I put "discovery" in quotes because the existence of the graves was common knowledge. What was unknown was their exact location, so the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nationsaid it hired a specialist in ground-penetrating radar to find them, to bring some closure to the families and community from which the deceased people came.
A statement from Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir said, "To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths. Some were as young as three years old. We sought out a way to confirm that knowing out of deepest respect and love for those lost children and their families, understanding that Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc is the final resting place of these children."
This being the year... make that the decade... of Justice for the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, the liberal elites, governments and media fell all over themselves to apologize, and to denounce the residential schools and vilify those who ran them. From 1894 to 1947, the schools were funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches. Although the Anglican and other Protestant churches ran most of the schools, the majority were in the care of various orders of the Roman Catholic Church.
Attendance at the residential schools was mandatory. Conditions at the schools, most of which were in rural communities, were not much different from those at British boarding schools of that era. Spartan accommodations and strict discipline were the norm. Today, revisionist historians and SJWs charge that the school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own native culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Eurocentric Canadian culture.
Agent 6 has sent along a letter by an "indigenous related" person named Jim Bissell, which he wrote in reply to a Sun columnist who had written (correctly) that the backlash against the schools was leading to acts of vandalism and terrorism by mostly non-native people. Mr Bissell wrote:
The time has come for 70-year-old people like me to speak the truth. A little background. I grew up surrounded by four reserves and a large community of indigenous peoples. It was a community of wonderful, kind, very generous, very humorous people that remained that way even when very poor. I have a wonderful successful indigenous daughter with grandkids and great-granddaughters. I am not a Catholic and I do not belong to any church. I belong to me and my family but I like Christian values.
It should be noted that the missionaries were very essential to our success in the northern communities at that time. I had my first TB test administered by a missionary trying to stop a TB outbreak. (I hated her at the time for the scratches on my back. LOL). I got my first stitches from a wonderful nun. I got my first tooth pulled by a missionary. My first X-ray by the nuns.
My first teacher was an angel called Sister Rita. I will never forget her and her deep love of all the children she met and taught over the years. My best teacher ever and she was not qualified by Government standards. So although I have never been a Catholic, their church has been very good for me and although I now do know of one very bad priest, most of the people were wonderful. I can still see brother Filion who later became a priest working all by himself outside the school window making a wonderful merry-go-round for the schoolyard.
There were two residential schools in the community. When I arrived in the community, there were no phones, very poor roads, mostly winter access, and not a lot of services other than the churches. The mission school was there long before my time. It has been told to me by elders that many small children, some way younger than school age, were dropped off at the missions sick, hoping the nuns could heal them. Sad to say many died from measles, diphtheria, TB, smallpox, flu and many other conditions of the poor. Just the reality of the north.
Years ago most of the dead were placed in the trees so the birds and other animals could take them back to nature.
It was the churches that convinced them that that part of their culture should be changed so that to stop the spread of disease so they started to bury the dead. If the dead were Christians, their grave was marked by a painted rock or a small wooden cross that rotted away in 25 years or so. No one could afford a headstone and if they could there was no one that made them at the time.
Times were hard and in fact desperate in the ’30s. Many people owed their lives to the missionaries and we tend to forget that.
They were not always right, no of course not, but they actually wanted to educate, feed and make the lives of all people better regardless of where they came from. The churches do not need to apologize for trying to educate the poor in the only system that would work for nomadic peoples. They need to say sorry, though, for protecting and moving about the few bad apples (priests).
The Government saying they are sorry is meaningless. They didn't have a clue of the impact of their decisions at the time and they don't have now. Most of the older generation that did suffer are long dead and gone or have forgiven. It seems to me that many of the new generations just want to be victims and feel the money would solve their pain.
We need to understand that very few people wanted to live in the north under the isolated conditions at the time just to help out with a few indigenous peoples. After the federal government took over the school system, most of my junior high school teachers were immigrants from the British Commonwealth (India, England, Ireland and other countries) as no Alberta teachers wanted to live up there when they could live in or near a city with a doctor, bank, good grocery store, ambulance or even a policeman.
The quality of my education suffered because all of a sudden (in 1967) the nuns or even were not qualified to teach us. Thus I had to try and take lessons from teachers with a very heavy accent and hard to understand, who wanted to move close to the cities as soon as they could. Thank goodness the missionaries were there for the past 300 years.
Were they all good? No, but many were wonderful and now that seems to be forgotten.
How many of today's critics have relatives that went up to those communities in those times to try and help? Not many, I bet. The media today is only telling half the story, so I feel we as witnesses have to speak up and speak to the truth.
If you want I will take you to a sacred ground where hundreds of people were left in the ramps and trees or lay on the ground when they died. No one but historical memory marked their graves.
Please believe me when I say that the missionaries were not a bunch of evil persons out to kill little children like it sounds in today's media. That is not what I witnessed.
The missionaries knew that the ancient peoples of our land could not continue to exist in a nomadic and isolated society, so they tried to educate them and of course change their culture to be more compatible with the conditions of the times. Were they right? Maybe, I don't know, but at least they were willing to try and help.
Like I tell my children, I cannot become indigenous like them but they can become Canadians like me and they are.
There are more success stories out there than even you realize. The missionaries did not just throw bodies into the ground. Most were marked by a small wooden cross made by the brothers of the mission or parents of the child. Those crosses are long gone. Sad but true. I can also take you to the unmarked graves of many people that were not indigenous as well if you want. That was the way of the north.
Sorry to ramble on for so long but many things need to be said and if the elders of our society lack the moral courage to say them, we are doomed anyway. Please encourage people to stand up and be heard for the good not just the bad. Thanks and keep writing.
Jim Bissell
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