Active Now

Zack
Discussion » Statements » Rosie's Corner » This is exceedingly tragic to learn. Unmarked graves of 600 children have been found in Canada. Second finding. The First?
RosieG

This is exceedingly tragic to learn. Unmarked graves of 600 children have been found in Canada. Second finding. The First?

There were 200 unmarked graves of Indigenous children found a few weeks ago.

There were 150 schools for Indigenous children. It is said that 150,000 "passed through". At some point 4,100 children "went missing". The schools opened in 1883 and closed in 1996. A shocking thing this. I wonder what other countries are guilty of other shocking tragedies that we don't of...yet?

That it is Canada and not some barbaric 3rd world country? Perhaps that is the most shocking for me.

Posted - June 26, 2021
Tags : None

Responses


  • 11162
    What is really horrible is at one of the schools the graves were marked at first but then the church or the school had the names taking off the graves - guess they figured people would forget about what they did that way. Cheers and happy weekend!
      June 26, 2021 3:19 PM MDT
    2

  • 113301
    I just cannot imagine what those people who did that were thinking to justify such horrible actions. I expect if 4100 "went missing" and so far they found 800 we're going to be getting more updates. Who were those children? All orphans? Where were their parents? It's really hard to grasp the enormity of it though I suspect a lot more worse goes on all the time in many countries. Some graves were originally marked but someone had the names taken off? Thank you for the information Nanoose. I know it is a sadness for Canadians who are living now. I wondered how many knew about it as it was going on? How could they sleep at night? :(
      June 26, 2021 3:31 PM MDT
    1

  • 13395
    You could google 'Indian residential school construction Canada' where there are various websites explaining the mismanagement by Canadian government and by the various churches which were supposed to run these schools.

    A bit of a horror story in many cases.
      June 26, 2021 3:33 PM MDT
    1

  • 258
    No. One or two deaths may amount to unfortunate "mismanagement"; hundreds of deaths may amount to a evidence of a policy of genocide.
      June 28, 2021 10:30 AM MDT
    1

  • 3719
    There are two other horrifying aspects to this.

    The schools were established to "assimilate" the indigenous people into being fully "Canadian"; thus defining them as not actually the true "Canadians".

    The removal of grave markers maight be linked to the policy of not returning the dead to their families - perhaps because to do so would raise the awkward question of why so many children were dying.

    ' ' '

    Is it unique? NO: think of the...

     - Magdelan Laundries in Ireland (Church-owned slave-labour institutions for fallen women. Of their children born there or taken in with their mothers, those many killed by the nuns' neglect and incompetence were interred in unmarked graves that have only recently been discovered),

     - Swiss anti-Romany pogrom of the 1940s-50s (slightly similar in intent and method to the Canadian scheme, though by kidnapping the children and fostering them with Church help, under new identities, to "approved" familes),

     - and even in my country, England, 1940s-early 60s transporting abroad of poor and/or illegitimate children to "new lives" in Canada or Australia. Most were routed through dreadful Vatican-run orphanages, to become cheap farm labour for their foster-parents. Ironically, one of the secular organisations helping this was the Dr. Barnardos children's rescue charity.

    Most of those in charge of these schemes probably genuinely thought they were doing the right thing by the standards of their time, but never thought to monitor and question the results.

    And whilst we have now learnt just how evil these plans were, it does make it rather uncomfortable to criticise the People's Republic of China for its anti-Uyghur drive.
      June 26, 2021 4:45 PM MDT
    2

  • 44655
    Trudeau is trying to get the Pope to come to Canada and officially apologize.
      June 26, 2021 5:01 PM MDT
    1

  • 258
    The Canadian state is said to have funded the schools, the schools were on its territory. These circumstances imply the Canadian state has equal culpability with the Catholic Church.

    Contributor "Maurice214" has deleted his post (and with it my responses to his post). The reader will recall he failed to condemn the deaths (in highly suspicious circumstances) of indigenous children at Canadian "residential" schools funded by the Canadian State and run by the Catholic Church. Instead, he gave a link to what he said were similar (or possibility similar) circumstances in the United States. I challenged him to condemn the deaths in his own country Canada, to which he responded only by saying it was personal to him, citing family. I replied, again drawing his attention to the fact he had so far failed to condemn the deaths of indigenous children in his own country Canada, at which point he deleted his posts on this thread.
    The reader will have also noticed that contributor "Maurce214" (as at date of posting this) sports the Canadian flag as his user-image - Contributor "Maurice214" Activity page: https://answermug.com/profile/3028 This post was edited by Robert at June 30, 2021 11:00 AM MDT
      June 28, 2021 10:33 AM MDT
    2

  • 258
    Hundreds of babies buried in a mass, unmarked grave in Tuam, County Galway, Republic of Ireland, on the site of a "mother and baby home" that had been run by an order of Catholic nuns - the Bon Secours Sisters:
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54693159

    'Some 9,000 children died in Ireland's church-run homes for unwed mothers, a government report published on Tuesday found. This is equivalent to 15 percent of all children who were born or lived in the 18 institutions investigated over nearly 80 years.'
    [...] The homes, many run by nuns and members of the Roman Catholic Church, operated in Ireland for most of the 20th century, with the last home closing as recently as 1998: 
    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/9-000-children-died-irish-mother-baby-homes-report-finds-n1253862

    Hundreds of children buried in a mass, unmarked grave at the site of Marieval Indian Residential School [located on the Cowessess 73 reserve in Marieval, Saskatchewan, Canada - Wikipedia] which operated from 1899 to 1997. [The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, was the Catholic organization that operated this school, along with 48 others - Wikipedia.] It is reported the graves were marked at one time, but that the Roman Catholic Church that operated the school had removed the markers:
    https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009784025/hundreds-of-unmarked-graves-found-at-another-indigenous-school-in-canada

    The remains of 215 children were found last month buried in unmarked graves at a (second) former residential school [Kamloops, about 160 miles northeast of Vancouver, Canada], one of more than 150 institutions in a defunct system that for well over a century forcibly separated Indigenous children from their families to assimilate them into Canadian society. The school where the remains were found is in Kamloops, about 160 miles northeast of Vancouver. The institution, the biggest residential school in Canada, operated under the auspices of the Catholic Church from 1890 to 1969: 
    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/canada-pressured-find-all-unmarked-indigenous-graves-after-children-s-n1269456

    182 unmarked graves have been discovered at a (third) Indigenous residential school in Canada at the former St Eugene's Mission School near Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada, where the Catholic Church operated a school on behalf of the federal government from 1912 until the early 1970s:
    https://www.sbs.com.au/news/another-182-unmarked-graves-have-been-found-at-a-third-indigenous-school-site-in-canada

    Heading: "Disappearances of Canada's indigenous women remain unsolved, decades on".
    'Over the past 30 years, over 1,000 indigenous women have been killed or reported missing in Canada, often last seen or found along a 720-kilometre section of road nicknamed the Highway of Tears.': 
    https://www.france24.com/en/20180702-focus-canada-indigenous-women-unsolved-disappearances-highway-tears-national-inquiry


    The Republic of Ireland, Canada, and the Vatican, are sovereign states. Is it not time for these states to be made to take responsibility for such crimes, and be prosecuted for genocide and crimes against humanity?


    This post was edited by Robert at July 2, 2021 6:07 AM MDT
      June 28, 2021 10:28 AM MDT
    2