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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   28779 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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NYT has released an article about unmarked graves in Canada.

They quote Tom Flanagan about lack of concrete evidence for child graves:

“There’s, so far, no evidence of any remains of children buried around residential schools,” Tom Flanagan, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary and an author of “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth About Residential Schools),” said in an interview.

“Nobody disputes,” he added, “that children died and that the conditions were sometimes chaotic. But that’s quite different from clandestine burials.”

The arguments by Mr. Flanagan and other skeptics have been roundly denounced by elected officials across the political spectrum who say evidence clearly suggests that there are many sites of unmarked burials.

Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation, who made the announcement about the Kamloops site, said: “The denialists, they’re hurtful. They are basically saying that didn’t happen.”

Why are the denialists hurtful, Chief Rosanne? Wouldn't it be great news if there are no unmarked graves?

“We’ve had many conversations about whether to exhume or not to exhume,” Chief Casimir said. “It is very difficult and it is definitely very complex. We know that it’ll take time. And we also know that we have many steps yet to go.”

“We have to know for sure,” she added, “that we did everything that we can to determine: yes or no, anomaly or grave?”

So, the current course of action is to continue not knowing for sure.

“Will every one of those anomalies turn out to be an unmarked grave? Obviously not,” Mr. Lametti, a former law professor now practicing law in Montreal, said. “But there’s enough preponderant evidence already that is compelling.”

The article conveniently omits which evidence is compelling.

The comments seem like a breath of fresh air:

So having read this article, I’ve learned that native children were in the past treated horribly by the government, and that today there is a vigorous debate about how to remember that. But the article doesn’t tell us whether there is actual evidence for mass graves.

The ground penetrating radar results showed disturbances that could be bodies, or tree roots, or something else. There's simply no way to tell unless there are excavations.

When these results were announced in 2021, the country was led to believe these were likely children's graves. Flags were lowered for months. It was reported as a deeply shameful fact, and it really undermined people's pride in their country.

Shockingly, no one in authority has tried to actually get to the bottom of what actually lies underground. If these were clandestine graves there should be criminal investigations. If these are tree roots, then this should be a very cautionary tale against preliminary investigation results being taken as fact and then used for political purposes.

All of the above is totally separate from the real and well documented suffering of Indigenous children wrongly taken from their parents and placed in those awful schools. But it does their memory no credit to make unproven claims in their name.

And now we come to the comment, due to which I started writing all this:

It is sad this is the most recommended comment, which is simply refuted in the second sentence of the article.

Racism abound.

Quote from the article:

While there is a broad consensus in Canada that children were taken from their families and died in these schools, as the discussions and searches have dragged on, a small universe of conservative Catholic and right-wing activists have become increasingly vocal in questioning the existence of unmarked graves. They are also skeptical of the entire national reconsideration of how Canada treated Indigenous people.

Another comment:

Same old rightwing playbook. Deny, obfuscate and rely on sophistry to prove that nothing is real unless they agree with it.

There are so many known and proven ways, in which First Nations were harmed. I can't imagine my child being taken away from me to be reeducated in some way in general, let alone experimented on. Taking away children from their parents causes a visceral reaction in me. I can't imagine the pain and which downstream effects this would cause to a community.

Setting all of the compassion I feel on the personal level aside, why do we need to invent new ways for the indigenous people to be oppressed? Is it acceptable to just lie for victimhood points at this point? Why do liberals seem to be content with this state of affairs?

It all comes down to this, and it's a very cynical and bitter conclusion: it's profitable to lie. Would, for example, this documentary* be made? Would the feds give $27 million to National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation? Would provinces pledge more money for searches? (god knows which unreliable methods would this money be spent on in the future. Divination? Remote viewing? Not out of the question apparently).

And the same tired tactics are used to browbeat the skeptics into "believing science", again. Who cares that for now ground scanning radar found exactly 0 buried kids? It doesn't matter, Catholics killed kids. It's plain and simple, champ. Just be more centered. Do better. Be less racist. Catholic churches on fire be damned. What's one church against maybe existing child remains?

Chief Nepinak from the CBC article above:

“I think the vocal majority in the room, in the community engagements, wanted certainty. They wanted to find the truth. They wanted people held accountable,” Nepinak said. “And to that end, you know, we prioritized that, that voice.”

Apparently, it's easy to exhume, even if the act of doing so violates religious beliefs. And now Pine Creek First Nation knows for certain: no unmarked graves where the ground scanning radar found the anomalies. Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation, on the other hand, would prefer to not know.

* This documentary is stunningly scare on content. Julian Brave NoiseCat shows us a lot of tears over the dead children, lying in those unmarked graves. A lot of interpersonal trauma. People hurting other people - there's a scene where he confronts his absentee father about spending the childhood without him. They find a survivor of residential schools who recounts a story about putting a newborn baby, who was the result of an indigenous girl being raped by a priest, in an incinerator. Of course there's no evidence outside of this single account. The whole RAPE BABY INCINERATION is mentioned in passing. One of the main characters is an activist woman, who's trying to uncover the whole truth about the residential schools for 50 years and the only thing that she now clings to is... unmarked graves. Widespread evidence of abuse is so widespread, one person can apparently dig for 50 years and come up with nothing.

What’s especially galling is that the indigenous kids dying is being framed as murder because communicable diseases that everyone died from back then killed those kids, because the schools lacked proper ventilation. Yes, that’s how Catholics planned to genocide the Indian children. Improper ventilation. How devious! How cunning!

Ironic also that it’s only Catholics bearing the blame, when the Unitarians and other churches also joined in.

Ironic also that it’s only Catholics bearing the blame, when the Unitarians and other churches also joined in.

Do you think this is independent of present day politics? The project 2025 scaremongering rabbit hole blames Catholics too. It’s just a progressive meme.

'just' a progressive meme undersells it a little I think -- there's a very real attempt to whip up anti-Catholic sentiment for social engineering reasons, and going after some Unitarians in bumfuck SK wouldn't advance this goal.

In reality the parameters of the project were determined by the (largely Liberal) government of the day -- so if anyone should be getting the hate it's like Robert Borden or something. This does not serve the agenda either, which is why old John A gets so much demonization despite being removed from power around the time the residential school system got really fired up.

just' a progressive meme undersells it a little I think -- there's a very real attempt to whip up anti-Catholic sentiment for social engineering reasons, and going after some Unitarians in bumfuck SK wouldn't advance this goal.

I won't disagree with that, but at the same time there's a limit to how far the cathedral is willing to go there. Hit pieces on St Mary's Kansas seem ambivalent and conspiracy theories about the knights of Malta involvement in project 2025 are not being pushed by DNC attack ads.

I think the lawfare and literal conquest by fire of the churches are doing the job well enough.

Louis Riel did nothing wrong.

From what I can gather, the idea of residential schools at the time was a rather progressive idea: "we can make these kids lives better by bringing them up assimilated with Western education and values." And several prominent Native Americans were at least loosely supportive of the idea (Charles Curtis, Vice President of the US during the Hoover administration comes to mind).

It strikes me as very similar to the far-left/communist meme about who gets to educate your children. And I think even now there would be support for it among progressives as long as you make sure it's for children of the right "undesirables."

the idea of residential schools at the time was a rather progressive idea

Nothing has changed. The Catholics get it worse simply because they're the easiest target for Progressives to engage (for various reasons). They also tend more often to be actually located on the reserves.

there would be support for it among progressives

Progressives already act like this, with force of law.

What do you think "we'll send Indian Affairs CPS to take your kids away if you use their birth name at home" is?
What do you think "if you complain about the teacher's pet raping your kid, you'll be arrested" is?
What do you think "if you engage in your native customs, like letting your kid outside to play unsupervised, you'll be harassed by the State" is?

They'll beat the Indian out of colonize you eventually.
Remember, land acknowledgements are about forcing you to admit that these colonizers own the land.

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