Ongoing Residential Schools Tragedy Discussion

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

I'm not sure it has been discussed in this thread yet, and I wasn't quickly able to get the following date which I think is relevant:

1. What was the baseline infant/child mortality rate in Canada from say 1850 to 1940.
2. What was the baseline infant/child mortality rate for FN in their communities for the same time period.
3. How do these compare to the infant/child mortality rate in the residential schools for the same time period.

4. How many non-FN children were dumped into unmarked graves when they died for the same time period?

[BoLevi]

Originally Posted by Wormius

4. How many non-FN children were dumped into unmarked graves when they died for the same time period?

worth finding out

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

I'm not sure it has been discussed in this thread yet, and I wasn't quickly able to get the following data which I think is relevant:

1. What was the baseline infant/child mortality rate in Canada from say 1850 to 1940.
2. What was the baseline infant/child mortality rate for FN in their communities for the same time period.
3. How do these compare to the infant/child mortality rate in the residential schools for the same time period.

And the deflection continues. Reconciliation will never happen when we continually search for justifications.

[BoLevi]

Originally Posted by belsarius

And the deflection continues. Reconciliation will never happen when we continually search for justifications.

Justifications? What justifications.

I'm curious what the rate of death was in residential schools compared to two baselines. I haven't suggested any conclusions.

I'm interested in fully describing the problem. That's not a deflection - it fits within the "Truth" part of Truth and Reconciliation.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

Justifications? What justifications.

I'm curious what the rate of death was in residential schools compared to two baselines. I haven't suggested any conclusions.

I'm interested in fully describing the problem. That's not a deflection - it fits within the "Truth" part of Truth and Reconciliation.

I've read that it was about 5x higher.

[Red Slinger]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

Justifications? What justifications.

I'm curious what the rate of death was in residential schools compared to two baselines. I haven't suggested any conclusions.

I'm interested in fully describing the problem. That's not a deflection - it fits within the "Truth" part of Truth and Reconciliation.

Yes, knowing how the kids deaths compares to children that weren't tortured would be interesting but not the most important questions. The more important questions are:

• What caused their death?
• Why were they in a mass grave?
• Why weren't the deaths documented/reported?

Skipping over these questions and focusing on the one's you listed smacks of having an agenda.

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

Justifications? What justifications.

I'm curious what the rate of death was in residential schools compared to two baselines. I haven't suggested any conclusions.

I'm interested in fully describing the problem. That's not a deflection - it fits within the "Truth" part of Truth and Reconciliation.

Residential schools, a system designed by the federal government and administered by Churches, threw children into a mass grave. What does it matter what the "rate" of death inside vs outside of schools was?

Pretty easy to conclude that if these Christian institutions treated these children that badly in death, they probably didn't give them tender loving care in life.

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

Justifications? What justifications.

I'm curious what the rate of death was in residential schools compared to two baselines. I haven't suggested any conclusions.

I'm interested in fully describing the problem. That's not a deflection - it fits within the "Truth" part of Truth and Reconciliation.

Your questions imply conclusions.

If the death rate for residential schools are in line with the death rate of FN communities, what conclusion does that intuitively draw?

If the death rate for all FN communities is in line with Canada, what conclusion comes from that?

By just asking for rates of death, it is searching for a justification that Residential schools weren't as bad (or as deadly) as being advertised. Or that FN communities weren't as bad off as the rest of Canada. Neither of which are good conclusions as there will be a complex set of circumstances around each.

The problem is that we don't need to ask questions like this. We need to listen, we need to believe and look for ways to improve.

Ultimately death rates don't matter to this conversation. I don't care if more kids survived in residential schools than in FN communities. They were ultimately abused, neglected, forbidden from their culture, ripped from their homes and genocide was committed against their people.

Saying 4.5 children per 1000 died in Canada overall and 5.5 did on FN communities changes none of that and does nothing to the conversation but provide a reason to escape or justify the ultimate conclusion that Canada committed atrocities against FN people.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

You've taken this position a couple of times and it makes absolutely no sense in light of your other expressed views, as far as I can tell. Be specific. Why is the fact that the group doing the criticizing is white, male and college educated relevant? Why is the fact that many religious people are visible minorities relevant? Why does this make it "not a good look"?

One of the big cleavages emerging in our society is between the educated, mobile, tech-savvy, progressive, and irreligious on one hand; and the uneducated, geographically rooted, low skilled, and religious on the other. As the economy becomes ever-more knowledge based, these two groups increasingly break along class lines as well.

This cleavage is really bad for society. It’s toxic to trust and civility. Of course populists make great hay exploiting these divisions. But the knowledge-class does the work of populists for them when they denigrate the unenlightened. Notice I didn’t say disagree with, but denigrate.

One of the ways the enlightened keep up a compassionate self-image is by imagining that the people they’re denigrating are all middle-aged white men. People who don’t deserve sympathy. Which is why I’d guess people around here haven’t been particularly receptive to the data showing high rates of vaccine hesitancy among people of colour. They want to hate people who won’t get vaccinated, and that’s a lot easier when they’re picturing some people in their minds and not others.

The same with religion. The popular depiction of religious conservatives in our media is white men. Which makes performative contempt for religion and the religious acceptable in their social circles - admirable even. Lots of social media points to be earned showing white people emerging from a church during the pandemic with a caption “#### these idiots.” I’d wager few of these people would post a picture of people emerging from a mosque over that caption. It would be unthinkable.

Maybe the enlightened wouldn’t be so contemptuous of the unenlightened if they were prodded to recognize that many of those unenlightened don’t fit the profile they want to assign to them. White men are actually the least religious demographic in North America (women of colour are the most religious). Catholics aren’t just pasty old white dudes, but young Filipino women, South Korean families, and the tens of thousands of indigenous Canadians who make the pilgrimage to Lac Ste Anne every year. There’s a good chance the next Pope will be African, and that would almost certainly shape how people talk about the Church.

I point out these demographics in the hopes of making people more tolerant. Less eager to put the unsophisticated and unenlightened in boxes so they can hate them with a clean conscience.

Finally, the root of the monstrous residential school system was white saviour syndrome. The idea that benighted native people needed to be led into the light by enlightened Europeans. A bunch of white atheists expressing contempt for the brainwashed fools (many of them indigenous) who persist in their ignorant beliefs has echoes of the same arrogance.

[peter12]

That was superb, Cliff. Well said.

[Fuzz]

Except for the part where it's riddled with his own biases and attempts to paint a picture that misrepresents reality in an attempt to avoid placing blame where it actually lies, then ya, great post!

[BoLevi]

Originally Posted by peter12

I've read that it was about 5x higher.

I read the same, but there were two confounding issue with the quote that I read.

1. it was comparing to the baseline of overall (presumably non-FN) population.
2. the quote that I saw was for data from around 1940, which may not be useful when comparing to, say, the prior 70 years.

[Red Slinger]

Cliff...that is largely true but you completely ignore the power dynamics in your equation.

[BoLevi]

Originally Posted by belsarius

Your questions imply conclusions.

If the death rate for residential schools are in line with the death rate of FN communities, what conclusion does that intuitively draw?

If the death rate for all FN communities is in line with Canada, what conclusion comes from that?

By just asking for rates of death, it is searching for a justification that Residential schools weren't as bad (or as deadly) as being advertised. Or that FN communities weren't as bad off as the rest of Canada. Neither of which are good conclusions as there will be a complex set of circumstances around each.

The problem is that we don't need to ask questions like this. We need to listen, we need to believe and look for ways to improve.

Ultimately death rates don't matter to this conversation. I don't care if more kids survived in residential schools than in FN communities. They were ultimately abused, neglected, forbidden from their culture, ripped from their homes and genocide was committed against their people.

Saying 4.5 children per 1000 died in Canada overall and 5.5 did on FN communities changes none of that and does nothing to the conversation but provide a reason to escape or justify the ultimate conclusion that Canada committed atrocities against FN people.

Depending on how we slice things, there are three dominant narratives here:

1. The kidnapping of children and sending them to schools to be forcibly assimilated.

2. The consequences this had on the mental and physical health of the children (up to and including death).

3. The nature of the treatment of the children and their families after their death.


All three of these topics are worthy of our discussion, and we can discuss them all at length. However, my question addressed #2. It in no way suggested we should not talk about #1 and #3.

Further, the answer to #2 doesn't impact what conclusions we should draw about #1 and #3. I'm certainly not comfortable saying we don't need to ask questions about how deadly the Residential Schools were. That's a pretty important question in my view. And I am asking to what degree Residential schools increased the risk of death. (Incidentally, this is the inverse question that that people ask in the covid vaccine threads: to what degree does an intervention prevent death is just the inverse of asking to what degree an intervention increases death. Just in this case the "placebo" is either the Canadian population at large or FN in their own communities).

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

I read the same, but there were two confounding issue with the quote that I read.

1. it was comparing to the baseline of overall (presumably non-FN) population.
2. the quote that I saw was for data from around 1940, which may not be useful when comparing to, say, the prior 70 years.

Man you're a piece of work.

Why does it even matter?
Let's say for the sake of argument that it was lower.
Hell let's say for the sake of argument that there was less abuse in these schools than either the general or FN populations.

If we paint the residential schools in the best possible light that they maybe weren't as bad as some other place, how does that (almost certainly 100% false assumption) change the conversation?

Does it change the fact that this was institutionalized and sanctioned abuse with an eye to eliminating an entire culture?
Can anyone make a good faith argument that it excuses even a tiny bit of the purpose and effect of residential schools?

We know who you are and they kind of things you post, and your intent couldn't be more clear.
You're the type who "Just asks questions" knowing full well that they are fully loaded, thinly veiled dog whistles.

Asking these types of questions is meant only to obfuscate what should be an obvious point, that terrible things happed at these schools and we need to do some deep looks into why they happened and what we can do to try to reconcile for that.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

Depending on how we slice things, there are three dominant narratives here:

1. The kidnapping of children and sending them to schools to be forcibly assimilated.

2. The consequences this had on the mental and physical health of the children (up to and including death).

3. The nature of the treatment of the children and their families after their death.


All three of these topics are worthy of our discussion, and we can discuss them all at length. However, my question addressed #2. It in no way suggested we should not talk about #1 and #3.

Further, the answer to #2 doesn't impact what conclusions we should draw about #1 and #3. I'm certainly not comfortable saying we don't need to ask questions about how deadly the Residential Schools were. That's a pretty important question in my view. And I am asking to what degree Residential schools increased the risk of death. (Incidentally, this is the inverse question that that people ask in the covid vaccine threads: to what degree does an intervention prevent death is just the inverse of asking to what degree an intervention increases death. Just in this case the "placebo" is either the Canadian population at large or FN in their own communities).

But despite occasional efforts at reform, even as late as the 1940s the death rates within residential schools were up to five times higher than among Canadian children as a whole.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...ential-schools


I haven't found anything comparing the death rate directly in general, but if, after efforts fo reform, it was 5 times higher, you can expect it was worse than that.

Odds of a student dying over the life of the program: 1 in 25 (if 6,000)

• Odds of dying for Canadians serving in the Second World War: 1 in 26
• According to Saturday Night magazine, reporting on residential schools, Nov. 23, 1907: "Indian boys and girls are dying like flies.... Even war seldom shows as large a percentage of fatalities as does the education system we have imposed on our Indian wards."

Odds of a residential school student dying in the early years of the program: 1 in 2

• Duncan Campbell Scott, then deputy superintendent-general of Indian Affairs, wrote in 1913: "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."
• During the program's first half-century, tuberculosis and then influenza were the primary killers. The neglect, abuse, lack of food, isolation from family and badly constructed buildings assisted disease in killing residential school "inmates," as Scott termed them. A lawyer who conducted a review in 1907 told the government, "Doing nothing to obviate the preventable causes of death, brings the Department within unpleasant nearness to the charge of manslaughter."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/t...bers-1.3096185


It really doesn't matter how you look at the numbers, they are all really bad.

[Wastedyouth]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

One of the big cleavages emerging in our society is between the educated, mobile, tech-savvy, progressive, and irreligious on one hand; and the uneducated, geographically rooted, low skilled, and religious on the other. As the economy becomes ever-more knowledge based, these two groups increasingly break along class lines as well.

This cleavage is really bad for society. It’s toxic to trust and civility. Of course populists make great hay exploiting these divisions. But the knowledge-class does the work of populists for them when they denigrate the unenlightened. Notice I didn’t say disagree with, but denigrate.

One of the ways the enlightened keep up a compassionate self-image is by imagining that the people they’re denigrating are all middle-aged white men. People who don’t deserve sympathy. Which is why I’d guess people around here haven’t been particularly receptive to the data showing high rates of vaccine hesitancy among people of colour. They want to hate people who won’t get vaccinated, and that’s a lot easier when they’re picturing some people in their minds and not others.

The same with religion. The popular depiction of religious conservatives in our media is white men. Which makes performative contempt for religion and the religious acceptable in their social circles - admirable even. Lots of social media points to be earned showing white people emerging from a church during the pandemic with a caption “#### these idiots.” I’d wager few of these people would post a picture of people emerging from a mosque over that caption. It would be unthinkable.

Maybe the enlightened wouldn’t be so contemptuous of the unenlightened if they were prodded to recognize that many of those unenlightened don’t fit the profile they want to assign to them. White men are actually the least religious demographic in North America (women of colour are the most religious). Catholics aren’t just pasty old white dudes, but young Filipino women, South Korean families, and the tens of thousands of indigenous Canadians who make the pilgrimage to Lac Ste Anne every year. There’s a good chance the next Pope will be African, and that would almost certainly shape how people talk about the Church.

I point out these demographics in the hopes of making people more tolerant. Less eager to put the unsophisticated and unenlightened in boxes so they can hate them with a clean conscious.

Finally, the root of the monstrous residential school system was white saviour syndrome. The idea that benighted native people needed to be led into the light by enlightened Europeans. A bunch of white atheists expressing contempt for the brainwashed fools (many of them indigenous) who persist in their ignorant beliefs has echoes of the same arrogance.

I mean, except that the atheists aren't promoting indoctrination, abuse and segregation so much as education so that hopefully these people you seem to think are being put in the specific boxes, can make educated decisions based upon reasoning. Not because they, their parents and grandparents and their society have been somewhat forced into believing because of lack of education, lack of resources to educate themselves and being neck deep in religious propaghanda from the moment they are born.

White saviourism almost exclusively follows religion. And it has for centuries. I think most "Atheists" in this thread are promoting open discussion and acceptance of guilt from the Catholic Church, in the hopes that a people who have had this unholy dogma funneled into their lives for over a hundred years, can make a clean break if they want.

You don't see a whole lot a atheist based groups running around in other countries trying to educate them on atheism, do you? Most groups that are non-religion based that do charity work in underprivileged areas are often there to teach technical skills, provide upgraded infrastructure or similar practical goals. Not ramming religion down their throats and hoping that Jesus can save the "Savages".

If they choose to still believe, good for them, they can make that choice. I have a feeling it hasn't been much of a choice for them for a very very long time.

Religion (Christianity) has done more harm, in every facet of Indigenous life, than good over the last two hundreds years. And what is upsetting I think to most is, that the organizations (churches/religions) that a lot of these Indigineous communities have had to turn to, are the ones who inflicted generational abuse upon them and their children.

[BoLevi]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

One of the big cleavages emerging in our society is between the educated, mobile, tech-savvy, progressive, and irreligious on one hand; and the uneducated, geographically rooted, low skilled, and religious on the other. As the economy becomes ever-more knowledge based, these two groups increasingly break along class lines as well.

This cleavage is really bad for society. It’s toxic to trust and civility. Of course populists make great hay exploiting these divisions. But the knowledge-class does the work of populists for them when they denigrate the unenlightened. Notice I didn’t say disagree with, but denigrate.

One of the ways the enlightened keep up a compassionate self-image is by imagining that the people they’re denigrating are all middle-aged white men. People who don’t deserve sympathy. Which is why I’d guess people around here haven’t been particularly receptive to the data showing high rates of vaccine hesitancy among people of colour. They want to hate people who won’t get vaccinated, and that’s a lot easier when they’re picturing some people in their minds and not others.

The same with religion. The popular depiction of religious conservatives in our media is white men. Which makes performative contempt for religion and the religious acceptable in their social circles - admirable even. Lots of social media points to be earned showing white people emerging from a church during the pandemic with a caption “#### these idiots.” I’d wager few of these people would post a picture of people emerging from a mosque over that caption. It would be unthinkable.

Maybe the enlightened wouldn’t be so contemptuous of the unenlightened if they were prodded to recognize that many of those unenlightened don’t fit the profile they want to assign to them. White men are actually the least religious demographic in North America (women of colour are the most religious). Catholics aren’t just pasty old white dudes, but young Filipino women, South Korean families, and the tens of thousands of indigenous Canadians who make the pilgrimage to Lac Ste Anne every year. There’s a good chance the next Pope will be African, and that would almost certainly shape how people talk about the Church.

I point out these demographics in the hopes of making people more tolerant. Less eager to put the unsophisticated and unenlightened in boxes so they can hate them with a clean conscious.

Finally, the root of the monstrous residential school system was white saviour syndrome. The idea that benighted native people needed to be led into the light by enlightened Europeans. A bunch of white atheists expressing contempt for the brainwashed fools (many of them indigenous) who persist in their ignorant beliefs has echoes of the same arrogance.

Fantastic post. I agree that the cleavage you describe is real. However, I don't think it represents as large of a majority as people think it does. It's just the loudest conflict at the moment.

There is a substantial group that stand outside of this conflict, looking on both parties with disdain (disdain which is deserved).

I would describe a large portion of this silent crowd as:

educated, mobile, tech-savvy, progressive, classical liberals (small L libertarians if you prefer), and irreligious

These people tend to get vilified by both sides, but mostly as traitors by the progressives you describe in your post. Public figures representing this demographic would be the likes of John Mcwhorter, Glenn Loury, Sam Harris, Hitch, Douglas Murray, etc.

[BoLevi]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...ential-schools


I haven't found anything comparing the death rate directly in general, but if, after efforts fo reform, it was 5 times higher, you can expect it was worse than that.


https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/t...bers-1.3096185


It really doesn't matter how you look at the numbers, they are all really bad.

Sure it's bad. More than bad.

I'm still trying to find out to what degree it was bad. Having more information and being specific and accurate is never a bad thing.

[Makarov]

Thank goodness CliffFletcher and BoLevi have arrived to steer this discussion about residential schools back to their preferred topics of discussion, including greatest hits like "the regressive left".