53 replies to this topic

[Moonless]

 

 

This story was interesting to me for multiple reasons. I had heard nothing about it until yesterday. I don't pour over "the news" like I used to so it's a little understandable. However, my first thought was, there is no way I wouldn't have heard about 45 mosques or synagogues being burnt to the ground.

Really?

 

Which part?

 

 

But when you check in on the actual recommended reparation ideas its not like that at all.

 

Would you happen to have a link for this? I wouldn't mind reading a compelling proposal.

 

 

Sorry I messed up the formatting! I was asking about the comment about your first thought. I do agree with it however I think that non-christian religious buildings like mosques get burned or bombed or have violence in them without us knowing. Sure if it were 45 burned for whatever reason it's big news. Even searching into the site that you listed "burned mosque" I found many news stories about mosques being bombed and set on fire in the past eight years. All of which I had no idea about.

 

Yeah this is an audio transcript of a podcast about the first town in US to consider racial reparations. The town is really gentrified because of a really bad Jim Crow laws and there is a high racial disparity. The black community proposed reparations using the cannabis sales tax (cause black people were 80% more likely to be locked up for it). I think you'll find it interesting as its something that is actually being considered rather than just talked about.

[FLASHINGROOSTER]

I didn't make this distinction myself it was borrowed. Again to be clear one can make this distinction and still agree with the assessment that shit was fucked up.  Whatever its not a hill I need to die on call it whatever you fancy

 

 

“This is not a mass grave site. These are unmarked graves,” said Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delrome.

 

https://www.mbcradio...idential-school

 

 

This article dives into the whole thing, sorry it feels too long to format

 

https://nationalpost...dential-schools

Edited by FLASHINGROOSTER, 16 July 2021 - 07:14 PM.

[Moonless]

I didn't make this distinction myself it was borrowed. Again to be clear one can make this distinction and still agree with the assessment that shit was fucked up.  Whatever its not a hill I need to die on call it whatever you fancy

 

 

“This is not a mass grave site. These are unmarked graves,” said Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delrome.

 

https://www.mbcradio...idential-school

“This was a crime against humanity. An assault on First Nations people. The only crime we ever committed as children was being born Indigenous,” said Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Chief Bobby Cameron.

 

This really gets me.

[August West]

 

 

 

This story was interesting to me for multiple reasons. I had heard nothing about it until yesterday. I don't pour over "the news" like I used to so it's a little understandable. However, my first thought was, there is no way I wouldn't have heard about 45 mosques or synagogues being burnt to the ground.

Really?

 

Which part?

 

 

But when you check in on the actual recommended reparation ideas its not like that at all.

 

Would you happen to have a link for this? I wouldn't mind reading a compelling proposal.

 

 

Sorry I messed up the formatting! I was asking about the comment about your first thought. I do agree with it however I think that non-christian religious buildings like mosques get burned or bombed or have violence in them without us knowing. Sure if it were 45 burned for whatever reason it's big news. Even searching into the site that you listed "burned mosque" I found many news stories about mosques being bombed and set on fire in the past eight years. All of which I had no idea about.

 

Yeah this is an audio transcript of a podcast about the first town in US to consider racial reparations. The town is really gentrified because of a really bad Jim Crow laws and there is a high racial disparity. The black community proposed reparations using the cannabis sales tax (cause black people were 80% more likely to be locked up for it). I think you'll find it interesting as its something that is actually being considered rather than just talked about.

 

 

Thanks for the link. I will plan to make time for it.

 

For clarification, I was suggesting that I would have heard of 45 mosques or synagogues burned over a short period of time, as opposed to the churches. When I searched the Canadian story, almost no links from major media came up other than one particular weekend when two churches were burned. I have serious doubts that I would've had to look very far for stories about mosques or synagogues. Whatever the reasons (and I have a few guesses), I suspect I'm correct.  

[Juthro]

I didn't make this distinction myself it was borrowed. Again to be clear one can make this distinction and still agree with the assessment that shit was fucked up.  Whatever its not a hill I need to die on call it whatever you fancy

 

 

“This is not a mass grave site. These are unmarked graves,” said Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delrome.

 

https://www.mbcradio...idential-school

 

 

This article dives into the whole thing, sorry it feels too long to format

 

https://nationalpost...dential-schools

 

They never give the complete context that Mr. Delrome gives that statement in, so I forced to assume that it was to point out that the graves are set up like a potters field ( like I had pointed out in an above post), and not a single mass grave.  But he then goes on to say not all the graves are limited to a single occupant.  So what is your chosen meter of what is/isn't a mass grave? 

 

So IMO, I think that trying to blame the media for blowing this out of proportion by using the term 'mass grave' is unfounded, and that it is in effect an attempt to help delegitimize the atrocity that this truly is.

 

The other article you posted also gives the same quote by Delrome,  again without the context that it was given in, and it then goes on to say,

One (reason) is that they were never marked in the first place. At times of particularly high death rates, children were known to be interred in ad-hoc graves without proper markers or burial records. 
During the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, Red Deer Industrial School principal J.F. Woodsworth assured his bosses that he was burying dead students “two to a grave” in order to save money.

 

 

So we are back to the fact that these are not all just graves that have lost their markers to the ravages of time, and that there was a concerted effort to just make these people go away.  To chuck them beneath the clay so to speak.  It was most certainly not an effort to give anyone a respectful final resting place.

[FLASHINGROOSTER]

Here is the man speaking about it in length in a video.

 

https://www.cbc.ca/p...y/1913298499803

 

 

If using that language is what it took to finally get people to pay attention I can accept that, but the truth needs to come out good or bad

 

Well the Washington post though enough of it to print a retraction

 

https://www.washingt...dential-school/

 

 

 

[Moonless]

News is so strange in America.

 

Right wing news:

Headline: 45 churches BURNED (or vandalized)!

Article: this is happening because mass graves have been found

Example: Nonprofit finds at least 45 Canadian churches have been burned or vandalized in recent weeks

 

Left wing news:

Headline: Canada's grim history of cultural genocide

Article: Cultural genocide, mass graves have started a protest movement.

Example: Canada’s Grim Legacy of Cultural Erasure, in Poignant School Photos (sorry paywalled)

 

Take into consideration that the headline is all that anyone reads, you get situations like this one where two people who think they are talking about about the same thing but in reality they about two completely different things.

 

Makes it hard to talk about this stuff cause i'm more interested in talking about how bad cultural genocide is and others are talking about how bad it is to burn churches.

 

[Edited for clairity, spelling]

Edited by Moonless, 16 July 2021 - 09:49 PM.

[Juthro]

Well the Washington post though enough of it to print a retraction

 

https://www.washingt...dential-school/

 

I wish you wouldn't give links to sites that require a membership to view.  I'm not looking to buy a membership to the Washington Post 

[FLASHINGROOSTER]

It works for me I don't know what to tell ya

 

here it is anyway 

 

 

Correction: An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the burial site discovered at Kamloops Indian Residential School as a mass grave. The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation says the remains were found spread out; it considers it an unmarked, undocumented burial site, not a mass grave. The article has been corrected.

 

TORONTO — The remains of 215 Indigenous children, including some as young as 3, have been found on the grounds of a former residential school in British Columbia — a grim discovery from one of the darkest chapters of Canadian history, and one that an Indigenous leader called “an unthinkable loss.”

Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc said in a news release Thursday evening that the “stark truth of the preliminary findings” was unearthed last weekend with the help of a ground-penetrating radar specialist who surveyed the site of what was once the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify,” Casimir said. “To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths.”

She said it’s possible more remains could be discovered. The First Nation hopes to complete preliminary findings by mid-June.

Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said on Twitter that “while it is not new to find graves at former residential schools in Canada, it’s always crushing to have that chapter’s wounds exposed.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the discovery of the remains “breaks my heart.”

“It is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country’s history,” Trudeau tweeted. “I am thinking about everyone affected by this distressing news.”

From 1883 to 1996, nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families, often by force, and sent to the government-funded, church-run schools in an attempt to assimilate them. There, many faced neglect and physical and sexual abuse. Speaking Indigenous languages and practicing their traditions were forbidden.

For many, the schools have left lasting scars and trauma that has been passed down from one generation to the next. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded in its 2015 report that what happened at the schools constituted “cultural genocide.”

Thousands of Canada’s indigenous children died in church-run boarding schools. Where are they buried?

It also identified at least 3,200 students who died at the schools during that time — a rate that was far higher than for students elsewhere in Canada — though it said that the figure was probably greater and merited further investigation. It has since revised that number up to more than 4,100 children.

Students at residential schools often died of illnesses such as tuberculosis, which spread quickly in cramped and unsanitary living quarters and because the children were often malnourished. Others died by suicide, in fires, in accidents while enduring hard labor or by freezing to death while trying to escape.

Officials working to find the graves and to compile a register of the children who died at the schools told The Washington Post in 2018 that a lack of resources and missing documents was impeding progress, raising fears that unmarked graves could be destroyed.

The 2015 report said that school records were often destroyed. In some cases, school officials failed to note the names of the students who died, the cause of death or to report the deaths to the parents. Those who died were sometimes buried on school grounds, in part because the schools were long distances from Indigenous communities.

The Kamloops Indian Residential School, the largest in the residential school system overseen by the department of Indian Affairs, was set up in 1890 under the administration of the Roman Catholic Church. It operated as a school and, later, as a residence for students, for more than eight decades, shutting down in 1978.

In 1927, a medical health officer visited the school at the request of the principal, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report. He found that a recreation room for younger boys was “most unsanitary” and had contributed to “numerous infections, colds, bronchitis and pneumonia during the past winter.”

The outside toilets, the inspector said, were “a distinct menace to the health of the children” and should be destroyed.

The commission also cited statements from George Manuel, a student at the school in the 1920s. He recalled being forced to speak English and having been called “a heathen” because of his grandfather.

Manuel had one enduring memory.

“Every Indian student smelled of hunger,” he said.

[August West]

Well the Washington post though enough of it to print a retraction

https://www.washingt...dential-school/

I wish you wouldn't give links to sites that require a membership to view. I'm not looking to buy a membership to the Washington Post

Just viewed it with no membership. There are browsers or browser features that support viewing things through a pay wall. Duckduckgo usually. I think Chrome has an "incognito" feature that often works. I can't remember the last thing I couldn't view.

Edited by August West, 16 July 2021 - 11:32 PM.

[Juthro]

Must be an east coast thing, asks me to sign up every time....   

 

How many unrecorded bodies need to be dumped into an unmarked grave before it qualifies as a mass grave?

 

According to your own posted articles the principle at  the Red Deer Industrial School was lumping more then one student at a time in unmarked graves to save costs.  And the same thing was said by Chief Delrome about some of the graves at the Marieval Indian Residential School having multiple occupants. 

 

So why maybe this didn't ever happen at the Kamloops site (something I doubt),  I think it's fair to assume that some of the graves will contain more then one set of remains, and that qualifies as a mass grave to me, regardless of what the WP writes, or retracts.

 

The point being that I don't accept that the term 'mass grave' is hyperbole from the media to amp up the situation.  While it is not the perfect descriptor of the situation, I find it more correct than not so.

[FLASHINGROOSTER]

I have said what I needed to, the evidence has been presented, final argument made, so then lets draw this one to a close

[TVCasualty]

I wonder how much the semantic arguments about what to call the discoveries are really just intended to distract away from what's being described. I don't imagine any of the victims would much care what we called what happened to them. They'd want justice for it all the same.

 

Filling lots of individual holes one at a time with the bodies of children that had been kidnapped in order to destroy their spiritual lineage and culture probably doesn't qualify as a "mass grave" in a technical sense but the only real difference is that the bodies were interred in a time-shifted manner rather than all at once. It's cultural genocide by inches rather than miles, but it's still cultural -and was often literal- genocide (the schools came later, after most of the overt slaughtering and displacement had been accomplished).

Edited by TVCasualty, 17 July 2021 - 10:18 AM.

[Arathu]

https://ratical.org/...HumanBeing.html

 

This is, IMHO, worth a read.....Tribes of Europe and elsewhere......

 

I will pay reparations AFTER I get mine, from the Vatican and from greater Arabia to start with......other than that we should UNITE in place of being divided, we should HEAL in place of maintaining our wounds, and we should become a sum that is FAR GREATER than whole of numbers......The native First Nations folks should be compensated and RESTORED long before any other(s) get a dime......

 

From the above talk by John Trudell, "What it Means to be a Human Being"

 

So when Columbus got here, he got off the boat, and he said to the first people he saw, ‘Who are you?’ And the first people he saw said, ‘We’re human beings.’ And Columbus said, ‘Oh, Indians.’

See, and right now when I’m talking, “Columbus” is every descendant of the tribe[s] of Europe that came. We’re not talking one person here. We’re talking a mindset, alright. This is a mentality that came, the Columbus Mentality, we name it.

Because it isn’t about discovering, you know, it’s almost like, this is when the virus got here. And this is how long it’s been here. But because, you know we’ve never had this disease before, that we have no natural – we can’t – we don’t have an immunity to it. But if we can survive the ravages of this disease we will evolve an immunity to it because we are the part of the Earth and that’s what happens. Alright?

Anyway, Columbus got here...and he didn’t know what it meant to be a human being. See, that perceptional reality of being a human being, and what it really meant, had been erased from descendants of the tribes of Europe, by the time they got here. So when we introduced ourselves to the European as human beings, they, just didn’t get it. It wasn’t a part of their perceptional reality. They might know how to say the words. Alright?, but being a human being had changed in their reality.

Alright – we know there was an inquisition. And this inquisition went on for 4 or 500 years in Europe. The purpose of the inquisition was to alter the perceptional reality of the descendants of the tribes of Europe. To make them believe and see reality the way the church wanted them to believe and see reality.

The church called it – they waged a war for possession – for possession, this is important – they waged a war for the possession of the souls of the godless heathens. And to be a godless heathen you just didn’t believe in god. It wasn’t a part of your reality. Or another way [of] becoming a godless heathen was to question the authority of the church to do this.

See now, again, I’m not making this up. You know, this did transpire. These things did happen. And they killed as many people as they could – I guarantee it – in order to get the other ones to submit. So they killed as efficiently as they could with the technology they had at their disposal at that time, alright? And because they created a rationalization as to why to do it, so it just became as efficient as they could do.

And at some point, the descendants of the tribes of Europe no longer knew what it meant to be a human being. They just didn’t know – they didn’t want to know. So the descendants of the tribes of Europe, in the end, had to love what they feared which was there to possess them. See, and I think it messed up love in a lot of ways, you know that they haven’t unsorted yet. You know, no offense, but

 

fwiw......burning churches is not the answer, nor mosques or synagogues......or MOTHER Nature either......divided is not the answer......responsibility and self actuated discipline are though. Coming together is too I believe..... 

 

A

Edited by Arathu, 17 July 2021 - 02:58 PM.

[August West]

 

Yeah this is an audio transcript of a podcast about the first town in US to consider racial reparations. The town is really gentrified because of a really bad Jim Crow laws and there is a high racial disparity. The black community proposed reparations using the cannabis sales tax (cause black people were 80% more likely to be locked up for it). I think you'll find it interesting as its something that is actually being considered rather than just talked about.

 

 

I made it through - just. For me, it was a little thick on "human interest" story and thin on a lot of details and nuance that I think are important to the discussion. They did a decent job but I have a lot of questions about details. That said, if a city wants to vote in "reparations", a case could certainly be made - though I still have a lot of problems with it. Federally however, I see no reasonable path. I'm willing to listen but I remain pretty skeptical.

[TVCasualty]

Imagine expressing what Trudell expressed in that essay after having had your wife, three kids, and mother-in-law murdered by what was all but certain to be Feds or someone doing their dirty work for them. That really happened to his family, and if anyone would have been justified in torching stuff (especially state property) or starting an armed insurrection against the government, it was him.

 

But he didn't do those things, though he was treated as if he had anyway. I'd guess that that's probably because his writings and spoken word albums are ultimately a much greater threat to the status quo than any acts of arson could ever be, thanks to his stunningly eloquent ability to express such ideas. Fires get put out or burn out of their own accord, but compelling ideas can continue to spread for millennia. I suppose that means his medicine is more powerful than fire. Food for thought...

 

I got turned on to him by a friend of his back in 2000 or so since he'd also worked with Earth First! activists on radical environmental stuff (our mutual friend was one of the founders of that grizzled group of hardcore lowbaggers). Looking back, it's safe to say that the folks at Earth First! were way too moderate in their approach to environmentalism (considering where things stand now, but at least they tried).

Edited by TVCasualty, 18 July 2021 - 09:26 AM.

[TVCasualty]

I made it through - just. For me, it was a little thick on "human interest" story and thin on a lot of details and nuance that I think are important to the discussion. They did a decent job but I have a lot of questions about details. That said, if a city wants to vote in "reparations", a case could certainly be made - though I still have a lot of problems with it. Federally however, I see no reasonable path. I'm willing to listen but I remain pretty skeptical.

 

 

If a city or County votes to fund reparations there will have to be a source of money to fund them with.

 

If it's done through taxation then anyone not on the list to receive reparations will relocate to protect their own perceived economic interests. If the majority of the population of a city or County that votes for reparations ends up being those eligible to receive them then who would they get the money from? They can't tax the recipients of reparations to pay the reparations with, obviously. I don't see it ever happening on a State or Federal level since the relevant electoral demographics would likely be insurmountable.

 

If funding to other programs and services provided by a city or County are cut to afford the payments then the community would realize no net gain by receiving them. It seems that the only way that fairness can be enforced in one socioeconomic context is to deny it in another. Checkmate?

 

I'm getting the impression that the concept of "reparations" is ultimately a red herring that would be impossible to reasonably and realistically implement. But it makes for an ideal wedge issue to distract away from things that we could actually accomplish or fix if we weren't always being divided and conquered by extremely fraught issues that are frankly just not that relevant to the big picture concerns that could and probably eventually will make lesser (but much more intensely personal) issues like reparations, trans rights, abortion, religious "freedom," etc. moot.

Edited by TVCasualty, 18 July 2021 - 09:56 AM.

[August West]

I've got a whole bunch of other questions, as well. I have yet to come across a proposal that makes reparations sound like a viable idea.

[Moonless]

I made it through - just. For me, it was a little thick on "human interest" story and thin on a lot of details and nuance that I think are important to the discussion. They did a decent job but I have a lot of questions about details. That said, if a city wants to vote in "reparations", a case could certainly be made - though I still have a lot of problems with it. Federally however, I see no reasonable path. I'm willing to listen but I remain pretty skeptical.

 

 

Are there any instances that you see where reparations might be good? For me the canabis one is a gold star example because the war on drugs really fucked things up so bad and I believe that it isn't a situation where we the gov can apologies and everyone move on and be ok with what happened. I think it's the same for the indigenous cultural genocide thing too.

Me personally think reparations need to be made but I'm like you, I focus on the details how it's being done to have my vote for it. In my city I support reparation initiatives like pumping extra money into poor schools and expunging non violent drug charges. If your curious why please DM me I'd be happy to explain my thinking.

[Juthro]

I'm not convinced reparation is truly achievable.  As in, how can somebody make up for a cultural genocide that claimed the lives of someone's ancestors, and destroyed their very way of life?  How do you make up for the kidnapping, and forced slavery of someone's forefathers?  I dont see any monetary amount being able to balance the scales for these kind of crimes.  Some actions can not be undone, and some sins can not be atoned. 

 

I dont object to the concept of reparations, but I have a hard time thinking it is workable on the large scale   Also, the fact is that most of the people that truly deserve some form of reparation aren't alive anymore to receive them (IMO)