Have you read last week’s high profile article on how bones found near Vimy Ridge in 2003 were identified last month by a research team in Thunder Bay, ON, and now Pte. Thomas Lawless of Calgary, killed at the Ridge in 1917 can receive a proper burial, with honours? Relatives who never met him have been notified by Veterans Affairs and they will attend the service.
Did you read an article published February 17, 2011 about what are likely hundreds of children’s bodies lying unidentified in unmarked graves? You may not have seen it. It appeared in section H of the Winnipeg Free Press.
It is not a new story but it never seems to catch the attention that you would think the mass murder of children would.
You would also think that if researchers in Thunder Bay could use genetic testing to identify a man who died at Vimy Ridge in 1917, they could identify many of these bodies of children who still have living relatives who knew them. You think they would make it a priority.
But it seems that aboriginal children are like those unwanted dogs drowned in a river. Just a nuisance. Worse, even, because being human on paper at least, the deaths have to be covered up, hidden. And our oh so enlightened society has to relegate the knowledge of such murders and unmarked graves of children to the barest, faintest reaches of our peripheral thoughts. Things of nightmare, to be sure. Don’t look, don’t talk about it, and for god’s sake (and here I use the name of that mythical deity intentionally), don’t stir up the dirt that hides the horrors.
No one knows how many children died in residential schools. No one knows how many graves were dug for them.
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.
There is no doubt that many of these children died from neglect, and little doubt that more than a few were murdered. In any event, when dealing with so many bodies lying in unmarked graves, and knowing that many of those responsible for the deaths are walking free right now, these deaths should be investigated as any other deaths would, not handled as an historical dig managed by a Commission that so far has had little support and no authority to enforce.
But hey, it’s not like they’re white kids, right?
"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.
Part of the legacy? How about tackling it for what it is - brutal crimes of neglect, rape, and murder of numerous children taken by force from their families?
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.
This tells us a lot about how governments and churches of those decades considered aboriginals to be less entitled to rights than non-natives. That those same churches and governments are treating this matter as a historical event that may eventually require some sort of resolution tells us that little has changed.
The commission hopes to have enough information to suggest further research and ways to commemorate the graves.
A nice plaque or two providing a lovely photo op for some bastard politician to appear somewhat human.
"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."
OK. Stop. Enough with the euphemisms. Impregnated? No, these were children. That makes it rape, every damn time.
Teachers and priests. Well, wingnuts, at least they didn’t let the children have abortions, right? They rape the kids, take away the living, crying baby that resulted from their rape crime, and...murder it.
Teachers and priests. God-fearin’ folk to want to take the savage out of The Savage. Drive out the heathen beliefs and insert the holy ghost. You know, civilize them, teach them the good ways of the white, enlightened society, and have them embrace that loving god while following the teachings of christianity.
I realize that atheists also commit child rape and murder, but they are held accountable for their crimes, and they don’t have an entire sheltered religion enabling further crimes and covering up past ones for them.
In a YouTube broadcast posted this month, Favel, now an elderly woman, describes her hard life as a child in residential school. She recalls the day she saw school staff carry a newborn baby wrapped in pink through the kitchen and into the adjacent furnace room.
..."They took that baby into the... furnace room and burned it alive. You could smell the flesh cooking," Favel says, her voice soft but clear.
Gotta protect those priests. Have to protect the name of their god. Can’t have people thinking badly of them because, you know, religion does a lot of good, right? Like bring enlightenment and christianity to aboriginals?
In 1944, a priest levelled the rest of the cemetery, removing all traces of it, according to an elder interviewed by the working group who had attended the school as a child in the 1940s.
That’s the christian way, isn’t it? Just remove all traces of past crimes, move on, and preach to others on morality.
Crimes were committed. That doesn’t suggest we should reconcile a damn thing. It demands we investigate aggressively and hold those responsible for the rapes, deaths, murders, and cover-ups accountable in courts of law.
And all efforts should be made to identify every single child’s remains, determine how that child died, notify families, and provide support for a proper burial which family can attend. Just like was done for Pte. Thomas Lawless of Calgary.
