Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Can We Stop with the ‘Indigenous’ Bit Already?

Can We Stop with the ‘Indigenous’ Bit Already?


It’s amazing how many people are trying to tear down present glories in the name of a past none of them have any interest in going back to. Bringing this to mind is the underreported story of the Canadian church burnings, acts inspired by the claim that Christian-run “residential schools” abused, brutalized and murdered Canadian Indian children.

I investigated this story recently, and it won’t surprise many readers that the Enemedia have completely misrepresented it. And while I covered it here and will have a long magazine essay on the topic go to print this week, the shorter version is this: Insofar as Indian children were forcibly taken to the schools, it was the result of Canadian government policy; many (in fact most, it appears) Indian parents of school pupils wanted their children to attend; and some ex-students describe their years at the institutions as their lives’ best.

Furthermore, the media provocatively speak of residential schools “mass child graves.” But these sites are merely quite typical church cemeteries, and it appears that, at least in some cases, people of all kinds from the local communities were buried therein. But, hey, the Enemedia can’t be bothered with the facts. What I want to address today, however, is something even the churches’/schools’ defenders don’t say.

A central charge made against the churches/schools and the government is that they aimed to stamp out Indian culture. In point of fact, John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister — and a main residential school system author — was a benefactor to the Indians and called many of them his friends. Admittedly, though, he did consider their culture doomed to extinction and thus believed they needed to be westernized to survive as individuals. Horrible, isn’t it?


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