So, british mumsnet, how do you feel about statues of Queen Victorian and QEII torn down in Canada?

[Evangeli]

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57693683

While we're talking about statues, curious to hear opinions on this. Are you shocked, outraged or just "meh"? I feel this is different from the slaver captain who was torn down last year (in Plymouth?) or the military/politician men who have been toppling across Canada- it feels even more iconoclastic?

Personally I'm anti-monarchist, so it's all good to me, but would like to discuss it. fwiw, I grew up in the UK but immigrated to Canada as an adult.

The QE2 and Kamloops link is a half remembered thing I read on MN some years ago.

Knocking down statues isn't an attempt to change history- it's an expression of anger and grief, as people said. And it's nothing like the Romans, at all.

I'm anti monarchy anyway. But I've been following this story since seeing some stuff on tiktok about the graves of children being found near a residential school.

I don't pretend to know all the details of this or the colonisation on Canada but I know enough to form an opinion. Canada was inhabitated when it was colonised. We can't pretend the land and traditions of people who lived there meant nothing and were virgin for the taking.

Therfore much of Canada should be viewed as occupied land. After discoving these graves it is evidence of what these communities have been saying for so long about how they were/are bowed and treated.

So I'm not surprised they are angry and want to show that anger. How much it feel having a celebrated symbol of the colonisation of your land and decimation of your culture in your town? To see everyday? Good on them!

I don't think it is particularly productive or meaningful.
However I understand that the rage and trauma has to go somewhere and a symbolic figurehead is as good as anywhere.

As a Canadian who had nothing to do with tearing down statues, I think it is fair to say that Canada's history is far more complex than all of this makes it sound.

As an example, our first Prime Minister, John A. McDonald was born in Glasgow, Scotland. Canada was not a confederation until 1867. Many of the men involved in confederation were UK born.

A good number of my ancestors were United Empire Loyalists, who left the US during the War of Independence because they were loyal to the Crown. Another good number came from Scotland.

Canada was not created out of thin air and populated by white anglophones. We have three founding groups. French, English, and aboriginal. The relationships were complex to say the least.

I find it difficult to be a Canadian at times because we are facing up to our history in ways many other countries are not. That is partly why you hear so much. It is also why the Canadian population today is feeling so much horror, guilt, and responsibility, even though we had nothing to do with setting up and running the schools.

It is why we are putting so much into reconciliation. We had a years long process of compensation for residential school survivors already, and the Royal Commission recommended the cemetery areas be studied. It is not a surprise that many children died of things like TB, childhood diseases, malnutrition etc. The churches who ran the schools were not the benevolent groups that were perhaps expected.

We are told we indirectly benefitted. I find it hard to see how, unless you sat that "white privilege" flows. I lived in a community with many indigenous people as a teen, and went to high school with kids from the residential school who came to my school for advanced subjects like sciences at higher grades. This was in the 1970s. We learned side by side.

I am not in any way saying that the residential school system was anything but a horror and huge mistake. So was letting the churches run them. But they had similar in the US and we do not hear anything really. I don't know about other countries with indigenous populations but it seems likely similar bad things happened.

Iconoclasts leave gaps in history though that can't be replaced - i'm thinking of the religious monuments destroyed during the enlightenment, and the reformation in Britain.

I feel nothing!

'I don't think removing the statue of someone supporting the slave trade is appropriate because it destroys the evidence of how those people became successful/rich and thus erases not just their history but that of those they exploited'

That's what museums are for.

Statues generally are elevated so you look up at them. And don't usually have any info or context with them.

I think comparing this to smashing Roman busts is insulting. Many survivors of the residential schools are still alive today (and many are deeply traumatized). This isnt ancient history, it's a genocide within living memory.

@Evangeli

Knocking down statues isn't an attempt to change history- it's an expression of anger and grief, as people said. And it's nothing like the Romans, at all.

I work in the heritage sector and I agree. We don't need to pretend this didn't happen. But we need to document it as the next stage of history.

@NiceGerbil

'It’s more about self-righteousness than anything else.'

Not about the discovery of a raft of mass graves full of children's bodies?

Well if you say so.

This is actually a bizarre thing though. And language like "mass graves" is part of the issue. These are graveyards, with coffins, used over years. A few are marked but most are not. But not what most people picture when you say "mass graves."

There is almost no new information involves. We knew about these graveyards, we have known for many years. We knew many children died in residential schools. Mostly from tb and other childhood diseases.

Finding them and making some attempt to record the numbers, maybe identify them, and commemorate them was one of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation committee that finished a few years ago, and this was very much in the public eye and covered by the media.

More recently likely locations were identified as a next step - again, covered, although more quietly, by the media.

What has just happened now is that estimations on the number of coffins have been made, so that they can then begin to examine records and go on with archeological investigations. The numbers are high to modern ears, but not so much in the context of the late 19th and early 20th century and institutions that operated for many years.

The media has bizarrly reported this without saying anything about the earlier parts of the investigations, as if it's a shock, and used words like "mass grave" and "murder". Are there murdered kids there? Possibly, and almost certainly kids who were abused and malnourished too. But also many that died because almost every child that entered the schools had tb according to the records. We just won't know anything for sure until they get further.

And now what we have people making accusations all over the place of other people supporting murdering of kids because people want to have a party on Canada day, or calling people who were born in the country settlers and suggesting they should go home, and burning down churches, and so on.

Not, I think, what the T&R report was hoping to achieve by giving indigenous families some real information and closure about their lost children.

Was it Queen Vic's fault that those kids died?

Or the RC Church?

Bloody hell smoked.

Really?

150000 indigenous children taken from their families.

'It is unclear how the children died at the schools, which were buffeted by disease outbreaks a century ago, and where children faced sexual, physical and emotional abuse and violence. Some former students of the schools have described the bodies of infants born to girls impregnated by priests and monks being incinerated'

'The purpose of Canada’s residential schools for indigenous children was to “kill the Indian in the child”. Sometimes the child died too. Over the past month 1,148 unmarked graves have been found at the sites of three former residential schools. Ground-penetrating radar confirmed what indigenous groups have long suspected: that more children died at these schools than was previously thought.'

'Many children never returned home, and their families were given only vague explanations of their fates, or none at all. Canada had about 150 residential schools and an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children passed through the schools between their opening, around 1883, and their closing in 1996.'

'An estimated 6,000 children died while attending these schools, due in large part to the squalid health conditions inside. Students were often housed in poorly built, poorly heated, and unsanitary facilities.

Physical and sexual abuse at the hands of school authorities led others to run away.'

Up to the Canadians. If they don't like the monarchy i don't feel it's got anything to do with me. If anything I sympathize

[quote Evangeli]@SmokedDuck I agree that it feels very tinder-boxy and I am thankful C-day was muted or mostly canceled yesterday. What you would consider "rational influences"? Are you thinking of Indigenous elders and leaders? That they should "calm" things down?[/quote]
I mean the media should be reporting this information with the context that helps people place it.

For example - how were the graveyards found? How did we know about them?

Not using words like murder and mass graves would help. I have spoken o a lot of people who really believe that these are mass graves of the kind you see in news footage about the Balkans or concentration camps, and think that most or all of these children were secreetly murdered, based on what they hear from the news and social media. That's outright inaccurate.

It might also be a useful thing for news sources to remind people how common child deaths were during that time. It seems surprising but many seem clueless about the number of children affected by polio, diphtheria, tb, at that time.

UNfortunatly the big broadcasters like the CBC are not good on stories about indiginous issues now, almost in the same way they are problematic with things like women's prisons. They seem to believe if they ask even questions meant to help the reader understand these kinds of basic background elements, or ask any questions at all, it's bigotry. Which runs them into trouble occasional like with the issue with the elders opposing the pipeline - the news dropped it like a hotcake when it started to be clear they'd misrepresented the story.

The RC church doesn’t exactly have the greatest track record of, you know, actually looking after people….

@July2mebabywouldJuly2me

It just seems over dramatic and silly to me. Like they don't care about the dead indigenous children, they just wanted some aggro.

Absolutely

Smoked your point is then that... This is all being misreported?

That the levels of children dying was to be expected?

That it's unlikely that any children were murdered, because squalor disease mistreatment etc naturally kills children so it wasn't murder?

The casual yes there's probably kids who were abused... ?!

So essentially your view is nothing much happened and it's the media whipping up trouble. I think?

'For example - how were the graveyards found? How did we know about them?'

They used ground penetrating radar.

That's been in pretty much every news item I just read.

'It might also be a useful thing for news sources to remind people how common child deaths were during that time. '

Yes good idea.

That would definitely calm the upset and anger and everyone would go home and have a cup of tea.

Crowd action: In general I don’t like mobs, violence, rioting, vigilantism or that kind of thing, even in a cause I support. I prefer democracy and discussion. It’s up to other countries how they police themselves, though.

The tragedy of the First Nation children at the home: Absolutely bloody awful. Heartbreaking. Not a surprise, having read how bad things have remained for those groups up to the present. Missing native women. That serial killer case. Various things. There is obviously a very powerful undertow of contempt and hatred for the original Canadian peoples there that must have been overpowering as you go back into Canadian history.

The issue of unpopular or insensitive statues: I think better mechanisms for getting these things removed if a majority of citizens want them gone need to be brought in in all jurisdictions. Local government is often not very responsive. It’s a problem in various countries.

These toppled Canadian statues in particular: Queen Victoria makes sense as a avatar of Empire and colonial attitudes. I’m a bit bemused that poor QE2 copped it too. She’s not an imperialist and I don’t think she’s killed people, but I’m not weeping into a Union Jack and railing about it. Must feel odd for HMQ but she will live. Of course, we are not a former colony so the significance of the symbolism is different.

Overall: Meh.

'They seem to believe if they ask even questions meant to help the reader understand these kinds of basic background elements, or ask any questions at all, it's bigotry'

So in summary.

Nothing newsworthy.
Some of the kids may have been abused but meh.
Don't know what all the fuss is about children died all the time back then (there are still people alive who went to them!).
The media are making stuff up same as the indigenous prior people are prone to doing
The media are scared to ask the proper questions about... Something to do with this. Because they don't want to be accused of racism.

I think that's about it.

@NiceGerbil

Bloody hell smoked.

Really?

150000 indigenous children taken from their families.

'It is unclear how the children died at the schools, which were buffeted by disease outbreaks a century ago, and where children faced sexual, physical and emotional abuse and violence. Some former students of the schools have described the bodies of infants born to girls impregnated by priests and monks being incinerated'

'The purpose of Canada’s residential schools for indigenous children was to “kill the Indian in the child”. Sometimes the child died too. Over the past month 1,148 unmarked graves have been found at the sites of three former residential schools. Ground-penetrating radar confirmed what indigenous groups have long suspected: that more children died at these schools than was previously thought.'

'Many children never returned home, and their families were given only vague explanations of their fates, or none at all. Canada had about 150 residential schools and an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children passed through the schools between their opening, around 1883, and their closing in 1996.'

'An estimated 6,000 children died while attending these schools, due in large part to the squalid health conditions inside. Students were often housed in poorly built, poorly heated, and unsanitary facilities.

Physical and sexual abuse at the hands of school authorities led others to run away.'

You have a very strong tendency to think it is ok for the media, or activists, to say anything they want, whether it is factual or not, if you think it supports the right feeling about a subject.

It is not factual to say that these graves were unexpected, or that they were murder victims - some may well have been but it's unlikely most were - or to call them mass graves.

Information with no context is useless and often worse. How many more? What were the estimates based on? What woudl we have expected, statistically?

Many of us have folowed these stories for years and were not that surprised by the findings, and are also hoping that there will be more information as time goes on. This thing where people jump on those who have followed the story all along, but don't put up an avatar that shows they are supportive, or don't support blatantly incorrect media reporting, and don't chastise their neighbours for celebrating Canada day, is seriously fucked up.

It's just the worst kind of wokism. Embrace truthiness.

And as for the purpose of the residential schools: current left politics, like everything else, will only allow us to say that they were based on racism and hate and intended to kill people. Well, they would be a pretty inefficient way to do that, and while there were plenty of racist people their creation did in fact have a considered purpose. One that has important links to all kinds of problems that are still ongoing in indigenous communities now, and for which real solutions still have not been found. So it's quite possibly important to actually give a shit about truth over truthiness, if we want to try and make some headway at fixing those problems. Because trying to do so without understanding what has been done before is the method of idiots.

@TheSpottedZebra

Not outraged at the statues at all. Outraged at the atrocities that have been waged against indigenous peoples, and understand (as much as i can, as a Brit), the anger.

I'm very pro- peaceful protests and also a bit of a republican, for context.

This

I'm shocked and outraged that hundreds of dead children have not been remembered properly. That's what I'm shocked and outraged about. Statues being torn down pales in comparison.