Truth and Reconciliation... Legitimacy

[eyeball]

I don't think that word means what you think it means. It implies a mutual coming to terms in a conflict. It does not imply a capitulation by one party.

Exactly, the 1st half of the process has produced the terms that will be used to determine the reconciliation.

The report writers seemed to have forgotten that and seems to believe that they can some how force the the rest of the country to capitulate.

The report writers have simply put the facts they recorded out there, they can't however understand them for you that's something you'll have to force yourself to do.

Good luck with that.

[TimG]

Exactly, the 1st half of the process has produced the terms that will be used to determine the reconciliation.

Actually no. The terms chosen by the commissionaires we not rational choices if the objective was reconciliation because they completely ignore the historical context for what happened (i.e. the fact that all schools used physical violence against children or that the alternative to leave natives uneducated would have caused their own problems). Simply listing abuses without historical context is not a basis for reconciliation. Edited June 6, 2015 by TimG

[eyeball]

Except the objective was the truth.

There will still be plenty of time during the reconciliation phase for our government and our head of state to argue that treating people savagely was appropriate.

[cybercoma]

Stories of abuse have very weak proof, and are nothing but anecdotal.

We have government records of the abuse. We know how many kids died in residential schools. We know what kind of programs were run in those schools because there's documentation of it. Weak proof? The vast majority of it has been documented by the government itself.

[TimG]

Except the objective was the truth.

No. The objective was not truth. The objective was narrative created by the context used to present facts. They choose to place the facts in the current context and ignore the historical context and thereby create a biased picture. That is why I say the commission cared nothing about reconcilation. Edited June 6, 2015 by TimG

[cybercoma]

No. The objective was not truth. The objective was narrative created by the context used to present facts. They choose to place the facts in the current context and ignore the historical context and thereby create a one sided view of history.

You don't believe there's such thing as truth in anything anyway.

[TimG]

You don't believe there's such thing as truth in anything anyway.

Exactly. There are facts. But facts require context and by choosing a context you create a bias. Reconcilation requires a mutual coming to terms. Simply trying to impose a narrative that suits one side will not result in reconcilation.

[eyeball]

No. The objective was not truth. The objective was narrative created by the context used to present facts. They choose to place the facts in the current context and ignore the historical context and thereby create a biased picture. That is why I say the commission cared nothing about reconcilation.

The context of our morality back then is no different than it is today. Our crown and churches have very clearly known for centuries now what Jesus would have done if he'd been in charge so don't give me this crap that we didn't have to behave differently because we didn't know any better.

I'm really looking forward to hearing politicians who are truer to your heart discussing reconciliation using the terms and narrative you're using, aren't you?

[Smallc]

The context of our morality back then is no different than it is today.

Of course the context is different. That's a ridiculous statement.

[poochy]

The context of our morality back then is no different than it is today.

Yes it is.

[eyeball]

Our head of state had access to the same moral compass our society still steers by today. Jesus' instructions on how to treat others has been quite clear to the highest authorities in our culture and society for centuries. They knew better and so did our society it's just that simple. Ignorance was no excuse then and it's an even more pathetic excuse now.

[Smallc]

Our head of state had access to the same moral compass our society still steers by today.

No

[eyeball]

They were using GPS?

[jacee]

In other words - you also have no clue where these 630 Nations want to be in 30 years - or 100 years either. There has been billions spent and there are billions more available - AND many of these nations stand to have recurring royalties of billions more. A good start is to take collective responsibility (all 630 nations) for their future, start to work together, and move forward.

I'm quite sure they are.

.

[cybercoma]

Exactly. There are facts. But facts require context and by choosing a context you create a bias. Reconcilation requires a mutual coming to terms. Simply trying to impose a narrative that suits one side will not result in reconcilation.

Everything is biased so nothing is to be believed. It's intellectual nihilism. That means your arguments are entirely worthless because they're also biased. Your epistemological assumptions make any sort of discussion or fact finding completely irrelevant because you believe we can't find knowledge, we can't understand things, that there is no truth to be had. Your beliefs are firmly grounded in the idea that everyone is just making shit up to suit an agenda so everything anybody says should just be dismissed. This allows you to cling to dogmatic narratives that suit your political agenda and hold them up as if they're somehow equivalent to researched and documented findings. It's a sad attempt to deny any objective analysis and has absolutely no use for discussion or debate because it means we cannot know anything. Your arguments are discussion killers because you can't possibly come to common ground with anyone, even people you agree with, because you're a radical skeptic-nihilist. Why even bother contributing, if all you're going to do is deny all research in favour of your own personal spin because in your view everything is just a biased narrative, so your biased narrative should be equal to everyone else's biased narrative? It's like saying evolution doesn't explain how species adapt to their environments because evolution is just a biased political narrative around the fact that we can observe how species change over time. So really, everyone should accept intelligent design because it's an equally valid biased political narrative that explains the observed facts. This epistemology you hold so dear means nothing can be falsified, which means no arguments have any value whatsoever. It means there's no such thing as validity. The problem is you constantly fail to see how your own epistemology invalidates your own claims as well. It invalidates everything and leads to discussions that are entirely meaningless and cannot move forward. These are the worst kinds of arguments I see on the forum because your entire aim is to kill discussion by creating some false equivalency between validated research and your own political dogma.

[Scott Mayers]

We didn't fight any wars against Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

We made peace treaties with them.

Then we tried to destroy them as Indigenous Peoples so we wouldn't have to honour the treaties ... so we could just take over their land and benefit from the resources it provided, without compensation to them.

We made practicing their culture, religion and traditional governance illegal.

We made accessing our courts for land claims illegal.

We removed their children by force, denied them the practice of their culture (under threat of severe punishment), and indoctrinated them in our culture.

The government was informed repeatedly in the early 1900's that the schools were death traps for the children, disease, malnourishment and death were rampant. Isolation of children with TB was strongly recommended, in compliance with Canadian Public Health Law. The author of the reports was fired as medical examiner. The Feds stopped collecting information about deaths of children. The death rates increased.

The 'Indian' Residential Schools operated under Federal oversight for a hundred years, phasing out in the 1970's and '80's, the last one closing in 1996.

Canada signed the UN Convention on Genocide in 1952, but didn't implement any domestic law on genocide (as required) until 2000, four years after the last federal IRS closed and without the clause pertaining to forcible removal of children.

Canadians cannot pretend that our governments didn't know what they were doing. They knew ... as recently as 2000 they knew it was genocide.

And all Canadians continue to benefit from the wealth of resources from traditional Indigenous territories on which our economy is based.

.

"We didn't fight any wars against Indigenous People"; "We made peace treaties with them."

Prior to Canada actually existing as a formal country, 'we', including those 13 colonies that eventually would form the U.S. did so 'war' against the North American natives. When the States formed, our (not quite Canada yet) survival depended DESPERATELY on any groups that would collectively conspire to hold back American's attempt to take over the whole continent. As such, certain Natives, British loyalists, and the abandoned Quebec French [France supported American independence and NOT favorable towards Catholics in their period of enlightenment] only agreed to work together out of desperation. WE (all of these original Canadian peoples) were those loyalists to dictatorial Kings and/or Gods and/or a collection of remnant desperadoes fighting against the progress of the concepts of 'freedom' and the other enlightenment ideals of intellectual and the democratic concepts of the newly formed United States.

North American natives and European immigrant cultures could NOT coexist. You seem not to recognize this and should try to place yourself within the times and places to understand that none of the people back then were any more 'fair' in comparison to our present understanding of respect towards each other. No one today, including modern Natives, would accept our ancestors moral conduct. But since we progressed to being more civil (That is, less caveman mentality), even modern Natives would be against their own ancestors with equal force intellectually than the 'European' immigrants of the past. It is NOT simply about some feigned "cultural" differences.

And...we don't make "peace treaties" unless we were seeking 'peace' out of some prior conflict(s) (war!)

"We..." "We..."

I am not a part of this "we" as I don't own my ancestor's faults (NOR gains) even if "WE" all have benefited AND suffered the consequences of their acts. I also see ALL ancestors as belonging to all of us regardless of genetic relations. Note that I, just as many other, was adopted from birth and so where does that place us? We don't 'own' our genetic parent's culture but rather the families that raise us and/or the culture of our present environments. To me, I and most others are being culturally murdered when we are dictated that inherent rights belong only to those groups that have ethnic cultures/religions based on historical precedence.

Asserting that we purposely attacked the Native culture is simply your own religious/cultural belief. I say, "religious/cultural" because while you seem to think it necessary to accept ALL cultures, I have no doubt that you'd likely NOT accept ALL cultures. It is NOT possible to have all cultures coincide and be tolerant of each other because the nature of them necessarily require differentiating between groups of people based on social constructs that come from struggles that always involve an us-and-them(s).

"All Canadians benefit..."

You can always pick some arbitrary origin in which some such group or people reigned prior to another. However, this says nothing nor means anything. If you are the first to 'arrive' on some island, and then 100 other people from some ship wreck later land there too, do you have some intrinsic God-like right to claim control (ownership) of the people, the space, and the resources? "Ownership" is only a force by the management of the people who manage to take such control to manage ORIGINALLY by force. Even if some ancestor of humanity was at some place 'first', how does that assure they have any more right to dictate how others in some far future agree to behave?

[TimG]

Everything is biased so nothing is to be believed. It's intellectual nihilism.

You are making claims that I did not make. The statement that all things are biased does not means all things are useless. It simply requires a level of uncertainty to be attached to any assertion based on the level of bias.

When it comes to the TRC there are facts and there are opinions.

A fact is children were forced to attend these schools;

A fact is pedophiles took advantage of trapped children;

A fact is children were disciplined using means that are illegal today;

Claiming 'cultural genocide' is an opinion that presumes nefarious intend on the part of the authorities.

It presumes that the treatment of students at these schools was because they were aboriginal instead of simply being a consequence of how schools were run at the time.

A few other posters have brought up examples of how the treatment of non-British students was similar. The only thing unique about the native experience is the isolation created by residential schools but many natives went to day schools like everyone else. If it was deliberate 'cultural genocide' then why weren't ALL natives rounded up and put in these schools? The answer is obviously because there was no such intent and the schools existed on a bureaucratic convenience to deal with children of people living far from major centers.

I am not saying that the report should have followed my narrative. But it should have acknowledged multiple narratives and if reconciliation was the objective it would have emphasized the need for people to understand the multiple narratives and that regardless of the narrative acknowledge that bad things happened to kids at these schools.

But reconciliation was not the objective. It is all about establishing a new narrative that suited the authors and many native groups. The net result is the report will get tossed in the garbage heap as another self serving exercise in political posturing.

Edited June 6, 2015 by TimG

[jacee]

I read that about 7,000 people testified at the Truth Commission about their abuse and experiences in the 'Indian' Residential Schools. I wondered about that low number, out of 80,000 living survivors.

Now I understand:

legal-battle-to-preserve-stories-of-residential-school-abuse-to-begin

However, well into the process, the commission discovered that IAP adjudicators repeatedly failed to inform former students of their right to transfer their stories to the TRC. Instead, the adjudicators had all parties, including the former students, sign undertakings of strict confidentiality.

The commission continues to fight this issue in court, and a hearing is scheduled for Oct. 27-28 in Toronto.

The loss of these documents would be a blow to Canadas national memory of a significant historic injustice, the commission stated in its summary report, which was released this week.

...

While the commission heard and recorded testimony from 6,750 former students, the IAP hearings heard almost 38,000 stories of sexual and serious physical abuse.

Original estimates said only 12,500 former students would come forward.

It appears that over 40,000 former students have shared their stories, 38,000 through the IAP process for possible compensation.

And those 38,000 accounts, due to improper information and consent, will be destroyed unless the TRC is successful in court.

.

Edited June 6, 2015 by jacee

[Scott Mayers]

I'm guessing that you weren't being literal on listening to all 7000 people testify, Jacee. 38, 000 accounts? This is absurd to believe even possible. It's understandable that a few such people can maintain such abuses but to presume 38,000 AND not to mention the fact that not even one culprit is being named is too suspicious. This story should be world news! Even the Nazis were a relative minority and certainly the ones who did the killings. Note that even within the Germans doing such acts, many disapproved of it to the point as it affected them so much to have given rise to the Nazis to try to find easier ways to kill without as many people.

My point is that while we may all have evil tendencies, it is absurd to presume such a conspiracy as these natives are claiming without at least a body for evidence other than hearsay testimonials (without even a trial of the accused too!)

[Argus]

So if you think saying that people who are offended by genocide should give all their stuff away and go live in a shack because they are zealots is not bigotry, perhaps you need a primer on the meaning of the word.

They're not offended by genocide. They're offended by white skin.

[Argus]

Yes and I notice they also got their country back. I guess natives noticed that too.

I don't believe the Jews were subjected to 6 generations of genocide, now were they?

[jacee]

When it comes to the TRC there are facts and there are opinions.

A fact is children were forced to attend these schools;

A fact is pedophiles took advantage of trapped children;

A fact is children were disciplined using means that are illegal today;

Claiming 'cultural genocide' is an opinion that presumes nefarious intend on the part of the authorities.

...

It presumes that the treatment of students at these schools was because they were aboriginal instead of simply being a consequence of how schools were run at the time. If it was deliberate 'cultural genocide' then why weren't ALL natives rounded up and put in these schools? The answer is obviously because there was no such intent and the schools existed on a bureaucratic convenience to deal with children of people living far from major centers.

INTENT

"In 1920, attendance at residential schools became compulsory under the Indian Act."

, Canadian officials used food, or rather denied food, as a means to ethnically cleanse a vast region from Regina to the Alberta border as the Canadian Pacific Railway took shape.

For years, government officials withheld food from aboriginal people until they moved to their appointed reserves, forcing them to trade freedom for rations. Once on reserves, food placed in ration houses was withheld for so long that much of it rotted while the people it was intended to feed fell into a decades-long cycle of malnutrition, suppressed immunity and sickness from tuberculosis and other diseases. Thousands died.

"Sir John A. Macdonald ... boasted that the indigenous population was kept on the verge of actual starvation,"

"In 1907 Samuel Blake, a reform-minded lawyer for the Anglican church, had told the minister of Indian Affairs that "the appalling number of deaths among the younger children... brings the Department within unpleasant nearness to the charge of manslaughter."

"Blain, who had only recently moved to Alberta from Ontario, told Blake that he had now met all the members of the legislature "and made a point to get what information I could in regard to the Indian from such of the Members as had reserves in or near their districts." He had consulted other Albertans too. The results were discouraging. "I might say," Blain wrote, "that most of those with whom I have spoken are not, I would gather, very much in sympathy with the Indian, nor with the efforts to better his condition. They look upon him as a sort of pest which should be exterminated." "

" want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill. Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott - 1920

"Duncan Campbell Scott in response to Dr. Peter Bryces warnings regarding tuberculosis on reserves and schools:

It is readily acknowledged that Indian Children lose their natural resistance to illness by habituating so closely in the residential schools and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this does not justify a change in the policy of this department which is geared toward a final solution of our Indian problem. "

I am not saying that the report should have followed my narrative. But it should have acknowledged multiple narratives and if reconciliation was the objective it would have emphasized the need for people to understand the multiple narratives and that regardless of the narrative acknowledge that bad things happened to kids at these schools.

But reconciliation was not the objective.

Not yet, no.

This is the Truth part.

Reconciliation is up to the rest of Canada.

I believe we're currently waiting for some response and ... um ... leadership from the one we pay to lead. <crickets> :/

Your pronouncements are quite premature, and ill-informed. The full report isn't even out until fall, I doubt you even read the whole summary that was published, and so you don't really know how many perspectives are in it.

I know you often go off on a rant based on tidbits of other peoples opinions, but you refuse to read a goddamn thing, Tim.

.

[On Guard for Thee]

They're not offended by genocide. They're offended by white skin.

Umm...I have white skin

[jacee]

I'm guessing that you weren't being literal on listening to all 7000 people testify, Jacee.

To the TRC over a five year period, yes. You don't know that?

38, 000 accounts? This is absurd to believe even possible. It's understandable that a few such people can maintain such abuses but to presume 38,000 AND not to mention the fact that not even one culprit is being named is too suspicious.

Those were confidential reports to the IAP. They were done to receive compensation and likely do contain names of perps for verification. The churches lobbied hard to keep the perps names secret.

You don't know much about the process at all, do you?

This story should be world news!

It is.

My point is that while we may all have evil tendencies, it is absurd to presume such a conspiracy as these natives are claiming without at least a body for evidence other than hearsay testimonials (without even a trial of the accused too!)

You are in no position to make that judgement as you have no clue about the process.

The government and the churches were sued in a large class action suit. They settled out of court to avoid a trial.

These processes and compensation are part of the settlement.

As for the churches protecting the names of the perps ... I agree. Why don't you ask them?!

.

[Accountability Now]

It appears that over 40,000 former students have shared their stories, 38,000 through the IAP process for possible compensation.

And those 38,000 accounts, due to improper information and consent, will be destroyed unless the TRC is successful in court.

.

Did you intentionally leave out the most interesting part from that article?

"Not all former students support the TRCs position, and the legal case has created unusual alliances. Like the TRC, the Canadian government is seeking to preserve the documents, while Catholic churches and the Assembly of First Nations have expressed concerns about their potential release."

The Canadian government wants these documents and the AFN doesn't???? Why would that be? Oh wait...the article suggests further reasoning:

"Former Assembly of First Nations leader Phil Fontaine told the Ontario court that stories of aboriginal-on-aboriginal abuse at the schools could prove damaging to First Nation communities."