Discussions

I saw this on FB...  
"As a white man I have a complicated relationship with Canadian History. But we had a tragedy where we lost 16 kids a few years ago and the Nation thankfully came to a standstill to mourn. We just found 215 kids in a forgotten grave and I don't see the same pause."  
AND also this on FB...  
"If you mourned for Humboldt but didn't bat an eye at Kamloops you might want to search your soul and ask yourself why.  
Anyone involved with the Kamloops Indian residential school and the residential school system en masse is complicit in genocide and is punishable by international law. The government, the rcmp, the church, the priests, the nuns, all of them. The time is now to hold everyone accountable. Investigate all records and search all residential schools."  
.......  
I'm mid 60's, and from grade 10 on I went to school with Natives. I know there was a Residential School in the area but I really didn't know to much about it, I think it may have closed around that time. Wasn't anything people talked about back then.  
I'm sickened that people would treat kids this way and Churches no less...shameful.  
 
I saw that Winnipeg did something at the Forks and I was wondering if anything is going on in Brandon somewhere?

Not sure if this is what you meant, but the City of Brandon tweeted this  
 
“The City of Brandon will be lowering the flags to half-mast to honour the 215 children whose lives were lost at the former residential school in Kamloops, BC, the survivors, their families, and all those who never made it home”

There was a large Residential School located north of the Grand Valley Rd.  
Let’s hope that when those grounds are searched that no little Souls suffered the same demise.  
What happened to these families and their beloved children is unforgivable.  
I can not imagine how anyone could have done or been allowed to do what they did back then or ever treated another person especially innocent children with such brutality and disrespect for their lives.  
My heart goes out to all their families.

There is a grave site at Bdn residential schools and also one at a what was once Curran Park.

I was thinking more like the shoes and a fire pit with sage, special type of wood and such. At least they are acknowledging it with the flags.

Very saddened from this and likley happened all over Canada. Bdn wont do anything that might cost couple buks

I think that Brandon being a site of a residential school, we as a community would have a permanent memorial. If we don’t, we should. I would certainly be willing to donate to one. Dedicated to the remembrance of all children and their families of Brandon residential school and all other residential schools. Maybe a spot could be at the discovery centre. Think along the lines of eternal flame. A quiet reflective place.  
 
I am also in my 60’s and remember being in school with children who lived at the residential school. At least from grades 3-4 to grade 6. I have never forgotten two of the kids. A girl named Janice L and a boy named Alan T. There were others but I can’t remember their names. These 2 and a few others were my playmates at school and after when their bus was late. So many of us privileged kids went to school with children that lived and schooled in these atrocious centres with no idea of their living conditions. Now the thought that these kids suffered any of this just breaks my heart.

Could be yours to take.  
You could start it yourself with dropping off a pair of shoes on the steps at DOTC 702 Douglas St .  
Always need one person to take the first step does not need to be City of Brandon it can just be the people who show they care.  
 
Edited by Mac72, 2021-05-31 07:35:22

I never thought of DOTC on Douglas. I figured if I dropped a pair of shoes at City Hall, one pair wouldn't last long before they were gone.  
I'll do that next trip to town. Thanks

We already know there is, at a minimum, 70 unaccounted for children who are likely in unmarked graves at the Brandon site. Possibly more.  
 
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-secret-graves-of-brandon-residential-school-773123

More needs to be done than lowering of flags and tweets or Facebook posts. The government needs to take responsibility and step up and do what they promised these people who had to endure such pain. The pain is still VERY raw.  
The schools were made mandatory in the 1920s. My grandpa had just been born.  
There are people still alive dealing with this pain.. their children and their children's children. The pain lingers through each generation. People need to open their eyes and their hearts.  
They are saying there are unmarked Graves.. finally people are starting to believe them, only because technology can prove it. But no one is speaking about the babies that were born from rape that were thrown into the furnaces to prevent the priests and teachers from being caught.  
 
The little babies that were thrown into cages for crying for their parents.  
There shouldn't even be a canada day. This country really disgusts me sometimes.

Just read that the Riverbank Discovery has a place for shoes. They'll be set up for 4 days and then donate them to Children in need

This was very disturbing for me to hear. I have wanted to say something, but wasn't ready...I didn't know what to say even though my heart was heavy. I feel that I am now ready.  
 
I had arranged for my kids to learn directly from a residential school survivor friend after she shared her personal story with me, but then the first covid lockdown came and derailed our important visit. I hope that we can still follow through at some point.  
 
To hear first hand from a survivor of any such still very raw experience is important for them to heal, for us to truly learn, and for us to better know how to compassionately help...one individual at a time. It makes the depth of the tragedy (no fault of their own) personal and living and gives it a physical and spiritual face that we can interact with...reminding us that each one is very important.  
 
One thing to remember, it is easy to issue an empty apology or throw money at such a situation, but it really contributes little if anything and is an aloof gesture. The federal government was never innocent in this and did knowingly and purposefully destroy many families, while peddling lies so that the parents would trust them. Specific (not all) church organizations also bear the same weight of guilt.  
 
Not to take away from what happened, but to add even more weight to my statement here, the government tried milder forms of dividing families & stripping culture away on various immigrant populations as well in the early through mid 1900s. The Japanese, Italians...who were given a recent easy apology, Ukrainians & Mennonites are the ones that I am aware of. There may be more. All these despicable actions are relatively recent history.  
 
It is good to remember that abusers rarely change, often apologize and/or give lavish gifts to cover themselves, lie for the same purpose saying they will change, and usually repeat their wrongs, even if in slightly different ways. For this very reason, it is wise to be wary of government and their agendas. They certainly had one in each of those situations, to control & make the specific people to conform to their purpose and erase who they were. They are not an innocent organization that always has the people's best interests in mind, but instead, their own. That has been repeatedly proven. This recent additional discovery & new knowledge is a very stark, horrific & present reminder of that. We should never forget the past and keep wary even today and into the future. Be aware & active...not passive.  
 
Some of us were not involved (born later or immigrated later), some were aware and some not. But, each person that is aware now can contribute to the healing process. I feel that those who committed these crimes and still live, should very much be held personally responsible, whether they made the policies or enforced them. It is the simple principle of consequences for actions that even little children can understand.  
 
I received some resources through my email today that may be helpful to those who wish to learn more, teach their kids, and contribute to those who still suffer, to help them to start to heal. I will put these links below.  
 
To echo some of what the email's content was and add to what I said above, we can learn about the cultures of the people around us and learn to respect their heritage.  
 
Here is a course from the University of Alberta: https://www.ualberta.ca/admissions-programs/online-courses/indigenous-canada/index.html  
 
Many resources for teaching children can be found here: https://thecanadianhomeschooler.com/indigenous-education-resources/  
 
As written in the email, & I can't word it any better:  
"We can write to our members of parliament for change, for action, for justice. Ask for clean water for Indigenous communities to be a priority. Ask for more investigations at other schools."  
 
Additionally, if you wish to donate to a survivor's fund that offers practical services like counselling and health support, there is the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, https://www.irsss.ca/  
 
Let's be active participants in the healing by listening to each story...connect with at least one breathing human being...and genuinely be angry alongside with & cry with them. Let's each be active to try to understand the pain, erase the hate, ask how we can help even just one survivor in a personal way & make sure their stories are not forgotten. Let's put love into action.  
 
I hope that I can make a difference. I am certainly trying.  
 
Thank you for reading.

Well said, thank you for writing this. If everyone were like you, we wouldn't still have this problem today. I appreciate you.

I believe I read the other day that there is a suspected burial at the Turtle Crossing campground. The owner/owners of the campground had not allowed searches to be conducted because they originally understood it was only a monument and not an actual gravesite. Does anyone on here know if the owners of Turtle Crossing have changed their position considering the "recent" news? Or does anyone on here know the owners and could maybe approach them to reach out to experts and have the area searched? Seems like the least we/they could do.

If the owners were sold the property with the understanding it was simply a monument why should they be on the hook for searching and excavation expenses let alone loss of use of their land if it turns out to be a graveyard ?  
 
The government and the church were the complicit parties and should be held responsible for all expenses associated with their failure to keep proper records of the deceased and location of their burial.  
 
i find it hard to believe the government and the church didn't keep meticulous records of such major instances as death and burials, they keep reams of records of the most mundane things, dollars to donuts you would find records of how much was spent on cleaning supplies every year going back to day 1 of the whole messy affair.

Why would they keep records of children they're responsible for putting in the ground? Of course they wouldn't document it, they knew it was wrong, hence why so many Graves were unmarked. They didn't care and they didn't think anyone else would.  
The government should be responsible for buying back the land to give to the people and they should be held responsible for all costs for finding the remains and helping the reserves they're near/on.  
All churches should be willing to help as well. I don't see any churches in my town with any signs showing any kind of support. It's kind of disgusting really.  
 
And for all of you who don't agree with me.  
If you're not a part of of solution, you are the problem.

Were there Residential Schools in the US? A quick search on Google states that there were. Is the history just as bad in the States? Did the religious organizations participate in the same genocide is the US? This whole thing sickens me.

Thank you. That is rare to hear a note of appreciation anymore these days. I want you to know that your words mean a lot to me.  
 
I just hope that what I wrote is heeded by others. These children certainly serve as a warning to others. Unless something invades someone's very personal space or immediate family directly, often people remain ignorant of what others' struggles are (I think it's human nature). It isn't *their* real life, so they don't care to get involved. They might even heckle & harass instead.  
 
These children still, after all these years, have a message for all of us, and we need to honor them by listening and insisting on change to the government's way of dealing with any peoples under its umbrella. Don't just accept lies, manipulation & empty words. I'm not advocating violence, but instead, holding them accountable and demanding practical helps that actually make a *real* tangible difference in people's lives.  
 
I don't trust the government politicians in this or much else due to repeated abuses of their power. I don't see genuine remorse from the federal end in this particular situation. A sad face & a few or even many dollars doesn't correct the wrongs. It can't. I've seen this abuser giving lavish gifts (without sacrifice to themselves) and deflecting what attention they can onto someone else (who is also guilty as well, but that is what an abuser will do anyway to take some heat off). It also sounds like the Catholic church itself is trying to avoid it all at all from what I'm reading. They have much to lose.  
 
All that said, I think it is positive that the government is sending some specific funds to purposely search grounds across Canada so that the dead can hopefully be found & identified (I think that I read that), but what about the ongoing current water issues and helping the families heal in a practical way? There has got to be more practical and helpful things that can be done.

I honestly don't believe the first grave yard is going to be easily found, even with ground penetration radar. The location is too vague and the geography of the area has changed so much in the past 130 years. Let's start with the obvious... The river. As it sits now. That's not where it was over a hundred years ago. It was more North, much closer to where the valley road is sitting now. A simple glance at an google map satellite view says it all. Most of Curran Park (Turtle Crossing) land would have been river or on the other side of the river. There's a more likely chance that the original cemetery site is not within the boundaries of that park/campground, but instead in the fields either side of the Grand Valley Road. That's a lot more ground to cover when compared to the search area that discovered the unmarked cemetery in British Columbia (a park and a soccer field). The fact that the river has moved more to the South and the surrounding landscape has been plowed level with a highway built right through. Plus, the original residential school was built further down at the bottom/base of the valley hill... Where the heck do we start looking? I'm thinking we need to leave the owner of the campground out of this mess until accurate records of the topographic/geographic surveys from the 1890's be studied first. That means that we stop this insistence of harassing the park owner for an statement or demand access and put an end to this idea of the City of Brandon to "buy it back".  
 
More research is needed before anything else.  
 
Just my opinion, I could be wrong.

I wonder if area farmers have ever came across singles or clusters of bones plowing those fields that may have migrated upwards or been buried shallow.  
 
Granted, the fact that they were children might make it difficult to discern the difference between human and animal bones like deer or coyote might be a factor.  
 
Was it common practice back then to bury deep or shallow, if shallow, a lot of the bones could be gone already, mistaken for animal bones over a century of farming and scavengers.  
 
Mrs. Worme, I'm not well versed in the history of the residential school system, but I would assume at the time it was going on the staff weren't monsters and thought they were saving these children somehow, whether it be by educating them or instilling their sense of god in them, and record keeping would have been important.  
 
That being said, any records could have been easily destroyed over the years as the need to cover it up became more apparent.

I used to feel the same way. That the staff were mostly good people. Caught in a different time. I don’t know that I want to call most of them bad people. Some certainly were. But the fact is that all of them knew the children were forcefully removed from their homes and most/all of the children did not want to be there. This combined with the chronic underfunding of the schools leading to lack of food etc. I am not sure how a good person could do that job. No amount of money fixes this but some things can be done. Drinkable water on every reserve would be a good start.

more than water on reserves to fix everything that has been inflicted on indigenous peoples.  
 
One thing that needs to be done... teach children the truth as to how these people were mis/treated years back and probably still are but not to the same extent as before.  
 
Canada's history towards our first people is horrid.

Just need to clarify, I'm not suggesting anyone "harass" the Turtle Crossing owners or require that they pay for anything. However there are experts who believe this to be an good location to search. Allowing the search to take place would be a good step on the road towards reconciliation.  
This article may help some understand what I had meant.  
 
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-secret-graves-of-brandon-residential-school-773123

The campground owners agreed to have work done on the burial ground. There was a major research project ready to go last summer, but it was derailed by covid. Here's the recent press release from Simon Fraser University, which is taking the lead on the research in partnership with Sioux Valley.  
http://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/stories/2021/06/finding-indigenous-children-the-brandon-indian-residential-scho.html?fbclid=:IwAR1ANLI9wsLNgfZMnMJYRoLOkhpIL11ctgwgybwJDvk8gPAp2F-kVu9t2N0  
 
Edited by margretk, 2021-06-05 22:19:26

I am not sure some of the previous posts in this thread are really based on much.  
 
Normally we are asked to provide an opinion and not post links, but I don’t know enough to have an opinion.  
These are links I have found as I try to learn more about this topic.  
 
In 1963, after the City of Brandon, Man., built a large recreational park atop one of the cemeteries of the former Brandon Industrial School, it took a sustained letter-writing campaign from one of the school’s former students, Alfred Kirkness, to have even a rudimentary fence erected around the site.  
Very long read  
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/78/brandoncemeteries.shtml  
 
This second link needs to be read from start to end.  
I think it contains enough information for one to start asking tough questions.  
10 minute read  
https://thechildrenremembered.ca/school-histories/brandon/  
 
Edited by loeog, 2021-06-05 22:47:29

Excellent, thanks for the update, Margret. Hopefully they will be able to complete the work soon.

touch this one but feel compelled. People are making false claims that no one has tried to do anything in regards to our residential gravesites and I don't like false claims. Neither do I care for the City selling Curran Park for $1 and knew this act of sheer genius was going to bite them in their collective arses, but I digress.  
 
His name was Alfred Kirkness and he tried for decades...DECADES for someone to step up and do the right thing but no one would. Not the City of Brandon, not the Federal Government and not Indian Affairs. Yes, that is correct: Indian Affairs did NOTHING! Chew on that one.  
 
For anyone interested in learning more on the topic as opposed to the usual finger pointing and complaining from a place of ignorance here you go:  
 
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/78/brandoncemeteries.shtml  
 
 
 
I see someone has beaten me to it.  
 
Edited by Gussins, 2021-06-06 08:03:56

I took a course years ago as part of my "cultural sensitivity" training when I worked at the CRA. I worked in compliance for the Child Tax Benefit program, and a disproportionate number of our clients were Indigenous, both on and off reserve.  
 
One of my take-aways from that class (back in maybe 02-03, before the TRC anyway) was that the entire system, and the "Indian Affairs" department, had the sole purpose of eliminating the Indigenous people. The treaties signed were not in good faith, but essentially were entrapment to facilitate policy to strip them of rights and assimilate them into European society.  
 
Anything the people did to either improve their situation or perhaps move off-reserve basically resulted in enfranchisement, which stripped them of their identity and status. For a long time, you could not be an Indian and a citizen - to be accorded the rights and freedoms of citizenship (including freedom of movement, which the Indigenous did not have due to Indian Agents etc) meant you had to give up your status as an Indian. Women were especially hard hit with the enfranchisement rules, which continues to have repercussions today.  
 
So the legacy of Indian Affairs is that - not of help but of harm for the sake of European settlement. Roles and legacy can and do evolve, but we continue to see this old legacy today in how the government to this day interacts with the Indigenous people of Canada.  
 
Edited by Abbysmum, 2021-06-06 10:11:24