3,000 children dead, some found in mass graves, many not even identified? This is not the past and we shouldn’t just move on.

These numbers are coming out and these are only the results of the first systematic search of government, school and other records.  That number is likely going to be shown to be very low considering this – 

The annual death reports were consistently done until 1917, when they abruptly stopped.  "It was obviously a policy not to report them," Maass said.

At least 3,000 children, including four under the age of 10 found huddled together in frozen embrace, are now known to have died during attendance at Canada's Indian residential schools, according to new unpublished research.

Despite these horrible, nightmarish numbers and this report, we have Canadians trying to trivialize this unspeakable government and church engineered, widespread abuse of children.  Their rationale?  White kids died too, ya know.  Look at the comment section, but be prepared.

Sure, white kids died.  But did eight and nine year olds die freezing to death in each others' arms in an attempt to walk home, scantily clad during the winter because the abuse was so horrible in the white run schools?

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Did they die without the love and comfort of family, community, even a language they were familiar with?

Were they buried in mass graves, so that their families could not grieve over them, could not give them last rights or bury them, might not ever even know what happened to them?

Did the government and churches consider them of so little value that their deaths weren’t even reported?

As for it happening in the past, and hey, time to move on…there are survivors who witnessed these atrocities and they deserve to have their friends and siblings deaths dealt with as though they mattered, because they did matter.  And this is not ancient history we’re talking about.  If there’s even a slight possibility that anyone responsible for any of these deaths is alive, shouldn’t they be investigated?  There’s no statute of limitation on murder or child abuse.  At least not when it comes to white kids.

Do Canadians make these excuses because the sheer number of children dead at the hands of our government and churches is just to overwhelming to come to terms with?  That may be part of it, but considering how people still think we should track down any living Nazis and put them on trial, and how the Jewish genocide must never be forgotten, I don’t think that accounts for all of the dismissal.  Many Canadians still don’t think a dead Indian is a big deal.

What kind of inhuman bastards can read this article and just shrug their shoulders?

The same ones who just feel so driven to write hateful comments related to any article that mentions aboriginals, I think.

I don’t give a damn if it was 40 years ago, or if the kids were brown, white or fucking green.  There are over 3,000 confirmed deaths of children, torn from their families and communities who were buried with less respect than a family pet.  Not only do survivors need some kind of closure through this being addressed openly, the rest of Canada needs to look at it in a very bright light, unfiltered, or we will continue to fail addressing problems that exist in how our government continues to dismiss Aboriginal concerns.