# Many hundreds of unmarked graves of Indigenous children discovered at Canadian residential schools **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 5, 2021, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674 "2021-06-05T14:04:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2021, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/41 "2021-06-06T16:14:56Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > Part of society? Sure. The dominant or even typical part of society? No. …why does that matter? > [@slash2k](#): > > First Nations people comprise less than five percent of the population of Canada today, and rather less than that at various points in the past. They have been a marginalized part of Canada for a very long time, and I don’t see the point of pretending that the majority of Canadians knew or cared about what happened on the reserves for most of the nation’s history. “Not knowing” and “not caring” is **not forgetting**. You’ve all but conceded you got this wrong. You may as well go all the way. > [@slash2k](#): > > What, exactly, is unique about Canada’s residential system for First Nations? What separated it from, say, the [stolen generations of Aborigines](https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/track-history-timeline-stolen-generations) in Australia, or the [Indian boarding schools](http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=airc_hist_boardingschools) in the United States, or what is going on with [Romani children in Europe today](https://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/features/europes-silent-scandal-romani-children-state-care-institutions)? I’m tangata whenua. Ngāpuhi. Don’t even start to lecture me on this. Don’t even attempt it. What happened to children here in Aotearoa was different to what happened to children in Australia and was different to what happened in Canada. You think I don’t know what happened to my brothers and sisters in Australia? You think a google search and a hyperlink will tell me more than I already know? The complete and utter arrogance on display here. Unbelievable. > [@slash2k](#): > > What happened in Kamloops is horrific, but proclaiming Canadians (or the Catholics) as uniquely evil is at best misguided. I’ll call them what I like thanks. I don’t need a lecture from you. > [@slash2k](#): > > Similar programs and attitudes have existed (and in many cases still exist) in many societies, and understanding the how and why of a widespread phenomenon gives better hope of preventing it from happening again. That, however, requires acknowledging it has been widespread. Stop gaslighting us. Stop minimizing what happened, stop pretending that this wasn’t unique because it was. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2021, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/42 "2021-06-06T17:00:11Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …why does that matter? Because the dominant part of society is the part making decisions for everybody else. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > “Not knowing” and “not caring” is **not forgetting**. Sure it is the same thing. Every school kid in Canada learned there were First Nations kids there, just like every New Yorker knows there are homeless people living in the streets there, and pretty much everybody in North America knows there are people in prisons and hospitals and foster care and shelters and so forth. Those people are not in the forefront of the collective consciousness, though; they are “forgotten.” (What sense of the word ‘forgotten’ are you using that it doesn’t include the people who are known to exist but who are not thought about by society at large?) > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > Don’t even start to lecture me on this. Don’t even attempt it. Okay, so tell me what is different and unique, because from where I stand, “kids from marginalized groups forcibly removed from their parents (with government sanction) and sent to institutions to purge them of their original culture and assimilate them into the dominant language/culture/religion, while frequently being subjected to terrible abuse and sometimes ending in unmarked graves” sounds like a pretty accurate summary of multiple programs in multiple countries. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2021, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/43 "2021-06-06T17:08:15Z")
Since this has degenerated into an argument between @slash2k and @Banquet_Bear that is going nowhere, I am going to close it. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2021, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/44 "2021-06-06T17:08:31Z")
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**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/45 "2021-06-07T10:23:03Z")
**Moderator Action** I am re-opening this thread. @slash2k and @Banquet_Bear, you are both permanently topic banned from this thread. Do not post anything further to this thread. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/46 "2021-06-07T10:23:17Z")
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**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/47 "2021-06-07T14:16:56Z")
Thank you for reopening. There’s likely to be further news coming out about this – there’s already some response from the Catholic church, one story linked below; but also with modern techniques, it may be possible to identify some of the individuals, and/or some of the causes of death, though it may take a while for any such information to come out. > **[Pope Francis Expresses Sorrow But No Apology For Indigenous School Deaths In...](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/06/1003814538/pope-francis-expresses-sorrow-but-no-apology-for-indigenous-school-deaths-in-can)** > > Francis urged political and religious officials to work toward "healing and reconciliation," but he did not formally apologize for the church's role in the forced reeducation of 150,000 children. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/48 "2021-06-07T16:23:43Z")
Very, very sad story - heartbreaking. Here’s CNN’s most recent coverage: > **[Canadians demand action from officials as country mourns discovery of a mass...](https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/31/americas/canadians-mourn-mass-grave-childrens-remains/index.html)** > > Indigenous leaders and residential school survivors in Canada are calling on officials to do a thorough investigation of every former residential school in the country after the remains of more than 200 children were found on the grounds of the... And the Pope’s response is disappointing, at best. ---
**Author:** ![FloatyGimpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/floatygimpy/32/7750_2.png) [@FloatyGimpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FloatyGimpy)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/49 "2021-06-07T17:04:27Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > There is no evidence at all here about the children being murdered, and rape was not even mentioned. > > What happened here is that the children were taken out of their homes to learn English and the white man way of doing things. > > Many succumbed to disease- and likely many would have died from the same diseases at home, too. The death toll from childhood diseases was horrible back in those days. > > In fact few even think the deaths were due to neglect- but the crowded conditions certainly made things worse . But the horrible thing is the schools themselves. While a “good idea” on paper, and everyone meant well, the kids were torn from their families more or less by force, and taken away from their native traditions and languages. In some cases, abuse of various sorts is suggested, true, but the horror is not the deaths so much, but where and why the deaths occurred, the children dying away from their loving families. While that specific article is not about the rapes. Many, many children, both male and female, were raped by both nuns and priests. There are many first account survivor stories about watching children be beaten to death for things like trying to escape. And then not being allowed to cry as they were put into unmarked graves. This kind of playing it down and saying “it’s in the past” is the exact sort of bullshit that needs to stop. There needs to be a huge, public, official apology from both the government and the church. It needs to be taken as seriously as the Holocaust because that’s what it was - genocide. Children were removed from their homes at gunpoint, which is called kidnapping in my world, taken to institutions where they stripped of their identity, beaten if they even spoke their own language, starved, raped and abused. I have two friends who survived the “schools”. One had her teeth knocked out when a nun hit her in the mouth with a book when she was 10. She wasn’t able to get her teeth fixed until she was in her 50’s. My other friend’s brother froze to death while trying to run away back home when he was 7. Until we, as a nation, stand up and admit our fault, the First Nations people will not be able to heal. The first step in healing is being believed. It’s embarrassing and shameful that we have not done this. It needs to be taken as seriously as the Holocaust is in Germany. Taught it schools, memorials, knowledge that everybody knows happened. People who say “it wasn’t that bad” need to be treated the same as Holocaust deniers and shunned. ---
**Author:** ![FloatyGimpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/floatygimpy/32/7750_2.png) [@FloatyGimpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FloatyGimpy)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/50 "2021-06-07T18:33:42Z")
This just popped up in my news feed: > **[Brayden Bushby, convicted in trailer-hitch death of Indigenous mom Barbara...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/brayden-bushby-barbara-kentner-sentencing-1.6056010)** > > A man convicted of manslaughter after Barbara Kentner, 34, was struck by a trailer hitch thrown from a moving vehicle in 2017 has been sentenced to eight years in prison in Thunder Bay, Ont. "You targeted a vulnerable woman," the judge tells Brayden... There needs to be an immediate and drastic shift in how we see and treat Indigenous people. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/51 "2021-06-07T18:40:17Z")
> [@Mark\_Finn](#): > > According to various sources, there were about 139 residential schools in Canada. 60% run by the RC Church. In addition - 15 were run by the United Church of Canada, and 11 by the Presbyterian Church of Canada. The United Church issued an apology in 1998, for what it’s worth. > **[The Apologies](https://united-church.ca/social-action/justice-initiatives/reconciliation-and-indigenous-justice/apologies)** > > We have apologized as a church for our broken relationship, and we have pledged to heal it. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/52 "2021-06-07T18:57:08Z")
I find myself in agreement that the time has passed for us to ask politely for the Catholic Church in Canada and in the Vatican to divulge Every. Single. Record. about residential schools in Canada. We require every single thing that they have. We’ve asked. A full and complete accounting of records has not been provided. It is time for the RCMP to do a complete physical and electronic document search, and they need to physically attend the Catholic church locations where these records are kept and confiscate any and all records. Any and all living people that had any administrative or other role at these schools need to be interviewed by a special police investigative unit - not “invited” to talk to them, but REQUIRED to attend an interview - under oath, with criminal penalties for lying. I’m absolutely DONE with asking politely. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/53 "2021-06-07T19:15:46Z")
> [@FloatyGimpy](#): > > People who say “it wasn’t that bad” need to be treated the same as Holocaust deniers and shunned. This is MPSIMS, not the Pit or other venues. ---
**Author:** ![FloatyGimpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/floatygimpy/32/7750_2.png) [@FloatyGimpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FloatyGimpy)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/54 "2021-06-07T19:29:37Z")
Saying Holocaust deniers should be shunned is hardly pit-worthy. But thanks JM. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/55 "2021-06-07T19:34:05Z")
No, you implied that anyone who didn’t want the Pope and the Canadian government lined up and shot is a Holocaust denier. This is, by no means, anything close to or comparable to the Holocaust. By comparing this to where the Government deliberately killed 20 million innocents is more like denying the Holocaust, since you are minimizing the horrors of the Holocaust by doing so. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/56 "2021-06-07T19:40:15Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > No, you implied that anyone who didn’t want the Pope and the Canadian government lined up and shot is a Holocaust denier. No one said that. Chill. As you say, this is MPSIMS. Let’s try to keep this thread open, and not devolve into another fight. Also, (to all) please report, don’t junior mod. ---
**Author:** ![Ranch\_Dip](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranch_dip/32/5238_2.png) [@Ranch\_Dip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranch_Dip)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/57 "2021-06-07T20:49:37Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > What happened here is that the children were taken out of their homes to learn English and the white man way of doing things. > > Many succumbed to disease- and likely many would have died from the same diseases at home, too. The death toll from childhood diseases was horrible back in those days. And not returned to their families? Put in a mass grave? Yeah, that makes it totally ok. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/58 "2021-06-07T21:04:56Z")
where did I say it was OK? In fact I said the opposite: _but the horror is not the deaths so much, but where and why the deaths occurred, the children dying away from their loving families._ You guys are getting too excited for MPSIMS, putting words in peoples mouths, etc. I will bow out of this thread. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/59 "2021-06-07T21:29:27Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > I find myself in agreement that the time has passed for us to ask politely for the Catholic Church in Canada and in the Vatican to divulge Every. Single. Record. about residential schools in Canada. We require every single thing that they have. With all due respect to Canada – was this a thing perpetrated by the churches? Or was this a thing that the Canadian government authorized and arranged for, and they just found some churches that were willing to house the children the government had stolen from their parents? ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2021, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674/60 "2021-06-07T22:18:24Z")
This specific graveyard is part of a much larger overall attempt, in which multiple organizations and individuals were complicit, to destroy the First Nations within Canada as cultures, in the process willingly destroying many of the individual members of those cultures. And that specific pattern of behavior is part of a much larger, much older, and still ongoing pattern of human behavior. Since the beginning of history and probably before, human groups have been trying to destroy other human groups: whether by killing them, by enslaving them and forcing them to follow the culture of the captors (sometimes including forced marriage and claiming the children), by forced conversion, by destruction of languages, by forbidding customs and rituals, by combinations of all of the above. It’s wrong. It’s horrendous. And it’s stupid; partly because it loses us the skills and talents of the destroyed members of those cultures, partly because it loses us the knowledge of those cultures, and partly because, in attempting to impose one way of life on everybody, it damages both individuals (whoever they’re born to) who would do well in other cultures but not in that one, and our chances of surviving whatever the universe throws at us in the next million or whatever years. It’s horrendous and stupid and wrong. And we need to stop doing it. But we’re not going to stop doing it by saying (none of this is direct quotes) ‘oh, everybody did that sort of thing and it was a long time ago.’ (It’s happening, various places, to various people, right now.) And we’re not going to stop it by saying ‘they meant well, we know better now.’ And we’re not going to stop doing it by saying ‘that one example was so bad that nobody should ever compare anything else to it’; or by picking specific bits out of the larger pattern and saying ‘this one bit doesn’t look as bad as this larger piece over there so why make a fuss over it’; or by saying ‘the problem was this specific government, or this specific culture, or this specific religion, or this specific time.’ The problem is us. This is a thing that humans do: we try to destroy the Other. It’s not the only thing that humans do. (If it were, we wouldn’t be here.) We also defend, and try to learn from, and fall in love with the Other. But it is a thing that humans do, and we’re not going to stop doing it until we’re able to say ‘This is a thing that humans do. And we are humans. It’s horrendous and it’s stupid and it’s wrong. So we need to be damn careful that we don’t do it.’ And in order to stop ourselves from doing it we need to look at every incident we find; look at it hard and face on, and try to put actual faces to it, the best we can: so that we can see and can have jammed into our own faces and our own brains that it’s horrendous and stupid and wrong. It’s ugly. It’s ugly, quite literally, as hell. We don’t want to look at it. But if we refuse to look at it: we’re going to find ourselves doing it. Over and over and over again. Not every individual, no. In just about every case we know enough about to be able to tell, there were also people trying to stop it. But no human group is immune. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/many-hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-discovered-at-canadian-residential-schools/943674.md?page=4)