Breaking News: A Child Died 125 Years Ago

 

LeBret Indian Residential School, Saskatchewan

A human jawbone has been found at the site of the former LeBret Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan. Coroners say it is the jaw of a child 4-6 years old, and he or she died somewhere around 125 years ago.

This is being played as big news in the media, as proof that children were subject to genocide at the residential schools and were buried in mass graves. However, one cannot help but notice that, after loudly and internationally declaring there were mass graves, and after a year and a half of searching since across the Canadian West, this is all the solid evidence anyone has produced. One child’s jawbone.

Was it ever in an unmarked grave? Perhaps the grave marker has been lost. Perhaps the remains were inadvertently exhumed from a marked grave by gophers or ground squirrels or the spring rains.

Did he or she die of unnatural causes? Child mortality 125 years ago was high. “One third of all children born in 1830 [in Canada] did not make it to their fifth birthday. Child mortality remained above 25 percent for the remainder of the nineteenth century, before falling at a much faster rate throughout the 1900s.” (Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-time-child-mortality-rate/#:~:text=Child%20mortality%20in%20Canada%2C%201830%2D2020&text=This%20means%20that%20one%20third,faster%20rate%20throughout%20the%201900s.) Tuberculosis was common among native children, in the schools or on the reserves.

Was he or she a student at the school? School starts at six; they didn’t do kindergarten back then. This skeleton is just within possible range. The school sits in a reserve; this might have been any child living on the reserve.

Finally, if this was a student at the school, and there was foul play, murders happen everywhere. Why does this reflect on the school, and not on the government of the reserve?

A child died about 125 years ago. For those who care deeply, there is a more immediate problem. One word. Abortion.