The good old days and unmarked graves.

 

The good old days and unmarked graves.

My wife’s parents were students in the Grouard Residential school. They told me about the poor conditions. It doesn’t make me an expert but:

People are shocked to hear what took place just a little while ago. We discover evidence of horrific abuse of native Canadians and all of us are rightly upset. Yet we don’t realize the level of brutality that existed not long ago, in my lifetime. The horrific part is that much of it was done by those who loved us.

I remember reading the book Young Winston, by Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the British Empire, during the war. Winston was being educated in a rich private boarding school. He describes in detail a little room by the chapel where the kids suffered corporal punishment. He was a sickly child and after a beating got sick and almost died.

Sexual abuse, as we call it today, was a regular behaviour also, and no one gave it a second thought. At home, girls and boys endured what today would be punishable by jail time. We exposed kids who had no way to know about sex to sexual behaviour as a part of life. I was a teen when I saw touching and pinching take place in public. It intensified when youngsters began to work in low-paying jobs where protection from bosses was nonexistent.

When society allows very few people to enjoy most of the riches, the last on the totem pole suffers most from deprivation. Here it was, the children of the First Nations. They would be made “useful” or deemed expendable. Tears escape my eyes, thinking about their suffering.

In those days boys had privileges unavailable to girls while girls had to be “nice” by smiling or laughing at sexual advances. Some of what we bring up now as reasons to demote people in prominent positions was commonplace. I witnessed remnants of that kind of abuse right until recently. Older folks who grew up with sexual abuse have done it all their lives never learning that it’s wrong. Now generals can be fired for making sexual comments. Their sin is simply not changing fast enough when society did.

The problem is that moral norms change relatively fast and people’s careers span over a few generations. Everything changes fast these days but people’s behaviour stays the way they learned it.

Governments, churches, and schools are leaders but also a reflection of current public opinion. Just look at the rates of deaths from the Coronavirus in the US by the end of last year compared to now. The same people, the same virus, different government.

When Canada became a country, the emphasis was on building a new country on the lands previously occupied by indigenous “primitive” tribes, who were viewed as a problem. The motherlands of our population were fighting for domination in Europe and people as cattle were moved around subjected to the whims of whoever had bigger armies. It was normal.

What was done to the native population was horrendous, yet the intentions at the period in history were considered good and most voters supported it. The government intended to educate and convert people to give them a better chance of surviving in the newly formed country. The churches were involved in education and health care so they were contracted.

I listened to a nun who worked her entire life in boarding schools and she was a good person who sacrificed her life to help kids using the approved methods at the time. She didn’t know that a tiny percentage of people are born pedophiles.

Like most people, I was born into my religion and tried to be good. I don’t wish to excuse the injurious behaviour of individuals belonging to my faith or any other. I think we should apologize when we do wrong and do what we can to make it right. Sometimes we can’t. What is important is to ensure that we don’t continue or repeat mistakes from the past. “Lest we forget.”

Asking around, I found out that nobody knows which documents are requested from the church. Anything that we know of has been released. The religious orders have paid and apologized. All I do know is that the government Indian Boarding Schools were significantly under-funded as First Nation’s schools are today. Over the hundred years, we had Spanish Flu, diphtheria, smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, polio before vaccines, and much more.

 The RCMP and other agents were sent to take kids away from parents, but who was in charge of keeping communications between children and their families is not clear.

I am also aware of graves all over the place that were marked with wooden crosses that disappeared over time. The government didn’t pay for funerals. I don’t suggest that the churches were innocent or that we as a society hadn’t done wrong. My heart is bleeding for the victims and their families. I wish I could cry with the families who lost kids. My soul is shouting with unbearable pain.

However, when I hear the Prime Minister demanding the Pope apologize for what governments here caused, I become upset. We should apologize but it was politicians who possibly were not aware of what they should have been, that caused a huge painful problem. I call upon politicians today to do better and not play politics with people’s most painful memories. Sir, the Catholic Church is not the WE organization, and the Pope is not the owner of the corporation. Do your homework before making statements. Politicians hired churches to “take the Indian out of the child.”

The universal church was hardly aware of local schools situations but the Government was in charge. Then as now, politicians choose not to invest money in powerless people who couldn’t influence elections. First nations got the right to vote in 1967 and didn’t know how to vote strategically until many more became educated above what was thought in the Boarding Schools. Don’t blame, fix what is broken.

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