I expect that it is the recent ‘discovery’ at the BC Residential School that is what prompted this thread, so I feel justified in using Residential Schools as the basis of my input. Even though I am concentrating on the Residential School facet, it points out that we can not, necessarily, attribute malice to past decisions. I expect that this will be an unpopular opinion, here, but I am open to correcting comments. (I am old enough to have studied British history in school, not Canadian history, so I have had to pick up my opinions from varied sources through my life.)
None of us were around at the time that the past decisions were made, so we are looking back at them with our current, though somewhat varied, perspectives. Add to that, the interpretations the media is feeding us, and it is easy to say things like; “We need to have a Parliamentary Inquest into the decision of Residential Schools!” As if an inquest now will have any influence over a 130-year-old decision.
And, of course, the media, of all kinds, has been reveling in the sensational nature of the words that people are using to describe the finding of 215 buried children; regardless of how inaccurate the words are. When one hears that there were 215 children in a “mass grave”, it conjures up visions. But, despite the fact that our Prime Minister used that very term, it does not reflect what was actually found. The ground-penetrating RADAR has found 215 ‘likely’ graves – each one separate. I expect that, similar to all other Residential School yards where children’s graves have been dug up or exposed by flood-waters, each child was actually buried in a coffin and provided with a dignified ‘Christian’, burial.
No, the bodies were not returned to their families. Canada had not been in the habit of repatriating bodies; be they children under the responsible care of the government, or soldiers killed in battles. It is only recently that the American concept of bringing home the dead has taken hold here.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, Residential Schools were certainly not a new, developed-in-Canada, concept. I knew a man, since passed, who attended one in England for his childhood. The descriptions he gave of hunger (lack of money to provide ‘all-you-can-eat’ meals), beatings (extremely strict, religious rules, with corporal punishment to maintain order in over-crowded conditions), etc. are remarkably similar to those described by Aboriginals who talk about Canadian Residential Schools. He did not have knowledge of sexual abuse. I am not saying that sexual abuse didn’t happen in Canadian Residential Schools, but under today’s standards, it seems easy to declare something as sexual abuse – which may not have had any sexual intent.
I’d also like to talk about the number of child graves found – 215. We need to remember that this is 215 children over a period of 80 years! And during that time, there were great illnesses (TB, the Spanish Influenza, measles, etc.), and physical tragedies (that particular BC Residential School burned in 1923 and had to be completely rebuilt – which might also account for lost records). The BC Residential School was also the largest one, with the most children passing through it. Unfortunately, I have not found a break-down of the number of children who attended that BC Residential School, out of the estimated 150,000 total for all schools over nearly 100 years.
215 sounds like a lot of children dying, but it is, likely, far fewer than would have died if the children were left with their families.
Historical child mortality rates for aboriginal populations in Canada are hard to get, but Tina Moffat, B.Sc. did a pretty thorough tabulation of infant (death within the first year, after a live-birth) mortality rates for the Fisher River Reserve in her 1992 Thesis for McMaster University.
Her table is reproduced here:
Table 5.1 Estimated Infant Mortality Rates per 1000 Live Births. Fisher River: 1910-1939
Year Deaths Corrected Births IMR Burials Uncorrected Births IMR
1910-19 74 263 281.4 74 234 316.2
1910-19(2) 63 259 243.2 63 234 269.2
1920-29 52 221 235.3 52 206 252.4
1930-39 56 246 227.6 56 225 248.9
1910-39 182 730 249.3 182 665 273.7
2 Infant mortality rate for the decade excludes 11 deaths caused by the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918.
The number of births was ‘corrected’ by estimating possible unrecorded births, based on death records, post-first-year, for the various cohorts.
Pretty dismal survival rates. Between 25% and 30% of live-birth babies died within their first year. These numbers, of course, do not include deaths of older children.
After the second World War, things got better, with the introduction of much better drugs and health-care. By 1985, the infant mortality rate was down to about twice the national average. You can read T. Moffat’s Thesis here:
https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstr...1/fulltext.pdf
So, as a mind-experiment, I think back to a time in the 1600s, when the Aboriginals of (what will become) Canada are first being encountered: They are a stone-age people, subsisting off the land by wandering between areas of periodic food source. They are, mostly, family-oriented tribes, with a loose social structure between Bands. There are often wars.
Interaction between the new-arrivals and the Aboriginals proves to be beneficial to the newcomers, since the Aboriginals have local knowledge of things that the foreigners want; but not the resources to provide them in large quantities – until the ‘White-man’ provides the tools. The Aboriginals, now with the ability to do so, begin taking far more out of the natural landscape than they previously could, because it is seen as a benefit to them. With guns, not only can they kill many more beaver, but they have a definite advantage in the wars. And the newcomers brought wars of their own, which were fought here.
Alas, although the Aboriginals were happy to take the advantages provided by the ‘White-man’, contact also came with disease and problems; such as alcohol, and restrictions of historic migrations. Conflicts arose more often, leading to the governing bodies, both foreign and Aboriginal, setting up conditions. Some through formal Treaties, others not. The consequence of many of these arrangements were that the populations, Aboriginal and others, were segregated. The ‘White man’ was more or less happy to stay in their townships and farm their plots. Many Aboriginals, who used to have free-run of all of the territory, felt too confined to the ‘Reserves’.
The Aboriginals used to need to move around to find enough food to survive. Then they acquired better tools and were able to take much more out of the environment, which they could trade for goods and food. They no longer needed to travel so far, but doing so provided them with greater personal gain. It was capitalism. Being restricted in their movements restricted their gains.
There should be no confusion between not having the facility to strip out natural resources, and the conscious desire to take the bare minimum and, thus, endure a subsistence living with many deaths. Given the opportunity, Aboriginal people were willing to kill more than necessary. Take, for instance, the people who used the Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump: When they had the opportunity, they would run as many buffalo over the cliff as they could. They would then take from the dead what could easily be carried when they moved on. Of course, after bounties such as these, the Aboriginals would pray to the appropriate God so that they would be able to do the same again, next time they return.
This is not to be considered a slight against Aboriginals. They are human and have the same desires to improve their lives as anyone else would. Whether it is a fisherman over-fishing ‘The Banks’ to have more fish to sell, or a fellow in Brazil who is burning away forest so that he can increase the size of his farm to raise more cattle, humans tend to try to get more. It has been the same in every culture since the dawn of Man.
But, back to the mind-exercise: The governing bodies tried to correct some of the wrongs. The populations were segregated, alcohol was not to be transferred into Reserves, payments were made to compensate for loses, etc..
Over time, it was recognized that limiting interactions still inflicted harm. But it was also clear that there was no going back. The newcomers would not be leaving and the Aboriginals could not be stripped of all modern amenities that they had grown accustomed to. Other measures would need to be tried.
It was obvious, from the ‘White-man’ point of view, that the Aboriginals were much less well-off than the new-comers. Therefore, Aboriginals were offered the opportunity to ‘join’ the ‘White-man’ side. Each Aboriginal person could get $160 dollars, or 160 acres of farm land, by giving up their Aboriginal status. This was a relatively generous offer, since the new Federal Government of Canada was paying a lot to support the Aboriginals on their Reserves.
The new Federal Government also realized that the death-rate of Aboriginals was very high, and their prospects to survive without Government aid was very low. As mentioned, the past had been lost, and the old Aboriginal way of life could not be returned. The options were; status quo on the Reserves; or to try to help them move on – to better fit into a more ‘modern’ way of life. The best way to do the second choice, it was reasoned, was to educate the children.
Unfortunately, with so many, and such spread out, Reserves, it was far too expensive for the Government of the day to support a separate small school in each one. A better way, it was determined, was to follow the tried-and-true method of gathering the children and housing them in large Residential Schools. This, it was felt, would give the children the best chance of building a future life within the dominant society. At the time, the thinking was much more about a ‘Melting-pot’ than a mosaic of cultures.
Despite Macdonald’s oft-quoted remark that the Residential Schools could “take the Indian out of the children”, I think that the sentiment, by the majority at the time, was to try to provide a ‘better life’ for future generations of Aboriginals. With the huge death-rate among the Aboriginals, and the prospect of nothing better than to be subsidized by Government money for the future, the government tried something. If it turned out that, like other church organized efforts, there was incidents of abuse, I sincerely do not think that that was part of the original goal. (Should it be something that the Government apologizes for? Absolutely! Is it something that religious organizations should apologize for? Absolutely!) At the time, religious orders were seen as the height of ‘goodness’. Trusting the children to Nuns seemed like a safe thing to do.
I think that there is too much romanticism about what could have / should have been. Once the ‘White-man’ came across the ocean to stay, the ‘paradise’ of subsistence living was lost for the Aboriginals. People who used their best judgement, based on what they knew at the time, to improve the situation, are now being found wanting, by today’s standards.
Oh, and if you think that taking babies away from their mother’s isn’t still going on today, here is a recent CBC article that you might want to read:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toron...erts-1.5648940