Grief, sorrow after discovery of 215 bodies, unmarked graves at former B.C. residential school site

[glorybebe]

19 minutes ago, el midgetron said:

When the Spanish first discovered the Aztecs they witnessed the Aztec-industrial-human-sacrifice-complex in action and demanded it be ended. We’ve know murdering children for any reason is wrong for longer then many here seem willing to admit.

 

as requested I will cease commenting in this thread

This thread is NIT about the Aztecs, it is about the Catholic church and the Canadian government taking children from their families to 'remove the savage' from them.  The parents had no choice, the children had no choice, they were forced.  Children we beaten, starved as punishment and raped ( both females and males).  Any offspring from the rapes disappeared.   The atrocities committed in Canada have to be acknowledged and we need to find the truth in order to have this country heal.

[aztek]

heal?? how about punishing those responsible, some are still alive, go after them put them on trial, and execute those who are guilty, cuz they sure do not deserve few years in prison, they deserve to be removed from society forever.

[glorybebe]

37 minutes ago, aztek said:

heal?? how about punishing those responsible, some are still alive, go after them put them on trial, and execute those who are guilty, cuz they sure do not deserve few years in prison, they deserve to be removed from society forever.

While I agree about punishment, a lot of native beliefs are not to punish, they are to heal.  That is why they use the sweat lodges as a way to bring both perpetrators and victims together.  Either way, it needs to be acknowledged, the government needs to rectify their involvement and not just give lip service.  The church needs to take responsibility and provide restitution, not that money will ever replace the children, but, they need to stop hiding behind their God.

[el midgetron]

Quote

AFTER SEVEN MONTHS of recrimination and denunciation, where are the remains of the children buried at the Kamloops Indian Residential School? 

The Canadian Press has just honoured the children of residential schools as the “Person of the Year 2021.” The huge media story last summer grew out of the scanning of part of the site in the British Columbia interior where the school operated from 1890 to 1978….…..

……The Kamloops “discovery” of 2021 created a major sensation in Canada and abroad. Based on the preliminary assessment and before any remains were found or any credible report made, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau immediately referred to “a dark and shameful chapter” in Canadian history.[3] British Columbia Premier John Horgan said he was “horrified and heartbroken” to learn of a burial site with 215 children that highlights the violence and consequences of the residential school system.[4] Several other Aboriginal communities and media outlets then followed up with references to unmarked graves….……

…..Around the country, churches were burned or vandalized. Statues were spray-painted and pulled down in apparent retaliation for the fate of the children. The statue of Queen Victoria in front of the Manitoba Legislature was defaced and pulled down. Montreal’s statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, was knocked down, his detached bronze head symbolically rolling on the ground.      

In the wake of unsubstantiated claims by Aboriginal leaders, several media outlets amplified and hyped the story by alleging that the bodies of 215 children had been found,…..

……The UN urged Canadian authorities and the Catholic Church to conduct “thorough investigations into the discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of over 200 children” — again before a single verified body had been exhumed.[6] Amnesty International is demanding that the persons and institutions responsible for the “remains” that had been “found” in Kamloops be prosecuted.[7]….

……By never pointing out that it is only a matter of speculation or potentiality, and that no remains have yet been found, governments and the media are simply granting credence to what is really a thesis: the thesis of the “disappearance” of children from residential schools. From an allegation of “cultural genocide” endorsed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) we have moved to “physical genocide,” a conclusion that the Commission explicitly rejects in its report.[12] And all of this is based only on soil abnormalities that could easily be caused by root movements, as the anthropologist herself cautioned in the July 15 press conference…..

…..The Commission included all these unnamed students in the total of student deaths. That means that student deaths could have been counted twice: both in the trimester report by the principals and in the general compilation with no names. The Commission admitted that this possibility exists that some of the deaths recorded in the Named Register might also be included in the Unnamed Register.[18]……

…..It is likely that this methodological gap relates to the years prior to 1950 because the death rate recorded by the Commission in residential schools from 1921 to 1950 (named and unnamed deaths) is twice as high as that of Canadian youth in the general population aged five to fourteen for the same years. This mortality rate averaged about four deaths per year for every 1,000 youth attending the schools. Their deaths were mostly due to tuberculosis and influenza when the Commission could identify the cause. 

On the other hand, the mortality rate in residential schools was actually comparable to the Canadian average from 1950 to 1965, again for youth aged five to fourteen.[19] That drop from the previous period is most likely the result of the inoculation by vaccines that took place in the residential schools as in other Canadian schools….

…..At the Kamloops residential school, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) officially recorded the names of 51 children who died from 1915 to 1964.[22] We have been able to find information on these children from the records in Library and Archives Canada and from death certificates held by the British Columbia Archives’ Genealogy resource online which, it seems, was not consulted by NCTR researchers.[23]

Combining these two sources provides a good picture of the deaths of at least 35 of the 49 students (two are duplicates).[24] Seventeen died in hospital and eight on their own reserves as a result of illness or accidents. Four were the subject of autopsies and seven of coroners’ inquests. As for burial sites, 24 are buried in their home Indian Reserve cemetery, and four at the Kamloops Indian Reserve cemetery. For the rest of the 49 children, information is either missing or requires that the complete death certificate in the B.C. Vital Statistics Agency be consulted. This is a far cry from the unverified claim that authorities overlooked or somehow covered up their deaths, or that the parents were not informed, or the remains never returned home. Most were informed and most were returned home.

 

https://www.dorchesterreview.ca/blogs/news/in-kamloops-not-one-body-has-been-found

[el midgetron]

Quote

Catholic register, survivors offer clues to who may be buried in cemetery next to Marieval residential school

Lloyd Lerat still remembers the day in the early 1960s when workers came to remove headstones from a section of the cemetery in Cowessess First Nation, Sask., that is now covered with tiny flags marking spots left by a ground-penetrating radar survey that the nation says found evidence of 751 unmarked graves.

A student at Marieval Indian Residential School at the time, Lerat, 72, said he and other children heard a hubbub of activity coming from the cemetery near the school, located about 164 km east of Regina. They saw workers and a truck removing headstones and wooden crosses….…..

….Several stories have surfaced in the community about what happened to the grave markers, and they all agree on one thing: a priest ordered their removal in the early 1960s. But no one story explains why, and officials from the Catholic Church, which ran the school until the late 1960s, have not been able to confirm the account or explain why either.

A similar uncertainty shrouds the identities and precise location of those buried in this section of cleared cemetery now at the centre of national attention, with some former students suggesting the majority of the 751 grave sites do not contain the remains of children from the residential school.

Nevertheless, early Catholic mission records obtained by CBC News, along with the testimony of elders from the community who attended Marieval residential school, help shed some light on who could be buried there. 

Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme said that, according to local oral history, up to 75 per cent of the interred are children who attended Marieval residential school, which was run by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

"But I can't confirm that," he said in an interview with CBC News.  

The Cowessess discovery sent shock waves across a country still reeling from the findings revealed three weeks earlier of another ground survey that identified 200 potential unmarked graves in an old apple orchard near a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C…..

…..From the beginning, Delorme has maintained that the area surveyed also held remains of others from the community and surrounding region who did not attend the school.

"This is a Roman Catholic grave site. It's not a residential school grave site," he told CBC News.

"Other Roman Catholic faith-goers, Indigenous and not, adults as well, have been buried there.... There are one-metre-apart graves. We understand that those are not adult sizes." …..

….This is where the oldest part of the cemetery begins. It is now a sea of little flags and small, solar-powered lights. There is also a headstone for a nun and a worn grave monument for three members of a German family from Grayson, Sask., a village about 25 kilometres north of Cowessess..

….He said the idea that the graves were primarily of children who attended the school took on a life of its own.

"It's just the fact that the media picked up on unmarked graves, and the story actually created itself from there because that's how it happens," Lerat said.

The newer section of the cemetery is dotted with headstones and grave markers. A community member was recently buried there……

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/marieval-cemetery-graves-1.6106563

[glorybebe]

Survivors of the St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School in Williams Lake, B.C., are still reeling from the news that an initial sweep of the former grounds has uncovered 93 possible burial sites.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8540292/bc-residential-school-survivor-speaks-st-josephs-mission/

 

The government and the church are going to have to do more to acknowledge this happened and that they keep trying yo push to the side

[the13bats]

On 5/29/2021 at 3:25 AM, Tatetopa said:

I know several people my age or a little younger that were shipped off to boarding schools in the US.  None of the three have any good memories of their days there.  They were the US version of re-education camps for kids.

My gma had that happen to her and her 2 brothers, her pa would get them when he had enough work to support them all.