Comments

  2. palefury says

    Sadly a truth in many colonized countries. Colonialism, and it’s ongoing harm.

    In Aotearoa New Zealand, there is currently a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care (and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions) spanning 1950-1999. This came about in part due to the research of Professor Elizabeth Stanley detailed in her book “The Road to Hell: State Violence against Children in Postwar New Zealand” there is also a presentation here on her work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWbaRS9YvhQ where she researched the circumstances of 105 victims of state care. These children were predictably disproportionally Māori (Indigenous people of New Zealand)

    Meanwhile almost 70% of children currently in the care of Oranga Tamariki – Ministry of Children identify as Māori, while Māori represent ~15% of the total population.

  3. wsierichs says

    Canada had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The report came out several years ago. They heard from hundreds of Indigenous people’s children who had been kidnapped and turned over to Christian-run schools for brainwashing and abuse. The report is online. It’s ugly reading, but it’s worth at least skimming to see the role of Christianity in torturing “heathen” children to make them into good church goers.

  4. F.O. says

    Modern science has been used to cast colonized people as primitive.
    As someone who has always been in love with science, I find it especially bitter.
    We lost a vast wealth of human knowledge.
    We have fantastic understanding of nature but we forgot how to live.
    Science has been used to cast ourselves apart from and above the natural world.

  5. Marshall says

    Genuine question, is “Indian” considered ok terminology when referring to Native Americans? I’ve always learned it was bad to call them that but I don’t know what they actually prefer.

  6. Curious Digressions says

    My aunt and uncle were adopted into our family at the tail end of the baby scoop, 1968 and 1972. My grandparents worked with a Catholic agency to acquire them as infants. The stories the agencies passed on (unmarried mothers giving up the children to avoid shame and give themselves a chance at a “normal” life) was the same one churchies always used. Who knows how credible that is.

    We’re so happy to have them in our family and they were raised with love as two of eight kids. They’re happy and unhappy, just like everyone else. Who’s to say what they would have experienced with their birth families. We know a bit about my uncle’s family, since he met his birth mother and received tribal membership. To say that his interactions with his tribe were challenging is an understatement. The program was just as successful at removing him from his heritage as it was with my aunt, who never pursued meeting her birth mother.

    They absolutely had more material and financial opportunity than they would have as kids of single mothers or, in my uncle’s case, extended families. Was what they lost worth it? Who knows? It will always be lost.

    @Marshall –
    Per Caine (†) at Affinity, use indian or the person’s specific tribe.
    https://freethoughtblogs.com/affinity/2016/10/20/its-indian-okay/
    She has a more extensive post with links to “why”, but I can’t find it at the moment.