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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   30214 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Were those conditions more awful than the usual condition of native children in their own communities? Was their average death rate lower?

The poor conditions in their home communities were also the fault of the Canadian government, so relative rates aren't a very convincing argument.

EDIT: Nevermind, I've fallen for the narrative. Death rates at residential schools reached acceptable mortality rates by 1949 (Source Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials (PDF), p17, from this website).

(As a sidenote, my thought process was "Why the downvotes? Motteposters are usually smarter than that. I'll show them with FACTS and LOGIC." lol.)

I don't find that plausible at all.

You don't think that the conditions on reserves are the responsibility of the Federal government, or you don't think that they were bad, or what?

How familiar are you with Canadian history?

I find implausible and frankly preposterous the notion that the authority of the federal government and the Church in Canada over local aborigines resulted in an increase of average child mortality among that population. The idea that the average aborigine child had a higher chance of surviving into adulthood before the evil colonizers showed up is simply ludicrous.

What are you talking about? Do you think that they were hopping in a time machine to get to their "home" in the 1860s when they were attending school in the 1960s?

Of course the conditions improved in a hundred years. You've correctly identified that it's simply ludicrous to deny that, but I'm not sure why you felt it was relevant.

In fact, let's imagine an alternate history: Colonization, settlement, and the Treaties happen like normal, but then the native population gets locked in and experiences zero changes in welfare/wealth/happiness/etc. from the pre-contact baseline. Would you think "Wow, the Federal Government is doing a great job. We haven't worsened their nasty, brutish, and short lives at all!"?

Maintaining the status quo doesn't meet my standards, and neither do the (frankly huge) improvements we have done in reality. This goes double when you cast your eye back a few decades.

According to these accusations (to the extent they can even be called that), in which timeframe were these mass murders of Native children committed?

Nevermind, I've fallen for the narrative. Death rates at residential schools reached acceptable mortality rates by 1949 (Source Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials (PDF), p17, from this website).

Honestly this is what perplexes me the most about indigenous culture war. I feel like one side reads the horrors of colonialism, but then doesn't engage with the horrors of general pre-modern human life.

Why would I engage with the horrors of pre-modern life? Residential schools were only shutting down around the 1960s, so it's appropriate to judge them based on contemporary standards.

Were the 1960s Residential Schools subject to outbreaks of Cholera in a literal frontier?

Nevermind, I've fallen for the narrative. Death rates at residential schools reached acceptable mortality rates by 1949 (Source Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials (PDF), p17, from this website).

Because the ones being shut down around the 1960's weren't doing any of the things that are trotted out to show how horrible residential schools were.

You're right, I've fallen for the narrative. Death rates at residential schools reached acceptable mortality rates by 1949 (Source Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials (PDF), p17, from this website).

I assume that is due to ignorance, as there is no Disney movie with the horrors of pre-colonization life, it must have been rainbows and flowers and all that noble savage jazz.

Is that necessarily relevant? For example, if a child was taken from their parents by CPS for their safety and went into foster care with a much more functional family, which offered him a better life than his alternatives with his previous family or in a orphanage or whatever, would that child still not have legitimate grievance if they were mistreated in a lesser way by the foster family?

It’s worth noting that this usually isn’t what happens- conditions in foster care are generally horrific.

Is that still true? I know several foster families, and they seem about equal with other middle class families, aside from greater compatibility challenges.

If they could properly vet, it’s probably no worse. But there are enough families slippping through the cracks that you end up with a lot of dysfunctional people as foster parents.

Who judges the mistreatment? The child is likely a poor judge.

The intervention in your hypothetical results in material improvement and better life. Grievance over something you can't change and resulted in better outcomes than non-intervention seems poorly considered. It may make the people who intervened wish they left you with your shitty birth family. Is that a better outcome, if it dissuades future positive interventions?

That depends on your definition of 'legitimate'. (Yeah, I actually just said that.) If 'legitimate grievance' in this context means 'grievances, when proven, used as justification to enact organizational reform of CPS so that no child abuse is committed under their watch in the future', then I think the answer is very obviously yes. Having said that, this is not at all what's happening in this particular case. Let's just be clear about this. This is simply pure culture war, nothing else.

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