Do any Canadians (or others) on this site want to weigh in on the tragedy that has emerged of the past murder of Indigenous children in residential schools?

I think the revelations are horrifying. I fully expect the same scandal to spread across the US. We had the same history of denying Natives their own culture and language. We had residential schools. It’s reprehensive that the system existed.

I really would like to see a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the US deal with our past of racism and slavery and genocide of Natives.

@Hawaii_Jake Yes, there had been the same situation in the US as well and I have been learning about for the past several years. It crops up in the novels of Louise Erdrich and also in This Tender Land by Krueger but like many other atrocities we have not dealt with it on a national level.

However, it’s a hot issue in Canada right now so I’d like to keep the focus on there if possible.

What can you say? The nation took racist paternalism to a psychopathic end, asked the church to be official psychopaths, and cloistered them with children and no oversight. Kids died horribly for decades. I applaud Canada for trying, but how can a country really ever face that, when the victims and perpetrators are still alive?

@Smashley If the victims are alive still or their families, do you think individual reparations should be made?

The BBC reported on this quite recently. It is a horror story and difficult to believe that this was the official policy of what considered itself a civilised country. It is profoundly shocking and disturbing and failed in its aim of wiping out native culture. It succeeded only in terrorising and sometimes murdering untold thousands of children, some as young as three years old.
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It was horrific ,I have a friend that went to one of these schools, and he said it was horrible he was just about 16 and quit they said he couldn’t but they in the end let him.
It was a disgusting part of Canadian history, our Government has apologised , even the Catholic Church has finally admitted it was wrong.

@SQUEEKY2 Do you think personal reparations are in order?

They have made some.
And yes I think anyone that was forced to go to one of these schools should get financially compensated .
It really screwed up a lot of kids lives.

I asked a similar question when there was the previous discussion about the children of slaves in the US, and reparations for their families. I don’t question that there is some compensation or recognition due, but I am not sure that paying money is the appropriate avenue.

Where does the money for reparations come from? In Canada, it’s even more of an issue, because Canada’s population is a fraction of the US population, and the money would have to come from somwhere.

What should the Canadian government not fund in order to pay reparations?

Health care? Education? Libraries? Armed Forces? Highway maintenance? Which of these wouldn’t be funded to pay reparations?

Would Canadian taxpayers – like @squeeky2 and others – like to pay more tax each year to pay off the families of these children? For how long would the reparations continue? When are the sins of the past expiated?

Yes, the Church and the Canadian government colluded at the native population was treated horribly. But the approach should more constructive:

Better schools and health care for existing native groups.
More industry and jobs in and among native populations.

Throwing money at people contributes nothing to a long term improvement.

I think the church probably should pay some money to individuals and their families, and the government probably should do something to improve the life of anyone who survived, and their families, but I am not sure what they need. This damage is not only the individual, but also to the descendants. Possibly, a lot is already done for the native Canadians, and if so, then I think that counts. Canadians have a lot of social services already.

According to most Canadians who I know, Canada is much better than the US at being inclusive, I am not sure if that is true. I don’t think people have an accurate read on what the US is really like, people see the worst on television and in the news.

What do the people who survived and their families want; what are they asking for?

I’ll be devil’s advocate, a lot of people had horrible experiences at the hand of the church and governments in the past. One of our jellies was sent to an orphanage (I think it was a Catholic orphanage) as a child, similar to my grandfather being sent to an orphanage because his family was poor. It’s horrible. The Catholic church and governments did this sort of thing in many countries from what I can tell. See the movie Evelyn based on a true story in Ireland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_(2002_film)

My family didn’t get anything from Latvia. Should they? What about the Jews from Lithuania and Russia? Lithuania is giving citizenship to children, and maybe grandchildren, of Jews who left because of religious oppression. I know someone who attained Lithuania citizenship a couple of years ago.

I know from working in the CPS field, in the US, now, when Native American children are taken into foster care, there are very strict protocols that must be followed regarding the children’s language and culture being maintained. Their schooling, their foster homes, their culture all has to be in accordance with the law and with their heritage.

@JLeslie: This movie about how Irish women were treated by the Catholic Church in Ireland was really tough to watch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magdalene_Sisters

It’s about young girls who are pregnant, made to give up their babies and toil for the nuns doing manual labor. A very bleak and joyless movie, really traumatizing to watch, I thought.

I almost mentioned pregnant girls being sent away and forced to give up their babies, but my post was already getting long.

It happened in America too with the parents going along with it. I’ve heard of that movie, maybe I’ll watch it.

@JLeslie Jewish Holocaust survivors have gotten reparation payments from Germany:

http://www.mnchurches.org/blog/2021/02/18/holocaust-survivors-receive-german-reparations-day

And just announced a fund for Ukrainian Holocaust survivors:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/world/europe/germany-holocaust-reparations-ukraine.html

There are precendents for this.

@janbb I’m not talking about Germany, but yes that’s an example of reparations. I talked about Latvia, Russia, and Lithuania.

For those who are interested in the subject of Indian boarding schools (and to get back to the topic at hand) here is a summary that was presented in 2008 on the topic of United States Indian schools and reparations. It references what had been being done in Canada for a while.

Worth a skim:

https://knottedline.com/images/A_Critical_Appraisal_of_Reparations_final.pdf

I feel like ultimately, the many native American peoples who were displaced throughout the Americas by European colonists, ought to be returned to some worthwhile form of sovereign statehood (not just “Indian reservations”), their historical treaty violations and so on eventually atoned for, their people and cultures valued and respected, etc.

60 minutes did a piece about it a while ago. That’s how I learned about it. I found it on YouTube if you want to see it. https://youtu.be/J1CfRdEd_PI

@Zaku Do you think a larger piece of land where they can create a state would make a big difference? Where would it be? Aren’t there tribes all over the country? Would they want to move to live in the state? It would be like Israel was for the Jewish people I guess. Maybe Native Americans would move there from all over the Americas if it was successful. The thing is each tribe is different, but I have no idea how different.

@JLeslie I’m by no means an expert, but yes there are many tribes and individuals with various perspectives. What I do think I clearly see, is that their ancestors and their culture was unjustly removed and replaced by the current countries, and the current people deserve better than to be treated as second-class people whose culture and ideas are given inferior status and rights.

What should be done shouldn’t be decided by me, but by a conversation between their leaders, and sympathetic informed intelligent leaders in the occupying nations. It will of course take a lot to shift conversations such that that second group of people exist and have enough sway to get something to happen.

I think that, assuming the world as we know it survives the threats of nuclear war, global climate change, species extinctions, etc, and assuming culture and workable economies in the Americas progress rather than devolving, what I expect will happen is that eventually the stigmas and relationships with government will change toward native peoples. I don’t know what it’ll look like, exactly.

I’d hope it might also go hand in hand with acknowledgement of natural ecosystems as also being something everyone wants to support and be given rights, protections, and significant legal representation. (I think such a shift may be necessary for the part about the world not being destroyed by climate change and species extinctions.)

^^ The fact that the Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, is a Native American has got to be helping the indigenous people and their lands somewhat.

I just wonder if the native Canadians had been treated better all along if they would have culturally moved towards being part of what CA is on their own. That doesn’t address land being taken, but I just mean if they were being educated in Canadian schools and assimilated they would have culturally been both. Many of them probably would have become more modernized and westernized culturally anyway.

When you think of the cultures and ethnicities in the US and Canada that stay in their enclaves, like the Amish, some Native Americans, the Chassidic, most still interact with mainstream society for business, some people in the groups do leave. Some of those groups we really question if it’s ok to limit the children in their education, or women being treated poorly in some sects. I don’t think it’s simple.

Growing up I didn’t have negative stereotypes of Native Americans, just the opposite. I found out a few months ago my mom always cared about the Native Americans and as a child once a year she had to donate money to whatever charity she wanted (her parents did it with the children) and she would pick giving money to Native Americans. I didn’t know that before, but maybe that’s partly why I always had positive thoughts towards the Native Americans. Also, in school and in advertising they were usually represented in a positive light.

After the Choctaw were forcibly removed to Oklahoma, we formed our own government and established our own schools, so avoided a lot of the trouble. We are a sovereign nation within the U S. At one point, we were betrayed once again, when the government allowed settlers to claim homesteads on our land, but we remained strong and are now a very successful Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

@janbb – I do. I think that’s about the least you can do, but real healing will take a lot longer.

@Smashley Oh agree. How do monetary reparations “heal” years of abuse?

They don’t but we don’t have a better way. At least we should try to ease the burdens that abuse contributed to. As far as punishment, you’d have to put powerful people in jail or at least take all their money, which is simply never going to happen.