'Unthinkable' discovery in Canada as remains of 215 children found buried near residential school

[Omaha Steve]

Source: CNN

By Paula Newton,

(CNN)The gruesome discovery took decades and for some survivors of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada, the confirmation that children as young as 3 were buried on school grounds crystallizes the sorrow they have carried all their lives.

"I lost my heart, it was so much hurt and pain to finally hear, for the outside world, to finally hear what we assumed was happening there," said Harvey McLeod, who attended the school for two years in the late 1960s, in a telephone interview with CNN Friday.

"The story is so unreal, that yesterday it became real for a lot of us in this community," he said.

The Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc community in the southern interior of British Columbia, where the school was located, released a statement late Thursday saying an "unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented" was confirmed.



The former Kamloops Indian Residential School on Thursday, May 27, in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. The remains of 215 children have been found buried on school's grounds, which closed in 1978.


Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/28/world/children-remains-discovered-canada-kamloops-school/index.html

[Mysterian]

1. A school operated by the Catholic Church

It seems to me the Catholic Church is a criminal organization that should be prosecuted and shut down.

[Demovictory9]

2. This does remind me of that Irish home for unwed womens story

[COL Mustard]

13. The Magdelene Laundries

Where "fallen" women learned anything but Christian charity.

[Demovictory9]

45. Yep

[Botany]

3. Just taking the kids from their lands and families and teaching them to be white is and was torture.

In 2015 Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a report detailing the damaging legacy of the country's residential school system. Thousands of mostly indigenous children were separated from their families and forced to attend residential schools.

The report detailed decades of physical, sexual and emotional abuse suffered by children in government and church run institutions.

[AllyCat]

7. Why are they always part of these horrible incidents?

[Mr. Steve]

8. Definitely yes.

Yes, yes and yes again

[Pacifist Patriot]

11. The story immediately reminded me of the Mount Cashel Orphanage in N & L.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/mount-cashel-supreme-court-thursday-1.5871478

[Warpy]

28. They weren't the only ones

I think you'll find the same story at most of them, kids crowded together, far from home, language barrier, and epidemics of diseases to which Indian children had no resistance. Oh, the schools had a loftier purpose, to educate them for a better life than sitting in tents or other "primitive" housing in the mud, plus the darker purpose of educating the Indian out of them, but until vaccinations came out, the overcrowding did the job that the wars hadn't.

The hard part of this one is that likely families weren't notified. If they had been, they'd have wanted to bury their own children, but people of such lofty purposes never consider the human feelings of their human projects.
'
And the three year old. Who snatches three year olds to put them into boarding school? Must've been a bounty offered to heartless bastards.

[shrike3]

30. Different churches and government organizations were involved.

It's my understanding it was also the official position of the Canadian government.

"Boarding schools" also existed in the United States.

https://www.grunge.com/328173/the-messed-up-history-of-native-american-boarding-schools/

Richard Henry Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian School in 1879 in an abandoned military barracks in Carlisle, Penn. According to the University of Washington, Pratt's reigning philosophy at the school was "kill the Indian, save the man."

Although Pratt wanted to recruit children from Indigenous groups that he had experience with, such as the Cheyennes, Comanches, and Arapahoes, the U.S. government insisted that Pratt should convince the Sioux instead.

While some families allowed their children to go to Carlisle, when Siŋté Glešká (Spotted Tail), a Brulé Lakota chief, went to visit during their first year, he immediately brought his own children back home because he "did not approve of the erased Native American culture or the fact that Pratt was, in his view, turning the students into soldiers with all the drilling."

Like the POW camp, the Carlisle school was run like a military camp. Strict schedules and uniforms were enforced, genders were separated, and corporal punishment was practiced. And following Pratt's model, several other off-reservation boarding schools were soon established across the country.

[pnwmom]

38. Yes, for most of its years. But the Fed govt took it over in the late 60's till it shut down

in 1978. It appears, based on the interview with Mr. McCloud, who entered the school then, that the abuse continued while a Federal institution.

[BlueWavePsych]

43. Just another crime committed by the Catholic church.

[weissmam]

46. The catholic church is NOT

a force for good , never was never will be

[ratchiweenie]

4. Heartbreaking.

[knightmaar]

5. It's not just the stupid church, our whole country started this way.

Sir John A McDonald was our first Prime Minister.

https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/10-quotes-john-a.-macdonald-made-about-first-nations

“When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly impressed upon myself, as head of the Department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men." 1879

[Ferrets are Cool]

6. Reading that made me sick to my stomach.

[llmart]

25. Me too.

What a horrible person to have that sort of thought process.

[shrike3]

29. Yes, it was official Canadian policy

Very sad.

[pnwmom]

39. Wasn't there a similar philosophy and practice in Australia, with aboriginal children? nt

[uriel1972]

47. Oh yes indeed it was.

In its own peculiar wau is still operating. Look up "Stolen Generations."

[Faux pas]

9. ...

[Evolve Dammit]

10. Canada has its own reparations to make. Sick as our history, or England, or France, or.....

fill in the blank. Always the same. Power to control, extort, "re-educate" and steal any asset "they" have.

[narnian60]

12. Yes.

Well said.

[Fiendish Thingy]

22. Canada has created a truth and reconciliation commission to expose what happened

And provide reparations to the survivors.

The history of residential schools is taught in public schools.

The recent reboot of Anne of Green Gables, “Anne with an E” had a storyline about residential schools.

[shrike3]

32. Good on them for doing it.

[Evolve Dammit]

41. That is what is needed. It is the only way to acknowledge the truth and make amends.

[PatSeg]

14. So tragic and chilling

And this is very recent history. Many of these children would have been alive today if they hadn't been torn from their families and abused. Absolutely heartbreaking.

[Mira]

15. Colson Whitehead - the novelist of the Underground Railroad

wrote the book: "The Nickel Boys". It immediately comes to mind and so does the terror that story invoked. I look at that building and my hair stands on edge.

[mjvpi]

24. Spot on about the building. It screams museum.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

51. I think it has for a while been incorporated into a tribe's land and is a park w limited access

You have to go through reserve lands and for some time I think only indigenous people and few others have access.

They expected to find about 50 bodies, so it has been known for some time that the RC church inflicted some horrors on children there.

[JohnnyRingo]

16. I wonder how they explained the disappearance to parents.

It wasn't just a few, obviously. How could they continue to send children to what amounted to a death camp? Didn't they compare notes?

[OnlinePoker]

17. They came from reservations across western Canada

That was the worst part of the residential school system. They didn't even keep the kids in the same region they came from, mostly to destroy their roots and lessen the chance they would try to run home. Their parents often didn't even know where they had been sent to. What's weird, my white mother actually went to school at the Kamloops residential school for a year in 1940/41 because it was the nearest boarding school to her family's farm which was out in the middle of nowhere. That's all I know about it because she never really spoke about it.

[greenjar_01]

21. The children were essentially kidnapped

They didn't sign up for it like some day camp. It was compulsory and violent.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

36. The parents definitely were not "sending" their kids to this institution. The state kidnapped the

kids.

[Lonestarblue]

18. This story reminds me of an old, great film called Rabbit Proof Fence.

It’s about the Australians ripping aboriginal children from their families and putting them in schools to force them to learn English and forget their aboriginal languages and culture. It’s well worth watching as the small heroine escapes from the school and finds her way back to her family.

The sense of white superiority ingrained in our ancestors and in many today has caused untold damage to indigenous peoples. Our treatment of Native Americans during the expansion of the country was nothing less than genocide. Even today, we still trample on their rights to build pipelines through their lands or take them to build a border wall.

[pandr32]

34. I'm glad you brought that movie up

Similar story.

[Andy Canuck]

19. It's genocide

It’s always been genocide and continues to be genocide. It’s been genocide since Europeans landed on the “Americas” and became codified into law when countries were created and continues today. There were 100 million indigenous people in the “Americas” before European arrival and there are 3 million indigenous people now. And the genocide continues. Until we accept what we have to stop we won’t be able to stop the genocide.

[mjvpi]

27. There is so much more history for the Texas legislature to edit.

I live in Montana. While the horror in this story is so compact, seeing the ongoing life problems that exist with the reservation system continue to play out, the paradigm that made that orphanage is still in place. It’s just working at a slower, grinding pace.

I/we can’t change the past, but it’s high time that we start to live up to the ideals that our country espouses.

[Aldemelod]

20. Human trafficking, slavery, and child murder to please someone's money-grubbing jealous deity

It's a horrific story constantly updated. Ireland: The forgotten Angels of Tuam is another example. Almost 800 children were secretly buried in rags and forgotten in a sordid corner of the convent's estate. Unwanted because of neglected health issues, unattractiveness because of physical blemishes, or the stigma of illegitimate birth. Unwed and vulnerable mothers were forced by social ostracism to work unpaid for the enrichment of the clergy as the mothers waited to give birth. The convent turned a nice profit brokering the adoption of surviving "acceptable" children, like puppies in a puppy mill. Each mother's and child's plight and misery was the clergy's found gold or refuse This is human trafficking and slavery of women under the pious gaze and control of profiteers dressed in robes of piety. It's possible the traffickers now have an idealogical ally on the highest US court in Amy Coney Barrett to join with the religious antiabortion extremists and activists Alito and Thomas.

[llmart]

26. Terrific post.

Sums it up nicely. Barrett was placed on that court for one reason, and one reason only and that was to revoke Roe v. Wade and make sure that women "know their place" in our country.

[Bayard]

23. Assimilate or die

That's always been the message in every country. It usually wasn't even that nice in the U.S. The government just killed the real Native Americans. Murder and theft was the name of the game.

And its still happening. There is an epidemic of Native women being stolen and killed.

"Native American women are murdered and sexually assaulted at rates as high as 10 times the average in certain counties in the United States—crimes overwhelmingly committed by individuals outside the Native American community."

https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/addressing-epidemic-missing-murdered-indigenous-women-and-girls

https://apnews.com/article/missing-in-indian-country-north-america-mountains-mo-state-wire-sd-state-wire-cb6efc4ec93e4e92900ec99ccbcb7e05

[Jay25]

31. You are correct, and because of jurisdiction bullshit, the bastards usually get away with it.

[Duppers]

44. The Nat'l media needs to cover this far more than they do!

These horribly tragic murders are not just random murders; they are genocide.

We wonder where are the MSM broadcasts? Just because they don't have murder-on-video to play doesn't preclude any coverage.
(As in Geo. Floyd's case - THAT video was what got the nation's attention. And thank goodness it was filmed.)

There has been no coverage of Native Americans killings on programs like Vice, Frontline, 60 Minutes, etc.? Not that I'm aware of.


Bayard, I know you agree. If we keep talking, perhaps MSM will give this the needed attention and perhaps national authorities will act because we cannot count on the local racist ones.

[Hekate]

33. KnR

[WhiskeyGrinder]

35. Settler colonialism is genocide.

[AZLD4Candidate]

40. Sadly, that's what most settlers have done to native populations when the came in uninvited

Asian, Africa, Polynesia, North and South America. . .and it's just white people, so those lurking CRT critics can relax.

Indonesians did it to the East Timorans
Ethiopians did it to the Eritreans
The Taiwanese did it to the native Formosans
The Mongolians did it to the Chinese under the Yuan Dynasty (though they weren't settling, they conquered)
The Japanese did it to the Chinese between 1932-1945 (though they weren't settling, they invaded)
The Japanese did it to the Koreans between 1898-1945 (though they weren't settling, they took it by war)
The Russians did it to the Ukrainians during Holomodor

[llashram]

37. breaks my heart

the cruelty of adults...

[Backseat Driver]

42. I'm just sickened to learn such history!

K&R for discoverable truths...

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

48. Are any autopsies being done? Did these kids die from some sudden epidemic?

I hope the circumstances of these deaths are being investigated.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

49. It happened over many decades, but probably more in the early years

1919 flu pandemic may have increased the count somewhat, but unfortunately there were deaths spread over many years.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

50. Today: FLAGS will be half-mast for 215 hours, that's about 9 days

One for each body found.

Federal, Provincial, and Municipal flags across the country.

I do not recall any occasion in North America (or around the world) where I've heard of anything as long as 9 days of half-staff flag honours.