"Genocide, kill the Indian and save the man" Topic

"In October 2019, the Canadian government revealed the names of 2,800 victims of residential schools for Native American minors. Today there are already more than 1,100 nameless graves found in these boarding schools, but the debate continues, not bearing any fruit because no one wants to say the word. Unfortunately, this atrocity is but one of many chapters in a long history of repression and subjugation that today is more than 500 years old…"

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Armand

Can we simply recognize that, by 19th Century standards, the school programs were trying to help Native Americans?

Can we also acknowledge that children routinely died in the 19th Century, in the pre-antibiotics age?

All true Bill. But the schools were often quite brutal. Beatings if you spoke your traditional language. Locked in room for punishment ect.

But the schools were often quite brutal.

Agreed, but some of that was true in all schools.

The home environment was often challenging too.

Bill, you're deflecting. I'm pretty sure the students in "all schools" were allowed to speak their native English and probably didn't have their culture quashed unlike the Native Americans.

My grandmother attended an Indian school. It was barbaric.

Immigrant children were also punished for speaking their native languages.

And while the Progressives love to say "beaten", caned was actually the correct term. And that happened in regu;ar schools as well. Remember the old song

School days, school days
Good old golden rule days
Readin' and writin' and 'rithmetic
Taught to the tune of a hick'ry stick.

Nor were they allowed to go home at anytime during their school years. There is the story of one Kiowa boy who was taken from his family and sent to a boarding school. Years later he was allowed to return home. His Grandfather picked him up from the railroad depot. The boy could no longer speak Kiowa and the Grandfather could not speak English. He had become a stranger to his own family. Don't think this happen at public schools.

the school programs were trying to help Native Americans?

I believe the basis of 'help' was simply the presumption of native bad, us good and the results in terms of mortality compared to either staying at home or the rest of the society were pretty appalling.

The timing of the program was also pretty hideous. I can accept that the idea of cultural destruction in the name of assimilation was common in the 1860's and 1870's. Stupid and arrogant but kind of a thing in those times. Continuing that program in the 1950's through 1998 seems unforgiveable.

Thanks

Armand

the results in terms of mortality compared to either staying at home or the rest of the society were pretty appalling.

Not really. Child mortality was brutal in the period. Childhood diseases we take for granted, like measles, mumps, and chickenpox were far more deadly, due to lack of medical knowledge. And then there were the real killers – smallpox, rheumatic fever, whooping cough, scarlet fever, etc. Kids only had about a sixty percent chance of making it to adulthood.

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Child mortality was brutal in the period.

1870 yes, 1940 Not the same, 1970 No. As the CBC summary of the Commission noted, the odds of a Canadian Soldier dying in WW2 was 1 in 26, the odds of a kid dying in the Native schools was 1 in 25.

Here is a quote from the linked report -
During the program's first half-century, tuberculosis and then influenza were the primary killers. The neglect, abuse, lack of food, isolation from family and badly constructed buildings assisted disease in killing residential school "inmates," as Scott termed them. A lawyer who conducted a review in 1907 told the government, "Doing nothing to obviate the preventable causes of death, brings the Department within unpleasant nearness to the charge of manslaughter."

Childhood under age 5 mortality was about 20 – 25% until the 1930's – i.e. 1 in every 4 or 5 children died before their 5th birthday – period. That changed when i) antibiotics were developed (sulfanilamide, 1937), ii) vaccines were introduced (and as someone who worked in child health prior to H influenzae vaccination, I am an enthusiastic supporter of vaccines) and iii) public sanitation

One thing that residential schools did do was put native children together in a way that facilitated transmission of tuberculosis, a huge killer of First Nations people

Thanks also…

Armand

The article is from 2021. According to an article I found from 2023, no graves were found at the school.

According to what I could find, the first school for Indigenous peoples in Canada was founded in 1828. Assuming the numbers in the article are correct, 2,800 Indians died between 1828 and 1950. So, over the course of 122 years a total of 2,800 people died which averages to 23 a year. According to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, there were over 130 schools for Indians in Canada. That means, if my math is right, one person died at a school every 6 or 7 years. Considering the factors noted above, this doesn't sound like genocide to me.

I'm not saying I agree with the goals of the schools, but there doesn't seem to be evil intent. I'm guessing this is ginned up for political purposes.