On "getting over it"
Mar. 26th, 2008 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI was fortunate—in a manner of speaking—to attend a workshop on residential schools last night, featuring several survivors and Kevin Annett, who recently made a movie called Unrepentant. (Visit that site; it's very good and has a link to Google Video where you can watch the whole movie. Which I haven't gotten around to doing yet.)
I like to think that I know a fair bit about residential schools—enough to have, even as a kid, felt vaguely squeamish about how their atrocities tended to be downplayed in history textbooks—but the workshop taught me a few new things. For example, in the early 1900s, a government bureaucrat named Dr. Peter Bryce was sent around to residential schools to investigate health and safety. In the summer of 1907, he reported a death rate of 30-50% in most residential schools—the result of a deliberate policy of keeping children infected with tuberculosis and other contagious diseases in the same dorms and classrooms as non-infected children. The death rate stayed constant for the next 40 years.
Let me repeat that. Thirty to fifty percent of residential school children, who had already been violently kidnapped from their homes and often raped and tortured as well, died. Dr. Bryce's second report in 1909 revealed an even higher death toll: 40-60%. His findings, later published in 1922 as The Story of a National Crime: An appeal for justice to the Indians of Canada, were buried by the Department of Indian Affairs, and he was removed from his position.
There are mass graves in Canada. For children. After World War II, Canada was instrumental in re-writing the UN's definition of genocide to exclude many of the state's crimes. Still, the residential schools easily fall under the UN's definition of genocide.
The annual death rate in Auschwitz was 15 to 25%. Proportionately, more children were murdered by the Canadian government and various churches than died at Auschwitz. No one was ever convicted for those murders. The government now offers a paltry $10,000 compensation to survivors with strings attached—you can't sue after receiving the compensation. It's also hard to get, since the churches and the government disposed of a great deal of records.
One thing that really hit home, though, was when one of the speakers mentioned that the death rate from the Black Plague in Europe was 30-60%. No study of European history is complete without an analysis of the shattering, world-altering consequences of the bubonic plague—economic, social, political, religious.
And yet, the First Nations are expected to swallow the loss of 40-60% of their children with a blithe attitude of "forgive and forget." The last residential school closed in 1996, but they're just expected to move on with their lives. If half the students died in one Canadian school, would we expect their parents to shake hands with the killers and accept a few crumbs? Would we expect the survivors to remain sane, their children to be emotionally whole?
Again and again I see this attitude, that various populations (but never white populations) should swallow the atrocities done to them and embrace their oppressors. Only someone who has never actually suffered would be that naïve, or cruel.
I like to think that I know a fair bit about residential schools—enough to have, even as a kid, felt vaguely squeamish about how their atrocities tended to be downplayed in history textbooks—but the workshop taught me a few new things. For example, in the early 1900s, a government bureaucrat named Dr. Peter Bryce was sent around to residential schools to investigate health and safety. In the summer of 1907, he reported a death rate of 30-50% in most residential schools—the result of a deliberate policy of keeping children infected with tuberculosis and other contagious diseases in the same dorms and classrooms as non-infected children. The death rate stayed constant for the next 40 years.
Let me repeat that. Thirty to fifty percent of residential school children, who had already been violently kidnapped from their homes and often raped and tortured as well, died. Dr. Bryce's second report in 1909 revealed an even higher death toll: 40-60%. His findings, later published in 1922 as The Story of a National Crime: An appeal for justice to the Indians of Canada, were buried by the Department of Indian Affairs, and he was removed from his position.
There are mass graves in Canada. For children. After World War II, Canada was instrumental in re-writing the UN's definition of genocide to exclude many of the state's crimes. Still, the residential schools easily fall under the UN's definition of genocide.
The annual death rate in Auschwitz was 15 to 25%. Proportionately, more children were murdered by the Canadian government and various churches than died at Auschwitz. No one was ever convicted for those murders. The government now offers a paltry $10,000 compensation to survivors with strings attached—you can't sue after receiving the compensation. It's also hard to get, since the churches and the government disposed of a great deal of records.
One thing that really hit home, though, was when one of the speakers mentioned that the death rate from the Black Plague in Europe was 30-60%. No study of European history is complete without an analysis of the shattering, world-altering consequences of the bubonic plague—economic, social, political, religious.
And yet, the First Nations are expected to swallow the loss of 40-60% of their children with a blithe attitude of "forgive and forget." The last residential school closed in 1996, but they're just expected to move on with their lives. If half the students died in one Canadian school, would we expect their parents to shake hands with the killers and accept a few crumbs? Would we expect the survivors to remain sane, their children to be emotionally whole?
Again and again I see this attitude, that various populations (but never white populations) should swallow the atrocities done to them and embrace their oppressors. Only someone who has never actually suffered would be that naïve, or cruel.
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-26 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-26 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 04:33 am (UTC)Apart from that, though, as I usually do, I will point out that it isn't a White Thing to consider your own suffering more important than other people's suffering and your oppressing acts towards others okay and other people's oppressing acts towards you not okay. It is a general human thing, and can be taken completely out of the radical post-colonial context in which it is fashionable to put it in some circles.
Radical post colonial thinking seems to me to be based on the unambiguous assumption that White man is indeed a strong conquerer whose main interest is to exploit other populations. In reality, colonialism was and is a less clearly cut phenomenon. So while I very much appreciate the way of thinking which you present, I don't think I fully embrace its somewhat sweeping assumptions of White de facto supremacy.
Anyhow, hope your practicum went well (getting hammered with the teachers? No wonder I like art teachers much more than math teachers), and it's great you're having an interview! Probably, with the ridiculously good evaluation I got this time around, I'll have one too somewhere at some point.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 02:43 pm (UTC)Congrats on your good evaluation! I got a good one too. (Well, I wrote it. [Durmstrang] rocks.)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-26 10:50 pm (UTC)This coming August marks my 6 year anniversary of my move to Montreal (and Canada). And yet I managed to live here all this time without even hearing of these residential schools. What was their supposed purpose in the first place? (of course, I mean the official explanation). I am well aware of the drugs and alcohol problems that exist in many First Nations areas (contributing to the destruction of their communities and identities), and the government's role could be thought of as facilitative in those instances, but this is.. SO in-your-face.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-26 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-26 11:05 pm (UTC)You are so not going to like this answer, because it's going to fly in the face of everything you've ever believed about politicians and lying. The official explanation was genocide. They were very honest about it. Back in the day, they didn't even bother to disguise it. They actually used the phrase "final solution to the Indian problem" before Hitler cribbed it from them. I mean, the guy in charge of Indian Affairs used this phrase—in a letter to our very first prime minister, John A. Macdonald. (Who of course said, "Oh yes, that's a jolly good idea, carry on.")
At the beginning of the workshop, we all got sheets of paper with quotes on them. Half were from survivors, half were from politicians. We had to read aloud. Uncomfortably, mine was a motto coined by the founder of the first (U.S.) residential school, which was used as a model for the Canadian ones:
"Kill the Indian and save the Man."
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 12:31 am (UTC)Problem with this was that the kids would get religious instruction all day at church, and then they'd trundle on home, and tell their family what they learned. And the family would be all, "Do you actually believe that?" The kid would be like, "Uh, no, not really." And all of the missionary's careful work all day would be undone.
So the churches got it in their heads that the only way they were going to convert these kids is if they had them all day long. They discussed this issue with the government, and they agreed to set up boarding schools where the kids would be indoctrinated in the ways of Whitey. Predictably, the parents of these kids did not think that this was a good idea, so the government (at least in Canada; I'm not sure about the U.S.) passed a law that all native children had to go to school full-time. If the parents objected, the children would be removed from the home.
Among the many villains of this story are Canada's beloved symbol, the RCMP, who at gunpoint raided indigenous villages and tore the children from their parents' arms. They were taken to residential schools (usually as far away as possible so that they couldn't run away), forbidden to speak their own languages, beaten, starved, and very often sexually abused. The education they received was also useless, as they weren't legally allowed to go to college. The government was quite willing to foot the bill to send them far away, but it was to cheap to pay for their way back in the summer, so the children spent summer vacations working as slave labour for white people in the communities around the schools.
Like I mentioned, between a quarter to two-thirds (depending on the time period and location) of these children died at the school. Many of the bodies were never returned and are buried in mass graves. One of the many controversies now has to do with repatriating the remains.
Pretty much every First Nations person in Canada is suffering from the after-effects of these policies. It killed a large chunk of the population and resulted in generations where the links of traditional knowledge were broken. (One survivor at the workshop stood up and, his voice breaking, said that he didn't know his own language.)
Since there are criminal charges pending (and since the church and state knew they'd eventually get sued over this) many of the records having to do with residential schools have been sealed or buried. Beyond that, the scale of the assault is never mentioned in Canadian history. We do learn about residential schools and see a touching movie about a girl who escapes from one, but you're not allowed to claim that a genocide took place without offering an "opposing perspective." (That link is mainly about Palestine and Israel, but scroll down to the seventh paragraph before the end.)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-26 11:29 pm (UTC)It's just completely appalling. Not just the history but like you say, the expectation that folks can just...what? shrug, say oh well? ugh.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-26 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 01:00 am (UTC)Churchill's book Kill the Indian Save the Man gets a bit into how these schools affected tribes. Trauma like that makes its mark.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-26 11:55 pm (UTC)Again and again I see this attitude, that various populations (but never white populations) should swallow the atrocities done to them and embrace their oppressors. Only someone who has never actually suffered would be that naïve, or cruel.
Y'uh huh. I think people who say that sort of thing are waving this word "forgiveness" around without having a clue what it means.
I think what they actually mean is "First Nations people should accept their politically inferior position and just be glad we aren't actually killing them any more."
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 12:14 am (UTC)This piece on defining genocide and applying it to Australia's Stolen Generations, was in the paper on Monday. I liked it because they are distinguishing between genocide and mass slaughter, although their opponents don't seem to have grasped that nuance.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 02:11 am (UTC)I got the chance to read part of a court transcipt of testimony from a former residential school inmate, now deceased, while I was archiving his chart. It was heartbreaking.
I've been doing some reading on the effects of residential schools in regards to violence against native women at the hands of native men. The separation from children (who only speak english) from grandparents (who only speak their native language) through the denial & erasure of language factors in heavily, especially seeing as traditional native teaching is oral-centric.
I could go on.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 11:09 am (UTC)I'm so very, very angry.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 03:04 am (UTC)Jesus Christ. I need to go breathe into a paper bag for a while. After that, the important question needs to be answered-
What do we do now?
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 11:10 am (UTC)The movie we all saw in Grade 7 made it look like an isolated incident, from what I recall.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 05:36 am (UTC)Which of the following does this mean?
1) In 1907, Dr. Bryce reported that through the length native children's stay in the residential school, the death rate was 30-50%;
or
2) During that summer of 1907, 30-50% of children in residential schools died.
I'm asking that, because I take mathematical pause at your Auschwitz comparison (comparing total to annual rates), if you derive the second sentence from that paragraph from the first sentence.
The comparison seems to hold for the black plague, though.
Otherwise, thanks for this message.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 11:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 06:26 am (UTC)Did you see this yet?
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-28 07:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-28 11:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-15 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-15 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-11 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-11 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-06 08:19 pm (UTC)I took a college course in Native (American) History, and this was gone over rather blithely. Never was there mention that it was a co-ordinated (?) effort with Canada - which somehow makes everything worse, although there are plenty of horrors already.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-11 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-11 01:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-12 06:37 am (UTC)Ah, they were pretty damn horrible. Let's say that, I grew up hearing about it from as long as I can remember. My mother would also make fun of the nuns in the schools, as did my grandmother, but yes, there were many horrible, lonely things about it. They were beaten to not speak their language (Blackfoot) but my mother and other older relatives spoke it any way. It was her first language. They were called numbers often instead of their names, my mother was "number 52".
I am glad this is coming to light and that there was an apology and some type of redress. I am also glad that it is finally being talked about openly on reserves across Canada and work is being done to help survivors and families.
At the time my mother left school, Indians were not allowed to go past the 8th grade. My aunt, Flora Zaharia (married name), went beyond as did my mother since my grandfather was an exceptionally enterprising man who sent his two daughters to a private high school. My mother went on to get two years of university in the US, where she met my father (non-Indian Latino) and my aunt went on to get a graduate degree and become for a time, head of Indian education in Manitoba. She is retired now, but still an educational consultant. My grandfather, Chris Shade, their father, was an exceptional rancher, businessman, farmer and Indian cowboy who really did amazing things after a hard start in life. I am always inspired by his example.
My mother is twisted from it all I know, but she has never seen herself as a victim. She is too proud.
I am, again, glad this is coming to light finally.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-12 02:21 pm (UTC)