They Went Out Of Love For The Poor Natives
Dear Patrick O’Neil, you sir, are an asshole.
Don’t get me wrong, there were documented cases of abuse, and those people should be pitied, apologized to and compensated. But, let’s set the record straight, the teachers and religious that relocated to the remote reservations left everything out of an act of love and service to the native people. They sacrificed themselves to give the natives a better life. The only reason churches were likely involved is that nobody else would go and make that sacrifice.
– and then they somehow turned into racist, authoritarian, child beating, perverts, and pedophiles, bent on cultural genocide?
Lorne Gunter, says give the commission a chance, I guess we don’t have a choice. But I sincerely hope that five years from now we will see a balanced report that recognizes the selfless acts of service and doesn’t simply create another opportunity to reinforce the native sense of victimhood.
Yup, definitely an asshole.
I tend to agree with O’Neill to a certain extent.
I would hope that this is not just another silly, useless, time-consuming, costly, wasteful, debilitating, insulting, demeaning, destructive, divisive, paternalistic, condescending exercise launched and controlled by the federal government in cahoots with the churches to keep a lot of poor, old and mostly First Nations folks preoccupied while the feds tear up its treaty obligations, jail those FN leaders who speak out to demand justice, and take away yet another generation of Aboriginal children “in the best interests” of whom?
I would hope that the churches provide full disclosure of their internal investigations – something they must have done just as soon as they realized what was going on at these schools.
I also hope – in the interest of truth – that they produce as much as possible the people who were in charge of these schools to the commission for questioning.
I trust that the federal government, in particular the department of Indian Affairs and the Federal Cabinet, will open their files for the full and complete consideration of the Commission.
I stand hopeful, but doubtful.
Funny how these things work. The problem with the Maher Arar Inquiry, the Somalia Inquiry, the Gomery Inquiry was that the very authority that commissioned them (the federal government) refused to cooperate or provide full disclosure. It had to be dragged kicking to devulge even the most mundane documents. I expect the feds to act in a similar way this time around as well.
I’d be careful here. While O’Neill’s language is one-sided (I suspect that motives were a lot more complicated than simple love and self-sacrifice), your language (”racist, authoritarian, child beating, perverts, and pedophiles, bent on cultural genocide”) is just as misleading. It’s very convenient to believe that the staff of residential schools were monsters with evil intentions. That sets up a nice comfortable distance between them and us, since we *obviously* don’t mean to perpetuate racism, authoritarianism, perversion, or cultural genocide (nah, not us). We have good intentions (at least in a nice moderate/polite sort of way) for current aboriginal/non-native relations, so of course the policies we support and attitudes we maintain could never have such a bad result as the residential schools did.
There are other reasons why it’s convenient to imagine that the school staff, government policymakers, or church officials were nasty ill-intentioned people. Most of them are dead now, so they can’t defend themselves and complicate the story. And it’s doesn’t cost too much to castigate the schools either. They’re all closed, so it doesn’t require any change of current policy. Indeed, all kinds of current problems can be blamed on the legacy of the schools, rather than on current factors for which we might otherwise have to find tangible solutions. The only cost is compensation money and a truth and reconciliation commission — not unimportant or trivial things, but arguably not as difficult or perplexing as finding constructive alternatives to problems in present situations and structures, whatever those might be.
So I’d argue that we should view people involved in the residential schools as normal people, with the mix of noble, terrible, and run-of-the-mill motives and behaviour that we’re familiar with from looking in the mirror or observing our neighbours. Then the residential schools can not only remind us of the wrongs our predecessors committed, but also warn us to think twice about our own doings.
You may argue all you wish Joel, but the fact is that normal people do not engage in those activities do they? The ‘misguided tough love’ philosophy might help you personally, but that really won’t change the government programs that were put in place, or what happened to thousands of innocent children, and the thousands more who have suffered (and continue to suffer) the multi generational effects of those institutions.
I think that’s the scary part – not for Aboriginal peoples but for Canadians. Many of them were clearly average Canadians who in other circumstances might belong in that cubicle beside you at work, or at least in an office at Indian Affairs. Normal and probably boring; banal even.
The problem is not that the present exercise will distract from efforts to improve the quality of life in Aboriginal country. It is that the country will continue to deny what their government did back then, and fails to connect the dots to what it continues to do today. A closer look by average Canadians might result in more cooperation and less obstruction, avoidance and denial.
The way O’Neill puts it, all of the abuse was BOUND to happen – and the church is involved only because they cared and loved enough to go and help. Better the church raping and beating the kids than another not so loving and caring entity?
I can’t stand that crap – somehow the very “authorities” who committed these attrocities are to be commended for their sacrifices?
I wonder if O’Neill would applaud all of the Liberals implicated in the Sponsorship Scandal for their dedication and commitment to public service.
“Many of them were clearly average Canadians who in other circumstances might belong in that cubicle beside you at work, or at least in an office at Indian Affairs. Normal and probably boring; banal even.” — Shmohawk
This — and the rest of Shmohawk’s comment — is bang-on.
“You may argue all you wish Joel, but the fact is that normal people do not engage in those activities do they?” — stageleft
Au contraire, stageleft, normal people *do* engage in such activities. Okay, normal people do not sexually molest children. But do normal people show mild or major racism? Obviously, in the past and today. Do normal people lacking employment take jobs for which they aren’t qualified? Do normal people working in stressful conditions with children ever lose their tempers? Do normal people become authoritarians? Do normal people cut inexcusable corners on budgets to achieve organizational objectives? Do normal people fail to properly supervise employees under them who are engaging in misconduct? Yes to all. Do normal people act as if it’s not as much of a problem if aboriginals suffer as it is when other citizens suffer? In the past and today. Do normal people hear reports of severe problems in policy towards or treatment of aboriginals and do nothing? Obviously. I’m guilty of some of these things myself, and it’s not hard to imagine myself doing some of the others, if I were in the right (er, the wrong) scenario. This is not to say that I’m normal, but it’s safe to say that on these counts I’m far from alone. If we think that a person has to be an unusually malevolent individual with a diabolical laugh to act in ways that have terrible consequences for others, then we’ve missed the big lesson of residential schools.
When any group is effectively given absolute power over another, you will see sexual, economic and social abuse and exploitation: and it will be greater to the extent that the group with power has the means or influence to exempt themselves from scrutiny. That includes the staff of a residential school, a parish priest, or an occupying military force.
Those settings involve a majority of decent people who signed on for the right reasons and a smaller group attracted by the opportunities. But the setting and situation create opportunities and a culture of abuse, concealment, and (in the rez school and military examples) contempt for the “other”.
That’s the “Truth” part of the equation. If the moronosphere is any indicator, the priority for many of our good blogging tory friends is simply to deny, or mock, or minimize. Looks like a long, long path to “reconciliation”, doesn’t it?
I think the “truth” is going to be extremely difficult to find. As Kropf says, most of the people who committed the crimes are dead. But not all. They have no reason to come forward, to bare their souls, to tell the truth because there’s no compelling reason for them to do so. The majority of Canada is in a massive state of denial about its treatment of Aboriginal peoples and could care less what happens at a so called truth and reconciliation commission. Why? Because they didn’t do it themselves; they’re not personally responsible, and they will not be directly affected — even if it was their governments and their policies that have done and continue to do so much damage.
The TRC has no powers to make people appear or testify. The government and churches have seen to that. So the very institutions responsible for some of worst crimes do not have to appear, to give testimony, to defend themselves, or even open themselves to criticism because they’re part of the planning and coordinating committee. And that wouldn’t be cricket, right?
Without truth – from all sides – there can be no reconciliation; only more lies.
“Normal and probably boring; banal even.”
Indeed, as Hannah Arndt demonstrated those many years ago.
Balb is right too…give any group the kind of absolute power and authority and they will use it to their advantage.
And SL is right too…it is racist. Those normal folks out of the goodness of their hearts, moved north and sacrificed everything in order to help those unfortunate natives. Of course, the reason they “needed help” was because they were not white, not Christian and somehow less-than human savages whose “immortal souls” were more important than their actual lives and bodies. Never mind that none of the natives actually asked for this help, that it was forced on them to the point where, in some places, the RCMP was sent in to steal kids from their parents.
Racism isn’t always neo-Nazis and Klansmen lynching people and burning crosses. Kindly, well-intentioned, holier-than-thou patronizing paternalistic racism is still racism.
And I think Shmohowk is right…without the power to compel those who committed or were complicit in the crimes to appear and testify, there will be no truth, and without truth, no reconciliation.
Harper is making an apology on Wednesday. My father will be in the assembled crowd in the HoC.
I can get pretty uppity when this topic comes up – my pops has told me alot of stories. While everyone else politely disregards my comment, I make no apologies for calling people like O’Neill bottom-feeding scum.