Some People Are "Special"

Were I to encounter these stoic Pacific Northwest crusaders, I would insist that they call me Q334ty MMMMMurpherey7 and make them enunciate every single digit:

The Snuneymuxw First Nation says the names of B.C. Ferries' newest ships continue decades of discrimination because they do not use the nation's language.

The two vessels are among several the corporation has rolled out over the past year to service shorter routes along B.C.'s coast.

Some of them are covered in artwork by Indigenous artists, others have Indigenous names chosen after consultation with Indigenous people. 

But the Snuneymuxw say the wrong people were consulted for the newest ferries, the Island Gwawis and the Island Kwigwis, which were announced as replacement vessels for the Nanaimo-Gabriola Island route, in Snuneymuxw territory.

Both are named using words from the Kwak̓wala language spoken by the Kwakwaka'wakw people, whose territory reaches from north Vancouver Island to parts of the Central Coast and smaller islands such as Quadra and Cormorant. Gwawis means "raven of the sea" and kwigis means "eagle of the sea."

But the Snuneymuxw are Coast Salish people who speak Hul'q'umi'num'. 

Snuneymuxw Chief Mike Wyse says it's insulting that the ferries are named in a language from another territory. 

"Where [they] take off in Nanaimo is one of our ancient village sites. We've got a specific claim on that territory and for them to overstep that acknowledgement is very disrespectful," he said.

 

Okay then.

 

Also - let them fight.

 

 

Weren't we supposed to have a report in June?:

The “discovery” meme arose from a scanning by ground-penetrating radar in a search for the remains of children already surmised to have been buried there. A preliminary report did not find bodies, but rather soil disruptions in a nearby apple orchard. No remains were exhumed, but First Nation Chief Rosanne Casimir stated that according to community “knowledge,” the soil abnormalities were 215 “missing children,” some as young as three.

The anthropologist who oversaw the scans cautiously theorized that there were likely 200 “probable burials” — not specifying age — based on the disturbances. But only excavation could provide further evidence of anything, and no excavation has yet been done. But the story was too good to fact-check, and went viral, often with the trope “mass graves” substituting for “unmarked graves,” a distinction with an enormous difference, since “mass” graves are associated with genocide.

Suddenly there was talk of “thousands” of “missing” Indigenous children whose parents had not been informed of their deaths. The Parliamentary flag was lowered to half-mast; China (of all nations) called for an investigation into Canada’s human rights violations at the UN Human Rights Tribunal; Pope Francis expressed pain over the “shocking discovery in Canada of the remains of 215 children” at Kamloops.

Nobody in political authority — certainly not our instantly and abjectly apologetic prime minister — has to date pointed out that no actual remains have been found. Thus, Rouillard writes, “[G]overnments and the media are simply granting credence to what is really a thesis: the thesis of the ‘disappearance’ of children from residential schools.” The consensus of “cultural genocide,” endorsed by the TRC (but contested by many accredited historians routinely cold-shouldered by uncritical mainstream media), has effectively been elevated to literal genocide, “a conclusion that the Commission explicitly rejects in its [TRC] report.”

The bulk of the article details myth-busting evidence that should act as a cautionary tale against uncritical acceptance of feelings-based narratives over objective academic inquiry. Rouillard concludes, “It is hard to believe that a preliminary search for an alleged cemetery or mass grave in an apple orchard … could have led to such a spiral of claims endorsed by the Canadian government and repeated by mass media all over the world … Imaginary stories and emotion have outweighed the pursuit of truth.”

 

I'll just leave this here: 

In its 2015 report, the TRC identified 3,200 deaths of children at residential schools. Surprisingly, it was unable to record the names of one-third of the children (32%) or for half (49%), the cause of death.[15] Why are there so many “nameless” residential school students? According to Vol. 4 of the Report, there are “significant limitations in both the quality and quantity of the data the Commission has been able to compile on residential school deaths.”[16]

In fact each trimester, school principals reported the names of students attending school to be funded by the government and specified the names of any students who had died. But “in many cases,” the Report says, school principals simply reported on the number of children who had died in the previous year, without identification. Or, they might give a total of the number of students who had died since a specific school opened, but with no indication of the name, year, or cause of death.[17]

The Commission included all these unnamed students in the total of student deaths. That means that student deaths could have been counted twice: both in the trimester report by the principals and in the general compilation with no names. The Commission admitted that this possibility exists that some of the deaths recorded in the Named Register might also be included in the Unnamed Register.[18]

This obviously biased method inflates greatly the number of missing students and the actual state of knowledge surrounding their deaths. And this flawed information is what lies at the root of the assumption that any unnamed students disappeared without their parents’ being informed and that the schools crudely buried them in mass graves.

It is likely that this methodological gap relates to the years prior to 1950 because the death rate recorded by the Commission in residential schools from 1921 to 1950 (named and unnamed deaths) is twice as high as that of Canadian youth in the general population aged five to fourteen for the same years. This mortality rate averaged about four deaths per year for every 1,000 youth attending the schools. Their deaths were mostly due to tuberculosis and influenza when the Commission could identify the cause.

On the other hand, the mortality rate in residential schools was actually comparable to the Canadian average from 1950 to 1965, again for youth aged five to fourteen.[19] That drop from the previous period is most likely the result of the inoculation by vaccines that took place in the residential schools as in other Canadian schools.