Hacker News Reader

Comment by beiller | Hacker News Reader

I think China is just trying to take pot shots and their comments on the situation really just shows how their leadership appears to act like children. Yes the residential schools are an atrocity. The children were stolen from their parents under a "best intentions" situation and died of disease that they had little natural immunity brought over via Europeans and buried in unmarked graves because the Christians thought they were all going to hell. Nice to see 2 churches burned down under suspicious circumstances in Canada recently. Maybe the church should be shouldering more of the blame here perhaps?

View on HN

> I think China is just trying to take pot shots and their comments on the situation really just shows how their leadership appears to act like children

Yes. The reasoning behind their statements is a a way to distract from Canadian criticisms of Chinese human rights abuses, but the political agendas behind their statements do not make them any less true.

> Maybe the church should be shouldering more of the blame here perhaps?

I see this sentiment a lot in Canada with regards to the "who should be responsible for fixing this" question. The Church bearing all the responsibility gives most Canadians the convenient out of feeling deeply uncomfortable with a core part of their identity being associated with these horrific crimes. All Canadians are Canadian, but only some Canadians are Catholic after all. The history of these events tell us that both the government and the church were heavily involved, so I don't find the question "well which entity is MORE at fault" to be particularly useful.

Just to be clear, it wasn't just the catholic church that was running these, there was also the anglican church.

It was more than even then two, a great many dénominations ran residential schools.

yeah I see the presbys in there as well. I just knew the Anglican Church was involved off the top of my head, because they ran the Residential school in my city.

Well at least we agree on one tiny part of the above. I guess I was a bit callous in my reply. This news has set of a somewhat violent chain reaction in Canada. I'm glad the news came out but lately I am disturbed how much "news" is just overhyping and conveniently lacking details in order to drive ad revenue, and this is the perfect story for that. Many people who I speak to are under the assumption that there was government run mass children murdering squads killing native American children execution style. I am very sympathetic to the atrocities native American people went through _and it continues to this day_. Children are still taken from their homes today via child services meanwhile education on reserves is under funded making native children on reserves far more likely to wind up in foster homes. What do we do to fix it? We're protesting against figures in the past and doing nothing today because we all think it's over.

The news seems to be craving/inventing chaos since covid. Each crisis pushes the last out of the spotlight. It's cycling so quickly it has given rise to outrage culture. The media are dumping some moral crisis' on the viewer and trying to extract whatever emotion the view has left.

People are confused and want to attack anything.

Perhaps this is covid / lockdown induced.

Are you implying that the Canadian news industry only covered this story, or even manufactured it, in order to extract rage-clicks from their viewers... as opposed to covering it because it happened and was newsworthy?

Or that public outrage is merely the result of people being confused and punch-drunk from the psychological toll of the constant media news cycle... as opposed to an understandable reaction to the discovery of mass indigenous child graves at a residential school?

I can understand cynicism when it comes to the media but writing this off as outrage culture and essentially "fake news" seems like a bridge too far. I'm sure it's good for karma though.

It's the sudden urgency and staged-shock that's the problem. Framing it as the most important story for you to read today, even though it's been known and newsworthy for years, and 50% of the text was copied from the story that ran on page 16F 10 years ago.

Doing a few 10'x10' scans with GPR (which should never be trusted without ground truthing confirmation), then extrapolating it across a football field, and getting numbers that roughly agree with previous estimates isn't a breaking news update.

> It's the sudden urgency and staged-shock that's the problem.

That’s a problem, sure. But I find the body count rather more alarming.

That's my point- there's no reason to wake up today and be shocked that TB used to kill a lot of people, including kids.

If I found a plantation house with 1000's of bodies buried in the yard, and forensic evidence shows most died a violent death, in a pattern of killings that repeated itself for decades...

would you be alarmed at the body count at Arlington?

Then why are you alarmed at the body count of a overgrown cemetery "found" where it was expected to be found, and containing roughly the same number of graves expected?

> would you be alarmed at the body count at Arlington?

Alarmed isn’t quite the right word. But it’s likely close.

> Then why are you alarmed at the body count of a overgrown cemetery "found" where it was expected to be found, and containing roughly the same number of graves expected?

I had no idea this was a thing or that any schooling system regularly buried children.

Not fake news, well known facts being presented as news.

The volume has been turned up to 10 and the media wants you to react. To get angry. To be controlled.

Remember George Floyd? All of that stuff is still happening but the protests have moved on. The calls to defund have changed. This social movement is stalled.. until the next cycle. But day to day injustice keeps happening.

Don't be part of the outraged mob unless you plan on being outraged for a longtime.

Also, churches and governments were working hand-in-glove and the public approved of, or at the very least ignored, what they were doing. Blame cannot be laid at the feet of any one group as all shared equally in sustaining this terrible system.

best intentions situation? bullshit. This was to beat their culture out of them.

I think that's the first time I've ever heard genocide called "best intentions"

"Kill the indian to save the man" was how they thought of it.

As fucked up as this sounds, beating their culture out of them was one of the more mundane things that went on in these awful places. I'm not sure who will read this so I'm uncomfortable going into much detail, but if you do some digging, you'll find stories so horrific that you may find yourself thinking "I wish they had stopped at beating the culture out of them."

These are some of the most horrible stories that I've ever heard. It's too horrific to even be believable fiction- the fact that it all happened and that I have graves of Indigenous children all around me is just about too terrible to think about. :(

Like the senior boys at the schools being taken out in the middle of the night to dig graves...

That's one of them. Have you ever read about sexual assault babies?

Then there is this, which is admittedly unverified but if true would not surprise me: https://www.snopes.com/articles/347191/queen-kamloops-abduct...

I live in Canada as an immigrant and I am constantly ashamed of this history, and how indigenous people get treated to this day. RCMP often regard indigenous people as 3rd class citizens, like full on treating folk as criminals all the time. We have all this dialog about black lives matter and the disgusting reality is no one gives a single fuck about the most beaten down minority in Canada. I live in a very white province and work with many people of colour, but not one single native Canadian. All this HR drive to up our diversity but no one gives any thought, at all, to hiring indigenous people. I don't actually agree with hiring singularly for diversity, I believe in equal opportunity though. Even so, HR is up its own ass about driving diversity but this does not encompass native ethnicities. That conversation just does not happen at any level anywhere.

This all makes me so angry. Native Canadians had their children stolen, murdered, and buried in unmarked graves and there are people on this forum excusing it as being "best intentions". Can you imagine the reaction to this if the story was of African Slaves in the 1800s? These kids were murdered as late as the 1960s. And let's not forget the land that was stolen, the culture that was all but annihilated, the lives being ripped apart to this day through drugs and alcohol which is largely seen as a criminal nuisance rather than an epidemic that continues to marginalize and shun.

I could go on. The story is so sad, so dark, and still going on and covered up to this day. And we all gloss over it and pay lip service on CBC. Where is the criminal investigation? Where are the task forces looking for all the other mass graves?

I'm so saddened and ashamed by all of this. I've often thought of leaving Canada due to this shit, I live on unceded native territory for fuck's sake.

Hey friend, if you are ever going to be in Saskatchewan, my email address is in my profile. Let me know when you'll be here - I'd love to take you around, introduce you to some people including some survivors, show you some graves right in my city and maybe get you out into the country for a Pow Wow or something similar.

You seem like a great person, you'd fit right in and I think you would be as drawn to these amazing people as I am. Last summer, I got to attend a really beautiful rally in front of our Legislature. The feeling there, of unity, love and craving justice was beyond almost anything I have ever experienced. Indigenous cultures are absolutely beautiful and incredibly strong, so strong that our country's system of evil couldn't wipe it out. There's something beautiful and inspiring in that.

I agree with absolutely everything you say and reading this has been an absolute privilege. Like you, I'm saddened and ashamed and I've had my own thoughts of leaving Canada. My privilege is 100% because of white supremacy. I am literally on Hacker News now because of white supremacy. That is so embarrassing and shameful that I don't know what to do other than fight or flee.

If you're interested in quite the read, read about the time the TRC requested $1.5 million from the Canadian government to search for graves. $1.5 million isn't even a rounding error in the Canadian budget - it's so insignificant it doesn't even exist. But they were denied that money. The TRC was an explicit agreement to find our missing Kookums and Mooshums (the words translate best as Grandmas/Grandpas but in a really strong Indigenous context).

Talking to people like you fills me with a tremendous amount of hope. Goodness can overcome.

Take good care and thank you. I just watched the press conference where they announced 751 bodies and I've never needed this level of positivity more. I owe you. Thank you. Honestly thank you.

There are likely thousands of buried children yet to be found. This is not news, people have known about this for decades but it took a privately funded search to break the ground. Government has essentially brushed this under the rug until private citizens took it upon themselves and paid GPR specialists to search for the graves that everyone knew were to be found somewhere.

There is no statute of limitations on murder so why is there no criminal investigation? Someone is responsible for all these deaths.

When this is all said and done, I hope that the number is less than 25,000 but I think it will be much higher. We're at 1,000 kids in the last couple of weeks and that's two residential schools. There is another graveyard a 10 minute drive from where I live and that Regina Indian Industrial Residential School was a complete shit hole, even by the low standards set by the other schools. Add in schools in Lebret (they used to torture kids by making them crawl up a 78m hill to say the Stations of the Cross) and Prince Albert and I bet we'll be at over 4,500. This number is going to be huge...

As for criminal charges, go grab a beverage of your choice then come back and sit down.

Did you know that we located 5,300 abusers during the TRC? And in all these years, Canada has laid charges against less than 50 people. The 5,300 people who we found were invited to testify at a compensation hearing- most refused and their records are being kept private from the police.

People say that apologizing is the Canadian trait. I think it's passing the buck. When you ask police why there haven't been charges, they blame the victims for not coming forward. But bud, put yourself in their shoes. A cop rounded you up, took you away from your parents and sent you to a residential school. How much do you trust police??? It's fucking asinine to expect that...

The TRC even operated under weird rules. If individual A accused individual B of abusing them, individual B would get to read the allegations and get individual A's name. Individual A can't get any information about their abuser.

So, I guess the answer to your question is 'we are a really shitty country'.

> I live in Canada as an immigrant

> I've often thought of leaving Canada due to this shit, I live on unceded native territory for fuck's sake.

And where would you go exactly?

Given every country has a history, I feel like declaring your intention to leave is hyperbolic. What country is your homeland?

Where would I go? I have relatives living in France.

Hyperbolic? I used to live in Australia and how they treated indigenous people was partly a motivation for me to leave. The racism is open and unapologetic there.

"Given every country has a history..." This is not a history, there are survivors living today. This is an issue happening right now. Children as late as the 60s were stolen, abused, and murdered. I live on unceded territory, my house is literally on stolen land. Leaving would be a monumental part of my life, I'm not going to lie, and I'd like to try and make a difference before going down that road. But it does feel rather hypocritical for me to feel this way and not stand by my principles.

This whole "it's history" argument really makes me sad. The amount of people that feel ok with this being a reason to just brush off what is happening today is a little sickening.

"I feel like declaring your intention to leave is hyperbolic" You say this as if what you "feel" has some deep insight into how I actually feel. I feel very emotional about this stuff, and I "feel" like you don't have any useful introspection into my character.

My homeland has absolutely no bearing on this conversation, I think you just want to know so you can go and unearth some sort of horror in my home nation. For the record I don't have any desire to return to where I grew up, nor do I think it's necessarily better there. However, I can guarantee that my home country does not have a suppressed indigenous population, no children buried in unmarked graves, and the land is not disputed.

It’s not from the 16th century

The article doesn't mention when they died.

I'd usually agree but in this case, I'm not sure. The residential school system is a stain on our past that continues to hurt the future. As one example, Indigenous women in Canada are subject to almost unspeakable levels of violence.

If you're interested in an absolutely awful read, you can read the final report from our National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls here:

https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/

Indigenous people in Canada are several times more likely to live in poverty, several times more likely to find themselves imprisoned and many Indigenous communities in Canada don't even have clean drinking water. The explicit genocide is over but the system still remains.

> I think China is just trying to take pot shots

Bob Rae, Canada's ambassador to the UN, had some good ripostes to China (and Syria):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKqBOlLRcgQ&t=11m12s

Best intentions? Not even close - horrible racism and genocide.

In many cases it wasn't disease, they were malnourished, and and in some cases beaten to death.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com