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Canada Haunted by Past Sins
Starting in 1876, with the passage of the unfortunately named “Indian Act,” the Canadian government started a system of residential schools intended to educate native children to integrate them into the larger Canadian society and economy. Management and operation of these schools were entrusted to several Church organizations. With the movement of granting tribal nations more self-governing powers, these schools began closing in the 1940s and 50s, with the last closing in the late-60s. Recently unmarked graves have been uncovered at the sites of 4 former schools and to date, a total of 1148 graves have been discovered.
So far these sites are located in:
Kamloops, British Colombia
Cranbroke, British Colombia
Marieval, Saskatchewan
Brandon, Manitoba
As many as 30,000 children may have died at residential schools while they were in operation.
Sadly, time may have robbed the communities of any semblance of justice as it’s unlikely that many of these children will be identified or a cause of death to be determined. These are not mass graves, these are unmarked graves. In the case of Marieval SK, the gravesites are unmarked because in the 1960s, members of the local Roman Catholic church removed the headstones from the graves.
The denial of justice can lead to disturbing vigilantism and in the past few weeks, four Churches have been burned, with Sacred Heart Church in Penticton BC, St. Gregory’s Church on Osoyoos Indian Band, St. Ann’s Church on Upper Similkameen Indian Band land; and St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Gitwangak was damaged by fire, but remains standing, unlike the other three Catholic churches.
Fortunately, so far nobody has been hurt in any of the church fires, but I fear this is only a matter of time before someone’s luck runs out. Given Canada’s recent track record of arresting pastors for continuing to practice their faith during the COVID hysteria. Will Canada tolerate the persecution of Christians?
It’s the question of the day: Can Canada avoid the sins of the past being fanned into fresh hate by the Social Justice crowd to renewed violence? Is Justine Trudeau really the man for the job?
Published in History
There are a number of unpleasant truths here.
Warfare by and against the Indians was often very cruel—in both directions. Torture of captives was not an integral institution in European societies, though it happened a lot. It was a cultural institution among many native peoples, as was cannibalism.
So was slavery.
The agents sent by the federal government to administer them were often vicious and corrupt. Worse, the treaties were egregiously and often serially violated for many years. To honor them would involve massive reparations; the tribes cannot be made whole other than financially because the lands taken from them in violation are now not vacant.
The case for such reparations is much more compelling than the case for reparations for chattel slaves of African origins. Just for starters, begin with Lincoln’s second inaugural address:
For that reason, I’m going to use both Union and Confederate losses.
A commonly cited figure for soldiers on both sides of the Civil War is just under 620,000 dead of disease and in battle. In reality, that figure is too low and should be more like 750,000.
Not only is 620,000 too low a number for military casualties alone, it does not account for those who survived but suffered life changing wounds, and does not address the civilian death toll – or the impact (emotional, social and economic) on their families and communities of the loss of those hundreds of thousands of young men, or the other economic impacts of the war.
There were just under 4 million slaves in the US in 1860; as Lincoln said, about 1/8 of the total population of 31 million.
But let’s use that low number of 620,000 combined Civil War deaths for North and South for a moment.
4,000,000 slaves divided by 620,000 dead. More than one American died for every seven slaves in the country at the beginning of the war. If we use the 750,000 number, it’s more than one dead for every six freed slaves. That’s a big down payment on any fair reparations. (Free and freed blacks did serve in the Union Army, but not in large enough numbers to change this argument.)
Many tribes across North, Central and South America.
As true as all that is, when a sovereign nation enters into a treaty with pagan, primitive, violent Stone Age barbarians it ought to honor the treaty. Otherwise it’s not a treaty, it’s a hudna entered into for tactical reasons in a perpetual war.
North American native people didn’t form a single society. But yes, there are recorded instances. For example, there is a famous instance of a French-supported war party of Anishinaabe people eating the heart out of a Miami leader (nicknamed “Old Britain” because of his trading alliances) near Piqua, Ohio, in the leadup to the French and Indian war. (I made the site a destination for one of my bicycle outings. I should go back and learn what new archaeological work has been done there in the past dozen years.)
There are also instances in European-American society, though they mostly have to do with actual starvation situations.
The Donner party is a famous example.
And Kwakiutl (Pacific NW,) Iroquois (Eastern US and Canada,) Tonkawa (Texas etc.,) Carib, Aztec, Maya, and Inca.
I once had my hair cut by someone whose family came to California with the Donner Party. Talk about a conversation stopper.
Then there was Alferd Packer.
Rugby players eat their dead.
My mother’s mother bore sixteen children, the first before the turn of the twentieth century. Nine survived to adulthood. This was in a prosperous family. After a while she began to have a hard time remembering the names of the children who died. Lots of things could kill children that do not now: scarlet fever, whooping cough, mumps, measles, polio, tuberculosis. A cold or a flu could easily become pneumonia, a scratch lockjaw. In the days of helicopter parenting, we have a hard time appreciating how common childhood death was. It’s easy to imagine that an institution where many children live is especially imperiled by contagions.
Times do change. In my own family, about 1945, before I was born, my sister, six months old, was taken by the mysterious “crib death”. By then, infant death was rare enough, that even in a sizable family like ours, it was a profound trauma, and it deformed us a bit. I realized so many years later; how my heart went out to my parents, especially my mother, when I did.
David Warren has an interesting blogpost relevant to this topic: Egerton Ryerson. Here’s a quote.
I can see there are different views on this.
https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/
What I find surprising is that Ricochet is pretty switched on about the importance of the family to children’s healthy growth and development. Residential schools were set up to actually weaken indigenous families, how could you expect the results to be good for the children? It’s rushing in where angels fear to tread.
6 Things the media got wrong in about this story:
https://tnc.news/2021/07/07/six-things-the-media-got-wrong-about-the-graves-found-near-residential-schools/
This entire moral panic was created by media to stir racial animosity and start an anti-christian persecution.
Church North of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan burns:
https://www.rebelnews.com/former_polish_roman_catholic_church_burns_to_ground_northwest_of_saskatoon?fbclid=IwAR2eHzWmrr685KgrHuCqlUeWV39Nf3UORqS1LTIPSiptMn2XMhAWfE4qNHo
Fiery but mostly peaceful, say Canadian media and government…..