A 1935 letter found in shed reveals suffering and anguish residential schools created

Twila

Nanah Potato
Mar 26, 2003
14,698
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J.H. McIntosh, Esq.,
Calling Lake, Alta.
Driftpile, Alberta,

July 24th, 1935

Dear Sir,

Last winter J.B. Gambler, an Indian of Calling Lake, has taken his children away from the Wabasca R.C. School without the assent of the Principal and when the Magistrate acting as Truant Officer went to him to regain possession of the children he used abusive language and threatened to shoot him.

As the above mentioned J.B. Gambler is in receipt of a monthly ration, I have to order that the same be cut off entirely until such time as I am able to reverse my decision. This cannot be expected until the children are back at school at Wabasca and Gambler’s amends presented to the Principal and Magistrate there.

Your account dated 7th of July is being passed as submitted.

Yours faithfully,

W.P L’Heureux,

Indian Agent.


n 2013, Gwen Schmidt found this letter in a shed that she inherited near Calling Lake, in northern Alberta. She showed it to Curtis Cardinal, who posted it online.

After it went viral, Cardinal told the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network that he thinks Jean-Baptiste Gambler, who died in 1957, likely found a way to keep from sending his children back to the school. Let’s hope.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

From the 1880s until the 1990s, many parents had to choose between starving and sending their kids to schools where they were terribly mistreated.

Recollections of parental anguish are some of the saddest parts of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report issued this week.

Isaac Daniels told the commission that, in 1945, an Indian agent came to his home on the James Smith Reserve in Saskatchewan and spoke to his father in English, which Daniels couldn’t understand.

“So that night we were going to bed, it was just a one-room shack we all lived in, and I heard my dad talking to my mom there, and he was kind of crying, but he was talking in Cree now. He said that, ‘It’s either residential school for my boys, or I go to jail.’ He said that in Cree. So, I overheard him. So I said the next morning, we all got up, and I said, ‘Well, I’m going to residential school,’ because I didn’t want my dad to go to jail.”
Stephen Maher: A 1935 letter found in shed reveals suffering and anguish residential schools created | National Post
 

MHz

Time Out
Mar 16, 2007
41,030
43
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Red Deer AB
You probably though 'Ben Dover' was your 'secret' name.
I love how the fukers that were behind it are not blamed but 'all Canadians' must share in the shame and reconciliation efforts. The first one being the cases should go to the ICC as it is about torturing children and the abusers are the Church and State rather than the 'citizens' who were (willingly) kept in the dark.


Canada’s residential schools cultural genocide, Truth and Reconciliation commission says | Toronto Star
OTTAWA—The Truth and Reconciliation Commission urges all Canadians to rise to the enormous challenge of righting the wrongs committed by residential schools, even if it takes generations to reverse the ongoing effects of cultural genocide.

“We have described for you a mountain. We have shown you a path to the top. We call upon you to do the climbing,” Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, told a packed ballroom in a downtown Ottawa hotel Tuesday.

The exhortation came on an emotionally charged day that saw the commission release a heart-wrenching and damning 381-page summary of its final report detailing the history and legacy of residential schools — largely operated by churches and funded by the Canadian government — that saw 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children come through their doors for more than a century.

The 38,100 page report would still be the tip of the iceberg and the RCC is good at keeping ledgers when they are being paid. That would include purchasing children by customers who were into 'snuff' so nothing good is going to get uncovered, good reason it should have been back in 1935 via the elected Govt. If we donate $30B to the bankers for interest, throwing money at the survivors shouldn't be such a hardship as the interest gets paid but the principle never goes down. Give them some homeless people and see if they still have a sense of morality or if we have changed them into the savages we are at heart.
How stupid would we look if the Indians made the Reservations into a thriving business? Just by making such radical changes as leveling off the income and all tribal decisions were done by referendum either by 'house' or by being 18 or older. Nobody gets very involved when they have no say in the direction things go.
 

tay

Hall of Fame Member
May 20, 2012
11,548
0
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Stephen Harper's reaction to the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been to have no reaction at all.


Stephen Harper is increasingly declining to engage on subjects that don’t advance his electoral interests, to the point that his silences are sometimes more noteworthy than the things he says.


Harper has failed, for example, to comment on the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Report into crimes committed against aboriginals at residential schools.

Harper did not say anything at the closing ceremonies he attended at Rideau Hall. He did not hold a news conference, as most leaders would do as a matter of course when their government has received $50-million report that took six years to put together.

But this leader doesn’t do that kind of thing. The last time he held a real news conference in Ottawa was in December 2012.




After saying nothing in Ottawa, he went to the Toronto riding of Finance Minister Joe Oliver to warn television viewers about the threat from jihadi terrorists, delivering his tough lines in front of a backdrop of mute supporters and a huge flag, as he recently did in Montreal.

On Thursday, Harper took four questions. None were about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Perhaps that's because he's been getting feedback from his base. Over at the National Post, the backlash has set in.




http://www.ipolitics.ca/2015/06/05/...e-backlash-is-just-getting-started-mitrovica/




and




http://news.nationalpost.com/full-c...ke-staying-silent-on-truth-and-reconciliation












 
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MHz

Time Out
Mar 16, 2007
41,030
43
48
Red Deer AB
INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS - Cultural Genocide
TERRIFIED
TWENTIETH-CENTURY EDUCATION
FOR NATIVE AMERICANS
RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS

“I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.” Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott - 1920
Scott made his mark in Canadian history as the head of the Department of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, a department he had served since joining the federal civil service in 1879.
Even before Confederation, the Canadian government adopted a policy of assimilation (actually, it was the continuation of a policy that British colonial officials had pursued since 1713). The long term goal was to bring the Native peoples from their ‘savage and unproductive state’ and force (English style) civilization upon them, thus making Canada a homogeneous society in the Anglo-Saxon and Christian tradition.
In 1920, under Scott's direction, it became mandatory for all native children between the ages of seven and fifteen to attend one of Canada's Residential Schools.
 

Walter

Hall of Fame Member
Jan 28, 2007
34,843
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The Iroquois were nasty to the Wyandot. The Iroquois should pay reparations.