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"people wouldn't go near certain areas because they knew what was there" Right. Everyone knew. There have been a number of inquiries on this. The deaths at res

"people wouldn't go near certain areas because they knew what was there" Right. Everyone knew. There have been a number of inquiries on this. The deaths at residential schools has never been a mystery. There is nothing new being unveiled. This is an absolute tragedy, but there is a bit of a lie happening in the presentation of it, with each "discovery" being treated like it is unveiling some dark secret. No, it is a dark, but very well known, truth that has been in the open for the entirety of the program. And the truth is that mortality across the entire demographics of Canada was bad in that time period (3 out of 10 children under 5 died across the country), so it isn't entirely atypical. "we need real change in Canadian society" What does this even mean? Should the country abolish the residential school system, despite it being long abolished?

soperj 5y ago
Then why can't they get any information about it? The list of kids who died at these schools is much shorter than the numbers that we're seeing here.
- Roscius 5y ago
  The Churches are refusing to release the records.
  - soperj 5y ago
    So is the Canadian Government.
- defaultname 5y ago
  Firstly, the overwhelming majority of deaths have current records. There are gaps because of record destruction between 1936 to 1944, but the notion that this was all a secret, or that real numbers are being exposed, is not accurate. It is a grotesque period in history, and people should be angry, but a lot of people are effectively misleading people to try to anger. There is a huge amount of misinformation. Here's one famous residential school death that has been heavily leaned into - https://c2cjournal.ca/2017/10/the-sad-truth-about-chanie-wenjack/ https://c2cjournal.ca/2017/10/the-sad-truth-about-chanie-wen...
  - soperj 5y ago
    Really? Can you show me the current records for the Marieval Indian Residential School where they just found 751 unmarked graves?
    - defaultname 5y ago
      They didn't find 751 unmarked graves. Just as they didn't find 215 graves at Kamloops. These numbers are in all probability many multiples exaggerated over the reality. And the catch 22 is that any actual anthropological analysis is going to be restricted by the very group publishing the exaggerated numbers. So expect at the next location for it to be...why not 10,000? The methodology to derive these numbers borders on farcical. However we know that loads of children died at these facilities. Tragically. It has never been secret. It never had to be secret, sadly because native children were considered effectively expendable. That is the pox. The current culture of, effectively, horseshit isn't making it better.
      - soperj 5y ago
        Sorry, you do have a current record of how many children died at that school? or no?
        defaultname 5y ago
        There are records from that school, yes. Are there enough to account for fictional numbers? No, why would there be? Do you understand how perilous counting "graves? with ground radar is? Note that the people who actually did the study are very careful with their language, noting that they found ground anomalies. The actual correlation with that and graves is incredibly loose.
        brandon272 5y ago
        The "error rate" cited today by Cowessess First Nation and their partnered technical teams was 10% to 15%. The ground penetrating radar technology does not merely look for "ground anomalies", they work to specifically identify burial shafts, which tend to be rather distinctive. To say that they are merely counting any "anomaly" as a "fictional" grave is misrepresenting the work being done.
theluketaylor 5y ago
I agree this was a open secret for decades, but I also think there are a large number of people who are learning about the horrifying things that went on at the residential schools for the first time. The stated policy was nothing short of ethnocide and if it takes "discovering" these issues to finally have the national conversation and action that is so badly needed then let's discover everything there is to know. A problem cannot be fixed until everyone agrees there is a problem (see race relations in the US and climate change), so the more people who can be educated on what went on the better, because then we have a chance starting to heal (which will take generations).
- corndoge 5y ago
  As an outside observer, I don't understand what action you think is needed? Weren't these schools abolished?
  - Roscius 5y ago
    There still are massive levels of racism particularly in policing and the justice system. Kids are still dying - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/seven-youth-inquest-recommendations-year-2-work-1.5027621 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/seven-youth-inque...
  - theluketaylor 5y ago
    The schools are gone, but the damage remains. While most closed in the 70s, there were a couple that lasted into the 90s! and there are many living survivors who continue to suffer from the trauma they experienced. The stated goal of the schools was to eliminate First Nations' culture and it was tragically highly effective. A culture doesn't recover from generations of ethnocide overnight.
    - nucleardog 5y ago
      > there were a couple that lasted into the 90s! While true, I think this is generally misleading without context. The federal government took control of the schools from the churches around 1970. By the mid-70s, control of most of them had been transferred to the band councils in some form or another, and a third of the staff at the schools had Indian status. By 1980, only 15 were still left operating. It's really hard to find any actual information on _what_ the schools that remained open were like in the 90s as most easily discoverable documentation is about beginning to unravel the abuses that had occurred prior, but what little I've ever been able to find sounds like they continued to operate as a school (presumably because the community needed a school), not as an implement of cultural genocide. This would seem to be backed up by some sources saying that some of the communities that housed the schools resisted their closure. Not that it's a particularly great situation, but it's likely that it was the only source of formal education available to them at the time and they didn't want to lose it, rather reform it. The current school situation on reservations is abysmal, so this is... understandable. None of this is to try and discount the atrocities that occurred at the schools, but I like to think saying "They operated until the mid-90s!" is a bit sensationalist, implying that the kidnapping, experimentation, abuse and murder was occurring at the same time Seinfeld and Friends were airing. I think there's more than enough to be horrified at here without implying a worse situation which may lead some people to discount some of the actual atrocities. That said, if you (or anyone) can dig up some information to refute any of this, I'm more than happy to hear it. I am genuinely interested and I have a lot of difficulty trying to find concrete information.
II2II 5y ago
> This is an absolute tragedy, but there is a bit of a lie happening in the presentation of it, with each "discovery" being treated like it is unveiling some dark secret. No, it is a dark, but very well known, truth that has been in the open for the entirety of the program. And the truth is that mortality across the entire demographics of Canada was bad in that time period (3 out of 10 children under 5 died across the country), so it isn't entirely atypical. I understand and am partially sympathetic with what you are saying, but I don't think this is the time to bring up those concerns. At the moment, Canadians have to reckon with yet another impact of the residential school system: many children died under the government's custody (even if it was indirect, through various churches). It doesn't matter if the mortality rate was similar to other demographics, since the decisions of the government placed aboriginal children in those schools which was the precondition to the specific cause of death. The "abolition" of the residential school system doesn't really mean anything, since many youth are still forced to leave their communities and are frequently placed in the care of complete strangers if they aspire to accomplish something that most Canadians take for granted: earning a high school diploma. While the willful ignorance of these "very well known" deaths is difficult to excuse, the willful ignorance of the continuance of some of the hallmarks of the residential school system is difficult to forgive. EDIT: for clarity.
8note 5y ago
The residential schools are gone, but their goal -- getting rid of indigenous culture so that they stop being a hindrance to resource exploitation on their land -- is still going strong. https://www.johnralstonsaul.com/non-fiction-books/a-fair-country/ https://www.johnralstonsaul.com/non-fiction-books/a-fair-cou... Has some good ideas for a mental model shift
- munk-a 5y ago
  Let's also not ignore the fact that the sixties scoop[1] was a thing as well and that children in indigenous households are more likely to be taken out of their families than other groups (except blacks who have it worse). 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixties_Scoop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixties_Scoop
  - cperciva 5y ago
    children in indigenous households are more likely to be taken out of their families Children in households affected by poverty are more likely to be at risk, and indigenous households are more likely to be affected by poverty. What would you have child services do, leave children who are determined to be at risk where they are, just because they're indigenous? Because that has happened, and children have died as a result.
    - watwut 5y ago
      The comment you respond to have link to citations. You dont.
      - cperciva 5y ago
        I'm not talking about the Sixties Scoop.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      I don't actually disagree that it's likely that child welfare actions are more likely to be justifiably taken against indigenous households but the sixties scoop was pretty clearly not based on household stability alone. But, at the heart of the matter, if this minority is much more likely to live in poverty[1] then that itself is a problem we need to solve. But, the sixties scoop wasn't so long ago and, honestly, I think an in depth investigation of child services today would reveal that biases are still quite present. 1. Which is definitely true in Canada https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-645-x/2015001/income-revenu-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-645-x/2015001/income-... (sorry it looks like this report was discontinued after 2015 so no more current data is available)
graeme 5y ago
I would say “not very well known”. That’s why there’s such a furor now. The extent of the deaths was quite well known to anyone who read the reporting on the residential schools and the truth and reconciliation commission. But clearly a lot of people didn’t know that so these findings are a shock. Probably an instance of “one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic”. Some countable number of graves has a more visceral effect than “disease was rampant in residential schools are up to 40% of children in attendance died”.
- inasio 5y ago
  Agree, this was known in that you could read about it if you cared to, but was not taught in schools or acknowledged officially. A different approach would be to go the Germany route and confront the past head on and not shy away from it.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >> But clearly a lot of people didn’t know that so these findings are a shock. Only those who have actively avoided the issue. I was taught it in school, then again during university. The issue has been discussed on radio/TV for decades. At work (government) we all attend aboriginal awareness training, where residential schools are a big subject. It is an acknowledged part of Canadian history. Those who are shocked now are only so because they chose to remain ignorant year after year.
  - graeme 5y ago
    Use some basic reasoning: * Many people are shocked and surprised by these findings * They are sympathetic to aboriginal causes and not sticking their fingers in their ears. They were not trying to avoid it You are in the educated set (university), work for the government, and are commenting on a text based forum so you probably easily consume and retain text based information. You also had a school that taught death stats specifically (mine didn’t) and are young enough that these stats were known at the time the curriculum was formed. If most people were like you, these findings would not be headline news. The fact that the finding are surprising sympathetic people should indicate that you’re not the majority. And it is not fair to people to say they “choose” to remain ignorant because they didn’t pay close attention and integrate statistics at the time the truth and reconciliation report was released. Do you have no gaps in your knowledge? In particular outside of bookish, text based knowledge, which you are surely top 1% in.
inasio 5y ago
What time period are you talking about? The mortality rate you mention happened in 1830, but was an order of magnitude lower in the 1960s [0]. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-time-...
- jollybean 5y ago
  Most of the deaths occurred earlier in the 20th century [1] As for the story in general ... it's not new information really. We have records of the deaths, families were notified, governments were notified, they didn't want to pay to ship the bodies so they buried them near the residences. We also knew where the graves were. The Canadian government was aware at the time of the higher rate of deaths than normal, it was recognized as a problem, but obviously they didn't do much about it. [1] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/newly-discovered-b-c-graves-a-grim-reminder-of-the-heartbreaking-death-toll-of-residential-schools https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/newly-discovered-b-c-gr...
JulianMorrison 5y ago
I think the unveiling here is the difference between "it's known a lot of kids died" and "we have literally found a mass grave, in this location, using ground penetrating radar".
jgjot-singh 5y ago
Just because the truth is known, doesn't mean that it is accessible to the average person, or even undiluted enough to be recognized for what it is. Plenty of folks probably have not come to terms with this being the truth even if they have tidbits of knowledge pointing to it's existence. Like that pastor who urged people to look at the positives which came from colonization.

soperj 5y ago

Then why can't they get any information about it? The list of kids who died at these schools is much shorter than the numbers that we're seeing here.

Roscius 5y ago
The Churches are refusing to release the records.
- soperj 5y ago
  So is the Canadian Government.
defaultname 5y ago
Firstly, the overwhelming majority of deaths have current records. There are gaps because of record destruction between 1936 to 1944, but the notion that this was all a secret, or that real numbers are being exposed, is not accurate. It is a grotesque period in history, and people should be angry, but a lot of people are effectively misleading people to try to anger. There is a huge amount of misinformation. Here's one famous residential school death that has been heavily leaned into - https://c2cjournal.ca/2017/10/the-sad-truth-about-chanie-wenjack/ https://c2cjournal.ca/2017/10/the-sad-truth-about-chanie-wen...
- soperj 5y ago
  Really? Can you show me the current records for the Marieval Indian Residential School where they just found 751 unmarked graves?
  - defaultname 5y ago
    They didn't find 751 unmarked graves. Just as they didn't find 215 graves at Kamloops. These numbers are in all probability many multiples exaggerated over the reality. And the catch 22 is that any actual anthropological analysis is going to be restricted by the very group publishing the exaggerated numbers. So expect at the next location for it to be...why not 10,000? The methodology to derive these numbers borders on farcical. However we know that loads of children died at these facilities. Tragically. It has never been secret. It never had to be secret, sadly because native children were considered effectively expendable. That is the pox. The current culture of, effectively, horseshit isn't making it better.
    - soperj 5y ago
      Sorry, you do have a current record of how many children died at that school? or no?
      - defaultname 5y ago
        There are records from that school, yes. Are there enough to account for fictional numbers? No, why would there be? Do you understand how perilous counting "graves? with ground radar is? Note that the people who actually did the study are very careful with their language, noting that they found ground anomalies. The actual correlation with that and graves is incredibly loose.
        brandon272 5y ago
        The "error rate" cited today by Cowessess First Nation and their partnered technical teams was 10% to 15%. The ground penetrating radar technology does not merely look for "ground anomalies", they work to specifically identify burial shafts, which tend to be rather distinctive. To say that they are merely counting any "anomaly" as a "fictional" grave is misrepresenting the work being done.

theluketaylor 5y ago

I agree this was a open secret for decades, but I also think there are a large number of people who are learning about the horrifying things that went on at the residential schools for the first time. The stated policy was nothing short of ethnocide and if it takes "discovering" these issues to finally have the national conversation and action that is so badly needed then let's discover everything there is to know. A problem cannot be fixed until everyone agrees there is a problem (see race relations in the US and climate change), so the more people who can be educated on what went on the better, because then we have a chance starting to heal (which will take generations).

corndoge 5y ago
As an outside observer, I don't understand what action you think is needed? Weren't these schools abolished?
- Roscius 5y ago
  There still are massive levels of racism particularly in policing and the justice system. Kids are still dying - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/seven-youth-inquest-recommendations-year-2-work-1.5027621 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/seven-youth-inque...
- theluketaylor 5y ago
  The schools are gone, but the damage remains. While most closed in the 70s, there were a couple that lasted into the 90s! and there are many living survivors who continue to suffer from the trauma they experienced. The stated goal of the schools was to eliminate First Nations' culture and it was tragically highly effective. A culture doesn't recover from generations of ethnocide overnight.
  - nucleardog 5y ago
    > there were a couple that lasted into the 90s! While true, I think this is generally misleading without context. The federal government took control of the schools from the churches around 1970. By the mid-70s, control of most of them had been transferred to the band councils in some form or another, and a third of the staff at the schools had Indian status. By 1980, only 15 were still left operating. It's really hard to find any actual information on _what_ the schools that remained open were like in the 90s as most easily discoverable documentation is about beginning to unravel the abuses that had occurred prior, but what little I've ever been able to find sounds like they continued to operate as a school (presumably because the community needed a school), not as an implement of cultural genocide. This would seem to be backed up by some sources saying that some of the communities that housed the schools resisted their closure. Not that it's a particularly great situation, but it's likely that it was the only source of formal education available to them at the time and they didn't want to lose it, rather reform it. The current school situation on reservations is abysmal, so this is... understandable. None of this is to try and discount the atrocities that occurred at the schools, but I like to think saying "They operated until the mid-90s!" is a bit sensationalist, implying that the kidnapping, experimentation, abuse and murder was occurring at the same time Seinfeld and Friends were airing. I think there's more than enough to be horrified at here without implying a worse situation which may lead some people to discount some of the actual atrocities. That said, if you (or anyone) can dig up some information to refute any of this, I'm more than happy to hear it. I am genuinely interested and I have a lot of difficulty trying to find concrete information.

II2II 5y ago

> This is an absolute tragedy, but there is a bit of a lie happening in the presentation of it, with each "discovery" being treated like it is unveiling some dark secret. No, it is a dark, but very well known, truth that has been in the open for the entirety of the program. And the truth is that mortality across the entire demographics of Canada was bad in that time period (3 out of 10 children under 5 died across the country), so it isn't entirely atypical. I understand and am partially sympathetic with what you are saying, but I don't think this is the time to bring up those concerns. At the moment, Canadians have to reckon with yet another impact of the residential school system: many children died under the government's custody (even if it was indirect, through various churches). It doesn't matter if the mortality rate was similar to other demographics, since the decisions of the government placed aboriginal children in those schools which was the precondition to the specific cause of death. The "abolition" of the residential school system doesn't really mean anything, since many youth are still forced to leave their communities and are frequently placed in the care of complete strangers if they aspire to accomplish something that most Canadians take for granted: earning a high school diploma. While the willful ignorance of these "very well known" deaths is difficult to excuse, the willful ignorance of the continuance of some of the hallmarks of the residential school system is difficult to forgive. EDIT: for clarity.

8note 5y ago

The residential schools are gone, but their goal -- getting rid of indigenous culture so that they stop being a hindrance to resource exploitation on their land -- is still going strong. https://www.johnralstonsaul.com/non-fiction-books/a-fair-country/ https://www.johnralstonsaul.com/non-fiction-books/a-fair-cou... Has some good ideas for a mental model shift

munk-a 5y ago
Let's also not ignore the fact that the sixties scoop[1] was a thing as well and that children in indigenous households are more likely to be taken out of their families than other groups (except blacks who have it worse). 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixties_Scoop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixties_Scoop
- cperciva 5y ago
  children in indigenous households are more likely to be taken out of their families Children in households affected by poverty are more likely to be at risk, and indigenous households are more likely to be affected by poverty. What would you have child services do, leave children who are determined to be at risk where they are, just because they're indigenous? Because that has happened, and children have died as a result.
  - watwut 5y ago
    The comment you respond to have link to citations. You dont.
    - cperciva 5y ago
      I'm not talking about the Sixties Scoop.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    I don't actually disagree that it's likely that child welfare actions are more likely to be justifiably taken against indigenous households but the sixties scoop was pretty clearly not based on household stability alone. But, at the heart of the matter, if this minority is much more likely to live in poverty[1] then that itself is a problem we need to solve. But, the sixties scoop wasn't so long ago and, honestly, I think an in depth investigation of child services today would reveal that biases are still quite present. 1. Which is definitely true in Canada https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-645-x/2015001/income-revenu-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-645-x/2015001/income-... (sorry it looks like this report was discontinued after 2015 so no more current data is available)

graeme 5y ago

I would say “not very well known”. That’s why there’s such a furor now. The extent of the deaths was quite well known to anyone who read the reporting on the residential schools and the truth and reconciliation commission. But clearly a lot of people didn’t know that so these findings are a shock. Probably an instance of “one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic”. Some countable number of graves has a more visceral effect than “disease was rampant in residential schools are up to 40% of children in attendance died”.

inasio 5y ago
Agree, this was known in that you could read about it if you cared to, but was not taught in schools or acknowledged officially. A different approach would be to go the Germany route and confront the past head on and not shy away from it.
sandworm101 5y ago
>> But clearly a lot of people didn’t know that so these findings are a shock. Only those who have actively avoided the issue. I was taught it in school, then again during university. The issue has been discussed on radio/TV for decades. At work (government) we all attend aboriginal awareness training, where residential schools are a big subject. It is an acknowledged part of Canadian history. Those who are shocked now are only so because they chose to remain ignorant year after year.
- graeme 5y ago
  Use some basic reasoning: * Many people are shocked and surprised by these findings * They are sympathetic to aboriginal causes and not sticking their fingers in their ears. They were not trying to avoid it You are in the educated set (university), work for the government, and are commenting on a text based forum so you probably easily consume and retain text based information. You also had a school that taught death stats specifically (mine didn’t) and are young enough that these stats were known at the time the curriculum was formed. If most people were like you, these findings would not be headline news. The fact that the finding are surprising sympathetic people should indicate that you’re not the majority. And it is not fair to people to say they “choose” to remain ignorant because they didn’t pay close attention and integrate statistics at the time the truth and reconciliation report was released. Do you have no gaps in your knowledge? In particular outside of bookish, text based knowledge, which you are surely top 1% in.

inasio 5y ago

What time period are you talking about? The mortality rate you mention happened in 1830, but was an order of magnitude lower in the 1960s [0]. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-time-...

jollybean 5y ago
Most of the deaths occurred earlier in the 20th century [1] As for the story in general ... it's not new information really. We have records of the deaths, families were notified, governments were notified, they didn't want to pay to ship the bodies so they buried them near the residences. We also knew where the graves were. The Canadian government was aware at the time of the higher rate of deaths than normal, it was recognized as a problem, but obviously they didn't do much about it. [1] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/newly-discovered-b-c-graves-a-grim-reminder-of-the-heartbreaking-death-toll-of-residential-schools https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/newly-discovered-b-c-gr...

JulianMorrison 5y ago

I think the unveiling here is the difference between "it's known a lot of kids died" and "we have literally found a mass grave, in this location, using ground penetrating radar".

jgjot-singh 5y ago

Just because the truth is known, doesn't mean that it is accessible to the average person, or even undiluted enough to be recognized for what it is. Plenty of folks probably have not come to terms with this being the truth even if they have tidbits of knowledge pointing to it's existence. Like that pastor who urged people to look at the positives which came from colonization.