Kamloops Residential School Mass Grave
May 31, 2021 23:06:51 GMT
furnaceface, fordprefect, and 1 more like this
Post by drcor on May 31, 2021 23:06:51 GMT
This is a downer topic, but one I think it's important to bring up with my people. Elliot Friedman did so in his 31 Thoughts, which I appreciate.
It's an altogether too common refrain that this was a well meaning program to integrate indigenous peoples. When the historical record shows the opposite. Government officials attested to what we would now refer to as the cultural genocidal intent of residential schooling in official documents. Duncan Campbell Scott called the policy "the final solution to the Indian problem". If that sounds eerily resonant of the Holocaust, it should. Hitler biographers such as John Toland detail how inspired Hitler had been by North American Indian policies. More than 100,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children passed through Residential schools; at least 1:20 died (a similar rate to Canadian POWs in Nazi camps).
It is easy to make the claim that they were doing what they thought was right. This, in historical thinking terms is called "prudential relevance" i.e., was this considered morally problematic in the time, or are we holding them to a present-day standard that they hadn't thought of. The answer clearly is they knew it was wrong. As early as 1891, some priests were raising concerns about the inability of schools to provide the necessities of life to children. Those who raised concerns were sent away from these schools (in much the same way that objecting Nazi soldiers were reassigned, and those "problem priests" or "nuns" with histories of abuse, were sent to the schools in their place. The Canadian Chief Medical Examiner Peter H. Bryce detailed as early as 1907 the horrors occurring in these schools. Not only were they ignored and dismissed by Duncan Campbell Scott
, the government of Canada actively suppressed them until Bryce published his report in 1922 against the will of the government. He called his report "A National Crime" nationtalk.ca/story/dr-peter-henderson-bryce-a-story-of-courage
. Among these, but not limited to them was physical, mental, and sexual abuse of children, forced starvation and experimental withholding of specific nutrients, solitary confinement, hard labour, separation from siblings, unsanitary living conditions, and a lack of parental skill development which has led to generations of trauma to follow.
We can make things right, but first we have to acknowledge the depth of our wrongs.
It's an altogether too common refrain that this was a well meaning program to integrate indigenous peoples. When the historical record shows the opposite. Government officials attested to what we would now refer to as the cultural genocidal intent of residential schooling in official documents. Duncan Campbell Scott called the policy "the final solution to the Indian problem". If that sounds eerily resonant of the Holocaust, it should. Hitler biographers such as John Toland detail how inspired Hitler had been by North American Indian policies. More than 100,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children passed through Residential schools; at least 1:20 died (a similar rate to Canadian POWs in Nazi camps).
It is easy to make the claim that they were doing what they thought was right. This, in historical thinking terms is called "prudential relevance" i.e., was this considered morally problematic in the time, or are we holding them to a present-day standard that they hadn't thought of. The answer clearly is they knew it was wrong. As early as 1891, some priests were raising concerns about the inability of schools to provide the necessities of life to children. Those who raised concerns were sent away from these schools (in much the same way that objecting Nazi soldiers were reassigned, and those "problem priests" or "nuns" with histories of abuse, were sent to the schools in their place. The Canadian Chief Medical Examiner Peter H. Bryce detailed as early as 1907 the horrors occurring in these schools. Not only were they ignored and dismissed by Duncan Campbell Scott
, the government of Canada actively suppressed them until Bryce published his report in 1922 against the will of the government. He called his report "A National Crime" nationtalk.ca/story/dr-peter-henderson-bryce-a-story-of-courage
. Among these, but not limited to them was physical, mental, and sexual abuse of children, forced starvation and experimental withholding of specific nutrients, solitary confinement, hard labour, separation from siblings, unsanitary living conditions, and a lack of parental skill development which has led to generations of trauma to follow.
We can make things right, but first we have to acknowledge the depth of our wrongs.
