Openings are almost always fraught with indecision. See, even that "fraught" is fraught with its 14th century etymology of being "freighted" or loaded with things as a ship. But I already digress. This opening is especially problematic because it's loaded with so many possible avenues of discourse. And emotions.
Should I express my rage? There's plenty of news items to stoke those fires right here in BC, or south of the border (may we keep it strong and FREE), across the globe where a humanitarian flotilla has been stopped off the shores of Gaza or with our NATO allies in Poland and Germany now being attacked by Russia.
There's enormous sadness as well as I have been reading so many documents pertaining to Truth and Reconciliation Day and our collective failures to address the issues and promises made relative to that observance. The documented stories of survivors and their descendants are sad enough; the failure of governments to respond to those reports is really troubling
I started to read the transcript of the Executive Summary of The Truth & Reconciliation Report. I stopped after a bit because, well I let other things get in the way. No excuse. I would start the day by reading a few pages - often not pleasant reading, but sometimes Murray Sinclair's writers captured truth in a palatable form. And the reconciliation, as he said, could only come after the truth was told. The full title of the report was Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future. I have now read the summary of the report and it goes to just over 500 pages.
What really got in my way was swatting away all of the nasty posts in my google search by deniers who jumped on every chance to discredit the Commission and its findings. Every time I dug into some aspect of the "Truth" there would be an article which purported to discredit the claim.
Here in BC, the Conservatives finally ejected some very vocal members who felt that even raising the orange T&R banner at the legislature was an affront. They have formed their own party as OneBC with such folk as Tara Armstrong and Dallas Brodie in the House and failed candidates Tim Thielmann, Wyatt Claypool and Paul Ratchford working the party levers, the latter of whom was of the opinion that our chief medical officer, Bonnie Henry, should be fired and jailed. These are MAGA wannabees as much as Our Lady of Petroleum Patronage in the province next door. I'm going back to searching for the the truth.
For the Residential School deniers and I know they don't deny the existence of those institutions, just the negative impacts, the big issues they focus on are these:
The schools weren't bad because some people had good experiences in them.
Some of the events maligning the residential school experience have been so misrepresented as to call all such reporting into question.
There aren't any unmarked graves and certainly no mass burials and we know that's so because there haven't been any actual bodies exhumed from any of the so-called burial sites
Let's examine the evidence.
Tompson Highway has been a great success as a playwright, author and musician and has spoken of the benefits of his education at a residential school. His brother says those comments have been used as a blanket endorsement of the system and Tomson's international success is used as a cherry-picked example to serve the deniers.
This is from a Huff Post article on Tomson Highway of Dec 2015:
"All we hear is the negative stuff, nobody's interested in the positive, the joy in that school. Nine of the happiest years of my life I spent it at that school. I learned your language, for God's sake. Have you learned my language? No, so who's the privileged one and who is underprivileged?
"You may have heard stories from 7,000 witnesses in the process that were negative," he adds. "But what you haven't heard are the 7,000 reports that were positive stories. There are many very successful people today that went to those schools and have brilliant careers and are very functional people, very happy people like myself. I have a thriving international career, and it wouldn't have happened without that school.
"You have to remember that I came from so far north and there were no schools up there."
He says that by the time he was 18, he was playing Brahms, Chopin and Beethoven: "How many white boys can get to do that? And they grew up with grand pianos in their living rooms!"
Highway's novel Kiss of the Fur Queen, however, paints a somewhat more complex picture as it revolves around two brothers taken from their family and sent to a residential school where their native language was forbidden, their names were changed and they were sexually abused by priests before they saved themselves by becoming artists.
So now I'm cherry-picking too. He says that he came "from so far north … there were no schools up there." and the article's author notes that his "novel Kiss of the Fur Queen, … revolves around two brothers taken from their family and sent to a residential school where their native language was forbidden, their names were changed and they were sexually abused by priests."
But look, ultimately it's great that there were "7000 reports that were positive stories". That doesn't make the rest of the truths of the T&R report disappear. Do you know that from Gaza there are reports of Israeli soldiers refusing to fire into crowds pushing to get food at the few distribution sites and there are young Israelis going to jail rather than serve in the armed forces committing their nation's genocide? Will those examples be used in some future article to whitewash the horrible events of a holocaust perpetrated by descendants of a previous holocaust? Good on ya, Tomson; your brother tells a different story.
Here's another example of a story seized upon as "evidence" that the residential school horror stories weren't true.
Chanie Wenjack was born on January 19, 1954, at Ogoki Post on the Marten Falls Reserve. In 1963, Wenjack and three of his sisters were forcibly removed from their home and sent to the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora. On October 16, 1966, Wenjack escaped with his friends, Ralph and Jackie MacDonald. The trio made it as far as Redditt, 31 km north of Kenora, where they stayed with Ralph and Jackie's uncle and aunt. After four days, Wenjack left to follow the CN mainline towards Ogoki Post, using a CN passenger timetable with a map for navigation. The Kellys gave him food and matches and advised him to seek help from the section maintenance crews stationed along the line. Wenjack had only a light windbreaker and walked for 36 hours in the wind as the temperature dropped to −6 °C (21 °F). He died sometime on the morning of October 23.
A year after Wenjack's death, an article written by journalist Ian Adams, "The Lonely Death of Charlie Wenjack," was published in Maclean's magazine.
The Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie wrote a concept album, Secret Path, released on October 18, 2016, along with a concurrent graphic novel of Wenjack's story by novelist Jeff Lemire and an animated film which aired on CBC Television.
It's that graphic novel and Gord Downie album that are at the heart of the denialist take on the events concerning the death of Charlie (Chanie) Wenjak. They really are exaggerated accounts with errors in settng and events and even characters such as menacing priest figure advancing on Charlie's dormitory bed when there were no catholics in the Presbyterian-run hostel. But a kid did die walking "home" from a residential school.
I'm reminded of the condemnation by a woman (whose name I wish I could remember) of any woman who falsely cried "rape" for vindictive or mercenary reasons because it would be used to discredit real victims of the very real crimes of partner abuse and who have a tough enough time getting legal redress in our courts.
The third issue seems to be the most damning. Until it's pulled apart.
"Show me the bodies!" cry the denialists. "If there's all these 'mass graves' at former residential schools, just dig 'em up and show me the bones."
First off, the expression "mass graves" was used in one early report, but on the insistence of band leaders, hastily corrected in favour of the term "unmarked graves." I think in some cases it was completely appropriate to refer to mass graves because in some instances many bodies were actually interred in one grave site. This from the records of Dunbow also known as the High River or St. Joseph’s Industrial School in Alberta:
Many children were buried in the institution’s graveyard; in some cases, children were buried two to three in one coffin.
Children who were forced to work in the Dunbow cemetery are seen in a photograph from 1918. The cemetery associated with the Dunbow Industrial School was located on the banks of the Highwood River and was therefore vulnerable to erosion. In 1996, the burials of the children were exposed when the river overflowed. In some instances, children’s remains were washed away by the flood waters. The remains of several of the children originally buried in the cemetery are likely still in the river.
But for the ghouls, nothing will suffice but body parts. They won't be content with just ground penetrating radar imagery and school records although those are plentiful. I checked on the use of GPR as it's used to locate underground features (besides utility pipes in infrastructure projects) and found this from Kisha Supernant the director of the University of Alberta’s Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology. It's long but worth skimming.
The basic principle is that ground-penetrating radar sends an electromagnetic wave into the ground. As the wave travels below the surface it encounters different things and bounces back to the machine.
When it comes to finding unmarked graves, what they are looking for is a grave shaft. When you dig a grave, you disturb the soil and ground-penetrating radar can sometimes detect that change in the soil from the digging of the grave itself. There are sets of signals often associated with graves, either marked or unmarked, she said.
Supernant says her team is also guided by elder testimony and community knowledge to help identify where to search, as the areas where graves may be no longer have markers. First Nations communities tend to use careful language when announcing the findings of such searches, ranging from anomalies and areas of interest to possible graves. “We use the careful terminology because at the end of the day, ground-penetrating radar alone cannot 100 per cent confirm that there is a grave present or that there’s anything in that grave. To confirm the existence of graves, searchers can rely on old aerial photographs of an area to show whether it was a cemetery, or collect information from archival records held by churches and other institutions."
In terms of physical evidence, Supernant says there can sometimes be impressions left on the land itself, but in order to confirm the existence of remains, “you need to do something below the surface.”
That’s why First Nations that have detected possible unmarked graves are exploring the possible options hoping to avoid disturbing the sites even more. Some methods being considered include trying to sample the soil to test for the presence of human DNA. “That still is invasive, but it’s a lot less invasive than digging down.”
Supernant says there are two main misconceptions about the technology and its role in searches: “On the one hand there’s an overstatement, and then on the other hand, there’s an undermining.”
In May 2021, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced it had detected 215 possible unmarked graves at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. Supernant says some people were left with the impression that 215 children’s bodies had been found. “Ground-penetrating radar can’t do that.”
But because some assume that ground-penetrating radar can do more than it can, a narrative has formed where those anomalies or possible graves have “become children.” She says she understands why that happens, because the announcements are devastating and people want to find the children who went missing from residential schools.
On the other hand, Supernant says she also sees people trying to downplay the results, by “using the ambiguity that is inherent in the technology and that we can’t know for sure to really discredit it entirely.”
“It’s also really dangerous because we do know how to distinguish a rock from a potential grave. But sometimes when denialists get a hold of some of these narratives, they use that to undermine (which) is not true, as there is established science behind the technology.
Two other short bits on the finding of bodies or parts thereof. The first from Battleford, Saskatchewan.
In 1908, the principal of the Battleford Indian Industrial School reported to the Department of Indian Affairs that, during its operation, 49 of the 190 boys (approx- imately 26 percent) and 37 of the 125 girls (approximately 30 percent) had died.
In the summer of 1974, a team of students from the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology excavated 70 of the Battleford Indian Industrial School’s graves. These graves contained 72 individuals. During excavation, the team documented coffin construction, grave goods, and the use of shrouds on the children that were not interred in clothing. J. Hurov, who did an analysis of some hair samples taken during the excavation, later reported, “each unmarked grave was identified, assigned a number and excavated; the contents were uncovered, identified, and recorded. Bone and tooth samples also were obtained for future analysis and standard radiographs were taken.”
That says enough I think to silence most of the body-parts brigade, but there is another news item worthy of our attention because it focuses on another aspect of dead Indigenous people.
The Highway of Tears is very real and it has been named for the large number of murdered Indigenous women. When it became probable that the bodies of some of those women had been dumped into a landfill outside of Winnipeg, the debate began. Should the landfill debris be sifted and tested for human DNA?
Yes, it would be an expensive project - over $190 million by some estimates - but, yes, it would give closure to families and verify testimony from accused murderers. Premier Wab Kinew campaigned on a promise to do the testing. He was elected premier, initiated the work and the tests found the evidence (the actual human DNA of the murder victims) they were looking for - at a cost of $18 million.
Lastly, I have spent three weeks fussing over this post - the organization alone kept me awake nights. And I didn't like the topic. Dead children is not a subject I want to examine, but I and all of us, should confront it. Ukraine has its children kidnapped into Russia; Gaza has kids with amputated limbs and a horrible death toll; Sudan is also in the midst of war-induced famine and that always kills a higher number of kid . The testimony of residential school survivors also includes these gruesome reports:
from the Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools pp 36-37
Criminal and Inhumane Treatment of Children’s Remains:
Furnaces and Incinerators
There was a young girl…she was pregnant from a priest there.…she had her
baby, and they took the baby, and wrapped it up in a nice pink outfit, and they
took it downstairs…they took the baby in the…furnace room, and they threw
that little baby in there and burned it alive. All you could hear was [this little
cry, like] “Uuh!” and that was it.
—Irene Favel, Survivor
Survivor testimonies, oral histories, and documentary records confirm that furnaces and
incinerators were used at many, if not most, Indian Residential Schools for various purposes, including to heat the buildings. Many testimonies and oral histories confirm that children witnessed babies being wrapped in blankets and burned in the institutions’ furnaces:
One of my friends brought me here when I started day school. Showed
me this steel drum that was here, the incinerator. And he was saying,
“This is where they …they burn all the little children, the little babies,
that are born.” They were thrown into the incinerator…and they were
burnt there.
There can be no denying the truthfulness of Survivors’ testimonies and oral histories about the incinerators due to the repetition and similarity amongst Survivors who were taken to the same institution. This is what John Borrows refers to as “internal cross-referencing”—the confirmation and accuracy of oral history when truths are repeated by different community members or members of a group. Similarly, truthfulness is confirmed due to the repetition of these accounts across Canada at many different Indian Residential Schools. This repetition confirms the fact that these horrific acts were occurring across the Indian Residential School System with impunity.
St Joseph's Mission Residential School (Jan 2022)
“At St. Joseph’s Mission, survivor stories tell us that many children will remain unaccounted for, even after our geophysical and archival work is complete,” he said. “Their bodies were cast into the river, left at the bottom of lakes, tossed like garbage into incinerators. For those children, there will be no headstone, no unmarked grave, no small fragment of bone to be forensically analyzed. For those families, there will be no closure. It is for those children and families that we grieve the most.”
But those are Indigenous voices recorded as testimony at Truth & Reconciliation hearings across the country. The voices of journalists at various newspapers also recorded the death tolls at residential schools and noted how parents often came to get their kids because so many were dying of tuberculosis and influenza at those institutions and it was a higher death toll than on the reserves and much higher than in the general Canadian population even during the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic.
And where records were preserved (and many were destroyed as a simple housekeeping process by the govenment) they show lists of students and staff who died and were buried on the grounds of schools. How about that for a government building design - include a cemetery. One government official - a doctor - wrote and pleaded with authorities to correct situations that allowed such deaths. He was fired. He subsequently paid out of his own pocket for the publication of his report.
In 1907, Dr. Peter Bryce wrote that the schools were disease-festering death traps and incubators of tuberculosis. And he made a moral case against complacency, complaining that government officials had come to accept rampant tuberculosis in the country’s Indigenous population and had decided to do little to mitigate its toll. At the time, the death rate in residential schools was 20 times higher than that of the general Canadian population.
In 1904 Dr. Peter Bryce was appointed the Chief Medical Officer of the federal Departments of the Interior and Indian Affairs. His 1905 and 1906 annual reports emphasized the abnormally high death rates for Indigenous peoples in Canada.
Bryce wrote that Indigenous children enrolled in residential schools were deprived of adequate medical attention and sanitary living conditions. Bryce cited an average mortality rate of between 15% and 24% among the schools' children and 42% in Aboriginal homes, where sick children were sometimes sent to die. He appealed his forced retirement from the Civil Service in 1921 and was denied, subsequently publishing his suppressed report condemning the treatment of the Indigenous at the hands of the Department of Indian Affairs that had been given the responsibility under the British North America Act.
In 1922, Dr. Bryce wrote a book “The Story of a National Crime: An Appeal for Justice to the Indians of Canada”. This book provides clear evidence of the government’s role in creating and maintaining conditions that led to the huge number of student deaths. (It) draws attention once again to the failure of the government to act: “[In the schools, a] trail of disease and death has gone almost unchecked by any serious efforts on the part of the Department of Indian Affairs” (Milloy, 1999, p. 51).
And I just checked an item that came up in my search for the effectiveness of ground penetrating radar. The body of Richard III of England was dumped in a shallow grave after he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 14-something. A few years ago, GPR helped find his carcass under the asphalt of a carpark. He got a much more decent final send-off than so many of those Indigenous kids, and no one accused the folks who pushed for the recovery of his body of making up stories.