Tuesday, August 03, 2021

Hey, Did Anyone Find Out Who Burned Those Churches Yet?

A map of burned and/or vandalised churches in Canada.


Well, this might seem a tad controversial:

Father Rhéal Forest took to the pulpit on July 10 at St. Emile Roman Catholic Church in Winnipeg and, according to videos watched by the Daily Mail, told his congregation, “If they wanted extra money, from the money that was given to them, they had to lie sometimes — lie that they were abused sexually and, oop, another $50,000… So it’s kind of hard if you’re poor not to lie but all the ones I met said they liked the residential schools.”

 

I'll just leave these right here:

Regardless of what some besotted prime minister may have said 150 years ago about “taking the Indian out of the child,” the primary function of formal education, especially in complex multi-ethnic societies like Canada, has always been to teach mainstream norms and practices. State education has been compulsory for decades and the children of non-British residents, native and non-native alike, have always undergone considerable cultural loss, “taking the Swede/Ukrainian/Jew out of the child,”­ by attending government-mandated schools while still managing to retain many old country beliefs, customs, and languages.

The Commission was well aware that the provision of native education was a right requested by aboriginals and entrenched in the treaties they signed giving up their sovereignty. There is also historical documentation that generations of aboriginal parents were keen to send their children to church-run schools so that they could obtain a Western education. Without residential schools, the nomadic hunting-and-gathering lifestyle, remote location, and tiny size of many aboriginal collectivities would have resulted in no formal education, a fact that was clearly understood at the time.

Conversely, there is evidence that the 70 per cent of aboriginal people and their descendants who never attended residential schools exhibit the same or worse socio-economic outcomes and pathologies as the “survivors” and their descendants.

If the goal were genocide — as the report and statements from Judge Sinclair suggest — the results do not show it: aboriginal peoples in Canada now number over 1.5 million, or 4.5 per cent of the national population, spread over 600 recognized First Nations bands with unique cultures, languages, art and religion.

** 

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Kristian Eggum's name was on the lips of people who hadn't gone to residential school but wanted to get a cut of Indian Residential School Settlement money, according to the prosecutor in his fraud case.

The Prince Albert, Sask., lawyer submitted more than 800 claims for survivors. While many of them were legitimate, at least three dozen were from people he knew, or should have known, hadn't actually attended residential school, Crown attorney Darren Howarth said in an interview with CBC News.

Those successful fraudulent claims netted people $233,000 — of which Eggum received $35,000, the prosecutor says.

**

An assistant warden at a federal correctional institution wants the federal public service to change how it handles claims of Indigenous identity during hiring and promotions. 

Peter Lang filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Canada in March 2019 alleging that policy gaps are resulting in discrimination against Indigenous Peoples with respect to hiring and promotion in the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC). 

CBC learned about his complaint after reporting on a situation at the Senate where a Métis woman raised allegations that a coworker was falsely claiming an Indigenous identity at work. 

 

(Sidebar: wait - why are people getting a job because of their race?)

 

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