The Canadian Genocide

about fucking time is about all I can say.

I remember learning about residential schools in highschool but I never expected how fucked up they were, totally swept under the rug.

1000's of kids dead, and buried silently is beyond disgusting. Legitimately ashamed. Burn the fucking churches.

It's incredible tragic what white Europeans did to indigenous people in Canada (and the rest of the world too). I'm glad these discoveries are shedding light on this genocide. It's horrible to think that these atrocities happened only 100 years ago and were conveniently ignored until recently. The western world needs to face and acknowledge its ugly past. The Catholic Church needs to do their damndest to make things right with the survivors of these schools.

I hope some good can come of this. I hope families, tribes, and indigenous nations can somehow find peace in the rediscovery of their missing children. Their anger and frustration is completely justified.

That being said, I don't condone arson or any other kinds of violence or property damage. Two wrongs don't make a right and it's a quick way to lose sympathizers to a movement.

Idk anything about the boarding schools that are/were on/near those grave sites. So what's the story behind them? I've been reading some news articles about these arson attacks, but they dont talk about what the schools were doing.

Can someone enlighten me?

BrandoComandoThat being said, I don't condone arson or any other kinds of violence or property damage. Two wrongs don't make a right and it's a quick way to lose sympathizers to a movement.

I think that people who burn churches are looking for some sort of instant and visible gratification, and some just enjoy destroying things and feel this is justification.

Burning churches gives the Catholic Church ammunition to fire back and address other issues

I feel its best to give them nothing. It should be either radio silence from them or directly addressing the crime. No squirming around the subject with talking about arson. People who burn the churches are a mix of foolish and selfish.

So this isn’t actually new, just a larger scale than originally thought. In 2005, the Catholic church settled on a $25 million payment to help right the wrongs to the indigenous people. Then they broke that settlement after only paying 4 million cuz they got more churches to build and stuff...

the older i get, the more i drift towards agnosticism. Still open to believing in a greater being or a temporary afterlife, but these religions aren’t it.

it really feels to me like for every 2 genuinely righteous theologian i know, there’s 3 really shitty ones who use religion solely as a guise. Read the bible, shit’s basically just snuff porn in literature

Its good to get clarification on the Catholic church's stance on abortion.


Its bad when its a fetus, its OK when its a 4-year-old minority.


Got it.

Catholic Church in need of another Martin Luther to call them out on their crap.

Also burning churches is stupid and will only create more problems.

We have the same stuff in US, we massacred the natives here too. It’s awful because everyone constantly focusing on BLM while to this day natives are still being pushed further and further to extinction.
But Catholic church is still giving male and female virgins to good Catholics. It’s the real life super adventure club. Brother went to a catholic prep school, they had to use a buddy system if they ever walked around campus because of the “bad monks” that were allowed to roam despite their known problems. Fuck the Catholic church

theLiquorWe have the same stuff in US, we massacred the natives here too. It’s awful because everyone constantly focusing on BLM while to this day natives are still being pushed further and further to extinction.

This

theLiquorWe have the same stuff in US, we massacred the natives here too. It’s awful because everyone constantly focusing on BLM while to this day natives are still being pushed further and further to extinction.
But Catholic church is still giving male and female virgins to good Catholics. It’s the real life super adventure club. Brother went to a catholic prep school, they had to use a buddy system if they ever walked around campus because of the “bad monks” that were allowed to roam despite their known problems. Fuck the Catholic church

95% of americans have never seen a native american reservation and it shows. Natives have and are still getting fucked over but activists barely give a fuck about them unless it’s the 4th or thanksgiving.

the difference between the systemic treatment of black people, and natives, is that the country will need to halfway peacufully co-exist with afroamericans because they aren’t going to disappear.
natives on the other hand, are already nearly vanished so it’s easier to ignore the problem because we can ignore our past that much easier once theyre all gone and so are the reminders.

the residential schools are still a thing. They can give lip service all day long “shameful, we will never do this again” but it’s just meaningless

Jems95% of americans have never seen a native american reservation and it shows. Natives have and are still getting fucked over but activists barely give a fuck about them unless it’s the 4th or thanksgiving.

theLiquorWe have the same stuff in US, we massacred the natives here too. It’s awful because everyone constantly focusing on BLM while to this day natives are still being pushed further and further to extinction.
But Catholic church is still giving male and female virgins to good Catholics. It’s the real life super adventure club. Brother went to a catholic prep school, they had to use a buddy system if they ever walked around campus because of the “bad monks” that were allowed to roam despite their known problems. Fuck the Catholic church

My understanding of why this is being talked about so much now, and I'm not trying to make this the suffering Olympics here because what happened in both countries was terrible, but from my understanding, this was still occurring in Canada pretty recently, like, the 60s and 70s. Kids were just being killed and then buried by other kids in unmarked graves. Not too long ago in large amounts. Not that terrible things have not been happening to American Indians in the same time frame but...yeah...shitty all around.

We haven’t found mass graves, but do you have any doubt that they exist here?
little story of a school in South Dakota that still exists https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/30/my-relatives-went-to-a-catholic-school-for-native-children-it-was-a-place-of-horrors

LonelyMy understanding of why this is being talked about so much now, and I'm not trying to make this the suffering Olympics here because what happened in both countries was terrible, but from my understanding, this was still occurring in Canada pretty recently, like, the 60s and 70s. Kids were just being killed and then buried by other kids in unmarked graves. Not too long ago in large amounts. Not that terrible things have not been happening to American Indians in the same time frame but...yeah...shitty all around.

theLiquorWe haven’t found mass graves, but do you have any doubt that they exist here?
little story of a school in South Dakota that still exists https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/30/my-relatives-went-to-a-catholic-school-for-native-children-it-was-a-place-of-horrors

No not at all, but to my knowledge this issue wasn't as widespread as recently as Canada, at least that we know so far.

Jems95% of americans have never seen a native american reservation and it shows. Natives have and are still getting fucked over but activists barely give a fuck about them unless it’s the 4th or thanksgiving.

There’s a few about an hour or less from where I live and it’s amazing the amount of poverty in these communities and also the substance abuse rates. Really sad to see. Also Like above said people don’t focus much on America’s treatment of indigenous people or any race other than African Americans. The US had prison camps for Asians during world war 2, NYPD TSA FBI and NSA after 9/11 had the power to detain any muslim or middle eastern person for any suspicion even if purely speculation and if there was any evidence most ended up in Guantanamo Bay. The US has done some terrible terrible things even recently

WoFlowzThere’s a few about an hour or less from where I live and it’s amazing the amount of poverty in these communities and also the substance abuse rates. Really sad to see. Also Like above said people don’t focus much on America’s treatment of indigenous people or any race other than African Americans. The US had prison camps for Asians during world war 2, NYPD TSA FBI and NSA after 9/11 had the power to detain any muslim or middle eastern person for any suspicion even if purely speculation and if there was any evidence most ended up in Guantanamo Bay. The US has done some terrible terrible things even recently

Yeah the Reservations are bad news. The problem is these people are stuck on welfare out in the middle of nowhere with no economic mobility etc. I hate to say it but the reservation system is outdated. The indigenous people need to assimilate into American Society with education and opportunity. They should be encouraged to keep their heritage and use the Reservation for ceremonies etc but spending your whole life as an alcoholic in a single wide trailer is not helping anyone.

SuspiciousFishYeah the Reservations are bad news. The problem is these people are stuck on welfare out in the middle of nowhere with no economic mobility etc. I hate to say it but the reservation system is outdated. The indigenous people need to assimilate into American Society with education and opportunity. They should be encouraged to keep their heritage and use the Reservation for ceremonies etc but spending your whole life as an alcoholic in a single wide trailer is not helping anyone.

Correct me if I'm wrong but they are free to participate in society pretty freely right? The bigger obstacle ia the res tends to be in pretty barren locations but if someone were to move into a city from the res they would have similar opprotinities to a non native person?

r00kieCorrect me if I'm wrong but they are free to participate in society pretty freely right? The bigger obstacle ia the res tends to be in pretty barren locations but if someone were to move into a city from the res they would have similar opprotinities to a non native person?

They have more actually, there are a number of scholarships that are set up for Native Americans. I think the bigger problem is making the move from the reservation with broken homes into a situation that they can better themselves.

Lonelythis was still occurring in Canada pretty recently, like, the 60s and 70s. Kids were just being killed and then buried by other kids in unmarked graves. Not too long ago in large amounts. Not that terrible things have not been happening to American Indians in the same time frame but...yeah...shitty all around.

Not just the 60s and 70s, the last Canadian residential school closed in 1996. There are former residential school students out there that are the same age as me and many NSers.

However you're wrong if you think this is ancient history in the US. It wasn't until 1978 that the laws in the US changed so that parents could refuse to have their kids sent away to "Indian Boarding Schools". They weren't gone by the 60s like you're suggesting, in fact enrolment doubled in that decade and peaked in the 70s. There were 60,000 students in these schools in 1973. What with the revelations here in Canada, my understanding is the Americans are going to complete an investigation as well. I doubt we will learn that things were much better south of the border. They had something like 360 schools, and with more than twice as many schools there were likely twice as many students involved, and quite possibly twice as many students killed.

As for those asking why Canadian residential schools were so bad, these schools were specifically designed with the intention of wiping out indigenous culture. Words like "eradicate" were used non-ironically, as if nativeness was some pest that needed to be removed at any cost. Children were ripped from their families and sent to what was essentially a federally-funded and church-run prison. They had their heads shaved, clothes stripped from them, and were given new names. They were beaten if they spoke their language or attempted to leave. Physical and psychological abuse, disease, neglect and malnutrition ran rampant. It wasn't just the Catholic Church responsible - some were run by Anglican and United churches, and later directly by the government - however the Catholics are getting the most attention because of their lack of formal apology and unwillingness to release records. We're talking 140 schools, and 150,000+ children. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that between 4000 and 6000 children died in their report a couple years back, although many believe that even that is a conservative estimate and the reality is over 10,000. These unmarked graves have been somewhat of an open secret for a long time - the bodies of the missing children had to be somewhere. I've seen it mentioned that the reason the Kamloops school is still standing is because they can't dig anywhere without hitting bodies. We've located just over 1000 now, but that's a small fraction of what we will find as the search is expanded to all school sites.

paige.Not just the 60s and 70s, the last Canadian residential school closed in 1996. There are former residential school students out there that are the same age as me and many NSers.

However you're wrong if you think this is ancient history in the US. It wasn't until 1978 that the laws in the US changed so that parents could refuse to have their kids sent away to "Indian Boarding Schools". They weren't gone by the 60s like you're suggesting, in fact enrolment doubled in that decade and peaked in the 70s. There were 60,000 students in these schools in 1973. What with the revelations here in Canada, my understanding is the Americans are going to complete an investigation as well. I doubt we will learn that things were much better south of the border. They had something like 360 schools, and with more than twice as many schools there were likely twice as many students involved, and quite possibly twice as many students killed.

As for those asking why Canadian residential schools were so bad, these schools were specifically designed with the intention of wiping out indigenous culture. Words like "eradicate" were used non-ironically, as if nativeness was some pest that needed to be removed at any cost. Children were ripped from their families and sent to what was essentially a federally-funded and church-run prison. They had their heads shaved, clothes stripped from them, and were given new names. They were beaten if they spoke their language or attempted to leave. Physical and psychological abuse, disease, neglect and malnutrition ran rampant. It wasn't just the Catholic Church responsible - some were run by Anglican and United churches, and later directly by the government - however the Catholics are getting the most attention because of their lack of formal apology and unwillingness to release records. We're talking 140 schools, and 150,000+ children. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that between 4000 and 6000 children died in their report a couple years back, although many believe that even that is a conservative estimate and the reality is over 10,000. These unmarked graves have been somewhat of an open secret for a long time - the bodies of the missing children had to be somewhere. I've seen it mentioned that the reason the Kamloops school is still standing is because they can't dig anywhere without hitting bodies. We've located just over 1000 now, but that's a small fraction of what we will find as the search is expanded to all school sites.

Good info