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While you may have a point there about "catalyst for action", what you are suggesting sounds like "It doesn't matter if it's all lies, so long as a conversation was started".
So if some Indigenous woman claims that she was raped, forcibly impregnated, had her baby taken away, and it was sacrificed by the local priest on the altar of the church - that doesn't matter if it's not true, it acted as a catalyst for action and that's the important thing! Because the Catholic Church did Bad Things in the past! Along with the Anglicans, who also operated residential schools, since that was the ideology of the day: give native children a Westernised upbringing so they could fit into mainstream society and be lifted out of primitive superstition and squalour.
Happened to white children as well, there's a long-running similar dispute about mother and baby homes in my country with similar claims of unmarked mass graves. And the movement to send orphan (though often they weren't) British children to new homes in Australia and Canada where they'd become (in time) farmers and settlers but in practice were treated as cheap, disposable labour by the people supposed to be fostering them.
So it's not confined to the Indigenous peoples of the former British Empire/Commonwealth, by any means.
There are certainly grounds to argue about the ideas underpinning that view, and about how indigenous people have been treated badly. But "hey if it's all lies it's okay so long as it's the Indigenous who are telling the lies" is not helping anyone.
And what of the crimes of the Indigenous peoples when they were the ones ruling the lands? I don't think it was all peaceful running around singing with the animals and the trees. Maybe they reaped what they sowed with karma for wars, murders, and massacres? Or is that a case of "one law for me, another for you"?
I think you're being uncharitable by calling this a 'lie'. Evidence for 200 child graves in Kamloops has been found. It's not great evidence, It could easily be incorrect, it is being treated as proof when it absolutely isn't. But it is evidence, it hasn't been invented, and the underlying atrocity to which this evidence refers is (to a greater or lesser extent) certainly true.
And let's make your analogy more representative of what has happened. If someone found a cave full of suspicious looking bone shards and says "hey we just found evidence of 200 babies that were killed in ritualistic sacrifice" and the Catholic Church says "nuh-uh, Thiose shards are probably from a goat or something, we only raped, impregnated, and sacrificed the babies of 50 indigenous women at that site. And besides everyone was doing it back then, it was really trendy." Well in that scenario I'm less bothered about the veracity of the find and more about the underlying atrocity. And if a group of indigenous people want to take mortal offense at what happened I think that's pretty fair. And if they burn down a church or two, well I don't advocate for that (I genuinely, honestly do not think it is a good thing that churches were destroyed over this), but it's hard for me to feel any indignation on behalf of the Church.
By way of example, let's say Andy viciously insults David's wife in an argument and David breaks his nose in response. I don't think that’s a good or right thing to do - you shouldn't be going around breaking people's noses because they upset you. David should probably be arrested. But at the same time it's a completely understandable and predictable response, and I have zero sympathy for Andy. Now replace Andy with the Catholic Church and David with Indigenous people.
Can you clearly state what you think the Church did bad? Kid dying of disease and being buried doesn’t strike me as bad. The mass grave thing seems to be a desire to associate this with far worse things. Are you accusing the church of executions? Otherwise why does this matter.
Complicit in the abduction of children by the Canadian Government, subjected them to emotional and physical abuse, often looked after them pretty poorly, and as a result many children died of preventable diseases. and of course, the whole point of the exercise was to expunge their culture from them. Which is, uh, bad.
I mean, is it really that difficult to see where the natives are coming from?
I think if I kidnapped your child, took him half a world away to learn Swahili and African culture and have that dumb Christianity beaten out of him, and then sent you a letter saying 'Sorry, young Mswati (that was his new name) died of malaria.' I think you'd probably feel a tad aggrieved.
We do this every single day in America. What do you think schools in America do? Expunge bad culture teach good culture. The deaths honestly just sound like poor people deaths.
I’m fairly certain the people upset about this incident are the same people shoving pride and blm flags down people’s throats. The problem here just seems to be Christians = bad.
I have no issue with teaching poor people higher culture. Perhaps, I’m not being fair here but I don’t see anything obviously wrong with taking an outgroup and trying to incorporate them into your civilization.
Whether the conditions were particularly bad I don’t know. Would take a lot of study to differentiate.
They weren't Poor People deaths though were they? They were Ward of the Church deaths. When you steal children away from their parents you get to take responsibility for what happens to them.
it was hardly """just""" that. If they had managed to do so without kidnapping, abuse, beatings, and deaths by neglect they'd have far less of a case to answer today, eh?
Bad compared to conditions back at the tribe? Probably unknowable. They were certainly worse than they could have been. And like I said, when you steal children away from their parents you get to take responsibility for what happens to them. If you find that too burdensome feel free to not do it. Or engage in apologism for those that did.
Well, there you have it. You don't even know if these schools had worse or better conditions for the children than they would have had at home, yet you're willing to blame the church for the deaths.
Perfection is never an option nor a reasonable standard.
OK, suppose the state finds a cult who rape their children and sacrifice half of them to dark gods on their 16th birthday. The state takes all the children away to a group home, where a few of them die of ordinary accidents. Do you blame the state? It's the same principle.
'better' is always an option. 'better than shit' is certainly a reasonable standard.
I would disagree; constraints exist. And for obvious reasons, it cannot be a standard.
"Shit" here is rather poorly defined. You've already admitted that you don't know if the conditions the children were subject to were better or worse than they would have had at home.
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