scilly

Precisely!!

But the probability of there being bodies buried without ceremony or documentation on all the residential school sites has been in the public domain for at least 20 years, and much longer to the First Nations of course.

Yet nothing has really been done until recently, and I think the Kamloops find has only become so important because there are so many bodies.

For example ............ I'd never heard about the Regina discovery until caretaker posted above, yet that used the same ground penetrating radar used at Kamloops.

The Kamloops Band is only one of many bands that have been asking for help in exploring the grounds of residential schools for years. Yet now all the p0oliticians are coming out of the woodwork, non-First Nations people are calling it disgusting.

The real truth is that no-one has really paid any attention to what the First Nations have been saying, nor to what they have been asking for.

I can think of at least 5 residential school sites around BC that are believed to contain unmarked undocumented graves, and the bands that had ancestors sent to those schools all have stories of children lost.

I'm not an expert in any way, but I've been interested in First Nations, their histories and stories, and their use of medicinal and food plants since we came here almost 53 years ago.

Shard

Britain's not so sparkling history of colonialism and oppression.

Danny B

Kind of sad when you think about it.
100 years ago Brits were snatching Indian kids from their families in Canada, uprooting Australian aboriginals, causing all kinds of chaos in African countries and here we are in 2020/2021 complaining about COVID lockdowns and having to wear a bloody mask.

I tell you, kids these days don't even know they are born.

Shard

Yup.

Some awful stories on aboriginal land clearances in Australia too. It was a different time, but still, it's hard to imagine the inhumanity.

mikelincs

Don't forget the British children sent to Australia as well

scilly

The US also had a similar Residential School system for their First Nations.

In about 2002, a friend took us to a former Residential School in Arizona which had been turned into a museum. Nothing said about any bad effects, just glowing comments from the whites, and photos of "happy children in school".

People in Canada had already been hearing about the Residential schools up here, and the horrors of them. Some such museums had already been closed.

No-one seems to have asked the Navaho, Hopi, Cree or other bands what they thought of it .............. having already been driven off their ancestral lands a century or more earlier.

scilly

British children were also sent to Canada under a similar scheme, and just like those sent to Australia, some had a good "billet" some had a terrible one.

CanadaJimmy

I think as always with these things the intentions were good but very ignorant, there was a lot of poverty on the reservations and I expect people didn't want to see children suffering. The church took on this "do gooder" role of taking the kids in but people didn't realize how terrible the conditions were and that sick twisted people would take advantage of this arrangement - I would say this was a common problem prior to the 90s, people were completely ignorant to pedophiles in general at that time. There was also little respect at all for First Nations customs or traditions at this time from the colonial population, never mind from the institutions themselves. There is an idea that western society has the highest quality of life because of our capitalist consumer culture and because first nations people often follow a different culture it is looked down upon. Even to this day there's this sort of institutionalized racism that exists to this day of "protecting the kids". You still hear stories from APTN and other sources where social workers take First Nations children away for the weakest reasons. A lot of work to be done to turn things around.

This case happened in Kamloops two years ago: https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-new...rt-of-neglect/

Danny B

Not to downplay the harm that some of these poor kids endured, but they weren't snatched from their white British parents. These children were living in over crowded orphanages at the time. Little did anyone know that there would be perverted Catholic priests waiting for the boys arrival in Australia and Canada.

The more I read about the shit that went on in the 50's, the more I am sickened. Imagine a world without religion. Perhaps one day people will wake up and realize that there isn't a man in the sky and people will live their lives being kind to each other, instead of reading a 3,000 year old book.

dbd33

I think the telling statistic about that is that, at least in the county here, a huge proportion of the Barnado boys volunteered for the trenches and those who survived chose not to come back to Canada.

Jerseygirl

Years ago we took a tour around an orphanage in Sydney. One young girl was sent there from the UK because she cut another girl’s hair.

Piff Poff

and Canada.

Piff Poff

Some white British kids WERE taken from their parents. Some were supposedly temporary others the parents were convinced the kids would have a better life. They were taken from slum areas and unbeknownst to the parents, put on a ship.

It makes me feel sick that this has happened. The more I learn the more ashamed of my heritage I am.

scrubbedexpat091

I guess technically speaking the US still has some of the schools in operation, depending on how you want to define it.

What is now Haskell Indian Nations University, started out as a residential boarding school in 1884, and todays faculty and staff being predominantly Native American.

Siouxie

They were snatched from parents and families and culture............... Not in orphanages, in the main... forcibly relocated.. no choice offered to most of them.

Totally different from the orphans relocated from within the UK.