jeremy brewer

Hi
totem pole fired with graffiti
one totem = one statue

article states beleived retaliation for captain cook statue


https://www.albernivalleynews.com/ne...malahat-totem/


looking like a situation could be brewing ?
jerry

JamesM

I saw it in on the golf course. The weather was a lovely surprise.

I did donate a solid sum to a fund for indigenous though. I thought it more useful than the trending people like to do on social media to feel good about themselves when it has no benefit to any cause what so ever.

Canada Day is a good holiday because typically people get an extra day either side of it off work. That aside the the birth of Canada I have no doubt was not good for everybody but I think the problems in North America go deeper to the arrival of the white man- much like Africa and insert any other place as you choose.

Shard

Justin seemed to strike the right tone. It's some dark history that needs to be worked through. Might be time to move on from the British/colonial past, as it happens. Maybe these recent discoveries of suffering can be used to push the country in a more cohesive direction.

scrubbedexpat091

He is all talk really and not much else. If he really wanted change he has the power to begin the process rather than fight it.

Look at how much effort and money the government has spent fighting First Nations in court during his time in office.

scrubbedexpat099

Trudeau identified as indigenous before it was a thing.

It is interesting how the media has turned on Canada, was the example to all others.

scrubbedexpat091

I wouldn't say turned, it's just generally speaking Canada is a pretty boring place and even heinous crimes by Canadian standards often don't come close to what happens in the US, and being next door to the US, Canada has more or less been in the shadow with nobody paying attention, until something worth paying attention to hit the news wires, add in the heat wave, and some of the BS going on with internet regulation, and well Canada is making more international news but not for the right reasons.

caretaker

This article is from 2017 but covers payments up to that time.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politi...it-settlements
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia....ment-agreement
Contesting the CHRT recommendation to pay $40,000 to each survivor isn't something the government is likely to cave in on, since the "one size fits all" formula isn't going to effectively compensate those who spent more time in the system. I have a friend who got $90,000 for spending her whole youth through grade 12 in residential school; should she get the same as someone who spent 2 or 3 years there? It's a good talking point for the NDP since they're in no danger of forming a government and having to do anything about it, and the tories can take cheap shots but they'll never mention that it was Harper and their party that stonewalled the Martin government's compensation plan. The Conservative voter base isn't one that lends itself to paying natives for past wrongs.

scilly

Can I answer a question from a few pages back ..........

why unmarked graves.

If FN were buried in a grave by their families, it was most often marked only by a wooden stake or cross. The traditional burial for bodies especially for the coastal FN was wrapped and placed in a tree, or in a funerary totem pole, sometimes buried or left in the woods.

Most settlers' graves in the late 19th century, and sometimes later were marked only by a wood cross, if marked at all

Carving a monumental grave stone requires a supply of suitable stone, and someone with stone carving ability. Not many of those around, even now. Carving a name in wood can be done by almost anyone.

Wooden stakes rot easily especially around the soil level ......... think of wood that you have used to identify plants in your garden, or as I did once, a house plant. They only last a few years.

So to expect a wood marker on a grave too still be in place 100 or 150 years later is not very likely.

We have been to several once-flourishing gold towns, which now exist really only as foundations that can still be seen in the grass or overgrown by shrubs. Most of these are unmarked, and now with no records.

This was the last one that we visited about 15 or so years ago .....

https://landwithoutlimits.com/places...esnelle-forks/

I can tell you there were not many markers in the grave yard, and the trees were tall and encroaching everywhere. It was also drizzly and very eerie.

The find of around 180 unmarked graves reported from an FN in eastern BC last week is a more difficult one.

The information was actually released before the Chiefs were ready to do it, as they wanted to do some more work.

A new fence was being built around what was thought to be the grave yard when an unmarked grave was found. They called in the experts with ground radar, and subsequently somewhere around 180 more graves were found.

The original graveyard was opened in 1885 for the use of the settlers who were beginning to arrive and live in the area, and by the local FN if they so desired. A hospital was also built nearby at some point.

The residential school was built next to this graveyard in 1912, so some 27 years after bodies had begun to be buried there.

From what I've heard, none of the early graves were marked with more than a wooden stake.

Wood quickly rots, doesn't even have to be taken away.

Now the problem is going to be to identify original settlers, original FN, original hospital patients, residential school children or nuns and priests.

As children form other FN had also been at that school, the Chiefs had wanted to notify those people before releasing any information, but someone went on social media.

Shard

Isn't that truth and reconcilliation committe a process that's started?

Shard

Thanks for answering.

scilly

The question about why didn't anyone do anything in the past.

My story ............... I began at the local grammar school in the early 1950s. Within a couple of days, some girls in a higher class took us newbies to one side, and said "If you have Mr X for history or geography, watch out".

We soon found out why.

The desks were single desk and attached seat. He would give us work to be done, then walk around looking over your should. Eventually he would stop by a girl's desk, say something like "You're going a bit wrong there. Let me sit beside you and show you."

Very close contact in a single seat desk, especially if it was in the row against the wall.

Then. one of his hands would land on your leg and gradually squeeze and creep upwards. Most of us at that point were a little bit protected because we were still obeying the school dress code of navy blue bloomers with elasticated legs.

Every girl got that at some point in the first term. After that, he would choose more selectively, or ask a girl to stay after class to go over her homework, tell her to stand next to at the teacher's desk, then one hand would start creeping.

Flash forward 5 years, I'm in the 5th form, studying for our Ordinary Level exams, allowed to stay in our home room at lunchtime to study. About half the class, on average, would do that every lunch time.

Our home room was the geography room, which had a store room , and the door to that store room was at the front, beside the blackboard.

Almost every lunchtime Mr X would appear, and go into the store room, either with him or appearing soon after ,was a girl from the 3rd year, so 13/14 years old. They stayed in that room for the rest of the lunch hour. They were also spotted occasionally sitting in the front seats of his car, having driven away from the school to a quiet area.

One day, the boys' Head Prefect came in, asked if we had seen Mr X because he had a message for him. Someone said "yes, he's in the store room but ..........."

Too late ..... Frank had already opened the door and entered. He came out hurriedly, with a red face and didn't say a word as he left.

Now, we in that class that day all knew, boys and girls. All the girls in the school knew. But no-one else did, even most of the boys didn't know. I found that out when we went back in 2011, I mad made contact online with a boy (man!) who had been in my year but not in that class, was now teaching back at the school, and was doing a lot of local history. We talked and talked over coffee and lunch, and I eventually mentioned Mr X.

He seem horrified, he'd never known about it, and couldn't believe that Mr X would do that.

Why?

Why didn't we tell?

Quite simply put, no-one would have believed us, whether we had told other teachers, the Senior Mistress, or our parents.

We were generally on good terms with the teachers, most of us were in loving family homes, but no-one would have believed us.

Because even then, and for years later, most people put teachers, priests, doctors almost on a pedestal.

They're educated. They're in positions of trust over you. They would never do that. You naughty girl/child for telling lies.

Now if I felt like that as a bright white child with loving parents to listen to me, what do you think a frightened FN child miles away from home, already scared of these nuns and priests in scary black habits ........... even for CofE nuns ............... would do?


So, rumours abounded, reaching even white people, but no-one could get the proof.

FN rely on oral telling of stories and histories, so very little is written down.

Besides, they were talking only about what they knew, which was ill treatment, sexual and physical abuse, and children who did not return to their families.

Why did children not return home? The suggestion always made, was they've got a job, they've moved to another town. Very rarely would it be "they died".

Those who did escape to the town were the urban Indians disregarded by everyone because they drank, stole, etc ... all allegations that were not always true, but the "Indians" got labelled with it.

I only became aware that that degrading talk was still very active after we bought our cabin in 1997, and over the years got talking to local people.

Many of them were the original red neck ........ not a good word to say for the people from the neighbouring reserve, even though they didn't know any of them.

Of course there were whites who respected the FN and didn't disparage them.

Shard

Quite a shocking story about Mr X, Scilly.

I was wondering why the parents/family of the missing children did not report or demand action, but I suppose it was so easy for the schools to say they ran away or something like that. Far more difficult to track people in the old days (no technology).

scilly

Plus some of the children were at schools hundreds of miles away from their parents.

scilly

Shard ...... it might be shocking now, and it was shocking to us at the time, but it was what happened, and it was what we had to deal with and bury.

Whether that be a teacher, the Catholic priest or the Anglican minister or choir master.

The News of the World in the 1950s and 1960s was usually full of such stories ...... my Dad always thought he'd hidden the News of the World from me

I had a boss through the 90s who was a lovely man, from the UK, had a sister who was an alcoholic that he had to arrange care for over there, with cousins or neighbours who would watch over here. He always said to me that he just couldn't understand why she drank, why anyone could drink.

Imagine my great surprise when he was fired from his job, walked out of his office by security personnel, because of drunkenness some time after I'd retired.

We sort of knew he was more "out in left field" than usual for the couple of years preceding that, but never smelt alcohol on him, and I worked pretty close to him at times.

He entered treatment several times, but never managed to finish, always walked away, wife left him, etc etc. He died young.

What I eventually found out was that he had been at a Boarding School back in the UK in the 1950s and 60s. There had been sexual abuse at the school, kept hidden, but in about 1995/7 one of the boys went to the police and reported what had happened to him.

Investigations, and eventually my boss had been contacted because he apparently knew something. I don't think he had been abused himself, but the thought of having to go back to the UK and give evidence in court over something that he had buried deep in his mind, sent him over the edge, and he resorted to alcohol, becoming just like his sister.


TI don't know whether this all comes as a shock to you. It certainly has never been a shock to me.

I'm just too glad that finally people and families will be getting satisfaction and peace because finally others are believng what happened, whether that be the Residential schools, or school back in the UK.


One other effect of the news about the Residential schools is that the US is finally also looking into their residential schools and what happened. They've always denied what their FN have known.

caretaker

I knew about that from working up north, but was surprised that someone my age from Sweetgrass which is just a short bus ride from the Battlefords was sent away. It wasn't for dayschool, he had to stay which didn't make much sense to me. We spent a lot of time together travelling and on the reserve, but like most of the other survivors he didn't want to talk about it much, which is why the TRC was so important, and the successors Missing Children's Project and the others. It was the only way to get their stories out in the open while they are still alive.