Where are the children BURIED? . . .
Truth and Reconciliation Commission looking into most horrible chapter of
painful residential schools saga
By: Alexandra Paul
Posted: 02/19/2011
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/fyi/where-are-the-children-buried-116524718.html

No one knows how many children died in residential schools.
No one knows how many graves were dug for them.
And there is no peace without knowing.
Research at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is underway to get
a grip on
the approximate number of missing children and unmarked graves at residential
schools in Canada, including on the Prairies.
Justice Murray Sinclair, chairman of the three-member commission, said the
tragedy of the missing children is a chapter that casts a deep shadow on the
saga of residential schools.
That children died and went missing isn't in dispute.
It's part of the record and the memory, such as the story Joe Harper recounted
of how his friend Joseph died in obscurity at the Cross Lake
residential school.
Fifty years on, it still rankles him.
"There was never a funeral for him," Harper said outside one of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission tents set up to hear survivor accounts last June at
The Forks. "I don't even know how his parents ever found out."
One question likely to remain a mystery is how many Josephs were at the schools.
"We are, quite frankly, not going to be able to say how many children died in
the schools or say where they are all buried, and what happened to them after
they died," Sinclair said recently at the commission's downtown Winnipeg
offices.
Nevertheless, he said it's essential to tackle the issue as part of the
residential schools legacy.
To get the work done, the commission has hired Alex Maass, a former Indian
Affairs civil servant who is an anthropology expert on gravesites. This month,
Greg Younging, a professor of indigenous studies at the University of British
Columbia, was appointed assistant director of research. One of his jobs is to
oversee the Missing Children Project.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Canada's provincial governments were in
place, along with requirements for deaths to be reported as they occurred.
While residential school deaths may have been reported, there are few death
certificates attached to student files in old archives. Finding out what
happened to each child would involve matching church and government records to
Vital Statistics files.
"In order to properly document the children who died in the schools and where
they are located, you'd have to go through millions and millions of pages of
archival material," Sinclair said.
The commission isn't equipped to complete the herculean task.
Even then, there are too many gaps in the records to clear up every death and
every missing child.
The best the commission can do is try to identify the magnitude of the problem,
Sinclair said. "And once we have, there will be better information for a
decision to be made about what to do about it."
The commission hopes to have enough information to suggest further research and ways to commemorate the graves.
Survivors' accounts are part of the historical record and will be used in the research. Documents to corroborate those accounts are, not surprisingly, hard to find.
"We've heard stories from survivors that babies were born in the schools to mothers who'd been impregnated by teachers and by priests. They say their babies were taken away. They think their babies were killed," Sinclair said. "We don't know the extent to which that occurred, if at all."
Records show there was a practice followed when children died.
"The local principal of the school would make contact with the family and basically say, 'What do you want us to do with your child? He's dead. He drowned when he was running away or he died of disease.' Sometimes there was no effort made to contact the family. They just buried the child."
Depending on the era, there might be a few deaths per year or dozens.
John Milloy, author of National Crime, the most extensive book on Canadian residential schools, has said that reports dating back as far as 1907 show 24 to 42 per cent of children in some schools died of tuberculosis. He said nearly every school he knew of had a cemetery on the grounds.
Records cited in the commission's 2010 study on missing children contained very few references to those cemeteries.
With gaps and discrepancies like that, investigators have their work cut out for them.
"We need to be sensitive to the fact there is a great deal of misinformation and non-information out there," Sinclair said.
Google "residential schools" to get a glimpse of how the fate of missing children decades ago is a super-sensitive and sensational issue today.
Scores of sites pop up, referring to the Canadian Holocaust, in which 50,000 children died or disappeared. The figure is widely reported, but also considered likely a dramatic overstatement.
Many of the sites feature former United Church minister Kevin Arnett from British Columbia, the self-appointed crusader for families who lost children in residential schools. His contribution fuels a debate that's disturbing enough without potentially exaggerated claims.
Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice ordered a working group in 2008 to define the scope of the problem in the wake of Arnett's polarizing allegations and their impact on survivors.
The working group found that children had gone missing and graves were not uncommon. The issue was handed on to the commission.
"There are people out there able to take advantage of the mistrust between survivors and the government and maximize their fear and their anger," Sinclair said. "That means there can be no peace until there are some answers."
alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca

To honor the lives and attain justice for the children that were brainwashed, raped and murdered under the Canadian Government’s Residential School Policy of genocide against Native people.

Wednesday February 10, 2009 at 10:00AM

Silent march beginning at the Department of Indian Affairs building in Hull , on to the Supreme Court of Canada, then to the parliament and ending at the Prime Minister’s office.

Each step of the way the Brief entitled;

Human Rights Violation

Government Sponsored Identity Theft

Through

Residential Schools

And

Its continued application within

The Canadian Judicial System

Will be presented to the respective authorities

If you can support this, please attend or help is in whatever way you can.

Help restore Humanity!

Mohawk Traditional Council ~ Kahnawake Mohawk Territory

mohawktraditionalcouncil@gmail.com

450-638-4357

Urgent Brief Concerning; Human Rights Violation Government sponsored Identity theft Through Residential Schools And its continued application within The Canadian Judicial System Mohawk Traditional Council 2 3 Native People have identified that Prime Minister, Steven Harper’s apology RE residential schools is hollow and means nothing, due to the fact that; It does not identify the true crimes that were committed. It does not identify responsibility for those crimes. It does not offer justice by charging those responsible for carrying out such heinous crimes against children. Which exemplifies for Natives, that there is no justice in the Canadian system. By making a one-time-lump sum payment to what the Canadian Government identifies as the survivors, is a clear denial of responsibility for the multigenerational problems it has caused, such as with the Duplessi Orphans of Quebec. This clearly identifies that each successive generations are also survivors, which in turn incurs more responsibility upon the government than a measly dollar amount and an apology. The Canadian judicial system is still carrying out the objective of the residential schools, of oppressing Native identity. 4 Excerpts from Prime Minister, Steven Harper’s official apology for Canada’s genocidal acts against humanity. June 11, 2008 “Two primary objectives of the residential schools system were”; “To remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures” And “To assimilate them into the dominant culture.” and “To kill the Indian in the child” “ Today, we recognize that, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country” Prime minister of Canada, Steven Harper 5 Residential Schools As an official Canadian Government policy, targeting children in collaboration with the Catholic Church enforced through the British Crown’s law, via the RCMP and the courts, constitutes an evil conspiracy of the highest order. The Conspiracy; “To kill the Indian in the child” on such a massive scale as to have this illegally forced, more often than not, at gun point, upon all native people, constitutes GENOCIDE. The methodology of genocide; “To remove children from their homes” is premeditated kidnapping, in the 1st degree. “To isolate them from their homes” is premeditated forcible confinement, in the 1st degree. 6 “To isolate children from their families” is premeditated dehumanization of the human spirit, in the 1st degree. “To remove and isolate children from their traditions and cultures” is premeditated identity theft, in the 1st degree. “To assimilate them into the dominant culture” is premeditated brainwashing and reprogramming with malicious intent to cause a deep-rooted psychological and physiological conflict, purposely forcing a multigenerational breakdown of the Native identity, in the 1st degree. “To kill the Indian in the child”, upon one child, is premeditated murder in the first degree. To systematically carry this out upon an entire race IS PREMEDITATED GENOCIDE, IN THE 1ST DEGREE. For the Prime Minister of Canada to admit “this policy of assimilation was wrong” and 7 officially apologize for its evil effects on the Native People of Turtle Island, clearly exemplifies how an already corrupt and archaic system of people, institutions, regional police, regional courts, provincial police, provincial courts, RCMP, federal courts, provincial and federal governments, CSIS, the catholic church and the British Crown, sank all society to the darkest depths of sub-human behavior. By singling out children, kidnapping them through the said institutions, raping, murdering and brainwashing the survivors with the evil intent of re-establishing the assimilated minds of these young helpless victims, back into Native societies, proves the Government’s intention was to have these children more easily accept the second phase of the assimilation process, the forcible (through murder) insertion of the elected band/tribal council system. 8 This is nothing more than the early Roman practice of kidnapping the children of their enemies, raising them and teaching them the ways of Roman Court politics, then return them back into their societies with their poisoned minds, with the intent of destroying their traditional political systems. This is done, by establishing a military maneuver of a “fifth column” such as what Adolph Hitler used in Nazi Germany, what the United States and Canada uses, and is a common practice of any military state. One must ask ones-self; what is the difference between our two identities to make this violent sub-human assimilation process necessary? The answer to this is like the difference between night and day. Where Canada is a paternal military state that wages war on 9 everyone who is not like them and on everything, including our Mother Earth. Contrarily, Native society is a matrilineal society, which wages peace to establish a living harmony with all living things. Native identity is to be true human beings, living in balance with our Mother Earth, protecting her from any destructive force that may attack and destroy her. Clearly these two identities clashed, for the non-native identity and culture is controlled by paternalistic democracy, which protects capitalism, which in turn thrives off the exploitation and destruction of our Mother Earth’s non-renewable resources. Thus, when Democracy and capitalism are combined, it creates the lethal abomination of “DEMOCRAPITALISM” which kills our Mother Earth by creating laws that legalize her destruction and other 10 laws making it illegal for human beings to protect her from the said destruction. The Native people know that, “killing yourself is no way to make a living” this is not our identity, nor will it ever be our identity. We are not destructors of the land like the non-native society. Not even the forced reprogramming of our identity through residential schools will get us to change from protecting our Mother Earth, to the non-native identity of destroying her! Prime Minister, Steven Harper’s official apology is an admittance that it is illegal to try and steal anyone’s identity, to force identity change or to oppress native identity from being expressed, through whatever methods of oppression that may be used to illegally force such a change, EG Canadian judicial system. 11 Therefore, in order for the positive step of Canada’s apology for the residential school system to mean anything, that which is identified as being wrong with the policy must be corrected. Meaning, all archaic policies that still continue to steal, oppress and prevent native identity from being expressed must be officially stopped by the Canadian Government. In light of this apology which identifies that it is wrong to try and oppress Native identity, it is not only hypocritical but also illegal for any level of court system to continue to criminalize any native person who engages in the expression and manifestation of our identity of protecting and defending our Mother Earth from the destruction of her vital resources. Not only will this benefit the Native people by ensuring that our identity is recognized and protected by law, it will also free the 12 Canadian people from the psychological damage that has been done to them as a result of their government being an oppressor and instigator of genocide, which devolved everyone’s humanity in order to accept such archaic, subhuman behavior. Recognizing Native identity will also benefit all humanity and our Mother Earth. Through official government policy and law, it will provide human beings with the only actual tangible mechanism to fight against the GLOBAL CLIMATIC DISASTER that is facing us all. Therefore, it is now your responsibility to inform every level of court within the Canadian judicial system, that it is illegal to keep doing what your Premier already apologized for and stop arresting any Native person for defending the land and to stop putting bail conditions on them restricting them from returning to the land in protest. Which would effectively prevent the Native people from exercising our TRUE NATIVE IDENTITY. Do act accordingly. In Peace and Friendship. Secretary, Stuart Myiow Mohawk Traditional Council Box 531, Kahnawake Mohawk Territory J0L 1B0

Can Little Corpses Forgive, or Be Apologized To?
Awakening from Canada's Big Lie
by Kevin D. Annett
www.hiddenfromhistory.org

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it .
Adolf Hitler, 1925

You have to admit it, but the Canadian establishment has to be pretty nervous these days, if you judge by its unfolding circus in Winnipeg.

I expected at first for the Indian residential school "Truth and Reconciliation" (TRC) bandwagon to do its usual photo op and move on, after the typically expensive fanfare and self-congratulations. But no. The lies and obscenities are growing on what they feed on. Hot on the heels of the TRC posturing there is descending on Winnipeg in a single week 280 world religious leaders, followed by a United Nations human rights delegation, and finally, Queen Elizabeth herself - all of them bubbling with praise for Canada's human rights record towards aboriginal people.

Liz Windsor, true to form, will have the unmitigated gall to unveil a statue of herself in Winnipeg on July 3, just before laying a piece of soil from Runnymede, where Magna Carta was signed, at the foundation of Canada's new "human rights museum", which hosts not a single exhibit of the genocide of Indians in Canada.

Some of us wrote to Queen Liz over two years ago, asking her to identify where the children who died at the hands of her church and state are buried. She never replied. But William Combes, who survived torture and starvation at the Catholic Indian residential school in Kamloops, B.C., wants the Queen to also explain what happened to ten native children who were last seen in her company in the fall of 1964, and disappeared forever.

"The Queen showed up at the school one day in September, she and her husband, when I was eleven" described William on my radio program last year.

"All of us kids at the school were given clean clothes and breakfast that day for her royal visit. We went down to a big field near Dead Man's Creek and had a picnic with her after she did her tour. After that, she went off with seven boys and three girls, and we never saw any of them, ever again."

The truth is that the topsoil has finally blown off the mass graves of more than 50,000 children who never returned from residential school, and those responsible are doing their damnedest to distract all of us from those revealed, tiny corpses. And what better decoy to use than an appeal to our deep collective need, as the guilty party, to be forgiven and to get off lightly for our crime?

A Big Lie can only be believed if those hearing it need to believe it: and in this case, Canadians' need for self-absolution for their century-long slaughter of innocent children has been our primary response to the residential schools revelation.

Every politician and Bishop in Canada knows this, and they've crafted their rhetoric and actions accordingly. But there's an odd sort of panic in the way they're going about it, using such overkill in their ridiculous stacking and censoring of their "official inquiry" into themselves that it suggests a deep and underlying uncertainty and fear by church and state.Undoubtedly this explains how thickly Ottawa and its church partners have been laying it on in Winnipeg since June 16, relying on a smiling Governor General, church celebrities, and the Queen herself to push the Big Lie that every crime, and every corpse, can be swept away with the right words.

The trouble with overkill is that it produces the opposite of its desired effect. For even residential school survivors who came to the TRC believing in it have come away hurt, angry and determined to be heard in some other forum.

Shirley, a Cree woman from northern Saskatchewan, told me,

"Nobody would pay our way to Winnipeg, and there was twenty of us who wanted to speak. So I came all by myself and I waited three days, and I never got to be heard. Except for a few token Indians, the whites were running the show, and they kept looking at me suspiciously and said I had to let them see my statement before I could speak. I said to them, I just want to speak, I don't have it written out, and they just snubbed me after that."

Peter Yellow Quill, an Anishinabe traditional chief who helped lead an anti-TRC protest outside the event, said afterwards,

"People themselves kept raising the whole missing children thing. They kept saying, 'We need help finding our dead relatives.' They were just ignored. There weren't court reporters present so everyone could see it wasn't even a proper hearing. I think the government people are just exposing themselves and they have no way out, really, and it worries them."

Voices like Shirley and Peter never reach "mainstream" Canada or the world, thanks to the loyal compliance of the media in shutting them out. A total of eight different news agencies refused to report our anti-TRC protest in Winnipeg, or quote natives who called for an international inquiry into genocide in Canada, including the CBC, the Globe and Mail, the Winnipeg Free Press, CTV, the Canadian Press and even ostensibly "radical" news agencies like Rabble and Canadian Dimension magazine.

"It was a total media blackout on us, by everybody" commented one protester.

"The only reason reporters would call me up would be to find out what we were doing that day, probably to tell the feds or the cops. But they'd never do a story on us."

All of this, of course, is a sign of the impact the voices of the living, and the dead, are having on churches and a government which, like the Vatican itself, have run out of options as they stand finally exposed as mass murderers and serial child rapists.

My problem these days is less with the criminals - for they are, after all, ultimately just corporations in damage control - and more with the masses of Canadians, beginning with "progressives" of every hue, who stand by with absolute non-interest regarding the greatest crime and cover-up in our history.

Awakening from a lie, particularly a huge and historical one, is always difficult. But when so many "activists" across Canada studiously shun our rallies at churches demanding that the corpses of children be returned, or that child rapists in high places be arrested and tried, then one wonders what has happened to the soul and the conscience of our people.

After years of acting in the wilderness to expose and undo the Canadian genocide, our efforts are finally igniting a response around the world, especially in the recent formation of an eight-nation International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State - a body that will be confronting the Pope in September and convening local non-governmental tribunals throughout the fall in Europe and on this continent.

In the meantime, it is incumbent on all Canadians to at least loosen their mental and spiritual subservience to the Big Lie and Criminal Conspiracy called Christian Canada - and shift their allegiance away from a murderous Crown and Church to a new social order that some have called a Republic of Kanata.

Stay tuned.

.........................................................................................................................

Kevin Annett is a community minister, author and award-winning film maker who lives in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, Canada. He is a co-founder of The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State, and can be heard every Monday at 1 pm (pacific time) on his program "Hidden from History" at www.coopradio.org .

ph: 386-323-5774
260 Kennedy St.
nanaimo, B.C. Canada V9R 2H8

Read and Hear the truth of Genocide in Canada, past and present, at this website: www.hiddenfromhistory.org , and watch Kevin's award-winning documentary film UNREPENTANT on the same website.

UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide
- Winner, Best Foreign Documentary Film, Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, March 2007, Best Director of a Foreign Documentary, New York Independent Film Festival, October 2006
- Winner, Best Canadian Film, Creation Aboriginal Film Festival, Edmonton, 2009


“Kevin is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than many who have received it in the past.”
- Dr. Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor Emeritus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"As a long time front line worker with the Elders' Council at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, I stand behind what Kevin Annett is trying to do for our people. The genocide that continues today and which stemmed from the residential schools needs to be exposed. Kevin Annett helps break the silence, and brings the voice of our people all over the world."
Carol Muree Martin - Spirit Tree Woman
Nisgaa Nation

"I gave Kevin Annett his Indian name, Eagle Strong Voice, in 2004 when I adopted him into our Anishinabe Nation. He carries that name proudly because he is doing the job he was sent to do, to tell his people of their wrongs. He speaks strongly and with truth. He speaks for our stolen and murdered children. I ask everyone to listen to him and welcome him."
Chief Louis Daniels - Whispers Wind
Elder, Turtle Clan, Anishinabe Nation
Winnipeg, Manitoba

The TRUTH about Canada: Child asks "WHY?!"

Canada's court-ordered, internationally monitored 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission'into the 'Indian' Residential Schools has just begun. All Canadians need to understand that these were not just 'schools', but a government designed policy for a means of destroying the culture, customs, heritage and birthrights of Indigenous Peoples. In particular, the schools were planned by Canada's government "to take the land out of the Indians hands". (Egerton Ryerson, 1847) The 'Indian' Residential Schools were just one of Canada's weapons of GENOCIDE against Indigenous Peoples who had, and have legal title to the lands and resources of Canada.

The struggle continues for Indigenous Peoples of 'Kanata' to reclaim their birthright - Aboriginal Rights and Title to the lands of Canada - a say in development and a share in the revenues from the land. Indigenous Peoples also struggle to overcome the horrific personal legacies of Canada's 'Indian' Residential Schools - the traumas of over 100 years of chronic abuse and neglect, separation from family and culture, and the losses of friends and relatives who died or 'disappeared' in the schools.

Over 50,000 Indigenous children died or disappeared in Canada's 'Indian' Residential Schools, and their fates and burial places remain a mystery as their graves are unmarked and sometimes hidden: Unmarked and mass graves of these children exist all across Canada.
NOTE: See sidebar, and see previous articles here, esp. Globe and Mail.
http://grannyrantson.blogspot.com/search/label/%27Indian%27%20Residential%20Schools
and SEE DOCUMENTARY FILM
UNREPENTANT: CANADA'S GENOCIDE

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/06/16/man-truh-reconcilation-commission-foster-care.html#socialcomments

Boy, 11, slams residential schools legacy
Last Updated: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 | 9:28 PM CST Comments134Recommend235
CBC News
Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, speaks during a sharing circle in which persons affected by residential schools shared their experiences. Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, speaks during a sharing circle in which persons affected by residential schools shared their experiences. (John Woods/Canadian Press)

An 11-year-old boy stole the spotlight at the opening day of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings into the tragedy of Canada's residential schools.

The former foster child, who turned up to ceremonies at The Forks in Winnipeg on Wednesday, told CBC News that members of his family still suffer from the aftershocks the federal government's former policies had on his grandparents and elders.

He cannot be identified because he's a former ward of the child-welfare system — a system he says continues to remove children from their homes and places them in care where they are sometimes subjected to abuse.

'I want a good explanation why all our elders went to residential schools.'— Former Manitoba foster child, 11

In Manitoba, recent data from the provincial children's advocate shows there are more kids in state care than ever before, most of them spread across a number of regional child-welfare authorities throughout the province.

"When I was a baby, like two years old, I was taken away from my Mom to a foster home," the boy said. "And still nothing has changed. They might do something today for residential schools but nothing's changed.

"Well, some kids are still in foster homes, still kids are still being treated bad and you cannot take away what happen to those people that went to residential schools," he said.

He wondered why the government wanted residential schools to exist in the first place, given their legacy of damage and trauma.

"That doesn't, what you call, make sense — like why would they do that?," the boy said. "And still, still, still today, our grandfathers and grandmothers — our elders — are still sad about what happened," he said.

"I want a good explanation why all our elders went to residential schools."
Stories note loss of language

About 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were forced to attend the government and church-run schools over much of the last century. The last one closed outside Regina in 1996. About 85,000 former students are still alive.
Jack Beardy, 65, leans against his cane during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's opening ceremonies in Winnipeg on Wednesday morning. Jack Beardy, 65, leans against his cane during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's opening ceremonies in Winnipeg on Wednesday morning. (John Woods/Canadian Press)

The $60-million truth commission, meant to expose and expiate the pain and suffering caused by the policy, was part of a landmark deal reached with survivors who had filed a class-action lawsuit against Ottawa and the churches that ran the schools.

Others also shared their experiences — some in private, some in public — with those at the commission charged with recording their stories for a national public archive.

Robert Joseph, from British Columbia, told the commission he was sexually abused by two people as a young student. He said he used to hide under his blankets and dream about his family, whom he was not allowed to see.

Leanne Sleigh, from Alberta, told the commission she felt worthless after attending a residential school where she was sexually abused.

Mary Simon, head of Canada's largest Inuit group, said she was made to feel ashamed of her culture at a day school in northern Quebec. She said she had her hand strapped whenever she spoke her language.
Healing and forgiveness

While many spoke of their trauma and anger toward the government and those who ran the schools, others, such as Rev. Guy Lavallee from St. Laurent, Man., spoke of the need for healing and forgiveness.

Lavallee, a Catholic priest who is Metis, said he understands why people are upset.

"I think that animosity has been in the minds [and] hearts of survivors for many years now," he said. "They have the opportunity to express themselves fully here."

All Canadians need to take part in the commission's work, he said.

It is expected that more than 5,000 people, including former students, leaders of aboriginal organizations, church groups and members of the general public will attend the event during its four days in Winnipeg.

The commission has the ability to record as many as 600 statements from survivors during its time in the city.

By noon Wednesday, about 50 people had given one.

AND SEE MORE ...
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/06/16/man-truh-reconcilation-commission-foster-care.html#socialcomments


Read more:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/06/16/man-truh-reconcilation-commission-foster-care.html#socialcomments#ixzz0r6vlJSLw

Deja vu: Canada's 'Indian' Residential Schools ... and now the Roma children??

From article below:
“The [next] government’s agenda must include a program designed to gradually put as many Roma children as possible into boarding schools and gradually separate them from the life they live in their settlements,”

... HMMM! ... sounds an awful lot like this ...
"Their education must consist not merely training of the mind, but of a weaning from the habits and feelings of their ancestors, and the acquirements of the language, art and customs of civilized life."
Egerton Ryerson, 'father' of Canada's 'Indian' Residential Schools (1847)

... AND this ...
"I want to get rid of the Indian problem...Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question and no Indian department."
(Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1913-1932)

...AND this ...
Nicholas Flood Davin Report of 1879 noted that "the industrial school is the principal feature of the policy known as that of 'aggressive civilization'....Indian culture is a contradiction in terms...they are uncivilized...the aim of education is to destroy the Indian."

...AND this too?? ...
"It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habituating so closely in the residential schools and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this does not justify a change in the policy of this Department which is geared towards a final solution of our Indian Problem."
(Duncan Campbell Scott)
www.shannonthunderbird.com/residential_schools.htm

Boarding schools for Roma kids?

by Claire Ward on Wednesday, May 12, 2010 2:40pm - 2 Comments

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/05/12/boarding-schools-for-roma-kids/

In an attempt to integrate future generations of Roma into European society, the Slovakian government has controversially proposed to send children of Roma families to state-run boarding schools. Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico made the announcement in March following a damning report by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay during her annual address. Pillay slammed Slovakia for the “deteriorating” situation of its impoverished, widely unemployed Roma citizens, who represent around 10 per cent of Slovakia’s overall population of 5.4 million.

“The [next] government’s agenda must include a program designed to gradually put as many Roma children as possible into boarding schools and gradually separate them from the life they live in their settlements,” said Fico, whose left-wing Smer party is facing a June election. “It seems that there is no other system. Many things have been tried. If we don’t do it, we will raise another generation of Roma which will not be able to integrate.”

A recent EU summit in Spain focusing on the Roma situation in Europe concluded that tens of thousands of Roma children are currently sent to schools for the mentally disabled, and suffer from a widely adopted systemic racism that perpetuates the segregation problem. Fico’s solution hasn’t been rejected by the EU, on the condition that the schools are voluntary and temporary. The Slovak government has confirmed preliminary approval of the plan by top Roma officials, and that the schooling would be indeed offered on a voluntary basis.

But human rights organizations have decried Fico’s solution. “[The Canadian Roma community] are very upset about it,” says Ronald Lee, a Hamilton-based Roma-Canadian author and activist. “It’s like native children in Canada being sent to residential schools. It destroys the ethnicity, the culture, the language, the sense of identity. How are they going to be treated in these boarding schools? Prejudice over there is rampant.”

-----------------------------------------

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group

GENOCIDE "Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
GENOCIDE@WIKI

Natives died in droves as Ottawa ignored warnings

Tuberculosis took the lives of students at residential schools for at least 40 years

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GRANNYNOTE: AS CANADA'S COURT-ORDERED, UN-SUPERVISED 'TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION' TRIES AGAIN IN 2010 TO BEGIN ITS VVORK, A REVIEVV OF THE HEINOUS FACTS ... THE TRUTH OF CANADA'S ACTIONS ... IS NECESSARY.

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THIS INFORMATION TO ALL CANADIANS
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Globe and Mail investigation

BILL CURRY AND KAREN HOWLETT

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

April 24, 2007 at 1:30 AM EST

OTTAWA — As many as half of the aboriginal children who attended the early years of residential schools died of tuberculosis, despite repeated warnings to the federal government that overcrowding, poor sanitation and a lack of medical care were creating a toxic breeding ground for the rapid spread of the disease, documents show.

A Globe and Mail examination of documents in the National Archives reveals that children continued to die from tuberculosis at alarming rates for at least four decades after a senior official at the Department of Indian Affairs initially warned in 1907 that schools were making no effort to separate healthy children from those sick with the highly contagious disease.


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GRANNYNOTE: IN 1901, IT BECAME CANADIAN POLICY TO SEGREGATE PEOPLE VVITH TUBERCULOSIS FROM OTHER PEOPLE TO AVOID THE SPREAD OF THE DEADLY DISEASE. NO SUCH EFFORTS VVERE MADE TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN IN CANADA'S 'INDIAN' RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS. THEY DIED IN NUMBERS SO HIGH THAT IT COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED BY NORMAL TRANSMISSION. IT VVAS DELIBERATE MASS MURDER PERPETRATED BY THE GOVERNMENTS OF CANADA AND THE CATHOLIC, ANGLICAN AND UNITED CHURCHES OF CANADA.
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Peter Bryce, the department's chief medical officer, visited 15 Western Canadian residential schools and found at least 24 per cent of students had died from tuberculosis over a 14-year period. The report suggested the numbers could be higher, noting that in one school alone, the death toll reached 69 per cent.

With less than four months to go before Ottawa officially settles out of court with most former students, a group calling itself the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared Residential School Children is urging the government to acknowledge this period in the tragic residential-schools saga – and not just the better-known cases of physical and sexual abuse.

Last week, Liberal MP Gary Merasty wrote to Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice asking the government to look into the concerns. Mr. Prentice's spokesman, Bill Rogers, told The Globe that departmental officials have been asked to meet with native groups.

Some of their stories, including tales of children buried in unmarked graves beside the schools, are told in a new documentary by Kevin Annett, a former United Church minister, titled Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide.

Mr. Annett, as well as some academics, argue that the government's handling, combined with Canada's official policy of removing children from their homes for 10 months each year to attend distant schools, does indeed fit the United Nations definition of genocide.

The UN definition, adopted after the Second World War, lists five possible acts that qualify as genocide, of which killing is only one. The fifth act is described as “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

But transcripts of debates in 1952 of the House of Commons external affairs committee, reviewed by The Globe, show public servants advised politicians not to enshrine a definition of genocide into law, despite Canada's promise internationally to do so.

In 2000, four years after the last residential school closed, the government finally adopted a limited definition of genocide, excluding the line about forcible transfer of children. But courts have rejected native claims of genocide against Ottawa and the churches because Canada had no law banning genocide while the schools were operating.

“It's another crime,” said Roland Chrisjohn, a professor of native studies at St. Thomas University who has written extensively on the subject. “Canada can't define genocide to suit its own purposes.”
(See http://www.dominionpaper.ca/original_peoples/2006/10/12/like_weeds.html )

Few argue that the policy was genocidal in the Nazi sense of deliberately killing people. Rather, the focus was on killing native culture in the name of assimilation, said John Milloy, a Trent University professor.

“The purpose of the [federal government's] policy is to eradicate Indians as a cultural group,” said Prof. Milloy, who has had more access to government files on the subject than any other researcher. “If genocide has to do with destroying a people's culture, this is genocidal, no doubt about it. But to call it genocidal is to misunderstand how the system works.”

Whatever the definition, there is no disputing the deadly swath tuberculosis cut through native schools.

Dr. Bryce followed up his 1907 report with a second one two years later, this time on the toll TB was taking in Alberta residential schools. He recommended that Ottawa take over responsibility of the schools from church control.

The Globe has uncovered letters in the archives showing that many others issued similar warnings. Just a few months after Dr. Bryce's 1909 report, the department's Indian agent for Duck Lake, Sask., wrote to his Ottawa colleagues: “The department should realize that under present circumstances about one-half of the children who are sent to the Duck Lake boarding school die before the age of 18, or very shortly afterward.”

Another document published in 1914 shows Dr. Bryce's findings were accepted by Duncan Campbell Scott, the most influential senior Indian Affairs official of the period. “It is quite within the mark to say that fifty per cent of the children who passed through these schools did not live to benefit from the education which they had received therein,” Mr. Scott wrote in an essay.

But one of the documents obtained by The Globe reveals Mr. Scott's department rejected the doctor's recommendations because the government did not want to upset the churches that ran the schools.

The residential schools were an extension of religious missionary work. They started receiving federal support in 1874 as part of Canada's campaign to assimilate aboriginals into Christian society by obliterating their language, religion and culture. Well over 100,000 native children passed through the schools, most of which were closed in the mid-1970s.

The tuberculosis problem was symptomatic of the deplorable living conditions for the thousands of children uprooted from their communities and placed in the care of strangers. Tuberculosis is one of the deadliest infectious diseases, entering the body through breathing and infecting the lungs. It can then spread to the central nervous system, bones and joints, according to the Canadian Lung Association.

In May, 1930, at the Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia, officials were coping with an outbreak of tuberculosis seven months after the facility opened. But it was the arrival several years later of James Paul, a new student with an advanced case of tuberculosis, that raised the ire of the school's visiting physician.

“Evidently somebody has mistaken our residential school for a TB sanatorium,” D. F. MacInnis says in a letter to Indian Affairs.

Later, Dr. MacInnis wrote to the school principal: “We are apparently getting all the advanced TB cases and syphilities in the three provinces shipped into our school and apparently there is no way left for us to keep them out. It is very unfair to the children who are clean and well.”

Although most students from this period are no longer alive, some who attended later recall sharing sleeping quarters with dying children.

“I've known some students that died there and I don't know how they died. All we know is we had their funeral service,” said Harry Lucas, 66, who attended Christie Indian Residential on Vancouver Island from 1948 to 1958.

“There were quite a few grave sites there that I always questioned. We were able to sleep next to a person that was dying. They didn't put them away in separate rooms. That was always kind of spooky for me.”

Ted Quewezance, the executive director of the National Residential School Survivors Society, attended Gordon Residential School and St. Philip Residential School in Saskatchewan from 1960 to 1969. He said he has spoken to thousands of former students across Canada.

“We'd see [funerals] monthly,” he said. “We were never able to ask what they were. It's no different right across the country. There's even some graves unmarked. Kids were buried at the school, but now we're talking about how do we bring our survivors home?”

The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared Residential School Children claims thousands of children are buried in unmarked graves near the schools. Many of their stories are contained in the documentary by Mr. Annett ( Link: Unrepentent ) who says he was ousted from the United Church in 1995 after raising concerns about the church's residential-school history.

(The United Church rejects Mr. Annett's version of events, pointing to a three-week termination hearing in which several witnesses said he was a confrontational figure who was a poor manager of his Port Alberni church.)

James Scott of the United Church said there is relatively little solid information on deaths at the schools because archivists have been so focused on researching claims of living former students.

“My sense is that the more we find out about [the schools], the deeper our understanding of the catastrophic impact of the residential schools on aboriginal people, on their families and their culture,” he said.

Bede Hubbard of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said the Roman Catholic Church, which ran most of the schools, noted that previous research has shown the churches made many pleas to Ottawa for more money to improve standards.

“I didn't realize that the rates of tuberculosis were that high. In the 1930s, tuberculosis was rampant in Canada itself, so it shouldn't be surprising then that it was also a problem in the residential schools.”

Prof. Milloy of Trent University is the only outsider to have accessed the locked vault of Indian Affairs records through his role as a senior researcher for the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

In 1999, he published his research in a book titled A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System. Prof. Milloy expressed discomfort with the campaign of Mr. Annett and others to introduce language such as genocide and “aboriginal holocaust.”

What government and church records do show, he said, is that the deaths were primarily due to the policy of paying churches on a per-capita basis to run the schools. Numerous letters indicate that because of the funding policy, churches would admit sick children and refuse to send ailing ones home. Pleas to the department for more funding fell on deaf ears.

“That's why there's so many kids sleeping in so few beds in so many dormitories across the country,” Prof. Milloy said. “It has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of ‘Let's get them sick with tuberculosis and wipe them out as a species on the earth.' It's the fact that the feds won't spend any money on this, and that's what it leads to.”

As for Dr. Bryce, the man who first sounded the alarm, he was shuffled to another department. The position of chief medical officer was terminated and the government appears to have made no further effort to gather statistics on deaths at the schools. Ottawa did not take over control of all schools until 1969.

In 1922, after he retired, Dr. Bryce penned a diatribe against Ottawa's lack of response to his reports.

The title: The Story of a National Crime.

A HISTORY OF SHAME

EARLY YEARS

Started before Confederation as part of religious missionary work, residential schools originally focused on replacing aboriginal beliefs with Christianity. More than 70 per cent of the schools were run by the Roman Catholic Church; the rest by the Anglican and United Churches.

FEDERAL INVOLVEMENT

The federal government started funding residential schools in 1874, using American Industrial Schools as the model for introducing manual labour and agricultural skills to natives. To encourage children to use English and French, they were physically punished for speaking their own languages.

OTTAWA TAKES OVER

There were 72 residential schools in 1948 and 9,368 students. Ottawa took full control of the schools in 1969 and most were closed during the 1970s. The last school shut its doors in 1996.

THE LEGACY

Stories of physical and sexual abuse began to emerge in the 1980s, and became major news when Manitoba Chief Phil Fontaine, now the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, went public with his story of sexual abuse as a student.

In April of 2006, Ottawa reached a $1.9-billion agreement with former students to settle their class-action lawsuits out of court and compensate for the loss of language and culture. Further money has been set aside to settle claims of physical and sexual abuse. Students have until Aug. 20 to accept the package. Bill Curry

RAISING CONCERN

January, 1919

Duncan Campbell Scott, a senior Indian Affairs official, talks about the inadequacy of the school buildings in a memorandum to Arthur Meighen, then Superintendent General of Indian Affairs. “They were unsanitary and they were undoubtedly chargeable with a very high death rate among the pupils.”

December, 1920

A report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs says 33 students at the Sarcee school near Calgary are afflicted with tuberculosis.

February, 1925

W.M. Graham, Indian Commissioner for Saskatchewan, says in a letter to Mr. Scott: “We will have to do something to stop this indiscriminate admission of children without first passing a medical exam. ... I quite often hear from the Indians that they do not want to send their children to school as it is a place where they are sent to die.”

February, 1925

Russell T. Ferrier, Superintendent of Indian Education, writes to Indian commissioners and agents, saying each child should be pronounced fit by a medical officer before being admitted to a school. “When a pupil's health becomes a matter of concern soon after admission, the consequent parental alarm and distrust militates against successful recruiting.”

March, 1932

The Department of Indian Affairs announces that as a result of spending cutbacks, it cannot authorize admitting children with tuberculosis to a sanatorium or hospital unless the patient requires “care for relief of actual suffering.” Karen Howlett

Original source. www.theglobeandmail.com

Natives died in droves as Ottawa ignored warnings


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GRANNYNOTE: THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA IS ATTEMPTING TO CONTROL THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION BY CONTROLLIN ITS FUNDS AND BY STACKING THE COMMISSION VVITH GOVERNMENT/CHURCH-FRIENDLY APPOINTEES.

VVILL CANADIANS ACCEPT THE VVHITEASH?
DO VVE VVANT TO KNOVV THE REAL TRUTH?

Vatican told bishops to cover up sex abuse

Expulsion threat in secret documents

[url=http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Observer/documents/2003/08/16/Criminales.pdf]Read the 1962 Vatican document (PDF file)[/url]

'These instructions went out to every bishop around the globe and would certainly have applied in Britain. It proves there was an international conspiracy by the Church to hush up sexual abuse issues. It is a devious attempt to conceal criminal conduct and is a blueprint for deception and concealment.'

* Antony Barnett, public affairs editor
* The Observer, Sunday 17 August 2003 01.27 BST

The Vatican instructed Catholic bishops around the world to cover up cases of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church. The Observer has obtained a 40-year-old confidential document from the secret Vatican archive which lawyers are calling a 'blueprint for deception and concealment'. One British lawyer acting for Church child abuse victims has described it as 'explosive'.

The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of 'strictest' secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication.

They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the instructions are to 'be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [Vatican] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.'

The document, which has been confirmed as genuine by the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, is called 'Crimine solicitationies', which translates as 'instruction on proceeding in cases of solicitation'.

It focuses on sexual abuse initiated as part of the confessional relationship between a priest and a member of his congregation. But the instructions also cover what it calls the 'worst crime', described as an obscene act perpetrated by a cleric with 'youths of either sex or with brute animals (bestiality)'.

Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases 'in the most secretive way... restrained by a perpetual silence... and everyone... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office... under the penalty of excommunication'.

Texan lawyer Daniel Shea uncovered the document as part of his work for victims of abuse from Catholic priests in the US. He has handed it over to US authorities, urging them to launch a federal investigation into the clergy's alleged cover-up of sexual abuse.

He said: 'These instructions went out to every bishop around the globe and would certainly have applied in Britain. It proves there was an international conspiracy by the Church to hush up sexual abuse issues. It is a devious attempt to conceal criminal conduct and is a blueprint for deception and concealment.'

British lawyer Richard Scorer, who acts for children abused by Catholic priests in the UK, echoes this view and has described the document as 'explosive'.

He said: 'We always suspected that the Catholic Church systematically covered up abuse and tried to silence victims. This document appears to prove it. Threatening excommunication to anybody who speaks out shows the lengths the most senior figures in the Vatican were prepared to go to prevent the information getting out to the public domain.'

Scorer pointed out that as the documents dates back to 1962 it rides roughshod over the Catholic Church's claim that the issue of sexual abuse was a modern phenomenon.

He claims the discovery of the document will raise fresh questions about the actions of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.

Murphy-O'Connor has been accused of covering up allegations of child abuse when he was Bishop of Arundel and Brighton. Instead of reporting to the police allegations of abuse against Michael Hill, a priest in his charge, he moved him to another position where he was later convicted for abusing nine children.

Although Murphy-O'Connor has apologised publicly for his mistake, Scorer claims the secret Vatican document raises the question about whether his failure to report Hill was due to him following this instruction from Rome.

Scorer, who acts for some of Hill's victims, said: 'I want to know whether Murphy-O'Connor knew of these Vatican instructions and, if so, did he apply it. If not, can he tell us why not?'

A spokesman for the Catholic Church denied that the secret Vatican orders were part of any organised cover-up and claims lawyers are taking the document 'out of context' and 'distorting it'.

He said: 'This document is about the Church's internal disciplinary procedures should a priest be accused of using confession to solicit sex. It does not forbid victims to report civil crimes. The confidentiality talked about is aimed to protect the accused as applies in court procedures today. It also takes into consideration the special nature of the secrecy involved in the act of confession.' He also said that in 1983 the Catholic Church in England and Wales introduced its own code dealing with sexual abuse, which would have superseded the 1962 instructions. Asked whether Murphy-O'Connor was aware of the Vatican edict, he replied: 'He's never mentioned it to me.'

Lawyers point to a letter the Vatican sent to bishops in May 2001 clearly stating the 1962 instruction was in force until then. The letter is signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, the most powerful man in Rome beside the Pope and who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the office which ran the Inquisition in the Middle Ages.

Rev Thomas Doyle, a US Air Force chaplain in Germany and a specialist in Church law, has studied the document. He told The Observer: 'It is certainly an indication of the pathological obsession with secrecy in the Catholic Church, but in itself it is not a smoking gun.

'If, however, this document actually has been the foundation of a continuous policy to cover clergy crimes at all costs, then we have quite another issue. There are too many authenticated reports of victims having been seriously intimidated into silence by Church authorities to assert that such intimidation is the exception and not the norm.

'If this document has been used as a justification for this intimidation then we possibly have what some commentators have alleged, namely, a blueprint for a cover-up. This is obviously a big "if" which requires concrete proof.'

Additional research by Jason Rodrigues

more ...
[url=http://www.google.ca/search?q=Crimine+solicitationies&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a][/url]

Latter Day Zombies

Residential School Survivors Occupy St. Andrew's Wesley United Church to protect the remains of children killed at the Alberni residential School Two dozen aboriginal survivors of the Indian residential schools non-violently occupied St. Andrew's Wesley United Church in Vancouver today to stop the destruction of the grave sites of children who died at the former Alberni Indian Residential School. The protestors entered the church sanctuary as the worship service commenced and unfurled a banner declaring "All The Children Need A Proper Burial". After leafletting the congregation and making a statement, the protestors left, vowing to return if the United Church did not surrender the remains of native children who died under their care and halt further destruction of their burial sites. The occupation was prompted by the partial destruction this week of the last building of the United Church's former Alberni Indian residential school, where eyewitnesses claim that the remains of former students are buried. "They're destroying the evidence of their crime, and under the law, that's a crime" said Bingo, a survivor of the Alert Bay residential school. "We're not listening to their bullshit anymore. We'll be back with more people next time." Squamish hereditary Chief Kiapilano, who legally evicted the United Church from his territory last March, endorsed the occupation and called for similar actions by other residential school survivors. These occupations of United Churches during their Sunday services will continue and will escalate until the fallen children are brought home, their killers are brought to justice, and the residential school crime sites are all protected. Issued by The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared (Vancouver) Contact: 1-888-265-1007 or 250-753-3345 www.hiddenfromhistory.org Note: A video transcript of today's occupation will be posted this week on the website, above, and is available on request. http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=64768866488&h=NCNoz&u=geEa9

A blog about things no one wants talked about.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Latter Day Zombies

I rarely go to church but last Sunday in Vancouver I attended the occupation of Saint Andrew's Wesley United Church by survivors of Canada's residential school genocide. About twenty aboriginal men and women entered the church just as I was sitting down, and lined up in front of the altar holding a banner calling for the return of the 50,000 missing children's remains, and a proper burial. The church, which had been humming with pre-service chatter, suddenly became silent. After conferring quickly, the minister and one or two other robed officers approached the group and talked with them. For a few moments, the atmosphere was tense and uncomfortable. Then the minister addressed the congregation and welcomed "our friends" who had a message to deliver. He did this in a superficially friendly and grandstanding way that showed he was on top of the situation and knew exactly how to deal with it. The native men and women stood holding their banner. In contrast to the minister, none of them were smiling. They looked as if they had just absorbed another insult. No one in the congregation moved or responded. All eyes were focused on the visitors and the minister who stood awkwardly rubbing his hands together in one of those ritualized gestures expressing benevolence and Christian tolerance. The church seemed suddenly filled with the disappointment and anger of the native people. I felt tears welling up, inside and around me. When they all slowly turned and began silently filing down the aisle towards the front door, it was as if they had had enough of this place. I felt like running after them, but a family had just sat down next to me, blocking my exit. Once the natives had disappeared, the minister was all smiles again, calling on the congregation to "wave your hands wildly" and shout requests for favourite hymns. The heavy mood had lifted, and now we were going to be entertained by the Holy spirit. For the next hour, I squirmed in my seat as Rev. Gary Paterson nimbly ran through his scripted Sunday routine. First came a children's pantomime about Christ healing a paralyzed man, performed with stuffed bears and children led by Paterson. Next, a sermon about a minister's weekly struggle to make his sermons relevant to parishioners. At times he raised his arms and threw back his head as if receiving inspiration from heaven. He digressed briefly into a commentary on the "guests" who had interrupted the service, and from there he talked about "illness" and the case of the paralyzed man who was saved by the holy spirit descending through a hole in the roof. He talked about "sin" as the root cause of sickness -- an ancient belief that still has meaning today. Never once did he address the theme of guilt, or atonement for crimes against humanity. The United Church has nothing, apparently, to say about that. When we were asked to turn to the people around us and shake hands and greet one another in the "spirit of the Lord," I was forced to look into one smiling face after another. As mouths repeated the ritual line, eyes told another story. They were eyes I would instinctively have avoided, filled with coldness, fear, secrecy. I started to think there was something strange about this church and its congregation. I turned my head once or twice to look at them, standing in their rows, astonishingly alike in Sunday clothes, as if they knew what was expected of church goers. In his struggle to be relevant, the minister seemed almost like a marionnette, calling on us to stand up again and make a "joyful noise to the Lord." It was, he said, our time to "rock." The guitars came out and the middle-aged choir put on a pathetic show of belting out a few "contemporary expressions of faith." The minister joined in the rapture, shaking to the Muzak, letting it all hang out for Jesus. How people manage to go through these motions week after week without choking, is beyond me. It takes a stronger person than I to take part in an orgy of phoniness, and walk out feeling at one with God's love and light. By the time it was over, I understood my place in the universe: out on the street with the native people who must know by now to expect nothing from a church that has been taken over by latter-day zombies.

MISSING CHILDREN: Infamous Port Alberni dormitory to be demolished Tuesday ... but some say it should be investigated first: The digging is happening again, in just a few days, at the very place that robbed Harry of his childhood and life. The United Church's old residential school building in Port Alberni is being demolished by the government and its trained seals called the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council, even though it's a proven crime site where hundreds of kids lie in unmarked graves. "When the girls were raped by the staff, they'd abort the babies and bury them between the walls, where nobody would find them" described Harriett Nahanee, who witnessed a murder at the school in 1946. "That old building is full of bones. They even had a cold storage room in the cellar where they kept the bodies before they buried them in the hills out back." That evidence will be obliterated on February 10, as the world watches and does nothing, as unmoved as when Harry tries to choose between a beating and merciless cold each night. (FULL TEXT BELOW) Infamous Port Alberni dormitory to be demolished Tuesday http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5ilz-9E2yE8ZjKo_X7N7hcTgdczAA VANCOUVER, B.C. — When Ben Nookemis was just another seven-year-old child torn away from his family and forced to attend the Port Alberni Indian Residential School, he and the other children would often pass the time crafting projects, such as stilts."We used to make them out of a two-by-two square piece of wood," he remembers.But it was on those stilts, and the extra height they provided his small frame, that Nookemis gained insight into the true horror of his surroundings."We would walk around on these things and it was just high enough for me to look into the supervisor's living quarters and I would see the supervisor sexually abusing these young girls," he says. Perhaps ... but perhaps there are also some truths to be reconciled first?

Feb 5

Harry Wilson, Continued: Why There is No Healing and Reconciliation

by Kevin Annett

I was going to begin this by observing that the poor, made and kept poor by us, are the only antidote to our self-deceptions. But to say so would be to repeat the crime, and use them, again, for our purpose. Instead, let his life judge us: Harry Wilson of the Heiltsuk nation, kidnapped and sodomized by Christians at age six, and for nine years after, at the United Church's Alberni Indian residential school; a witness to the violent murder of friends and relatives, and the discoverer of a young girl's dead body on the grounds of the school; drugged and straight-jacketed for a year when he spoke of what he saw to the Principal, another child rapist, who has never gone to jail. .................. Harry Wilson sleeps most nights now on the cold ground of Oppenheimer Park on pieces of cardboard he collects from nearby alleyways in Vancouver's downtown eastside. When he gets too cold, he risks dozing in the pews of nearby First United Church, where he usually gets beaten up and robbed. Last week, when I came across Harry slouched against a wall during one of my nightly walkabouts, the blood was still congealing over his swollen face. He wore no jacket, even though it was below freezing. "They took it when I was sleeping in the church" Harry muttered. "Took my coat, my watch, all my money. Then they socked me a few times." "Where was the night staff?" I asked him. "Aw, smoking crack outside. They don't do nothin' ..." First United Church proudly announced its "out of the cold" gimmick in December, opening their doors to the homeless at night thanks to a gift of $30,000 from city taxpayers to do what churches are supposed to be doing anyway. Before the handout, First United's doors stayed locked every night. One wonders what the $30,000 is being spent on, when Harry and other homeless aboriginals - made homeless by the torture they endured at the hands of the same United Church of Canada - can be so easily violated, once again. Beaten and robbed, while taxpayers fund crack-head church employees to sit outside. And they say the abuse stopped long ago. .................. East Hastings is like the Gaza strip: an urban concentration camp where the conquered are penned in and slaughtered when required. Harry is a veteran of the slaughter, somehow surviving it into his fifty sixth year. But he doesn't have much time left. Harry's steps are slower now, his face more sagging and worn, the scars bloodier and deeper each week, his hours utterly drowned by alcohol. He is dying in front of me, his life squeezed out by the same forces, to feed the same people. When the U.S. Army bombs civilians to pieces and then sends in their medics to treat the survivors, it's behaving exactly like the United Church of Canada, who first rape and kill innocent children in their residential schools, and then offer "healing" programs to those who survived. That's how the winners in history get to behave. The only real evidence of their crimes is people like Harry, and the bones of his friends who never made it out of the residential school. But church and state have shoved both Harry and those little corpses out of sight and mind: Harry to rot and die in obscurity on East Hastings street, and the bones of the dead to be dug up and destroyed. The digging is happening again, in just a few days, at the very place that robbed Harry of his childhood and life. The United Church's old residential school building in Port Alberni is being demolished by the government and its trained seals called the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council, even though it's a proven crime site where hundreds of kids lie in unmarked graves. "When the girls were raped by the staff, they'd abort the babies and bury them between the walls, where nobody would find them" described Harriett Nahanee, who witnessed a murder at the school in 1946. "That old building is full of bones. They even had a cold storage room in the cellar where they kept the bodies before they buried them in the hills out back." That evidence will be obliterated on February 10, as the world watches and does nothing, as unmoved as when Harry tries to choose between a beating and merciless cold each night. The United Church will stand by and do nothing, pretending that it hasn't murdered Harry and thousands of others. The RCMP will stand by and do nothing, either, since they helped to bury the slaughtered children. But they have warned me not to interfere with their latest destruction of evidence of a crime. The killing and coverup continues. Welcome to "Beautiful British Columbia." ......................................................................................................... 5 February, 2009 Kevin D. Annett 260 Kennedy St. Nanaimo, B.C. V9R 2H8 250-753-3345 / 1-888-265-1007 The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared www.hiddenfromhistory.org

Facing up to Canada's dark history
By Lorraine Mallinder Kahnewake, Canada http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7860552.stm From the late 19th Century up to the 1970s, an estimated 150,000 native children in Canada were seized from their parents and sent far away to state-funded, church-run schools to learn how to think, speak and act like white people. The country is still coming to terms with the disastrous results. Archive images from inside Canada's aboriginal residential schools In pictures Maybe I picked a bad day to visit. The place is a ghost town. I came here with the idea of taking a mental snapshot of life in Kahnewake, exclusively populated by members of the Mohawk nation, at the beginning of an important year for Canada's relations with its native peoples. In the coming months, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission will start touring the country to heal the scars of the residential schools system, a policy that resulted in thousands of deaths and devastated lives. With an estimated 80,000 former pupils still around today, many of whom witnessed or suffered sexual, physical and mental abuse, the debate over how much truth will be needed for reconciliation is stirring controversy. Bitter memories Back in the freezing present, I duck into a smoke shop, selling tax-free tobacco, for shelter. Star Eagle greets me from behind the counter and, eyeing my numb face with bemusement, offers me a coffee. "Truth and reconciliation? I ain't never heard of that," she says when I ask whether she is aware of the new commission. Now in her 50s, she has bitter memories of the residential schools regime. "People here are heart-broken about what they went through," she tells me. "They show their hearts on their faces and they don't know it." "I call it hard face," she says. Her eyes deaden and her features tense in a depiction of life in Kahnewake. Away from the reserve, in Ottawa, the Canadian capital, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has suffered some loss of face. Launched last year, it has had trouble getting off the ground. Its chief commissioner, a Mississauga Indian and a judge on the Ontario Court of Appeal, resigned in October after tussles over the body's mandate. As the politicking over his replacement continues, the public spotlight has been shifting from the healing of the living to the raising of the dead. It is accepted knowledge that a large proportion of the children, some estimates run into tens of thousands, died of tuberculosis in the cold, filthy schools. Spirit of the dead But recently, the story has taken a darker turn, as allegations of secret burials in mass graves, death by torture and fatal medical experiments have begun to surface. The man behind the new allegations is Kevin Annett, a defrocked Vancouver priest who was thrown out of the United Church in the mid 90s for exposing the schools scandal and challenging the clergy's sale of native lands. Whatever emerges from the process of truth and reconciliation, the ghosts will not go quietly The Truth and Reconciliation Commission cannot, under the terms of its mandate, subpoena documents or witnesses to investigate the claims. It has, however, ordered research into possible burial sites. It has also floated the idea of holding traditional ceremonies to ask the spirits of the dead children to return home to communities like Kahnewake. Annett tells me this is a cover-up. He wants a Nuremberg-style tribunal to hold government and church officials accountable for genocide. He also wants the children's bones to be dug up, forensically tested and returned home. I ask some native people about their views on Annett's campaign and receive a complex set of responses. While most say there is an element of truth in the shock allegations, not everyone supports the former priest. Willie Blackwater, a Gitxsan Indian, is well known in Canada for his landmark victory against the church and the government in a sexual abuse lawsuit in the 90s. He resents the idea that Annett, a white man who has never attended residential school, has somehow become the public face of the dead children. He believes Annett has "disgraced" native people with his public demands for the dead to be repatriated. I ask Blackwater what kind of outcome he would be happy with. He supports the truth and reconciliation process, but thinks that native people should be in charge. 'Locked in pain' I get the sense from my discussions with him and others that native people feel the Church and state, the white establishment, are driving the whole healing process. They feel excluded from the real decisions on truth and reconciliation. Maybe it stems from the experience of everyday life on reserves like Kahnewake, cut off from mainstream Canadian society, with no political or economic clout. The segregation is both enshrined in federal laws that define native status and self-imposed by wary native communities that frown upon intermarriage with outsiders. People in isolated reserves like Kahnewake are still haunted by memories of the residential schools era. For many, it is a world of drug and alcohol addiction, violence and high suicide rates. "Sometimes I feel people get annoyed with me for trying to be happy," says Star Eagle. "They're all locked in together with their pain." There is a real sense of foreboding as Canada prepares to come to terms with its dark history. Whatever emerges from the process of truth and reconciliation, the ghosts will not go quietly. From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday 31 January, 2009 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. 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