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First Nations - CF help, protests, solutions, residential schools, etc. (merged)

Complicated by the fact that the kids that died there came from several different nations, so you would have to get them to come to a consensus as well. I am surprised this is all a big surprise to everyone. The facts were well known and a plan should been in place as to how to deal with this issue, but then INAC and this government is not the best at forward planning, so I shouldn't be surprised....
 
People are having a hard time separating the case for political and economic integration (laudable) from the case for cultural assimilation (immoral). And as has been demonstrated repeatedly over the past couple of years, one bad act or thought supercedes everything else a person did during his life.
 
Still, the decent and non-arrogant thing would have been to treat them as actual fellow human beings and ask them what they wanted and offered help if they considered it necessary or desirable.
 
We could wish. Even today there are people who want parents to be compelled to educate their children in a certain way and to have few alternatives to mandatory public school attendance, and people who openly seek to suppress the practices and beliefs of others.
 
Some more sickening reading:




I have not been a fan of vandalizing and removing statues or renaming structures as a result of holding people to the standards of our times rather than their own, but that is becoming somewhat more difficult of late.

There was an article published several months ago that I cannot now find that laid out a case that Sir John may not have been aware of what was actually happening. That could be true, given less perfect communications of the time, but my doubts are increasing. Willful ignorance/complete lack of concern is my most charitable current theory.

The closest that I could find to the article sought was Sir John A. once more

"Having said this, the question to be asked is obvious: to what extent can Macdonald and his colleagues be held responsible for what eventually took place in the residential schools? Their purpose in creating these schools was an essentially honourable one: to teach Indian children English or French and provide them with an education so as to facilitate their integration into Canadian society. The alternative was to leave the children illiterate, poor and isolated on remote reserves. To intelligent and sensitive men such as Macdonald, Langevin and Ryerson, the choice was obvious: give the children an opportunity to share in the prospects and prosperity of Canada. To blame these men for what eventually went so terribly wrong in the residential school system is not only monstrously unfair, but also distinctly ahistorical."

Providing education is honourable and generous. Forcing it on people is not. Forcing "education" on people to destroy their heritage as a means of assimilating them - as is happening to Uyghurs (and other minorities) today in China - is evil. I cannot doubt their intelligence, but I can more than doubt their "sensitivity".

And who created those "remote reserves", and forced people onto them, in the first place?

But how do we balance good actions and bad actions, in any one man?

www.thewhig.com

Blaming Sir John A. impedes reconciliation process

Timothy Tyson, American writer, academic and historian, theorizes: "If there is to be reconciliation, first there must be truth."
www.thewhig.com www.thewhig.com

And, lastly:

www.thewhig.com

Local artist weighs in on Macdonald and residential schools

Local multimedia artist Pat Shea has created a sculpture that illustrates his opposition to Canada’s residential school system and Canada’s first prime minister Sir…
www.thewhig.com www.thewhig.com
 
One thing in one of those articles did give me some pleasure: the photograph of the school torture centre burning.
 
From reading our residential school discussion, I was curious to know how First Nations voters cast their ballots in Canadian federal elections.

Saw this from 2016, if anyone is interested.

( Not sure what impact - if any - it will have on the next election. I have read, "A week is a long time in politics." Also, not sure if it was previously posted in these 64 pages. My apologies in advance if it was. )

2015 On-Reserve Election Results
Polling divisions entirely on-reserve only
The New Democrats won the largest share of the vote in these polling divisions. But their share dropped dramatically from 2011, to 46.4 per cent from 58.4 per cent. The Liberals saw an increase of almost 28 points to 40.5 per cent, while the Conservatives dropped precipitously to just 9.3 per cent.
Click to expand...

2015 On-Reserve Election Results
Includes polling divisions partially and entirely on reserve
At 39.2 per cent, the New Democrats took the largest share of the vote in on-reserve polling divisions. The Liberals finished second with 35.4 per cent, followed by the Conservatives at 20 per cent.
Click to expand...
 
Six Nations wants $10M to search residential school grounds, a third of Ottawa's allocated funds

If approved, it will account for more than a third of the $27.1 million envelope the federal government set aside for communities to identify burial sites.
Click to expand...
Chief Mark Hill said it's a substantial, but necessary request to conduct a full investigation.
Click to expand...
"It's really for justice," Chief Mark Hill told CBC News.
Click to expand...
Money just a start- Hill said the $10 million would be an initial start and he isn't sure it's enough.
Click to expand...
Hill said he would've liked to have seen the money yesterday.
Click to expand...
 
Colin Parkinson said:
Complicated by the fact that the kids that died there came from several different nations, so you would have to get them to come to a consensus as well. I am surprised this is all a big surprise to everyone. The facts were well known and a plan should been in place as to how to deal with this issue, but then INAC and this government is not the best at forward planning, so I shouldn't be surprised....
Click to expand...
I'll be totally honest here. I didn't learn a thing about residential schools, at all, during my time in elementary, Jr. High, or Sr. High school. And even during my college/uni years (have a degree in Criminal Sciences) the topic of Residential Schools never came up. The challenges of policing on reserves came up, but nothing was discussed about residential schools.

Throughout my childhood & those school years, we learned, very broadly, about the basic history of Canada. Certain key figures, and the general narrative of 'the white man moving in.' We learned a very shallow, very basic version of how we took their land, certain events that had taken place, etc. Nothing in detail, and nothing anyone could honestly describe as a real education about this, as basic as it was. (Our key learning topics were that Natives were connected to the land, spiritual, nomadic, and the random things connected to the lessons such as 'they liked wolves' and 'had a spiritual connection to the Northern Lights.')

In hindsight, our education about the interactions between Native Americans & Europeans was downright pathetic. Our teachers did always tell us how much better we were for 'not having slaves like in the US'. And they gave a token mention to the Chinese who came over to build our railroad, and how dangerous the work was. A very, very token mention.



The first I had heard about Residential Schools was a few years ago, when residential schools were in the news. The understanding I got at the time was that 'native children were taken from their families, forced to go schools mandated by the government, some of them were run by the church, and there were some pretty bad abuses taking place.'

It wasn't until my neighbour and I stayed up for hours the other night googling everything we could about residential schools and really taking that time to educate ourselves about what was actually happening, that I realized the extent of it. He, being an older man who lived most of his life in Newfoundland, hadn't even heard of them.
 
CBH99 said:
I'll be totally honest here. I didn't learn a thing about residential schools, at all, during my time in elementary, Jr. High, or Sr. High school. And even during my college/uni years (have a degree in Criminal Sciences) the topic of Residential Schools never came up.
Click to expand...
You're far from alone, including a lot of other people who are otherwise pretty well & broadly informed - I hear there's even still a few people in government who were surprised after the 215 discovery.
CBH99 said:
It wasn't until my neighbour and I stayed up for hours the other night googling everything we could about residential schools ...
Click to expand...
Googling "nutrition experiment residential school" opens a specific chapter of that book that's pretty sad, too :cry:
 
CBH99 said:
Our teachers did always tell us how much better we were for 'not having slaves like in the US'.
Click to expand...

Except that they were wrong: We did have slavery and slaves in Canada, just not in large numbers and for farm work. The rich families of Montreal, Quebec and Halifax, amongst others, had slaves for domestic work until slavery was abolished in England (and by ricochet, in the British Empire).
 
Remius said:
I believe there is a casualty identification coordinator at DND that deals with that sort of thing, like when WW1 remains are found and need identification. I’m not sure if that would be the more appropriate asset to be used or if other civilian government services would be better placed. I’m think maybe the RCMP forensics lab maybe. Things like identifying causes of death, DNA matching to families etc. It also really depends on whether the community even wants this done. I think it was in Manitoba where they found 80 in a mass grave and the community opted to just let them all Rest In Peace. The very first step is to confirm what the wishes of the indegenous communities would be. I suspect we’ll see more of these but my feeling is it should be on a community by community basis.
Click to expand...
Police forensic resources are stretched this as is. Depending on how fully any eventual investigation wants to go into exploring forensics and pathology, this could be an immense task...

Forensic pathologists are medical doctors. They aren’t working for or under the control of police services. Similarly, we don’t have in house forensic anthropologists. Whatever investigation, commission or whatever is established for this, while there will probably be a need for investigative police, most of the real expert help will have to come from the medical and anthropological field.

Right from the start they’ll need to decide what approach to take. A major criminal investigation project? A TRC approach as we’ve seen elsewhere post-atrocity? I don’t even know.
 
Oldgateboatdriver said:
Except that they were wrong: We did have slavery and slaves in Canada, just not in large numbers and for farm work. The rich families of Montreal, Quebec and Halifax, amongst others, had slaves for domestic work until slavery was abolished in England (and by ricochet, in the British Empire).
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IIRC orphans and unwanted children were shipped here from Britain in the late 1800s? Yes we had slaves.
 
Oldgateboatdriver said:
Except that they were wrong: We did have slavery and slaves in Canada, just not in large numbers and for farm work. The rich families of Montreal, Quebec and Halifax, amongst others, had slaves for domestic work until slavery was abolished in England (and by ricochet, in the British Empire).
Click to expand...
Now that I'm older, and the internet exists, and Google makes researching things a lot easier than it was back when I was in school (I remember when Caller ID first came out, and Encarta CD Rom was mind blowing) - I've spent a bit of time every single day, for the past several years, taking the time to learn about a variety of things that I was very much misinformed about when I was young.

A lot of the history we were taught in school was absolute rubbish. I really can't say anything other than 'pathetic'. I realize young kids aren't going to retain a ton of information about "Which PM signed this treaty?", so they teach the bare basics. But not only did we learn the bare basics about some things - we didn't learn anything about some pretty important historical topics, and grossly misinformed about others.


- We didn't have slavery, while the US did.

- Not a single mention of residential schools

- Europeans came to North America. Some initial turmoil, cultural differences. Europeans introduced disease, alcohol, and forced the natives of the land onto Reserves. That was it really.

- Basic WW2 "Germans bad, Europe. Japanese bad, Pacific." That was pretty much it, minus why November 11th is important and key Canadian contributions. (Yes, I feel like they mixed WW1 and WW2 up for certain things. And being honest, we didn't learn a single thing about the Canadians liberating the Dutch.)


I now listen to a lot of Mark Felton, Kyle Hill, and I do enjoy Thoughty2 - while I relax, along with some other history and science channels. As an adult, I realize now my education about these things was literally a quick gloss over.... sad 😔 (But boy did we ever seem to have plenty of time to learn about quadratic equations!)
 
Colin Parkinson said:
As did the First Nations with Slave raids

John R. Jewitt - Wikipedia

Raiders from the sea

Along one of the world’s greatest salmon rivers, archaeologists and First Nations elders discover clues to a turbulent past
www.canadiangeographic.ca www.canadiangeographic.ca
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Yeah, that's not one of the things they teach in schools anymore, that and the cannibal practices of some First Nations, Joseph Brant seems to have survived cancel culture so far,
 
That would require doing research and open minded learning to find out about him first of all, then they would cancel or write a fluff piece discounting his entire story.
 
Oldgateboatdriver said:
Except that they were wrong: We did have slavery and slaves in Canada, just not in large numbers and for farm work. The rich families of Montreal, Quebec and Halifax, amongst others, had slaves for domestic work until slavery was abolished in England (and by ricochet, in the British Empire).
Click to expand...
To an extent yes. there is a big distinction between a slave society, which the US (Rome is a good example of a slave society) at the time was and society with slaves, like Great Britain and others.
 
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