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These children weren’t abandoned, they were forcefully taken from their families by the government. They were sent vast distances to these boarding schools to

by dade_ 5y ago

These children weren’t abandoned, they were forcefully taken from their families by the government. They were sent vast distances to these boarding schools to “kill the Indian in the child”, where they were often mistreated, sexually abused, and went missing ( murder/neglect/ abuse). So it is all the more egregious in this case. The government turned a blind eye to the Churches, and the Churches were doing God’s work. These stories are uncovering the horrors described by the survivors that were generally ignored until recently. We will never be perfect, but we can keep trying to be better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...

notsureaboutpg 5y ago
I think OP agrees with you and is trying to say that the tendency of us to prefer institutions over families can lead to this. For example, I know when I was a kid the school teachers and people were constantly worried about me and my family since we're immigrants from a part of the world they thought of as "backwards". We did not have liberal social views, and my parents opted me out of sex ed, LGBT events, etc. One time I mentioned a comic strip (Calvin & Hobbes) in which the kid dreamed of flying an F-14 with a team of T-Rex pilots to blow up his school because he really didn't want to attend and I was called in for some government program to prevent terrorism and they asked me all sorts of questions about how violent my parents are and did I believe in violence as a tool to solve problems, etc. Sometimes our tendency is to "civilize" children when we think parents aren't doing that. What OP and you are trying to say is that what parents and family offer (accountability, care for the child, etc.) is usually better than any "values" an institution can impart onto a child. Institutions can often be cold and cruel in a way few parents ever are, and so the tendency to lean on institutions with regards to molding children is one we should avoid unless absolutely necessary.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
The government would have never let the Church (run schools) take responsibility for the kids if the Church wasn't mistreating them like this. They would have just run their own abusive boarding schools. Slow moving genocide and generally treating these populations like crap to the point where they chose to forgo their culture was the whole point.
- DanHulton 5y ago
  I was about to disagree with you, when my brain finally made sense of the double negative in that first paragraph. So I figured I'd just leave a comment to that effect to save anyone else the same potential mistake. In short, above is saying that the abuse and neglect was a feature, not a bug, as far as the government was concerned, and is absolutely correct.
refurb 5y ago
The whole system makes a lot more sense if you imagine it through the belief in the “white man’s burden” at the time - it was the white man’s responsibility to educate and assimilate “inferior” cultures into the “superior” Western system. Not to excuse the damage done, but the people doing these things felt like it was their moral responsibility - if they didn’t do it, these cultures would forever be stuck in their inferior ways. That attitude hasn’t disappeared.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >That attitude hasn’t disappeared. It's undergone a very successful rebranding and PR campaign.
  - andai 5y ago
    To what?
    - dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
      https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...
    - refurb 5y ago
      Woke politics.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Yes, and this is the most difficult form of racism to recognize and avoid. Hatred is easy to recognize. Racism without hatred is often discounted. It’s the people with good intentions who are acting with inherent biases and preconceived world-views who often commit acts of blatant racism without anyone realizing until it’s too late.
  - behnamoh 5y ago
    I find it odd that some Christian conservatives in the US support policies which are essentially racist. I had a talk with my girlfriend about it and she mentioned one reason could be that they actually think they're doing the right thing according to the Bible. It's true that religion/belief-system "partitions" people -- you're either one of us or we must be against you. Not saying that some (supposedly) Christians aren't taking advantage of religion to justify their agenda, but many actually believe what they're doing is right. It's also difficult to change this situation because for many people maintaining homeostasis is much easier and more favorable than opening up their minds to other opinions. Many religious people (not just Christians) I've known just want to follow a set of "rules" and have a simple standard life.
secondcoming 5y ago
In at least Ireland, not all of the children were abandoned either. Quite a few were guilty of being born out of wedlock. Luckily Ireland has cast aside the influence of the Catholic church these days.
samstave 5y ago
and then there is the 'conspiracy theory' about the queen of england going to canada to see a bunch of children who later went missing.... Elite pedophiles are a real thing. Abuses such as this are a real thing. Also, anyone who calls them self a 'royal' can just go fuck themselves. They're kleptocracy and thats all there is to them.
beloch 5y ago
Hunter-gatherer societies across the world have, historically, fared poorly when agricultural or pastoral societies have moved into their territory. Complete extermination (i.e. genocide) or complete assimilation is the rule, not the exception. Such genocides happened all over the world but have mostly passed out of living memory with the winners preferring not to be reminded of them. This didn't happen in Canada for several reasons. Most native tribes, especially in the West, were not crushed militarily, as they were in the U.S.. The crown and most tribes signed treaties. While what was going on South of the border was, no doubt, instructive, it's to both sides' credit that they looked for a peaceful way to coexist. The terms of those treaties remain controversial today but, nonetheless, they put Canada's natives on fundamentally different footing than almost any other overrun hunter-gatherer societies in human history. They had an established, legal right to continue existing. It's incredibly difficult for us, today, to understand the state of affairs that existed just after these treaties were signed. Native tribes were not peacefully co-existing, stagnant populations that had existed in the same spot for thousands of years. They moved around, bumped into each other, struggled to defend territories, had wars, raided each other. Raiding was so honoured and economically important in some tribe's cultures that even other native tribes did not want to be their neighbours. A big part of why so many tribes were eager to sign treaties with the Crown was that the Crown was promising security. They wouldn't have to continually fight other tribes to keep their sources of food secure. The Crown proved to be a less than completely secure food source themselves at first, but that's another discussion. When we, today, talk about the desire of leaders such as John A Macdonald to "kill the Indian in the child", we find this atrocious. We respect diversity of religion and culture. However, at the time of John A Macdonald, native culture presented real problems. It was actually progressive for the time to think that natives could be as productive as any other Canadian citizens if they could be educated to adopt European economic pursuits and abandon cultural practices, such as raiding, that were wholly incompatible with the peace and order the Crown promised its citizens, native and European alike. There were those, at the time, who still espoused outright genocide. There remain, even today, places in the world where outright genocide is pursued actively. The residential schools are a painful part of history that is still, very much, in raw living memory. However, we must look at the big picture too. In almost any other place and time in history, native cultures would already be utterly extirpated. They still exist and thrive in Canada and there is every reason to hope that they will continue to do so. How many other times in history have cultures so alien to each other managed to coexist? There remain many problems to tackle, but hope for the future is well justified based on Canada's past.

by dade_ 5y ago

notsureaboutpg 5y ago

I think OP agrees with you and is trying to say that the tendency of us to prefer institutions over families can lead to this. For example, I know when I was a kid the school teachers and people were constantly worried about me and my family since we're immigrants from a part of the world they thought of as "backwards". We did not have liberal social views, and my parents opted me out of sex ed, LGBT events, etc. One time I mentioned a comic strip (Calvin & Hobbes) in which the kid dreamed of flying an F-14 with a team of T-Rex pilots to blow up his school because he really didn't want to attend and I was called in for some government program to prevent terrorism and they asked me all sorts of questions about how violent my parents are and did I believe in violence as a tool to solve problems, etc. Sometimes our tendency is to "civilize" children when we think parents aren't doing that. What OP and you are trying to say is that what parents and family offer (accountability, care for the child, etc.) is usually better than any "values" an institution can impart onto a child. Institutions can often be cold and cruel in a way few parents ever are, and so the tendency to lean on institutions with regards to molding children is one we should avoid unless absolutely necessary.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

The government would have never let the Church (run schools) take responsibility for the kids if the Church wasn't mistreating them like this. They would have just run their own abusive boarding schools. Slow moving genocide and generally treating these populations like crap to the point where they chose to forgo their culture was the whole point.

DanHulton 5y ago
I was about to disagree with you, when my brain finally made sense of the double negative in that first paragraph. So I figured I'd just leave a comment to that effect to save anyone else the same potential mistake. In short, above is saying that the abuse and neglect was a feature, not a bug, as far as the government was concerned, and is absolutely correct.

refurb 5y ago

The whole system makes a lot more sense if you imagine it through the belief in the “white man’s burden” at the time - it was the white man’s responsibility to educate and assimilate “inferior” cultures into the “superior” Western system. Not to excuse the damage done, but the people doing these things felt like it was their moral responsibility - if they didn’t do it, these cultures would forever be stuck in their inferior ways. That attitude hasn’t disappeared.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>That attitude hasn’t disappeared. It's undergone a very successful rebranding and PR campaign.
- andai 5y ago
  To what?
  - dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...
  - refurb 5y ago
    Woke politics.
kube-system 5y ago
Yes, and this is the most difficult form of racism to recognize and avoid. Hatred is easy to recognize. Racism without hatred is often discounted. It’s the people with good intentions who are acting with inherent biases and preconceived world-views who often commit acts of blatant racism without anyone realizing until it’s too late.
- behnamoh 5y ago
  I find it odd that some Christian conservatives in the US support policies which are essentially racist. I had a talk with my girlfriend about it and she mentioned one reason could be that they actually think they're doing the right thing according to the Bible. It's true that religion/belief-system "partitions" people -- you're either one of us or we must be against you. Not saying that some (supposedly) Christians aren't taking advantage of religion to justify their agenda, but many actually believe what they're doing is right. It's also difficult to change this situation because for many people maintaining homeostasis is much easier and more favorable than opening up their minds to other opinions. Many religious people (not just Christians) I've known just want to follow a set of "rules" and have a simple standard life.

secondcoming 5y ago

In at least Ireland, not all of the children were abandoned either. Quite a few were guilty of being born out of wedlock. Luckily Ireland has cast aside the influence of the Catholic church these days.

samstave 5y ago

and then there is the 'conspiracy theory' about the queen of england going to canada to see a bunch of children who later went missing.... Elite pedophiles are a real thing. Abuses such as this are a real thing. Also, anyone who calls them self a 'royal' can just go fuck themselves. They're kleptocracy and thats all there is to them.

beloch 5y ago

Hunter-gatherer societies across the world have, historically, fared poorly when agricultural or pastoral societies have moved into their territory. Complete extermination (i.e. genocide) or complete assimilation is the rule, not the exception. Such genocides happened all over the world but have mostly passed out of living memory with the winners preferring not to be reminded of them. This didn't happen in Canada for several reasons. Most native tribes, especially in the West, were not crushed militarily, as they were in the U.S.. The crown and most tribes signed treaties. While what was going on South of the border was, no doubt, instructive, it's to both sides' credit that they looked for a peaceful way to coexist. The terms of those treaties remain controversial today but, nonetheless, they put Canada's natives on fundamentally different footing than almost any other overrun hunter-gatherer societies in human history. They had an established, legal right to continue existing. It's incredibly difficult for us, today, to understand the state of affairs that existed just after these treaties were signed. Native tribes were not peacefully co-existing, stagnant populations that had existed in the same spot for thousands of years. They moved around, bumped into each other, struggled to defend territories, had wars, raided each other. Raiding was so honoured and economically important in some tribe's cultures that even other native tribes did not want to be their neighbours. A big part of why so many tribes were eager to sign treaties with the Crown was that the Crown was promising security. They wouldn't have to continually fight other tribes to keep their sources of food secure. The Crown proved to be a less than completely secure food source themselves at first, but that's another discussion. When we, today, talk about the desire of leaders such as John A Macdonald to "kill the Indian in the child", we find this atrocious. We respect diversity of religion and culture. However, at the time of John A Macdonald, native culture presented real problems. It was actually progressive for the time to think that natives could be as productive as any other Canadian citizens if they could be educated to adopt European economic pursuits and abandon cultural practices, such as raiding, that were wholly incompatible with the peace and order the Crown promised its citizens, native and European alike. There were those, at the time, who still espoused outright genocide. There remain, even today, places in the world where outright genocide is pursued actively. The residential schools are a painful part of history that is still, very much, in raw living memory. However, we must look at the big picture too. In almost any other place and time in history, native cultures would already be utterly extirpated. They still exist and thrive in Canada and there is every reason to hope that they will continue to do so. How many other times in history have cultures so alien to each other managed to coexist? There remain many problems to tackle, but hope for the future is well justified based on Canada's past.