I will be putting up flags this Canada Day. Canada remains a great country.
We must acknowledge its past flaws honesty, be serious about addressing them now with good faith and fortitude, focus on how best to realistically achieve a stronger, fairer and more inclusive society which allows all Canadians the freedom to flourish.
That is a very powerful image, brings to mind the Prehistoric cave prints in France and Spain. They were a people long before Christians appeared on the scene.
A lot of places have cancelled their fireworks displays around here.
Starting to reverberate in the US:
182 unmarked graves have been located at Ktunaxa Nation territory in British Columbia.
And a fifth Catholic Church, located on indigenous territory, has burnt down.
There is a walk to honour the children, tomorrow, Canada’s Day, here in my city. I believe there are several similar events planned across the country.
There’s a walk in my city. I won’t be able to make it there, but I am wearing orange.
In the unsurprising news department:
The Catholic Church in Canada was ordered in 2005 to pay compensation to residential school survivors in the amount of 25 million dollars. This was to help those people who were abused but were not actually killed and buried in unmarked graves.
They agreed to do this.
Fast forward to 2015. The Catholic Church went to court to plead that they were only able to raise 4 million, and this was their “best effort”. The court agreed, and decided that this was just tough shit for the survivors.
Fast forward to now. It has been uncovered by CBC reporters that the Catholic Church did manage to fundraise for some other important things since that 2005 order. Like building renovations.
TO THE TUNE OF $300 Million.
300 million for buildings. 4 million for survivors of the abuse that they themselves dished out. That was their “best effort”. This is not an organization that gives a shit about human beings. They care only for glorification of themselves, and constructing Golden Idols of worship.
I’m beyond disgusted with them.
I would like to see the monetary compensation order revisited. I would like to see it raised to 300 million over 10 years for the survivors. The church has shown that it is possible for them to raise this sort of money.
If they do not do this, then they should have all assets confiscated, buildings sold. Sell everything. Take the most sacred elements of the churches and give them to first nations communities to display in their museums on reserves. This is what was done to them when their ceremonial artifacts were stolen, mainly by by the church, and sold for profit.
162 unmarked graves located at the residential school on Penelaku Island, off Vancouver Island.
For summary of the multiple discoveries:
I like this idea and I’ve had similar thoughts about the Catholic Church regarding child abuse allegations.
What I don’t understand is why the Church always seems to get a pass on stuff like this. Take any instance of this sort of thing with them, but replace “Roman Catholic Church” with “Holiday Inn”, “Canadian Armed Forces”, “McDonalds”, or “Lockheed Martin”, or whoever (and I’m not suggesting anything about those other organizations) and I suspect different legal actions would be taken and a shitload of people would be in prison.
If mass graves, containing the bodies of victims of the above organizations, were found on the properties of those organizations…
I truly do not understand this.
If the church is guilty, equally so is the government, they protect each other. I assume they each have evidence against the other, in all likelihood.
The weird Canadian defense of this I saw on Twitter is “Well unlike in the United States we never had people in human bondage”.
I don’t want to get too deep into the issue for fear of going too far off topic, but religion is protected to a preposterous extent in Canadian law (and I’d assume other countries too) in a way that doesn’t really make any sense, but it’s always been that way so no one notices most of the time.
Once is an incident, scandal, or crime. Twice could be coincidence. Three or more is policy, even if it’s secretive or uncoordinated.
Conrad Black has an op-ed in the National Post implying the issue of residential schools is concerning but not indicative of genocide.
A lot of his view seems to rest on the assumption children were educated in English or French but no effort was made to stop them using their original languages.
Is there any truth to this? It seems to be against the experience of many indigenous groups worldwide where reducing native language and cultures, for professed good or bad reasons, was largely the point.
Did he provide any evidence for it?
Everything I’ve seen – including survivors’ testimony – seems to say the opposite.
That denies what an abundance of survivors have said and against the stated policy of the school from its inception. They were often brutally punished for speaking their own language. Hair is a very spiritual thing in First Nation cultures, so all the children had their hair cut off when they arrived.
It was definitely an attempt at cultural genocide. Which very nearly succeeded.
No. In fact, Black states this assumption twice in a short article. It is a very important point, because it seems to me likely to be untrue. If it is untrue, his entire argument is greatly weakened. (Although, he may or may not be wrong about the value of judging historical giants by controversial criteria).
Black is a fairly respected historian (though perhaps less so in Canada, since very much supporting Trump) and (despite this) far from naive. So this statement is not a trivial thing - and the truth or falsity of it is important. He claims the Canadian government was simply:
“encouraging one third of native children over a century for a few years each to learn English or French with no effort to prevent retention of their native tongue.”
A great many seem to disagree.