An Inconvenient Truth

 

Small Dead Animals has uncovered a piece from the Regina Leader-:Post reporting on the local Indian Bands protesting the closing of the Marieval Residential School in 1971. The same one at which 750 or so unmarked graves have been found.

Not only did the Indians themselves ask for the schools to be established, they still wanted them when the government wanted to shut them down. 

"The pupils are generally children from broken homes, orphans or are from inadequate homes." They had nowhere else to go.

And the Indians wanted the religious instruction.

"'Children in the residential school get a measure of correction, discipline and religious training and this should be taken into consideration, when plans are under study for the phasing out of the school,' the spokesman said.

While residential schools are not the best, they meet the most needs of the children. Children in foster homes are deprived of correction, discipline and religious training. The older members were disciplined and given religious training and 'we must get back to these old traditions,' the spokesman said."

By Ruth Shaw, Staff Reporter

YORKTON (Staff) – A resolution asking that the Marieval Residental School be kept open as long as the Indian people want it, was passed by the chiefs and counsellors of eight Indian bands at a regional meeting held Thursday.

The meeting was held in the Royal Canadian Legion Hall, with Joe Whitehawk of Yorkton, district
supervisor, as chairman.

Various spokesmen said the pupils are generally children from broken homes, orphans or are from inadequate homes. There is a great need for the school and the need is increasing, rather than diminishing. Many of the children have no other place to stay, as many have only grandparents, who through lack of space, health or age are unable to look after them.

The alternative is foster homes, which will cost just as much money. Children in the residential school get a measure of correction, discipline and religious training and this should be taken into consideration, when plans are under study for the phasing out of the school, the spokesman said.

While residential schools are not the best, they meet the most needs of the children. Children in foster homes are deprived of correction, discipline and religious training. The older members were disciplined and given religious training and “we must get back to these old traditions,” the spokesman said. The spokesman, who is a community development officer, said the Marievale Residential School must be expanded one step further and a junior high school established.

Another spokesman said the Indian people passed a resolution asking that the school remain open and it should not be up to the department to say whether the school should be closed.

Another said that if the request is made it should remain open and “the people should not be bribed to close the place.”

Chief Antoine Cote of the Cote reserve said the people on his reserve are not satisfied with the integration of Indian students at Kamsack.

“They claim there is no discrimination, but there is and we realize there is. One of the reasons of phasing out the student residential schools is so our children can be sent to so called integrated schools,” he said.

On Cancelling Canada Day

 

There are many calls in the media to cancel Canada Day this year, because of the unmarked graves of Indian children found in Kamloops and Marieval recently.

I am pleased to see a new Leger Poll finds no support for the idea. Scott Adams regularly observes that, no matter what cockamamie question you ask the shuffling public, a steady 20-25% will vote for anything. But not even this lunatic fringe is on the bandwagon for the cancel-Canada-Day parade. Asked the question. “do you feel with all the questions about Canada and its historical record, it would be best to cancel Canada Day this year?” only 14% answered yes. Even though salesmen say when forced to choose, people always prefer to say “yes” than “no.”

The ruling elite has gone stark bonkers. Canadians in general remain resolutely sane. In fact, this smells like a popular tsunami lurking just below the surface.

More Unmarked Graves Found in Saskatchewan

 

Enough said?

I am increasingly scandalized by the general reaction, at least in the media, to the announced discovery of 215 unmarked graves near the Kamloops Indian Residential School; and today of maybe 751 more more near Marieval Residential School in Saskatchewan. People are talking about cancelling Canada Day in response.

What exactly do they think has been demonstrated by the discovery of unmarked graves?

Are they imagining the children were murdered? If they had been, would the police, the parents, the Department of Indian Affairs, the church bodies, or the Indian bands not have noticed at the time? Mustn’t they have all then been complicit in some vast conspiracy?

Are they imagining the children died of neglect? Estimates are that one third to one half of all children in the 19th century died before the age of five. High child mortality was a fact of life. Indian reserves, in particular, were notoriously riddled with tuberculosis: Eight times the national average. Two studies on the Prairies in the early 20th century found that 80 to 100 % of all Indian children entering schools already had tuberculosis. “An official 1907 report into Manitoba Indian Residential Schools …  included charts cataloguing pupils as either “good,” “sick” or “dead.”” (National Post, June 2, 2021). 

Some proportion of these children inevitably died; others died of the dozen common childhood diseases we have since eradicated. The Department of Indian Affairs would not pay to ship bodies home; the parents were not prepared to, or could not afford to; so they were buried locally.

Then the schools were shut down. The government might have tended the gravesites; the local band might have tended the gravesites. Neither did. Like many other cemeteries in many other places, they were left to the elements. Leave a graveyard untended, and grave markers tend to disappear. Wood burns. Stones fall over and are buried; or are ”borrowed” for construction projects.

Kingston, Ontario’s old city cemetery was closed in 1864. By the late 1880s, many of not most of the original grave markers had disappeared—less than 25 years later. Marieval Indian Residential School closed in 1997; 25 years ago. The Kamloops Residential School has been closed since 1978—33 years ago. There is no reason even to suppose the graves were originally unmarked; they might have been.

Official written records are spotty; apparently this is because the government recycled the paper at some point.

Does Canada really stand indicted for this? For not maintaining better archives? Not always easy to guess, surely, what people will decide your priorities should have been a hundred years later.

The current media and public reaction to the unmarked graves looks like hysteria.