Playground Bones Force Canada to Face Genocide Of Indian Children

[Stretch]

'In overgrown deserted school playgrounds across Canada lie the bones of thousands of native Indian children who were stolen from their families.
Historian John Milloy is helping to uncover their stories in official research on burial sites. "We know that children were buried in unmarked graves, children who disappeared and were never heard from again," he said. The research is part of Canada's attempts to face up to a disturbing legacy of its residential school system, an attempt to "assimilate" native children that resulted in thousands of deaths and ruined lives.'
Playground bones force Canada to face genocide of Indian children - Scotsman.com News​

 

[Machjo]

It was just the Europeans' attempt to ensure that they could get their way through the democratic system. Kill enough of them then so that today we can crush their culture on the argument of majority rule.

Don't you love democracy?

 

[EagleSmack]

It was just the Europeans' attempt to ensure that they could get their way through the democratic system. Kill enough of them then so that today we can crush their culture on the argument of majority rule.

Don't you love democracy?

Thats what I'm talking about. It had nothing to do with Canadians. Just like the US had nothing to do with taking land from Native Americans.

 

[Machjo]

Thats what I'm talking about. It had nothing to do with Canadians. Just like the US had nothing to do with taking land from Native Americans.

If my father robs a family of millions of dollars and gets away with it, even though I might not be responsible for the crime, I'm still its beneficiary, even if I'm not ever aware that the crime has ever been committed. In this respect, as a beneficiary, woud I not have a responsibility to help those who may have fallen into poverty owing to their parents having lost this money a generation earlier?

The same applies to North America's indigenous cultures today. English, French, Spanish and their respective cultures dominate, while many of North America's indigenous languages and cultures are on the verge of extinction (I remember a case of an indigenous woman whose father refused to teach her his indigenous language because fo the trauma associated with it caused by memories of teachers sticking needles through his tongue if he dared speak ). We might not be responsible for the crimes of our fathers, but we are the cultural beneficiaries of this genocical policy. As such, do we not have a duty to help not only to preserve but even to develop North America's indigenous cultures?

Unfortunately, a son who should inherit from a deceased criminal father, unless he's of strong character, is likely to haved a privileged attitude, figuring since he never stole the money, he has a right to it. And it would seem that North Americans of European descent have the same attitude towards their privileged inheritance. They conveniently forget history and argue that it is their democratic right as a majority to force the indigenous people to learn the majority languages and cultures today, with no consideration for how this majority came to be in the first place. Sure they give some token consetions, but they are so minimal as to really be quite patronizing.

 

[EagleSmack]

Well my father, and fathers father as far back as we can trace did none of this. I am second generation American. Mom's parents were from Newfoundland (via Ireland in the late 1700's), Dad's were from County Cork Ireland. The color of my skin does not make me guilty.

 

[Machjo]

Well my father, and fathers father as far back as we can trace did none of this. I am second generation American. Mom's parents were from Newfoundland (via Ireland in the late 1700's), Dad's were from County Cork Ireland. The color of my skin does not make me guilty.

Neither did my personal family to the best of my knowledge. But if my neighbour gets robbed, and the police go to help her, they do not bring an interac machine with them. It's a free service out of compassion for what that person suffered. When a person suffers a crime, if we can make the criminal pay, we should. But when it's not possible, then society ought to make some kind of compensation out of sheer compassion.

We can't necessarily go out and start picking whose father did what. But it's pretty clear that the indigenous languages, cultures, and consequently peoples are suffering today for these crimes, and society ought to show some compassion with a desire to rebuild these cultures.

Sweden has never been involved in colonialism, yet it gives more of its GDP to develping countries every year than do ex-imperial countries such as France (e.g. Zaire), the UK (e.g. the North America), the US (e.g. the Phillipines), etc.

An injustice has been made, and society ought to be compassionate enough to try to rectify it. If the perpetrators can't rectify it, then society as a whole ought to bear the burden for such serious crimes as colonialism and genocide, be it bodily or cultural.

Instead, we always hear this attitude of privilege, that English, French, Spanish and other major world languages and cultures should be exploited to our advantage with no regard for the damage they are causing to smaller languages and especially with no regard for how they became so powerful in the first place. This thsu allows us to cash in on the interest accrued through imperialism, thus adding insult to injury.

 

[#juan]

'In overgrown deserted school playgrounds across Canada lie the bones of thousands of native Indian children who were stolen from their families.
Historian John Milloy is helping to uncover their stories in official research on burial sites. "We know that children were buried in unmarked graves, children who disappeared and were never heard from again," he said. The research is part of Canada's attempts to face up to a disturbing legacy of its residential school system, an attempt to "assimilate" native children that resulted in thousands of deaths and ruined lives.'
Playground bones force Canada to face genocide of Indian children - Scotsman.com News​

The government of Canada has never practiced a policy of genocide. Even in the worst days of the residential schools, the deaths of the children were from disease rather than any form of execution. When the schools were being closed, some native leaders demanded they stay open. The abuse that went on in those schools is something none of us can be proud of but to call it genocide is nonsense. If you want to blame someone for the bad things that went on, blame the church(s).

 

[Stretch]

The government of Canada has never practiced a policy of genocide. Even in the worst days of the residential schools, the deaths of the children were from disease rather than any form of execution. When the schools were being closed, some native leaders demanded they stay open. The abuse that went on in those schools is something none of us can be proud of but to call it genocide is nonsense. If you want to blame someone for the bad things that went on, blame the church(s).

As early as November, 1907, the Canadian press was acknowledging that the death rate within Indian residential schools exceeded 50% (see Appendix, “Key Newspaper Articles”). And yet the reality of such a massacre has been wiped clean from public record and consciousness in Canada over the past decades. Small wonder; for that hidden history reveals a system whose aim was to destroy most native people by disease, relocation and outright murder, while “assimilating” a minority of collaborators who were trained to serve the genocidal system.

This history of purposeful genocide implicates every level of government in Canada, the RCMP, every mainline church, large corporations, and local police, doctors, and judges. The web of complicity in this killing machine was, and remains, so vast that its concealment has required an equally elaborate campaign of cover-up that has been engineered at the highest levels of power in our country; a cover-up that is continuing, especially now that eyewitnesses to murders and atrocities at the church-run native residential “schools” have come forward for the first time. For it was the residential “schools” that constituted the death camps of the Canadian Holocaust, and within their walls nearly one-half of all aboriginal children sent there by law died, or disappeared, according to the government’s own statistics.

These 50,000 victims have vanished, as have their corpses, “like they never existed,” according to one survivor. But they did exist; they were innocent children, and they were killed by beatings and torture, and after being deliberately exposed to tuberculosis and other diseases by paid employees of the churches and government, according to a “Final Solution” master plan devised by the Department of Indian Affairs and the Catholic and Protestant churches.

The term “Final Solution” was not coined by the Nazis, but by Indian Affairs Superintendent Duncan Campbell Scott in April of 1910 when he referred to how he envisioned the “Indian Problem” in Canada being resolved. Scott was describing planned murder when he came up with the expression, since he first used it in response to a concern raised by a west coast Indian Agent about the high level of deaths in the coastal residential schools.

The Canadian Holocaust

Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust

Hidden From History > Home

Hidden From History - The Canadian Holocaust, Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples by Church and State

 

[EagleSmack]

The government of Canada has never practiced a policy of genocide. Even in the worst days of the residential schools, the deaths of the children were from disease rather than any form of execution. When the schools were being closed, some native leaders demanded they stay open. The abuse that went on in those schools is something none of us can be proud of but to call it genocide is nonsense. If you want to blame someone for the bad things that went on, blame the church(s).

Looks like genocide is not just for Americans.

 

[Cliffy]

The government of Canada has never practiced a policy of genocide. Even in the worst days of the residential schools, the deaths of the children were from disease rather than any form of execution. When the schools were being closed, some native leaders demanded they stay open. The abuse that went on in those schools is something none of us can be proud of but to call it genocide is nonsense. If you want to blame someone for the bad things that went on, blame the church(s).

Juan,

You are sadly lacking in your knowledge of Canadian history. Residential School children were subjected to medical experiments and if they objected too much, usually ended up being "failed" medical experiments. Physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse was rampant and with 50 thousand deaths in a native population of a few hundred thousand, the percentages were very high.

I have sat with the elders and listened to their heart breaking stories. The emotions are genuine, the tales were real. You cannot make up stories that horrific. All you have to do is look around at the aftermath, the destroyed lives, and you can see that something as devastating as genocide did occur. And you just have to look at the attitude of many European descendants to see that it probably happened exactly the way the indigenous people said it did. The lack of compassion alone speaks to the callousness of their tormentors.

 

[Tyr]

The government of Canada has never practiced a policy of genocide. Even in the worst days of the residential schools, the deaths of the children were from disease rather than any form of execution. When the schools were being closed, some native leaders demanded they stay open. The abuse that went on in those schools is something none of us can be proud of but to call it genocide is nonsense. If you want to blame someone for the bad things that went on, blame the church(s).

The government of Canada has never practiced a policy of genocide

True enough. It was the gov'ts of France and Britain that practiced genocide in Canada. The gov't of Canada has only been around for 141 yrs. British and French colonialism go back 511 yrs.

 

[EagleSmack]

The government of Canada has never practiced a policy of genocide

True enough. It was the gov'ts of France and Britain that practiced genocide in Canada. The gov't of Canada has only been around for 141 yrs. British and French colonialism go back 511 yrs.

Well I guess that is one way of absolving yourself.

 

[Ron in Regina]

The last Residential School (to the best of my knowledge) closed down in
the 1990's...in all of our lifetimes.

 

[Cannuck]

To call what happened in to aboriginal people in North America "genocide" disrespects all those who were victims of real genocidal actions. It also gives the arguments of those that use the term, reduced credibility. What has happened to the aboriginal population in Canada is unconscionable. It was not, however, genocidal.

The real question is what to do now.

 

[Cliffy]

To call what happened in to aboriginal people in North America "genocide" disrespects all those who were victims of real genocidal actions. It also gives the arguments of those that use the term, reduced credibility.

Cannuck,

What would you call the deliberate and long running policy of wiping out a culture and the people who belonged to it. In Alberta, former Premiere Manning initiated a program of forced sterilization of native girls and that happened in many other provinces as well. Genocide is a perfectly good word for what was done to the aboriginal people. Just because you don't like it doesn't make those who use it any more or less credible, just different from you.

 

[Cannuck]

What would you call the deliberate and long running policy of wiping out a culture and the people who belonged to it.

Assimilation

In Alberta, former Premiere Manning initiated a program of forced sterilization of native girls and that happened in many other provinces as well.

That would be called "forced sterilization" (it wasn't all native girls btw....that would be genocidal)

Genocide is a perfectly good word for what was done to the aboriginal people.

Yes it would be...if you are trying to elicit some type of emotional response. On the other hand, if you are trying to be factual...

Just because you don't like it doesn't make those who use it any more or less credible, just different from you.

My "liking" it or not "liking" it has nothing to do with the lack of credibility of those that don't understand the meaning of the word.

 

[Cliffy]

While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2, of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."[1]

I believe all criteria have been met

 

[Machjo]

The government of Canada has never practiced a policy of genocide. Even in the worst days of the residential schools, the deaths of the children were from disease rather than any form of execution. When the schools were being closed, some native leaders demanded they stay open. The abuse that went on in those schools is something none of us can be proud of but to call it genocide is nonsense. If you want to blame someone for the bad things that went on, blame the church(s).

Cultural genocide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clearly there are varying definition sof cultural genocide, but it would seem they all cover government sanctioning of churches tearing children away from family and forcing them into a foreign cultural environment. And when we hear stories of children haivng needles forced through their tongues because they dared speak their mother tongue, I'd say that counts as cultural genocide by any definition.

 

[Tyr]

Well I guess that is one way of absolving yourself.

Unlike the Sand Creek massacre. That would be tough to rationalize other than outright murder

The Sand Creek Massacre (also known as the Chivington massacre or the Battle of Sand Creek or the Massacre of Cheyenne Indians) was an incident in the Indian Wars of the United States that occurred on November 29, 1864, when Colorad Territory militia attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped in southeastern Colorado Territory. Based on the oral history of Southern Cheyenne Chief Laird Cometsevah, over 400 Cheyenne and Arapaho children, women, physically- and mentally-challenged, and elders were brutally murdered at Sand Creek. More than 700 American soldiers were involved.

 

[Cannuck]

"I believe all criteria have been met"

Hardly...but nice try.