See You In the Next Two Years

Yet another apology (delivered in Spanish -HA!) is just not good enough.

I will paste a passage here:

Although Christian charity was not absent, and there were many outstanding instances of devotion and care for children, the overall effects of the policies linked to the residential schools were catastrophic. What our Christian faith tells us is that this was a disastrous error, incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is painful to think of how the firm soil of values, language and culture that made up the authentic identity of your peoples was eroded, and that you have continued to pay the price of this. In the face of this deplorable evil, the Church kneels before God and implores his forgiveness for the sins of her children (Pope John Paul II, Incarnationis Mysterium). I myself wish to reaffirm this, with shame and unambiguously. I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the indigenous peoples.

 

Let's clarify a few things:

To ignore the 2009 apology is a shame, for on that occasion Fontaine delivered a magnificent, moving and magnanimous address to the pope that stands as a model for thinking about the relationship of the Catholic Church to aboriginal Canadians.

“The Catholic Church has always played a significant role in the history of our peoples. Priests and nuns were some of the first Europeans to arrive on our shores,” Fontaine began. “They acted as intermediaries in treaty negotiations and interpretation and often expressed their serious reservations about the federal government’s intentions in the implementation of the treaties. Many embraced our languages with enthusiasm, wrote them down and created dictionaries, bibles and books of prayers that we still use to this day. The Catholics recognized the deep spirituality of our peoples and introduced a faith to which many indigenous people devoutly adhere.”

“What brings us here today, however, was the failure those many years ago, by Canada and religious authorities, to recognize and respect those who did not wish to change — those who wished to be different,” he told Pope Benedict. “Those at the highest levels of authority in Canada came to believe that our indigenous cultures, languages and our ways of worship were not worth keeping and should be eradicated.… The Catholic Church entities thus became part of a tragic plan of assimilation that was not only doomed to fail but destined to leave a disastrous legacy in its wake.”

“We suffered needlessly and tragically. So much was lost for no good reason,” Fontaine continued. “The Catholic Church, too, was harmed by the residential school experience. Many good and decent men and women of faith were tainted and reviled because of the evil acts of some. The hundreds of years of good will and hard work by courageous and committed missionaries were undermined by the misguided policy Catholic priests and nuns found themselves enforcing. The reputation of the Catholic Church was impoverished. This, too, was tragic. But today is a new day. We are here at the Vatican in your presence Most Holy Father, to change this sad history.”

**

Does the PM not remember the White Paper that his father wrote upon the Residential Schools in the early 70s? Or the fact that Pierre Elliott Trudeau was Prime Minister during the time of the Residential schools? Or is that forgotten because he wants to portray his father as a great Quebec separatist as he is himself?

Let’s not forget that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporations’ top infomercial spokesman; he is either selling Canadians a lie or prosecuting us.

As Canadians, are we going to see Trudeau’s crocodile tears streaming down his cheeks and listen to his empty words, and once again apologize for Canada’s dark past for some kind of political leverage.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada must apologize for his late father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau and the Human Rights violations and abuses that First Nations children suffered under his political leadership, and for this, I believe that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should make some sort of recompense towards First Nations from the Trudeau family fortune.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10159177124207604&id=630117603&sfnsn=mo

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=559080911746948&id=100029351323032&sfnsn=mo

https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_white_paper_1969/

 

(Sidebar: do read the white paper. Assimilation and elimination of the Indian Act or perpetuating a grievance industry funded by the taxpayers? Fight amongst yourselves.)

 

When does Justin apologise?

**

To be clear: nothing was “uncovered.” No “bodies” were found. There was no excavation, nothing was unearthed, nothing was removed, no identities were confirmed.

So anything you may have read saying these graves belong to children, including some specific claims about the ages of these children, is speculation at this point. 

Let me refer back to a National Post story that explains what ground penetrating radar actually does. They interviewed a professor of Anthropology who is also the director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology. She said this of ground penetrating radar:

“It doesn’t actually see the bodies. It’s not like an X-ray.” 

“What it actually does is it looks for the shaft. When a grave is dug, there is a grave shaft dug and the body is placed in the grave, sometimes in a coffin, as in the Christian burial context. What the ground-penetrating radar can see is where that pit itself was dug, because the soil actually changes when you dig a grave. And occasionally, if it is a coffin, the radar can pick up the coffin sometimes as well.”

**

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.

Also - leave Iqaluit and set up somewhere else. If people need you, they can always travel a day for it:

Following the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential school sites and ahead of Pope Francis’ visit to Nunavut’s capital on Friday, the City of Iqaluit has passed a bylaw that could require churches to begin paying property taxes.