Still No Unmarked Graves

 

Thread by @jonkay on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App

A Window on the Leftist Mindset

 

Adam Smith's ungraved marker.

A long communication from a left-listing acquaintance gives insight into gauche thinking.

He writes: “I lead safaris in Kenya. There, I do not walk about in major centres alone. White privilege is seen around the world.” 

His evidence here for white privilege is exactly the evidence used to prove black discrimination in America. In America, it is supposed to be white privilege that whites can walk the streets without being stopped or harassed. Yet the need for whites to be careful when walking around in Kenya, or Harlem, is, equally, white privilege. 

This illustrates that “white privilege” is simply assumed. It is non-falsifiable.

Our correspondent then points out that we have actually known for a long time about the unmarked gravesites near residential schools that have recently been probed by radar. To his mind, the scandal is that “individual graves and the person buried has been disrespected and families not treated justly.”

But not treated justly by whom?

Whom do we usually consider responsible for marking and tending graves? In the first instance, the family. Why in this case are they not held responsible, but instead seen as victims?

If no family can be located, or the family is too poor, then it is the government’s responsibility. But this ordinarily means the local government, and certainly would have in the 19th or early 20th century. “The city where the person has died pays for the funeral, and will employ a local funeral home to manage the burial.” (talkdeath.com) 

These gravesites are on Indian reserves. The local government is the band council—indeed, they claim more than municipal sovereignty. So why are they the victims here? Why have they not tended their gravesites?

This illustrates the problem aboriginal people face; it is the same problem we saw in MP Qaqqaq’s recent farewell speech. It is learned dependency. What other Canadians do for themselves as a matter of course, aboriginal people have come to expect a distant government to do for them. This is never an efficient system: this is the way you create a permanent underclass; or a Third World nation. The chronic poverty and despair on reserves is the result.

Which brings us to our correspondent’s description of the Conservative Party: it “has a fundamental principle that small government and lower taxes is the best way forward and the private sector will use their wealth to the benefit of society.”

Which thought he dismisses out of hand. Why would they?

His description is at least partially true: Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” argues that, in a free market, even though everyone is pursuing their self-interest, the actions of all participants will tend towards the general benefit. Goods and services will be as abundant and as cheap as possible. In this sense, each individual participant is using their “wealth,” such as it is, to the benefit of society. 

If Bob, or someone else, finds Smith’s reasoning here flawed, they need to address it; not dismiss it out of hand.

But the simpler calculation, for liberals (currently often, as here, called “conservatives”), is simply that each of us has a better idea of our own needs than some distant government official, however well-intentioned. Therefore, it is less efficient and more expensive to transfer your property to him, and then let him look after us. Even assuming that no government officials take any salaries or have any self- or class interest.

If one is poor enough, granted, one may personally benefit financially. Money is taken from the relatively rich, and given to you. But this is selfish; it is at the cost of the general good.

And the example of the Indians (used here as the correct legal term) suggests where this leads. 

Some Questions on Residential Schools

 

Studying on the quad at Assiniboia Indian Residential School

It is surprisingly hard to get reliable contemporary information on the Indian residential schools. A lot of people are playing politics. To get the facts, one has to go back to original documents.

One assertion often made is that Indian families were obliged to send their children to a particular residential school. It was all done against the Indians’ will.

I suspect this may be no more than a reference to the general Canadian law that parents must send their children to school; the law against truancy. 

For I find references in the Truth And Reconciliation Commission final report to concern about Indian parents pulling their children out of the schools.

“Student complaints about food hurt recruitment. Kuper Island school principal J. N. Lemmens pointed out in 1891 that it was very important to provide the students with good food and clothing at his school on the British Columbia coast. He said that, unlike First Nations in other parts of the country, coastal First Nations ‘did not suffer for want of food.’ Their children were ‘used to being well fed at home.’ If the quality of food provided at the school was poor, the school might fall into disrepute” (TRC Final Report, Volume 1, pp. 488-9)

The same concern is expressed in a government report in 1907: that student attendance at the residential schools has been falling off, as parents did not want to send their children so far from home. (P.H. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, Department of Indian Affairs, p. 16).

For this to have been a concern, attendance at any particular school must have been voluntary.

Indeed, how could it not have been? The schools were generally denominationally run. Wouldn’t it have been obvious and necessary to send Catholic children to a Catholic school, regardless of their home address, and Anglican children to an Anglican school, and so forth? Meaning parents would have a choice of which residential school to have their children attend, by declaring their denominational preference. Even if students had to attend some residential school, the schools would be in competition for students. Meaning they would have a need to keep the students, and their parents, satisfied.

And it is not logically possible that Indian students were even required to attend a residential school. Because only about one third of Indian school-aged children ever did, even at the height of the residential schools.

It is also obvious that the government itself would prefer they not attend: at a residential school, the government had to pay for the student’s food and lodging. If they attended regular day schools, or just stayed at home, the government spared considerable expense.

The simple fact that parents could withdraw their children seems, at a stroke, to discredit most accusations of abuse, starvation, or cultural genocide.

Now as to those unmarked graves so much in the news recently.

We have always known there was a high mortality rate in the residential schools. For whatever reason—and science cannot agree on the reason—Canada’s First Nations have always been highly vulnerable to tuberculosis, among other diseases.  A 1907 survey of schools across the Prairies reports: “of 1,537 pupils returned from 15 schools which have been in operation on an average of eleven years, 7 percent are sick or in poor health and 24 percent are reported dead.” All of these deaths were believed to be from tuberculosis. (P.H. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, Department of Indian Affairs, p. 18).

Can the schools fairly be blamed? There was no cure for tuberculosis until 1946. Granted, bringing students together to educate them might cause the infection to spread to previously uninfected students; but what was the government to do? Not educate the children? They could and did turn away any students showing active symptoms; but TB can remain latent for a lifetime. The rate of tuberculosis in the schools ended up being only half that on the reserves, so the average student was still safer there than at home.

What about the charge that the schools tried to destroy Indian culture by requiring students to speak English or French?

There are several reasons for this requirement that have nothing to do with “cultural genocide.” First, given that the schools were in the business of teaching English or French, the best method is by immersion. Anyone who has studied in a language school will be familiar with this “English only” policy. Second, in almost no cases would the students at a school all be from the same language group. Speaking their first language instead of French or English would freeze out any minorities. Third, why would learning a new language cause you to unlearn a language you already knew? Does learning geometry make you forget your arithmetic? Granted that it is possible, through lack of practice, we have never considered this an important argument against further education. 

Finally, the evidence is ambiguous that this prohibition on using one’s first language was either widespread or, when imposed, was strictly enforced.

Many Indian children, no doubt, hated school. Me too. Perhaps we all deserve compensation.

The Kamloops Cemetery in Perspective

 

At last I find someone else making the points I have been making about all those sinister unmarked graves near residential schools.