an "western identitarian" cloak of infallibility, much like the Roman Catholic Church's (if you allow me the anachronism).
Why even use such arguments then ?
I conclude one shoud only precisely circumscribe its thinking groups and situations in time and space. If you don't, "right and wrong", become meaningless, undermining your whole construction.
---
My personal opinion on your apparent positions, expressed in my comment's last sentence:
Even within what seems to be your own moral framework, your own thinking about the matter is somewhat narrow. You are describing at a tree and missing the forest. As such, I do not believe you are fit to judge about superiority and inferiority of civilization, yes, even when using the relative quantity of dead children.
---
Finally, to answer your accusation of insanity, I argue not to make standards for "civilizations", even concerning dead children. It is dangerous. Only think with precisely well defined groups and situations in time and space.
Of course, if you see some children dying, go help them, but do not mix "civilization level" thinking into the mix. And do not believe yourself superior, or inferior. It is a gross, ridiculous, useless oversimplification.
If you are then interested in continuing this discussion, or asking "what's the alternative". I'll provide much shorter arguments and examples for each (this WAS vebose !) .
Relativism is in contradiction with the empirical facts. Modern industrial societies are 'better' than traditional ones in the sense that 99% of the people chose an industrial lifestyle over a preindustrial one, if given the choice. This happens everywhere: in Europe, in Americas, in Asia, in Africa. The people have voted, quasi-unanimously, with their feet.
I'm saying that while also believing that modern industrial lifestyle is unsustainable, ecologically and psychologically, and that the Amish have a better long-term handle on sustainable life that most of us. Alas, humans are notoriously poor at long-term planning, and human aggregates even worse.
The text was long, you probably missed it. It do now preach moral relativism. I preach against civilizational value judgment relatively with one's own.
As I wrote : I argue against making value judgments and standards for "civilizations", even concerning dead children. It is dangerous. It is safer for all to reason factually with precisely defined groups and situations, limited in time and space.
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I don't argued to reject industrial approach wholesale either, as long as it's voluntary. As for itself, it has to be changed, sure, it must evolve, and get out of agriculture, IMHO. It's still an extremely useful tool in humanity's survival toolkit.
In regards to the rest and to borrow your metaphor:
My parents voted one way. I voted the reverse way quite recently, due to some ills you mentioned. After working around the planet for a while, I also didn't share some of the values anymore.
Take this take from someone who's both an emigrant and re-emigrant: as with political votes, people vote either when promises are made, or because they want to effect change. One way or another.
So there you go if we're to debate that.. But I believe it's another subject entirely.
You're arguing a lot in circles, sometimes against yourself, to prove nuanced points that are mostly moot. This is usually indicative of someone who has underlying prejudice toward the issue.
From the article you cite (Section Characteristics):
In the absence of sufficient data for nearly all economies until well into the 19th century, past GDP per capita often cannot be calculated, but only roughly estimated. A key notion in the whole process is that of subsistence, the income level which is necessary for sustaining one's life. Since pre-modern societies, by modern standards, were characterized by a very low degree of urbanization and a large majority of people working in the agricultural sector, economic historians prefer to express income in cereal units. To achieve comparability over space and time, these numbers are then converted into monetary units such as International Dollars, a step which leaves a relatively wide margin of interpretation.
Also note that people "back then" were capable of providing for themselves many of the goods and services for which we rely today on others, so "GDP" translating to purchasing power is not a straightforward comparison of the capability of pre-industrial rural populations to satisfy their material needs.
This analysis overlooks the significant impact of appropriation of assets from colonists. A society with small GDP is not necessarily poor. E.g. if there's plenty of resources, available as communal, then that would change the view and sense of prosperity within these communities.
A society with a small GDP is poor. And that was reflected in statistics like extremely high infant mortality rates within indigenuous populations pre-integration.
There was some decline in quality of life in the transition from hunter-gatherer life to early agricultural life, but there is still a huge gap between the quality of life in hunter-gatherer societies, or medieval agricultural societies, and modern societies.
> A society with small GDP is not necessarily poor. E.g. if there's plenty of resources, available as communal, then that would change the view and sense of prosperity within these communities.
SA was a society with small GDP that became wealthy through development of natural resources. Similarly Canada has a significant amount of resources. Colonial expropriation meant that these resources have not been controlled by the previous regimes.
[A] major source of income for the ruler of Hijaz was the taxes paid by pilgrims on their way to the holy cities. After the depression hit, the number of pilgrimages per year fell from 100,000 to below 40,000.[2] This hurt their economy greatly and they needed to find alternate sources of income. This caused Ibn Saud to get serious about the search for oil.
I think my reply above failed to really clearly express this so I thought I'd try again briefly. There still is a large racial bias in child welfare services above what is explainable by income alone. I think that income is the larger factor now so I'd agree it's the more important point to focus on - but we have not reached a level of egalitarianism where income alone can explain the disparity.
I also agree it's an extremely complex matter since there are two strongly opposed factors - urban migration (with educational support and the like) could greatly improve the lives of indigenous individuals but that would erode native culture continuance and communities - and that's one of the worst parts of residential schooling. A number of the people involved thought that white washing natives to improve their economic futures and let them more easily integrate with common Canadian society was a good thing - and it's not entirely a bad idea from an egalitarian perspective.
So there is, I think, a continued push and pull of cultural preservation vs. individual prosperity. I don't think they're polar opposites, I mentioned elsewhere that the Haida Cultural Center on Haida Gwaii provides a lot of jobs to reservation residents and youths - but this approach can't just be blindly replicated to extremely remote reservations.
So yea - I've got no quick and easy solution to offer.
It should also based on the above, apply to nearly any family dealing with poverty in these areas.
The fact is that social services does not visit and escalate issues the same levels controlling for poverty.
The correlation of poverty and being indigenous is a reflection of systemic racism and purposeful limitations on societal participation, and so they co-occur. Kids in abusive homes ofc need to be supported. Kids in poor homes need policies that allow their lives to become more stable.
It is in vogue to make judgements on the past based on current moral standards without much more context or understanding. These issues are far more complex than the popular narrative of Canada needing to atone for the genocide of native Americans, that sort of hyperbole just makes it even more difficult to create meaningful solutions. These issues are specifically pervasive because they are extremely difficult to reconcile.
There are several comments in this thread that are well-intentioned and more or less on the right track. There are also a few that are quite problematic. I felt compelled to come make the point that--maybe this is obvious to some, but not to others--poverty is not a valid reason for child protective services to seek to remove a child from their parents. Here in the US, there are thousands of children who are homeless with their parents, and it isn't because they are skirting under the radar of social services. As long as the child is not being abused or neglected, and the parents are doing what is necessary to see they are clothed and fed, it is widely accepted that is always in the child's best interests to remain with their parent(s). Outside of imminent danger, even the most abject crushing levels of poverty are not an excuse to take someone's child from them.
--Source: I have worked as a Guardian ad Litem since 2008 and my mother is the director of a county department of social services, formerly the director the department's child protective services.
If the only problem is poverty, then pay the parents $1600/mo to take care of the kid. If that sounds weird, it's about how much foster homes receive per child. We have[1] a system in place that continues to take children from parents in poverty, and then delivers them to a broken foster system; paying more than my monthly child expenses. Handing money to the parents instead has the same monetary cost, but has a chance to break the cycle of needlessly tearing families apart.
This sounds like a perverse incentive [0]. If you reward impoverished people for having children, it is not unlikely that the net result will simply be more children birthed into poverty.
The foster system is rife with perverse incentives, and Canada is experiencing a population decline. Is it actually a perverse incentive to raise more indigenous kids in stable homes with guaranteed income?
And, this touches on a broader conversation about UBI. IMO, payments for the kid should start in the third trimester. Our society does not value stay-at-home parents nearly enough. It's a job, and a damned hard one at that. Doesn't do much good to give people a guaranteed income that's too small to raise kids on -- you'll end up with parents working multiple jobs and the cycle of poverty continues.
I guess one option is to reward everyone for having children. Although this only makes sense if you want more children in your country. Some countries do. Singapore apparently has a giant "baby bonus" of incentives worth $121,400 USD to have 2 children.
I think it depends on your definition of poverty. If you define poverty as having an income below a certain amount, and you pay parents above that amount, then by definition the kids aren't born into poverty.
So the kids in question got removed from their unsafe homes, and placed in equally unsafe foster homes. What was gained? The actual solution is to work with the families to help them create safer conditions and monitor the kids, keeping them at least with their tribes if not with their parents. Instead they just get placed with random white families where they're abused and often end up running away and becoming street people.
One idea that floated around was to have a special division to handle indigenous cases a bit like how they have peacekeepers (indigenous self-policing) instead of the RCMP on reserves.
Considering RCMP members are trained to use lethal force with a pretty low threshold I think this is pretty fair. The RCMP is a pretty bizarre organization that doesn't really have clear parallels in other developed nations. I think it's accurate to call it a paramilitary force and they end up juggling extremely serious crimes in most cases - but tend to be the only organization with clear jurisdiction in most reservations. So, for the closest American equivalent, occasionally SWAT gets called in to break up domestic issues and investigate robberies.
That seems like a very uncharitable characterization of the RCMP, they act as the defacto police in the maritimes and that doesn't seem to have an impact on police killings[1].
I think our main point of comparison for the RCMP behavior is the American policing system and from that comparison the RCMP come out looking saintly. I also do strongly believe that RCMP members take a lot of pride in being a force of justice and trying to apply the law evenly - there are certainly cases where that doesn't happen but my point is more focused on the contrast of duties.
RCMP members are normally trained for situations that local police (that specialize in de-escalation) can't handle - but when it comes to reservations they're the authority in pretty much all cases. Being in the RCMP isn't an easy job and it'll leave you scarred and hardened in a way that can seriously impede your ability to properly deescalate non-violent situations.
> RCMP members are normally trained for situations that local police (that specialize in de-escalation) can't handle - but when it comes to reservations they're the authority in pretty much all cases.
First Nations deal with the (federal) Crown, and so the RCMP is the federal law enforcement agency. Unless (a/each) First Nation wants to run their own police force internally?
But there are entire regions that don't do that because of the costs involved, and so they contract out to the RCMP to be the provincial (and even municipal) police.
The larger provinces (ON, QC) have their own services, and they are also contracted out to the smaller municipalities. Not sure how provincial police would work (or not) on the reserves.
Many reserves do indeed have their own police forces internally. In fact, when I was in high school, a Fort Frances City police officer pulled over a First Nations police officer who had their emergency signals activated, for crossing a double line, on a provincial highway (just outside city limits) It was a shit show. My father was involved in mediating that, there was a real world consequence to that officer not being able to respond to that call, and the city officer admitted he was concerned with making a jurisdictional point (even though, even if he was technically right, he also ended up being technically wrong, the road had become provincial). In another instance, a first nations officer got into an accident responding to a call on the reserve with their emergency signals activated (ran a light iirc), at the time, they were within city limits, so the city decided to issue them a traffic violation and charge them.
You know the RCMP are the local police in rather a lot of Canada, including being the provincial police in 7 provinces, and the municipal police in a great many municipalities.
How does "resource exploitation on their land" play a part in this discussion. Seems like quite the non-sequitur.
The way the residential school program was implemented was gross (it was massively underfunded leading to absurdly neglectful conditions and crowding, should never have been put in the hands of people who felt that Christianity was the purpose, and most importantly should have been voluntary), and was driven entirely by prejudice. However if you have essentially a people that time forgot in far flung locations while the rest of the world is rapidly progressing...it's a tough situation. There are people involved in the residential school program who probably really did have good intentions. They weren't a part of some broad "steal `their' resources" evil plot.
And we face the echos of this problem to this day. Remote, extremely low density aboriginal groups. No, they don't want to "live off the land" (and the reserve is full of snowmobiles, pick up trucks and guns, and we have regular newspaper articles complaining that watermelons are expensive or that there isn't piped water). Suicide and substance abuse are endemic -- up to 9x the non-aboriginal rate -- not because people are sad about something that happened a hundred years ago, but because they live in the middle of nowhere, with no prospects, and suddenly the things that amazed and entertained their ancestors four hundred years ago isn't engaging to kids who have an awareness that the rest of the world exists.
In a normal, functioning world, yeah their "indigenous culture" wouldn't be so defensively guarded and a part of their identity. I come from Scottish and Irish culture. I have never worn a kilt. I have never played a bagpipe. I have never eaten haggis. I have never flown scottish or irish flags, or concerned myself whatsoever with whatever happens there. Because I'm a part of a multicultural, rich, integrated society. I identify with the whole, not for some uniqueness that I demand be identified.
And I'll take the inevitable downvotes by the "yeah you're white you don't have a say" crocodile tear crowd, but this is all spot on.
"getting rid of indigenous culture so that they stop being a hindrance to resource exploitation on their land"
Educating people is the last thing you'd want to do if you're wanting to 'get rid of their hindances'.
Every revolutionary you can think of (i.e. Gandhi, Castro, Ho Chi Minh etc.) had privileged educational opportunities usually by the very people they sought to ultimately overthrow.
In Canada specifically, there was actually a fear that providing education would give aboriginals too much power.
The 'hindrance' towards resource extraction didn't start to happen until fairly recently, when educated and literate aboriginal groups were able to make proper legal challenges to certain things, particularly their right to 'govern' the environmental aspects of certain areas of land.
There's a difference between teaching kids to read and do math, and beating them for using their own language or telling each other their own stories. You don't have to destroy culture while educating.
I agree this was a open secret for decades, but I also think there are a large number of people who are learning about the horrifying things that went on at the residential schools for the first time. The stated policy was nothing short of ethnocide and if it takes "discovering" these issues to finally have the national conversation and action that is so badly needed then let's discover everything there is to know.
A problem cannot be fixed until everyone agrees there is a problem (see race relations in the US and climate change), so the more people who can be educated on what went on the better, because then we have a chance starting to heal (which will take generations).
> A problem cannot be fixed until everyone agrees there is a problem (see race relations in the US and climate change), so the more people who can be educated on what went on the better, because then we have a chance starting to heal (which will take generations).
There will not be a “fix” because a “fix” for the victims or descendants of victims would require massive wealth transfers, mostly from people who were not alive or making decisions at the time. And that is not going to be politically popular.
> a “fix” for the victims or descendants of victims would require massive wealth transfers
My take on this, as a child of white immigrants, is that the Native Indian population would prefer something other than money. I think this kind of easy solution, just give them some money, is the type of solution that has been tried over and over without success. Even worse, we'll carve out some land and tell a tribe "this is yours" only to steal it back as soon as some commercial opportunity makes it valuable.
In the medium sized town I live nearby, large tracts of native land sit unused as undeveloped trash pits surrounded by condo and townhouse developments. How are natives expected to live a traditional life off the land when on one side there are supermarkets and strip malls and on the other side suburbs? Eventually many bands cave in and throw up their own gated communities which they lease to rich white retirees. One corner of the remaining land gets to stand for a local band community centre and maybe a small section of housing for a few lucky band members. My own perception is that corruption within the bands is rife, with chiefs and their family/friends benefiting from the rent-seeking and pretty much everyone else in the band losing out.
I think the harsh reality is that the kind of society and life that Native Indians dream of cannot be lived alongside modern industrial capitalism. It isn't just forestry, mining, oil and gas pipelines ruining their habitat. It is the very root of capitalist consumerist culture that is incompatible with the very conception of life they wish to maintain. You can't make that go away with money or by temporarily relocating them. It would require a cultural shift that would alter every aspect of Canadian life.
The funny thing is, we're all just jumping on to the global warming bandwagon. But the only communities I see taking environmental stewardship seriously are the Native Indians. They've been literally screaming at the top of their lungs about the destruction we are wreaking to this planet for decades. And instead of listening to them we just pressure them until they give in and accept whatever bribe we muster alongside a weak apology for past transgressions. And then they retreat into depression and alcoholism. It's a heart-breaking cycle and more money (or "wealth transfer") isn't the solution.
"How are natives expected to live a traditional life off the land "
People of aboriginal heritage in Canada do not 'live off the land' as their ancestors did in neolithic conditions. Other than for some very specific activities like seal hunting etc.
"the kind of society and life that Native Indians dream of"
?? They definitely are not dreaming of this.
Or not in any different way that we often dream of maybe 'going fully organic / off the grid' - but we don't because we have regular jobs..
'What they want' is complicated. Definitely they want 'treaty rights' respected, but those are vague. They want certain municipal services (i.e. water) but it's really spotty - some places, water facilities are made for them, but they won't do the upkeep. In other very remote communities, it's exceedingly expensive. In others, private mining companies have polluted the water (the answer here should be easy though - the mining companies pay to fix the dam problem they created). There's also the problem of taxation and cost - my father pays $180/month for water for his tiny little flat in a small town because they live in a remote area. Municipalities, via taxes, pay for water treatment. So the question arises as to 'who the Federal/Provincial Government' will pay for, and who they will not.
There are very complicated band structures where by some band leadership positions are inherited and come with legal powers.
Some hereditary band leaders in BC who've maintained their 'titles' for centuries and who hold all of the power but have no support from the band members, and there's no democratic input, may decide to be 'against' a pipeline or some such thing - even as basically entire band/community themselves is 'for' it. The Canadian government is in a weird position they are forced to recognized the hereditary titles of the chiefs - which is democratically anathemic of course.
I think I was sloppy in my comment and you linked two ideas that I didn't necessarily want to link. That is, I don't want to imply: "a traditional life off the land" and "the kind of society and life that Native Indians dream of" were the exact same thing. Nor would it be fair to suggest that everyone wants the same thing based on their heritage. I meant those ideas distinctly. That is, a traditional life off the land does not seem possible given the circumstances regardless of whether or not that is the kind of life some might desire.
What I wanted to combat was the assumption that the kind of "western values" that are represented by consumerism is what those communities are failing to achieve. It is the exact same kind of thinking that lead to residential schools in the first place. As if we give them enough money, give them education and health care then they'll finally integrate into our society. But if they don't want that life, if it isn't their dream to be successful western capitalists, it is hard to imagine how they can live alongside the western capitalists without constant tension. And accommodating any other alternative communities alongside our own isn't simply a matter of financing. That problem is distinct from any particular formulation of "alternative communities" including but not exclusive to "living off the land".
Basically, how can we allow Native Indians to form a distinct culture and identity when we constantly encroach on them and disrupt them. You can't pay that problem away.
Your comments are not at all sloppy; they are very well-written and well-taken, at least by this reader (and Canadian). I think you are correct in your analysis and your perspective.
The fact is, as Canadians we ought to feel ashamed of this. I know I do. When I feel shame, I want to make it go away. Our entire society has become adept at turning away and ignoring our past. But our task as citizens right now is to not do that. It's to grapple with the reality of what is very clearly a horrific injustice. It's to stop claiming the past is the past. The legacy of colonialism is alive and well in Canada and it is still actively destroying many lives.
There is no way to make this right. The only thing we can hope to do now is honour the dead, do our best to make amends to the living and carve out a new path forward.
" The legacy of colonialism is alive and well in Canada and it is still actively destroying many lives."
Canada is, and continues to be a Colonial project. This is an objective reality, not an ideological statement. That's just what it is. It was put in motion a long time ago and continues to be that.
While it may have some negative aspects, Canada is actually a beacon many positive ways - largely because of what the Colonialists have managed to create.
It's also not really true at all to say 'Colonialism continues to hurt people', because it's mostly just the opposite. All citizens of Canada live immensely higher standards of living than they would otherwise under the Colonial umbrella - including aboriginals.
Canada is one the top destinations for immigrants, and Canada is probably hands down the #1 place for 'easy integration'. Swedes try to help Syrians but it's hard for them. Syrians and others, tend to do consistently well in Canada because integration is more manageable. People 'get along' in Canada probably more so than anywhere, which is firmly Colonial manifestation.
Paradoxically, even for the aboriginals, of the 'solutions' ahead amount to ... 'more colonialism'. For example, the Federal government building for aboriginals their housing, and water facilities. The really successful hockey program that's getting young Quebec aboriginals to stay focused and in school. The extra effort on getting Aboriginal kids to finish school and the availability of post-secondary systems. Most of these measures look like they have the same intentions as the Canadian Government in 1900 - just not as draconian. They are all de-facto 'Colonialist' measures.
The political situation on many reserves is more of a hindrance than not and will require reform, which will probably take the shape of falling more under the Canadian legal norms, i.e. 'Colonialist'. Many tribes have 'elders' who's positions are hereditary, and they lord over the tribes, sometimes against their will like literal Monarchs. There are problems with allocating land ownership and control to individuals making housing formation and especially small business formation very difficult. No tax base -> no ability to collect municipal taxes -> no water facilities etc.. The lack of transparency and inconsistent management has meant there's a 'more than comfortable' amount of corruption on some reserves, with Government money going into the pockets of a few.
I should point out that it's very different in almost every situation. Different bands, reservations, locations - there's no specific pattern.
Some 'non colonialist' aspects include opportunities for local, more traditional governance, which definitely should be experimented with, for example, the RCMP (i.e. justice system) can relinquish power in certain areas (i.e. Manitoba) in the hopes that local, more tradition forms of governance may work out at least on the criminal side of the issue.
On the whole, for every 'traditional measure' of improvement, there will be a bunch of measures which are effectively Colonialist.
It's fair to point out that there are aspects of Colonialism which haven't been very good, on the whole it's been totally the opposite. The groups trying to misrepresent the term 'Colonialism' I think have serious ideological underpinnings. I think they should find a different word.
> While it may have some negative aspects, Canada is actually a beacon many positive ways - largely because of what the Colonialists have managed to create.
Canada is a positive beacon in many ways in spite of its origins as a colony, not because of them.
> All citizens of Canada live immensely higher standards of living than they would otherwise under the Colonial umbrella - including aboriginals.
What is "the Colonial umbrella" you are referring to here? Canada's standards of living are attributable to a number of factors, including an immense land area with plentiful natural resources, a highly industrialized economy, a robust system of law and government, etc. Like Japan, the UK, the US and the other G7 countries (only two of which were originally colonies).
Secondly, I challenge your assertion that the native peoples of Canada would have lower standards of living were it not for colonialism. On the contrary, I think the evidence is clear that colonialism has been an unmitigated disaster for indigenous peoples. Unfortunately we will never know what standards of living the indigenous peoples of North America might have achieved in the 21st century had Europe respected their sovereignty.
> Paradoxically, even for the aboriginals, of the 'solutions' ahead amount to ... 'more colonialism'.
I take your point in the sense that many of these measures are "interventions" in a sense; they are initiatives imposed (or presented) by the federal government. I think they are fundamentally different from the original acts of colonialism, however, in that they seek to confer rights, status and resources as opposed to taking those things away.
Where this goes beyond my understanding of the issues is in trying to determine who wants what, who speaks for whom, and so on...for instance you point out "problems with allocating land ownership and control to individuals". Of course that is problematic when, as I understand it, in many indigenous cultures the idea of owning land is considered absurd. It is, indeed, colonialist to insist on answers to questions like "who owns this land?" without considering that perhaps, no one does - and perhaps no one ought to.
"Canada's standards of living are attributable to a number of factors, including an immense land area with plentiful natural resources, a highly industrialized economy, a robust system of law and government, etc." <--- Yes. The imposition and expansion of this into North America is Colonialism.
The expansion of education, language, justice, culture, industry, the economy, the political system, religion, and Enlightenment ideals - that is 'Colonialism'.
i.e. civilization (as we understand it).
The alternative, which was present before, is neolithic culture, which is how they would be living 'without colonialism'.
If there is a 'paternalistic' view it's that Aboriginals somehow don't want at least the advantages of 'civilization' which they benefit from tremendously.
Do you really think that Aboriginals would be happy and fruitful without hot water? Foraging for meals, living in tents and stick homes? No medicine, education, no effective social organization even at the tribal level?
Aboriginals want warm homes, cars and Televisions just as much as anyone else - and the material benefits require all the supporting systems of 'Colonialism'.
The 'situation' among Aboriginal communities is far better than it would be otherwise, they live at roughly the standards of the bottom 1/3 of Canadians. They have access to education, healthcare, homes, travel i.e. modernity in general - a relatively fair justice system - untold benefits - mostly provided to them for free (!!).
Their 'problems' are almost entirely local: drugs, alcohol, violence among themselves, and an unwillingness to participate in many of the things they'll need to do (i.e. jobs) if they want the material benefits of the system.
The current 'disequilibrium' is that they want access to modernity and all that comes along with it - without active participation in creating it.
You’re conflating colonialism with modernization. They are not the same thing. Of the G7 only two countries are colonies, which shows that nations (and the indigenous peoples of North America were indeed nations - engaging in treaties, sending diplomats to Europe, etc.) are able to modernize with being subjected to colonialism. It is absurd to claim that indigenous nations would not have modernized without the “benefits” of colonialism.
It is also absurd to claim that “aboriginals” lacked access to hot water until European settlers showed up. I think some reading about the accomplishments of the native societies of North America would be beneficial.
There could have been a fruitful and mutually beneficial exchange of ideas, technologies, ways of life, etc., between Western and indigenous nations when Europeans made contact with native Americans. Instead what took place was genocide.
> All citizens of Canada live immensely higher standards of living than they would otherwise under the Colonial umbrella - including aboriginals.
I mean, that was a typical argument in favour of slavery. After the apartheid ended in South Africa there was a pretty large movement of former slaves protesting about their lower quality of life and demanding a return to the previous status quo. We don't only consider standard of living when making moral judgements about structures of government.
It is the standard paternalistic European attitude. And the last vestige of justification remaining for residential schools so I'm not so quick to just let it slip. It's the analogy to a parent soothingly telling a child in tantrum: "You'll understand why I'm doing this when you're older". As if they should thank us for raising them out of their savagery.
I also reject your comparison to immigrants, like Syrians literally running for their lives from a civil war in their country of origin, to aboriginals who were living within their own land of origin and had this life thrust on them unrequested. The circumstances couldn't be any different. Immigrants make a choice of self-determination while aboriginals are being deprived of self-determination.
> The political situation on many reserves is more of a hindrance than not and will require reform, which will probably take the shape of falling more under the Canadian legal norms
On this we agree and it fits into the complexity of the situation. One area that most Canadians would find hard to stomach is that some traditional tribe hierarchies are patriarchal. It is a difficult balance to allow self-determination while also upholding concepts like universal human rights.
We've gone a bit deep here and I admit I'm pretty far out of my depth. In fact, the only real thing I'm confident on is that this issue is too complex to fix with money alone.
"I mean, that was a typical argument in favour of slavery. "
This isn't even anywhere near true.
First - Canadian colonialists did not, and do not, benefit from the labour inputs of aboriginal citizens. They were never some kind of advantage to Canadian development.
Second - that Canadians of Aboriginal descent live at considerably higher standards that the neolithic people they were, and would be otherwise - is unambiguously factual.
"aboriginals who were living within their own land of origin and had this life thrust on them unrequested"
They are living in homes, have cars and TV 'unrequested'?
We are 'forcing' them to do this? They couldn't just go ahead and live in huts and tents if they so chose?
How 'paternalistic' is it to contemplate that somehow Aboriginals really want to live as their ancients did, in skin tents and huts, with no hot water, no medicine, education or any of the advantages of material advancement?
In reality - they want all the same thing we do: homes, heating, hot water, grocery stores, cars, food, entertainment. They're just not organized enough to 'trade' services or labour to the point where we care to give them anything for it.
They want the material benefits of Colonialism for the same reasons we do.
Op has a Pocahontas imagination of what most indigenous are like.
Most are like everyone else and want to live life, party, hang out with friends. Reserves have kfc and grocery stores. Some hunt but if you’re a white guy in northern / rural Canada you probably hunt.
What a weird take. Always a laugh to hear what the city liberal thinks of the world. So out of touch and delusional, but so confident.
It’d be like saying African Americans want to hunt wild game.
> My own perception is that corruption within the bands is rife, with chiefs and their family/friends benefiting from the rent-seeking and pretty much everyone else in the band losing out.
Look far north. The village doesn't have clean water, but the local chief has two hummers and brand new ATVs on the front lawn. Guess where your tax money went...
> Look far north. The village doesn't have clean water, but the local chief has two hummers and brand new ATVs on the front lawn. Guess where your tax money went...
I'm not going to try justifying a Hummer, because I don't know what intrinsic value it holds in their circumstances. I have been to northern communities where expensive pickup trucks were the norm, for very good reasons. There are many parts of Canada where a car is basically useless. The communities are small enough that one can walk from end to end in a quarter of an hour, yet the roads leading to the town would be impassible to anything less than a decent truck (and even then are impassible to any vehicle at certain times of the year). That is before utility is taken into consideration. You won't get very far with hauling loads of firewood home and would not enjoy the trip to the dump with your household trash in a car. Owning a truck also makes more sense for the trip to the city, where virtually everything from food to furniture will be less expensive. Arguing that they should own inexpensive cars because it supports the suburban lifestyle of the south is even more tone-deaf than arguing that people in the suburbs should use public transit because it is sufficient for downtown residents.
The Mayor of Vancouver currently earns 171k annual - that appears to be enough for about 7 hummers, 4 after taxes[1]. Purchasing two hummers would cost you about 50k which is a very nice nest egg to have in the bank but, considering they may get a lot of use, probably not unreasonable. Most reservations have extremely poor roads and these cars might be shared in the community - I don't know if that's the specific case here but it's pretty common... lastly, cars aren't cheap and while hummers are expensive cars they aren't unreasonably priced, maybe having a hummer is this chief's personal luxury - we all want to have nice things, even when our lives aren't glamorous.
I think that the Mayor of Vancouver's salary is pretty fair considering the job they're doing, I can't speak on the specifics of this village but I am extremely suspicious of anyone who demands that people live in visible poverty to receive aide. The concept of "the welfare queen" originated with Reagan and was entirely born to utilize as a political tool - we can stop playing into stereotypes.
1. I am 100% not a car person - if anyone else knows a better assumed value than 24k please feel free to revise or correct numbers
I hesitate to even comment given the divisive nature of the thread but…
Hummers cost north of $100k USD. Assuming the mayor of Vancouver’s salary is listed in CAD it isn’t enough to buy one after tax. Furthermore on that salary it probably wouldn’t be prudent to buy one at all.
I'm personally a non-driver so I am quite clueless here. That said it does impact my understanding a fair bit since paying 24k for a car seems like a pretty nice price for a car (you can get used cars for thousands of dollars, but a new car is probably going to be well over 10k) but where there are definitely cheaper options - paying 100k is pretty ridiculous.
That can be a real problem for tribes, I agree. In my youth I worked with an organization for Haudenosaunee cultural preservation in the US and while the politics are a lot different there the status of tribes as nations means that there are a lot of weird power dynamics.
In particular this organization was opposing considerations of the Mohawk People to invite in outside investors that wanted to build casinos on reservation land - that's a hard decision to make and even harder when there is a single ultimate tribal representative that you can throw ten million dollars at without serious impacting long term financial expectations. The Mohawk Council of Chiefs in Akwesasne[1] represents a tribe with enough members, and historical precedent, that they benefit from and enjoy an actual government body, but many of these tribes are small enough or remote enough that a single member is vested with a lot of power and this will often go poorly. I don't think there's a really clear good solution here - it'd probably make sense to consolidate tribes into fewer regional bands but Natives are obviously pretty skittish about surrendering any of what little power of self-governance they have.
> Look far north. The village doesn't have clean water, but the local chief has two hummers and brand new ATVs on the front lawn. Guess where your tax money went...
Source? I think this is a common argument and having lived among native reserves I have never seen it myself or seen reports of it. Feels like an urban legend crafted to justify not providing support, but willing to think differently if there’s evidence to support it.
The schools are gone, but the damage remains. While most closed in the 70s, there were a couple that lasted into the 90s! and there are many living survivors who continue to suffer from the trauma they experienced.
The stated goal of the schools was to eliminate First Nations' culture and it was tragically highly effective. A culture doesn't recover from generations of ethnocide overnight.
While true, I think this is generally misleading without context.
The federal government took control of the schools from the churches around 1970. By the mid-70s, control of most of them had been transferred to the band councils in some form or another, and a third of the staff at the schools had Indian status. By 1980, only 15 were still left operating.
It's really hard to find any actual information on _what_ the schools that remained open were like in the 90s as most easily discoverable documentation is about beginning to unravel the abuses that had occurred prior, but what little I've ever been able to find sounds like they continued to operate as a school (presumably because the community needed a school), not as an implement of cultural genocide.
This would seem to be backed up by some sources saying that some of the communities that housed the schools resisted their closure. Not that it's a particularly great situation, but it's likely that it was the only source of formal education available to them at the time and they didn't want to lose it, rather reform it. The current school situation on reservations is abysmal, so this is... understandable.
None of this is to try and discount the atrocities that occurred at the schools, but I like to think saying "They operated until the mid-90s!" is a bit sensationalist, implying that the kidnapping, experimentation, abuse and murder was occurring at the same time Seinfeld and Friends were airing. I think there's more than enough to be horrified at here without implying a worse situation which may lead some people to discount some of the actual atrocities.
That said, if you (or anyone) can dig up some information to refute any of this, I'm more than happy to hear it. I am genuinely interested and I have a lot of difficulty trying to find concrete information.
These are very fair points. I likely should have given some additional context on the later operations.
I will admit I was trying for some shock value since a non-Canadian outsider was asking. It's far too easy to think about the abuse as happening long in the past and therefore more of an abstract conversation. It's really a conversation about the ongoing trauma of survivors, some of whom are not actually that old.
> This is an absolute tragedy, but there is a bit of a lie happening in the presentation of it, with each "discovery" being treated like it is unveiling some dark secret. No, it is a dark, but very well known, truth that has been in the open for the entirety of the program. And the truth is that mortality across the entire demographics of Canada was bad in that time period (3 out of 10 children under 5 died across the country), so it isn't entirely atypical.
I understand and am partially sympathetic with what you are saying, but I don't think this is the time to bring up those concerns.
At the moment, Canadians have to reckon with yet another impact of the residential school system: many children died under the government's custody (even if it was indirect, through various churches). It doesn't matter if the mortality rate was similar to other demographics, since the decisions of the government placed aboriginal children in those schools which was the precondition to the specific cause of death. The "abolition" of the residential school system doesn't really mean anything, since many youth are still forced to leave their communities and are frequently placed in the care of complete strangers if they aspire to accomplish something that most Canadians take for granted: earning a high school diploma.
While the willful ignorance of these "very well known" deaths is difficult to excuse, the willful ignorance of the continuance of some of the hallmarks of the residential school system is difficult to forgive.
I would say “not very well known”. That’s why there’s such a furor now. The extent of the deaths was quite well known to anyone who read the reporting on the residential schools and the truth and reconciliation commission.
But clearly a lot of people didn’t know that so these findings are a shock. Probably an instance of “one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic”. Some countable number of graves has a more visceral effect than “disease was rampant in residential schools are up to 40% of children in attendance died”.
>> But clearly a lot of people didn’t know that so these findings are a shock.
Only those who have actively avoided the issue. I was taught it in school, then again during university. The issue has been discussed on radio/TV for decades. At work (government) we all attend aboriginal awareness training, where residential schools are a big subject. It is an acknowledged part of Canadian history. Those who are shocked now are only so because they chose to remain ignorant year after year.
* Many people are shocked and surprised by these findings
* They are sympathetic to aboriginal causes and not sticking their fingers in their ears. They were not trying to avoid it
You are in the educated set (university), work for the government, and are commenting on a text based forum so you probably easily consume and retain text based information. You also had a school that taught death stats specifically (mine didn’t) and are young enough that these stats were known at the time the curriculum was formed.
If most people were like you, these findings would not be headline news. The fact that the finding are surprising sympathetic people should indicate that you’re not the majority.
And it is not fair to people to say they “choose” to remain ignorant because they didn’t pay close attention and integrate statistics at the time the truth and reconciliation report was released.
Do you have no gaps in your knowledge? In particular outside of bookish, text based knowledge, which you are surely top 1% in.
It is impossible to be Canadian without having been thoroughly exposed to the realities of the residential school system. There have been multiple government inquiries. There were reparations paid. There was a truth and reconciliation commission. This is not at all new news.
But it's being presented as new news making people think this is some new discovery, as if unknown murder pits have been exposed. As if it's in addition to what everyone already knew about the residential school system. But it isn't.
Aside from some exaggerated, unverified numbers, there is literally nothing new in these claims. And it has become essentially a PR vehicle, so it's going to percolate for months to come.
I certainly agree none of this is news per se. I disagree that most people know about it.
I think most people were aware on some level of what residential schools were and had an opinion that bad stuff happened there. I do not think most people knew there was high levels of death. Even though that was quite clear from the report.
The other key thing is social media was not big in the era of the truth and reconciliation report. You could easily tune out the details or take it in passively. But finding the graves now, in 2021, allows for virality.
For what it's worth, elementary schools in Vancouver, BC were taught about residential schools as part of regular curriculum. I know our classes had it.
for some perspective, i went to school in ontario from 1986-2004 and never heard a single word about residential school.
I think its safe to say that canada is only starting out on this journey of reconciliation. Its going to take decades of work and focus to right these wrongs.
Presented accurately in school? No. Never heard about all the dead children or the abuse. Just this week there was an online course being presented to students in Ontario that was found to require students to list the “positives” of the residential school system. It’s propaganda.
In reality there was a single class in a single school in BC that had such an assignment. Trying to broadly wash that is propaganda. Tiny, isolated case on the other side of the country. Neat.
Agree, this was known in that you could read about it if you cared to, but was not taught in schools or acknowledged officially. A different approach would be to go the Germany route and confront the past head on and not shy away from it.
Most of the deaths occurred earlier in the 20th century [1]
As for the story in general ... it's not new information really. We have records of the deaths, families were notified, governments were notified, they didn't want to pay to ship the bodies so they buried them near the residences. We also knew where the graves were.
The Canadian government was aware at the time of the higher rate of deaths than normal, it was recognized as a problem, but obviously they didn't do much about it.
Firstly, the overwhelming majority of deaths have current records. There are gaps because of record destruction between 1936 to 1944, but the notion that this was all a secret, or that real numbers are being exposed, is not accurate.
It is a grotesque period in history, and people should be angry, but a lot of people are effectively misleading people to try to anger. There is a huge amount of misinformation.
They didn't find 751 unmarked graves. Just as they didn't find 215 graves at Kamloops. These numbers are in all probability many multiples exaggerated over the reality.
And the catch 22 is that any actual anthropological analysis is going to be restricted by the very group publishing the exaggerated numbers. So expect at the next location for it to be...why not 10,000?
The methodology to derive these numbers borders on farcical.
However we know that loads of children died at these facilities. Tragically. It has never been secret. It never had to be secret, sadly because native children were considered effectively expendable. That is the pox. The current culture of, effectively, horseshit isn't making it better.
Firstly, I can’t even begin to fathom how you could characterise people trying to determine what happened to their relatives, and where their remains might be, as a “culture of, effectively, horseshit”.
Secondly, as far as I can tell you have made no substantive claims in this thread, your dismissals of the efforts in the article being backed solely by assertions, at a variety of levels of verbosity.
If it is as important, as your many posts on the topic indicate you believe, to discredit the progress these people claim to have made, then I think you should try and provide some evidence to support your case.
Ah, the "you've engaged in this discussion, ergo that invalidates your engagement in this discussion" ruse. Always a go to for a boring troll.
"I can’t even begin to fathom"
While there is zero sincerity in your trolling comment, for anyone else involved it's important to view all players as intelligent, rational, negotiating, and ultimately selfish human beings. It's important not to treat aboriginals as childlike, brainless caricatures like mrow84 does (e.g. the "noble savage").
> "you've engaged in this discussion, ergo that invalidates your engagement in this discussion"
I can’t figure out which part of my comment could be misinterpreted as having said this - please point it out to me so I can clarify my intent.
> “there is zero sincerity in your … comment”
I was very sincere in both of my points, those being, in summary, that your comments in the thread I replied into seem both insensitive and unevidenced.
> “ it's important to view all players as intelligent, rational, negotiating, and ultimately selfish human beings. It's important not to treat aboriginals as childlike, brainless caricatures like mrow84 does (e.g. the "noble savage").”
My only mention of people’s actions other than your own was to say that those searching for their relatives’ remains should probably not be characterised as engaging in a culture of horseshit. You can think what you like, but equating that with “treat(ing) aboriginals as childlike, brainless caricatures” seems like a bit of a stretch. If you think about it you might realise that there is quite a bit of ground between the two.
I feel compelled to note that your response contains no justification for your previous comments’ assertions. I am inclined to think that my original assessment was spot on.
This isn’t an inaccurate description of the situation.
What’s happening now is political. The discovery of the Kamloops graves have just elevated this topic in Canadians minds (and the world). The actual knowledge of Residential Schools is quite old.
The First Nations are just being savvy about leveraging it for political power. And that’s not a criticism, that’s how things get done in a democracy - get the population on your side and politicians are powerless to say no.
There are records from that school, yes. Are there enough to account for fictional numbers? No, why would there be?
Do you understand how perilous counting "graves? with ground radar is? Note that the people who actually did the study are very careful with their language, noting that they found ground anomalies. The actual correlation with that and graves is incredibly loose.
The "error rate" cited today by Cowessess First Nation and their partnered technical teams was 10% to 15%. The ground penetrating radar technology does not merely look for "ground anomalies", they work to specifically identify burial shafts, which tend to be rather distinctive. To say that they are merely counting any "anomaly" as a "fictional" grave is misrepresenting the work being done.
It is positively impossible to cite such an error rate with any accuracy without doing an archeological analysis to determine the ground truth for a given site, which hasn't remotely been done (and in all likelihood would be blocked by the relevant players). Any claims to the contrary are simply a lie.
Ground radar grave analysis has a significant degree of reading tea leaves.
GPR is a great tool for law enforcement to find possible disturbed soil sites. Its use declines when you're doing mass surveys unless it is merely guiding a dig.
You either have specific knowledge of the scans and any associated archeological analysis done in BC and Sask, or you don't. What specific information do you have about the lack of analysis done in the Balcarres area?
The Sensoft link has nothing to do with what has been done in BC nor Sask.
It is identical to the technique done at the school sites. Very low cost hardware is used to sweep an area and then read the tea leaves of electromagnetic response waves. It is enough of a red flag when the people doing the survey make a big deal about such obstacles as clearing brush and grass.
> How do you know this?
How do I know that they haven't done an archeological dig to validate the accuracy of their scans? Because they explicitly have said so. Indeed, they've said they may never, and I would wager will never.
I said nothing about the "lack" of analysis, I'm just saying that you, like so many others, are incredibly accepting about information flowing through multiple parties, some of whom have a strong incentive to lean a certain way. The deficiencies of ground penetrating radar is very well known -- it's a very powerful tool, but read the words of the technicians who did it compared to the tribe spokespeople. They talk about anomalies, and how they have tried to be careful in the language they use (specifically noting that they can't say something is a grave, just that the patterns look similar to "a grave shaft").
How many grave locations do you think the team that did this survey have done? Have many tests of their claims? How has the rigor of their claims been validated?
> It is identical to the technique done at the school sites. Very low cost hardware is used to sweep an area and then read the tea leaves of electromagnetic response waves.
What hardware is being used by the school sites? Can you provide more information about what specific GPR hardware that was used on Cowesess?
> but read the words of the technicians who did it compared to the tribe spokespeople
I can't find any of the information you mentioned about the technicians in this latest finds describing the GPR and the hedging language used. Maybe my Google skills suck. Can you provide a link to that as well? I was under the impression that the technicians at Cowessess have not made any public statements so far when it comes to the technology being used, methods, background work, etc.
There are records from that school that the former administrators of that school are refusing to release. The paper trail regarding who they specifically are and how many they specifically are is being intentionally obscured.
Additionally, access to that property is pretty heavily restricted.
Edit: Please note I was specifically talking about the school in Kamloops and, actually, just yesterday a sharing agreement was reached as per my follow up comment below.
I was talking about Kamloops specifically but actually, googling, it looks like the order that staffed the school just signed on to better record sharing[1] - this is a new story to me so there may be some problematic limitations on access I'm not aware of but it looks like things are at least moving in a good direction. I had been talking about the Sisters of St. Anne as detailed here[2] - but yea according to the above article this is no longer correct.
I think the unveiling here is the difference between "it's known a lot of kids died" and "we have literally found a mass grave, in this location, using ground penetrating radar".
Residential schools in particular and the treatment of First Nations is our nation's original and ongoing sin and we badly need to have a collective reckoning on what went on and how to move forward. The Truth and Reconciliation commission was a good start, but it needs to be backed with action.
China's call for an international review is a craven political action designed to embarrass us on the international stage, but frankly we should be embarrassed (and a lot more). I would support using something like the International Criminal Court or the UN Commission on Human Rights to help produce findings on what went on and what can be done to start to heal. We could set an example for the world on how to reconcile on these issues and find a path forward.
> I would support using something like the International Criminal Court or the UN Commission on Human Rights to help produce findings on what went on and what can be done to start to heal.
As you say, Canada had a 7 year process to do just this. It was chaired by Murray Sinclair. Sinclair is an Indigenous man with a lot of standing in the Indigenous community and in broader Canadian society. He was an associate chief justice in Manitoba, and a federal senator.
It produced a bunch of documentary evidence, and a bunch of recommendations.
If people want action on this, following those recommendations would be a start. As it happens, one of the recommendations is funding for the ground-penetrating radar that is turning up these burial sites. While that recommendation was ignored at the time it was made, provinces are now funding it. We can expect more of these stories to come out. We don't need to start from scratch, we just need to make progress on the existing findings.
That's a fair point. The announcements are relatively new, so I don't infer anything negative from the fact that disbursements haven't happened yet.
The two announcements I'm thinking of are Ontario's ($10M over 3 years) and Alberta's $8M (available in $150K grants, application process for the next 6 months). The fact that there are dollar amounts, timelines, and they're offered by a political party holding a majority in the legislature makes me think it's likely to actually happen.
Technically, taking the land of the natives would the "original sin" and everything else involves justifying and maintaining the situation, including the death of those who held the land, the elimination of their children, etc.
"It may sound crazy but North America was previously inhabited and yeah, what happened to the previous inhabitants?"
He who casts the first stone let him be without sin.
It reminds me of the situation the European Union has going on with Hungary. How do you claim moral superiority as a Western country when you have none?
Hm I'm not familiar with the specifics of a ''full human rights inquiry at the international level'', but you do seem to know a bit about all these issues. If you don't mind, I have some questions for you;
1) My understanding is that there are two layers of laws ; Indian Act + Treaties. The first affect the 600+ nation-bands, while the seconds are specific to each of them. It follows that not all nation-bands have the same relationships with the governments. Hence, modifying the law might be fair for oen group, but bad for another. Am I right?
2) The 600+ nation-bands are not an monolithic group, they have different cultures, languages, territories and interests. Hence, in a political system where democracy happens inside geographical electoral district, it is not straightforward for nation-bands to become political allies. Am I right?
3) Since the legacy of the "privileges" granted by the treaties are guaranteed under the constitution, (https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/constitution_act_1...), "real change in Canadian Society" implies changing the constitution. Do you agree?
Basically what you said is correct, and you're quite astute to mention it. There is an extremely complex issue on the native side in terms of organization such that they can be proportionally and correctly represented. While most Aboriginal people in Canada "generally mostly believe around generally the same stuff" - it's as you can imagine hugely nuanced, never mind that Inuit are their own people to address in and of themselves. I could write about this extensively but I'll leave it at this: while it's true that the interfaces and work require to jive all of that together has an onus on the native people themselves, Canada has not done a particularly good job of sitting down with the chiefs across the board and facilitating a re-examination what that would look like in a modern context if a venue was presented and agreed upon. Personally, I could imagine something more like the UN?) I don't want to downplay the complexity of this side of the issue, I do think real change would require the constitution.
Honestly friend, this is a really good analysis. You've managed to sum up about the last thirty years of thought in ~ 5 paragraphs. This is some really incredible writing and thinking.
I can give you a bit of what I know but I'm approximately five professional degrees short of being remotely qualified.
1.) You're mostly correct here only there are not separate treaties for each band. The Canadian government recognizes 73 treaties that date from 1701 - 1921. These treaties run the gamut from "Please don't kill us" to "Please help us kill the French" to "Okay, now give us all your land." When people talk treaties, they're mostly talking about numbered treaties - I was born on Treaty 6 lands and I live and work on Treaty 4 lands.
These treaties are quite complicated and have a number of complicated legal arguments associated with them. Canada has violated these treaties in really messed up ways. For example, most treaties called for Indigenous children to receive an education on reserve. That didn't happen and instead, we put them in concentration camps for kids.
Because the treaties have been largely violated, there's a lot of debate amongst Indigenous people. Some think it would be good enough if Canada would just follow what has been signed. Others take on a more abolish them approach. And still others take on a renegotiate them approach. All three of these are complicated because treaties are foundational agreements for land and resource use. I don't know enough to provide more information, but I can share this paper:
Incidentally, Aimee Craft is a very good writer - she currently teaches law at the University of Ottawa and has published some very interesting papers. If you're as into this subject as you seem, I bet you would have a lot of fun going through some of the stuff on her UO page:
2.) This is where stuff gets interesting. There are groups that try to bring bands together and other groups that try to keep them apart. As you mention, they have dramatically different cultures, languages and territories. On a national level, we have a group called the Assembly of First Nations:
As you go through, learn more about the various groups and their ideas, I think you'll see lots of areas that pertain to all Indigenous people and others that are more niche. Indigenous politics are really interesting!!
3.) This one is a perfect example of #2. It's a long story with a lot of crazy twists and turns but the short answer is that we didn't include much about Indigenous rights and privileges while we were drafting our Constitution. It led to a really crazy (and remarkably rare) example of Canadian national unity in which virtually all the bands agreed that that was a bullshit constitution so they demonstrated en masse. The Prime Minister at the time was our current Prime Minister's father.
The actual section shouldn't cause too much friction but this is Canada and whenever there is any kind of constitutional question that could have to go to the provinces, everything goes completely to shit. So while the wording is mundane, I'm pretty sure that it will turn into another constitutional crisis just like we have every single time we try to change something.
Basically though, section 35 affirms current rights but adds in the provision for new rights to be added through land claims or other processes. So it doesn't box Indigenous affairs in too much while still acknowledging that Canada is founded upon treaties.
It starts to get a little more interesting when you start looking into Supreme Court challenges. This is R v. Sparrow:
Check out the list of respondents and consider reading the ruling as well as this case which points out some holes between Federal and provincial jurisdiction:
It's not even a secret. Sure we didn't learn the true nature of those schools in our classwork growing up, but it's been called out even in pop culture for the past several decades.
Gord Downie even made a film about it. I don't know how many Canadians can reconcile this.
I grew up with stories from my mother and her experience on a children's work farm and my grandfather getting snapped up by a Salvation Army work farm (hard to find info, but related: https://www.thestar.com/news/world/ww1/2014/08/15/home_child...) in the late 30's. Children of Scottish and Irish immigrants, mind you—their stories pale in comparison.
I know it's easier to just forget the hard things rather than deal with them, but I can't understand why there has been so much resistance to reforming some of those matters. It's hardly as if our elected officials would even have to do much work themselves—plenty of study has gone into our best actions forward.
I am as well. Further, many of the people who perpetuated these crimes are still alive. Residential schools were still around in the 90s. Where are the arrests and charges? Where are the actual criminal investigations? Thoughts and prayers pretty much are meaningless and commission reports are meaningless without action.
I saw a tweet the other day from someone in her 40’s who said her children were the first generation in the family not to have been sent to a residential school. Pretty sobering.
John Furlong -- the man who headed the Vancouver 2010 olympic committee and was awarded the Order of Canada -- was credibly implicated in residential school abuses. The idea that this is ancient history is completely wrong
We had a multi-year project called the Truth and Reconciliation Comnmission which came up with a very exhaustive collection of testimony and calls to action. Their findings are heart-breaking, and the government has done nothing to follow through on their findings: http://www.trc.ca/about-us/trc-findings.html
Integration of aboriginal culture into the Canadian education system. Not just offering an aboriginal studies class, but truly taking the native perspective into the education system. Most native people I've talked with don't take advantage of their free educational affordances because they don't want to continue to be whitewashed/don't feel comfortable in institutions that don't understand their culture/are understandably extremely scared of "education" in Canada given the residential school system.
Including traditional aboriginal health practises into the health care system, both mandating and expanding the services that are covered by our national insurance, but allowing a medicine man to charge OHIP for their time performing service. People don't die on reserves because they're lazy drunks(as is often portrayed), they die because they don't trust the Canadian health care system.
Adding Ojibway as an official language (either federally, or mandate the provinces provide services in the predominant native language of that territory).
Guaranteed seats in the Canadian parliament.
All of that on top of continuing the repreve on on taxation, and in my likely unpopular opinion, a reexamination of reparation.
What will it accomplish? It will only serve to minimally undo the damage that was inflicted upon these people by colonialists, my forefathers.
The notion of simply removing the Indian act is too simplistic and a flawed idea because of the fact that so many rights that Indigenous people have stem from the act. Removing the act would remove their rights.
Ending the Indian Act was proposed decades ago by Trudeau Senior in the famous White Paper, and this idea was panned by indigenous groups.
The Indian Act needs to go away in general terms, but it will be part of the more complex task of creating real First Nations governance in this country.
Essentially what I was trying to say was that a "White Paper" style repeal of the Indian Act is not appropriate.
(That may not have been what you were suggesting, but I'll point out nonetheless that this 'solution' has already been rejected by First Nations)
The more complex thing that needs to happen is that elements of the Indian Act need to be removed while also retaining the rights that the Indian Act grants First Nations.
You responded to me and told me that removing the indian act is a simplistic perspective. You don't think educated people capable of having conversations at this level might comprehend that? I've read the paper, I said nothing about it, I simply said it needs to be removed. We agree, you're being a pedant for the sake of pedantics.
I have no idea if we agree given how little you've said.
The simple and brief assertion that the Indian Act needs to be removed, given the history of such statements, and where they come from (ie. white paper), is begging to being misunderstood in the worst way.
So the Indian act should or shouldn't be removed? Natives I've discussed with this have said it should categorically be removed. I'm not saying it shouldn't be replaced, I'm say it should be removed.
Edit: Look, I'm sorry for being so aggressive on this point, and I hear what you're saying. You're not wrong. I am not a Trudeau, I'm not from that era, and I disagree with a lot of how we've approached these conversation, with a blunt assertion such as I made. I say remove the indian act because I've talked with dozens and dozens of Natives who have always started from that position. I've read Bob, I don't totally believe his reality reflects that of the majority of Natives, but I don't know. I take my queues from the positions of those directly impacted, and my conversations have brought me to the belief that the indian act has done more harm than good. I'll even go as far as to admit that "removing" it might simply be symbolic, but that symbolism, similar to the issues with Ryerson, or Mcdonald, or the street named "Colonization Road" that is currently a very hotly contested renaming issue in Fort Frances, Ontario, if these are the wishes of those that we displaced, they should be seriously considered in genuine consultation and partnership, something the Trudeau Sr government clearly did not undertake.
The Indian act needs to go away, as it's a racist, sexist and discriminatory document with a terrible history of much worse genocidal things, but it needs to be dismantled in a structured way that doesn't also erode the current rights of First Nations.
I have no doubt that indigenous persons you've talked to have expressed that the Indian Act needs to be removed and I expect they're speaking to the awful and discriminatory reasons I've mentioned.
The big problem is that there's another group of people that will similarly express that the Indian Act needs to be repealed, and that group contains racists and people that don't care at all about First Nations rights.
They express a desire to end the Indian Act so that the indigenous persons in this country will lose all rights, will be assimilated, and the Canadian government will then no longer need to spend any more money and time on this issue. While the white paper was from decades ago, the colonial assimilationist sentiment behind it has lingered around.
So the statement that the Indian Act needs to be repealed while generally true in a very high level sense, can be an inflammatory statement depending on the context.
I would hope that the assertions I made after my first firmly planted me in the former category. I think we're in total agreement. I wasn't going to spell the whole thing out, but I appreciate that you did. Your final point is well taken.
I also want to see us pour far more resources and money into First Nations' lead preservation of as many languages as we can. Without native speakers languages die and so does the culture that produced them.
The Indian Act is a truly messed up document with all these clauses that ultimately remove status from people. I'd be incredibly happy if they removed it, provided it was replaced with something designed by Indigenous people for Indigenous people.
I'm from Saskatchewan where an almost unbelievable number of people believe Indigenous people pay no taxes. That's not true at all but that sure fuels a lot of racism. Under the Indian Act, a person with status does not pay federal income tax on any money they earn on reserve. Some reserves have almost no opportunity so it ends up being a hollow benefit. I figure we have to either teach non-Indigenous people how the Indian Act really works, replace it entirely, build strong economies on reserves or extend the tax free status to any employment in Canada.
I love the idea of integrating Indigenous culture and health practices into our system and making them available for everyone. The First Nations University of Canada is a start. Sadly, if you watch the press conference in an hour, the Chief of the Cowessess First Nation (Cadmus Delorme) graduated from FNUniv, was heavily involved in their students association, hosted Prince Charles and Camilla when they were here a decade ago and then worked in Student Recruitment. It is a wonderful place...
I'd also like to see a more interesting path for Indigenous kids who are being released from the criminal justice system. In my city, when kids are released, one of the biggest programs teaches them how to be short order cooks and dishwashers. That's fine, but it ignores that some of these kids are absolutely brilliant and can do so much more. We could have art based programs, tech based programs, teach them OSCP or any of a wide variety of possibilities. But it's pretty hard on a kid to go from making $1,000 a day selling drugs to $12 an hour slanging french fries. I think if our system acknowledged their talent and potential the world would only get a little better.
I'd also love if they expanded Gladue factors in criminal justice sentencing, as well as started using more traditional Indigenous forms of restorative justice. Sentencing circles for example are not 'going easy' on crime. They're hard on crime but in a way that's distinctly Indigenous and that fits in with their entire culture, religion and belief system.
On a more personal level, I wish that everyone in Canada was as open about referring to colonialists as their forefathers as you are. Right away, just that small bit of personal responsibility could change the tone of dialogue.
And finally, honestly friend, your reparations idea will be unpopular, but you are 100% correct. It's necessary...
I'm a 6th generation Canadian on my father's side, my mother immigrated from Scotland. I'm about as colonialist as they come. I agree with everything you said. I just wanted to add one thing... I don't hold my views out of some misplaced or misguided post-colonial white guilt. I hold my views because of the reality of the situation. I cannot stand the "I will not pay for what happened generations before me" stance, I just cannot tolerate it. Even if one was to feel that, it so illogical with regards to the reality on the floor in Canada that I just cannot entertain it. If we do not do the best we can to back ourselves out of forced entry into an existing "Canadian" society, and then try to reintegrate with the guidance and permission of the natives, the future of Canada, in my opinion, is not at all bright. I realize some reading this may find my perspective extreme, nevertheless, I hold this belief deeply.
The issue with assigning guilt from the actions of ancestors is that not everyone is guilty.
I’m first generation Canadian. Is it fair that I should pay for the sins of your great grandfathers when mine weren’t even in the country? Canada accepts 300k immigrants per year. Since the closure of the residential schools, (very roughly speaking) 9m people have entered the country so it’s not a small number we’re talking about here.
There’s also the added issue that not everyone supported the residential schools. What if my ancestors protested the system? Should I still pay reparations?
I agree the quality of life on the reserves is a real problem that needs to be fixed but pushing the blame on the children of the settlers (or not even their children!) is not a good solution.
I am also a first generation Canadian. If you became a citizen at least in the past 10 years (not sure about before), you perhaps remember the Discover Canada guide[0], which we were asked to study prior to taking our citizenship oath. It discusses the multicultural nature of Canada and gives special mention to the unique status of its indigenous peoples. When we choose to become Canadians, we accept the same responsibilities that Canadians whose ancestors were born here have. That includes sharing responsibility for reconciliation, and perhaps also reparations for the impact of poor decisions that were made in generations past.
One outcome of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report (published 2015) was a proposal made for a change to the oath of citizenship to clarify this responsibility[1]. That change has now been made. It was used for the first time on June 22[2]. Hopefully this will help new Canadians to better understand what becoming a Canadian means.
There is no intention here to assign guilt. There is simply an understanding that as Canadians we have a responsibility to the indigenous peoples of the land that we now inhabit.
Hey Alison, I just wanted to thank you so much for this comment, you both taught me something, and I very very much appreciate that this is clearly not just a footnote for you. Thank you. :)
Personally I think it's rather naive to immigrate to a country and then not to expect to inherit what comes with that, both the good and the bad. I think everyone who claims themselves as a Canadian hold this responsibility equally, I don't really care what generation Canadian you are or where you immigrated from, you don't get to pick and choose your Canadianness, we're all in this together. Isn't that part of the beauty of Canada? To embrace each other, tackle hard problems, and move our society forward?
If you pull the thread all the way back - if it’s morally right to pay reparations, wouldn’t it also be morally correct in the same vein to give the land back?
How do you actually pay reparations for taking someone’s land?
If you pull the thread all the way back - if it’s morally right to pay reparations, it would also be morally correct in the same vein, to give the land back. That is correct. If they wanted the land back, and I had to move, I wouldn't be opposed to that, and I'd imagine my opinion is more common than one might expect.
That said, I'm not sure how useful the point is. I've very rarely heard a native person say they would like that. I have heard that proposed, usually drunken and angry over beer. When I was a kid my dad had the Chief of Couchiching First Nation over for dinner. In my 17 year old wisdom, I eagerly explained how sad it is that natives don't want to go live in Toronto. He said, natives would love to be in Toronto, if Toronto was a little more like a reserve. I think they have unfortunately long accepted they've been colonized, the treaties were not honored, and their culture was destroyed. Meaningful reparation at this point is unlikely to be about land or money, it's about Canada accepting it cannot be Canada without real change to re-incorporate the culturual growth that was strangled.
Hey pal, I almost wonder if our Dads know each other. Our upbringings were so similar, just a couple of provinces apart.
My version of that story was when the Chief of the Peter Ballantyne First Nation came to visit us. I spent the first couple years of my life on the PBFN. I was about your age and had the same questions about how great it would be if they moved to my city. he explained that on reserve, he can just be a man. He can be good, he can be bad, he can make mistakes and he can have successes. In a city, it doesn't matter what he does, he's just 'a fucking Indian.' If he makes a mistake, he's a 'dirty fucking Indian'. If he has success, he's a 'fucking Indian sucking at the teet'.
I also remember him cracking a joke. "Do they know this isn't India?" :)
I've never heard a proposal to give back the land unless people have been sipping. And I say silly stuff too when I sip so who can judge. The most radical idea I've heard outside of those settings is to treat current lands as sovereign nations that have an equal standing with the rest of the nation. The goal seems to be peaceful and respectful coexistence.
I think we can all (or at least should all) be able to get behind that. Wouldn't peaceful coexistence be a pretty amazing way to live??
“treat current lands as sovereign nations that have an equal standing with the rest of the nation”
This isn’t as radical as you may think. It’s been a stated goal for a long time. I’m always surprised how the actual meaning of these words don’t seem to make any impact on Canadians. Perhaps phrased another way, such as, “When I have an Ojibway passport…” might catch people’s’ attention.
Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s not radical at all. It’s almost a word for word quote of what early Indian agents said to get people to sign. It asks Canada to abide by the treaties it signed! Crazy and radical thinking, hey??
Weirdly, in the Canada of today, that’s considered extremely radical. But it’s also considered radical to think First Nations should have clean drinking water.
If you’re interested in one heck of a read, learn about a Cree Chief named Big Bear. He quite literally saw into the future - I think his words make him one of the few genuine political visionaries of his era in Canada.
If you’re or anyone else is interested, I have a bunch of books. My email address is in my profile - some of these books are hard to find and I’m privileged enough to be able to afford them. I’d be happy as anything to mail them out to anyone interested, provided you give them wings and give them away to someone else. :)
Tangentially, they do have status cards, I worked at a wal-mart up north for a summer after high school and I used to have to type the number on the card into the cash register to override the tax on the transaction of people with a status card. The same wal-mart that banned people with a status card from buying mouthwash because they labeled the natives drunks and didn't want to propagate the issue. Yah seriously, that happened.
This isn't really about blame, or individuals (although I do wish we pursued criminal priests and nuns half as thoroughly as we do aging nazis). It certainly isn't (or shouldn't be) about descendants inheriting some kind of blood-guilt. This is about the necessity of reconciliation, and justice.
The Canadian Crown made solemn promises in the form of treaties. Either Canada stands by a promise, or it doesn't. We are all bound. If you don't feel you should be held to a Canadian promise, you might reconsider your conception of being Canadian.
Sorry -- that was glib. The expulsion of the Acadians stained the honour of the British Crown. War and insurrection complicate the history, but it was not fair-dealing.
I don't think it's extreme at all. Honestly, I'm touched by your words - you're 100% correct, I love your perspective and you are an absolutely wonderful person. This conversation has been an absolute honour.
My Dad was in the RCMP. I was born on reserve and spent a large part of my youth on and around reserve. My Dad did some bad things and his uniform is certainly not absolved of guilt. A lot of my privilege came because of his job. It's quite sad to know how much I've benefited from white privilege and this entire awful system.
I will happily pay for what happened. My privilege is as obvious as oxygen and I have gained tremendous advantages as the result of an awful system. I will happily pay, never stop paying and advocate until I'm blue in the face. Worst case scenario, we might change some minds. Best case scenario, we might change some worlds.
Thank you friend - you're a wonderful person and I genuinely appreciate this support and fellowship. I just saw a press conference where they announced 751 possible graves in Cowessess. That's 751 missing Kookums and Mooshums...:(
> My Dad was in the RCMP. I was born on reserve and spent a large part of my youth on and around reserve. My Dad did some bad things and his uniform is certainly not absolved of guilt. A lot of my privilege came because of his job. It's quite sad to know how much I've benefited from white privilege and this entire awful system.
> I will happily pay for what happened. My privilege is as obvious as oxygen and I have gained tremendous advantages as the result of an awful system. I will happily pay, never stop paying and advocate until I'm blue in the face. Worst case scenario, we might change some minds. Best case scenario, we might change some worlds.
Are you willing to give-up your father's inheritance?
> taking the native perspective into the education system
> Including traditional aboriginal health practises into the health care system
Thanks, but no thanks.
> People don't die on reserves because they're lazy drunks(as is often portrayed), they die because they don't trust the Canadian health care system
Interesting take. When a white person doesn't trust "official healthcare", they are bigots/antiwaxers/idiots/you name it. But if they belong to FN, it turns out to be a noble thing. All of a sudden, "we've been doing it for hundreds of years" trumps science.
Same with education. It's horrible that these children were subjected to a sterilized, culture killing national/standardized education, and killed their individual culture.
Also, opposing nationalized education curriculums for everyone else means you're an evolution denier, hate minority children, and probably still think we should teach math with numbers.
I'm sorry, but many of these ideas are nonsensical and ill-defined.
> Integration of aboriginal culture into the Canadian education system.
No thank you. I prefer the education to be secular. At this point, we have many more people from other cultures. So many cultures that integrating all of them into the education system becomes contradictory. The issues that natives have with the education system have nothing to do with the content. In fact, having "aboriginal first" education on reservations might seem like a feel-good idea that everyone wants but actually sets them up for failure by presenting a huge barrier to entry when going to normal universities. The exact "whitewashing" barrier you are talking about.
> Including traditional aboriginal health practises into the health care system [...] they die because they don't trust the Canadian health care system.
Sure, as long as the treatment being offered has at least an iota of scientific evidence of efficacy.
> Adding Ojibway as an official language (either federally, or mandate the provinces provide services in the predominant native language of that territory).
Just sounds ridiculous when Ojibway is not even the most spoken aboriginal language. Less than 1% of the population
is a has an aboriginal language as a mother tongue. Making any of these languages as an official language is just an extremely costly virtue signal that doesn't actually help anyone.
> Guaranteed seats in the Canadian parliament.
Guaranteeing seats, for any group of people, is always a bad idea and should not even be entertained. Look at the demographics [1]. 5% by population but have something closer to 6% of federal districts where they have the plurality of the vote. Seems like the system is working.
> and in my likely unpopular opinion, a reexamination of reparation.
Funnily enough, that's the only thing I agree with you. Finding a way forward via their input and not excluding them by chatting on an online forum.
While I don't agree with your perspectives, I'm certainly not going to call them nonsense or ill defined. I would not expect you to write a novel on hackernews laying out the full nuances of your thoughts, and I'd appreciate you'd extend me the same courtesy. Two nitpicks in your reply if I may. I would not propose on-reserve of first nations universities or anything like that, I would propose a total re-architecture of what you called 'normal' universities in collaboration with the first nations peoples. I mentioned Ojibway because in the discussion around this, there has been a feeling in the first nations that a push towards a wider adoption of Ojibway might be acceptable. However, I couched it in the event that was not the case, hence suggesting giving the power to the provinces.
But even the reparations argument in my opinion is ridiculous given how much is already given in tax and other social benefits and the gross mishandling over and over of funds by chiefs.
I think China is just trying to take pot shots and their comments on the situation really just shows how their leadership appears to act like children. Yes the residential schools are an atrocity. The children were stolen from their parents under a "best intentions" situation and died of disease that they had little natural immunity brought over via Europeans and buried in unmarked graves because the Christians thought they were all going to hell. Nice to see 2 churches burned down under suspicious circumstances in Canada recently. Maybe the church should be shouldering more of the blame here perhaps?
> I think China is just trying to take pot shots and their comments on the situation really just shows how their leadership appears to act like children
Yes. The reasoning behind their statements is a a way to distract from Canadian criticisms of Chinese human rights abuses, but the political agendas behind their statements do not make them any less true.
> Maybe the church should be shouldering more of the blame here perhaps?
I see this sentiment a lot in Canada with regards to the "who should be responsible for fixing this" question. The Church bearing all the responsibility gives most Canadians the convenient out of feeling deeply uncomfortable with a core part of their identity being associated with these horrific crimes. All Canadians are Canadian, but only some Canadians are Catholic after all. The history of these events tell us that both the government and the church were heavily involved, so I don't find the question "well which entity is MORE at fault" to be particularly useful.
Well at least we agree on one tiny part of the above. I guess I was a bit callous in my reply. This news has set of a somewhat violent chain reaction in Canada. I'm glad the news came out but lately I am disturbed how much "news" is just overhyping and conveniently lacking details in order to drive ad revenue, and this is the perfect story for that. Many people who I speak to are under the assumption that there was government run mass children murdering squads killing native American children execution style. I am very sympathetic to the atrocities native American people went through _and it continues to this day_. Children are still taken from their homes today via child services meanwhile education on reserves is under funded making native children on reserves far more likely to wind up in foster homes. What do we do to fix it? We're protesting against figures in the past and doing nothing today because we all think it's over.
The news seems to be craving/inventing chaos since covid. Each crisis pushes the last out of the spotlight. It's cycling so quickly it has given rise to outrage culture. The media are dumping some moral crisis' on the viewer and trying to extract whatever emotion the view has left.
Are you implying that the Canadian news industry only covered this story, or even manufactured it, in order to extract rage-clicks from their viewers... as opposed to covering it because it happened and was newsworthy?
Or that public outrage is merely the result of people being confused and punch-drunk from the psychological toll of the constant media news cycle... as opposed to an understandable reaction to the discovery of mass indigenous child graves at a residential school?
I can understand cynicism when it comes to the media but writing this off as outrage culture and essentially "fake news" seems like a bridge too far. I'm sure it's good for karma though.
Not fake news, well known facts being presented as news.
The volume has been turned up to 10 and the media wants you to react. To get angry. To be controlled.
Remember George Floyd? All of that stuff is still happening but the protests have moved on. The calls to defund have changed. This social movement is stalled.. until the next cycle. But day to day injustice keeps happening.
Don't be part of the outraged mob unless you plan on being outraged for a longtime.
It's the sudden urgency and staged-shock that's the problem. Framing it as the most important story for you to read today, even though it's been known and newsworthy for years, and 50% of the text was copied from the story that ran on page 16F 10 years ago.
Doing a few 10'x10' scans with GPR (which should never be trusted without ground truthing confirmation), then extrapolating it across a football field, and getting numbers that roughly agree with previous estimates isn't a breaking news update.
That's my point- there's no reason to wake up today and be shocked that TB used to kill a lot of people, including kids.
If I found a plantation house with 1000's of bodies buried in the yard, and forensic evidence shows most died a violent death, in a pattern of killings that repeated itself for decades...
would you be alarmed at the body count at Arlington?
Then why are you alarmed at the body count of a overgrown cemetery "found" where it was expected to be found, and containing roughly the same number of graves expected?
> would you be alarmed at the body count at Arlington?
Alarmed isn’t quite the right word. But it’s likely close.
> Then why are you alarmed at the body count of a overgrown cemetery "found" where it was expected to be found, and containing roughly the same number of graves expected?
I had no idea this was a thing or that any schooling system regularly buried children.
Also, churches and governments were working hand-in-glove and the public approved of, or at the very least ignored, what they were doing. Blame cannot be laid at the feet of any one group as all shared equally in sustaining this terrible system.
yeah I see the presbys in there as well.
I just knew the Anglican Church was involved off the top of my head, because they ran the Residential school in my city.
As fucked up as this sounds, beating their culture out of them was one of the more mundane things that went on in these awful places. I'm not sure who will read this so I'm uncomfortable going into much detail, but if you do some digging, you'll find stories so horrific that you may find yourself thinking "I wish they had stopped at beating the culture out of them."
These are some of the most horrible stories that I've ever heard. It's too horrific to even be believable fiction- the fact that it all happened and that I have graves of Indigenous children all around me is just about too terrible to think about. :(
I live in Canada as an immigrant and I am constantly ashamed of this history, and how indigenous people get treated to this day. RCMP often regard indigenous people as 3rd class citizens, like full on treating folk as criminals all the time. We have all this dialog about black lives matter and the disgusting reality is no one gives a single fuck about the most beaten down minority in Canada. I live in a very white province and work with many people of colour, but not one single native Canadian. All this HR drive to up our diversity but no one gives any thought, at all, to hiring indigenous people. I don't actually agree with hiring singularly for diversity, I believe in equal opportunity though. Even so, HR is up its own ass about driving diversity but this does not encompass native ethnicities. That conversation just does not happen at any level anywhere.
This all makes me so angry. Native Canadians had their children stolen, murdered, and buried in unmarked graves and there are people on this forum excusing it as being "best intentions". Can you imagine the reaction to this if the story was of African Slaves in the 1800s? These kids were murdered as late as the 1960s. And let's not forget the land that was stolen, the culture that was all but annihilated, the lives being ripped apart to this day through drugs and alcohol which is largely seen as a criminal nuisance rather than an epidemic that continues to marginalize and shun.
I could go on. The story is so sad, so dark, and still going on and covered up to this day. And we all gloss over it and pay lip service on CBC. Where is the criminal investigation? Where are the task forces looking for all the other mass graves?
I'm so saddened and ashamed by all of this. I've often thought of leaving Canada due to this shit, I live on unceded native territory for fuck's sake.
Hey friend, if you are ever going to be in Saskatchewan, my email address is in my profile. Let me know when you'll be here - I'd love to take you around, introduce you to some people including some survivors, show you some graves right in my city and maybe get you out into the country for a Pow Wow or something similar.
You seem like a great person, you'd fit right in and I think you would be as drawn to these amazing people as I am. Last summer, I got to attend a really beautiful rally in front of our Legislature. The feeling there, of unity, love and craving justice was beyond almost anything I have ever experienced. Indigenous cultures are absolutely beautiful and incredibly strong, so strong that our country's system of evil couldn't wipe it out. There's something beautiful and inspiring in that.
I agree with absolutely everything you say and reading this has been an absolute privilege. Like you, I'm saddened and ashamed and I've had my own thoughts of leaving Canada. My privilege is 100% because of white supremacy. I am literally on Hacker News now because of white supremacy. That is so embarrassing and shameful that I don't know what to do other than fight or flee.
If you're interested in quite the read, read about the time the TRC requested $1.5 million from the Canadian government to search for graves. $1.5 million isn't even a rounding error in the Canadian budget - it's so insignificant it doesn't even exist. But they were denied that money. The TRC was an explicit agreement to find our missing Kookums and Mooshums (the words translate best as Grandmas/Grandpas but in a really strong Indigenous context).
Talking to people like you fills me with a tremendous amount of hope. Goodness can overcome.
Take good care and thank you. I just watched the press conference where they announced 751 bodies and I've never needed this level of positivity more. I owe you. Thank you. Honestly thank you.
There are likely thousands of buried children yet to be found. This is not news, people have known about this for decades but it took a privately funded search to break the ground. Government has essentially brushed this under the rug until private citizens took it upon themselves and paid GPR specialists to search for the graves that everyone knew were to be found somewhere.
There is no statute of limitations on murder so why is there no criminal investigation? Someone is responsible for all these deaths.
When this is all said and done, I hope that the number is less than 25,000 but I think it will be much higher. We're at 1,000 kids in the last couple of weeks and that's two residential schools. There is another graveyard a 10 minute drive from where I live and that Regina Indian Industrial Residential School was a complete shit hole, even by the low standards set by the other schools. Add in schools in Lebret (they used to torture kids by making them crawl up a 78m hill to say the Stations of the Cross) and Prince Albert and I bet we'll be at over 4,500. This number is going to be huge...
As for criminal charges, go grab a beverage of your choice then come back and sit down.
Did you know that we located 5,300 abusers during the TRC? And in all these years, Canada has laid charges against less than 50 people. The 5,300 people who we found were invited to testify at a compensation hearing- most refused and their records are being kept private from the police.
People say that apologizing is the Canadian trait. I think it's passing the buck. When you ask police why there haven't been charges, they blame the victims for not coming forward. But bud, put yourself in their shoes. A cop rounded you up, took you away from your parents and sent you to a residential school. How much do you trust police??? It's fucking asinine to expect that...
The TRC even operated under weird rules. If individual A accused individual B of abusing them, individual B would get to read the allegations and get individual A's name. Individual A can't get any information about their abuser.
So, I guess the answer to your question is 'we are a really shitty country'.
Where would I go? I have relatives living in France.
Hyperbolic? I used to live in Australia and how they treated indigenous people was partly a motivation for me to leave. The racism is open and unapologetic there.
"Given every country has a history..." This is not a history, there are survivors living today. This is an issue happening right now. Children as late as the 60s were stolen, abused, and murdered. I live on unceded territory, my house is literally on stolen land. Leaving would be a monumental part of my life, I'm not going to lie, and I'd like to try and make a difference before going down that road. But it does feel rather hypocritical for me to feel this way and not stand by my principles.
This whole "it's history" argument really makes me sad. The amount of people that feel ok with this being a reason to just brush off what is happening today is a little sickening.
"I feel like declaring your intention to leave is hyperbolic" You say this as if what you "feel" has some deep insight into how I actually feel. I feel very emotional about this stuff, and I "feel" like you don't have any useful introspection into my character.
My homeland has absolutely no bearing on this conversation, I think you just want to know so you can go and unearth some sort of horror in my home nation. For the record I don't have any desire to return to where I grew up, nor do I think it's necessarily better there. However, I can guarantee that my home country does not have a suppressed indigenous population, no children buried in unmarked graves, and the land is not disputed.
I'd usually agree but in this case, I'm not sure. The residential school system is a stain on our past that continues to hurt the future. As one example, Indigenous women in Canada are subject to almost unspeakable levels of violence.
If you're interested in an absolutely awful read, you can read the final report from our National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls here:
Indigenous people in Canada are several times more likely to live in poverty, several times more likely to find themselves imprisoned and many Indigenous communities in Canada don't even have clean drinking water. The explicit genocide is over but the system still remains.
We are still fighting to get the truth out. Reconciliation will unfortunately take generations because the problems caused by these schools and other issues reverberate through the generations. But i hope there is an accelerated push to get more of the truth out!!
> The recommendations put forward by the government never go far enough, and frankly, the Indian Act is stain on our country.
The current party in power is pretty much responsible for residential schools. Apparently, their current leader thinks crying on camera will make people believe they changed.
What really makes me shake with rage as a parent is that after these children died, they were not returned to their parents for burial and in many instances the parents were never informed of the death.
As a Canadian I am disgusted. I say we start taxing the land Catholic Churches sit on and use 100% of the proceeds to compensate victims of these schools.
The scale of death at residential schools was known since at least 1907.
> Upon taking the job, Bryce began (in his words) the “systematic collection of health statistics of the several hundred Indian bands scattered over Canada.” In 1907, Bryce released a report drawing attention to the fact that, according to his surveys, roughly one-quarter of all Indigenous children attending residential schools had died from tuberculosis: “of a total of 1537 pupils reported upon nearly 25 per cent are dead, of one school with an absolutely accurate statement, 69 per cent of ex-pupils are dead, and that everywhere the almost invariable cause of death given is tuberculosis.” [1]
Bryce, a whistleblower, was defunded and removed from his position over reporting on it. The government moved to stop collecting statistics on infectious diseases in residential schools afterwards.
> as a Canadian I would echo Chinas call for a full human rights inquiry at the international level.
Not to diminish the tragedy of this, but China's genocide is current and ongoing. Their call for an investigation is an attempt to deflect from that. Canada should be doing something, but not on account of China's urging. That's like Nazi Germany asking for an inquiry into American Slavery. Of course it was wrong and tragic.
Yep, everyone knew. As a society we just decided not to care or ask questions about it for decades. These discoveries are shocking and gruesome but not surprising. I'm pissed about it too.
>I would echo Chinas call for a full human rights inquiry at the international level
There isn't a knowledge problem. The issue is well documented. The problem is figuring out what to do and convincing voters and leaders to support it.
No government authority is hiding or impending any investigation or discussion about this issue.
Residential schools, and the damage they caused are a part of primary education.
There have been court cases, testimony, and settlements.
What would a human rights inquiry achieve? Is it possible that a hostile foreign power, who is likely right now perpetrating a possibly worse genocide, is using your perfectly justified emotions to manipulate you?
There's nothing wrong about aligning with the CCP's calls for investigation - however the irony and hypocrisy shouldn't be ignored; the genocide in Canada is also in the past, which doesn't reduce its significance nor the tragedy, however genocide is actively happening in China - the pot calling the kettle black; a form of whataboutism among other tactics.
I think the Canadian government has enough tact to agree an investigation is warranted while continuing to pressure the CCP on their treatment of minorities. We can do two things at once.
Indeed, meanwhile the CCP will ironically use free speech social media platforms to try to shame and guilt Canadians - which I've personally encountered.
> It was one of more than 130 compulsory boarding schools funded by the Canadian government and run by religious authorities during the 19th and 20th Centuries with the aim of assimilating indigenous youth.
> The children were often not allowed to speak their language or to practice their culture, and many were mistreated and abused.
Sounds eerily similar to what China is doing to the Uighurs.
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.
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.
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 continue their actions, unimpeded.
>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.
That's true, but let's contextualize this a little because that point isn't necessarily relevant here.
The modern welfare state is .. well .. a modern post-WW2 invention. Pre-WW2 and certainly pre-1900, in most (if not all nations) there was no such thing as a government provided a social safety net - this is doubly true for the nascent frontier Canadian government which had neither the funds, nor the capability to administer a huge land-mass. In addition, providing a social safety net was not seen as a purview of a frontier government anyway. Settlers were issued a deed and expected to figure things out on their own.
The church took on the role of providing charity because there was no other institution that did.
Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs in Canada in 1920:
"I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone... Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department."
"In 1920, amendments to the Indian Act make it mandatory for every Indian child between the ages of seven and six-teen years, to attend Indian residential school."
"In 1933, legal guardianship of the Indian children attending Indian residential school was assumed by the principals of those Indian residential schools, upon the forcible surrender of legal custody by parents."
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.
> The school system was created to remove Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture.
So... Basically the goal of current Chinese re-education camps, only applied to the indigenous Canadian population?
It wouldn't be farfetched to call these institutions concentration camps for indigenous Canadian children, given that mass graveyards were found. It's not unusual to disguise concentrations camps under euphemistic names such as "Internment Facilities". [1]
They were just graveyards. Nothing "mass" about them. A mass grave is where a backhoe is used to open a giant pit and dump bodies in en masse.
These are just individuals dying and graves made for them as needed. Given most of these were run starting in the 1890s and the first-half of the twentieth century, mortality rates were quite high. Reminder: penicillin was only generally available after 1945.
Before that, it didn't matter if you were the US President's son, life could be extremely fragile:
> The general story is well-known: while playing lawn tennis with his brother on the White House grounds, sixteen-year-old Calvin [Coolidge], Jr. developed a blister atop the third toe of his right foot. Before long, the boy began to feel ill and ran a fever. Signs of a blood infection appeared, but despite doctors’ best efforts, young Calvin, Jr. was dead within a week.
A little while ago there was a news article from BC about a former school having 210 graves. People seem to have been shocked that this number was 'high', but it seems that most people didn't do the math: the school ran for over 70 years, and with that many graves, all you need is 3 deaths a year over the decades to get to that number.
Given historical child mortality rates, 3 isn't a crazy-high number IMHO:
Yeah, and then they took little Calvin Jr and buried him in an unmarked grave or dumped him in the Potomac, right? The conditions were considerably worse than those afforded to the President's son, and arguably worse than those the children were taken from (although that's a judgement call). But in any case, we have a different feeling about kids dying in an otherwise abusive/coercive environment than we do about them dying with their families, for some strange reason.
I was correcting a factual error in the GP's statement.
The graves were marked, it's just that it was with wood which has since disintegrated over time. Even stone ones will dissolve eventually. I went to three funerals in 2020 and was at the cemetery for the lowering of the body/ashes in each case: plenty of almost-disappeared graves in cemeteries that are less than a century old (of which many did (used to) have stone markers once).
If I have erred in my statements, provide the correct information.
The shock isn't so much at the number as it is that so few records have been released to indicate who these kids actually were. It seems to be the case that many parents were never notified of the deaths of their own children - they just never saw them again.
I was responding to the assertion of the GP that people who are shocked "didn't do the math", not the appropriateness of the term "mass graves".
There seems to be a bit of an elitist bent to several comments here, implying that anyone who is responding to these findings emotionally must either be thoroughly ignorant or incapable of considering historical child mortality rates.
Surely it's reasonable for people to be "shocked" to find that children in these schools died at a far higher rate than their non-indigenous peers, and were buried on-site, presumably far from their homes, in graves that up until recently their relatives weren't even sure where they were? What is wrong with allowing people to have that emotion?
I'm not expecting lots of records to exist from schools that operated decades ago in very rural parts of Canada. Remember that while some of these schools ran until only a few decades ago, these deaths date back to the 1800's.
Clearly there are very few records. This was detailed in Hamilton's "Where Are The Children Buried", currently linked from the front page of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports page[0].
The report also notes that the death rate of children attending Indian residential schools was much higher than the Canadian average at the time, and that most children were not returned to their families for burial.
I think it's fair for people - especially people who haven't read the TRC report - to be upset by these numbers.
"We're shocked at finding graves for kids that we already knew had died, and already knew about where the graves should be, but are really surprised that they actually were there when we looked."
I think you will find that the people who are surprised are not the same people as the people who already knew the kids had died and where the graves should be. The first group is shocked. The second group is grieving.
If the first group realized that the second group weren't actually shocked, the first group would feel intentionally misled.
Especially if they found out the shocking discovery just confirmed what the second group already knew (and was what they'd been told by officials all along).
This is a bizarre complaint. What do you think is happening here? That there is some group of people who are pretending to be shocked, specifically in order to mislead another group of people into actually being shocked, for some nefarious purpose?
In neither the press release from Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc back in May[0] nor today's announcement from Cowessess First Nation[1] is there any claim that this is a "shocking discovery". Most of the Canadian media appears to be reporting on this as the start of a process to help the affected communities grieve and find closure, not as some kind of big, dramatic surprise.
I assume most of the people shocked by these findings are either not Canadian, or just didn't know much about the history of indigenous people in Canada. For those people, I think being upset is an authentic emotion.
The government did a purge of records in the 1930s and 1940s. While storage of information is cheap nowadays, it wasn't always so and sometimes it was decided things needed to go.
It is one thing for a white kid to die from playing golf or tennis, and another to pass laws, giving a free reign to those who are more than willing to torture colored kids to death.
I don't necessarily disagree with the point that mortality numbers may have been inflated due to lack of modern-day medicine, but I doubt access to it would have changed much, given the epidemic of systemic racism and the kind of violent behaviour it has entailed in the past.
"Concentration camp" is a euphemism when you're actually talking about death/extermination camps.
The difference between an "internment camp" and a "concentration camp" isn't entirely clear to me, but the terms were originally meant to mean what they say at face value: camps where people are concentrated or interned. The interment camps for Japanese Americans were concentration camps in the literal face-value meaning of the at term. They took a group of people that was spread out over the whole west coast and concentrated them down into a few small camps.
A camp that is purpose built to exterminate people, not merely concentrate them, should be called an extermination camp. In casual conversation extermination camps are often called 'concentration camps', but that is clearly euphemistic. (This is somewhat complicated by the fact that many nazi extermination camps were also concentration camps. "Auschwitz" was a cluster of several camps, some of them extermination camps, some of them concentration camps. Treblinka on the other hand was an extermination camp but not also a concentration camp.)
[1] This is a very good interview with Murray Sinclair, the former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission where he states:
"The parents were often not notified that their children have died and little effort was made to get the bodies home"
The government stopped documenting child deaths in 1920 at these "schools" because the death rates were so high. They documented 3,200 child deaths by 1920 but experts estimate the number increased up to 25,000 by the time last residential school closed in 1996.
Could you imagine what it would be like to have the police take your child away to an institution then to never hear from them again?
I'm so sad for the children and parents who had to endure this.
Yes. It's easy to paint the current Chinese policies as barbaric, but such was the official policy in democratic Canada (and the US, which had similar policies) barely a generation ago. It does not justify current Chinese minority policy, but it does make them more understandable and relatable.
It also suggests to me that outside pressures for policy change in China are probably largely futile. Would the Canadian or American Natives policies have changed much under foreign pressure?
> It does not justify current Chinese minority policy, but it does make them more understandable and relatable.
Does it? Strong democracies don't assure that atrocities don't happen, it just means that governments are able to be held accountable for them.
There will never be a Truth and Reconilliation commission in Xi Jinping's China, and there certainly is no mechanism by which any consequences can be had for their actions.
Canadian's and their politicians are faced with this current atrocity, and its politicians may face consequences if such actions were to continue or aren't reconciled.
I would say that actually the extent to which it is possible that politicians do not face consequences is a reflection of weaknesses in the representation of our democracy (e.g.: first-past-the-post, voter suppression, etc..)
>Strong democracies don't assure that atrocities don't happen, it just means that governments are able to be held accountable for them.
Has any government been held accountable for the "Residential School" system? No. Governments have apologized after the fact for actions of previous instances of the government. There has been zero accountability on the matter. Same with the atrocities, against first nations or slaves, here in the US.
>There will never be a Truth and Reconilliation commission in Xi Jinping's China
Likewise, there wasn't a T&R commission in under the Canadian governments that were in charge while these acts were committed.
>its politicians may face consequences if such actions were to continue or aren't reconciled.
>I would say that actually the extent to which it is possible that politicians do not face consequences is a reflection of weaknesses in the representation of our democracy
These statements are true only to the extent that the atrocities are politically unpopular. We don't need to look very far, temporally or spatially, to find examples of genocide being politically popular.
I'm glad I live in a liberal democracy and not under a dictatorship or some other kind of authoritarian system, but we shouldn't pretend that our form of government is capable of doing all, or even very much, of the hard work of respecting human rights for us. That's a key ingredient in the recipe to backsliding.
> Has any government been held accountable for the "Residential School" system?
I'm just saying there is a mechanism by which it is possible, and I don't think it'd take an abundance of polling to recognise that something like the Xinjiang internment camps or "Residential Schools" (internment camps in their own right) would be politically viable.
In fact, it can be argued that a huge reason why there is public knowledge of their existence and why the practice was ended (albeit far too late) was because of our free elections.
> We don't need to look very far, temporally or spatially, to find examples of genocide being politically popular.
There is much truth to this, but it's worth thinking about how democratic sliding/autocratic institutions amplify this to a huge degree. Genocide certainly can be popular in strong democracies, but things like a strong free press and equitable treatment under the law make this sort of thing much harder to defend in the court of public opinion.
> ...but we shouldn't pretend that our form of government is capable of doing all, or even very much, of the hard work of respecting human rights for us.
Absolutely agree, and I'd argue that there are many ways that our government and its institutions don't represent the will of the people. It's not sufficient to solely look towards our systems of government or to look inwards as a society; it's an all or nothing deal which sounds hard at first but there's a strong reinforcement loop in there.
When our institutions and our communities do right by their members, it begets more awareness and will to do well by each other.
I've said it before on HN: this domestic and foreign politics stuff all feels super overwhelming, but one can personally do tremendously to help rectify these ills by focusing on your local community, and being an active participant.
So certainly, I wholeheartedly agree that when democracies are healthy, change happens with political will and that starts on the ground.
If the democratic-free nations of the world made a multi-lateral trade agreement then all manufacturing could come back and buying power of the CCP would greatly reduce.
The hell these policies become "relatable". I can understand why these policies are made, but relate to them? I want to see a better world. I won't compromise and relate to policies causing destruction of human rights.
I'm saying this as a hyper-privileged, cuddled native of a country that acquired it's position on the world stage in part by enslaving other humans. We were homicidal, genocidal asshats, just like the Canadians with those natives, just like the Chinese with their Uyghur population.
We're a violent race. If we want to be better, we shouldn't tolerate any of our shitty behavior, and we shouldn't soften the messaging when talking about abject atrocities.
"Relatable" in the sense that you can imagine that if you grew up in Canada or the USA one or two generations ago, you could easily have been supportive such policies yourself in your own country.
Are you aware of the context of the article? Because reducing a race to inherently possessing certain tendencies or traits, and needing to "take action!" and "do something!" about it, is sort of how we got here.
If you want to base it on historic behavior, then it'd be justified, just like the people who set up these schools.
Yes I have always held that what happened to the "First Nations" in North America is not so different from the Uighur situation.
Only difference is that America's genocide was already successfully completed. The original inhabitants in Canada have been disenfranchised and marginalized.
Now for the real eye opener - all compulsory schooling can be described as "internment and reeducation camps for children". Children are taken from their parents, forced to learned a standardized dialect of the dominant language, indoctrinated with myths and ideals that are useful for the state, taught history that's heavily skewed to present the nation in a positive light, and trained that obedience to authority figures is highly desirable.
Rulers throughout history have found it useful for their subjects to speak the same language, pray to the same gods, and extoll the same values. The goal of compulsory education has always been to assimilate people into a single culture.
I think it's pretty disingenuous to compare the residential school system to the compulsory public school system. Yes, the standard school system is skewed towards a positive view of the state in North America (note Germany as a counter-example), but they're summer camps compared to the residential schools. You won't be beaten by a teacher for speaking Arabic if you're Afghan for example.
Cajun-French almost went extinct, and it was illegal for a long time to speak it.
Immigrants from all over were forced in school to use English and punished for speaking their ancestors' languages.
And physical punishment was pretty standard until recently, and a surprising number of schools still give spankings.
There might be things that need to be addressed with residential schools, but Americanizing (Canadianizing?) children and forcing English while banning ancestral language and culture were the norm across the continent.
I wouldn't say precisely concentration camps for children - at least not late-war concentration camps that were focused precisely on eliminating the population. I'm not saying residential schools were good in anyway - I just don't want to minimize just how bad the nazis were... Residential schools were pretty close to the US internment camps of Japanese citizens though.
Okay folks, I've got to put a trigger warning here. This next paragraph is absolutely brutal - it's physical, sexual abuse and infanticide. :(
This may be a time when we need a new word. Residential school doesn't quite capture the horror, the unbelievable level of physical and sexual abuse or the endless stories from residential schools across Canada of babies conceived in sexual assault being taken from their mothers and thrown into furnaces.
I'd really recommend reading some of the testimony from the survivors. These places were a special form of evil.
You are conflating "concentration camp" with "extermination/death camp". The modern "concentration camps" were invented by the British during the Boer war.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Detention centres seems too benign as well at first thought. Cultural genocide and child murder centres feels more appropriate - destroying not only culture but families and communities - which clearly has caused continued multi-generational dis-ease progression.
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.
I'm sure you could trace the tribe genealogy and get in touch with tribe members that knew your grandparents and, never too late to get back in touch with your roots. Native American history and culture is so unique and beautiful, it's such a tragedy that it was destroyed and suppressed. I really wish we could recover what was lost and celebrate it
We’ve done this, many years ago. It’s tough when the native language has no standardized written component, and basically no preserved records. The best genealogical records are the ones done by the schools.
There’s one person in my extended family who speaks the language still. And of course, they know it in a preservationist type of sense. The language is extinct outside of any academic sort of sense.
I think in the US most forced family separation of indigenous peoples now falls under "justified" actions by CPS. The US Dept of Interior's boarding schools were terrible and the investigation is likely going to raise a number of painful points - but CPS still ends up targeting minority families, especially native americans, with a much higher rate in the US.
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.
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.
This particular school isn't operated by a church, but by the Bureau of Indian Education (which I also didn't know still existed) and the US Department of the Interior. Sounds like the school has evolved significantly from when it was first established in 1892:
>Things have changed a lot at Sherman in Doepner’s lifetime. He says a Navajo woman who went there in the 1960s and was forbidden from speaking her language now teaches that language at Sherman. “I believe that those efforts over the past 35 or 40 years have helped transform the nature of what [Bureau of Indian Education] schools have tried to do which is to celebrate the culture of the students, of their families, of their ancestors,” Doepner says.
>Some Wyoming students who’ve attended Sherman agree. “They have a beading class,” says Scottie Nez, a junior at Fort Washakie High School who spent his first two years at Sherman. “And pottery—ceramics class. They have a basket-weaving class. And they have a Navajo language class.”
Of interest in relation to the original link, this school also has a dedicated cemetery:
>Because of Bureau of Indian Affairs policies, students did not return home for several years. Those who died were often buried in the school cemetery. May 3 marks an old tradition amongst the local tribes where many local reservations decorate their cemeteries with flowers and replace old crosses. Sherman Indian High School designates this as Indian Flower Day.
I've been told ones with a connection to a tribe are better, and I'm unsure about the BIA connected ones, as I've only had personal experience with the Catholic run ones.
The one I'm most familiar with had a one hour a week class teaching their culture to K-12 students shortly after mass, and when they tried to get a traditional blessing at their graduation before the Christian prayer it was refused.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
> The church was operating these schools as a charity because the government had neither the resources not inclination to do it themselves.
The first CA residential schools were a Christian effort. The first was started in 1820 by missionary John West in the Red River colony, with funding from the (British) Church Mission Society.
By 1901, though, "In Canada, the Indian residential school ... network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...] The compulsory schooling of children between 7 and 16 was the result of 1894 amendments to Canada's 1876 Indian Act ... often mentioned by the First Nations.
Edit: Adding a link to a very good article posted after Kamloops, called "Why so many children died at Indian Residential Schools". It also quickly details the scope of the operations and conditions across Canada.
The Residential School Program continued well into the 20th century, when Canada was very much a modern nation state with resources.
It's not just that these children died. These were indigenous children that died without the knowledge of their families because the Residential Schools intentionally uprooted them from their cultures.
> The Residential School Program continued well into the 20th century, when Canada was very much a modern nation state with resources.
Yes. I apologize if I implied otherwise. I was talking more about what conditions were like when they were created.
> It's not just that these children died. These were indigenous children that died without the knowledge of their families because the Residential Schools intentionally uprooted them from their cultures.
> Presumably at a school the mortality rate would be lower because the children were older.
Well, from a quick Google according to government numbers in 1907 there was a 40 – 60% mortality rate in Indian residential schools. Doesn't quite square with your assertion.
> 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.
These schools operated for many decades, far into the 20th century. At which point that death rate becomes even more unreasonable. And "undernourished kids without immunity are worse off" is not a defense if you are the one not caring for them properly and forcing them to live in such dense groups with inadequate medical care.
> Well, from a quick Google according to government numbers in 1907 there was a 40 – 60% mortality rate in Indian residential schools. Doesn't quite square with your assertion.
That's roughly double the population average. I expect it to be higher due to them lacking immunity, but still that's surprisingly high.
> These schools operated for many decades, far into the 20th century. At which point that death rate becomes even more unreasonable.
Obviously the death rate declined over time.
> And "undernourished kids without immunity are worse off" is not a defense if you are the one not caring for them properly and forcing them to live in such dense groups with inadequate medical care.
Yes and no. The schools obviously had nothing to do with them being undernourished or lacking immunity before entering the system. If they continued being undernourished after that, that's is on the schools and the government. Maintaining poor living conditions is also on them.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say they're blameless - because there are plenty of reports to the contrary. What I'm trying to say is a couple hundred graves outside a school in the modern era sounds like a crime against humanity. Placed properly in the historical times in which it happened, where child mortality was insanely high, especially among natives, it may well have been not that remarkable. It requires more careful analysis and not the knee jerk emotional reaction that I've been seeing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(I completely support also researching and addressing what happened at the residential schools. I'm saying that's the easy part.)
I agree. No matter your current view on industrial meat production, it's clear to me that at some point in the future people will be saying something along the lines of "We used to grind up animals and stuff the bloody pulp into their torn out intestines."
> 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.
Literally all boarding schools up until like the 1950s. You realize that kids were dropping like flies before the 50s, right? Many US presidents had children who died of the flu. Coolidge, Lincoln, Eisenhower, and more. The school in question was around for 70 years. That's 3 deaths a year, including the 1918 pandemic.
These places were definitely fucked up cultural genocide factories, but let's suddenly forget about child mortality
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.
"Cowessess First Nation is 'optimistic' that the church will work with them in investigating further, he said."
"It has not yet been determined if all the unmarked graves belong to children"
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.
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.
There are too many questions about what went on in residential schools. It's time to address those questions.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. *That includes more than hacking and startups.* If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: *anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.*
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.
This is hard to do, most at the commercial level only detect disturbance.
No one is releasing the data or even having it checked so far I can see.
Unmarked graves are normal, this many in one spot and allegedly unknown is not.
This to me says it's a graveyard, and this is just a survey. Nothing strange -
> "This is not a mass grave site. These are unmarked graves," said Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme.
If you think schools back then were killing or allowing students to die at levels higher than normal for the time you are delusional.
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?
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.
No one told us about the forced experiments, about bringing the nazi drs back to the US with us, the bombing of black communist communities, black wall street etc, CIA interventions in latin america, and essentially forcibly under-developing the rest of the world.
Only about how 'awesome' we were in WW2 when arguably the soviets played a much larger role in crushing fascism.
> about bringing the nazi drs back to the US with us
Pretty sure that Wernher von Braun makes an appearance in pretty much any history book that covers the Space Race, along with a mention that he and his colleagues had originally worked on the German V-2.
You're equating being a left handed person to being stolen from your parents, beaten and raped? That is one of the most disrespectful, disgusting things that I have ever read on this website. You need to seriously read up on history and learn a bit before you ever say that to anyone again.
Please don't respond to bad comment with a worse one, nor attack other users personally regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. All of that just makes the thread even worse.
I'm sorry Dan - I was in a really bad spot after I saw the press conference. I know the Chief of the Cowessess First Nation. It's no excuse but I was in an awful awful place. I'm sorry.
They do, it’s how the schools are designed to encourage bullying and bearings from staff and teachers.
It was not one school or one teacher.
Of course Canadians just want to pretend it was just one group they screwed with, I’m just simply pointing out that it was NOT an isolated thing that Canadian schools are pure trash.
I don't believe that ensuring children conformed to the current cultural norm was or is unique to Canadian schools.
My mother was left-handed and was forced to write, etc with her right hand by her Dutch teachers, as were all other lefties. Force included bloody knuckles from rulers wielded by teachers and other corporal punishments. I've heard similar stories from other lefties from other countries.
Schools were (are?) about teaching children to confirm as much as teaching them reading and math, etc - I think that was a pretty universal thing in previous generations. Just because your experience was in Canada doesn't mean there was anything specifically Canadian about it.
Yes, Canada has really been showing it's TRUE colors with how the government is handling covid. Fascism and propaganda are close to heart. I feel for all the mennonite communities and pray for them every day.
I think strong cultural investment is a good way to start and beneficial to canadians as a whole. I went on vacation to Haida Gwaii recently and really appreciated the Haida Heritage Center[1] but those places are few and far between - the funding for it actually originated in a standoff with the government[2] that was then invested and nurtured to accrue the value it has today. They host seminars and classes around culture and history while employing a number of reservation residents - I think it'd be wonderful if the federal government put a more serious investment into cultural preservation as a way to spur economic health.
There are other actions being called for by the tribes themselves but I hope that cultural investment ends up being part of the end solution.
Implementing the recommendations from the Truth & Reconciliation will be a start. It will be a long process of mending and healing that will take time, patience, and deliberate effort.
There's obviously no amount of money that covers it, and so ideally there are actual cultural reinvigoration goals as well perhaps as Indigenous population growth goals - and supporting the costs of social determinants until those communities are thriving and growing at a level above average or some multiple compared to Canada as a whole.
> 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.
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.
I think adventured is interpreting danish integration policies a bit too harsly when it is calling them genocidal. They are hard though, and there is a current of xenophobia in danish policy making.
It would be more relevant in this case to mention that Denmark did very similar things, as Canada, towards the Greenlandic population during the last century. Utilising forced adaptations of kids, suppressing greenlandic language and culture, and force moving communities to hinder them being able to live in a traditional greenlandic way.
If you happened to be Danish, I watched this 30 min minidoc the other day and it was eye opening, I was curious how accurate it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A1LtmxkAYk - If you have some time, i'd love to know. Thanks.
Skimmed through it. Seems mostly accurate. There is a lot of laws made explicitly to control the muslim minority. There is something about it that feels off to me though. Maybe its the "oh wholesome Denmark is actually awful". It's not really a dark secret, nationalistic populism has been on the rise in all of Europe for 20+ years.
The scene with the 'antifascists' being used as an argument for the animosity in Danish society seems construed imo. We don't see what lead up to it. But if I saw someone vlogging with his pals in that spot, just after a Paludan 'event', I would also tell them to stop filming. That corner as been used as hangout for a gang, and coupled with the boiling atmosphere in the neighbourhood its not really safe. Regardless I find the video factual but very bombastic.
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.
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.
