Unmarked graves found at Battleford Industrial School 1974 Related School Battleford Industrial School (SK) (Subject) Description Five anthropology students from the University of Saskatchewan discovered 74 unmarked graves on the grounds of the Battleford Industrial School. When in 1914 the school closed, the principal, E. Matheson, reminded Indian Affairs that there was a cemetery on the grounds containing 70 to 80 graves. The cemetery was never registered, however. The University of Saskatchewan students mapped its boundaries, excavated individual graves, and erected grave markers. Fifty of the deceased were identified and a cairn erected bearing their names. Image courtesy of Ben Feist.
There seems to be a criterion transformation occurring over the past 7-8 years, whereby income supports are now characterized as “settlements”, in effect, reparations without any reference or connection to measurable outcomes. In other words, here is a lot of money with no strings attached.
Some politicians have never seen a problem where the solution hasn't included throwing someone's money at it, and if that doesn't work, throw more. Frum's comment about our expenditures on income supports for native communities becoming comparable to our spending on national defense raises a couple of questions in my mind, one of which is: how much of that expenditure does nothing but feed a bloated bureaucracy?
Speaking as an archeologist, I find this whole issue imbued with politics, it’s not about facts or truth, not about rational discussion or debate, it’s about agenda … it all reminds me of my experiences in communist china and Eastern Europe before the wall came down…one must just shut up and accept… it’s the Canadian way.
The problems of reconciling the info about the unmarked graves reminds me as well about the current discussion around homelessness and drugs. Very difficult to have a respectful conversation/debate about these two issues.
David says the government spends as much on Indigenous communities as it does on national defense, as if it was a good thing. Go to Halifax, there are derelict buildings falling to pieces on every piece of Navy property in the city. Canadian subs and ships can't operate in the Artic in any meaningful capacity, and the Navy has a recruitment shortfall of 20%. It's remarkable how all this military spending is attractive to virtually nobody. The Canadian government burns money at an astonishing rate to make things worse in virtually every sphere of influence.
On the markers.... The pings have a random distribution, so the chance that they are from a graveyard with random distribution and no sanitation planning, would be novel. Random distribution of pings is what you would expect at some level, if you are scanning a whole site with no forethought as to site layout, you will find hits all over the place. Though at least one site has been dug up with no findings of graves.
Wasn't that the BC school which had an old apple orchard that had been cut down? Even the initial surveyor said that the anomalies could be disturbed earth owing to tree roots.
Funny that Frum noted that Miller’s book was never taken up by the press, and then says that he interviewed Miller and never wrote about it. I’d have thought at that point he would have had a giggle about the irony.
This is a very rare occasion where David drops the ball. Disappointing but also can't expect a person to be perfect all the time. He seems a lot more worried about bans and sure I won't begrudge him the point there but prioritizing this over the actual tragedy is dishonest or at least unfair. Furthermore, I didn't like when he got emotional and without any evidence claiming that the past isn't really that dark.
he lives in both canada (prince edward county, ontario) and washington, Dc...so because he lives half the year in the states it follows that everything he says is untrue? Address his views not irrelevant details of his personal life.
Sir John A Macdonald's comments when he approved residential schools are overtyl racist. Dr Peter Bryce reported to the gov't of Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1907 about the unconscionably high rates of death among children in the residential schools of Manitoba, Saskatchewan & Alberta. His report was circulated in newspapers of the time. I find Frum's dismissal of the anomalies disingenuous. Where are all those children's bodies? Were the records just sloppily kept or was there the intent to cover up the high rate of deaths?
Many of the children died after they were sent home. So it's unlikely their remains will be found in cemeteries adjacent to the residential schools. Bryce's report mentions this. You are correct to say the records were very sloppily kept. Only in the 1930s was it made mandatory to record each death in an official manner, showing time, date and cause of death. So, for all the deaths that occurred before that time, the records are highly dispersed, if they were recorded at all. A lot of information was in the hands of the provincial coroner's offices and these files were turned over to the TRC. Unfortunately, most of the nun's chronicles, which were the day-to-day diaries of the nuns from the various Christian orders who taught at the schools, have been sealed by the NCTR. Once the NCTR decides to make these chronicles public, we will have a better idea of when and where each child was buried.
@@tanler7953 The federal government actually stopped keeping records of the children's deaths. I watched this dialogue again & it makes me more angry because people are continuing to deny that the rate of deaths in residential schools was so much higher than that of children outside them. Frum speaks more articulately but some of what he claims is redneck ignorance. The First Nations didn't live in total peace & harmony any more than the Israelis & Palestinians or the Ukrainians & Russians or too many Canadians & First Nations. NO other persecuted group that I know of had their children systematically abducted & housed in inadequate, crowded spaces, malnourished , easy prey for infectious diseases & beaten for speaking their first language. Frum asserts this was "in no way genocidal". Sean Speer grew up in Thunder Bay in closer proximity to First Nations families than David Frum but he seems intimidated by Frum's glib speech. I agree with Frum about outcomes & with the unseated First Nations chief who called for foremsic auditing. The reserves that were "granted" to First Nations were not on the prime arable farmland that white settlers were urged to come colonize from Mennonite colonies & Galicia & the Ukraine. Yes, let's take our history curriculums back 10,000 years. Cabot & Columbus didn't find land bare of humans. The fur trade would not have made the Hudson's Bay Company & the Northwest Company unbelievably rich without the aid the First Nations men & women gave.But hat fashions changed & the beavers were almost trapped out anyway. The buffalo were exterminated by mostly American hunters who rode the railway & left rotting carcasses heaped up. So replace their traditional culture with the fur trade, then stop that, simultaneously killing off the buffalo, steal their lands, steal their children, and they still don't have clean drinking water, they still have higher rates of tuberculosis, suicide, substance abuse, domestic violence. Why haven't they taken all this money they've been given & assimilated into good capitalists? It IS a national shame & embarassment.Maybe Frum can write speeches for Poilievre.
@@elainerempel1613 You can criticise Frum. That's fine. I'm not a big Frum fan myself. But when he says he's concerned about a law against denialism, censorship is exactly what he's talking about. Because whatever your response was, no matter how reasonable you feel it might have been, there's a pretty good chance it would be considered denialism if the law is passed. I suggest saving your comments and posting them at a different time because the censorship programs that TH-cam (and Microsoft) are running are very inconsistant.
Neither of you are apparently aware of how your thoughts and queries here reveal the limits of your paternalistic mindset. I'm not convinced this discussion is aiming to support the search for truth or thoughtful policy reform. It's just a rehash of the same old, same old.
please explain to the Canadian public how wanting to know the truth of what actually happened is evidence of the two commentators paternalistic mindset
Brilliant!!! Sums up very well the tiresome, heavily biased, and message of appeasement that dominates the current discussion. And as Frum sums up, with the billions spent, have we moved the needle at all regarding the status of the problem?
Very good conversation. Rational, calm and truth seeking. Thank you!
Unmarked graves found at Battleford Industrial School
1974
Related School
Battleford Industrial School (SK) (Subject)
Description
Five anthropology students from the University of Saskatchewan discovered 74 unmarked graves on the grounds of the Battleford Industrial School. When in 1914 the school closed, the principal, E. Matheson, reminded Indian Affairs that there was a cemetery on the grounds containing 70 to 80 graves. The cemetery was never registered, however. The University of Saskatchewan students mapped its boundaries, excavated individual graves, and erected grave markers. Fifty of the deceased were identified and a cairn erected bearing their names.
Image courtesy of Ben Feist.
There seems to be a criterion transformation occurring over the past 7-8 years, whereby income supports are now characterized as “settlements”, in effect, reparations without any reference or connection to measurable outcomes. In other words, here is a lot of money with no strings attached.
Some politicians have never seen a problem where the solution hasn't included throwing someone's money at it, and if that doesn't work, throw more.
Frum's comment about our expenditures on income supports for native communities becoming comparable to our spending on national defense raises a couple of questions in my mind, one of which is: how much of that expenditure does nothing but feed a bloated bureaucracy?
Speaking as an archeologist, I find this whole issue imbued with politics, it’s not about facts or truth, not about rational discussion or debate, it’s about agenda … it all reminds me of my experiences in communist china and Eastern Europe before the wall came down…one must just shut up and accept… it’s the Canadian way.
The problems of reconciling the info about the unmarked graves reminds me as well about the current discussion around homelessness and drugs. Very difficult to have a respectful conversation/debate about these two issues.
I think that a key here too would be the repeal of the Indian Act, however the Indian societies will not agree to this.
David says the government spends as much on Indigenous communities as it does on national defense, as if it was a good thing.
Go to Halifax, there are derelict buildings falling to pieces on every piece of Navy property in the city. Canadian subs and ships can't operate in the Artic in any meaningful capacity, and the Navy has a recruitment shortfall of 20%. It's remarkable how all this military spending is attractive to virtually nobody.
The Canadian government burns money at an astonishing rate to make things worse in virtually every sphere of influence.
he never said it was a good thing.
On the markers.... The pings have a random distribution, so the chance that they are from a graveyard with random distribution and no sanitation planning, would be novel.
Random distribution of pings is what you would expect at some level, if you are scanning a whole site with no forethought as to site layout, you will find hits all over the place. Though at least one site has been dug up with no findings of graves.
Wasn't that the BC school which had an old apple orchard that had been cut down? Even the initial surveyor said that the anomalies could be disturbed earth owing to tree roots.
Funny that Frum noted that Miller’s book was never taken up by the press, and then says that he interviewed Miller and never wrote about it. I’d have thought at that point he would have had a giggle about the irony.
Economic development and opportunity might be more important than misleading discussion.
Money is the bottom line, follow who is getting rich! To think it is a human nature issue needed to be addressed but pure greed is the real issue!
This is a very rare occasion where David drops the ball. Disappointing but also can't expect a person to be perfect all the time. He seems a lot more worried about bans and sure I won't begrudge him the point there but prioritizing this over the actual tragedy is dishonest or at least unfair.
Furthermore, I didn't like when he got emotional and without any evidence claiming that the past isn't really that dark.
Fraser institute = Conservative Party lip service, David Frum hasn’t lived here for 40 years or more😂
he lives in both canada (prince edward county, ontario) and washington, Dc...so because he lives half the year in the states it follows that everything he says is untrue? Address his views not irrelevant details of his personal life.
Sir John A Macdonald's comments when he approved residential schools are overtyl racist. Dr Peter Bryce reported to the gov't of Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1907 about the unconscionably high rates of death among children in the residential schools of Manitoba, Saskatchewan & Alberta. His report was circulated in newspapers of the time. I find Frum's dismissal of the anomalies disingenuous. Where are all those children's bodies? Were the records just sloppily kept or was there the intent to cover up the high rate of deaths?
Many of the children died after they were sent home. So it's unlikely their remains will be found in cemeteries adjacent to the residential schools. Bryce's report mentions this. You are correct to say the records were very sloppily kept. Only in the 1930s was it made mandatory to record each death in an official manner, showing time, date and cause of death. So, for all the deaths that occurred before that time, the records are highly dispersed, if they were recorded at all. A lot of information was in the hands of the provincial coroner's offices and these files were turned over to the TRC. Unfortunately, most of the nun's chronicles, which were the day-to-day diaries of the nuns from the various Christian orders who taught at the schools, have been sealed by the NCTR. Once the NCTR decides to make these chronicles public, we will have a better idea of when and where each child was buried.
@@tanler7953 The federal government actually stopped keeping records of the children's deaths. I watched this dialogue again & it makes me more angry because people are continuing to deny that the rate of deaths in residential schools was so much higher than that of children outside them. Frum speaks more articulately but some of what he claims is redneck ignorance. The First Nations didn't live in total peace & harmony any more than the Israelis & Palestinians or the Ukrainians & Russians or too many Canadians & First Nations. NO other persecuted group that I know of had their children systematically abducted & housed in inadequate, crowded spaces, malnourished , easy prey for infectious diseases & beaten for speaking their first language. Frum asserts this was "in no way genocidal". Sean Speer grew up in Thunder Bay in closer proximity to First Nations families than David Frum but he seems intimidated by Frum's glib speech. I agree with Frum about outcomes & with the unseated First Nations chief who called for foremsic auditing. The reserves that were "granted" to First Nations were not on the prime arable farmland that white settlers were urged to come colonize from Mennonite colonies & Galicia & the Ukraine. Yes, let's take our history curriculums back 10,000 years. Cabot & Columbus didn't find land bare of humans. The fur trade would not have made the Hudson's Bay Company & the Northwest Company unbelievably rich without the aid the First Nations men & women gave.But hat fashions changed & the beavers were almost trapped out anyway. The buffalo were exterminated by mostly American hunters who rode the railway & left rotting carcasses heaped up. So replace their traditional culture with the fur trade, then stop that, simultaneously killing off the buffalo, steal their lands, steal their children, and they still don't have clean drinking water, they still have higher rates of tuberculosis, suicide, substance abuse, domestic violence. Why haven't they taken all this money they've been given & assimilated into good capitalists? It IS a national shame & embarassment.Maybe Frum can write speeches for Poilievre.
@@tanler7953 Former chief RoseAnne Archibald called for forensic auditing. Unseating her sure looks suspicious.
@@tanler7953 I wrote a lengthy reply which has disappeared. Maybe I offended TH-cam censors??
@@elainerempel1613 You can criticise Frum. That's fine. I'm not a big Frum fan myself. But when he says he's concerned about a law against denialism, censorship is exactly what he's talking about. Because whatever your response was, no matter how reasonable you feel it might have been, there's a pretty good chance it would be considered denialism if the law is passed. I suggest saving your comments and posting them at a different time because the censorship programs that TH-cam (and Microsoft) are running are very inconsistant.
Neither of you are apparently aware of how your thoughts and queries here reveal the limits of your paternalistic mindset. I'm not convinced this discussion is aiming to support the search for truth or thoughtful policy reform. It's just a rehash of the same old, same old.
please explain to the Canadian public how wanting to know the truth of what actually happened is evidence of the two commentators paternalistic mindset
Brilliant!!! Sums up very well the tiresome, heavily biased, and message of appeasement that dominates the current discussion. And as Frum sums up, with the billions spent, have we moved the needle at all regarding the status of the problem?