3 ms·

It’s funny because the narrative works just fine without the mass graves. A local paper (in the US) interviewed survivors/graduates on “Indian” schools. The ad

It’s funny because the narrative works just fine without the mass graves. A local paper (in the US) interviewed survivors/graduates on “Indian” schools. The administrators sent kids home as soon as they were sick. So there were no graveyards, even when lots of student were dying (Spanish flu).

cm2187 4y ago
Wait, the article is silent on the cause of death. Are you saying these deaths were just the result of some disease? Everything in the media treatment of these deaths implies mistreatment of the kids. If it was just a virus, particularly in the early days of medicine, this would be a scandal created out of thin air.
- pseudo0 4y ago
  Yes, the vast majority of residential school deaths were due to endemic diseases. The primary accusation regarding deaths is that the residential schools had a higher death rate than comparable populations, and the state should have provided more resources and better medical care.
  - cm2187 4y ago
    It’s hard to tell without knowing what disease we are talking about. If it was the spanish flu there isn’t much medicine could do then.
    - munk-a 4y ago
      The deaths at residential schools were higher than similar institutions - I don't understand what's hard to comprehend here when we're comparing a basket of 8 apples to a basket of 10 apples - 10 apples is more apples.
      - defen 4y ago
        I'm not an epidemiologist, so file this under "baseless speculation by an armchair non-expert", but influenza is an Old World disease - is it possible that First Nations people are more vulnerable to it? Ten seconds of Googling provided this link https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22032099/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22032099/
        munk-a 4y ago
        In this case I'd strongly suggest following up with an actual epidemiologist (which I also am not) but my assumption (also pretty baseless) is that when doing comparative population studies they do try and account for that affect.
        AlotOfReading 4y ago
        There's a lot of literature trying to disentangle genetic and cultural background in epidemiology, especially with regard to indigenous peoples in the Americas. However, the general idea that the immune systems of indigenous Americans are somehow uniquely susceptible to disease was a popular idea in the 80s that is now regarded as unsupported by evidence. Most of the prominent advocates (like black) have walked back on it.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pyuser583 4y ago
  I’m saying that a child with either Spanish flu or a severe concussion would be sent home on a train, and be buried far from the school.
- jollybean 4y ago
  That's exactly the 'lie' being presented. In the late 19th century up to about 1910, there were much higher rates of Aboriginal kids dying than normal, and it was mostly due to tuberculosis. It would 'set loose' at a residential school and mortality rates were high. There were investigations and it was a 'big social issue' even 100 years ago. Since about WW2, the rates of death at res schools have been fairly consistent with those in the general population. The term 'genocide' may apply in the context of the government wishing to 'educate' Aboriginals purely in the Western sense and to suppress their culture, but the world folds all to nicely into 'killing' the children etc which is how the word is used in popular imagination. The 'narrative managers' in the press are keenly aware of the power of their words, and that they will be misinterpreted, to great effect. The factual reality of Residential Schools is absolutely worth of consideration, it's a serious issue, but it's also deeply misrepresented in the press. "If it was just a virus, particularly in the early days of medicine, this would be a scandal created out of thin air." I wouldn't entirely want to make the claim that 'because it's tuberculosis' fully exonerates the schools, but I'll bet $100 that tuberculosis at other remote boarding schools (non-aboriginal kids) would have somewhere near the same effect in most places during that era, where as you hint 'medicine was a mess'. But either way, you're hinting at 'the distortion of information' begin presented by the narrative driven press, which is sad, because it's a serious issue.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    At best, you prove that the real issue here isn’t ethnic identity but social class. You might be right. What was the fatality rate at Eton during this time?
    - jtode 4y ago
      Unless an out-group was being kept in a low social class on the basis of their ethnic identity. The entire residential school system was about ethnic identity - removing theirs and making them take on ours, by taking children away from their families and handing them over to religious authorities. There's a whole bunch of people in this discussion thread who are clearly not Canadian and clearly not informed about this, who seem to believe they're railing against appropriating an issue for political points, by appropriating one of our most shameful national issues (and implicitly denying it, however artfully) in order to make political points.

cm2187 4y ago

Wait, the article is silent on the cause of death. Are you saying these deaths were just the result of some disease? Everything in the media treatment of these deaths implies mistreatment of the kids. If it was just a virus, particularly in the early days of medicine, this would be a scandal created out of thin air.

pseudo0 4y ago
Yes, the vast majority of residential school deaths were due to endemic diseases. The primary accusation regarding deaths is that the residential schools had a higher death rate than comparable populations, and the state should have provided more resources and better medical care.
- cm2187 4y ago
  It’s hard to tell without knowing what disease we are talking about. If it was the spanish flu there isn’t much medicine could do then.
  - munk-a 4y ago
    The deaths at residential schools were higher than similar institutions - I don't understand what's hard to comprehend here when we're comparing a basket of 8 apples to a basket of 10 apples - 10 apples is more apples.
    - defen 4y ago
      I'm not an epidemiologist, so file this under "baseless speculation by an armchair non-expert", but influenza is an Old World disease - is it possible that First Nations people are more vulnerable to it? Ten seconds of Googling provided this link https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22032099/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22032099/
      - munk-a 4y ago
        In this case I'd strongly suggest following up with an actual epidemiologist (which I also am not) but my assumption (also pretty baseless) is that when doing comparative population studies they do try and account for that affect.
      - AlotOfReading 4y ago
        There's a lot of literature trying to disentangle genetic and cultural background in epidemiology, especially with regard to indigenous peoples in the Americas. However, the general idea that the immune systems of indigenous Americans are somehow uniquely susceptible to disease was a popular idea in the 80s that is now regarded as unsupported by evidence. Most of the prominent advocates (like black) have walked back on it.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pyuser583 4y ago
I’m saying that a child with either Spanish flu or a severe concussion would be sent home on a train, and be buried far from the school.
jollybean 4y ago
That's exactly the 'lie' being presented. In the late 19th century up to about 1910, there were much higher rates of Aboriginal kids dying than normal, and it was mostly due to tuberculosis. It would 'set loose' at a residential school and mortality rates were high. There were investigations and it was a 'big social issue' even 100 years ago. Since about WW2, the rates of death at res schools have been fairly consistent with those in the general population. The term 'genocide' may apply in the context of the government wishing to 'educate' Aboriginals purely in the Western sense and to suppress their culture, but the world folds all to nicely into 'killing' the children etc which is how the word is used in popular imagination. The 'narrative managers' in the press are keenly aware of the power of their words, and that they will be misinterpreted, to great effect. The factual reality of Residential Schools is absolutely worth of consideration, it's a serious issue, but it's also deeply misrepresented in the press. "If it was just a virus, particularly in the early days of medicine, this would be a scandal created out of thin air." I wouldn't entirely want to make the claim that 'because it's tuberculosis' fully exonerates the schools, but I'll bet $100 that tuberculosis at other remote boarding schools (non-aboriginal kids) would have somewhere near the same effect in most places during that era, where as you hint 'medicine was a mess'. But either way, you're hinting at 'the distortion of information' begin presented by the narrative driven press, which is sad, because it's a serious issue.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  At best, you prove that the real issue here isn’t ethnic identity but social class. You might be right. What was the fatality rate at Eton during this time?
  - jtode 4y ago
    Unless an out-group was being kept in a low social class on the basis of their ethnic identity. The entire residential school system was about ethnic identity - removing theirs and making them take on ours, by taking children away from their families and handing them over to religious authorities. There's a whole bunch of people in this discussion thread who are clearly not Canadian and clearly not informed about this, who seem to believe they're railing against appropriating an issue for political points, by appropriating one of our most shameful national issues (and implicitly denying it, however artfully) in order to make political points.