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

[Szdfan]

From the TRC Summary of Findings (p153)

Residential schools were a systematic, government-sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples. English and, to a far lesser degree, French were the only languages permitted to be used in most schools. Students were punished—often severely—for speaking their own languages. Michael Sillett, a former student at the North West River residential school in Newfoundland and Labrador, told the Commission, “Children at the dorm were not allowed to speak their mother tongue.
I remember several times when other children were slapped or had their mouths washed out for speaking their mother tongue; whether it was Inuktitut or Innu-aimun. Residents were admonished for just being Native.”78 As late as the 1970s, students at schools in northwestern Ontario were not allowed to speak their language if they were in the presence of a staff member who could not understand that language. Conrad Burns, whose father attended the Prince Albert school, named this policy for what it was: “It was a cultural genocide. People were beaten for their language, people were
beaten because ... they followed their own ways.”

How far can you stretch terms like this? A salesman told me a few years ago that he attended a Catholic grade school where the nuns rapped his knuckles with rulers till they bled whenever he wrote with his left hand, because they believed everybody should write with their right hand. Were they genociding his lefthandedness?

Is left-handedness a national, ethnical, racial or religious group? It's not genocide according to the definitions Boot and I have cited.

[Bootstrap]

How far can you stretch terms like this? A salesman told me a few years ago that he attended a Catholic grade school where the nuns rapped his knuckles with rulers till they bled whenever he wrote with his left hand, because they believed everybody should write with their right hand. Were they genociding his lefthandedness?

Is left-handedness a national, ethnical, racial or religious group? It's not genocide according to the definitions Boot and I have cited.

There are several possible dangers, I think.

1. Throwing the term around so loosely that it means nothing at all.
2. Using the term in ways that are wildly out of touch with reality, e.g. "white genocide" conspiracy theories.
3. Not using the term when we should. Refusing to be alarmed by the kind of thing that really should be alarming.

I think it's helpful to construct parallel examples. Suppose the Russians took Russian Mennonites and put them in reeducation camps where they were punished if they spoke German or did things associated with being Mennonite. Suppose they broke off all communication with their parents and communities, and parents often were not notified if their children died. What would we call that? Why?

Is this different from left-handedness? How?

Is this different from the Indian residential schools? How?

[Josh]

I think it's helpful to construct parallel examples. Suppose the Russians took Russian Mennonites and put them in reeducation camps where they were punished if they spoke German or did things associated with being Mennonite. Suppose they broke off all communication with their parents and communities, and parents often were not notified if their children died. What would we call that? Why?

No need to "suppose" it, because that exact thing happened after WWII.

I don't think it was a "genocide", though. Was it religious persecution? Yes, it was. Were they targeted because of their ethnic group? Not really. Lots of different groups faced horrible repercussions for siding with the Soviet's enemies. (Another example were the Crimean Tatars who sided against the Soviets in WWII and ended up losing their homeland and being scattered to the four winds, often placed in terrible camps.) I would hesitate to call that a "genocide", though. Lots of Russians were also being sent to reeducation camps and being killed in great numbers.

Eventually, the Soviet Union decided it would be better to try to have a multi-cultural society and "celebrate" different cultures instead of trying to Russify all of them. They even decided to let a Mennonite town exist, which still existed in 2013. https://time.com/4170465/inside-a-remot ... e-village/

To me, a genocide looks a lot more like what happened to Armenians in Turkish controlled areas, or the infamous civil war in Rwanda. People were targeted and then killed solely of their ethnic group. Genocides do happen and they are very bad, but I don't think it does anyone any good to try to "expand" the definition.

[ohio jones]

So let's go back to the quote from Pratt on p. 18:

Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.

Genocide is killing the man because of the Indian in him.

Cultural genocide is killing the Indian in him.

Sinistral genocide is killing the left-handedness in him.

[Ken]

I think it's helpful to construct parallel examples. Suppose the Russians took Russian Mennonites and put them in reeducation camps where they were punished if they spoke German or did things associated with being Mennonite. Suppose they broke off all communication with their parents and communities, and parents often were not notified if their children died. What would we call that? Why?

No need to "suppose" it, because that exact thing happened after WWII.

I don't think it was a "genocide", though. Was it religious persecution? Yes, it was. Were they targeted because of their ethnic group? Not really. Lots of different groups faced horrible repercussions for siding with the Soviet's enemies. (Another example were the Crimean Tatars who sided against the Soviets in WWII and ended up losing their homeland and being scattered to the four winds, often placed in terrible camps.) I would hesitate to call that a "genocide", though. Lots of Russians were also being sent to reeducation camps and being killed in great numbers.

Eventually, the Soviet Union decided it would be better to try to have a multi-cultural society and "celebrate" different cultures instead of trying to Russify all of them. They even decided to let a Mennonite town exist, which still existed in 2013. https://time.com/4170465/inside-a-remot ... e-village/

To me, a genocide looks a lot more like what happened to Armenians in Turkish controlled areas, or the infamous civil war in Rwanda. People were targeted and then killed solely of their ethnic group. Genocides do happen and they are very bad, but I don't think it does anyone any good to try to "expand" the definition.

Genocide has an actual definition. According to the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide.

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

With respect to Native Americans, the US is probably guilty of all 5 of those things, although most (but not all) of it occurred before 1948.

I don't know enough about the treatment of Mennonites within the USSR after WW2. Although I suspect to the extent that they were persecuted, it was probably more to do with the fact that they were perceived as ethnic Germans than due to their religious beliefs.

[Soloist]

I have been persecuted too much. At one point they tried to recruit me to continue the persecution on entire new generation. I refused. To which I was mocked and ridiculed.
Here I am, left handed and left out.

[Neto]

From the TRC Summary of Findings (p153)

How far can you stretch terms like this? A salesman told me a few years ago that he attended a Catholic grade school where the nuns rapped his knuckles with rulers till they bled whenever he wrote with his left hand, because they believed everybody should write with their right hand. Were they genociding his lefthandedness?

Is left-handedness a national, ethnical, racial or religious group? It's not genocide according to the definitions Boot and I have cited.

My maternal grandmother was beaten with a ruler that way, for using her left hand.

[flyingnorm]

Would the moderators please consider intervening the hurtful, inaccurate, and harmful contents being posted by people who are exceedingly ignorant of matters relating to Indigenous people who are suffering in real life as a result of harm caused by the Indian residential school system, a portion of which was operated by Conservative Mennonites?

Would this forum tolerate people positing that the persecution of Anabaptist people in Europe in the 15th to 18th centuries was not really all that bad?

Would we tolerate people claiming the Mennonite purge of Russia as something minimal, or well deserved?

What about our Mennonite Indigenous brothers and sisters who suffered at the hands of Mennonites from the US and Canada? Do they matter to those of you who minimize harms, or make jokes about harms caused?

Have you no compassion?

[thebluffs]

Would the moderators please consider intervening the hurtful, inaccurate, and harmful contents being posted by people who are exceedingly ignorant of matters relating to Indigenous people who are suffering in real life as a result of harm caused by the Indian residential school system, a portion of which was operated by Conservative Mennonites?

Would this forum tolerate people positing that the persecution of Anabaptist people in Europe in the 15th to 18th centuries was not really all that bad?

Would we tolerate people claiming the Mennonite purge of Russia as something minimal, or well deserved?

What about our Mennonite Indigenous brothers and sisters who suffered at the hands of Mennonites from the US and Canada? Do they matter to those of you who minimize harms, or make jokes about harms caused?

Have you no compassion?

I second @flyingnorm's request that this thread be closed.

[barnhart]

I support flyingnorm's suggestion. And his call for compassion.