In 1999 I worked on the BC Gas southern crossing pipeline expansion on a partnership with the okanagan nation alliance, based out of the Osoyoos Indian Band office. During that project we formed good friendships with the administrators, some of which were band members. One of the things that a native administrator shared with me was that he had attended the catholic school in Kamloops. He was taken from his home as a child by the chief and taken to the government agent to be placed with foster parents because his parents were alcoholics. He considered his foster mom as his “white” mom and still loves her and says she was the reason he was a success. But upon completing his schooling he had a calling to go back to his band to make a difference for his people. One of the things he said that always stayed with me was this, look around this office, most of us natives that work here are either former foster family or residential school kids. He wasn’t saying everything was perfect but he said it changed his life for the better.
The residential school era is much more complicated than we are led to believe. Trudeau being who he is tried to make it all about himself, he was desperate for Canada to have a George Floyd moment. He has been the most toxic PM of all time, he has found issue after issue to divide citizens.
As citizens we have to find ways to come together as a nations despite the efforts of our govt to divide us, otherwise the idea of Canada is finished.
Perhaps this is all a matter of projection. We know that First Nations engaged in human sacrifice and cannibalism. We know they kept slaves and slaughtered people to inaugurate totem poles and longhouses, and in celebration of potlatches. The only graves of murder victims are likely to be found there, not in Catholic or Anglican schoolyards. What the Europeans brought to this continent was the abolition of slavery and the imposition of respect for human life.
Each day we slip further and further down into a Soviet-like rabbit hole created by those disgusting political cynics and opportunists, Trudeau and his cult. And sheep-like Canadians are too apathetic and cowardly to demand an end to it. If Trudeau wins again in 2025, we are well and truly done as a free nation.
The world is littered with unmarked graves. Chances are there is one in your backyard. People just die and they have done so for over a million years. Lacking any evidence or excavation we must assume that these sites may not be graves at all and even if they are, where is the evidence of wrongdoing? These days, with political correctness, we have to sing to the tunes of the conspirator composers. Any person who asks for evidence is painted as a denier, a bigot, and any other objectionable name under the sun. Now there are even voices heard which promote criminalizing second thought.
Jesus, obviously the desire to know the truth wanes on this topic as soon as it was possible that there was not some mass wrongdoing on it. Much more profitable to milk the myth.
Regarding the desire to criminalize this, wtf is Canada literally Germany? But in this case instead of holocaust denial being illegal, it's on the level of questioning something we literally don't know the answer to.
It isn't about whether or not there are actually unmarked graves, or more likely, cemeteries that were not maintained; it is about controlling what the narrative is. Going forward in our society, there will be less and less tolerance about individuals holding contrarian views. Matt Taibbi has been writing
extensively about this. The people who are in charge do not want anyone that they don't agree with obtaining any kind of political power. The pandemic, for example, just provided them with more more opportunities to shout down anyone that disagreed with them. It is going to get worse before it gets better as well.
The source of many of the stories repeated by the elders et al., at the KIRS was/is Kevin Annett, a defrocked United Church minister who began his career at the pulpit repeating the many lurid stories emanating from what we call the Satanic Panic of the 1970's and 80's, itself a tapestry of child torture, death and burial lore linked to the new phenomenon of industrialized daycare.
Failing as a pastor didn't stop Annett; he adopted a new indigenoussy persona and adapted his stories for a new audience and a new locus: Indigenous youth at residential schools. It caught on, obviously. So like many conspiracies we have stories in search of evidence, which is where ground penetrating radar enters the scene.
On top of the backwards working suspicions, we have a university department that won't give us the full GPR report, a refusal by the elders to excavate, a refusal to report on the 800,000 items sent to the Kamloops elders re archive data, and a government and media refusal to budge on a story that they all know is built on sand.
In return the Federal government is doling out 100's of millions of dollars so that 1st Nations can chase down myths, myths created by a white dude who got fired from a Christian church for being a complete lunatic.
If they really believed the residential-school experience was comparable to the Holocaust, they would be looking for the equivalent of "righteous gentiles" to honour. In this case, it would be those selfless nuns, priests and Anglican clerics who devoted their lives not only to providing as good an education as they could (like the teacher in Tomson Highway's memoir who taught him the piano), but many of whom learned their languages and were the first to write them down, nursed them through illness and encouraged their ambitions. We have letters from former students attesting to their love of these teachers and their gratitude for the decency and good faith they experienced in their care. Holocaust survivors clung to these examples of human goodness with gratitude for the proof they provided that goodness is a choice, and helped them to envisage a better future. That those of us who want to see these righteous teachers and administrators recognized and given their due acknowledgement are vilified as "denialists" speaks to the inhumanity and moral corruption in the alleged "truth and reconciliation" camp.
There is a chapter in "The 1867 Project" (what a delightfully tongue-in-cheek name!) that makes the case that Sir John A. MacDonald saved more indigenous lives than any other prime minister—which when you think about it, isn't so big a claim, as not many, if any, other prime ministers had such a policy. But it's not just about the western famine relief (an expensive and laudable effort that is forgotten just like the monies spent by the Brits on interdicting the slave trade), it examines the actual pros and cons of the residential school system. Stone-age subsistence hunters appreciated what the schools had to offer, benefits that are less clear today to someone living a far more comfortable life.
And we shouldn’t forget the TRC Report quietly agreed: “In keeping with the dominant social values of the day, school staff would have believed that they were helping Aboriginal people. Although some came to question the overall impact of their work, most believed that, on a daily basis, they were providing children with an opportunity to acquire needed skills.”
Some news outlets have picked up ‘denialism’ and are using it uncritically, such as this recent headline from The Tyee:
“Residential School Denialism Is on the Rise. What to Know”.
I am quite certain the taboos were in place but not the loaded terminology, not until folks like Marc Miller started with it. Of course, it’s absurd. Name-calling is virtually all they have.
“It matters because the thousands of aboriginal people who really did suffer unspeakable torment in residential schools deserve something rather more from us than our complicity in the act of dumping their very real suffering down a rabbit hole into the same parallel universe where you’ll find alien abductions,” 🎯
In 1999 I worked on the BC Gas southern crossing pipeline expansion on a partnership with the okanagan nation alliance, based out of the Osoyoos Indian Band office. During that project we formed good friendships with the administrators, some of which were band members. One of the things that a native administrator shared with me was that he had attended the catholic school in Kamloops. He was taken from his home as a child by the chief and taken to the government agent to be placed with foster parents because his parents were alcoholics. He considered his foster mom as his “white” mom and still loves her and says she was the reason he was a success. But upon completing his schooling he had a calling to go back to his band to make a difference for his people. One of the things he said that always stayed with me was this, look around this office, most of us natives that work here are either former foster family or residential school kids. He wasn’t saying everything was perfect but he said it changed his life for the better.
The residential school era is much more complicated than we are led to believe. Trudeau being who he is tried to make it all about himself, he was desperate for Canada to have a George Floyd moment. He has been the most toxic PM of all time, he has found issue after issue to divide citizens.
As citizens we have to find ways to come together as a nations despite the efforts of our govt to divide us, otherwise the idea of Canada is finished.
Perhaps this is all a matter of projection. We know that First Nations engaged in human sacrifice and cannibalism. We know they kept slaves and slaughtered people to inaugurate totem poles and longhouses, and in celebration of potlatches. The only graves of murder victims are likely to be found there, not in Catholic or Anglican schoolyards. What the Europeans brought to this continent was the abolition of slavery and the imposition of respect for human life.
Each day we slip further and further down into a Soviet-like rabbit hole created by those disgusting political cynics and opportunists, Trudeau and his cult. And sheep-like Canadians are too apathetic and cowardly to demand an end to it. If Trudeau wins again in 2025, we are well and truly done as a free nation.
The world is littered with unmarked graves. Chances are there is one in your backyard. People just die and they have done so for over a million years. Lacking any evidence or excavation we must assume that these sites may not be graves at all and even if they are, where is the evidence of wrongdoing? These days, with political correctness, we have to sing to the tunes of the conspirator composers. Any person who asks for evidence is painted as a denier, a bigot, and any other objectionable name under the sun. Now there are even voices heard which promote criminalizing second thought.
Where is Freedom of speech?
Jesus, obviously the desire to know the truth wanes on this topic as soon as it was possible that there was not some mass wrongdoing on it. Much more profitable to milk the myth.
Regarding the desire to criminalize this, wtf is Canada literally Germany? But in this case instead of holocaust denial being illegal, it's on the level of questioning something we literally don't know the answer to.
It isn't about whether or not there are actually unmarked graves, or more likely, cemeteries that were not maintained; it is about controlling what the narrative is. Going forward in our society, there will be less and less tolerance about individuals holding contrarian views. Matt Taibbi has been writing
extensively about this. The people who are in charge do not want anyone that they don't agree with obtaining any kind of political power. The pandemic, for example, just provided them with more more opportunities to shout down anyone that disagreed with them. It is going to get worse before it gets better as well.
Good piece, but I think many commentators are getting *way* ahead of their skis in dismissing Kamloops as a "hoax."
I'm not sure what else one might call it.
The source of many of the stories repeated by the elders et al., at the KIRS was/is Kevin Annett, a defrocked United Church minister who began his career at the pulpit repeating the many lurid stories emanating from what we call the Satanic Panic of the 1970's and 80's, itself a tapestry of child torture, death and burial lore linked to the new phenomenon of industrialized daycare.
Failing as a pastor didn't stop Annett; he adopted a new indigenoussy persona and adapted his stories for a new audience and a new locus: Indigenous youth at residential schools. It caught on, obviously. So like many conspiracies we have stories in search of evidence, which is where ground penetrating radar enters the scene.
On top of the backwards working suspicions, we have a university department that won't give us the full GPR report, a refusal by the elders to excavate, a refusal to report on the 800,000 items sent to the Kamloops elders re archive data, and a government and media refusal to budge on a story that they all know is built on sand.
In return the Federal government is doling out 100's of millions of dollars so that 1st Nations can chase down myths, myths created by a white dude who got fired from a Christian church for being a complete lunatic.
If it walks like a hoax and talks like a hoax...
Anyway, don't go by me. The redoubtable Frances Widdowson does a great job here: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/billy-remembers/
If they really believed the residential-school experience was comparable to the Holocaust, they would be looking for the equivalent of "righteous gentiles" to honour. In this case, it would be those selfless nuns, priests and Anglican clerics who devoted their lives not only to providing as good an education as they could (like the teacher in Tomson Highway's memoir who taught him the piano), but many of whom learned their languages and were the first to write them down, nursed them through illness and encouraged their ambitions. We have letters from former students attesting to their love of these teachers and their gratitude for the decency and good faith they experienced in their care. Holocaust survivors clung to these examples of human goodness with gratitude for the proof they provided that goodness is a choice, and helped them to envisage a better future. That those of us who want to see these righteous teachers and administrators recognized and given their due acknowledgement are vilified as "denialists" speaks to the inhumanity and moral corruption in the alleged "truth and reconciliation" camp.
There is a chapter in "The 1867 Project" (what a delightfully tongue-in-cheek name!) that makes the case that Sir John A. MacDonald saved more indigenous lives than any other prime minister—which when you think about it, isn't so big a claim, as not many, if any, other prime ministers had such a policy. But it's not just about the western famine relief (an expensive and laudable effort that is forgotten just like the monies spent by the Brits on interdicting the slave trade), it examines the actual pros and cons of the residential school system. Stone-age subsistence hunters appreciated what the schools had to offer, benefits that are less clear today to someone living a far more comfortable life.
And we shouldn’t forget the TRC Report quietly agreed: “In keeping with the dominant social values of the day, school staff would have believed that they were helping Aboriginal people. Although some came to question the overall impact of their work, most believed that, on a daily basis, they were providing children with an opportunity to acquire needed skills.”
Some news outlets have picked up ‘denialism’ and are using it uncritically, such as this recent headline from The Tyee:
“Residential School Denialism Is on the Rise. What to Know”.
I am quite certain the taboos were in place but not the loaded terminology, not until folks like Marc Miller started with it. Of course, it’s absurd. Name-calling is virtually all they have.
Oh look, another piece on this subject published in The Tyee 15 years ago by some dude named Terry Glavin (whoever the hell *he* is): https://thetyee.ca/Views/2008/04/30/TruthAndAbuse/
“It matters because the thousands of aboriginal people who really did suffer unspeakable torment in residential schools deserve something rather more from us than our complicity in the act of dumping their very real suffering down a rabbit hole into the same parallel universe where you’ll find alien abductions,” 🎯