No human remains found 2 years after claims of ‘mass graves’ in Canada

[Falco Knotwise]

Families today would naturally like to know where distant relatives might be buried, but nobody is making claims of criminal intent here, in this report.

As far as I can tell, nobody made any claims about these children being murdered or anything in any of the reports.

This report makes no mention of ‘atrocities’ committed by anyone. I can’t imagine why it is being used to justify such language.

According to a lot of sources, kids were kidnapped and put into cultural reeducation programs. They were not allowed to speak their language or live according to their culture or communicate with their families.

Okay, I believe I answered all these claims from my perspective in another post in this thread. You can go find it if you’re interested.

[ken_sylvania]

Yes Boot, repent, repent. Why is there so much 'gotcha' going on in this forum ?

So now it's 'gotcha' to ask people to admit when they are wrong?

After I caught the error and told everyone about that, you quoted places where I had been mistaken, repeatedly, as though I was not willing to admit the very thing I had already told everyone. To me, that did feel a little "gotcha". I mean, you didn't start doing that until I had already corrected the error.

And the original post made exactly the same error. The NY Post article made the same error. The people researching the graves did not call them mass graves. So if they aren't mass graves, that proves these researchers right on that point. It does not discredit them.

Actually, the timeline is that you claimed there were mass graves at "many, many schools." When I pushed back, you cited the NY Post article which claimed a mass grave at one school. You then admitted that the Kamloops site was not a mass grave, but you had not by any means corrected the statement about "many, many" mass graves. Just that the one location wasn't a mass grave.

That is when I doubled down about what I see as the real problem here - even with all your excuse-making about how it's all these click-bait sloppy journalists at fault, even they didn't claim mass graves at "many, many schools." The Wikipedia list you were citing as your source didn't make that claim. That's why I doubled down on asking for a specific admission - because it seemed to me that you were just making excuses, blaming sloppy journalists, and refusing to admit that in fact there is virtually no evidence of "mass graves". To me, your response here seems to be carefully worded to avoid saying "I was wrong, it doesn't appear that there were any mass graves" which you still seem to be trying to avoid.

For that matter though - if you still think that there is evidence to suggest there were mass graves at many, many schools, then by all means don't say you were wrong. It won't affect my happiness either way.

[Bootstrap]

Actually, the timeline is that you claimed there were mass graves at "many, many schools." When I pushed back, you cited the NY Post article which claimed a mass grave at one school. You then admitted that the Kamloops site was not a mass grave, but you had not by any means corrected the statement about "many, many" mass graves. Just that the one location wasn't a mass grave.

That's not what I see. Here's how I read the timeline:

Ken asks what definition of "mass graves" I am using, and points out that the Wikipedia article isn't saying that:

viewtopic.php?p=217495#p217495

Bootstrap says he got the phrase from the original post and the article it points to, then looks and sees that the article is not talking about the same place where "mass graves" were claimed. At this point, I assumed that they actually were claiming mass graves at Kamloops:

viewtopic.php?p=217515#p217515

Bootstrap looks further, and sees that the tribes and researchers were not claiming mass graves at Kamloops either, this is an error that NY Post made, quoting the Guardian. The Guardian had corrected it, the NY Post had not:

viewtopic.php?p=217521#p217521

So the fact that it isn't a mass grave doesn't seem to discredit the tribes or the researcher. You then start scolding me for having said something different before I learned these things:

viewtopic.php?p=217523#p217523

I wonder if something more like, "so you no longer believe ..." would have been more helpful here? I really do hope it's OK to say something, find out that it is wrong, and learn from the conversation. Your post felt kind of gotcha to me.

Then you posted a second time along the same lines, two minutes later:

viewtopic.php?p=217524#p217524

When I responded, you accused me of making things up:

viewtopic.php?p=217530#p217530

So I go ahead and explain how I had come up with this false impression:

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=6043&start=150

And you jump on me again:

viewtopic.php?p=217538#p217538

So that's 6 posts where you seem to be jumping on me for having said something before changing my mind based on new evidence. Not asking if I have changed me mind, but with an accusing tone. One after another. And yes, that all felt gotcha to me.

[Bootstrap]

That is when I doubled down about what I see as the real problem here - even with all your excuse-making about how it's all these click-bait sloppy journalists at fault, even they didn't claim mass graves at "many, many schools."

Excuse making? The real problem? This is what feels so gotcha to me. You seem to be assuming bad faith.

There were apparently individual graves at many many schools, and mass graves were more rare. You could have asked me, say, "so you no longer believe there were mass graves at many many schools?"

Why isn't it a "real problem" when the article in the OP says researchers are claiming there are mass graves when the researchers aren't saying that?

And why isn't the "real problem" the children who were taken away from their parents and forcibly reeducated, then disappeared?

[mike]

I haven't followed this story, but the Daily Mail claims that nearly one hundred churches in Canada have been burned or vandalized after the horrific claims that hundreds of children were buried under Catholic schools.

Whether or not the terrible claims were true, impressions matter more than reality in some ways. On an Internet forum, to backtrack later and say that oh, after all, the information was wrong or doesn't show what activists claim it does, is one thing. But in the real world, the impressions that were given and claims that were made had very nasty real-world consequences, deserved or undeserved, that can't be retracted.

[Falco Knotwise]

The "atrocity" is that for centuries native groups have been subject to a relentless and deliberate campaign of extinction that has included:

• Tens of thousands of children forcibly removed from their families and communities and sent do distant boarding schools where their language, culture, and beliefs were systematically eradicated.

They had to go to school because of compulsory school laws, yes. Their language, culture, and beliefs were not systematically eradicated. You’ve been drinking too much neomarxist cool aid again.

[*]Hundreds upon hundreds of native children gone missing which could include: children dying of disease without parents being notified, children dying of abuse without parents being notified, children running away from abusive situations without parents being notified, children being adopted into white families and "disappearing" into white society with new names without parents being notified, etc. etc.

The report talks about some students who ran away from school and caught sicknesses and died. It’s says nothing whatever about “hundreds upon hundreds.”

Also according to this report, there are no actual historical records of parents not being notified of deaths. Yet, you keep saying there were “hundreds upon hundreds” of such instances. Those records must have been “intentionally destroyed” though right?

Tell my why this isn’t some kind of cult belief.

[*]Native lands being stolen through a wide variety of mechanisms, some under the color of law, some through violence
[*]Native tribes being "disenrolled" in order to expunge their reservations and make the land available to white settlement
[*]A two-tiered system of justice, education, public health, economic development that made native groups second-class citizens on their own lands
[*]etc. etc.[/list]

So it isn't one event in one location at one point in time. It is the cumulative impact of decades of hostile acts across the country that has been going on for generations.

I would say your claims about the industrial residential schools are obviously unfounded and putting them into a wider historical context (regardless of merits or lack thereof) won’t make them any less false.

And that wider context is not the topic of this thread, anyway. You should start another one to discuss those things if you want.

[Josh]

Incidentally if we didn’t organise our own schools we’d have to send them to public school too. And the instruction wound be in English, not PA Dutch. The public school would do zip all to preserve Amish or Mennonite culture and would generally push students to conform to generic American culture.

Not sure how I see this as any different. The original reason for setting up residential schools was because of chronic abuse and neglect in certain homes and needing a place to send the children. That was in vogue in the 1960s. There are people today claiming Amish children need removed from their homes and places with non Amish foster families because of allegations of “abuse”.

[Signtist]

The original reason for setting up residential schools was because of chronic abuse and neglect in certain homes and needing a place to send the children. That was in vogue in the 1960s. There are people today claiming Amish children need removed from their homes and places with non Amish foster families because of allegations of “abuse”.

I think your opinions are based on a faulty premise. It seems there is ample evidence that the schools were in fact started to purposely do away with native culture, and sold to the church under the guise of humanitarian aid. I can't prove this at the moment. I prefaced my statement with 'I think' and 'it seems' for a reason.

[Signtist]

Also, Bootstrap is wrong. There were no mass graves anywhere. That is just patently false.

[Szdfan]

The original reason for setting up residential schools was because of chronic abuse and neglect in certain homes and needing a place to send the children. That was in vogue in the 1960s. There are people today claiming Amish children need removed from their homes and places with non Amish foster families because of allegations of “abuse”.

I think your opinions are based on a faulty premise. It seems there is ample evidence that the schools were in fact started to purposely do away with native culture, and sold to the church under the guise of humanitarian aid. I can't prove this at the moment. I prefaced my statement with 'I think' and 'it seems' for a reason.

The purpose of the residential schools in the 19th Century (not the 1960s - the first school was the Mohawk Institute in Ontario opened in 1831) was to assimilate native children and eradicate native culture.

The quote below is from an 1892 speech by Richard Henry Pratt, founder and longtime superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania:
https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/te ... n%20Denver.

A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.