Some People Are "Special"

But don't take my word for it:

She may be Justin Trudeau’s Minister of Indigenous Affairs, but Carolyn Bennett resorted to stereotypes when insulting Indigenous MP and former cabinet minister Jody Wilson-Raybould.

Bennett implied that Wilson-Raybould was just looking to secure her pension when she called on Trudeau to stop angling for an election and fulfil his promises to Canada’s First Nations.

 

(Sidebar: aren't you doing the same thing, Carolyn?)

 

Beneath the ugly visage of the average Liberal is the rotten, racist core of the average Liberal. 

#PMBlackface

Always read the articles carefully:

Recent accounts of 215 indigenous children buried and forgotten in a cemetery on a residential school grounds in Kamloops are shocking.  According to these accounts the cemetery was described as a mass grave (the term usually describing war crimes and massacres) of children who were neglected, abused and abandoned in the residential schools and buried in the cemetery to hide their deaths.

 

(Sidebar: yes, about that ...)

 

However, the report of Dr. Scott Hamilton, Anthropology Department at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, who was retained by the National Centre Truth and Reconciliation to address this question, provides a different record. ...

According to Dr. Hamilton, communicable diseases were a primary cause of poor health and death for many Aboriginal people during the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Tuberculosis, for which there was no cure, was rampant during this period. It affected Aboriginals more than other Canadians. Some children had likely contracted the disease prior to attending the school, but others were infected within the crowded, and poorly constructed residential school, built by the Department of Indian Affairs, not by the various churches. ...

Prior to 1883, Protestant and Catholic missionaries established churches and schools, and in some cases, hospitals to care for Aboriginals of all ages.  These schools were intended to provide basic literacy to acculturate children to non-Aboriginal social and religious values, and to provide vocational training.

It was not until 1883 that the Canadian Government under the Indian Affairs Department took control of and established larger institutions, known as the “residential school system”, for Indigenous children which were to provide both academic and industrial training, with an eye to aid their employment, independence and success within the increasingly dominant Euro-Canadian society.  The 1920 amendment to the Indian Act gave to the Department of Indian Affairs the authority to send any school-age Indigenous children to a day or residential school.  It was not until the early 1970s that the number of residential schools in operation began to decline sharply, and finally ceased operations in 1996.

Indian Affairs did not have a formal, written policy on burial of children from residential schools until 1958, which was fully 75 years after the rapid expansion of the residential school system.  The practice of the Department was to not pay funeral expenses unless the cost of long-distance transportation was less than the cost of burying the student where he died. This is consistent with the practice that occurred throughout the whole history of the residential school system, namely, to keep burial costs low which discouraged sending bodies of deceased students back to their home communities.

The most cost-effective way of doing this was to undertake burial in a cemetery on school grounds.  Such cemeteries often contained not only the bodies of students, but also those of teachers, their relatives, and religious personnel in the schools who had died while working there.  Over time, the wooden crosses marking the graves deteriorated, as did the fencing surrounding these cemeteries.  Another problem was the maintenance of these residential school cemeteries. Indian Affairs did not accept responsibility for maintaining them.  This responsibility fell on the religious congregations which operated these schools with inadequate government funding.  Another problem was that these residential school cemeteries were also sometimes used for burials of members of nearby municipalities, but the municipalities did not accept responsibility to maintain the cemeteries.

 

I guess people owe Monsignor Keenan an apology. 

Also:

Last week, the remains of 215 children were uncovered in unmarked burial sites on the site of the Kamloops (BC) Indian Residential School. The school was established in 1890 and from 1892 run by a Roman Catholic order of religious, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. It was once the largest residential school in Canada, with its enrolment peaking at 500 in the 1950s. 

It was in operation until 1969, when it was taken over by the federal government to be used as a day school residence. It closed in 1978. The school building still stands today, and is located on the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation.

I find it quite rich that the same country that is happy with northern ghettos (commonly called reservations) because the populace at large doesn't want its aboriginal brethren in the backyards of those who spew the correct and shallow pieties is of the same ilk who doesn't want to address the ignorance of the Holocaust and the rise of anti-semitism. 

Are there not enough shoes for that?

It's easier to react without thinking and continue wallowing in ignorance than it is to rigorously study history and accept its findings. It calls for patience, curiosity, self-reflection, even a belief in a higher being.

That is something Canadians simply won't do!

 

It's not "indigenous land"; it's Canada, and had these been mosques, the government would spare no expense to appease its new favourite voters block:

Two more Catholic churches on Indigenous land in B.C.’s Interior burned to the ground early Saturday morning.

The latest were located on reserves in the Similkameen Valley, and come just days after two Catholic churches burned down on Indigenous land in the southern Okanagan.

 

Why not cancel Canada Day because we belong to China now?:

Fredericton, Bathurst, Saint John and Cap-Pelé are among the municipalities that have chosen to scrap the traditional festivities in favour of what many are calling a day of reflection.

Way to morally posture, New Brunswick!

What's your next act?