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.

[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.

[altamira16]

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

[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.

[minoanmiss]

*presses hands to mouth in utter horror*

[contrarywise]

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

[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.

[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

[broken_record]

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