Graves at Residential schools

[techrtr]

So, educating children is cultural genocide? Let's say a family moves here from India. They have 5 kids under the age of 12 who speak only Punjabi. They come from a rural area and have never been exposed to technology. When they get go Canada, the parents refuse to let them go to school or learn English because they don't want them exposed to western culture, ideas, language or technology.
Do you think that that is a good thing?
We can change definitions when it's politically expedient. However, the fact is, sending kids to school so they could learn the skills they needed to survive in the modern world simply was not genocide. Sending the Jews to Auschwitz was genocide. Totally different things.

Come on, you are going to call this simply "educating children" for their own good?
Then why didn't they just remove white children or children of European settlers, against their parents' wishes, take them off to some where far away, and if they died, just bury them without telling authorities, without notifying parents, without returning them to their families for proper burial?
We don't know if those children died of natural causes, or neglect, or abuse, because their deaths were not reported or investigated. So one sure sign of something nefarious going on, is when bodies end up in the ground with no accounting to their community or families as to what exactly occurred to cause their deaths.
This was not just "sending kids to school". This was an attempt to wipe out their family as caretakers, their cultural connection, their language, and their right to a decent burial. If it wasn't genocide, then why cover it up?

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm calling it. A lot of those kids probably came from very remote areas where there was no way they would ever have gone to school. Some of their parents probably didn't speak English. Imagine growing up in Canada and only speaking Cree. What kind of options would a young person have under those conditions. You can complain about cultural genocide but cultural disruption has happened everywhere. When the Romans occupied Britain, they changed the culture there. Maybe the British government should sue Italy for the baths, aquaducts and neatly laid out towns that the Romans left behind.

Everybody on this forum with a few exceptions are jumping to conclusions about what went on at the residential school in Kamloops. The school was in operation for almost 100 years. There are what 215 suspected burials. That works out to just over 2 deaths per year. During the same period, how many non-native kids died every year from sickness in Kelowna? Until the site has been thoroughly investigated, no one should be jumping to conclusions and assuming that the Kamloops school was a house of horrors.

[Silverstarqueen]

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm calling it. A lot of those kids probably came from very remote areas where there was no way they would ever have gone to school. Some of their parents probably didn't speak English. Imagine growing up in Canada and only speaking Cree. What kind of options would a young person have under those conditions. You can complain about cultural genocide but cultural disruption has happened everywhere. When the Romans occupied Britain, they changed the culture there. Maybe the British government should sue Italy for the baths, aquaducts and neatly laid out towns that the Romans left behind.

Everybody on this forum with a few exceptions are jumping to conclusions about what went on at the residential school in Kamloops. The school was in operation for almost 100 years. There are what 215 suspected burials. That works out to just over 2 deaths per year. During the same period, how many non-native kids died every year from sickness in Kelowna? Until the site has been thoroughly investigated, no one should be jumping to conclusions and assuming that the Kamloops school was a house of horrors.

We won't know what happened until there is an investigation, that is the point, there was no proper accounting for the deaths of these children? Now the Catholic priests, if nothing else, were normally great documentors, of births, of deaths, of burials, and certainly knew what was going on in those schools. We know these schools were houses of horrors because we have the testimonies of many many people who were forced to go there. That they were forced, that they were treated very differently from the children of settlers, that they were removed from their families, is no secret and does not need to be proven. So this was NOT education. This was a deliberate attempt to erase a couple of generations from the history of Native Canadians.
Yes, this is 215 bodies, of unknow cause of death. There are also rumors of other burial sites, these also need to be investigated. Since these burials were not documented, that alone points to some serious misconduct, and one has to wonder why? Why would they cover up the deaths of these 215 children. Every Catholic church in the world, normally documents in detail births, deaths, and burials, which children are born to which parents. Where are the documents? How many other bodies were never accounted for? Why not?

[Fancy]

techrtr has raised valid points and there does seem to be "jumping to conclusions" even though all the facts haven't been disclosed. It's possible documentation did exist and may too be buried. Further investigation does need to continue.

[Silverstarqueen]

All of these residential schools have been asked/told to turn over any records or documentations they have. These 215 appear not to be included in those previous documents. How many other schools have burial sites without documentation? Who were these children? Where did they come from? No headstones, why? Demanding answers, from those who were supposedly incharge of these schools, is not "jumping to conclusions". The Church has had decades now to get their act together and come up with the documentations, and it was like pulling teeth. Someone knew each of those children that died, someone knew there were 215 little bodies there, and they weren't telling.
I can go online and find records of some child of my grandparents who died a century ago infancy. So it's not like it was normal to just stash bodies in the ground without a record of who was buried in a pandemic, or if a child died in infancy. So if there don't seem to be documents, then someone destroyed them. For what reason , would be a good question.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/po ... cle549066/
"The Roman Catholic Church is balking at the release of Indian residential schools documents that name individual church members, insisting its concern is purely about respecting Canada's privacy laws and not an attempt to cover up new allegations of abuse.

But the research director for Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission says the denominations involved in residential schools are being unco-operative, and suggests the Catholic church in particular fears more abuse stories will come out against living members.

The Conservative government and the churches that helped run Canada's Indian residential schools are sitting on mountains of archived material, but not a single page has yet been turned over to the commission.

For years, the churches, Ottawa and representatives of former students have negotiated behind the scenes over how to release the documents while respecting Canada's privacy laws. All the churches say they are being co-operative.
There now appears to be broad agreement that names of individual students will be released only with their permission, but it remains undecided whether the names of church members - whether dead or alive - will be revealed.
Pierre Baribeau, the lawyer who speaks on behalf of 54 Catholic entities involved in the agreement, said Catholics are the ones waiting on the commission to produce a clear policy for how documents can be released while respecting federal and provincial privacy laws.

"The TRC does not have a free fishing expedition. We are bound by the law," he said. "The law does not allow us to deliver documents which are pertaining to individuals who are named in some documents. We're trying to find a way to protect ourselves because the law does not allow us [to disclose] unless we have the consent of the individual… Whether they are or are not related to allegations is not the subject matter [of the discussions]"

Mr. Baribeau said regardless of how this debate ends, the commission will still receive 99 per cent of the documents it seeks from Catholic archives.
The commission's research director, Trent University professor and historian John Milloy, described the situation far more bluntly in comments published recently in a Trent campus newspaper.

"The churches are not being co-operative at all," he is quoted as telling the Arthur newspaper. "The Catholics are especially wary. They might say, 'If we give you the documents, John, and they're the diary of priest so-and-so and this opens him up to liability - because he was buggering boys in the basement and that sort of thing - and he sues us [the church] we're in all sorts of trouble.' "

Reached by The Globe, Prof. Milloy confirmed making the published comments but said the example of the priest's diaries was hypothetical. He said his main frustration is that the Catholic Church is made up of many different entities that have their own unique legal concerns. With funding from Ottawa, the Roman Catholic Church ran more than 70 per cent of the Indian residential schools, which operated from the late 1800s to the 1970s.

The United Church's representative in these closed-door meetings, Rev. James Scott, said his church is not insisting on consent from its church members, only consent from former students named in the documents. He said he has come across concern among Catholics that retirees living in church residences will be embarrassed.

"There are former staff who live in community - brothers, sisters, priests and so on - and I know that some of the concern in the Catholic Church has been about the reputations and the kind of history related to people who are still living in community," Mr. Scott said.

The churches' promise to publicly disclose their private archives to the commission was considered a key victory by former students at the time of the 2007 multibillion-dollar out-of-court settlement between former students, the federal government and the churches that helped run the schools.
The suggestion that Catholic leaders are opposing the full release of documents comes as the church is in full damage control over widespread international cases of child abuse.
Representatives of the Presbyterian and Anglican churches indicated that the Protestant faiths do not share the same privacy concerns as the Catholics and blame any delay on technical issues such as whether to disclose scans or microfiche.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has a five-year mandate and is planning its first of seven national events for this June in Winnipeg. The next meeting of the parties over documents will take place in Winnipeg next week.
Henriette Thompson, the Anglican representative in these closed-door meetings, insisted the negotiations over documents are approaching a conclusion.
"There are some differences," she said. "I'd say there's a high degree of consensus among the Protestant churches."
Editor's note An earlier version of this article included an incorrect date for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's first event. This version has been corrected

[Fancy]

...Demanding answers, from those who were supposedly incharge of these schools, is not "jumping to conclusions"....

That isn't what "jumping to conclusions" means. Of course people should be demanding answers BEFORE jumping to conclusions - let the investigators delve into the matter and release information they hopefully find to the family and then the public that they have yet become aware of.

[stuphoto]

In situations like this I really hope there is a heaven and hell.
If there is I strongly suspect that those in charge will never be seen in Heaven.

[Silverstarqueen]

I am not saying there have not been some injustices toward these people in the past, but there is not a single ethnicity under the sun that hasn't felt injustices in one way or another, at some point in time. Today's generations of Canadians have nothing to do with it. I am an immigrant to this country, and I have never owned a slave, killed someone, nor had any of my ancestors done any of that. And I paid dearly for every square inch of land I own. I have nothing to "reconcile" with anyone. Get over it, and move on.

Natives tend to not get over things, and demand demand demand. We're now in 2021 and this happened how many years ago? That's correct, today's generation of Canadians have nothing to do with this.

There are people among us today whose close relatives, brothers, sisters, cousins, were taken away by force and never returned home, were never accounted for. This was a deliberate program carried out by the goverment and the church. It makes me mad as hell and very sad, and these were not even my children. So I cannot even imagine the sorrow and pain felt by those people who have had no answers in all this time. The denials of the chance to bury their own loved ones, no information given, I guess if it's not your family, you just are not going to get it, unless possibly you have lost a child or sister/brother to someone who took them and they were never seen again. Would we, as a society tolerate this if it were children of our community? We are all one community, even if we did not know these children, these families personally.

[rustled]

...Demanding answers, from those who were supposedly incharge of these schools, is not "jumping to conclusions"....

That isn't what "jumping to conclusions" means. Of course people should be demanding answers BEFORE jumping to conclusions - let the investigators delve into the matter and release information they hopefully find to the family and then the public that they have yet become aware of.

I agree, Fancy. One of the questions being "demanded" is "No headstones, why?" Many people during this period were buried without headstones. The stone markers in old cemeteries were paid for by family or friends. Wooden markers were more common and deteriorated very quickly, usually within ten years - some of these graves may have been marked, and some may have been marked several times over. It seems likely to me they will be using every available technology to look for evidence there were wooden crosses, but we don't yet know and may never know whether any of these children were buried by people who cried over them, or buried by people who didn't care about them at all. We certainly shouldn't expect the same answer for all of these children.

Another question is around documentation. Much of the BMD record for the earlier part of this period in western Canada is incomplete, records were lost to fire or flood or mold, lost in transit on stages and trains and ships, destroyed by people who didn't know their worth, etc. Some may have been intentionally destroyed. We don't yet know, and may never know, what records were kept and what became of those records.

It's difficult for us today, with telephones and computers and highways and airports, to imagine how difficult and complicated it would have been to reach the family of a child from north central BC and arrange to ship a body home. If the child had died of what was known to be a contagious disease, it would have made little sense to expose others - think of our current pandemic, and have someone travel with the body by stagecoach with covid, stopping every few hours to change horses along the way.

We live during a time when finding answers to some of our questions about who these children were, how they died and why they are buried where they were is more do-able than ever. IMO, the least they deserve from us is that we honour them by seeking first the truth about as many of them as possible, rather than allowing ourselves to make broad assumptions.

I expect we'll find the unvarnished truth of each of these children is sad enough without any narrative embellishment.

[techrtr]

In situations like this I really hope there is a heaven and hell.
If there is I strongly suspect that those in charge will never be seen in Heaven.

Calm down - it hasn't even been proven that those are graves or that they contain human remains. GPR results are easily misinterpreted. Until they are excavated, no one will know for sure if there are graves at the site, and how many there are.

[Fancy]

There's certainly more information that hasn't been released yet and it will take time to confirm and document all the evidence.

Preliminary work in confirming that the remains of the children were on the reserve began in the early 2000s, Casimir said, with the radar technology confirming the stories.

https://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/news/t ... 5t0NWbKDaI

[Silverstarqueen]

In situations like this I really hope there is a heaven and hell.
If there is I strongly suspect that those in charge will never be seen in Heaven.

Calm down - it hasn't even been proven that those are graves or that they contain human remains. GPR results are easily misinterpreted. Until they are excavated, no one will know for sure if there are graves at the site, and how many there are.

215 has been reported. Highly unlikely that 215 animals were buried there. Does not matter if it was 200 or 250, someone knows who was buried there and when. The catholics priests were very meticulous about death records, and likely had a register of who attended their school, and what was their outcome, graduation, return home, moved to another school. It would be strange if they did not. Someone took roll call on these children every day until they died. So if the records are not forthcoming, why has this taken decades to acheive? It is not an "assumption" that the Catholic church was keeping these records to themselves, and that they were requested for many years. So if those records "disappeared" or just were not turned over, they must have an explanation for that.
When you take someone's child by force, you have a duty to know who they are, where they are, and whether or not they died. I would be interested in the laws around burial, because generally you can't just pop little bodies in the ground and call it a day.

[Fancy]

Expect a report by mid June.

To the band’s knowledge, these are undocumented deaths, but it is working with the Royal B.C. Museum and other groups to determine if there are any existing records of them. The band is also working with the BC Coroners Service and engaging the home communities of students who attended the school to determine if any historical missing persons may be a match.

There are documented deaths of students at the school. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba has on its website a list of the names of 52 children who died while at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The list of deaths range in dates from 1900 to 1971 and are part of the centre’s Missing Children Project. The children’s names are not accompanied by their ages.

Would be interested to know if a cause of death was listed on those identified.
https://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/news/m ... 1.24324498

[techrtr]

Calm down - it hasn't even been proven that those are graves or that they contain human remains. GPR results are easily misinterpreted. Until they are excavated, no one will know for sure if there are graves at the site, and how many there are.

215 has been reported. Highly unlikely that 215 animals were buried there. Does not matter if it was 200 or 250, someone knows who was buried there and when. The catholics priests were very meticulous about death records, and likely had a register of who attended their school, and what was their outcome, graduation, return home, moved to another school. It would be strange if they did not. Someone took roll call on these children every day until they died. So if the records are not forthcoming, why has this taken decades to acheive? It is not an "assumption" that the Catholic church was keeping these records to themselves, and that they were requested for many years. So if those records "disappeared" or just were not turned over, they must have an explanation for that.
When you take someone's child by force, you have a duty to know who they are, where they are, and whether or not they died. I would be interested in the laws around burial, because generally you can't just pop little bodies in the ground and call it a day.

Didn't say they could be animals. Blips could be caused by lots of things. Again, until there are excavations, don't jump to conclusions.

[Fancy]

... The catholics priests were very meticulous about death records, and likely had a register of who attended their school, and what was their outcome, graduation, return home, moved to another school. It would be strange if they did not. Someone took roll call on these children every day until they died. So if the records are not forthcoming, why has this taken decades to acheive? It is not an "assumption" that the Catholic church was keeping these records to themselves, and that they were requested for many years. So if those records "disappeared" or just were not turned over, they must have an explanation for that.
When you take someone's child by force, you have a duty to know who they are, where they are, and whether or not they died. I would be interested in the laws around burial, because generally you can't just pop little bodies in the ground and call it a day.

It's been stated files were destroyed so getting those meticulous death records may not be possible now.

[Fancy]

Have been advised of the possibility that GPR isn't as reliable as one might think but a step in providing an area to search anyway. An explanation here:

While GPR is one of the most effective forms of non-destructive testing, it is not 100% accurate. The variables we have discussed here such as the conditions and material of the scanning area, along with the person using the equipment all affect the accuracy.

https://www.xradar.ca/blog/common-misco ... 20accuracy.