GENOCIDE

[Apollonius]

Anti-Christian hysteria has grown into church-burning terror, and people might be next - Christopher Bedford, The Federalist, 13 July 2021
https://thefederalist.com/2021/07/13/an ... t-be-next/

Anti-Christian terrorists have turned their rage on poor First Nation and Canadian communities, accused us all of blood debt, and decided they will burn our sacred buildings to the ground.

[Apollonius]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_tree


I've heard that they sometimes (often?) dispensed with the coffins.

[Typhoon]

Quillette | The Canadian Historical Association’s Fake ‘Consensus’ on Canadian Genocide

The campaign to label Canada a genocide state isn’t an isolated phenomenon, but is playing out as part of a larger effort to destroy any publicly displayed symbol of national pride. This has included a concerted effort to rename organizations, and remove or destroy statues, on the logic that their mere existence “creates an unsafe environment” for historically marginalized groups. Many of the actors demanding this purge are activists. But an unsettling number are professional historians. This includes Adele Perry at the University of Manitoba, a former president of the Canadian Historical Association. A few months ago, Perry co-authored an article linking the defence of John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, with those who “serve white supremacy and protect the colonial status quo.” One of Perry’s University of Manitoba colleagues, Sean Carleton, denounces ideological opponents as being practitioners of “residential-school denialism,” a term that seems intended to put them in the same moral category as holocaust deniers.

[Apollonius]

As a break from all the terrible events in the news I've been doing some more investigations into British Columbia history.


I ran across a book called Fire in the Raven's Nest: The Haida of British Columbia by Norman Newton (new press, 1973). Woke readings of history are nothing new. Their antecedents go at least as far back as Tacitus. Recent expositions of this point of view got their start with the likes of Carl Ortwin Sauer, always talking about the depredations of Columbus while skipping over any description of Indians except those of Bartolomé de las Casas or the Admiral of the Ocean Sea himself whose flattering accounts of them were calculated to insure us that they were suitable candidates for conversion to Christianity. By the 1970s this attitude (minus Christianity, which was already passé) was in full swing both in popular books and film.

Newton purports to write from a Native perspective, even if he wasn't one himself. He did interview a lot of Canada's indigenous peoples living on the North Coast. Because I'm so well familiar with the area his descriptions of life there fifty and sixty and more years ago speak to me. I was there. I found it interesting, for example, that Chief Weah (William Matthews) told him that the first white people to visit the Queen Charlotte Islands (that's what they were called until just a few years ago) arrived in the mid 1600s. Improbably early, but interesting that he should make this remark.

"First time they met a the white man," he said, "it was a ship coming in. They never imagined that fine-looking people like that were in existence. In the olden days they used to live on this island and they used to see the mountains on the mainland, but they had no canoes to go over; and they wondered if those lands over there were inhabited. They didn't know nothing. They had stone axes, you see. They'd chop down, maybe, a three-foot-and-a-half cedar tree, and chop of the top so many lengths, and then square off the top somehow, and burn the inside out. No tools - tone axe. So they were up against it. They could make little dinghies to go around the shoreline and go up the river. That's all they could do in travelling. They couldn't go across to the mainland. They could see the mountains; for hundreds and hundreds of years they wondered if it's inhabited or what kind of land is out there. ..."

The chief was of the opinion that it was only a short time before the white people came that the first circumnavigation of the islands occurred. These seas are always rough, no doubt about that.

Today's Haidas and other activists for Canada's indigenous peoples will always tell you that that they are, in fact, the original inhabitants of Haida Gwaii (the new name for the islands). But later in the book we find this gleaned from many Haida legends:

The Haida who first came to the islands probably found themselves in conflict with the aboriginal inhabitants, whoever these may have been. In fact, an anomalous group is mentioned in the clan histories - the Pitch-Town people. The stories about them are confusing, some seeming to imply that they are ancient inhabitants of the islands, others that they were related to the Ravens. The curious thing is that the stories about them have many of the aspects of racist humour. They are described as having been uncouth in manners, unusually tall and strong and very superstitious, which may simply mean that they held a different set of beliefs about the supernatural world from that common among their fellows.

[...]

In time the Ravens spread over the whole island. They have always been considered the older of the two clans, and though the Eagle clan was apparently more powerful and aggressive at the time of white contact, the latter, or at least most of them, had to live down a certain assumption that they were newcomers, and hence rather raw, crude and spiritually poverty-stricken. Most of the super-natural beings associated with the Queen Charlottes, for example, are of the Raven clan, and in one story Dzilaqons, the ancestress of the Eagles, is distinctly snubbed by the Raven ancestress, Foam-Woman.

The oldest group of Eagles on the island, a small group, is said to have "appeared" or "come over" at the same time as the oldest of the Raven groups, and to have first made its home on the east coast. But another and later group, comprising most of the Eagles of northern Graham Island, seems to have spread from the direction of Rose Spit, which lay at the island end of the most frequently used canoe route from the mainland.

The name Gitins is found in connection with this group, and Swanton, whose opinions in this matter bear considerable weight, thought the name was once applied to all the Eagles of the north part of Graham Island. Boas has suggested that the name has a Tsimshian root; and it is significant that one of the possible places of origin for the mythical ancestress of the Eagle clan, Dzilaqons, is said to have been the Nass River to the north of Prince Rupert. In fact, the Stastas group within the Gitins, tow which the famous Haida carver, Charles Edenshaw (Tahayten), belonged, can trace its ancestry back to Tlingit country. The name Edenshaw, Tahayten said, was Tlingit, and meant "nothing left of it", a reference to the place where a glacier comes to the sea and is melted by the sea water. The story of how the Eagles came down the Stikine is also found among the Tlingit: the Eagle ancestors known as Yenyedi ("Hemlock people") passed under a Stikine glacier on their way to the coast. This information suggests a migration of Eagles directly to the north shore of the Queen Charlottes.

The fact that these traditions of the Eagles show less evidence of age - that blurring of outlines by time - than the Raven legends, implies that this last branch of the Haida Eagles crossed Hecate Strait some time in the past two or three hundred years. In fact, Tsiminshian history, which can be dated more precisely, speaks of a great invasion of Tlingit Eagles at the end of the seventeenth century, and continuing conflict with the Tlingit is recorded after that in both Haida and Tsimshian traditions. It was not until the island Haida began to exert an influence on the mainland that they entered Tsimshian historyr. During the eighteenth century, and particularly towards its end, the Haida began to enter the lives of the mainland peoples, both as raiders and, through marriage into the chiefly dynasties, as members of mainland elites.

The Haida not only crossed Hecate Strait and left ruling families among the Tsimshian, they also spread north, crossing Dixon Entrance to establish themselves on the southern end of Prince of Wales Island. There is some argument as to when this migration occurred, but most of the writers who have voiced opinions on the matter would place it at some time between 1740 and 1790. It would coincide with a period, according to Tsimshian tradition, during which the Tlingit, who had previously established control as far south as the Skeena estuary, were gradually being driven back to what is now Alaska: the slow fading of their power seems to have begun, roughly, about 1730 and continued, again roughly, until 1790. That the Tlingit were present on Prince of Wales Island is indicated by the fact that the Haida immigrants retained the Tlingit names of such places as Hlinkwan and Howkan; that they were not very strong is indicated by the fact that they allowed a weak group of Haid (the Haida immigrants are described as poor and rather desperate) to take possession of their territory.

The story of this migration seems to imply that big canoes were scarce on this part of the island at least, since the emigrants tried to cross Dixon Entrance without them, and had to turn back because of the rough water. They then, according to the story, "found many friends and secured a big canoe", in which they were able to cross "the great water". Now Dawson thought the crossing occurred about 1720; Swanton, in discussing his opinion, thought it must have happened more recently than that, though he advanced the opinion with some hesitation. If big seaworthy canoes, though they were obviously known at this time, were not easily obtained, this would tend to confirm Chief Weah's statement that the Haida did not build such canoes until some time after the 1640s. On the other hand, we know that they had such canoes by the 1770's since the Perez expedition describes them.

Brings back memories. I lived for several years right on the beach on Revilladigedo Island. This is in Tlingit territory. But directly opposite though quite a few miles out to sea is Prince of Wales Island which is / was half Haida and half Tlingit. In between but far enough south not to impede the view is Metlakatla Island. It's named after the original Tsimshian village near Prince Rupert. Back in the 1880s a group of them left to establish a Christian community there. I think I may have told this story before: It was supposed to be 'dry', only in sense of no liquor allowed; this part of Alaska is one of the wettest places on earth; when I was there most years we had over 200 inches annually. Metlakatla was never totally dry in other respects either. Every week a group of Indians would get in their boat and come over our way, beaching it very close by. There was a liquor store right across the road, perfectly situated for their convenience and the residents of the South Tongass rural area just outside of Ketchikan.

[Apollonius]

Another interesting story is bears telling in these pandemic times.

In 1860, the Haida almost attacked Victoria. They were frustrated, directionless, and crazy with drink at the time. The young men wanted to attack the whites, but one Hiada (Higgins thinks he may have been in the pay of the Hudson's Bay Company) urged them to attack the Tlingit instead. A man was stabbed and soon a feud developed between Haida and Tlingit factions. Gunboats were called in from nearby Esquimalt and stood by to bombard the encampment. As the feud between Haid and Tlingit grew, a thousand more Haida arrived. Once again they prepared to attack Victoria. The superior force of the whites, supplemented by the skillful diplomacy of Douglas and Edenshaw, who was playing his now-established role of peace-maker, prevented what might have been an Indian war. A threatened Haida attack on the coal-mining town of Nanaimo was averted by the dispatch of a gunboat. The Haida left.

In May of 1861 the Haida attacked and stripped of its valuables the schooner Laurel, whose captain had sold them a keg of whisky which he had diluted by half with sea-water. The gunboat Forward set out in pursuit, and battle ensued between the Haida, who were firing from shore fortifications, and the ship. When one of their chiefs was killed and another severely wounded, the Haida surrendered. The prisoners were later released without charge.

In 1862, the disaster occurred which finally broke the spirit of the Haida and other coastal Indians - the small pox epidemic. Douglas, in all good faith, had warned the Indians encamped around Victoria that a man had arrived from San Francisco with smallpox and an epidemic was more than possible. He ordered them to leave. But the Haida chiefs looked upon this as a ruse to make them go home. In addition, they could not afford to obey an order from Douglas, who had up to now treated with them as if they still retained some independence, because such obedience would have been an acknowledgement of British claims to sovereignty. Douglas then ordered out the police, Royal Marines, and the Navy. Gunboats fired warning shots into the encampment. The Indians were rounded up at gunpoint and forced into their canoes, which were roped in long lines behind Navy craft. They were then towed out of the harbour and up the coast.

Edenshaw could not accept this. He cut his tow rope, the other men of his clan followed his example, and they headed back to Victoria. It was a gesture in support of their right of free access to the town. They stayed there long enough to establish their defiance of Victoria's pretentions to authority over them, and left again. But as they sailed and paddled north, hoping to catch up with those who had gone before, they found only corpses. They saw canoes rolling aimlessly in the waters of quiet coves, where their crewmen had headed to die. As they approached the Queen Charlottes men in their own canoes were dying. The epidemic spread along the coast. Among the Queen Charlotte Haida the population shrank from the estimated seven to ten thousand of the late 1700s to a mere thousand.

By way of further explanation:

James Douglas was the first governor of Vancouver Island (then a separate province from mainland British Columbia). His wife was part Native. It's reputed that he himself might have been part African.

Charles Edenshaw (Tahayten) was probably the most famous Haida sculptor ever at least until Bill Reid (who was related and learned carving from him).


It's also worth mentioning that although it's not clear if the Haida had ever experienced smallpox, the those peoples living on the lower coast of British Columbia definitely had. The most closely documented outbreak originated in central Mexico in 1791, spreading through the American Southwest and northern Plains to gain entry into the northwest part of the continent from east of the continental divide and following the Snake / Columbia Rivers to the coast and thence north again through the Puget Sound area reaching coastal British Columbia about 1800.

Many areas were hit by subsequent waves of smallpox, often involving B.C. interior groups which had been isolated enough to miss the initial outbreak. There is little agreement about how many people were killed by these epidemics or how quickly populations recovered, but a rough average of opinions would guess that at least half the population succumbed and that populations could not readily recover in the face of repeated outbreaks, at least until vaccines were introduced. In the 1860s the government started inoculating everyone on the Coast, obviously to great effect as almost no smallpox deaths are recorded there after that date. Natives in more isolated areas were still vulnerable.

[Doc]

https://www.rt.com/news/534296-canada-b ... ndigenous/

Canadian school board halts BOOK BURNING project aimed at ‘reconciliation’ amid controversy over adviser’s native roots

A network of Francophone schools in Ontario has paused a project to burn or otherwise destroy over 4,700 books for misrepresentation of native people after the project’s adviser resigned amid claims she is not actually indigenous.

Ther Providence Catholic School Board has suspended the book-burning project – titled “Redonnons a la terre,” or “Give back to the earth,” and designed as a “gesture of openness and reconciliation” toward Canada’s indigenous population – after the practice was exposed by Radio Canada. Meanwhile, doubts have also been raised about the ethnic background of the controversial project’s main indigenous adviser. She subsequently resigned from her position in the Indigenous Peoples' Commission of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party

.

[Apollonius]

The flags are still flying at half-mast. It must be in the Guinness Book of Records by now.



Why it's difficult to put a number on how many children died at residential schools - Ka’nhehsí:io Deer, CBC News, 29 September 2021
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/resi ... -1.6182456

It's 'just the start' of this research, says National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation archivist


"It's taken us so long to get the attention of Canada to the atrocities that happened to our people," said Kebaowek Chief Lance Haymond.

"We just want to support those First Nations who are going through the process of discovery. It's just our way of showing support and continuing to educate and highlight what's gone on in residential schools."

The sign is just one of many acts of solidarity, awareness, and remembrance that have popped up across the country ahead of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 30. But while many are eager to raise awareness and make similar shows of support, navigating the different numbers circulating is a challenge.

If indigenous leaders and brokers haven't got the attention of Canadians regarding residential schools, it's undoubtedly because the general public is bored, bored, bored, bored, bored by the whole thing. We have heard almost nothing else about indigenous people or their histories and relations with the government and non-indigenous peoples of Canada for at least thirty years.


The story is preceded by this:

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

What distressing details? A map showing that kids have died all over the country? That a hundred years ago child mortality was high and that, again, kids actually died? This was in an age before modern medicine. Those kids who did go to residential schools were frequently unwell before they turned up there. Lack of proper attention at home was in fact the main reason for their establishment.



Once again, the story is being told to insinuate that Native kids were abused and even murdered at residential schools. This is simply untrue. The article mentions posts on TikTok and Facebook with sensationalist claims about babies being murdered and lets us know that how disturbing this is, but doesn't inform us that the people who post these stories are simply lying. And when it comes to reports that have some substance, while it is true that some 6000 Native kids died while they were at attendance at residential schools during the hundred-and-fifty-year-long course of their operation, there is not one single documented case of a death caused by abuse. The cause of death was disease, often pneumonia, influenza, and TB, diseases that took a lot of kids' lives everywhere before the advent of antibiotics.



I can't help comment on the author of this story. She's one of those super-white blond savages whose reports we keep seeing at places like the CBC or find as diversity hires in the corporate world and as heads of Indigenous Studies programs at major universities. There sure are a lot of these pale-face Indians.

[Apollonius]

Digging for the Truth about Canada’s Residential School Graves: Part One - Hymie Rubenstein, C2C Journal, 7 August 2021
https://c2cjournal.ca/2021/08/digging-f ... -part-one/

When disturbing evidence is unearthed that points to malfeasance by individuals, organizations or entire countries, it is understandable that feelings would run high among the aggrieved parties. But are unrestrained emotionalism, exaggeration and wild accusation the proper responses for politicians, experts, commentators and the population at large? How does this help a nation get at the truth, pursue justice or settle accounts – let alone move the parties along the path of forgiveness and reconciliation? In Part One of this special three-part series, Hymie Rubenstein sorts through the heated claims and allegations and sets forth what is actually known about the unmarked graves at Canada’s former Indian Residential Schools.

A reasoned look at this subject, something that the CBC is emphatically not interested in, which includes many details purposely ignored by mainstream media, politicians, and especially the academics, the very people who should be informed, but are in fact mostly concerned with career enhancement through publicity stunts.

... Academic efforts to liken Canada’s experience to these horrific examples of rampant slaughter and bloodshed does great harm to the fundamental meaning of genocide, as former federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, cited at the top of this story, has warned. Consider that there has not been a single verified murder of a child at any Indian Residential School throughout the system’s long history.

Digging for the Truth about Canada’s Residential Schools Graves: Part Two - Hymie Rubenstein, C2C Journal, 25 August 2021
https://c2cjournal.ca/2021/08/digging-f ... -part-two/

The reported discovery of unmarked graves at former Indian Residential Schools confirmed what many Canadians thought they already knew about this now-discredited system. But how much of this foundational knowledge is actually true? Did “all” Indigenous children attend residential schools? Were they forced to go? Was this done over the objections of their parents and chiefs? How did the buried students die? And what, in turn, was the system’s real purpose? In Part Two of this special three-part series, Hymie Rubenstein digs deep into the historical record in the search for answers to these difficult questions.

Good background information here. Almost everything that is published at the CBC (and sometimes re-circulated at the Guardian or New York Times) turns out to be highly misleading, often completely contrary to the truth.

All these schools were initially created at the express request of Indigenous leaders who wished to secure a formal English-language education for their people. In fact, a federal requirement to provide education was a key component of all nine numbered treaties covering Western and Northern Canada.

[Apollonius]

This Canadian questions the rationale of repeating a mythologisized story over and over again and asks what the ultimate purpose of this exercise in misinformation and recrimination is:



The sins of our fathers - Gourav Jaswal, C2C Journal, 1 September 2021
https://c2cjournal.ca/2021/09/the-sins-of-our-fathers/



Near the end of this article the author discusses what we need to do to go forward ...

Framing the Finish

Every sensible movement for justice – at least any that has succeeded – has a clear list of rational and reasonable claims. With integrity and focus, even demands once thought unattainable can eventually be met.

The famously hawkish U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, apologized for and approved a financial reparation of $20,000 to every survivor or heir of those Americans of Japanese ethnicity who were interned in camps during the Second World War. Because they had a specific set of demands that were met after a decade-long civil campaign, there’s no continuing Angst among the Japanese-American community. When internment is talked about today, it is correctly viewed as a disgraceful scar on American history, not a festering wound.

Is there a similar road to redemption for Canada? Apologies, reparations, memorials? More than one Prime Minster has already issued heartfelt apologies. Close to $2 billion has been paid through the Common Experience Payment of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and, additionally, over $3 billion has been paid through Independent Assessment Processes.

Yet the most commonly-heard refrain is “Not enough.” The state apologies appear not enough, heartfelt national penitence appears not enough, the direct compensation appears not enough and the many changes in government policy aimed at helping Indigenous communities lift themselves up appear not enough. Just a few weeks ago, the chief of the largest advocacy organization for Canada’s First Nations spoke about fresh reparations encompassing the entire community, above and beyond payments made to specific survivors.

In the spirit of reconciliation, perhaps many more apologies can still be made and many more billions can still be paid. But it is necessary to ask: What will be enough?

[noddy]

for me the difference between the East Asians, Indians and the other "white adjacent" communities is they actually want to play by the middle class society rules.

with the indigenous communities and some of the others of that nature - their idea of hell would be to be stuck in a room full of passive aggressive white folks playing corporate career games.

so, this leaves a dead end situation - all the bleeding heart white guilt is about turning them into folks who can live that way and they have zero interest in going that path.

this is what triggers the essays on whiteness and identity politics and the dead end politics of no progress on these fronts.

[Doc]

for me the difference between the East Asians, Indians and the other "white adjacent" communities is they actually want to play by the middle class society rules.

with the indigenous communities and some of the others of that nature - their idea of hell would be to be stuck in a room full of passive aggressive white folks playing corporate career games.

so, this leaves a dead end situation - all the bleeding heart white guilt is about turning them into folks who can live that way and they have zero interest in going that path.

this is what triggers the essays on whiteness and identity politics and the dead end politics of no progress on these fronts.

Native Alaskan youth have one of the highest suicide rates in the world because they are stuck between the world they grew up to love and the world they see on their televisions.

[Typhoon]

The Spectator | The mystery of Canada’s indigenous mass graves

[Apollonius]

Recently I went back and read Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School by Celia Haig-Brown (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002). This is a re-issue of a book originally published in 1988, one of the first and perhaps the single most important book to bring to the wider public's attention the phenomenon of Canada's residential schools.

It is largely composed of interviews with 13 Indigenous adults who attended a residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia in their youth conducted by UBC professor and activist Celia Haig-Brown. The text is unaltered from the original except for a brief introductory note by the author which attempts to address criticism she has received for being an elite white Canadian speaking to an issue that she has not herself 'lived'.



This book got the ball rolling for subsequent claims of unfair and abusive treatment of Canada's Native peoples and in its aftermath the federal government of Canada formed the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) which published a thirty-five hundred page report in five volumes in 1996 outlining these accusations. Subsequently, the Conservative government under Stephen Harper formed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2008 which produced a summary including 94 'calls to action' regarding Canadians and the indigenous peoples who live in this country in 2015. Later that year the multi-volume final report was issued, which included the claim that Canada had committed what amounts to 'cultural genocide' against its native peoples.

Scathing critiques of the RCAP and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission can be found here:


Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation by Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008)

First Nations? Second Thoughts by Tom Flanagan (McGill-Queen's University Press, 3rd ed., 2019)

Separate but Unequal: How Parallelist Ideology Conceals Indigenous Dependency by Frances Widdowson (University of Ottawa Press, 2020)



While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard testimony of physical abuse, this was not reported in these interviews with Haig-Brown. Instead we get stories of being required to speak English and small chores like cleaning one's room. Those who spoke with the author were by no means entirely negative about their experiences, remembering good teachers and good times at residential schools even though there were complaints, for example, about the porridge that was served for breakfast. Haig-Brown mentions in the new introduction that she avoided including anything which might substantiate what she describes as 'lurid' reports of sexual abuse. None of that appears here.


My complaint with this whole enterprise has from the very beginning centred on two facts:

Firstly, abuse and neglect of children on Indian reserves was and remains a problem. Residential schools were in part, in addition to acculturating and educating Native children, a response to that.

Secondly, the schools themselves were above all ordinary. Though nowadays always shown in faded black-and-white photographs that make them look drab and unwelcoming, people today forget that almost all schools were dreary in 1880 or 1960, certainly by today's standards.



But this is an issue which is, exactly contrary to the name of the 2015 Report, not even slightly interested in truth and reconciliation. On the contrary, it is a campaign of lies and extortion.

[Apollonius]

Natives, activists, and the media have been lying through their teeth:



The year of the graves: How the world’s media got it wrong on residential school graves - Terry Glavin, National Post, 26 May 2022
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-ye ... ool-graves

The coverage triggered protests, church arsons and condemnation from Canada’s bad-faith rivals, but last summer’s reporting on the country's long-acknowledged historic shame had little to do with what happened.

There is at least one part of this piece which I strongly object to:

This is not to dispute the proposition that the residential school system’s policy amounted to cultural genocide, at least in its foundational years, or to disregard the brutal sexual, emotional and psychological abuse inflicted on the institutions’ inmates.

Personally I reject the language, even the premise of ‘cultural genocide’. To repeat the question I’ve asked before, what kind of recriminations, lawsuits, and reconciliatory measures would we be going through had we just left Indigenous children to the neglect, abuse, and denial of access to education and yes, civilization, that would have continued if residential schools had not been established? Were these schools perfect? Is anyone perfect? I know for a fact that life on Canadian reserves even today is far from perfect.


The CBC reacts:


Fighting 'denialists' for the truth about unmarked graves and residential schooling - Kisha Supernant and Sean Carleton, CBC News, 3 June 2022
https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion ... -1.6474429

Residential schools are not fake news. There is no big lie or deliberate hoax

Terry Glavin assesses the angry responses he got from the woke media:



Terry Glavin: When narrative replaces facts - Terry Glavin, National Post, 1 June 2022
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/terry- ... aces-facts

The furor over my 'The year of graves' feature illustrated perfectly what the piece was about


I should say straight off that I didn’t set out to write something with “I” in it today. But it’s unavoidable because of an amazing strangeness that has taken over my working life in the past few days that’s directly related to and perfectly illustrates the disturbing phenomenon that this column was supposed to be about.

I didn’t want to write about my personal entanglement in it, but that’s what’s happened, so I need to deal with that right off the top and get it out of the way. It’s because of a furor that’s erupted over something I wrote to mark the anniversary of the kick-off of what has been described as a long-overdue reckoning with the legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools.

It was a 5,500-word reconstruction for the National Post of the sequence of media events and non-events that ran in tandem with and lit the fuses for last summer’s succession of statue topplings, national mourning ceremonies, opinion-page histrionics, riots, flag-lowerings, marches and church burnings.

Gavin should not have tried to deflect criticism by trying to appease progressives. It never works. By now I advocate exactly the opposite. Attack. Bluntly tell these people that they've got their facts wrong, their history wrong and that they are racists who talk like communists but are really just power-hungry money-grubbing slime bags.

[Apollonius]

The truth about Canada’s Indian graves - Tom Flanagan, UnHerd, 29 June 2022
https://unherd.com/2022/06/the-truth-ab ... an-graves/

The indigenous industry is thriving off fake news

... How could the fake news story of unmarked graves, with its attendant legends of missing children ripped from the arms of their mothers, have gained such wide currency among political and media elites? The short answer is that it fits perfectly into the progressive narrative of white supremacy, of the white majority in Canada oppressing racial minorities. But there is also a specific etiology of the unmarked grave story.

Prior to 1990, residential schools enjoyed largely favourable coverage in the media, with many positive testimonials from students who had attended them. Indeed, alumni of the residential schools made up most of the emerging First Nations elite. Then Manitoba regional chief Phil Fontaine spoke on a popular Canadian Broadcasting Company radio show about how he had suffered sexual abuse at a residential school. After that things went south quickly. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples wrote critically about the schools; two historians wrote influential books; and lawyers launched multiple class actions on behalf of residential school “survivors”, claiming damages for physical and sexual abuse, as well as loss of language and culture at the schools.

Rather than contest these lawsuits in court, the Liberal government of Paul Martin negotiated a settlement in 2005, which was accepted shortly afterwards by the newly elected Conservative government of Stephen Harper. Ultimately about $5 billion in compensation was paid to about 80,000 claimants, and Prime Minister Harper gave a public apology for the existence of residential schools in 2008.

Harper might have thought that the compensation payments and his apology would be the end of the story, but it was only the beginning. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he appointed took off in its own direction after the initial set of commissioners resigned and had to be replaced on fairly short notice. The TRC held emotional public hearings around the country at which “survivors” were invited to tell their stories without fact-checking or cross-examination. Most had already made claims for financial compensation in which the amount paid was proportional to the degree of sexual and physical abuse suffered, again without fact-checking or cross-examination. The TRC concluded that the residential schools amounted to “cultural genocide”.

While this was going on, lawyers were bringing more class actions for other forms of Indian education, such as day schools on reserves, or boarding in town to attend public schools. Harper’s government offered some resistance in court, but the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, elected in 2015, preferred to settle out of court. Billions of dollars more are being paid out as a result.

Against this background, the claims of unmarked graves are a new money-maker. In August 2021, the federal government announced $321 million in special grants to First Nations for research about unmarked graves, and Canada’s 2022 budget pledged $275 million for “addressing the shameful legacy of residential schools”. Meanwhile indigenous leaders are pursuing claims for financial compensation from the Catholic Church.

Fake news does not arise and thrive in a political vacuum. While progressive ideology makes academia and the Liberal government a receptive audience, the indigenous industry has an obvious financial stake in driving the story. As long as the dollars flow, expect more stories about unmarked graves, yet no excavations to test the truth of the stories.

I mentioned Celia Haig-Brown's book. If you read this entire article by Tom Flanagan you'll find a link to Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools by J.R. Miller (University of Toronto Press, 1996). 'Vision' is probably the right word. It's another upper-class white person, in this case a man, who has made a name for himself and no doubt lucre too from an entire series launched to follow this fantasm. By the time his book appeared the media had joined the educational system in doing its part to facilitate this hallucinatory version of events. In an interview published in response to the outraged woke media to Terry Glavin's article in the National post he summed up their handling of this affair when he said, "This is really a story about white people going crazy."

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Residental School 'Mass Grave' Turned Out To Be Underground Rocks, No Bodies Found

[Apollonius]

After two years the protest installation at Robson Square in Vancouver was hurriedly dismantled:

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/residen ... -overnight

The shoes that were part of a residential school memorial were removed from the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery overnight.

The City of Vancouver said it had planned to start closing the memorial today (May 19) following talks with the organizers involved, but that workers arrived early in the morning to find that the majority of memorial items had already been removed.

Volunteers at the site told Daily Hive Urbanized they were woken up between 5 and 6 am by City workers putting up fences and that the shoes were already gone. They didn’t know who took them.

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/vancouver-shoe-me ... -1.6406724


If you read the whole story, it turns out that people were living at this site. The new 'racist' Chinese mayor of the city told them they had to clear out.


In the meantime, three sites have been excavated, with none turning up anything more substantial than a rock.

Most sites, including the one originally spotlighted by the media, will likely never be investigated. Native leaders themselves have told us they are not interested.


A lot of lies get enforced in our schools and media. For example:

From a year ago:

As this B.C. teacher found out, even speaking the truth in class is enough to get an educator cancelled - Barbara Kay, National Post, 27 November 2022
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/as-thi ... -cancelled

McMurtry told the class a statement of fact, which he was well placed from his educational background to assert with confidence. For this, he has been the subject of a witch hunt


… Shortly after it was announced on May 27, 2021, that 215 probable unmarked graves had been found at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS), McMurtry found himself in a Grade 12 calculus class as a teacher on call, a status he says he had chosen in order to avoid further contact with one of his student tormentors the principal had refused to transfer to another class.

The students, he told me, were extremely upset by what they believed to have been a mass murder of children at the hands of the KIRS nuns and priests. Some of the girls, he said, were sobbing. As it happened, the previous day, McMurtry had reviewed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, which said nothing about foul play at the schools.

So, he told me, when one girl said, “The priests murdered the (215) children by torturing them and leaving them out in the snow to die,” he sought to alleviate her and others’ distress by telling the class that, although tragic, “most residential-school deaths were from disease.”

An offended student immediately complained to a guidance counsellor, who informed the principal, who informed the school district. The following day, McMurtry was ignominiously marched out of his classroom and suspended. (Taken together, McMurtry has been suspended for 15 of the last 22 months.)

In her above-mentioned report, Radomski concluded that, “regardless of Mr. McMurtry’s intent,” his expressed opinion that the deaths were due to disease was “inflammatory, inappropriate, insensitive and contrary to the district’s message of condolences and reconciliation.”

Indeed, she found it inculpating that, “He left students with the impression some or all of the deaths could be contributed (sic) to ‘natural causes’ and that the deaths could not be called murder.” Her finding, therefore, was that McMurtry was guilty of “extremely serious professional misconduct.” Most unjustly.

Even though the school may understandably have accepted the idea that the remains of schoolchildren had been unearthed at KIRS in May 2021, Radomski’s January 2022 report was written when the “mass grave” narrative was widely contested.

McMurtry told the class a statement of fact, which he was well placed from his educational background to assert with confidence. As Terry Glavin’s exhaustive May article on the graves issue in these pages would eventually to make clear, there is not a shred of actual evidence that any of the probable gravesites found at residential schools contain the bodies of murdered children.

Delaying tactics on both sides have kept McMurtry nominally still employed. A third investigation was launched in mid-November following McMurtry’s interview about his case with Rebel News. He expects it will ultimately result in his dismissal.

Haven't followed this up but it's doubtful that Jim McMurtry has been re-instated.

And when you get looking around you can find plenty of other examples of how any deviance from the official lies will not be tolerated:

Into wokism's raging maw: Frances Widdowson at the University of Lethbridge - Frances Widdowson, C2C Journal, 23 February 2023
https://c2cjournal.ca/2023/02/into-woki ... ethbridge/

As wokism rampages throughout society, a few are attempting to fight it head on – and paying the price. One is political scientist Frances Widdowson, previously fired for sheer outspokenness from her professorship at Calgary’s Mount Royal University. Earlier this month Widdowson was shouted down by a 700-strong mob at the University of Lethbridge as she prepared to deliver a talk to which a faculty member had invited her. Those tempted to wave off the incident as irrelevant might remind themselves that today’s out-of-control students are tomorrow’s managers, leaders and (presumably) parents. Widdowson describes the encounter, its place in the broader intellectual and moral degradation of Canada’s universities – and what might be done to begin restoring balance.

Meanwhile some MPs are calling for censorship of 'hate speech' resulting from residential school 'denialism':


NDP MP calls for hate speech law to combat residential school 'denialism' - Olivia Stefanovich, CBC News, 18 February 2023
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/should ... -1.6744100

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller interested in reviewing proposed bill


WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

The distressing details are that despite daily non-stop propaganda from the CBC and elsewhere many of us are convinced not that residential schools didn't exist but that the alleged abuses perpetrated in them never happened. There is not a single documented death at a residential school thought to be caused by violence or neglect. But as far as that goes, none of the worst stories we hear repeated in the media were ever reported in the RCAP or the The Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It's also worth noting that no testimony to these commissions regarding the schools has ever been cross-examined.

[Apollonius]

A report from Statistics Canada finds that 86% of the murders of indigenous women and girls are committed by the indigenous. However, thanks to racism in Canada, indigenous murderers get shorter sentences for killing their own. Once again, Woke SJW creates MORE injustice.


Indigenous female murder stats clash with Liberal narrative - Lorne Gunter, Toronto Sun, 11 October 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJXteQL57p0

The Sun's political columnist Lorne Gunter says recent Statistics Canada numbers show who is killing indigenous women and girls, it is indigenous men.

A couple of the most liked comments:

I myself am a Native American indigenous woman, the same narrative has proliferated throughout our society as well. Any person that comes from these communities or live near these communities know the truth is not “racism” but a combination of societal factors such as poverty, drug abuse, alcoholism, single mother homes, domestic violence, low emphasis on education, high unemployment rates and government dependency.

It infuriates me to watch and listen to people pretend to care about the plight of indigenous women and girls all the while never bothering to put forth any effort into understanding their issues. The smallest bit of effort would immediately come into conflict with this “progressive” narrative.

As much as it made my skin crawl hearing the PM speak about genocide, I recognize he’s a useful mouthpiece…most of the blame lay at the feet of so called indigenous activists. In my opinion, they are the most egregious.

**

The sad part is that this was already known - anyone who grew up around a reserve knows the violence was always internal, it was rarely from anyone else. I've heard a ton of stories where the RCMP would go to a reserve to investigate only to hear "i don't know anything " so how can they investigate when they get no information? They wanted a result where Canada was a genocidal nation and they got just what they wanted, the facts didn't matter. Even with this, the fault will be that the white man turned them like this, got them on booze, living in poverty, etc. Doesn't matter what the facts say, the left and Trudeau want to blame Canada.

[Apollonius]

This video may soon be ILLEGAL - Candice Malcolm, True North, 30 November 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zofJ9-wKANg

The Trudeau government wants to ban critical thinking and criminalize uncomfortable questions about Canada’s residential school program.

According to a recent Canadian Press article, the author of a government report on residential schools is urging MPs to ban so-called “denialism” – a vague term that no one seems to be able to define.

The report itself hasn’t even been released – we’re told it won’t be released until next year – and yet, the report’s author is already demanding MPs pass a bill to ban speech she doesn’t agree with.

What will this mean for journalists who ask questions and want corroborating evidence to back claims of alleged atrocities at residential schools?

What will happen to academics like Dr. Tom Flanagan and Dr. C.P. Champion who have a forthcoming book published by True North about the truth behind the residential school program?

What inconvenient facts get scrubbed from the record, like the fact that despite many excavations, no human remains have ever been found in the places we were told bodies were buried?

Will our coverage at True North, our news reports and our books soon get banned?

What does it say about our country when groups can level shocking allegations – that Canada ran literal death camps and that our school system committed genocide – and we are not allowed to ask questions, or even ask for evidence?

On today’s episode of the Candice Malcolm Show, Candice dissects the issue and asks the uncomfortable questions that may soon be illegal.

A transcript for this 17 minute long video is included at the site.