Decolonize the Half-Truths and Alienation Indigenous Death Cult
By Michelle Stirling ©2024
I think it is time we decolonialize the death cult that has become the “Half-Truths and Alienation” commission. I’m referring to the on-going campaign by Special Interlocutor on Missing Children and Unmarked Burials — Kimberly Murray — to find Canada guilty of genocide based on colonial evidence.
Kimberly Murray claims that long-forgotten cemeteries that may or may not hold the remains of Indigenous children who attended Indian Residential Schools are evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity. She (or someone) wrote this interim report called “Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience.” No authorship is attributed to this report.
Cemeteries are evidence that we are all mortal. That is all.
Cemeteries are evidence that people of the time, including Indigenous people, used the colonial Christian ritual of sacramental rites and burial practices to honor the dead.
Murray has subtly expanded her original mandate from strictly Indian Residential Schools to claiming she has some authority over institutions like Tuberculosis (TB) Sanatoriums. Her office has issued this report which curiously barely mentions TB and never mentions the US Indian Wars.
US Indian Wars, which were in full swing from 1644–1924, murdered thousands of North American Native Indians. The roaming cavalry threatened both Canada’s geographical integrity and the lives of Indians who lived in British North America/Rupert’s Land/North West Territories and Canada. On the northern side of the “Medicine Line” the Plains People had accepted the Queen as ruler and expected protection from the Crown for their decades or centuries as valued trade partners.
Murray’s report claims that Indians were seen as dangerous to Canadians; in fact, this is a reflection of the US conflict between settlers who had NO legal rights to select and squat on a piece of land — thereby invoking rage from the regional tribe whose land they were on, resulting in murder and mayhem and the Cavalry charging in.
By contrast, in Canada, members of the Six Nations fought with the British against the Americans in the War of 1812.
Likewise, E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), Canadian poet and child of a Mohawk Chief and British mother, was a favourite speaker in high society here and abroad, performing readings in traditional native regalia and conventional European style attire of the time. Her family were Anglicans in 1861 when she was born.
By contrast, the making of the Treaties under the auspices of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police [North West Mounted Police as they were originally named] (dressed in red, to avoid any confusion with the blue-coated ‘Long Knives’ US Cavalry) created a legal framework for settlement and gradual integration of the Plains Indigenous people — via education in Indian Residential Schools, who had no colonial skills of reading, writing, math, and had no agro-industrial skills necessary for the ‘just transition’ which was in progress.
Only about one third of all eligible students ever went to Indian Residential Schools; many became teachers who then taught at Indian Day Schools on reserve.
Yes, there were cemeteries at many of the schools, or there was an adjacent community cemetery for the missions because people have always died, in human history. You must bury them for human dignity, public sanitation, and for Christians, for ultimate resurrection.
Death is not evidence of genocide, Ms. Murray. It is a fact of life.
Particularly in the time of “The Forgotten Plague” of TB, where one Canadian died every hour of the day and two died every hour of the night from TB in 1908. This was the norm well into the 20th century.
The Murray report accuses Canada and the Christian orders which operated the Indian Residential Schools of neglect, human rights abuses and even murder. She claims the evidence is based on Indigenous oral traditions and ‘oral footnoting’ (i.e. that there is more than one similar story told by people who were children at the time they witnessed something). Her report claims that colonial Canadians intentionally neglected or caused the decimation of ancient cemeteries and that the children, at burial, were denied a right to Indigenous ceremonies for their spirits, despite the documented fact that families had chosen Christianity decades prior and sent their children to the Indian Residential School that reflected the family’s Christian religious affiliation.
So, let us decolonialize this process right now.
First of all, Kimberly Murray and fellow travellers must immediately stop using English or French words, written words, reports, online internet communications or mainstream media. These are all colonial impositions.
Secondly, they must abandon all forms of colonial documentation such as photographs, historic diaries and reports written by the colonial ‘masters’ — those being priests, nuns, clergy and the hundreds of Indigenous staff who worked at Indian Residential Schools.
Thirdly, no more GPR for you! Yes, Ground Penetrating Radar, a kind of soil sub-surface ultrasound, can no longer be used for any searches or claims as this is the ultimate in colonialism — it is the unification of scientific knowledge and physically documented historical evidence. It requires magical colonial witchcraft — electricity!
Henceforth, only Knowledge Keeper memories and wooden sticks can be used for identifying possible gravesites and possible excavations.
So, if that means your teams end up wandering the prairies, hillsides or valleys doing hours of labour-intensive digging by hand (no colonial excavators), with wooden or stone tools, so be it. You won’t know who you’ve dug up, if you find someone’s remains, because using DNA testing is verboten. Far too colonial.
And finally no money, and no flying to gatherings.
Money is colonial paper. Henceforth, if you want funding for something, you’ll have to bring in some furs, smoked fish, or antlers — maybe some beaded goods (though the beads are colonial, too).
And no flying to anymore gatherings.
Period. That should decolonize air travel for all of us.
Henceforth, reports must be prepared in sign language, information transmitted by smoke signals, travel by horse (colonial) with travois, canoe or dog sled.
In this decolonialized context, no cellphones would be allowed, and no one could work from a colonially imposed office or meet in a colonial-concept hotel; only hand-made tipis or lodges allowed and the only catering available would be whatever someone can hunt, trap or fish themselves.
Kimberly Murray and fellow travelers on the “Half-Truths and Alienation” gravy train are very big on Indigenous law and cultural traditions. So as Keith Chiefmoon has stated in his comments upon the release of Murray’s first report, “Sacred Responsibility,” for his people, the corpses of the dead were placed up in trees or on hand-made burial platforms until the carrion birds pecked out the eyes and stripped the bones clean. As the bones of the deceased fell to the ground, they were gathered up and buried in a sand hill with no marker. And since there was no written form of Indigenous languages, Kimberly Murray and friends should tell us, going back seven generations, the names of these people who are no more than a pile of bones today.
Israel Wood Powell (of Powell River fame) also mentioned the unsanitary practice of tree burials in his report published in the 1882 DIA Annual Report:
In connection with other bad customs, I may also mention that the Kwahkewlths do not inter their dead, but, having placed them in boxes, these are secured in the branches of trees. In the vicinity of the Mission House, I noticed many of these lofty sepulchres, some of which had fallen to the ground in revolting and disagreeable confusion.
These remains, I must confess, did not impress me as being of those “that Kings for such a tomb would wish to die,” and desiring especially to improve as much as possible the sanitary condition of the camp, I requested Mr. Blenkinsop to have a proper burial ground set aside, to which they might be at once removed, and where all interments of the dead should in future take place.
This raises the pertinent question of the Kamloops Band calling the apple orchard sacred ground where the alleged 215 unmarked graves/anomalies were made. The Band claims excavation cannot take place because of cultural traditions. It seems that in the West (BC and the prairie provinces) there was no cultural tradition of in-ground burials, so it would be perfectly fine for the Kamloops Band to excavate. It would not violate any cultural traditions whatsoever.
Since Indigenous law was strictly oral, whatever anyone says about it could be anything today and something else tomorrow. Kind of like the much-vaunted Two Row Wampum Belt which looks to me like a few rows of woven shells, it is not evidence of any noble treaty, nor any details related to it. That’s my decolonized view of it because I live in the present, not in some past oral history that no one can verify.
Murray denounces the treatment of children at Indian Residential Schools, especially that of orphans, claiming these are crimes against humanity. Perhaps she can tell us where are the burial grounds of the orphans before the Christian priests and nuns arrived? What happened to them?
Oh. They were often eaten for supper. Cannibalized.
Were their bones then buried with dignity? Or does it matter in a decolonized pre-contact context where beating your woman was fine, as was holding slaves, taking enemy hostages and brutalizing them to death. Were the slaves buried with dignity? Where are these graves, Ms. Murray?
I, for one, am tired of the “Half-Truths and Alienation” crowd exploiting colonial skills, traditions and technology to make farcical but very serious presentism claims of genocide against Canadians….claims which play right into the hands of an aggressive competitor nation, China.
Decolonize the Special Interlocutor’s office and function.
Decolonize the University of Manitoba’s tax-dollar sucking machine known as the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation which is using the ultimate colonial tool — computers and special algorithms mostly invented by WASPY white colonial folks — to try and create evidence that Canada committed genocide or crimes against humanity, against Indigenous people over the past hundred and thirteen years. A centre which restricts access to public records, in contravention of the Trust Deed.
Disband and decolonialize this destructively ranting and raging internal enemy now.
Canadian taxpayers have already been taken to the cleaners for billions of dollars, no need to continue to the intended goal of a scalping-by-reparations and torturous trials based on half-truths and misapprehensions of history at the International Criminal Court or the UN.
Kimberly Murray can’t prove genocide with all these colonial tools.
Let’s see her prove it without them.
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Related:
Ambiguous Losses: Epidemics, Orphans, and Unmarked Graves
https://read.amazon.ca/kp/embed?asin=B0D3D5D8PX&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_9SMQF6PQA647ZF5CBRQF
Mass Grave Mass Psychosis: Responding to Gerbrandt and Carleton’s “Debunking the Mass Grave Hoax”
Michelle Stirling is a former member of the Canadian Association of Journalists. She researched, wrote, and co-produced historical shows about Southern Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Hugh Dempsey, then curator of the Glenbow Museum. She also researched and co-wrote a documentary on genocide; the factual content so dark the producer decided not to release it.
