Genocide in Kamloops?

 

I have been puzzled about what the Kamloops Residential School is accused of, given preliminary reports of the discovery of 215 bodies in a “mass grave” somewhere near the grounds. So what?

Now I know: I just saw a video clip of National Chief Perry Bellegarde accusing the school of “genocide.” Chief Bobby Cameron of Saskatchewan accused it of “first degree murder.”

Unmarked mass graves have been uncovered on the banks of the Rideau Canal, and in downtown Kingston, Toronto, and Montreal, and nobody has thought to accuse anyone of either murder or genocide. These were Irish immigrants who died of malaria, cholera, or typhus. We know tuberculosis was a severe problem among native children. Why would anyone assume murder? We stop seeing things rationally as soon as “First Nations” are involved.

Another YouTube clip interviewed an expert on ground-penetrating radar of the sort used in Kamloops. She explained that this technique cannot detect any actual bodies: only the disturbance of the dirt from the digging of a grave, or a coffin.

In other words, in order to be able to produce a number “215” the people studying the Kamloops site must have discovered 215 separate burials. 

The next question: how, were the initial reports able to claim that those buried included “children as young as three.” No bodies were visible, let alone forensically examined. Surely this can only have been estimated from the size of the coffins. These children seem to have been buried in coffins, not just put in the ground.

It is odd to call this a “mass grave.” Mass graves are what were found along the Rideau. These are, rather, individual unmarked graves.

Possibly they were not always unmarked. They might have been marked by wooden crosses that have decayed away.

We can only guess; but mass murder or genocide is about the least likely explanation available.