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First Nations - CF help, protests, solutions, residential schools, etc. (merged)

medicineman said:
Phuquing people are more and more mentally challenged these days...
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Speaking of mentally challenged...

According to the report, Gazan is proposing legislation that would make Indian Residential School denialism a hate crime.
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Still waiting on that proof...

Not one has yet to be conclusive of genocide, never mind confirmed to be kids or people.
 
Quirky said:
Still waiting on that proof...

Not one has yet to be conclusive of genocide, never mind confirmed to be kids or people.
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The claims are that these are unmarked graves. That does not automatically equate to genocide. These are residential facilities that ran for many decades in a period where the childhood mortality rate was much higher than it is today. It is only natural that there would have been deaths at these facilities and that those that passed away would have been buried. There have also been suggestions that some of these unmarked cemeteries served the local communities as well.

It only seems to be people on both radical ends of the issue that have been making the leap from burial sites that are simply unmarked and some type of nefarious mass grave situation with the inference that those in the graves were the victims of intentional violence.

Franky I'd be highly surprised if there were not cemeteries near these residential schools. And if there are people interred there then the site deserves to be respected regardless whether you consider the people buried there to have simply passed from the normal causes of death in that age/place or to have been victims of a system that forced attendance in a poorly supported institution where disease was allowed to fester and harsh punishments would result in physical/emotional damage (or worse).

To me both those that suggest that these are mass graves of murdered children and those that deny the very possibility that people are buried near these facilities are equally off base.
 
This whole thing of children in unmarked graves, really bothers me to a great extent.

I am sure the government at the time had good intentions and saw a need for the Native children to have an education. Then the plan went sideways and have no real over site or controls. Afterall we were raised to trust that churches would do not evil and all leaders in the church were good people. But without real controls and real leadership all plans go to ruin. We all have seen or witnessed a power trip.

Now going back to my childhood in grade 5, my parents ( meaning my mom) decided that public school was evil, and I would get a better education at RC School just up the street from my home. 3 minute walk if you could not walk a straight line.

It was a school with a completely paved over school yard. There was this big puddle on the school yard and it always smelled, ( rotten leaves, trash, rain water etc always smells) . The school yard story was that that part of the school yard was over an Indian grave yard. We were too young to know about residential schools and the issues surrounding the school, ( late 70s, maybe 79 or 80,) but someone came up with the idea it was a grave yard and that story has stuck to me like glue. Ever since reading about unmarked graves at schools, and Native children buried at some schools. I have always wondered how that story of the puddle got started. I still live near that school and it is now abandoned and as I walk by where the puddle was, ( grassed over as pavement was removed years ago) I wonder how kids got the story, or how it started , or if there is any truth to the story. 40 plus years later I swear I can still smell the puddle and there is no puddle now.
 
Another thing to consider is just because there isn’t a tombstone today doesn’t mean there wasn’t one in the past. Many graves were marked with wooden crosses, without constant maintenance of those crosses they will rot away within several decades.
 
most small towns have a Pioneer Cemetery with of couple of barely legible stones often located on a concrete slab in the centre of the area. Very few are actually in position over what could be the actual grave. Many of the stones indicate that a child was buried there. For the time frame of the cemetery there are very few stones remaining; most graves are now unmarked. Old photographs sometimes show that there were a number of wooden markers. Over the years as well I imagine that the stones were damaged, weathered or otherwise rendered unreadable and eventually trucked away since they interfered with maintenance.. These chilcren weren't abused, at least not likely, and they weren't thrown into an unmarked hole. From what I have seen the people buried at the schools weren't dumped into an unmarked hole either but neither were stones placed as markers; probably due to cost and availability. The bodies seem to have been laid out in proper rows and you can't know where to put the next one if the previous isn't marked. There would have been people at each school who truly cared. The ones who should be castigated are those who kept the schools running into the 1970's. People like Ryerson were trying to ensure the survival of the tribes in their society. The schools were never intended to be mandatory.
 
GR66 said:
To me both those that suggest that these are mass graves of murdered children and those that deny the very possibility that people are buried near these facilities are equally off base.
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The possibility is definitely there, just like there is a possibility that god might exist. It will likely be impossible to prove anything at this point in time and calling someone a 'denialist' is far-fetched when nothing has been proven yet.

From the article above:

"[We need to] pressure the government and the churches to do the right thing so our survivors can find peace."
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They have yet to say what the 'right thing' is, much like the entire reconciliation movement, and what their survivors need to find peace.
 
Not uncommon (in Ontario anyway) to see a cemetery on the side of the road where the headstones are strangely close together. It's a sign that the headstones have been moved from the original burial site as the original cemetery site has otherwise been re-purposed.

As has been mentioned above, unmarked doesn't mean some sort of secret burial site. These sites are often lost to history and not necessarily due to some hidden evil intent. That being said, for families that in many cases lost touch with their loved ones and never learned of their fate these sites will obviously evoke strong emotional feelings and should be respected.
 
How do you define residential school denialism? I think making it a hate crime will be a slippery slope. Where do you draw the line. Is debating the cause of death for some of these children denialism? Is legitimately questioning some of the unfounded numbers that some far-left groups have claimed as to how many unmarked graves have actually been found? I once heard someone say to an audience (this was a musician), that there had been 10, 000 unmarked graves found in Ontario alone. At this point, the grand total in Ontario was zero.
 
So . . . taking a viewpoint that is contrary to another viewpoint should be a 'hate crime'? Interesting concept in a democracy.

I'm unclear what is actually alleged to have happened. It seems "they" entered onto the site, with shovels. Did someone shoo them away? Did they dig? Some kind of actual evidence would be helpful.

I'm also curious about "cultural protocols" about taking photos and videos. Of what? Are said cultural protocols published anywhere or are they, like other bits of oral history, plucked from the air when convenient? Do these ancient beliefs somehow speak to digital images? Have they gone after Google Earth and anybody else who runs a satellite imaging system?
 
Personally, I think the government was just trying to wipe First Nations out by whitewashing them. I bet a lot of deceased children were just discarded like garbage. Terrible.

The elephant in the room with this series of unmarked graves stories is that there is no beneficial reason to the various FN reservations/tribes to have these children found, buried, and that chapter put in the past. The money, for lack of a better way to phrase it, is in the continued victim label staying on top of the news stack.

Between the government and FN leadership, FN's will be victims for the next 200 years.
 
GR66 said:
The claims are that these are unmarked graves. That does not automatically equate to genocide. These are residential facilities that ran for many decades in a period where the childhood mortality rate was much higher than it is today. It is only natural that there would have been deaths at these facilities and that those that passed away would have been buried. There have also been suggestions that some of these unmarked cemeteries served the local communities as well.

It only seems to be people on both radical ends of the issue that have been making the leap from burial sites that are simply unmarked and some type of nefarious mass grave situation with the inference that those in the graves were the victims of intentional violence.

Franky I'd be highly surprised if there were not cemeteries near these residential schools. And if there are people interred there then the site deserves to be respected regardless whether you consider the people buried there to have simply passed from the normal causes of death in that age/place or to have been victims of a system that forced attendance in a poorly supported institution where disease was allowed to fester and harsh punishments would result in physical/emotional damage (or worse).

To me both those that suggest that these are mass graves of murdered children and those that deny the very possibility that people are buried near these facilities are equally off base.
Click to expand...
At the Huronia Regional Centre in Orillia there was lots and lots of stuff going on back in the day, including a whole building for pregnancies. What ever happened to those babies I wonder?

The ground penetrating radar discovered something. Unless someone went around and dug a bunch of trenches and filled them in for the fun of it just so we had something to comment on, something happened or was going on. Or the ground penetrating radar is completely unreliable but that is not what I have been told in the past in conversations with geologists and archaeologists doing surveys
 
Jarnhamar said:
Personally, I think the government was just trying to wipe First Nations out by whitewashing them. I bet a lot of deceased children were just discarded like garbage. Terrible.

The elephant in the room with this series of unmarked graves stories is that there is no beneficial reason to the various FN reservations/tribes to have these children found, buried, and that chapter put in the past. The money, for lack of a better way to phrase it, is in the continued victim label staying on top of the news stack.

Between the government and FN leadership, FN's will be victims for the next 200 years.
Click to expand...
Eugenics was very popular at the beginning of the 20th century and I suspect a lot of the senior civil service bought into that load of crap. The 1922 report about the poor conditions leading to a higher than average mortality rate that was buried by the senior management is in my mind indicative of thinking that Eugenics encouraged. Also the Canadian Government putting a massive project in place, mismanaging it and penny pinching itself into a crisis is just so Canadian. For me I can see why the residential school made sense in the 1870, where slave raiding was still taking place on the westcoast. However by 1910, there was no excuse for seizing peoples children and the goal of "integration" was being hampered mainly by racist attitudes of the whites and by the Indian Act that prevented free movement and the abilty to succeed.
 
suffolkowner said:
At the Huronia Regional Centre in Orillia there was lots and lots of stuff going on back in the day, including a whole building for pregnancies. What ever happened to those babies I wonder?

The ground penetrating radar discovered something. Unless someone went around and dug a bunch of trenches and filled them in for the fun of it just so we had something to comment on, something happened or was going on. Or the ground penetrating radar is completely unreliable but that is not what I have been told in the past in conversations with geologists and archaeologists doing surveys
Click to expand...

Ground penetrating radar only tells you there's an anomaly. It doesn't tell you what, if anything, is there.

The Camsell Hospital was rumoured to have graves on the site, and several spots were identified. When it was dug up, nothing was found.

 
Maxman1 said:
Ground penetrating radar only tells you there's an anomaly. It doesn't tell you what, if anything, is there.

The Camsell Hospital was rumoured to have graves on the site, and several spots were identified. When it was dug up, nothing was found.

Click to expand...
suffolkowner said:
At the Huronia Regional Centre in Orillia there was lots and lots of stuff going on back in the day, including a whole building for pregnancies. What ever happened to those babies I wonder?

The ground penetrating radar discovered something. Unless someone went around and dug a bunch of trenches and filled them in for the fun of it just so we had something to comment on, something happened or was going on. Or the ground penetrating radar is completely unreliable but that is not what I have been told in the past in conversations with geologists and archaeologists doing surveys
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yeah thats what i said
 
I wonder how much of this is more government callousness and poor record-keeping vs. something more nefarious. I have no doubt that many within 'the system' back then had a rather racist view of FN peoples (and many other races), but in many instances we are applying contemporary social attitudes to events of many years ago.

Regarding the Huronia Regional Centre (in today's terms, a mental health facility), many of the residents, particularly in the early days, were simply turned over to the province by the families - they became wards of the state. So-called 'warehousing' of mentally ill people was a not-uncommon social response back in the day. The 'anomalies' were detected in the facility's cemetery; I'm not aware anomalies were found elsewhere on the former grounds.

HRC was only one of many around the province, most of which are closed now and many of the former residents are now in the community; in my view without adequate supports. At the time, the Ontario government promised community-based group homes and support for families, most which didn't materialize.
 
My guess a bit of both, there were a number of people in charge in the early 20th century that could not GAF about the FN and their kids and saw them as useless. There were good people that tried to change things but were hampered by the former and by classical Canadian incompetence.
 
Colin Parkinson said:
My guess a bit of both, there were a number of people in charge in the early 20th century that could not GAF about the FN and their kids and saw them as useless. There were good people that tried to change things but were hampered by the former and by classical Canadian incompetence.
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And indifference to the plight of others. "Why should we care about them?" attitude.
 
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