In San Diego if you go to San Diego Ave near El Campo Santo Cemetery you will find markers like the ones in the photo. Wooden grave markers and poor record keeping at the time likely led to the future generations thinking the cemetery was smaller than it actually was originally, wasn't until 1993 with ground penetrating radar that researchers started finding graves under the street and sidewalks, the cemetery was first used in 1849, by 1894 a road and railroad bisected it, the current boundary fence was put up in 1933. Even in the actual cemetery itself they don't have records of who is in every grave.

It's still going on to a certain extent today.

I'm sure we've all heard stories about treatment of FN in Thunder Bay Ontario. Kids have to move from their reserves to Thunder Bay for high school in this day and age.

Imagine young teenagers sent away from home, lonely, so start drinking, and the white bullies seem to be taking advantage of them.

Is that a residential school burial site?

If it isn't, then you will find information in many Canadian places for pioneer cemeteries, both existing and as you noted, some mark to show a cemetery was here.

I was talking about governments and people now paying attention to FN in the US who have also been complaining quietly about their treatment in government ordained residential schools.

I was given a tour of one in Phoenix in the early 2000s. Lots of photos showing happy little girls and boys on the walls of the classrooms and along the hallways. The person showing me around said they'd never heard of any abuse happening.

Not so happy looking when you peered closely at the photos.

Thunder Bay police department got years of bad press, but it's just one city in the running for most racist. Winnipeg and Regina are probably the main contenders. Progress is measurable. As you know age gives you the long perspective.

True enough!

Just wish to thank Scilly, Caretaker & Jsmth for their input.

The yesterday matters today and tomorrow . It really always will.

M

It's easy to forget that there are people still alive who were affected either directly or indirectly by these things.

The residential school in Fort Providence NWT closed in 1929, and in 1948 the Church had the bodies of 8 missionaries exhumed and moved to the new town cemetery then ploughed over everyone else and planted potatoes. In the 1990's Albert Lafferty went to work with the Diocese getting records, organising a memorial, and preserving the site.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north...kids-1.6088159

What would be the normal FN burial practice during the 19th century?
Did they have a cemetery system as Europeans do?
They do have a spiritual belief in the earth and circle of life.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that the coastal FN used to wrap the body and place it in a tree or on a shelf at the back near the top of special mortuary poles. The remains gradually turn into dust over time and blown away.

Many of the totem poles taken away by anthropologists a hundred or more years ago and placed elsewhere in the world were actually mortuary poles. Most of the others were actually "family trees", like we would make of our ancestors, so would be the historical story of the family or clan that owned that pole. This is why the FN are attempting to reclaim them, and all other belongings taken away back then, all have meanings that we know nothing about unless you have studied. them. I have a faint idea, because we are lucky enough to have a superb Museum of Anthropology on the university campus, which was built with the intention of preserving poles that could not be returned because they were so deteriorated, but have FN explaining what they wish to to visitors.

I have not much idea what the Plains or Eastern FN did, but i don't think they had graveyards as we know them. I would assume that they would use some natural method like aboriginal peoples all over the world.

They all venerate their dead, so the dead would be treated with great respect. I assume you've read about the aboriginals in some countries who mummify their dead by putting them into cool dry caves, and then bring out the mummies on a certain day every year, dress them in fresh clothing, provide more food and things for the afterlife, and return them to the cave.

Bev .................... thank you.

Yes, a number of residential school in BC were still in operation when we came here, although most had already been taken over by the Federal Government. Some were still run by the Catholics, and I can remember driving past a couple quite frequently in those early days, and thinking how grim they looked. They were almost all behind some sort of fencing.

One other thing that happened here has been barely looked at as yet, but it's coming!

There were Indian Hospitals ...... special hospitals set up to treat only FN. It is beginning to appear as though many did not treat FN gently or properly.

We have a "coffee friend", my age, who was the secretary to the main Indian Agent in BC. The life of Indians was, and still is to a very large extent, controlled by the Department of Indian Affairs, and they had an Agent in every province. My friend's boss was particularly concerned with the Indian Hospitals, governing them, sending doctors, nurses etc to work in these often quite remote locations.

Similar to the schools, people need care were sent away to the nearest hospital, possibly hundreds of miles away. TB was very common, as well as various epidemics of flu, measles etc.

Some information about the mistreatment (or lack of treatment) and TLC of the patients started emerging about 8 or 9 years ago, and I well remember sitting with my friend at coffee, and her saying, very sadly "But we always thought we were doing our best for them."

They probably did think that, but they didn't know how the people working there were behaving .......... often still had the same attitude as the nuns and priests ............... FN were savages and ignorant.

Unfortunately, that same sort of treatment seems to still apply to some medical staff even these days, but the FN are becoming strong enough to complain to outside authorities and media when it happens.

There was a young woman who does not appear to have been treated well a few months ago at one hospital in the north, in her 9th month with a problem, turned away twice, father had to drive her to another hospital, where the baby was born dead. It is being investigate, so we'll see.

The Medicine Chest Treaty that provided for Indian Hospitals to be built within visiting range of some of the main reserves here was considered a big victory by the bands (I think as an ammendment to Treaty 6 and Treaty 4). It's discussed in The Sweetheart Tapes, (oral histories collected in the early 70's).

You did mention that (at least part of it) but I couldn't remember if I read in on BE or on the web. That would take a long time to turn to dust. Have been to the MOA but only once I think. So much to see there. I haven't read about the mummifying practice of other aboriginals, it can't be that common due to sheer numbers over time. In any case, under a field of potatoes sounds like it would not be desired burial situation for the FN in question.

You'd better believe quite a few aboriginal groups venerate the dead ............ beginning with the Incas, and the Egyptians, thogh they put the mummies in tombs for eternity. The Incas did allegedly have a form of ancestral veneration in which the mummies were brought out for certain ceremonies.

It's still found in Peru ...........

Visualizing the Past

Also in Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, and other island nations.

Just google "veneration of mummified ancestors".

The National Geographic has always been good for having an article every few years on such practices in different geographical areas, not the same article repeated.


Where did you get this idea??

The FN were never "farmers" in the European sense. They "farmed" oysters and clams ........... you should read about clam gardens, it's fascinating!

They would also tend the areas where their plant foods grew. For example, the FN in the southern part of Vancouver Island would collect the roots of Blue Camas for food, but they did very carefully, never over-picking and ensuring that lots would remain to regenerate.

from:- https://sierraclub.bc.ca/blue-camas/

I tried it once, but I would say it was very much an acquired taste for whites!! It is found across North America, and so was used by a lot of the FN.

I haver also tried whipped soapberry ice cream, a beloved treat of many of the coast FN. I thought it wasn't bad, but not to have again

They collected all kinds of wild berries. Every family group would have its own patch of soapberry, blueberry, huckleberry, whatever, and would only pick from those bushes. Heaven forfend that you'd go to someone else's patch!.

In fact, the FN wherever they lived, used the native plants, and cared for them very carefully by never taking too much t any one time.

In fact, this is one the major problems between the FN and us today .............. we don't take careful care of nature. We go in and take everything, as in all the old growth trees, or strip all the bushes of blueberries, etc.

But it was certainly not farming in the sense that we use the term., certainly not growing potatoes or corn or whatever.

Bodies would, I presume, be laid to rest in the forest, out on the prairie, and left to nature.

I'm only guessing here because I have studied very little in detail about the FN in other provinces.

The Plains Indians were constantly on the move, and are the ones that built tepees as they moved around their territory to hunt and gather

You've actually set me to thinking now, as to what other groups in Canada did with the bodies of their relations. I'll have to do some research about it.

When we have visited other provinces, and looked at the FN, it has always been about how they live now.

Auto correct, damn, I was on my phone. The Sweetgrass Tapes. Unfortunately the uregina links are all down, but the stories that were saved with a tape recorder were printed on a Gestetner machine and somewhere I have a copy. Just in case they get the university site going again I'll drop a link to a search page.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=the+s...bOTBkQQ4dUDCAw