Canadian Residential Schools - A National Disgrace

 

Canada has had its shameful racist history exposed with the discovery of 215 child skeletons buried on the property of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.

Indian children, who had been wrested from their parents and mandated to these schools for decades, were horribly abused. Those who succumbed were discovered buried in indiscriminate graves and forgotten. Parents were 'lucky' if they got notified of their child's death. In most cases, they were not. But wait, we've known about the heinous acts of the church for years now. As Canadians shook their heads after WWII  and gasped at the horror of Nazi extermination camps in Europe, we continued to herd our own unacceptable underclass into residential schools, our own brand of extermination camp where, if performance ranked high, nothing would be left of the 'savage' in the child, or better, nothing left of them at all.

In Canada, the Indian residential school system started back in the late 1800s and was administered by the Catholic Church, the greatest terrorist organization ever created, and funded by the Canadian government, who were eager to find a solution to the Indian problem. The schools were founded in order to 'civilize' the Indians and remove the 'savage' from the child, to separate them from their past and create a new order of Canadian citizen. Approximately 150,000 children attended these compulsory boarding schools after being rounded up from all corners of Canada and wrenched away from their parents, who, if they neglected to hand over their children, could be charged and imprisoned.

At the residential schools upon arrival, children were stripped of their native clothing, bathed, sprayed and given haircuts. They were not permitted to interact with any siblings with whom they had arrived, they were not permitted to speak their own language, and they were expected to follow the rules, in spite of not understanding the rules nor the English language. The food was inadequate, medical attention was next to nil and kindness and compassion were non-existent. Any deviation or protest by the children, or any attempts to escape, were met with harsh beatings from the nuns and priests. As well as being beaten and emotionally abused, children were exploited as child labor and sexually abused by a raft of pedophile priests and nuns, righteous criminals who had no regulatory overseer.  This is how, in Canada, the indigenous peoples were to be assimilated into a superior white culture and indoctrinated into the loving philosophy of Christianity. 

I have lived abroad and when I return to Canada it vexes me how often I hear Canadians say that Canada 'is the greatest country in the world.'  I've heard racist statements for years about Indians, Muslims and Asians, with usually not one having visited a Muslim or an Asian country. Ignorance breeds more ignorance. The other day my neighbor said that natives were all 'dirty, uneducated drunks.'  The most common question a Canadian might make about Muslim society is:  'Don't women have no rights in those countries?'  When I visited a church here not too long ago and I told a fellow I came from out west, he said, 'Good to get away from all those Asians. Luckily, we don't have them here.' We're ceasing to disguise our disdain for others.

When I was in Grade 3 in Quebec and studying Canadian history, my history book had a photo of an engraving, a replication of the Jesuit priest Father Brebeuf being burned at the stake by the Iroquois Indians. There was Father Brebeuf lashed to a stake with a fire lit under his feet and ten archetypical Iroquois Indians with tomahawks all pow-wowing in a circle around the bonfire. I remember studying the photo and thinking I hoped all those Indians were dead because that's what they would have done to me. Yes, Canadian children were very well indoctrinated to the Indian threat. 

I take exception to the superior attitude Canadians have espoused of themselves and their wonderfully clean country as they cling to their upright, ignorant viewpoints and their empty consumer culture. Go to any small Canadian town and you'll find pontificating, drunken fools. I know. I lived in a few and I'm one of them. Canada may have a breathtaking landscape or two, but it's a cultural desert.