Residential Schools....Are You Kidding me
- Thread starter Albertabound
- Start date
Since sexual abuse etc. occurs in Canadian elementary and secondary schools--one would expect more in Residential ?
Natives were treated like vermin. Stripped of dignity and self worth - no one listened to their complaints-easy targets
doukhobors--smaller numbers but no doubt similar
Natives were treated like vermin. Stripped of dignity and self worth - no one listened to their complaints-easy targets
doukhobors--smaller numbers but no doubt similar
True comment einmensh,
the hypocritical reality here is, they did to the natives what they did not want done to them self’s. The most viscous human liberty violation perpetrated on misfortunate other human beings, who happened to be native.
SHAME TO THE ONES WHO LIVE OR LIVED THIS LIFE, ROBBING INNOCENT PEOPLE FROM A LIFE WHICH BELONGED TO THEM!!!!.
Like all residential institutions the Residential Schools had their share of bullies, misfits, jocks, nerds.. and sexual predators... on the faculty and in the student body. But to condemn all the priests, nuns, teachers, administrators and caregivers who joined, at great personal sacrifice, and out of a sense of vocation to God's work is a great injustice. It is this latter aspect that is at the true core of these attacks. The real target is the CHRISTIAN apect of these missions into the 'pristine' pagan culture of hunter gatherers.. the 'noble savage'.
Even this might hold some validity if in fact it was possible to impose a religion on anyone. It is clearly impossible, a conversion is a matter of the heart and cannot be imposed. Normally Residential Schools operated for roughly 8 months of the year. The children returning to their parents to hunt of fish in the wilderness and gain whatever balance and familiarity they needed to make life decisions. Many did convert and to this day find understanding and grace in their faith, not to mention the literacy and benefits of (Western civilization).
Harper is not apologizing for me, i have nothing to apolagize for. He is merely apolagizing in my name for something for which he has neither the moral or legitimate authority to do. I would not ask the Iroquois nation to apolagize for martyring St. Jean de Brebeuf and the Canadian Martyrs at Midland Ontario, because i have enough sense and self respect not to hold the children responsible for the crimes of the fathers.. or those who were not directly involved with the crime.
Harper has no such qualms though. He is indicting the entire messianic cause of Christian civilization, no small statement for such a mediocre intellect. It was predictable given both he and his Liberal and Conservative predecessors have now fallen under the pall of the alter relativistic humanism with it gross hyposcrisy and sophistry. This token is symbolic only of the utter loss of confidence in and unravelling of our civilization. It is also more about money and land than it is about truth.
Even this might hold some validity if in fact it was possible to impose a religion on anyone. It is clearly impossible, a conversion is a matter of the heart and cannot be imposed. Normally Residential Schools operated for roughly 8 months of the year. The children returning to their parents to hunt of fish in the wilderness and gain whatever balance and familiarity they needed to make life decisions. Many did convert and to this day find understanding and grace in their faith, not to mention the literacy and benefits of (Western civilization).
Harper is not apologizing for me, i have nothing to apolagize for. He is merely apolagizing in my name for something for which he has neither the moral or legitimate authority to do. I would not ask the Iroquois nation to apolagize for martyring St. Jean de Brebeuf and the Canadian Martyrs at Midland Ontario, because i have enough sense and self respect not to hold the children responsible for the crimes of the fathers.. or those who were not directly involved with the crime.
Harper has no such qualms though. He is indicting the entire messianic cause of Christian civilization, no small statement for such a mediocre intellect. It was predictable given both he and his Liberal and Conservative predecessors have now fallen under the pall of the alter relativistic humanism with it gross hyposcrisy and sophistry. This token is symbolic only of the utter loss of confidence in and unravelling of our civilization. It is also more about money and land than it is about truth.
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What a bunch of bunk, many young people were sexually, and physically abused, the apology is for THEM, not for anyone who doesn't fit that
catagory, I am glad for the apology, and I apologize along with him, and hope for
f**k sakes, that it doesn't happen again, simple.
The apology was nothing but another session of lip service. BIG F UCKING JOKE. The Natives who have been affected by this need financial compensation not BULL S!HT ON TOP OF BULL S!HT. How can it be, you rip someone off from their youth and completely disowner their human existence and some idiot PM stops short from sincerely showing remorse by simply saying we are sorry and sorry again. That is a f joke.
The only time one can move on from something like this is to be financially compensated. Arar got $10,000,000from the Feds for wrongfully classified as a terrorist. Why is an Indian worth so much less?
I can't help but be jaded now when reading your posts. You've shown such an irrational level of hatred for anything 'CON', that I can't help but think that you're views aren't actually your views, they're just whatever you can dredge up to hate about any action taken by the current government. The jaded side of me reads your posts and automatically deduces that, if it were anyone but Harper in power right now, you'd have been applauding them having the guts to give an apology on top of the reparation payments that went out.
But, maybe that's just me.
Look Karrie, first off I can’t stand phony people, Harper and his bunch are phony they have no alternatives to many issues, and if you were to go around the country to many Indian reserves you will see that a young generation of Natives are destroying them selfs sniffing glue I agree that even when the Liberals were in power they did nothing to help the natives get on their feet. So, Harper is playing the optics game because they are not that popular at the moment. He is desperately trying to gain voter support with phony theatrics. If the Conservatives were on a majority today you would have not seen any of these stupid theatrics. Here you have two CON ministers who just got fired because they were involved in group sex with the MADAM BICKER BIG TITS CHICK AND OBVIOUSLY LETS SHOW Canadians we love the Indians. That is pure irritants that live no room in liking the CONS.
So, Soc, do you approve of how churchfolk treated their charges in those residential schools, considering it was the Churches who carried out their government's policy....
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apparently I missed something in the news. If I'd known there were group sex stories, I'd have been all over that! lol. And she has a name Socrates. 'Yelling' that she's madam biker big tits chick is more than just a little bit rude and misogynistic.
Richard WagameseCitizen Special
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Residential schools are Canada's shame. For roughly 100 years, their aim was to break the back of family, community, history and spirituality. Their aim was to end Canada's "Indian problem," to invoke the might of the right of the white to eradicate a people's sense of themselves and their rightful place in the history of the country.
Some call it genocide. Others call it a holocaust. More refined thinkers label it mere assimilation. Whatever the label, the grievous hurt that was inflicted on Canadian consciousness festers even now, long after the last of the schools was closed.
Now a touring commission will allow the survivors of that system to tell their stories. When the federal government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins its nationwide trek, Canadians will brace themselves for an onslaught of woe and terror, neglect and secret invasions of mind, body and spirit unparalleled in this country. They are prepared for bleak disclosure.
But there are other stories that need to be told as well. Stories like my mother's. My mother is 75 and attended the Cecilia Jeffery School outside Kenora, Ontario. In the 60-some years that have passed since her experience, she has become a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She lives in a small house on a reserve outside Kenora.
When you enter my mother's house, there's one thing more than anything that strikes you. It's incredibly neat. She cleans fastidiously. Every surface in her home gleams and everything is organized and arranged to make the most out of the living area. There is a cross on the wall, a Bible by her bed and a picture of Jesus in the living room. It's a home not unlike the home of any grandmother anywhere in Canada.
She credits the residential school experience with teaching her domestic skills. While she was at the school, she learned how to cook, sew, clean, launder and take care of a home. Her house on the reserve is known as the neatest and cleanest and even though she's an elder, she takes care to maintain it. Her lawn is the only cultured lawn on the whole reserve, shorn, immaculate, stunning.
My mother has never spoken to me of abuse or any catastrophic experience at the school. She only speaks of learning valuable things that she went on to use in her everyday life, things that made her life more efficient, effective and empowered.
Why is this important? Well, because the Truth and Reconciliation Commission needs to hear those kinds of stories too. As a journalist since 1979, I've heard people credit residential schools with the foundation for learning that allowed them to pursue successful academic careers. Others tell of being introduced to skills that became lifelong careers, and still others, like my mother, talk of being introduced to a faith that guided the rest of their lives.
Certainly, there are horrendous experiences. Certainly, the truth of those soul-killing incursions needs to see the light of day. Certainly too, it is a necessary step in a nationwide healing. But if the focus of the commission is truth and the goal is reconciliation, then someone needs to begin by being conciliatory. The opportunity for native people to lead and to show Canada their heart is now.
Because if, say, 150,000 people attended a residential school, not every single one of them was sexually or physically abused. To try to claim that would be outlandish and no one would buy it. Instead, let the commission hear from those for whom the residential school experience might have been a godsend, or at the least, a steppingstone to a more empowered future.
Because those kinds of stories happened too. They happened to my mother and others like her. To be brave and go against the flow and tell Canada that for some native people, the residential school experience was not exclusively a horror show is to tell Canada that we have grown as nations of people, that we recognize that truth means a whole vision and not just a selective memory.
If native people use this opportunity to show that they are capable of seeing beyond hurts and invasions and rampant disregard for our lives and future, we show our neighbours that the heart of us was never broken, that we were never conquered, that we have not and will never be assimilated, and that we have retained our dignity despite everything that might have happened to us.
Tell all of the stories. The good along with the bad. Lead by example and use this opportunity to create harmony, to create a more balanced future for all of us.
Such is honesty. Such is truth. Such is the foundation of forgiveness and such are the bones of reconciliation.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Residential schools are Canada's shame. For roughly 100 years, their aim was to break the back of family, community, history and spirituality. Their aim was to end Canada's "Indian problem," to invoke the might of the right of the white to eradicate a people's sense of themselves and their rightful place in the history of the country.
Some call it genocide. Others call it a holocaust. More refined thinkers label it mere assimilation. Whatever the label, the grievous hurt that was inflicted on Canadian consciousness festers even now, long after the last of the schools was closed.
Now a touring commission will allow the survivors of that system to tell their stories. When the federal government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins its nationwide trek, Canadians will brace themselves for an onslaught of woe and terror, neglect and secret invasions of mind, body and spirit unparalleled in this country. They are prepared for bleak disclosure.
But there are other stories that need to be told as well. Stories like my mother's. My mother is 75 and attended the Cecilia Jeffery School outside Kenora, Ontario. In the 60-some years that have passed since her experience, she has become a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She lives in a small house on a reserve outside Kenora.
When you enter my mother's house, there's one thing more than anything that strikes you. It's incredibly neat. She cleans fastidiously. Every surface in her home gleams and everything is organized and arranged to make the most out of the living area. There is a cross on the wall, a Bible by her bed and a picture of Jesus in the living room. It's a home not unlike the home of any grandmother anywhere in Canada.
She credits the residential school experience with teaching her domestic skills. While she was at the school, she learned how to cook, sew, clean, launder and take care of a home. Her house on the reserve is known as the neatest and cleanest and even though she's an elder, she takes care to maintain it. Her lawn is the only cultured lawn on the whole reserve, shorn, immaculate, stunning.
My mother has never spoken to me of abuse or any catastrophic experience at the school. She only speaks of learning valuable things that she went on to use in her everyday life, things that made her life more efficient, effective and empowered.
Why is this important? Well, because the Truth and Reconciliation Commission needs to hear those kinds of stories too. As a journalist since 1979, I've heard people credit residential schools with the foundation for learning that allowed them to pursue successful academic careers. Others tell of being introduced to skills that became lifelong careers, and still others, like my mother, talk of being introduced to a faith that guided the rest of their lives.
Certainly, there are horrendous experiences. Certainly, the truth of those soul-killing incursions needs to see the light of day. Certainly too, it is a necessary step in a nationwide healing. But if the focus of the commission is truth and the goal is reconciliation, then someone needs to begin by being conciliatory. The opportunity for native people to lead and to show Canada their heart is now.
Because if, say, 150,000 people attended a residential school, not every single one of them was sexually or physically abused. To try to claim that would be outlandish and no one would buy it. Instead, let the commission hear from those for whom the residential school experience might have been a godsend, or at the least, a steppingstone to a more empowered future.
Because those kinds of stories happened too. They happened to my mother and others like her. To be brave and go against the flow and tell Canada that for some native people, the residential school experience was not exclusively a horror show is to tell Canada that we have grown as nations of people, that we recognize that truth means a whole vision and not just a selective memory.
If native people use this opportunity to show that they are capable of seeing beyond hurts and invasions and rampant disregard for our lives and future, we show our neighbours that the heart of us was never broken, that we were never conquered, that we have not and will never be assimilated, and that we have retained our dignity despite everything that might have happened to us.
Tell all of the stories. The good along with the bad. Lead by example and use this opportunity to create harmony, to create a more balanced future for all of us.
Such is honesty. Such is truth. Such is the foundation of forgiveness and such are the bones of reconciliation.
But, please, let the apology not become an icon, something that we pull out from time to time and admire and then put away again. Let it not be something that makes us feel good about ourselves so that we can avoid thinking about the things that should shame us.
In my family, you are expected to work at apologizing until what you broke is fixed (the black eye fades, you pay to replace the toy you broke, or the hurt feelings have subsided). I don't know how we should expect to do things as a country, but, so long as people are alive who instituted these policies, and people are alive who suffered under them, I don't think we get to shrug it off and say 'okay, we're over it now', until those who were hurt do so. I wish there were a 'right answer' for it, a formula for fixing abuse and molestation, attempted assimilation. But there really doesn't seem to be.
Sorry Karrie but even if the Libs were in power I would criticize them for something like that. The Native Indian in Canada is an endangered species.
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FIRST OF ALL... Native Canadians are not a separate species, and I'd appreciate if you don't talk about them like they're something separate from us. They are people.
Second of all, they're experiencing greater population growth than any other segment of Canadian population the last I heard.
Karrie I have always respected the Native Indian, they are people with deep spiritual values. We are all species of this planet.
Do you think some of that money might be used to set up more casinos in Alberta where people can feed their addictions of gambling and smoking indoors while snubbing their noses at the law? Wouldn't that be grand! We could have our own little LV strip. Hey, maybe brothels can be built too.
ETA: and experience deep spiritual values too, at the casinos, with the smoking and gambling.
ETA: and experience deep spiritual values too, at the casinos, with the smoking and gambling.
It's a 'simple' apology, nothing more, unless, as I read here, people want to twist it into
something 'less' or 'more'. WE ARE SORRY, aren't we?
I am glad you make that point Ariadne;
If I am not mistaken the casinos were build by the provincial Governments while the feds say keep the profits coming. The casino became a pass time for many Indians on the reserve. We must never forget that the Native Indian was first given Alcohol to drink before water by the white man way back then. As for smoking cigarettes human beings around the globe for many years believed that smoking was like drinking tea. A habit that proved fatal for all users from all skin pigmentations.