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Comment by anon291 | Hacker News Reader

Based on what facts? The tribes negotiated the treaties and negotiated fairly large changes from the governments initial proposals (mainly to do with more monetary funding). Yet, they said little about schooling.

Perhaps they didn't know what was going on (and I agree that abuses took place), but the desire for their children to be more European was absolutely there. It is very clearly documented. This is in stark contrast to the claim that such things were forced upon the tribes. It seemed that a shared goal of the Canadian government and tribes was the integration of the natives with the Canadian nation. I don't see how this is deniable. The claim that the government committed 'cultural genocide' honestly falls flat for me.

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“Perhaps they didn't know”?! You think the tribes knew about the atrocities and were ok with them?

I have no idea what the tribes knew or did not know. Do you? I am amazed at some people's abilities to read other's minds.

As to the tribal leaders signing the documents. I can understand how the monetary promises given to them by the Canadian government would make them overlook the potential for atrocities yes; such things are well attested to in the history of humanity. But again, I have no idea. You asked me to speculate, so I did.

I don't understand why there is so much outrage today when one expresses that they do not know an unknowable fact.

The outrage is over the atrocities, and the people insinuating that those atrocities were somehow ok because some papers were signed beforehand

Asking questions like “did they know why they were signing?” or “was there going to be a war if they refused to sign?” seem entirely reasonable to me

There is outrage over the atrocities, which is justified.

There's also outrage over the nebulous notion of 'pushing Canadian/European values'. I think that's misplaced.

What atrocities, exactly? You’re begging the question. One of the main atrocities we are talking about is forcing the children to adopt European culture.

If you’re simply saying that some bad things happened at these boarding schools… we’ll, yeah. That’s a known reality in all boarding schools. Doesn’t make it ok. But many many people knew about those sorts of things and cared and also didn’t think the solution was to ban boarding schools. (Others, of course, as in all ages, didn’t care.)

Stories recounting cruel physical and sexual abuse are only a google search away. Of thousands of children being disappeared. Of being woken in the middle of the night to dig graves.

Yeah, the other weird thing about the whole situation is that (1) these things likely happened in other European boarding schools of a similar nature and (2) the physical punishments the students were subject to were par for the course in that era. The forced kidnapping is still wrong, but that doesn't mean we also need to add in other less substantiated claims.

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