Mass children's grave found in Canada

[LadyEloise]

The BBC are reporting that a mass grave with the bodies of 215 children have been found at former residential school set up to integrate Indigenous People, in Kamloops, Canada.
Once again the Catholic church is involved.
Striking similarities with those Mother and Baby homes in Tuam, Galway and Bessborough, Cork in Ireland.
But in Ireland the bodies have not been exhumed.
In Tuam they are in a septic tank and in Bessborough, only this week, a developer was refused permission to develop a site for housing in or around where the bodies of the children are believed to be buried.
A small victory but the children's bodies have still not been exhumed.

@Onesailwait

It's not blatant but there is a strong undercurrent. My younger kids go to a school that is 80% indigenous/ first nation's. Most of the neighbors drive their kids 25mins + so they don't have to have their children mix. My business partner is indigenous & we have faced many obstacles with setting up our business both with banks & client perception. Drive down any BC coastal highway & you will see red dresses hung to symbolize the missing & murdered indigenous women who nobody cares to investigate. Look at the Robert Pictkon case he murdered 40+ women, they were indigenous women & sex workers it went on for years because these women are seemingly worthless. I have a reserve just beind my property this is seen as highly undesirable. I feel like I'm banging on now but this issue is so important to me & my community. It needs to be addressed.

I hear you. I've been reading about the missing for a few years now. I hope the issues are addressed soon.

Heavy hearts in BC today. Dropped my kids to school, flags at half mast, a see if orange shirts. Hearts are broken but eyes are wide open. Everyone is taking and that is great. Let's hope this puts pressure on the government to search for the rest of the children who never came home.
Every Child Matters

I've seen that Soubriquet

It is horrifying. But at least Canada is actively acknowledging the wrongs of the past and trying to reconcile.

We have had a Royal Commission on the residential schools and another about the missing women. You can read both online.

@Onesailwait, I'm guessing you are familiar with BC Ferries...There are no words that can express how tragic this discovery is. I was disappointed to see that the story wasn't prominent on the BBC news site until a couple of days later. 'Heavy hearts' is absolutely the way to describe the feeling in my community too.

@Squiginawig, not so much conspiracy theories as government sanctioned policy.

How very sad. The other situation that greatly bothers me is The Highway of Tears. Google this on YouTube. I also recommend the film Wind River, which gives you an idea of what is happening with Native American women. The Highway of Tears is in Canada, I cannot believe it has not been investigated more. It's like nobody cares.

Sorry isn't enough.

And what you have now is closed Residential Schools but a foster care system that still removing little Indigenous children from their parents. Grandpa came back from residential school broken, raped, and now he's drinking the pain away. He beats your mum and doesn't know how to parent. She in turn can't parent you, turns to men who in their turn were poorly parented. And now you are removed because your parents aren't fit, even though they never attended the schools. And the foster care system is white social workers and white families. Still no language or culture and you're turned out at 19. And you know how you get housing and money so you don't die? That's right, have a baby, heal you life. But you weren't parented and here we are again.

And the land is still not respected. Fairy Creek. Or the pollution so bad that baby boys start to be born less and less. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281269/

Canada has very good international PR.

@MrsTerryPratchett, yes, trauma has such a knock on effect for future generations.

If you Google Highway of Tears you will see that it has not been ignored. It has been the subject of much inquiry but sadly most of the missing women cases have not been solved. The majority disappeared traveling (often hitchhiking) along the remote highway. Most were indigenous but some of the missing women were not.

The Royal Commission on Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women addressed this also.

At least one serial killer, Cody Legebokoff, is implicated.

These issues do not lend themselves to easy solutions. You cannot just throw money at the problem. As a Canadian, I am very aware of our history. We are very open about our past and as I have stated, we are working at reconciliation. We are very far from perfect.

I say this as someone who went to high school in Kamloops, BC and lost two classmates who were brutally raped and murdered in 1973 (Gail Weys and Pamela Darlington). If they were indigenous I did not know. It was very scary to be a young woman attending college that Fall. It is generally believed they were both murdered by the same serial killer, but I am not up to date with the cases.

The Yellowhead Highway, called the highway of tears, starts at Kamloops and goes north through remote country. I think it is fair to say that young women hitchhiking along that highway was and is unwise regardless of ethnicity. At the same time, the distances and remoteness mean public transportation is not readily available.

There is much work to do.

@Onesailwait

Yes, sadly this is the tip of the Iceberg. The stories about residential schools are horrific & sadly they are not all from a distant past but as recently as 1996. I live in an area where a high %of the population is indigenous. Some of my friends stories are heart breaking, families torn apart. They weren't trying to integrate them, they were trying to erase any trace of culture or heritage from these kids.

I watched a drama based on the stories of 2 indigenous ppl. They were taken from their families aged 4/5 ish and were expected to immediately talk English or French. They were called by a number.

They witnessed, and experienced all types of abuse. Then once they reached a set age. They just left. Nothing was arranged for them.

It was a man and a women telling their stories. The man was quite elderly and it was the first time he had told his story. And you could see the hurt in his eyes.

The aim of those homes was to destroy their heritage. It was not to help the children.

Lovefall, thank you for the update.

My god.

So what were they doing? Removing children from their families and then killing them? Hideous and I can't comprehend it.

onesailwait I’ve been listening to Connie Walker’s podcasts highlighting the history of the residential schools and the knock-on/long term effect this abhorrent system of education has had on the indigenous communities. Harrowing.

@LobotomisedIceSkatingFan

Made me cry. Salutary reminder that every country, even those which frequently appear to be more attractive than one's own, has its shame.

Canada has loads

I’ll bet we find a lot of this hidden here in Australia too. We have what we call “The Stolen Generation”, but there was a lot of cruelty and inhumanity going on before and after that in the name of God as well.

@SecondCityShark

My god.

So what were they doing? Removing children from their families and then killing them? Hideous and I can't comprehend it.

They were removing children to residential schools (and hospitals and other places) ostensively to 'civilise' the First Nations (that wasn't the word they used). They thought that by removing language, religion, culture and family they could remove the I-word from the child, making them fit for servitude and menial labour. But not giving them the same rights or privileges as white people.

When you remove children from their families, and put them with priests and nuns who think of them as subhuman, and allow them to do what they like, what you get is rape, abuse, violence, illness, starvation and death.

What stuck me today is that this is like any other genocide. Except it was mostly children who were killed. Just let that sit for a second.

And a whole generation came home (if they were lucky) not knowing their culture, language or history. With Christian names and a new religion and English. And massive addiction and self harm and violence.

And wiping out languages and moving different indigenous groups from their fertile lands in different climates, etc... and throwing them all in together (regardless of their languages and personal histories/potential enmity) and chucking them all in “reservations” in the shittiest, most remote parts of the country where water is scarce, food is brought in via trucks and is processed and expensive, etc. Now instead of open genocide, a lot of indigenous Australians are dying young of diabetes and renal diseases as a result of these conditions. They are very much out of sight, out of mind when you consider that 96% of the Australian population lives in and around the capital cities.

I think it is important to note that they have not discovered a "mass grave." The media, including the BBC used that phrase. You will find they have stopped describing it that way.

Rather, they found more unmarked graves than were accounted for in the school's records, and the location of the records. A mass grave is one grave containing multiple remains used for example when a lot of people die at the same time.

It is of course still tragic and shocking, but for everyone's sake we need a proper understanding of what was found.

It is not a surprise to Canadians that children died in the residential schools, at a much higher rate than other children. This was said in the Royal Commission report. There was TB, malnutrition, fires, and a host of reasons for tragic deaths. The schools were horrible places. Some children died running away.

It is notable that most were run by religious groups. Most of those groups have apologized but the Pope has not. The Kamloops school was run by Catholic priests and nuns. The fact that religious groups were involved does not remove Canada's responsibility.

I have read that finding the graves at other schools must be pursued as a next step in the healing process.

*location of the graves. (Not records)

@Justilou1
I lived in Australia 20 odd years ago for a couple of years, a lot of the time in Perth and had a great day out at Rottnest Island.
Biking, swimming, great beaches, cute quokkas, what's not to like?
Then a few years ago I saw a documentary on what actually happened there and was horrified.

@IHaveBrilloHair - our human rights are woeful. We have very “Whitewashed” history lessons and our news is suppressed. Most Aussies are so complacent and uneducated about this because it suits them not to rock the boat. I learnt more about it all when I lived in the Netherlands. Aussies are shocked when they discover that we are viewed as one of the most racist countries on earth.

I believe it's better now?
I'm in touch with my Dd's Australian family but not so much I could ask about this.
When I lived there it was v much if you aren't a white man, then you are inferior.
That, said, I loved it, but it suprised me, and not in a good way.
One of Dd's family members isn't white, and it's no issue, but she's a baby and not Indigenous.
Between everyone I know of there's Scottish, German, Canadian, English, Brazilian.
V diverse family, but I'll let you guess which one might have issues.

Hmmm… I wonder? Australia likes to present itself as being very multicultural - and it is…. But there is very much a “not as foreign as other foreigners” hierarchy in place. While the Brazilian friend may always be “foreign”, they will probably be more included than say, a Somalian or someone wearing traditional Muslim clothing, sadly. The most “foreign” amongst us still are our indigenous population though. I do feel that our current government has done a lot to perpetuate class and race issues, and the young people are really feeling it. (Thank god for our young people. They just don’t tolerate it!)

Yes, that's what I thought, though it's difficult for me to know of course.
Interesting you knew exactly which person I was talking about too, Dd's cousin.