About Kamloops

[sabotabby]

I debated whether this should go behind a cut. I feel like this story needs to be slammed in the face of every person on the land currently called Canada. You don't get to be safe from this. I don't get to be safe from this. But also I don't know who's reading, and Indigenous people are grieving right now. So I'm erring on the side of cutting it.



Yesterday, the bodies of 215 children were found on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential school. These are undocumented deaths—as in, if I understand correctly, heretofore uncounted in the already astronomical death toll of residential schools. The parents of these children who were kidnapped, brutalized, and murdered by the Canadian federal government and the Catholic Church never knew what happened to them.

This atrocity was uncovered by the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, who hired someone with expertise in radar to locate the bodies. It proved what they already knew—the Canadian state and its proxies had taken these children from First Nations across BC, tortured them, murdered them, buried the bodies in unmarked graves, and never told their families what happened.

This is one school among many. It is not the only school with mass graves—this is the one that was uncovered yesterady.

I've known about the mass graves for at least 15 years. I remember attending a talk by Kevin Annett, a writer and minister whose research into residential schools and interviews with survivors led him to conclude that there were mass graves of Indigenous children. People said he was crazy at the time. But the evidence he'd found was very convincing, and confirmed what survivors had described for years.

The Kamloops Indian Residential school operated as an instrument of genocide until 1969. This is not an historical crime of long ago—this is within living memory, with living survivors. In all likelihood, there are living perpetrators, child-rapists and child-killers walking free among us. This is the roots out of which public education in Canada grew. This is the roots of the wealth and privilege that we all enjoy.

What else can I say? Tell the truth. Scream it until your throat hurts. Mourn and grieve and fight.

Here are the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along with calls to action that remain unfulfilled to this day.

Comments

[smhwpf]

Horrifying. No adequate words.

If Canada does not open genocide investigations against living perpetrators, the ICC should.

[sabotabby]

As far as I know, no one has been charged in these atrocities and the other mass murders of Indigenous children. Canada would rather fight survivors in court than admit wrongdoing, unless it's just a milquetoast general apology that Trudeau gets to cry about.

[smhwpf]

Yeah, the fact that Canada is not making any efforts to prosecute is what made be wonder about the ICC, but now I remember that the ICC can only prosecute crimes that took place after it was established (in 2002). Hmm, I can see why Canada might have wanted that limitation put in.

[sabotabby]

We also fought to keep a bunch of things out of the UN definition of genocide.

[armiphlage]

They did charge one of the (female, underpaid) teachers who made her students eat their vomit off the floor, but for some reason they didn't go after the (male, overpaid) administrators who told her to do that.

[dewline]

Sacrificing the front-liners to cover the middle-managers and policy-setters. This is not new. Disgusting, and not new.

[sabotabby]

Yup. And that's still a tiny fraction of convictions vs. all the people who actively participated or were complicit.

[ioplokon]

Horrible but, like you say, not really surprising. I mean. Those children had to be somewhere. It's sure something how people were just like, oh yeah totally normal that thousands of kids just... never came home; sure there's nothing bad happening there. But yeah, finding them is not anywhere near enough.

[sabotabby]

Yep. The official death tolls don't add up. There are a lot more.

[altamira16]

And also Social workers forced girls under ten to get IUDs in Canada.

[sabotabby]

Oh yes. And there's the baby snatching. More Indigenous kids in shitty foster homes now than there were in the residential schools.

[moon_custafer]

This prompted me to look for updates on “Baby H” (the infant confiscated from the parents on a pretext of neglect 90 minutes after her birth by c-section), but the most recent thing I can find is a report from last June that she was still in foster care: https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/baby-h-turns-1-in-foster-care-while-newborn-brother-taken-at-birth/

Article contains a link to what I suspect is the original online petition asking she be returned to her parents.

[sabotabby]

As far as I know the legal battle is ongoing. It's part of the process where they bury you in paperwork because even if they know they're in the wrong, you don't have the resources or stamina to get through a fight with bureaucracy.

[minoanmiss]

*presses hands to mouth in utter horror*

[sabotabby]

This is only the first of the horrors, I think.

[contrarywise]

This is so horrifying and heartbreaking, and it's just the beginning. There are no words adequate for this.

[sabotabby]

No. I could barely write these ones and I'm just overwhelmed by the horror.

[lapinlunaire]

This is extremely fucked up. :( I can't imagine the fear and horror those kids went through or the heartbreak of their families.

What I don't understand is why governments and churches are so into sweeping this kind of thing under the rug for so long. Even on a more cynical level, surely it would be better PR to be seen to try to do the right thing, than to very obviously hiding secrets that people inevitably suspect -- or even confirm their suspicions.

[sabotabby]

The Catholic church has by and large gotten away with this kind of shit historically, and it's a wealthy and powerful lobby group. I suspect that any government that tries to investigate (besides the fact that the governments are just as involved in genocide, if not more so) would fear consequences at the ballot box.

[lapinlunaire]

That's the thing, in terms of the Church, it would be a 10000x better look if they did something. People keep complaining about how young people are less and less interested in the Church and this kind of thing (along with its inability to keep up with the times) is why. Whenever people find out the truth, the crappy response just makes it worse. Take all the stories about pedophile priests just getting assigned to different parishes -- many of these cases have come to light anyway, so the Church has looked bad, and then it's ended up looking even worse for trying to cover it up.

Governments being afraid of this having an impact on votes makes only a slight bit more sense, but couldn't it be good PR for them too? It would make them look like nicer people who are different from their predecessors and I think many people would trust them more, knowing they're not trying to hide secrets from them.

[sabotabby]

I don't know. I can't imagine having that sort of power and doing what they do with it. They consistently make the worst choices and I don't get it.

Like I get that actual reconciliation would bankrupt Canada but maybe not fighting sexual abuse survivors in court would make sense???

[numb3r_5ev3n]

There are no words for how awful this is, but we need to find them because, as someone tweeted last night, there are more Indigenous kids in the system than were at these schools. The genocide is still going on.

EDIT: here it is: https://twitter.com/DrsDefundPolice/status/1398685457345564675

[sabotabby]

Absolutely.

[broken_record]

Humans can be so horrible. It's upsetting and mystifying. I'm just glad people are working to reveal this.

[sabotabby]

Me too. I keep thinking that this has to be a tipping point, that there's no longer a chance that anyone will tolerate this.