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Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

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Re: Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you investigate you will find that the CURRENT Canadian Government released a report saying the CURRENT treatment of indigenous in Canada is an ongoing genocide. Specifically for the eradication of culture you mentioned. Matters very little what people like yourself who are far away from any impacts want to call it, it's still happening.

The term they use, which should also resolve this absurd definitional argument completely, is "cultural genocide".

Yes good point.

Re: Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

#122

This is one incident among many, but it has less to do with indigenous children as it does with any system wherein the accounting of "disconnected" children is left to that system. Tuam, County Galway ... eight hundred infants with missing graves. St Mary's Cemetery in Lanark, four hundred left in a single mass grave. In Germany, nuns pimping out orphans. The Sisters of Mercy scandal. I could go on. Bluntly put, when…

> it has less to do with indigenous children

This is a very strong claim to make about cultural genocide: that the children’s race was incidental to the destruction.

Re: Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia and China aren't comparable to the US (and allies) in terms of military power, economic coercion or control over propaganda. This false equivalence is manufactured by US and allied media to protect their interests. It's also worth looking at the actual sources. Try to find something claiming genocide in Xinjiang that doesn't end up using Adrian Zenz or a NED-funded think tank as a source. On the other hand, fo…

China does have a lot of influence as well, it is important not to discount it. It will continue to get stronger as well as it becomes an increasingly important market for goods and services. For example, this apology by actor John Cena this week because he appeared to contravened the official Chinese line that Taiwan is part of China: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/27/john-cenas-apology-after-tai...

Or maybe John Cena cares about upsetting a large part of his audience, he apologised in decent Mandarin after all. It's unsurprising that imperialist media would twist a perfectly normal apology video into something sinister.

If you talk to people both on the mainland and in Taiwan, you'll find the vast majority consider Taiwan to be a part of China. Many have family on the other side of the Taiwan strait, after all.

Taiwan's local government still officially claims all of China as its territory. This is unsurprising since it's a direct descendant of the KMT, who retreated to Taiwan after losing the civil war to the PRC on the mainland. Only more recently a minority are starting to move towards the idea of Taiwan as an independent country; this minority is overrepresented in Western media.

Re: Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

#124
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an article from Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, a Canadian channel. While I understand the issue with context, they're writing to their audience of 1) Canadians who probably already know about residential schools as its in the news frequently and taught in schools and 2) aboriginals who most certain know about the horrors inflicted by the government of their people, many of which are still alive today.

There’s an article on the guardian about the same discovery, it might add some context. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/28/canada-remains...

They need to bring the ground-penetrating radar to every residential school site now.

Re: Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

#125
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole system makes a lot more sense if you imagine it through the belief in the “white man’s burden” at the time - it was the white man’s responsibility to educate and assimilate “inferior” cultures into the “superior” Western system. Not to excuse the damage done, but the people doing these things felt like it was their moral responsibility - if they didn’t do it, these cultures would forever be stuck in their i…

Yes, and this is the most difficult form of racism to recognize and avoid. Hatred is easy to recognize. Racism without hatred is often discounted. It’s the people with good intentions who are acting with inherent biases and preconceived world-views who often commit acts of blatant racism without anyone realizing until it’s too late.

I find it odd that some Christian conservatives in the US support policies which are essentially racist. I had a talk with my girlfriend about it and she mentioned one reason could be that they actually think they're doing the right thing according to the Bible. It's true that religion/belief-system "partitions" people -- you're either one of us or we must be against you. Not saying that some (supposedly) Christians aren't taking advantage of religion to justify their agenda, but many actually believe what they're doing is right.

It's also difficult to change this situation because for many people maintaining homeostasis is much easier and more favorable than opening up their minds to other opinions. Many religious people (not just Christians) I've known just want to follow a set of "rules" and have a simple standard life.

Re: Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

#126
post #87
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These children weren’t abandoned, they were forcefully taken from their families by the government. They were sent vast distances to these boarding schools to “kill the Indian in the child”, where they were often mistreated, sexually abused, and went missing ( murder/neglect/ abuse). So it is all the more egregious in this case. The government turned a blind eye to the Churches, and the Churches were doing God’s work…

The whole system makes a lot more sense if you imagine it through the belief in the “white man’s burden” at the time - it was the white man’s responsibility to educate and assimilate “inferior” cultures into the “superior” Western system. Not to excuse the damage done, but the people doing these things felt like it was their moral responsibility - if they didn’t do it, these cultures would forever be stuck in their i…

If you believe that at all. Most virulent racists say whatever to justify their actions. These noble-but-misguided excuses are disingenuous.

Re: Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

#127
post #9

And then there is the forced sterilization of indigenous women that is still happening , specially in Alberta: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/sterilization-indigenous-1....

This is unbelievably shocking. Why is this not front page new across the world? Or at least the west? Good god, it’s unbelievable. The doctors should be instantly arrested, why haven’t they been arrested? This isn’t a law suit it’s a criminal investigation. I’ve not heard anything so absolutely disgusting about a first world country in quite some time.

Canada likes to whitewash stuff like this because we have a weird superiority complex towards the US. We just treat people better, have less racism and everything is better just by the virtue of being Canadian and not American. It usually goes "Oh first Nations are getting forcefully sterilized? But what about x thing happening in the US?". Remember, Native men were literally kidnapped by the Saskatoon police department and some of them just "disappeared" and it barely made the headlines for a few days. I think that's what people here mean when they boast about living in a "consensus based society", not like those savages south that actually have gasp political opposition & aren't shy of societal debates.

But what else would you expect from a country that is so deep into performative show of virtue that it fully admitted to perpetrating a literal genocide not even 2 years ago just to then proceed to not do anything about it, punish anyone or even really following up on that pretty huge allegation it made against itself? Keep in mind that a lot of the people involved in the disappearence of indigenous women (aka the genocide) are still alive. Tons of those people working for the government who by the government's own logic were directly involved in enabling or ignoring a genocide are still working for the federal gov because firing people, that's a bit too much of to ask for, right? Admitting to genocide is just the path to least conflict, so they did it to avoid a public debate

(And whether you agree with it being a genocide or not, the moment the PM and the government say that it was you should at least expect them to actually do... something about it?)

Re: Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

#128

This is one incident among many, but it has less to do with indigenous children as it does with any system wherein the accounting of "disconnected" children is left to that system. Tuam, County Galway ... eight hundred infants with missing graves. St Mary's Cemetery in Lanark, four hundred left in a single mass grave. In Germany, nuns pimping out orphans. The Sisters of Mercy scandal. I could go on. Bluntly put, when…

It seems like the Catholic Church is often (always?) somehow involved in these systemic child abuse/mass grave stories and it’s mind-boggling to me that we continue to allow an organization with that kind of track record to take responsibility for caring for and placing at-risk children.

I’ve heard that insurance for Catholic Churches aren’t any higher than insurance for a different denomination —- the abuse is at the same level as other churches, it’s just that the Catholic Church is so much larger than any of the others.

I can say that the mandatory training programs and background checks that are required to work with children (now) far exceed anything I’ve seen from other churches.

Re: Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

#129
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole system makes a lot more sense if you imagine it through the belief in the “white man’s burden” at the time - it was the white man’s responsibility to educate and assimilate “inferior” cultures into the “superior” Western system. Not to excuse the damage done, but the people doing these things felt like it was their moral responsibility - if they didn’t do it, these cultures would forever be stuck in their i…

>That attitude hasn’t disappeared. It's undergone a very successful rebranding and PR campaign.

To what?

Re: Remains of 215 children found at former residential school in British Columbia

#130

This is one incident among many, but it has less to do with indigenous children as it does with any system wherein the accounting of "disconnected" children is left to that system. Tuam, County Galway ... eight hundred infants with missing graves. St Mary's Cemetery in Lanark, four hundred left in a single mass grave. In Germany, nuns pimping out orphans. The Sisters of Mercy scandal. I could go on. Bluntly put, when…

> Bluntly put, when an institution is given power over children, more than that of a family, and the auditing is lax, you're gonna get maltreatment, and from there unmarked graves. Families are not particularly safe. Systems that pulled children from their family for placement in a "correct" family created similar horror stories and the natural families of many are also horror stories. Air crashes are more notable th…

Biological family are the only people in the world who manifestly have real “skin in the game” with respect to ensuring the proper treatment of their children. For almost everyone else, especially in institutional settings, there are always other considerations that come before the welfare of individual children.
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