Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Residential School Statistics

saddlegun;
Afternoon sir, I hope the day's as warm and bright where you're at as it is here.

If the intent of your post and subsequent replies was not to use inflammatory and divisive language, then in my former professional opinion you missed the mark sir.

If however, you intended to use personal attacks on folks you know next to nothing about, then you hit it squarely.

My fellow Canuck friends here are reasonably known quantities. In this thread alone we've received the bona fides of Jordan and 673 regarding their background on the very subject at hand.

In a former life much of my job task was communicating effectively to various government, enforcement and medical agencies, so that real world experience has shown me that words matter and shouldn't be used lightly or flippantly.

While you've asked us not to assassinate the messenger, meaning you, I'd suggest that perhaps if you were less accusatory with your statements, folks wouldn't be drawing and aiming at you quite as often.

Anyways, these are just a few thoughts on the matter and nothing more.

I am curious though as to your chosen moniker as to whether you're a horseman or were? If so, in Alberta or elsewhere?

Folks who know me - including quite a few here like Jordan and 673 to name them once more, know that I spent more than a quarter century on a branding crew, used to chase cows in the mountains on weekends for the same rancher and as well we had our own horses for 15 years using them for hunting, cattle work and mountain riding.

This is me about 15 years back - more or less by the lack of a grey beard - but anyways I used a few different saddle guns myself back when.



As with all things in life, the thoughts I present are only worth what time they take to read and nothing more.

Best.

Dwayne

I am just going to keep saying this to the reader.

Do not allow yourself to be sidetracked and for this thread to be derailed with "noise".

Too many of these responses are about "he said, she said" (myself included) rather than about residential schools and the children who died there.

And nobody seems to care.

Go back and read the original post and think about it.

That is the message.

215 children died in 79 years, about 3 a year, not a high number considering the illnesses of the times and the lack of modern medical intervention we have today. What was the capacity of the school in numbers of kids over the years. I know in one year that I went to school 5 students out of just over 100 students died in our small town, no it wasn't a residential school it was a regular elementary school about 1970. Student population at Kamloops residential school peaked in the 1950's at about 500 students per year.

They say there are no records, there may have been records, were they lost, destroyed, who knows, how many institutions have records intact from the period of 52 years ago to 132 years ago.

They say none of the families were notified, how do we know that. They very well could have been notified and had memorial services etc. We'll never know. Back then it wasn't uncommon for people of any race to have family members who died away from home buried where they died, the logistics of transporting bodies was more complicated back in those times especially to remote native communities in those days..

Damn, that's almost Third World stats.

It is interesting that rather than be appalled at the statistics that I presented in my OP post, that so many here simply want to dismiss it as being nothing.

Why is that?

Are these people that do not reflect the opinion of average Canadians?
Are they white supremacists?
Or are they just home-grown Alberta racists?

I would again suggest that the reader go back and read my OP post and read about how many deaths that there actually were.

That is the message. Not their propaganda.

Yes, an anomaly, 3 from childhood cancers, 1 pneumonia, can't remember the cause of the other. They most likely all would have survived today.

The Vancouver Archbishop has now accepted responsibility on behalf of the Roman Catholic church for the Kamloops Residential School deaths, and has acknowledged that their deaths were indeed the result of mistreatment and abuse.

Perhaps the deniers that want to dismiss and deny the deaths of so many children can now put their propaganda to rest.

Whatever your agenda is, I don't think that any "rational and logical" individual is going to believe your narrative now, no matter how you choose to spin it.

Again, I suggest that the reader read my OP post and decide for yourself.

One hell of a lot of deaths.

How many kids do you remember dying at the schools that you attended when you were growing up?

Damn few that I can recall.

Still trying to grasp the facts here, and the statistics, from that era, and relate to them.

What are the known mortality rates from the 1890s on thru the 40s, in towns and on the land or smaller native communities for kids 5 to 14? Is 215 deaths average, below, or high?

Unmarked graves from 100 years ago is common. Here, in Yellowknife, we're trying to identify many local and their locations from 1940 on as the wooden markers rotted away.

A few years I ago I visited some old family cemeteries and was amazed not to find some graves I knew to be there. Talking to a couple elder locals, they explained that there were more graves than are visible, but the marble headstones had aged and fallen down, and were pushed away. Many of the marble gravestones still remaining had deteriorated to the point that writing was not sufficiently visible to the eye. So today one could say they were unmarked but that is not the truth as they were originally well marked. But time marches on.

I have found more than one grave, including one from Sir John Franklin's expedition. Thru research I have identified a couple, but that is it, and time marches on.

It's known that the Indian agents were usually notified, but how many knew how to contact the family at the time, or who they were, and their location somewhere in the "wilds", away from any settlement? And how could the families possibly collect the remains if notified when they were a great distance away? It was a different time then.

When the Iroquois came north and decimated the Huron. were any graves marked? I have a couple of ancestors from the war of 1812 and earlier that I can find no mention of where their graves are, ..... who do I blame?

Now, before someone calls me a racist, I've spent most of my life in the North and am proud to be friends of both Dene and Inuuit and at times, feel more Native than white southerner!

'nuff said!

It would only be human, if a child died in your care, you wouldn't be too picky about record keeping. There may be more.

Ok ignorant racist and anti christian bigot, I grew up and used to live on a Chippewa Indian reservation in NW WI and have worked on Indian reservations over 16 years. Im a bit more familiar with how things work, rumors, and actual evidence and crimes on reservations. So can you submit any actual evidence and who processed the grave sites and the forensic findings by the First Nation? What forensic equipment did thee First Nation pathologists use to age the and date the remains? Where are all of these remains of children being stored today? Have worked a lot with tribal police and BIA over the years have a bit more experience than a clueless clown like you.

can you provide any evidence that the church killed all of these children? Do you know the average infant mortality rates in the tribes and on reservations a 150 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago and today?

I don't think anybody is denying there were deaths and abuse. Your pushing this as if it were a holocaust to exterminate a race.

As for the Archbishop, he is responding in a manner his press advisors see as the best option for damage control. In other words he is kissing ass. It's not like he just became aware of this, he's known about this debacle for decades. It's quite pathetic.

It was a holocaust with the express purpose to exterminate a race—as publicly admitted to by Duncan Scott in 1925 with the amendments to the Indian Act. The Germans were just so much more efficient.

My thoughts when I first heard this was “ I doubt all these kids were murdered!” But in a way they all were.

Abuse seems to me endemic with all boarding schools—not just Indian ones.

As I said, it’s a damned shame, but we’re also looking at it through a 2021 lens. Shyte, the media puts a spin on something that happened yesterday, much less what happened 20, 50, 100 or more years ago.

I saw on the news that there is a push to rename Ryerson university due to Ryerson’s involvement in the design of the residential school system. One of the people they interviewed was an indigenous woman who was pushing for renaming and removal of his statue. More destruction of history to fit their agenda.

What I found particularly funny is that this woman, being indigenous, is attending university for free. Probably gets all her housing and expenses paid, too.

If she really wanted to protest, she should quit and go to school somewhere that she has to pay her own freight.

[quote=ribka]Ok ignorant racist and anti christian bigot, I grew up and used to live on a Chippewa Indian reservation in NW WI and have worked on Indian reservations over 16 years. Im a bit more familiar with how things work, rumors, and actual evidence and crimes on reservations. So can you submit any actual evidence and who processed the grave sites and the forensic findings by the First Nation? What forensic equipment did thee First Nation pathologists use to age the and date the remains? Where are all of these remains of children being stored today? Have worked a lot with tribal police and BIA over the years have a bit more experience than a clueless clown like you.

The real questions here are:

Why you are trying so hard to create your own narrative of revisionist history?
Why are you not appalled by these deaths?
Why are you more interested in creating propaganda that dismisses the deaths of children in abusive conditions, rather than wanting it acknowledged?

What really is your agenda?

You keep mentioning First Nations Pathologists.
Really. What First Nations Pathologists are these?
Even today, there are probably very few.

And, slinging insults like "worthless clown" simply discredits you even more.

Again, I would urge the reader to go back and read my first post, and also to have a look at my other thread which contains a You-Tube link to a video where the Archbishop of Vancouver acknowledges responsibility by the Catholic Church for the deaths at the Kamloops Residential Indian School.

Curiously, neither this guy, nor the other deniers have responded to that thread at all.

I wonder why?

This is simply your interpretation of the facts.

The facts are that the Archbishop DID accept responsibility for the deaths at The Kamloops Residential Indian School.

And now, you are claiming that the Archbishop is a liar.

How Bizarre.

And I never said that this was there was an attempt to exterminate a race.
I compared the deniers of these deaths to holocaust deniers, who also substitute false narratives for their own agenda.

(quote) (ribka)
can you provide any evidence that the church killed all of these children? Do you know the average infant mortality rates in the tribes and on reservations a 150 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago and today?
(quote)

I never said anywhere that any church, protestant or catholic, murdered these children.

I did say that they died in their care, which is true.

And the death rate in these schools was much higher than anywhere else.

When I went to school 50 years ago, I certainly don;t remember a 20% death rate such as was experienced by The Red Deer Residential Indian School.

Hell, I don't even remember any student deaths at all. If a student died back then, at home or otherwise, it would have been a big deal and the principal would have informed us all about it.

The real question is:

Why are you trying so hard to deny that these deaths were appalling?
Why are you trying so hard to suggest that a 20% death rate among students is perfectly normal?

What is your true agenda?

It's only a few members here, such as yourself, that are doing this.

Slowly more information starts to come out.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canad...ential-school-stalled-by-lack-of-records

I find the fight for the holding of records for over 20 years to be despicable -- why have the Feds and Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate been doing this other than to exert control? The bloated departments that the Feds have in place to work with Indigenous groups need to be disbanded. This departments sole justification for existence is control. Phasing this out would be a first step.

HughW;
Good morning to you sir, I trust the day's looking fine and bright on your side of the big hills.

Thanks for that link, despite the nettlesome information contained in it for sure.

The family members I spoke of earlier had all sorts of stories of the Feds dealing with the FN communities they were living in back in the day and honestly Hugh, not many were positive. They'd do some amazingly tone deaf things - repeatedly too - just in case they weren't entirely wrong the first time.

I suspect you're correct that the departments set up their own little kingdoms and don't want anything to change.

For sure though, it's totally unacceptable that the Oblates and the Feds haven't produced the records for the various FN bands involved.

My only additional comment would be that I wish that didn't surprise me, you know?

Thanks again for the link. I've read a fair bit about the background and work of Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond and while I don't agree with everything she says or wants, she's earned my respect on this issue for sure.

All the best to you all Hugh.

Dwayne

SaddleGun I 'm not that up on my Nordic legends, but their was thing that lived under bridges and attacked everything,. It was called a troll.