Mass Graves Revealed of Indian Children in Canadian Schools

[Joanne98]

By Brenda Norrell,
Posted on Fri Apr 18th, 2008 at 09:57:53 PM EST
The horror of the genocide in Canada's Indian Residential Schools became public, as the locations of 28 mass graves of Indian children were revealed.

An unknown number of Indian children died in captivity at Indian Residential Schools in Canada.

The murders included children killed in electric chairs. Some of the bodies were incinerated in the school furnaces, while others were buried in mass graves.

Eyewitness Sylvester Greene described how he helped bury a young Inuit boy at the United Church's Edmonton residential school in 1953.

"We were told never to tell anyone by Jim Ludford, the Principal, who got me and three other boys to bury him. But a lot more kids got buried all the time in that big grave next to the school."


The location of mass graves of residential school children was revealed by the Independent Tribunal Established Squamish Nation Territory ("Vancouver, Canada") on April 10.

At a public ceremony and press conference held outside the colonial "Indian Affairs" building in downtown Vancouver, the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared (FRD) released a list of twenty eight mass graves across Canada holding the remains of untold numbers of aboriginal children who died in Indian Residential Schools.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2008/4/18/215753/976

This validates Ward Churchill

Kill The Indian, Save The Man:

For five consecutive generations, from roughly 1880 to 1980, Native American children in the United States and Canada were forcibly taken from their families and relocated to residential schools. The stated goal of this government program was to "kill the Indian to save the man." Half of the children did not survive the experience, and those who did were left permanently scarred. The resulting alcoholism, suicide, and the transmission of trauma to their own children has led to a social disintegration with results that can only be described as genocidal.Ward Churchill is the author of A Little Matter of Genocide, among other books. He is currently a Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

http://books.google.com/books?id=LUauAAAACAAJ&dq=ward+churchill&ei=iUcLSKLqIZCSzQT_nPmcAQ

[Berry Cool]

1. I don't believe it validates Churchill, necessarily.

From what I understand, his scholarship methods are highly questionable and he's prone to regurgitating the research of others as his own.

In other words, just because these graves were discovered and revealed now doesn't mean that Churchill was the only one, or the first one, to uncover such a horrible chapter in a nation's history.

If he could be proven to be the first to have uncovered the fact that Indian children were killed and buried in these Canadian schools, that would validate THIS PORTION of his scholarship.

Edit: To add: And nothing, absolutely nothing--not even this--can ever justify or forgive his having called the 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns" or blaming each of them, individually and personally, for his or her own death.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[intheflow]

3. Churchill never blamed individuals for their deaths on 9-11.

He was saying that they were part of the machine that kept the global economy and US interests abroad on schedule and gaining power, he was talking about workers in a systemic economy built on war and colonialism. He was literally saying the US had reaped what it sowed from it's aggressive and dehumanizing Middle East policies over decades. The fact that the "controversy" about this Eichmann comment was brought to the public on Fox by Bill O'Reilly says all I need to know about who to believe in this argument.

Just in case you haven't read Churchill's essay (and I suspect you haven't), here it is: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens

*Edited for clarity.

[Berry Cool]

4. And if he's going to claim that that's the case, then, aren't we all?

Or, at least, aren't ALL Americans, if you are spreading the tar brush that wide?

Don't we ALL, then, deserve to be killed?

Believe me, I know what kind of shit Chuchill spews about 9/11. Basically, that all Americans are guilty of complicity with whatever terrible policies our country exerts in some other country; therefore, if some of us get killed by terrorists, it's only deserved revenge for our collective evil. It's the same kind of bullshit Fred Phelps spouts about how 9/11 and every other horrible thing that happens to Americans is deserved vengeance from God for allowing gays to live.

Sorry, I don't believe in the concept of collective guilt and collective vengeful punishment. Even when the punishment is for something truly bad and wrong. "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" is not the kind of philosophy I live by.

As for the fact that Bill O'Reilly brought up the Eichmann comment, well, even a blind squirrel like him can find a nut from time to time, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, etc. This was one teeny tiny case amongst a billion in which he was right.

[intheflow]

9. He never said anyone deserved to be killed in 9/11.

He said their deaths befitted their complicity, but that's not the same as saying they deserved to die for it. If a person who's overweight, doesn't exercise, and eats nothing but McDonalds even when he knows all those things are bad for him, if that person dies of a heart attack, his death befits him. But I would never say that he deserved to die for his actions.

And in fact, all Americans are guilty. Do you pay your taxes? You're complicit in funding the war and Dick Cheney's closed energy meetings. Do you buy anything that's made in overseas sweatshops? Of course you do, it's nearly impossible to live in this country and only buy local, USA made products any more. How about your electricity and heat? Do they come from 100% renewable, sustainable sources? If not, you're complicit. No one living in mainstream America is exempt from being a part of the system. Doesn't mean you deserve to die, it just means you live in the United States.

To compare Churchill with Phelps is ridiculous. Churchill's comments were first presented in a secular, academic paper and taken out of context by Fox News. Phelps spews his deranged and delusional ignorance to anyone who will listen because he thinks he's a Messiah.

To defend Bill O'Reilly in any way is indefensible, imo.

[Berry Cool]

10. You are splitting ridiculous hairs now.

"He said their deaths befitted their complicity, but that's not the same as saying they deserved to die for it. If a person who's overweight, doesn't exercise, and eats nothing but McDonalds even when he knows all those things are bad for him, if that person dies of a heart attack, his death befits him. But I would never say that he deserved to die for his actions"?

There is NO DIFFERENCE between saying "their deaths befitted their complicity" and "they deserved to die." Even Churchill splits hairs when he says things like "I'M not saying they deserved to die, but if YOU think people who do such things deserve to die, well then, they deserved to die" (which he has said).

What a heap of bullshit. You're saying they died as a consequence of their actions. That's the same as saying they deserved it. No difference.

And please don't try to force your own personal sense of collective guilt on me. Yes, I pay my taxes--but that doesn't mean I approve of everything my taxes pay for. I have probably inadvertently bought something that's made in overseas sweatshops, precisely BECAUSE it's nearly impossible to live in this country and only buy local, USA made products anymore. As for my electricity and heat, of course they don't come from 100% renewable, sustainable sources because that is not where my power company gets them from, even though I would like it very much if they did.

You know what would be the only way to make myself not complicit in any of this? To live in the woods, without electricity or running water, eat only plants, live entirely off the land. How many people do you know who could do that? Are you doing it? And if not, and a terrorist kills you, well then, does your death "befit your complicity"?

A guy did once live in the woods, off the grid, so he could be ideologically "pure" and blame the rest of the world and its evils for all its pains and sorrows. He used to do that, and emphasize his point by sending bombs through the mail that killed people. I prefer not to follow his example, thank you.

The only way to change what we don't like about this world is to make the small, slow, gradual changes any of us can try to make. Elect better government, refuse to buy from sweatshops, force utilities to supply renewable energy. Otherwise, it's hopeless, and we might as well all just kill ourselves now, before we cause further blight upon the planet.

And comparing Churchill with Phelps is not in the least bit ridiculous. They are both ideologues. The only difference is that one shrouds himself in the religion of "Christianity" and the other in the religion of "academic inquiry."

You say "Churchill's comments were first presented in a secular, academic paper and taken out of context by Fox News." Well, I believe the "little Eichmanns" statement speaks for itself. I have read his own interpretation of that as told to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! (NOT Fox News), and I am still not at all impressed.

So they were "little Eichmanns" instead of "big Eichmanns." They were all implicit in "the banality of evil" (a concept which I believe in, entirely, but which I think Churchill stretches WAY too far in this case). No, no, no. I don't buy it.

Even if I believed it of all the people whose jobs had to do with the financial trade (and I don't), I could not buy it of the waiters at the Top of the World who were just trying to make a living and maybe raise a family. I could not buy it of the young woman who was the niece of a friend of mine, who was only going to work at eSpeed, the electronic trading arm of Cantor Fitzgerald, for a few years, and then quit to become a teacher. I cannot buy it of the babies and children on those planes. I cannot believe it of the firemen who tried to save them, or the priest who did what he could and died in the collapse of a tower. All of them, "little Eichmanns"? No.

Or, are they the "collateral damage" that is OK because, as Chuchill would say "We don't care enough about little brown babies in Iraq"? Bullshit. It is bullshit for him to say we don't care about little brown babies in Iraq. Some of us ache every day when we think about them, and how determined our president (whom many of us DID NOT VOTE FOR) was to kill them, no matter what we did or said. Are we complicit in their deaths?

"Phelps spews his deranged and delusional ignorance to anyone who will listen because he thinks he's a Messiah"? And you think that makes him different from Churchill how? Both of them think they speak the absolute truth. Both are badly deluded.

You say "To defend Bill O'Reilly in any way is indefensible, imo." So somehow Bill O'Reilly is worse than someone who thinks the 9/11 deaths befitted the complicity of those who died in the deaths of other people in the Middle East?

All I can say is, O'Reilly has a mixed-up sense of morality, but yours is stranger.

Don't get me wrong. This is a free country, and it's free for the speech of Churchill, and O'Reilly, and you. But that doesn't mean I have to believe any of it.

We will never get anywhere in this world if we keep attempting to justify and keep tally of how many people died here to avenge the deaths of how many people who died there. And whether or not Churchill wants to admit it, that's what he's trying to do. Justify the thirst for vengeance.

Are there too many people in the world who think as he does, who will indeed attack those whom they feel justified in attacking? Yes, and that's part of why things have to change. But they never will change if we begin to look upon acts of terrorism, or the invasion of innocent countries, as a means of some sort of social justice or balance.

And that's all I have to say about this, because I know at heart that I will never change a mind like yours. All I'm doing here is saying I argue out of knowledge and education, not just hot emotion. I know what's been said, and I understand what's been said...and I still disagree with you entirely.

[intheflow]

11. Man, what is your beef with this?

You must be the one with the collective guilt--you doth protest too much, as the saying goes. You seem to be in denial that the U.S. should take some ownership of the suffering it's wrought in the world. To pretend our actions abroad won't have brutal consequences if our action are brutal is naive at best and blindly patriotic at worst.

Your rant was completely out of proportion to both the tone and content of my post you were responding to. It doesn't help your case, but it does ensure that I won't respond to any more of your posts on the subject.

[knitter4democracy]

5. I don't doubt it at all.

During college, I did a month of teaching on the Navajo Nation Reservation in Chinle, AZ, and one of our field trips was to the Hopi Mesas area where we got to talk with a grandmother. She was amazing, kind, brilliant, and quite hospitable to these crazy college kids, and she told us the story of being kidnapped by white soldiers and taken to the school. They cut her hair, kept her away from other Hopi kids in an effort to keep her from speaking her language, and she closed her eyes at one point in talking about the horrors there. I can easily imagine that kids died under that kind of treatment. Horrific. She's an amazing person, and I was so honored to meet her, and my heart weeps for her as a child, torn from her family and imprisoned in a gov't school for ten years before she could ever see her family again. Evil. The whole thing is evil.

[Igel]

6. I guess the first question is, since the period covered decades,

"How did they die?"

They say some were killed in electric chairs. (I'm mildly curious about this.) Somebody said it was because of alcoholism and suicide; this strikes me as overstating the case for the kids. Perhaps for the communities that lost their kids it's true, but usually there aren't mass deaths by suicide, at least not the way I understand the expression "mass deaths".

The period covered some epidemics, to be sure. It probably also includes those dead from abuse. But the presumption seems to be that for 70 years no kids in state custody should die; this is unreasonable.

How the "hundreds or possibly thousands" of deaths came about should be investigated. But the easy inference is that there were some sort of anti-Indian pogroms at these schools to produce stacks of bodies to be incinerated (which is exactly what you'd do in an epidemic) in some sort of Canadian Oswiecim.

[Berry Cool]

7. It is a horrible story, and the whole truth should be found.

But if and when it is, I am still not of the belief that it will mean that all white Canadians deserve to be killed for their "complicity" in allowing such a thing to happen.

Ward Churchill, on the other hand, would probably consider it justice.

[Quantess]

8. A related article:

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2008/04/14/5279971-sun.html

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. There's a Canadian film about life in the boarding schools

It's called Where the Spirit Lives, and I saw it on PBS a few years ago. It's a fictional account of two Blackfoot children who are kidnapped and taken to a faraway boarding school.

The story is similar to what I've heard about these types of schools in the U.S. Back when I was in college, I took a course in Native American Culture, and the professor told of visiting one of those boarding schools. He said the youngest kids, some of whom looked as if they were in the early years of elementary school, just mobbed visitors and demanded to be picked up and played with. He felt that it was because they were desperate for attention and weren't getting it in that institutional setting.