Open Cash Register — Land Back? Then Cash Back. All of it.
By Michelle Stirling©2023
Caution: Grisly historical details.
For decades, Canada has been wrestling with efforts to provide reparations to a small group of people who suffered harm as children at Indian Residential Schools. The effort has turned into an open cash register where once a goodwill effort to offer financial compensation to a minority of children who were abused, has now turned into a new form of Me Too, where just because a person attended an Indian Residential School that their parents willingly enrolled them in, and that they suffered no personal physical or sexual abuse, they were entitled to a cash payout. Many of the claims rely on “loss of culture” — a cause of action unknown to the law — and claim that the government of Canada had a positive obligation to ensure preservation of the culture. Which one? Which part?
The original good faith estimates of reparations to relatively few individuals, related directly to Indian Residential Schools, were estimated to cost a few tens of millions. Today, Canadians are now committed to pay out over $76 billion (PBO); much of that already received. This is largely because people saw the open cash register and claimed that those who attended Indian Day Schools (where children went home at night, thus were not separated from family or culture) also should receive compensation. Other permutations of such claims abound. How it all happened? Much of this is outlined in essays in a new book titled “Grave Error.”
There are only 1.8 million Indigenous people in Canada, and this includes First Nations (party to the numbered treaties), Metis and Inuit.
Only one third of First Nations children ever went to Indian Residential Schools. Metis and Inuit were not required to attend; indeed Metis were forbidden to attend for some time. The privilege of education was attached to the First Nations treaty obligations and Indian Residential Schools were instituted with the blessing of the chiefs who were signatory to the Treaties! But claims have abounded with new angles and new objections to historical fact. The latest is in Quebec where Indigenous claimants want reparations for what they say was substandard education.
“The lawsuit includes all First Nations people who were required between 1951 and 2014 to attend day schools that were run by the Quebec government and its school boards in Indigenous communities for the federal government.”
“It also includes all Inuit who were required to attend Quebec government-run schools in their communities between 1963 and 1978.”
Reportedly, more than twenty lawyers or law firms were involved in the case.
Originally, the reparations or compensation was meant to address the fact that some children did suffer physical or sexual abuse at residential schools (mostly at the hands of non-clerical staff). Contrary to media reports and popular belief, according to the TRC Report, only one Catholic priest and one Catholic brother were ever convicted of abuse. The next level claims were that the children were isolated from their parents and culture, and thus lost their language and culture. In fact, historical records show that many Indian Residential Schools incorporated aboriginal languages into activities and prayers. But why look at historical records when you have anonymous Knowledge Keepers who say otherwise?
Wait. Did I say “Prayers?” You mean Christianity? Yes. The missing and murdered women of the day were victims of infanticide in their own “culture,” a practice that the Grey Nuns stopped by taking in the rejected and unwanted orphan girls.
The historical records of the Grey Nuns tell of these horrors. The aboriginal name given an orphan then was “Weeper” because the child would be abandoned by the tribe, left to their own devices to straggle along behind, to scavenge for food and clothing. In an 1867 document, the Grey Nuns recount that orphans, especially girls, were given up to them by tribes. This was a blessing, sparing the children from horrific suffering or murder.
“It was a rather general custom of these people in these countries to kill, and sometimes to eat, the orphan children, especially the little girls. Religion has made a great change in this respect, but infanticide is still by no means rare. A mother, looking with contempt on her newly-born daughter, will say, “Her father has deserted me; I am not going to feed her.” So, she will wrap up the little one in the skin of an animal, smother her, and throw her into the rubbish heap. Another mother, as she makes her way through a snow-field, will say, “My child’s father is dead; who will now take care of it? I am hardly able to support myself.” Thereupon she makes a hole in the snow, buries her child there, and passes on.”
These were the kind of barbaric crimes against humanity that Indigenous people practiced against their orphaned children as the norm; the crimes that Christianity, Indian Residential Schools, education, and ‘colonialism’ stopped. These children’s bodies, if not eaten by wild animals, lie in unmarked graves — but it’s not the fault of ‘colonial oppressors.’
Should Canada have preserved this cultural activity?
Indeed, as noted historian, Robert Carney (father of Mark Carney) wrote, Indian Residential Schools took in all kinds of disabled Indigenous people and orphans, and children from destitute or dysfunctional families, as well as those children whose parents actively enrolled them for education and a better future.
It is nonsensical to pay out reparations for claims that it was Canada’s fault for Indigenous and Inuit children being “acculturated” when the treaty chiefs and parents wanted these skills for their children and young people.
Interviews with Inuit elders reveal that arranged marriages were the norm, and if a woman did not want to marry her appointed husband, she would be tied to a dog sled and taken off into the vast tundra to either acquiesce to her new status — or die in that stark land of grim survival. Is this how young Inuit women would prefer to live today?
Look farther back in history and see how North American Indians readily adopted the horse, the gun, and the miracle of staple food in the form of flour for Bannock and that of canned goods for those times of slim pickings on the hunt. Will we be sued for that, too?
Those who are filing their claims for cash in court are doing so in acculturated English or French under a form of colonial British or French Law and the recipients will take their colonial reparations cheques to the colonial bank to turn it into colonial cash, not wampum, pelts, glass beads or medicinal herbs. Their English or French speaking lawyers will be paid in dollars, not barter.
On top of Canada’s staggering multi-billion-dollar settlements committed and mostly paid out for aboriginal reparations, we now we hear that Indigenous activists also want the “land back.”
Then let us have the reparations cash back. All of it. And we’ll take back all of the infrastructure, as well.
There’s obviously no reconciliation and very little truth going on here; its just pillaging the public purse. Worst of all, do you see any evidence that impoverished reserves have benefitted from the billions that have been poured into their economies? None. Indians on reserves make up only 1% of our population, and the ones who actually benefit from all the money is a small percentage of that 1%.
What began with good intentions has turned into monumental grift for a select few of the Indigenous elite, various public servants and academics on the ‘genocide’ bandwagon, and law firms, meanwhile Indigenous people on many reserves are still living 15 people to a house with no clean drinking water, no future, and no economic development. Environmental groups continue to capitalize on Indigenous grievances to block energy and resource development that pays the bills for all Canadians, including funding Indigenous treaty and residential school claims.
With the former tax payer base of boomers vanishing as their sweeping retirements gain strength, it is unlikely Canada can continue to meet Indigenous and grifter expectations of the open cash register. Indigenous author Calvin Helin recognized this impending fiscal disaster in his book “Dances with Dependency” as far back as 2008. The whole mess is driving Canada into economic and social decline. Most Canadians don’t even know this is going on.
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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.
Read more:
Confronting Indian Residential School Confabulation and Media Irresponsibility
Canada is in the grip of a ‘mass grave/missing children’ psychosis related to Indian Residential Schools. Contrary to…
Do I think Indigenous people are suffering? YES. But from Ambiguous Losses.
https://michellestirling.com/2023/07/28/ambiguous-losses-epidemics-orphans-and-unmarked-graves/
