Mass Grave of Over 200 Children Found at Former Canadian Residential School

[Agema]

Again, they built the schools to operate the same way as other Catholic Schools around the world, and then the Canadian government decided they were going to take on the entire native population, mandated by law, without offering the resources to even keep that many kids fed.

Indeed. Don't see how Catholicism or the Vatican is to blame for the shit the Canadian gouverment did to its native population.

The Catholic church ran those schools (and likewise the other Churches with theirs). If they didn't have the resources to run them properly, and it was bringing harm to the pupils, then they should have shut them down.

You can talk about objectionable policies and under-resourcing from central government all you like, but the welfare of pupils in a school is the primary responsibility of those who own and run the school. If they could not accomplish a proper standard of care and continued to subject their wards to neglect and abuse, they are at fault. They had responsibility over vulnerable individuals from a societally vulnerable group, and failed them. They failed them as part of a general culture of contempt for their charges and were absolutely complicit in this tragedy.

No excuses.

 

[tstorm823]

The Catholic church ran those schools (and likewise the other Churches with theirs). If they didn't have the resources to run them properly, and it was bringing harm to the pupils, then they should have shut them down.

Oh, got it. Just close schools. And Hospitals while we're at it. If an institution falls short of it's goals, just get rid of it, and then society will be perfect and no children will die. Perfect plan.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Oh, got it. Just close schools. And Hospitals while we're at it. If an institution falls short of it's goals, just get rid of it, and then society will be perfect and no children will die. Perfect plan.

Clearly Agema is a revolutionary communist for saying so

 

[Silvanus]

Oh, got it. Just close schools. And Hospitals while we're at it. If an institution falls short of it's goals, just get rid of it, and then society will be perfect and no children will die. Perfect plan.

If they don't have the most basic resources required to fulfil their remit, then they probably shouldn't be trusted to fill that role, that's right.

And overseeing hundreds of people in their care dying, then dumping them without burial and failing to notify anyone or document it at all.... is falling quite significantly short of its "goals", isn't it? So far that calling it "falling short" seems a bit glib.

But let's be honest: if it was a Catholic government, and a non-Catholic school, you would be taking precisely the opposite position.

 

[Agema]

Oh, got it. Just close schools. And Hospitals while we're at it. If an institution falls short of it's goals, just get rid of it, and then society will be perfect and no children will die. Perfect plan.

Schools really aren't hospitals though, are they?

These children had parents who could have cared for them. If they were to lack some education if the school shut down, then better poorly educated than malnourished, beaten by nuns, sodomised by the priest and dead of tuberculosis to be thrown in a pit. That should not be a particularly controversial statement.

And much as you may mock, yes you absolutely can and should shut down institutions that fail people and society often and seriously enough. Whether that's temporary until their problems can be sorted out, or permanently if they are beyond salvaging and need restarting from scratch.

 

[MrCalavera]

Oh, got it. Just close schools. And Hospitals while we're at it. If an institution falls short of it's goals, just get rid of it, and then society will be perfect and no children will die. Perfect plan.

Well, in this particular case, those children might not have died, yes.

 

[tstorm823]

These children had parents who could have cared for them.

Are you forgetting that the government mandated these children be taken from their families? Catholics washing their hand of the children would not have just put them back into their parents care, they would have been transferred to a different school. Catholics refusing to participate would only have meant the kids would be moved to someone even less capable of caring for them properly.

Edit: And if that had been the case, the history books would instead say "the government asked for the Catholic Schools to take them, but the Catholics shut down their schools instead, and allowed the children to be sent to poorer institutions where they were mistreated."

 

[Cheetodust]

The Catholic church ran those schools (and likewise the other Churches with theirs). If they didn't have the resources to run them properly, and it was bringing harm to the pupils, then they should have shut them down.

You can talk about objectionable policies and under-resourcing from central government all you like, but the welfare of pupils in a school is the primary responsibility of those who own and run the school. If they could not accomplish a proper standard of care and continued to subject their wards to neglect and abuse, they are at fault. They had responsibility over vulnerable individuals from a societally vulnerable group, and failed them. They failed them as part of a general culture of contempt for their charges and were absolutely complicit in this tragedy.

No excuses.

To add to your point:

Hey you know who has absolutely obscene amounts of money? The Catholic fucking Church.

 

[Agema]

Are you forgetting that the government mandated these children be taken from their families? Catholics washing their hand of the children would not have just put them back into their parents care, they would have been transferred to a different school. Catholics refusing to participate would only have meant the kids would be moved to someone even less capable of caring for them properly.

"Ifs" don't answer shit. No-one knows what would have happened, but one way or another the churches could have avoided a lot of suffering and death on their hands. And I would like to say consciences too, except I don't really know how true that is. The people running them didn't seem that bothered. And as your excuses here would suggest, to the point of saying they were better off with Catholic schools, the problem is not so much dead children, but that dead children might make the Church look bad. Defensiveness 1, remorse 0.

The bottom line is the churches got themselves embroiled in this and the dirt is on their hands. They took those kids even though they weren't able to look after them because of some cracked notion of missionary zeal: a bunch of dead kids no big deal in greater scheme of saving souls.

Edit: And if that had been the case, the history books would instead say "the government asked for the Catholic Schools to take them, but the Catholics shut down their schools instead, and allowed the children to be sent to poorer institutions where they were mistreated."

Spare us the victim culture.

The main problem the Catholic church has here is that everyone else did something about it and apologised decades ago. Protestant churches were on top of this 30 years back. The Catholic Church is copping the flak mostly because of its arrogance and unparallelled culture of apology-resistance.

 

[tstorm823]

No-one knows what would have happened, but one way or another the churches could have avoided a lot of suffering and death on their hands.

You were so close to a moment of understanding, and then turned the wheel as far towards the ditch as you possibly could. "Nobody knows what would have happened", and yet you're suggesting that the Catholic Church should have washed its hands of the situation. You want people, by virtue of not knowing that things would be worse without them, to cut and run and leave the mess to somebody else. That is a hideous suggestion. You want apologies from churches for not abandoning children to preserve their own reputation. Come on, man.

 

[Seanchaidh]

You were so close to a moment of understanding, and then turned the wheel as far towards the ditch as you possibly could. "Nobody knows what would have happened", and yet you're suggesting that the Catholic Church should have washed its hands of the situation. You want people, by virtue of not knowing that things would be worse without them, to cut and run and leave the mess to somebody else. That is a hideous suggestion. You want apologies from churches for not abandoning children to preserve their own reputation. Come on, man.

I suppose "raising hell" isn't exactly what the Catholic Church is known for, but if ever there's a time to do it it's in that situation if, indeed, you're actually just trying to make the best of a bad situation as you assert.

 

[Agema]

You were so close to a moment of understanding, and then turned the wheel as far towards the ditch as you possibly could. "Nobody knows what would have happened", and yet you're suggesting that the Catholic Church should have washed its hands of the situation. You want people, by virtue of not knowing that things would be worse without them, to cut and run and leave the mess to somebody else. That is a hideous suggestion. You want apologies from churches for not abandoning children to preserve their own reputation. Come on, man.

Oh, I understand. I just don't have any particular motivation to defend the Catholic (or any other) church so I'm okay to call out their sins.

Churches are not at all without good intentions (well, the vast majority of them at least), and assuredly many of their priests and congregants are highly virtuous. But churches are like any organisation - the organisation and its mission tend to be more important than people. Also, what they're looking at it isn't necessarily what the rest of us are. "Give me a child to the age of seven and I'll give you the man", said St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, and giving us a very good idea why churches were so interested in schools: recruitment. There is some notion of the betterment of the children, within the context that the greatest betterment is to be close to God. The suffering and death of a person is to be regretted, but the failure to save their souls unforgivable. And so on for much more, but it would be belabouring the point.

As Revnak said (#15) a lot of this is really about colonialism, and as 09philj pointed out (#20), this was hardly an isolated incident as the church was happy to hand needy Irish children over to sadistic nuns, too. I mean, there was an irony about you saying "Who is going to build coffins, make headstones, or dig graves? Do you want children to dig their own graves?" because setting the inmates to labour was something they absolutely did.

The world sucked, and churches were part and parcel of the sucky times. But if the government of Canada and all the other churches can apologise, I'm not sure why the Catholic Church thinks it's above that. Apart, of course, from the fact I get the impression it really does think it is above that. But perhaps that what comes from a central tenet of thinking itself the only true and pure representation of the highest authority in the universe.

 

[Revnak]

Ok, returning to pivot slightly toward Tstorm here. Fundamentally the mass graves and genocide are the Canadian government’s fault, though assigning blame is for losers and we should instead move to recognize the sovereignty of native peoples and land as independent from Canada. The pedophilia and abuse, that’s Catholicism.

 

[Trunkage]

You have the blame shifting in reverse. The government of Canada actively created the conditions where mass death of children was unavoidable, dropped it onto Catholic institutions, and now people are acting as though it was religious persecution perpetrated by Catholics.

Like, in any other context anywhere in the world were a school so severely overcrowded and underfunded that the students were actively getting sick, would you ever jump to "man, those teachers sure are neglectful."

So, again, you didnt bother to read what I said

But sure, go ahead. Its not like your listening anyway

Edit: To be incredibly clear. If a school lets a kid die, I hope they are shut down forever and a bunch of people go to jail. Along with any government that forced that situation to be a reality. I can say that the Canadian government are worse. I cant say that it absolve any school

 

[tstorm823]

Edit: To be incredibly clear. If a school lets a kid die, I hope they are shut down forever and a bunch of people go to jail. Along with any government that forced that situation to be a reality. I can say that the Canadian government are worse. I cant say that it absolve any school

Is that really your position? If a child dies at a school, it should be shut down and people should go to jail? Like, if a kid fell on the stairs and broke their neck, you'd put people in prison? I think you're taking a purely emotional gut reaction here, and not actually thinking things through, particularly in the context of an era with tuberculosis epidemics, before measles had a vaccine, etc.

 

[Silvanus]

Is that really your position? If a child dies at a school, it should be shut down and people should go to jail? Like, if a kid fell on the stairs and broke their neck, you'd put people in prison?

If that child's death was followed up by an unceremonious dumping into a secret grave, unreported and undocumented, and covered up for decades, then there should be a fucking criminal investigation, yes. Obviously. That's not in the slightest bit controversial to say. It would be the expectation of any modern school.

And if such an occurrence was so common as to create mass graves, then it's very unlikely to be the actions of one or two malefactors, and far more likely to be the result of some systemic and extreme negligence and criminal secrecy, if not outright abuse.

 

[tstorm823]

If that child's death was followed up by an unceremonious dumping into a secret grave, unreported and undocumented, and covered up for decades, then there should be a fucking criminal investigation, yes. Obviously. That's not in the slightest bit controversial to say. It would be the expectation of any modern school.

And if such an occurrence was so common as to create mass graves, then it's very unlikely to be the actions of one or two malefactors, and far more likely to be the result of some systemic and extreme negligence and criminal secrecy, if not outright abuse.

Or, hear me out, known pandemics. Can we talk about pandemics? Let's talk about pandemics. You know what often results in mass graves? Pandemics. That these were secret and covered up for decades is pure speculation, whether or not you realize it. We know that the schools were hit by brutal epidemics, that's not secret or covered up, the deaths were absolutely recorded. Poor people in mass death scenarios have historically often ended up in mass graves, that isn't unique to these schools. What would you expect from crowded schools with little funding who had infectious children sent into them in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Mass graves. Funny enough, you say it would be the expectation of any modern school, but this was as much as a century ago (I don't know if they have the graves themselves dated in any way). You know how much child mortality has fallen in the last 100 years? 100 years ago in Canada, ~15% of people died before their first birthday, and another ~10% died before they turned 5. Our expectations are different now than they were then. My grandmother had 3 siblings and 2 died of disease as children. Even during a global pandemic today, that sort of thing is basically unheard of.

As a more general comment to the thread as a whole: let's consider a completely hypothetical scenario. Imagine there were a pandemic going on, one where it was an infectious respiratory illness that disproportionately hit older people. And hypothetically, the government of a certain state decided to send infected patients into nursing homes triggering mass death events. Would you, in that hypothetical, blame the nursing homes? Call for their closure? Demand an apology from the nursing homes? Call them arrogant for not apologizing? Put the nurses in jail?

 

[Silvanus]

Or, hear me out, known pandemics. Can we talk about pandemics? Let's talk about pandemics. You know what often results in mass graves? Pandemics. That these were secret and covered up for decades is pure speculation, whether or not you realize it. We know that the schools were hit by brutal epidemics, that's not secret or covered up, the deaths were absolutely recorded. Poor people in mass death scenarios have historically often ended up in mass graves, that isn't unique to these schools. What would you expect from crowded schools with little funding who had infectious children sent into them in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Mass graves. Funny enough, you say it would be the expectation of any modern school, but this was as much as a century ago (I don't know if they have the graves themselves dated in any way). You know how much child mortality has fallen in the last 100 years? 100 years ago in Canada, ~15% of people died before their first birthday, and another ~10% died before they turned 5. Our expectations are different now than they were then. My grandmother had 3 siblings and 2 died of disease as children. Even during a global pandemic today, that sort of thing is basically unheard of.

It's not goddamn "speculation" that it wasn't recorded or reported. We're just finding out about it now. You cannot find out about something if you already knew it.

Poor people in incidents of mass-death historically ended up in mass-graves... during plagues and famines in the Middle Ages, or in severely lagging developing countries, or under authoritarian juntas. This was in a relatively wealthy (colonial) Western country in 1890 onwards. In those circumstances, such things pretty much only happened to native groups.

As a more general comment to the thread as a whole: let's consider a completely hypothetical scenario. Imagine there were a pandemic going on, one where it was an infectious respiratory illness that disproportionately hit older people. And hypothetically, the government of a certain state decided to send infected patients into nursing homes triggering mass death events. Would you, in that hypothetical, blame the nursing homes? Call for their closure? Demand an apology from the nursing homes? Call them arrogant for not apologizing? Put the nurses in jail?

If the hospital staff failed to document it, or report it, or tell the government or the families, and just dumped them without burial? Yes, I'd blame the people who ran it for grotesque negligence. The NHS has been severely overburdened and underfunded during the current pandemic, but they still find themselves capable of documenting it and reporting it when somebody dies.

As well as the government for their gross underfunding and murderous abdication of their own responsibility for allowing the transfer to happen in the first place.

 

[Seanchaidh]

It's not goddamn "speculation" that it wasn't recorded or reported. We're just finding out about it now. You cannot find out about something if you already knew it.

Poor people in incidents of mass-death historically ended up in mass-graves... during plagues and famines in the Middle Ages, or in severely lagging developing countries, or under authoritarian juntas. This was in a relatively wealthy (colonial) Western country in 1890 onwards. In those circumstances, such things pretty much only happened to native groups.



If the hospital staff failed to document it, or report it, or tell the government or the families, and just dumped them without burial? Yes, I'd blame the people who ran it for grotesque negligence. The NHS has been severely overburdened and underfunded during the current pandemic, but they still find themselves capable of documenting it and reporting it when somebody dies.

As well as the government for their gross underfunding and murderous abdication of their own responsibility for allowing the transfer to happen in the first place.

You have to understand that before computers we didn't have ways of writing things down or sending mail.

(edited for better phrasing)

 

[Cheetodust]

Hey my dude's here's a thought. Literally every human being with an ounce of decency knows that unmarked mass graves of children are universally a bad thing. Like there is literally no good reason for there to ever be one of those short of a landslide in a remote area nobody ever knew about, and even then if it were ALL kids of ONE particular minority group we'd ask some questions. Maybe don't bother with the only person who has defended every single mass child grave the Catholic Church sought to cover up. I feel like nobody wins here. Like, you're not going to convince him. I don't think anyone else is disputing that this was bad so maybe like have a snack? Or play with your pets. I'm snuggled up with my cat and it's great. I might have an orange. It's much more fun than trying to convince someone who needs to be convinced that mass child graves are bad that mass child graves are indeed bad.