[HN Gopher] Canada: Hundreds of unmarked graves found at residen...
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Canada: Hundreds of unmarked graves found at residential school
Author : akbarnama
Score : 246 points
Date : 2021-06-24 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| 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.
| loceng wrote:
| 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.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| 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.
| zapataband1 wrote:
| 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.
| javagram wrote:
| > 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.
| cambalache wrote:
| "Arguably"
|
| hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
| kube-system wrote:
| 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.
| ghthor wrote:
| You can pull it back out of the ether if you listen close
| enough. All your ancestors are here speaking to you, all is not
| lost.
| geranim0 wrote:
| Ether? Elaborate.
| glangdale wrote:
| 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.
| alex_anglin wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...
| trutannus wrote:
| Residential school is a coy name for "internment and
| reeducation camps for children".
| hnuser847 wrote:
| 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.
| trutannus wrote:
| 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.
| beerandt wrote:
| 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.
| stavros wrote:
| So more like concentration camps for children?
| hluska wrote:
| Precisely concentration camps for children. :(
| stavros wrote:
| Yay :(
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| glangdale wrote:
| You are conflating "concentration camp" with
| "extermination/death camp". The modern "concentration
| camps" were invented by the British during the Boer war.
| hluska wrote:
| 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.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| > 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?
|
| How 'nice' to frame that as a 'school'.
| gnulinux wrote:
| 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]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Amer
| ica...
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _given that mass graveyards were found._
|
| 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._
|
| * https://coolidgefoundation.org/blog/the-medical-context-
| of-c...
|
| 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:
|
| * https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-
| time-...
| ignoramous wrote:
| 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.
| sgallant wrote:
| Yes. Death (and rape) camps for children.
|
| [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.
|
| [1] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-
| june-2-2...
| slipframe wrote:
| > _Interment_ [euphemism for] _concentration camp_
|
| "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 cost 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 euphemistic.
| em500 wrote:
| 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?
| isoprophlex wrote:
| 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.
| em500 wrote:
| "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.
| jszymborski wrote:
| > 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..)
| michael1999 wrote:
| Never say never. I expect de Klerk never expected to
| testify to his crimes either.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >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.
| loceng wrote:
| 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.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| 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.
| vkou wrote:
| The most depressing thing is the lack of prosecution for the
| perpetrators of these crimes.
|
| It sends a clear message that this sort of thing _is_ something
| the country can live with.
| cperciva wrote:
| Important missing context: The school in question was built on
| top of a cemetary.
| adventured wrote:
| > 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.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| That Sounds like utter QAnon Bullshit
| 0xdeadc0de wrote:
| Could you point me to any new sources on this?
| tokai wrote:
| 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.
| neom wrote:
| 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.
| tokai wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| What should Denmark do then? Stop accepting migrants? Also is
| there even a serious source for this?
| scruffyherder wrote:
| Canadian schools are pure trash. The only people surprised by all
| of this are as always Canadians.
|
| They treated left handed people pretty shitty too but luckily
| they didn't get the chance to send us to concentration camps to
| die.
|
| I'm definitely never sending my kids to Canada, I'll send them to
| Beijing way before that.
| ghthor wrote:
| 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.
| hluska wrote:
| Being left handed and cultural genocide have absolutely nothing
| in common.
| scruffyherder wrote:
| 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.
| allannienhuis wrote:
| 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.
| scruffyherder wrote:
| Also left handed is culture, but some conformist righty
| wouldn't understand so instead we had it beaten out of us .
| hluska wrote:
| 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.
|
| That is complete and utter racist garbage.
| dang wrote:
| 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.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart,
| we'd be grateful. Note this one:
|
| " _Don 't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them
| instead._"
|
| a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls
| hluska wrote:
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| Understood and I appreciate the kind reply.
| hluska wrote:
| I owe you for calling me out. That was over the top and
| I'm pretty embarrassed. Thanks for being kind to me -
| you're loved and appreciated.
| brailsafe wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doukhobors
| neom wrote:
| 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.
| newsclues wrote:
| What does Canada need to do and what will it accomplish?
| jsjsbdkj wrote:
| 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
|
| If you just want the 94 calls to action, they're summarized
| here:
| http://www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf
| michael1999 wrote:
| We got the Truth. But did nothing about the Reconciliation.
| neom wrote:
| Remove the Indian Act.
|
| 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.
| hervature wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_in_C
| anada#U...
| neom wrote:
| 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.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| > 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.
| theluketaylor wrote:
| 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.
| hluska wrote:
| I'd vote for you.
|
| 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...
| neom wrote:
| 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.
| requin246 wrote:
| 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.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| 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 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.
|
| [0] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-
| citizenship/co...
|
| [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-
| citizenship/ne...
|
| [2] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-
| citizenship/ne...
| [deleted]
| neom wrote:
| 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?
| michael1999 wrote:
| 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.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > It certainly isn't (or shouldn't be) about descendants
| inheriting some kind of blood-guilt.
|
| But they did cash their inheritance checks.
|
| > The Canadian Crown made solemn promises in the form of
| treaties. Either Canada stands by a promise
|
| What about
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians
| michael1999 wrote:
| What about it? I believe we should honour our treaties.
| It is shameful when we don't. Did I suggest otherwise?
| hluska wrote:
| 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...:(
|
| I really needed to read your words.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > 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?
| hluska wrote:
| Sure am.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| 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.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://www.cmaj.ca/content/192/9/E223
| beiller wrote:
| 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?
| SonicScrub wrote:
| > 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.
| soperj wrote:
| Just to be clear, it wasn't just the catholic church that
| was running these, there was also the anglican church.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It was more than even then two, a great many
| denominations ran residential schools.
| soperj wrote:
| 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.
| beiller wrote:
| 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.
| pbourke wrote:
| 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.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I think China is just trying to take pot shots_
|
| Bob Rae, Canada's ambassador to the UN, had some good
| ripostes to China (and Syria):
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKqBOlLRcgQ&t=11m12s
| soperj wrote:
| best intentions situation? bullshit. This was to beat their
| culture out of them.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| "Kill the indian to save the man" was how they thought of
| it.
| hluska wrote:
| 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. :(
| monkeynotes wrote:
| Then there is this, which is admittedly unverified but if
| true would not surprise me:
| https://www.snopes.com/articles/347191/queen-kamloops-
| abduct...
|
| 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.
| hluska wrote:
| 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.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| 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.
| hluska wrote:
| 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'.
| Roscius wrote:
| Like the senior boys at the schools being taken out in
| the middle of the night to dig graves...
| hluska wrote:
| That's one of them. Have you ever read about sexual
| assault babies?
| malfist wrote:
| I think that's the first time I've ever heard genocide
| called "best intentions"
| scruffyherder wrote:
| It's not from the 16th century
| beiller wrote:
| The article doesn't mention when they died.
| Roscius wrote:
| Best intentions? Not even close - horrible racism and
| genocide.
|
| In many cases it wasn't disease, they were malnourished, and
| and in some cases beaten to death.
| [deleted]
| hluska wrote:
| 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:
|
| https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/
|
| 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.
| goalieca wrote:
| 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!!
| loceng wrote:
| 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.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| loceng wrote:
| Indeed, meanwhile the CCP will ironically use free speech
| social media platforms to try to shame and guilt Canadians
| - which I've personally encountered.
| theluketaylor wrote:
| 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.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| 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?
| cldellow wrote:
| > 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.
| soperj wrote:
| >While that recommendation was ignored at the time it was
| made, provinces are now funding it.
|
| They've been vocal about funding it now that it's in the
| media, they haven't funded anything yet.
| cldellow wrote:
| 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.
| soperj wrote:
| I'm hopeful as well. There's a history of politicians
| being politicians though.
| defaultname wrote:
| "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?
| inasio wrote:
| What time period are you talking about? The mortality rate
| you mention happened in 1830, but was an order of magnitude
| lower in the 1960s [0].
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-
| time-...
| jollybean wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/newly-discovered-
| b-c-gr...
| 8note wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.johnralstonsaul.com/non-fiction-books/a-fair-
| cou...
|
| Has some good ideas for a mental model shift
| jollybean wrote:
| "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.
| Kluny wrote:
| 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.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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).
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixties_Scoop
| mtalantikite wrote:
| 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
| teclordphrack2 wrote:
| 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.
| cperciva wrote:
| _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.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
|
| 1. Which is definitely true in Canada https://www150.stat
| can.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-645-x/2015001/income-... (sorry it
| looks like this report was discontinued after 2015 so no
| more current data is available)
| cperciva wrote:
| 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.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| ayngg wrote:
| 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.
| pempem wrote:
| 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.
| bookofsand wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP
| _(P...
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| marvin wrote:
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| The comment you respond to have link to citations. You
| dont.
| cperciva wrote:
| I'm not talking about the Sixties Scoop.
| Kluny wrote:
| 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.
| belval wrote:
| 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.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| belval wrote:
| 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].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law
| _enforc...
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _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.
| II2II wrote:
| > 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.
|
| EDIT: for clarity.
| soperj wrote:
| Then why can't they get any information about it? The list of
| kids who died at these schools is much shorter than the
| numbers that we're seeing here.
| Roscius wrote:
| The Churches are refusing to release the records.
| soperj wrote:
| So is the Canadian Government.
| defaultname wrote:
| 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.
|
| Here's one famous residential school death that has been
| heavily leaned into - https://c2cjournal.ca/2017/10/the-
| sad-truth-about-chanie-wen...
| soperj wrote:
| Really? Can you show me the current records for the
| Marieval Indian Residential School where they just found
| 751 unmarked graves?
| defaultname wrote:
| 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.
| mrow84 wrote:
| 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.
| defaultname wrote:
| 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 pejorative,
| 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").
| soperj wrote:
| Sorry, you do have a current record of how many children
| died at that school? or no?
| defaultname wrote:
| 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.
| brandon272 wrote:
| 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.
| defaultname wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.sensoft.ca/blog/cemetery-data-grave-locator-
| find...
|
| 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.
| brandon272 wrote:
| > which hasn't remotely been done
|
| How do you know this?
|
| 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.
| defaultname wrote:
| 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?
| [deleted]
| brandon272 wrote:
| > 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.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| defaultname wrote:
| Which property are you talking about? A number of these
| sites have been under aboriginal control for decades.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
|
| 1. https://globalnews.ca/news/7975128/catholic-order-bc-
| residen...
|
| 2. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-
| columbia/catholic-ord...
| graeme wrote:
| 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".
| inasio wrote:
| 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.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> 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.
| graeme wrote:
| Use some basic reasoning:
|
| * 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.
| defaultname wrote:
| "Use some basic reasoning"
|
| 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.
| theluketaylor wrote:
| 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).
| rscoots wrote:
| Ahh yes, generating a large righteous and hungry movement
| with no good ideas in place. What could possibly go wrong?
|
| I'm sure there are initiatives and policy changes the govt
| is pursuing in this space. We'd do well to learn about them
| if we do truly care.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > 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.
| reggieband wrote:
| > 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.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > the Native Indian population would prefer something
| other than money.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bay_and_Northern_Queb
| ec_...
|
| > 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...
| munk-a wrote:
| 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
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| What I meant was, a lot of tribal finance is opaque. A
| check is given but how it's spent is 100% decided by the
| local chief.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
|
| 1. http://www.akwesasne.ca/about/
| [deleted]
| diab0lic wrote:
| 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.
| II2II wrote:
| > 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.
| jollybean wrote:
| "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.
|
| And it goes on like this. It's complicated.
| reggieband wrote:
| 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.
| adriand wrote:
| 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.
| corndoge wrote:
| As an outside observer, I don't understand what action you
| think is needed? Weren't these schools abolished?
| [deleted]
| Roscius wrote:
| There still are massive levels of racism particularly in
| policing and the justice system. Kids are still dying -
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/seven-youth-
| inque...
| theluketaylor wrote:
| 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.
| nucleardog wrote:
| > there were a couple that lasted into the 90s!
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| hodder wrote:
| 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.
| pbourke wrote:
| 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.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| 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.
|
| The inertia of it all is grinding.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > 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.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Our current leader's _father_ was also the one who penned the
| disastrous and quickly withdrawn White Paper[1].
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_White_Paper
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Opening relations with China and Cuba, suspension of civil
| and constitutional rights during the October crisis and
| multiculturalism.
|
| What a legacy.
| DuncanKeith wrote:
| It's very telling that you take an issue with
| multiculturalism.
| yumraj wrote:
| > 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.
| Kluny wrote:
| 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.
| jplr8922 wrote:
| 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://indigenousfound
| ations.arts.ubc.ca/constitution_act_1...), "real change in
| Canadian Society" implies changing the constitution. Do you
| agree?
|
| Am I out of my shoes regarding these issues?
| neom wrote:
| 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.
| hluska wrote:
| 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:
|
| http://www.cba.org/cba/cle/PDF/ABOR11_Craft_Paper.pdf
|
| 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:
|
| https://commonlaw.uottawa.ca/en/people/craft-aimee
|
| 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:
|
| https://www.afn.ca/Home/
|
| Provinces also have assemblies. In Saskatchewan, we call it
| FSIN (Federation of Sovereign Indian Nations).
|
| https://www.fsin.ca/
|
| 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:
|
| https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/1990/1990canlii104/1990.
| ..
|
| 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:
|
| https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abpc/doc/2007/2007abpc278/2007a.
| ..
| [deleted]
| 99_00 wrote:
| >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?
| corndoge wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Hundreds of unmarked graves found at cemetery?
| andruc wrote:
| How many schools do you know have their own cemetary?
| cldellow wrote:
| I'm not sure what your question is asking, but this school
| operated under government control for ~85 years.
|
| Meanwhile, Canada's memorial for IRS schools recognizes that 8
| students died there: https://nctr.ca/residential-
| schools/saskatchewan-fr/marieval...
|
| So there's a bit of a discrepancy.
| [deleted]
| gadders wrote:
| Similar things happened in Ireland (but for unmarried mothers and
| orphans, rather than indigenous people):
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/mass-grave-of-...
| beloch wrote:
| 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.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| 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.
| neartheplain wrote:
| I had no idea these schools still existed in the US. Based on
| your comment, I looked up this article:
|
| https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/open-spaces/2016-02-26/to...
|
| 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:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Indian_High_School#She...
|
| >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.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| 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.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I had no idea these schools still existed in the US._
|
| Canada got the idea from the US (AFAICT). See also the Nazi's
| taking eugenics.
| loceng wrote:
| The problem is there seems to be no adults at the table in
| government, just politicians and lawyers pandering and worrying
| about liabilities it.
| faitswulff wrote:
| As a result of these discoveries, the US will be starting their
| own investigation into similar institutions:
| https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/us-boarding-schools-to-b...
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| 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.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >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.
| millerm wrote:
| I totally understand this is a tragedy, but what does this really
| have to do with hacker news?
| brandon272 wrote:
| From HN guidelines:
|
| 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.*
| ryanmentor wrote:
| Germany de-nazi-fied. Will Canada de-colonize?
| devtul wrote:
| 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.
| fukd wrote:
| Caring my foot, indigious people are subjected to heinious
| crimes even today
|
| https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/why-are-indigenous-people-in-c...
| nurgasemetey wrote:
| You know, it is genocide masked as school. What will pay for
| this? How these people will be repatriated?
| loceng wrote:
| 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.
| elevaet wrote:
| 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.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
|
| 1. https://haidaheritagecentre.com/
|
| 2. https://gwaiitrust.com/about/
| nahuel0x wrote:
| No church should be allowed to educate and host childrens.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents
| and certainly not into religious flamewar.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| zapataband1 wrote:
| preach
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