One of the shameful features of US history is its attempted genocide of the indigenous people here. Apart from the outright massacres, other attempts involved the erasure of their identities by destroying their language and culture. One means of doing so was a governmental policy involving the forcible abduction of Native American children from their parents and sending them to boarding schools where they were forbidden to practice any aspects of their culture and were forced to adopt those of white people.
I had not been aware that a similar shameful government policy had been carried out in Canada too until the news of the discovery of a mass grave that had been found with the remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, on the grounds of such a boarding school in British Columbia.
Rosanne Casimir, the chief of the community in British Columbia’s city of Kamloops, said the preliminary finding represented an unthinkable loss that was never documented by the school’s administrators.
Canada’s residential schools were compulsory boarding schools run by the government and religious authorities during the 19th and 20th Centuries with the aim of forcibly assimilating indigenous youth.
Kamloops Indian Residential School was the largest in the residential system. Opened under Roman Catholic administration in 1890, the school had as many as 500 students when enrolment peaked in the 1950s.
The central government took over administration of the school in 1969, operating it as a residence for local students until 1978, when it was closed.
…From about 1863 to 1998, more than 150,000 indigenous children were taken from their families and placed in these schools.
The children were often not allowed to speak their language or to practise their culture, and many were mistreated and abused.
A commission launched in 2008 to document the impacts of this system found that large numbers of indigenous children never returned to their home communities.
The landmark Truth and Reconciliation report, released in 2015, said the policy amounted to “cultural genocide”.
It is shocking that this was going on even as recently as 1998. The deaths of 215 children meant that on average more than two children per year were buried there. The school was run by Catholics so one can assume that they were baptized into the church. But that did not seem to prevent the school authorities from not giving these children a proper burial and instead secretly dumping them into a mass unmarked grave.
First part of post somehow amputated?
[Corrected. Thanks! -Mano]
… discovery of a mass grave … on the grounds of such a boarding school in British Columbia.
Perhaps they brought in advisors from Ireland or Florida.
Don’t let our unearned reputation as being “less racist than the United States” fool you. We’re a nation built on colonialism, theft, and genocide and it is still ongoing (one of the bigger stories now is how the government is dealing with First Nations communities who don’t want pipelines leaking all over their land and water). I know there are horror stories in Australia too, and would be incredibly surprised if there weren’t plenty in New Zealand.
Have you seen this?
https://apnews.com/article/canada-9707e8f0c4746a6bb0512c0d01729832
Bodies of more than 200 children whose remains have been found buried at what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school — one of the institutions that held children taken from families across the nation.
It’s disgusting, but not shocking. There were still “residential schools” near where I lived when I graduated high school in 1985, and they continued after. The total number of children murdered in those schools could be 6,000. Or higher, considering that they were guilty of poor record keeping and there was no accountability. They only got a feeble apology from Ottawa, not the prison sentences that should have been meted out.
It’s a cult of mass murder. In 2017, it was discovered that the catholic cult covered up the deaths of 800 children in Ireland. Who knows how many thousands or millions Pius XII participated in and was responsible for during World War II? The cult’s priests and bishops in Rwanda were active participants in the 1994 genocide. And, of course, there’s the recent admissions by former cult members of mother teresa’s cult of personality and sadistic infliction of pain upon the poor in India.
“I had not been aware that a similar shameful government policy had been carried out in Canada too ”
In Australia as well; to some extent even in Wales (by the English), Friesland and Suriname (by the Dutch). I bet there are examples to be found in Central, South and Eastern Europe as well (Sorbian, Catalan and Rusyn respectively).
In Suriname speaking other languages than Dutch at schools is still discouraged due to ethnical rivalry. The lingua franca, Sranan Tongo (means Surinamese), is associated with “stadsnegers” (literally city negroes, ie the Afro-Surinamese and their descendants who were liberated in 1873 and stayed in Paramaribo). So the Indo-Surinamese and Javanese-Surinamese don’t want Sranan Tongo to be taught at school.
@5 Intransitive: “It’s a cult of mass murder. ”
Yeah, sure, when catholicism was allowed in The Netherlands again in 1848/1853
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reestablishment_of_the_episcopal_hierarchy_in_the_Netherlands
the RCC clergy immediately went on a killing spree, following the example of Belgians after they became independent in 1830 (the vast majority always has been catholic).
That or your prejudice is as silly as creacrap.