751 unmarked graves found at former residential school for Indigenous children in Canada
Nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were sent to the government-funded and church-run boarding schools, which were set up in the 19th century.
www.post-gazette.com
In recent times, we are all shocked to learn that the Canadian government, over a period of about a hundred years, removed children from indigenous peoples' homes - sometimes forcibly - and placed them in residential facilities primarily run by the Catholic Church. In these institutions they were taught to speak, read and write English, and other customary academic subjects, as well as - presumably - learned Catholic doctrine and practice. And as the numbers would dictate for this number of children and for this amount of time, some were abused, exploited, and subjected to who-knows-what. (Which they also would have been at home, although no one would admit that).
And we all thought Canadians were nice people.
But why would the Canadian government, a subject of the English crown no less, do such a thing, as a matter of government policy?
It is not difficult to understand. They wanted these children to get a good education, become fully assimilated into Canadian life, and to lead long, healthy, productive lives in a fully-integrated Canadian society. What better way to do this than to place them in a loving, caring, respectful environment, facilitated by the Catholic Church - the only institution with the size and scope to accomplish the mission.
The current outrage about a few hundred unmarked graves is chicken shit. Out of 150,000 children, thousands would certainly die of various diseases and accidents, and under the circumstances some of them would have come from families that the Authorities could not locate, thus they were buried in unmarked graves. So what? The comparison of deaths with childhood deaths in the general Canadian population is B.S.; the appropriate comparison would be with children in indigenous populations, and one suspects that the institutionalized kids were better off, health wise, than those living in the primitive encampments from which they were taken.
It is a Leftist conceit that all cultures are equal, none better than any other, but this is preposterous and demonstrably false. These children were taken from hunter-gatherer cultures where disease, malnutrition, extreme poverty, and alcoholism were endemic, and where the average life expectancy was in the 40's, so placing them in an "institution" was, in most respects, a step up in the world. The institutionalized ones would reach 18 years old literate, healthy, and reasonably educated - able to be gainfully employed in any number of venues, when compared with those who remained in indigenous society, who were...none of the above at age 18.
Aside from the personal heartache, the 19th and 20th century Canadian officials who devised and continued this program were doing a Good Thing, for which the Left is - as usual - rewriting history to excoriate posthumously those with whom they disagree philosophically. Shame on their pantywaist Prime Minister for lacking the balls to defend his predecessors. And no credit to the Catholic Church which never even attempts to bring rational rebuttals when confronted by the anecdotal slanders. No doubt there were HUNDREDS of Catholic priests, nuns, and brothers who dedicated their adult lives to educating and caring for these indigenous yoots, and yet there is no one alive who is willing to speak for them.
