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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

#131

Post by wyager »

elliekelly wrote: post #67
at_a_remove wrote: post #21

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.

Public schools are statistically more of a danger to children than church institutions. The Catholic church collects flak because A) it’s a politically convenient target B) they’re one of the largest institutions in the world that run children’s programs.

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

#132

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

andai wrote: post #129
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To what?

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...

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

#133

Post by papandada »

As a Canadian who was very surprised to find shame underneath all kinds of personal issues after some decades, I want to say I also personally feel and observe shame on all sides of almost anything involving native peoples here.

A comment probably can't begin to convey what any of that means if you haven't experienced it yourself in some way. Practically speaking let me badly paraphrase a 12-step sponsor who said, it might take a year to "work the steps" for an average person, or 5 years if you're saddled with shame issues.

What that means on the scale of a country is pretty much what we observe, decades or centuries of denial, avoidance, actions that make the problems worse.

One of the main characteristics of shame is that shame induces shame, and shame is so unbearable people will do almost anything to not feel shame. I don't know what the answer is or where it even begins but I think any approach that ignores the role of shame will keep awful things happening.

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

#134

Post by brailsafe »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #93
elliekelly wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. What's the alternative? The government is no better here.

The only options are the fucking Catholics or the government!?

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

#135

Post by brailsafe »

thedmstdmstdmst wrote: post #116
kyralis wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you'll find relatively few people who will use "genocide" to refer to the eradication of a culture without concurrent mass killing of the members of that culture.

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.

I don't think it's irrelevant. If the current population is on board with adopting a more equitable relationship with the other cultures bthat were here first, then that stands a better chance at succeeding.

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

#136

Post by brailsafe »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #98
dragonwriter wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It highlights two very different meanings of "genocide". It's the distinction between "killing people" and "killing a people". “Killing a people” is genocide. “Killing people” is murder, mass murder if it is lots of people. The latter is sometimes part of the mechanism by which the former is achieved, but there aren’t “two different meanings of ‘genocide’” involved.

> “Killing a people” is genocide. But people do change their identities all the time. And sometimes the destruction of one identity leads to the creation of a new one. This has been a key part of all nation-building exercises. It is a purpose of education and mass-media. Is the unification of tribes, the destruction of difference, necessarily "genocide"? Also, if you can speak of the "death of a people", surely you c…

The attempted unification of tribes by removing their identity is different than unification. Unification is only so if whatever happens is a joint proposal of some sort

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

#137

Post by [deleted] »

lucian1900 wrote: post #123
bhouston wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by bhouston »

lucian1900 wrote: post #123
bhouston wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I agree that John Cena wants to appeal to his fan base in China precisely because China is a growing market for goods and services -- as I said earlier.

I didn't mean to link to that more critical article, I just picked the first one that showed up in Google search for John Cena apology.

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

#139

Post by dragonwriter »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #111
dragonwriter wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It highlights two very different meanings of "genocide". It's the distinction between "killing people" and "killing a people". “Killing a people” is genocide. “Killing people” is murder, mass murder if it is lots of people. The latter is sometimes part of the mechanism by which the former is achieved, but there aren’t “two different meanings of ‘genocide’” involved.

So if I take a million people into the gas chambers, and they are diverse in every dimension, then I have merely committed a mass-murder, but not a genocide? But if, in the minds of those people, just before I hit the switch, a collective identity forms -- "The People of the Gas Chamber" -- then my act is instead genocide, due to their internal mental state? (Interestingly, little would be so likely to cause such a s…

> So if I take a million people into the gas chambers, and they are diverse in every dimension, then I have merely committed a mass-murder, but not a genocide?

Yes.

> But if, in the minds of those people, just before I hit the switch, a collective identity forms -- "The People of the Gas Chamber" -- then my act is instead genocide, due to their internal mental state?

No, acts directed at the extermination of a people, not that incidentally cause it, are genocide. You’d still be committing mass-murder-but-not-genocide, not that the distinction is likely to be more than technically significant, unless you are a acting in a context so as to not render mass murder an international crime but only one subject to local jurisdiction. (Genocide is universally subject to universal jurisdiction, while mass murder requires special additional circumstances to rise to an international crime — either a war crime or crime against humanity.)

And when mass killing does rise to genocide, its not “instead of” being mass murder, but “in addition to”. Same with deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape, enslavement and other “act based” crimes against humanity when done as part of a mechanism aimed at destroying a people. The offenses are cumulative, not alternative.

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

#140

Post by BeFlatXIII »

elliekelly wrote: post #67
at_a_remove wrote: post #21

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.

It’s a function of the size of the church. Not only does it mean that there are more Catholic-affiliated institutions (and more opportunities to draw a similarity between troubled institutions), it also means that it is the only organization who can pull off a systematic cover-up. The actual abuse rates are similar whether the institution in question is Catholic, Anglican, or secular.
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