Native remains lost?Destroyed files leave anonymous graves
By JORGE BARRERA, NATIONAL BUREAU

The United Church of Canada says it can do little to help relatives seeking the remains of Native children buried on the grounds of Indian residential schools because identification records have been lost or destroyed.

It's estimated thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Native children died in the care of church and government during the more than 100-year existence of residential schools.

The actual number may be impossible to determine, say experts.

Survivors and their families have for years called for a return of the children's remains to traditional lands. They now put their hopes on the work of a truth and reconciliation commission, created as part of the $2-billion residential school compensation package.

But many records were destroyed during the World War II push to recycle paper, said United Church spokesman Rev. James Scott. Others disappeared because of accidents and fires, he said.

"If the residential school system was to assimilate people not valued in our society, then records around them were not valued," said Scott.

'YOU HAD CHILDREN BURYING CHILDREN'

Children died from tuberculosis and other diseases, others were beaten to death or froze trying to flee.

Mike Cachagee, president of the National Residential School Survivor Society, remembers the funeral of a five-year-old girl who died from tuberculosis. She was placed in a handmade box and buried in a hand-dug grave.

"You had children burying children," said Cachagee.

Sharon Thira, executive director of Indian Residential School Survivors Society, said repatriation is essential for healing.

"Their spirits can't return ... They are still there and suffering," she said

The federal government has no record of the deaths or burials, said a spokeswoman. The government also won't apologize because "the underlying objective had been to try and provide an education," according to Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice.
.......................
April 18, 2007
Feds urged to repatriate Native remains
By JORGE BARRERA, NATIONAL BUREAU

The Conservative government needs to begin the process of finding and repatriating the remains of Native children who disappeared while in the care of government and church at Indian residential schools, says Saskatchewan Liberal MP Gary Merasty.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of children died throughout the existence of Indian residential schools.

UNMARKED GRAVES

Many of their bodies are buried on school grounds in unmarked graves. Families have for years called for the repatriation of the lost children's remains, but their pleas have so far fallen on deaf ears.

"I strongly believe that if the federal government were to make a serious effort to attempt to repatriate these remains, the First Nations communities would be very grateful," Merasty wrote in an April 17 letter to Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice, obtained by Sun Media. "They realize the inherent difficulties in this process and the goodwill gesture of the government to address this issue would be significant in facilitating the healing process."

Identifying the bodies may prove difficult. Many of the identification records of dead Native children were destroyed over the years. Church officials have said the records had no value for the overseers of the schools.

Some children died from diseases, while others were beaten to death or died trying to flee.

Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice's office said the minister had not seen Merasty's letter and could not comment.
............................
Genocide target of federal coverup: MP
Genocide' target of cover up: MP

By JORGE BARRERA, NATIONAL BUREAU
The federal government purposely destroyed key residential school documents to erase evidence of the cultural genocide it committed against First Nations people, a Native MP charged yesterday.

Indian Affairs pulped accident reports, inspector reports and principals' diaries, as well as monthly and yearly reports, by school and department officials in targeted purges, says a recent study on missing residential school files.

"There was an intentional effort to hide the evidence and destroy the evidence to protect themselves in the future," said Saskatchewan Liberal MP Gary Merasty, former Grand Chief of the Prince Albert Grand Council.

"They knew very well what they were doing. It was cultural genocide."

The documents could have shed light on the tragic fate of Native children, some as young as four years old, who disappeared while in church and state care, the report says.

"There was a general federal government policy to destroy many government files and ... there was a very high level of records destruction activity that occurred between 1936 and 1956," said the November 2006 report authored by Edward G. Sadowski, a professor in the law and politics department at Ontario's Algoma University College.

'DESTRUCTION TEAMS'

Between 1954 and 1956, Indian Affairs set up "Document Destruction Teams" as a result of a "more rigorous policy of file destruction in the Indian Affairs Branch" called for in a 1954 memo from a senior department official.

Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice has asked his department to compile documents to uncover the fate of the children who disappeared.

And see Globe and Mail coverage here ...
Canadians for Aboriginal Rights - Genocide

It looks like the lid is coming off publicly.
It is about time.

The way Canada has dealt with aboriginal people throughout history is absolutely horrific. Personally, I hope the UN throws the book at us.

How can we continue to pretend to have the values we pretend to have ... while we hide our murderous past. Just sickening.

I find it curious that there is absolutley no mention of this here on babble until I posted it, though it has been in the Sun and Globe all week.

If you are interested in knowing the whole truth ... WHO? ... HOW COULD THEY? ... WHY? ...
...this is a good place to start:

Film Review:UNREPENTANT: Canada's Genocide

Film: Canada's Genocide

[ 06 May 2007: Message edited by: saga ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by saga:
I find it curious that there is absolutley no mention of this here on babble until I posted it, though it has been in the Sun and Globe all week.

Is it possible that Canadians would rather this stay covered up? Is that it?

---

I'm sure you mean well, but this is a very poor way to start off a discussion.

To be fair, this is the first time I've seen this, and I'm still taking it in and trying to sort it out in my head. I heard about the abuse that happened in residential schools, but I think this is the first time I've heard that they actually killed people.

Yes, the death rates in the schools ranged from 30% to 70%.

There was more than negligence involved.

50 000 is an estimate, based on the death rates recorded and the total enrolment.

Records are spotty, nonexistent in many cases, but it is acknowledged that total enrolment was "well over 100 000" from the 1890's to 1996 when the last school closed.

The families want the children's remains returned.
They say ...
"No reconciliation without full disclosure".

It is not 'ancient history' either as some would like to believe. I was shocked to find that these things were happening while I was a kid in school too. There are lots of 'witnesses' still alive.

The first question I had was ... HOW COULD THEY DO THAT?
The next one is ... WHY?
The film 'Canada's Genocide' at the link above addresses that.

Pretty shocking to us Canadians ... the best country in the world to live in ... for some.

[ 26 April 2007: Message edited by: saga ]

BILL CURRY AND KAREN HOWLETT

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.

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."

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, 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.

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

BILL CURRY

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

April 25, 2007 at 6:12 AM EST

OTTAWA — Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice is ordering a new Truth and Reconciliation Commission to expand its mandate to include an investigation of deaths and disappearances at Canada's native residential schools.

The commission is being established as part of the government's multibillion-dollar settlement with former students. It will travel the country hearing and documenting stories from those who attended and worked at the schools.

The minister surprised native leaders by also striking a special task force inside his department that will call in church and aboriginal leaders to examine internal records dealing with child deaths at the schools.

The minister faced questions in the House of Commons yesterday following a Globe and Mail report highlighting how Indian Affairs officials repeatedly ignored warnings that children were dying in residential schools at rates as high as 50 per cent in the early years of the system.
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The Globe and Mail

The federal government issued a "statement of reconciliation" in 1998, acknowledging that the school system contributed to a loss of culture and that sexual and physical abuse took place. But the statement made no mention of the alarming death rates in the schools.

"It is unimaginable to any parent that your child would go away to school and not return," he told reporters yesterday. "It is one of the saddest chapters in Canadian history. And obviously it will be incumbent on all of us to come to grips with it."

Phil Fontaine, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, welcomed Mr. Prentice's proposals but increased the pressure on Ottawa to issue a full apology for the century of assimilationist policy.

Mr. Fontaine, who was one of the first former students to go public with a personal story of abuse, described the federal policy yesterday in a way he has avoided until now.

"We're dealing with an issue that meets the definition of genocide," he said.

Mr. Fontaine said his office has carefully reviewed the United Nations Convention on Genocide, which the House of Commons endorsed in 1951.

The definition provides five separate criteria for genocide, of which killing is only one.

He specifically cited the definition's fifth act: "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" - a criterion the Canadian government left out when it formally adopted a limited definition of genocide in 2000.

Mr. Fontaine said he had avoided such language because he had hoped negotiations would lead to a full apology, but the government's resistance is causing him to speak more forcibly.

"We're not saying there is a deliberate program of killing children," he said. "The fact is, thousands of children died through gross negligence, they knew about it and they did nothing about it."

Mr. Prentice has been taking heat from native leaders for the past month since he declared that Canada will not issue an apology as part of its settlement with residential-school survivors.

Manitoba Liberal MP Gary Merasty, whose mother and other Cree relatives attended residential schools, called in the House yesterday for an official apology.

"There are good stories, there's no doubt," he said later. "But, unfortunately, the vast majority of these experiences were extremely negative. I hear people talking back home that young people died and sometimes the parents wouldn't know for months, even a year."

Jean Crowder, the Indian Affairs critic for the NDP, expressed concern that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission won't hear from the many former students who are elderly and now live in remote villages.

Ms. Crowder is also calling on Ottawa to issue a full apology as part of the settlement.

KAREN HOWLETT AND BILL CURRY

INDIAN BROOK, N.S. and OTTAWA -- On the morning of March 12, 1933, Josephine Smith, a 12-year-old student at the Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia, collapsed from acute appendicitis while at mass.

She died three days later.

D.F. MacInnis, the school's attending physician, was alarmed that no one had alerted him earlier that the child was severely ill with what turned out to be peritonitis. In a handwritten letter to the Department of Indian Affairs, he asked what length the government would go to "cover up the criminal negligence of one of its employees."

Yesterday, The Globe and Mail documented the toll that tuberculosis took on children at residential boarding schools, despite repeated warnings to the federal government that overcrowding and a lack of medical care were creating a breeding ground for the disease's spread. But the tragic case of Josephine Smith is indicative of a wider issue: the oppressive conditions that prevailed in these institutions during much of the last century, when neglect, cruelty and abuse were part of everyday life for many children.
A settlement between Ottawa and former students, expected in four months, has spurred native groups and activists to tell stories of the children's experiences. The federally funded Legacy of Hope project is holding sessions across the country to document them.

More than 100,000 native children passed through the schools from 1874 until the mid-1970s, when most closed their doors.

The survivor stories reveal that former students still struggle with the legacy of this dark chapter in Canadian history - and the Shubenacadie school experience was all too typical.

Noreen Bernard, now 50, told The Globe she was "angry at the world" when she left the school, located just north of Halifax and run by the Roman Catholic Church. She did not feel she belonged to her native community in Indian Brook or to white society. She said the experience left an entire community dysfunctional.

"I don't want my kids to say they're survivors," she said. "I want them to say they're Mi'kmaq and they're proud of who they are."

A Globe review of documents in the National Archives and interviews with former students reveal a pattern where, no matter what happened, those in charge of the school known as "Shubie" were not at fault.

Calls by Dr. MacInnis for an investigation into Josephine's death went unheeded. Rev. J.P. Mackey, the school principal, said in a letter to Indian Affairs that it was not apparent just how ill the child was, and the government accepted his explanation.

"On Saturday, she was as active as any other child in the school," Father Mackey wrote. "We had no reason to think that her condition was any more serious than the others."

In May, 1934, another student, Mary Madeline Bernard, also died from peritonitis.

"I know from my experience with the Josephine Smith case," Dr. MacInnis wrote, "that it is futile to report those cases to Dept. as they probably feel that they [the students] go to heaven and that it is not worthwhile trying to keep those poor Indian children alive."

Children often did chores unsupervised in the kitchen and laundry room, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Father Mackey reported to Indian Affairs in May, 1930, that two girls, Briget Moloney and Annie Pennall, got their hands caught in the dough mixer in "some unexplainable way." Annie ended up having a finger amputated.

"This accident is regretted, but it would appear that it was entirely the girls' own fault," an Indian Affairs official wrote.

Children were also harshly punished.

In her book, Out of the Depths, former student Isabelle Knockwood writes about the formal inquiry into 19 boys who were thrashed with a strap made from harness leather and placed on a diet of bread and water for four days over $53.44 that was stolen from a cash box.

Father Mackey denied the boys had received excessive punishment, even though some of them still had marks on their backs three months later.

Thrashings were part of everyday life. Doreen Bernard's mother, Nancy, told The Globe she was so desperate to escape a beating by three nuns when she was 11, she stood on a second-storey window ledge.

"I was going to jump," she said.

The nuns retreated, only to return later that night after she had gone to sleep. One nun strapped her bare buttocks, she said, while the other two held her down.

BILL CURRY and KAREN HOWLETT

William Coombs, 54, attended two British Columbia schools from 1958 to 1967, including Kamloops Indian Residential School and Mission Indian Residential School. Sylvester Green was sent to a school in Edmonton. The two men first told their stories in a film by Kevin Annett.

"I witnessed too many children being dragged by the hair" to the room of a Catholic brother, Mr. Combs said. "That's the worst thing that hurts me is the sexual abuse.

"That's what he was doing. I was dragged to that room one night and I found out what was happening. Sexual abuse and getting beat up and forced to stay in his room all night. I was about nine years old."

Eventually, he said, students threw a blanket over the brother's head and beat him up. They had watched it happen too many times.

Bill Curry

Sylvester Green, 63, said: "No matter how old you are, it hurts. For me, I was sent to Edmonton in 1949 and I left there in 1959. In that school, there were three perpetrators. One of them was supposed to be a minister. On Sundays he would go up in the pulpit and preach the word of God. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, he would abuse the kids."

Bill Curry

Beatings left pupil unable to be happy Peter Paul recalls running away from the Shubenacadie residential school in Nova Scotia after a particularly brutal beating. He was nine years old and had angered the orderly who took care of the boys on weekends by getting up from his bed to go to the bathroom.

"He picked me up two or three times, kicked me and threw me against the wall," Mr. Paul told The Globe and Mail. "He terrified me. After that happened, I could have killed him or run away."

Mr. Paul, now 50, did run away but he got caught and was returned to the school. It wasn't the first time he had ever been beaten. In fact, his refusal to cry on other occasions usually resulted in him receiving more lashes than the other boys.

One time, he said, his brother yelled, "You should at least pretend you're crying, you stupid son of a female dog ."

But the beating by the orderly seemed to change everything, he said. "I didn't know how to be happy after that."

Mr. Paul, the youngest in a family of five children, went to the school when he was 5. He told his story for the first time to The Globe and has never even talked to his brothers and sister about their days at the school.

"I don't listen to anyone else's stories," he said.

Karen Howlett

To start healing, hating has to stopDebbie Paul has made her own peace with the nun who gave her the strap for merely fidgeting during mass when she attended the Shubenacadie residential school in Nova Scotia.

Ms. Paul, now 51, said she recently paid a visit to Sister DiGilberta, who is 92 and ill with cancer. It turned out that the nun had a photograph of Ms. Paul's younger sister, Maggie, who died in 1978 at the age of 21.

"She had hung on to the picture for 40 years," Ms. Paul said. But Sister DiGilberta gave the photograph to Ms. Paul, the only one she has of her sister.

Ms. Paul said if she hadn't been able to get over her anger, she never would have found out about the photograph.

"There comes a point in your life," she said, "when you have to stop hating, and you have to heal."

The Conservative government needs to begin the process of finding and repatriating the remains of Native children who disappeared while in the care of government and church at Indian residential schools, says Saskatchewan Liberal MP Gary Merasty.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of children died throughout the existence of Indian residential schools.

UNMARKED GRAVES

Many of their bodies are buried on school grounds in unmarked graves. Families have for years called for the repatriation of the lost children's remains, but their pleas have so far fallen on deaf ears.

"I strongly believe that if the federal government were to make a serious effort to attempt to repatriate these remains, the First Nations communities would be very grateful," Merasty wrote in an April 17 letter to Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice, obtained by Sun Media. "They realize the inherent difficulties in this process and the goodwill gesture of the government to address this issue would be significant in facilitating the healing process."

Identifying the bodies may prove difficult. Many of the identification records of dead Native children were destroyed over the years. Church officials have said the records had no value for the overseers of the schools.

Some children died from diseases, while others were beaten to death or died trying to flee.

Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice's office said the minister had not seen Merasty's letter and could not comment.

[ 29 April 2007: Message edited by: saga ]

They were completely shocked. One of the priests actually stood with his mouth open, gaping at Harriett as she approached the pulpit. His colleague quickly motioned to the organist to continue playing, and the confused congregation kept singing the same final verse over and over. The clerical machine started to hiss and sputter.

I stood at the back of the church, recording all that happened, and from there I saw the older priest whispering something to Harriett, who kept shaking her head. Later, she told me that the priest had said that we could all go to jail for two years for disrupting their service. (That's no lie, either: check out Section 176 of the Criminal Code of Canada). But Harriett ignored the threat and literally seized the pulpit.

Reverting to the soft cop approach, the priest announced to the congregation with a saccharine tone,

"We have some new friends with us today. They have something they'd like to say to us."

But no amount of patronizing could have prevented, or predicted, what came out of Harriett's mouth after that.

"This is the place from where your people conquered mine, and destroyed our religion. So now I'm going to use this place to take back our religion and our land.

"You're always telling us how we're the ones who need healing. But you're the people who are sick and who need healing, not us. You are the ones who murdered innocent children and who still refuse to say where you buried them. You need real healing, and we're the only people who can give it to you, because you tried to destroy us. But we're still here, and so I've come to offer you that healing."

That kind of turning-of-the-tables was too much for the head priest, who quickly interrupted Harriett by declaring,

"The Anglican Church has acknowledged the wrongs it did towards First Nations people and has begun a comprehensive healing program. We have apologized for the residential schools and have ..."

A sudden cry arose from the back of the church, close to me:

"How do you apologize to a corpse?" yelled one of the non-native protestors. "How do you say sorry to a murdered child?"

And then all hell broke loose. A general outcry arose from the white folks in the pews, who began to call us all sorts of nasty names. A guy at the door started screaming into a cell phone,

"Code Red! Code Red! Call the police!"

None of that fazed Harriett. With great dignity, she stayed put in the pulpit and kept trying to speak. But the older priest, tired of civility, started shoving her away, and a few of the younger native men moved to her defense. Some of the others in our group kept leaning non-chalantly against the front altar, smiling at all the chaos.

Suddenly, Harriett emerged from the maelstrom, gathering all of us in her wake, and leading our army out of the church as the insults and screams rained down on us. We left the building before the cop cars arrived - all four of them - and our triumphant throng marched down east hastings street together. We were elated. We had made our statement, reclaimed what had been stolen, and turned the tables on the criminals. And it was mostly due to Harriett.

Harriett Nahanni was a residential school survivor who witnessed a murder there. She died recently at 71 years of age after being put in jail for protesting the Olympic highway being built on sensitive land in BC. She was in poor health, was put into the coldest dampest jail without blankets, and was released after 14 days when it was apparent she was dying. The west coast protests of the Olympics are carried on in her name.

Here is Harriett's story:
Harriett Nahanni: Recollections of Residential School

[ 29 April 2007: Message edited by: saga ]

Sponsored by the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared Residential School Children
(Founder, Anishinabe Elder Whispers Wind)

The residential school survivors and relatives of those who disappeared have been asking for some time for a full accounting of the children who died there.

As recently as two weeks ago, the response of the churches and Jim Prentice was "There is no record of deaths in the schools." They could say that because there was a massive "document destruction" campaign in Canada after the signing of the UN Convention on Genocide in 1948.

After signing the Convention on Genocide in 1948, each country was to pass laws within the country consistent with the Convention. Canada delayed passing ANY law on genocide until 2000, four years after the last government run school closed.

The collusion in covering up genocide crosses all party affiliations. I think it is an unwritten rule: If you aspire to politics in Canada, you must cover up genocide.

The coverup continues as Jim Prentice orders a House of Commons Commission to investigate crimes that are the responsibility of ... the House of Commons.

Phil Fontaine of the government Band Councils is using it as a way of pressuring the government to make 'the' apology they have refused so far.

The residential school survivors have until August of this year to decide whether to opt in to the government's Residential Schools Settlement package, or opt out and sue independently.
The package covers only what the government has admitted to so far: Physical and sexual assault. Likewise, the 'apology' being requested addresses only those crimes as well.

The sad thing is this:
In the residential schools, the children targetted for severe abuse and death were the traditional children and families who refused to give up their own religion, language and culture. The children who assimilated in order to avoid harm received preferential treatment. The Band Councils largely represent assimilated people, while the true story of the real victims remains not only untold, but there are still serious efforts to actively cover it up, by government, churches, and by Band Councils and the Assembly of First Nations.

Across the country, there is a resurgence of traditional people, councils and spirituality, led by the youth with support of the elders.

They are still not willing to go along with the Band Councils or the Government of Canada.

They still demand to repatriate the remains of the children immediately.
They still say "No reconciliation without full disclosure."

Frankly, they do not expect help from the government - i.e., House of Commons.

They do hope that enough Canadians will support them so that there will be a true investigation of genocide through proper National/International channels.

I guess I am posting this here to see whether Canadians are aware of these facts, and whether there is support for a full investigation.

Canada's record as a 'world leader' in human rights stands challenged.

Where do we go from here?
[ 29 April 2007: Message edited by: saga ]

[ 29 April 2007: Message edited by: saga ]

quote:

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Jean Crowder, the Indian Affairs critic for the NDP, expressed concern that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission won't hear from the many former students who are elderly and now live in remote villages.

Ms. Crowder is also calling on Ottawa to issue a full apology as part of the settlement.

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I could hook Jean up with a fairly young Residential School attendee, who actually only lives 20 mins away from her. If she wants to hear some truths.

My God, I did not realize that the numbers were so great who died.

quote:

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Originally posted by saga:
I will reiterate what I have said several times before, Michelle: Aboriginal people know about Canada'S genocide. It is Canadians who need to be aware and need to act to inform our governments that we will not accept the coverup any longer.

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thank you saga for bring this to my attention. I have emailed this thread to a place where I can print it off.

quote:

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I find it curious that there is absolutley no mention of this here on babble until I posted it, though it has been in the Sun and Globe all week.

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Actually, I just checked that link, and the site says the story is no longer available. It doesn't matter, though. The information that saga and others have posted here is both informative and infuriating.

In case folks didn't see the info I was going over and posted to another thread on this, here it is again:

The mass murder in church-run residential schools in this country is well-documented.

Truth Commission

Tribunal Evidence Excerpts

Nuremberg-standards study case on residential schools

Amnesty International report

Even the federal government has somewhat tacitly admitted to it.

Compensation Suit

Compensation Lawsuits

Court rules churches liable

Although the numbers and severity, as well as the motives, are in dispute, the fact is it happened, and for anyone to deny or minimize it is akin to denying or minimizing the Holocaust.

Casualty Estimates

Historic Chronology

Residential Schools Mortality Rates

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:

The mass murder in church-run residential schools in this country is well-documented.

Even the federal government has somewhat tacitly admitted to it.

Although the numbers and severity, as well as the motives, are in dispute, the fact is it happened, and for anyone to deny or minimize it is akin to denying or minimizing the Holocaust.
Let no one ever say this country is “blessed” with being free from mass murder, genocide and mass persecution.

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I wish I could agree, but ... the government has only acknowledged sexual, emotional and physical abuse. The current settlement (and apology ... if they condescend to make it) only cover those, NOT the deaths of children. That has NOT been acknowledged by government.

Yes, Kevin Annett has documented it well, but he has been blacklisted, blackballed and smeared to the point that he can't get a job or hardly a speaking engagement. I just tried. No one will touch him because the church, government and corporations (including universities) have turned him to a poison pill. If you watch his film (bottom of first post) you will understand.

I hope that makes it clearer. The government has not touched the topic of deaths in the schools until forced to by media and one MP last week. Only two weeks ago, they responded to media inquiries by saying "There is no record of deaths in the schools." Funny, at that time the Churches said exactly the same thing. Now they too acknowledge deaths and their 'sincere' wish for the government to investigate. Hmph! Two weeks ago they 'sincerely' had "no record of deaths".

The Feds are madly trying to get everyone to sign the settlement and THE WAIVER before those nasty bits come to light. Now that they have been caught, they propose to 'include it' in their Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Well call me paranoid but ... since when do we trust those with a stake in the outcome to investigate their own crimes???!!!

I agree that to deny the holocaust in the schools is akin to denying the holocaust. However, that is what is happening.

... that and a whole lot of trying to sweep it under the carpet is exactly what has been going on, and is going on right now, and apparently will continue!

Ask a politician ... try to get him or her to acknoledge Kevin Annett's data. Try to get them to acknowledge it was a campaign of genocide.

They won't. As I said, as recently as 2 weeks ago, Prentice's answer was "There is no record of death in the schools." And he is telling the usual political half-truth as far as church and government records go ... because they destroyed the records ... there was a concerted, directed, intentional campaign of document destruction.

If I could suggest an action ... I would suggest anyone concerned about this please email Senator Romeo Dallaire. thx

[ 06 May 2007: Message edited by: saga ]