The Forgotten Tuberculosis Plague — Residential School Factualism is Not a Crime
By Michelle Stirling ©2023
Warning: The following historical information may be triggering to some. I am following the wisdom of the Elders who spoke at the “Sacred Responsibility” ceremony saying we must all be truthful and honest. I am doing so with residential school factualism. See Indian Residential School Records here.
According to a Radio Canada report of June 17, 2023, “Federal Justice Minister David Lametti has said he is open to applying the same criminal and civil penalties to those who deny residential school abuses that exist against those who downplay or deny the existence of the Holocaust.”
If anything should stop, it should be this appalling attempt to pretend there is any historical parallel between Indian Residential Schools and the World War II intentional genocide — Holocaust — of 6 million Jews and millions of others who were either dissidents or deemed to be ‘undesirables’ to the Nazi regime.
I watched the morning ceremonies that were part of the presentation of “Sacred Responsibility: Searching for the Missing Children and Unmarked Burials.” The Independent Special Interlocutor, Kimberly Murray, has just issued her interim report on Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools.
The report proves one thing. The forgotten tuberculosis (TB) plague caused the deaths of thousands of Indigenous people. This does not prove there was a genocide, nor do the many reported potential unmarked graves prove there was a genocide.
Burial Policy at Residential Schools
From the TRCs “Missing Children” report: “At some point in the early twentieth century, Indian Affairs formalized its policy on the burial of students who died at residential schools. The policy is recorded in an undated memorandum by J. D. McLean, who was departmental secretary from 1897 to 1933. According to McLean: “Funeral expenses are met from Relief Vote [money set aside for welfare-related expenses], if a pupil of an Indian residential school dies elsewhere than at the school, and provided the parents or guardians are unable to pay the costs of burial. When a pupil dies at a residential school, it is considered by this Department that the school authorities should be responsible for the expenses. Occasionally, the Department has paid the cost of transporting the body from the school to the home of the parents, when the parents have refused to permit burial at the school.”
Kamloops Indian Residential School Death Records
Of the 19 Kamloops Indian Residential School students listed in Nina Green’s death register who are identified as having died in hospital, 18 were buried on their home reserves (the place of burial of the other one is unknown). The Department most likely paid for transportation in most of those cases, both to the hospital and then to the home reserve. Of the 4 students who died while at the school, 2 were buried at the home reserve, which in both cases was distantly located from the school. In the 3rd case, the burial is “likely” in the home reserve. The place of burial is not listed in the 4th case.
Tuberculosis — The Forgotten Plague
TB was rampant across Canada until the 1950’s when antibiotics and vaccines were successfully developed as treatments. Well into the 1920’s TB was considered by many to be hereditary. Thus, a TB diagnosis could cast a pall over a family’s social status, making them outcasts, it might limit personal freedoms, and future hopes. As we saw during COVID, police then were obligated to enforce public health orders which included a legal mandate to forcibly remove sick people; so it was back in the day, the RCMP could forcibly remove persons at risk of TB from the home. Consequently, like a cancer diagnosis in the 1960’s was shrouded in secrecy, TB was often kept secret from the public to the point that sometimes TB victims were buried in unmarked graves. A good documentary was made by PBS that sets the context of TB as “The Forgotten Plague.”
Deaths by plague do not constitute genocide. The “Sacred Responsibility…” report cites a sequential timeline of the many discoveries of unmarked graves across Canada. Serious criminal accusations have been made about deaths at residential schools. Yet, the areas said to be unmarked graves have not been marked as possible crime scenes; no excavations have been done to discover if there are coffins or bodies at any of these sites. Once there are excavations, then an appropriate step would be exhumations and forensic study and DNA matching.
The federal government has even contracted a Dutch-based NGO that is experienced in recovering human remains, but the National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials says they do not want to work with them.
Even the existence of graves and bodies would not prove if there were criminal acts. “Sacred Responsibility….” confirms the high ratio of TB deaths in the personal stories that it chose to highlight. As historian Robert Carney, father of Mark Carney, pointed out years ago, children at Indian Residential Schools had a higher TB survival rate that children on reserve where such comparative records were kept; none-the-less, TB was the grim reaper of the time for all Canadians.
The “Sacred Responsibility…” report lists the sequential dates of ‘discovery’ of unmarked gravesites across Canada. However, as Terry Glavin reported in “Year of the Graves,” many of these unmarked gravesites were already well-known to their Indigenous communities as local graveyards. Often, as in the case of Cowessess First Nation, the graveyard held the remains of all community members. In some cases, the graves had lost their original wooden crosses or headboards, disintegrated with time.
Who Cared for the Graves?
Is it not curious that no one cared enough about these graves to maintain them?
No one cared enough to seek out their loved ones, lost 40, 60, 100 years ago, until now? The case studies in the “Sacred Responsibility…” seem to confirm that many ‘missing’ children were under care for TB, which in those times was considered highly contagious and required isolation from others, along with painful treatments, until the development of modern medications.
Perhaps the answer is found in the fact that TB is truly a forgotten plague in mainstream society. “Tuberculosis” is mentioned 13 times in the “Sacred Responsibility…” interim report. “Genocide” is mentioned 73 times. Even to this day in Indigenous communities, TB has a powerful stigma, to the point that people actively avoid diagnosis and treatment — to the detriment of all.
In the past, it was not uncommon to bury a TB victim without a named marker, to prevent societal rejection of the entire family. Likewise, tending a grave requires geographic proximity, time, money and traditional custom; something not shared by all Indigenous cultures.
Traditional Tribal Customs Varied
If we look at a community graveyard for example, on the Blood/Kainai Reserve, we see that some graves are tended, and some are not. Perhaps the loved ones of those buried here have all passed on or perhaps it is not the community custom.
I watched the morning ceremonies that were part of the presentation of “Sacred Responsibility: Searching for the Missing Children and Unmarked Burials.”
A series of images from the graveyard on the Kainai/Blood reserve overlooking the former St. Paul’s Residential School, taken in 2012. The names of the passed are blurred to honor and protect the family’s privacy.
Elder Onistaya Kopi — Keith Chiefmoon, M. Ed., gave an interesting power point presentation about the Kainai/Blood Reserve and their customs. He also told the story of Okotoks “Big Rock” and the story of Napi. This was one of the traditional stories that I did a documentary about with Dr. Hugh Dempsey who was later made an honorary chief of the Kainai Nation and was given the name Potai’na (Flying Chief).
Onistaya Kopi told us in the livestream that in Kainai tradition, the bodies of people who died were put up in trees where the sun and sky could take back their spirits, while the birds and animals could take whatever food they needed. After a time, the cleaned bones of the dead would fall from the tree and the Kainai people would gather them up and bury them in a special sand hill where no one lives nearby and that is only for this special purpose. A ritual burial ceremony of some kind for the bones would take place. He lamented the fact that those who died away from the community at Indian Residential Schools were unable to be given a traditional spiritual ceremony like this.
Yet we see in the images of the community graveyard above, on the Kainai Reserve, overlooking St. Paul’s, there are conventional graves, even some from the 1950’s, with carefully tended gravestones; along with others overgrown with grass, where lonely white crosses are the only marker of a lost loved one.
Kainai/Blood band offer reserve land for the reconstruction of St. Paul’s Indian Residential School (Anglican, Church of England)
The Tuberculosis Plague — “Captain of all these men of death”
On Page 7 of the “Sacred Responsibilities…” report, the sad story is told of “The Over 50 Year Search to Find Marieyvonne Alaka Ukaliannuk.” There are many technical faults in this story in claiming it as an example of a victim of Indian Residential Schools. Marieyvonne was only 4 years old. She did not qualify for Indian Residential School enrollment. She was Inuk, and only Status Indians were covered by the legal mandate to attend Indian Residential Schools. She was sent to Chesterfield Inlet, Northwest Territories (now in Nunavut), which did not have an Indian Residential School, only a hostel and a day school.
In the footnote to the story, the first footnote of the report, the CBC story of July 17, 2016, tells us that: “The last time I saw her was when I was going on the plane for TB,” said Marieyvonne’s mother, Therese Ukaliannuk, in Inuktitut.
So Marieyvonne’s mother had been sent away for Tuberculosis (TB) treatment. TB treatments in the south were typically months or years in duration.
Thus, it is likely that Lucien, Marieyvonne’s father, applied for government assistance to care for his daughter. This was common; there are dozens of documented historic examples of single parents or orphaned children being taken into care by residential schools, simply because there was no one else to give them sustenance and the necessaries of life.
Lucien’s obituary says that on his passing he had nine children, 16 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. It is unknown if he had more children at the time that Marieyvonne went to Chesterfield Inlet, or if he needed to go hunting or run a trap line, something he could not do so without someone to care for his little daughter.
Marieyvonne’s tragic story ended up with her developing TB, likely contracted from her mother and carried in the form of ‘latent TB’, contrary to the report’s claim that she contracted it during a hospital stay. TB takes a long time to develop; it’s not something you pick up from short-term contact in a hospital as the report suggests.
Her condition became more complex as she acquired meningitis (TB meningitis is common in children around the age of 5) and ultimately became a paraplegic. She died in a care home in Quebec, thousands of miles from home, and alone.
However, it seems the health and government authorities did all they could to provide ever more complex medical care for Marieyvonne, at no cost to the family.
The Three Sisters
The stories of Betsey (aka Betzie), Isobel and Nora Osborne follow in the “Sacred Responsibility…” report. This story occurred in the 1920s and 30s; the report states: “…three sisters from Pimicikamak (Cross Lake) Cree Nation — Nora, Isobel, and Betsey (Betzie) Osborne — were taken away from their community, one by one. Their family never saw them again.”
Independent researcher, Nina Green, has found the Department of Indian Affairs “Application for Admission” form to enter St. Joseph’s school for Betzie Osborne, dated Dec. 9, 1939, listing her as the 8-year-old daughter of Roman Catholic parents, Salamon Osborne and Sara Jane Wiskey. Her admission form was authorized by her father. It was noted that Betzie did not speak English. The number under which her annuity was paid was 398. Clearly, her family had already embraced Catholicism, thus the claim that children were forcibly taken away to be indoctrinated into Christianity at residential schools is disputed by this evidence.
Nina also found the “Physical Examination” form — the medical exam — for Betzie’s entry into school dated August 9, 1939. While the “Sacred Responsibility…” report claimed Betzie was healthy, the medical report shows that she did suffer from scabies, but in the opinion of the examining doctor, she did not have active tuberculosis (TB). The form also asks if there are any medical conditions within the family that the school should be aware of. The attending physician, Dr. Turpel, wrote “Father somewhat dead mentally” and “Elder sister — dementia praecon care” (presumably a form of early dementia or schizophrenia, possibly related to tuberculosis meningitis).
This evidence debunks the claim that children were simply randomly or forcibly taken or that their health was not considered. It appears there was due process, with a medical exam in August, and then application for admittance in December of 1939. Parents had to apply to admit their children to residential schools and the schools did a medical check on the incoming child to affirm the child’s state of health. Likewise on the Department of Indian Affairs admission form, at the bottom it states, “Minimum age for admission is seven (7) years, except in the case of an orphan, destitute or neglected child.”
This information shows conclusively that Marieyvonne, the first noted missing child case in the “Sacred Responsibility…” report was too young to be registered in residential school. So, it confirms the notion that since Marieyvonne’s mother was going south for TB treatment, the child would have been considered ‘orphaned.’ The structure of the admission form strongly suggests that Marieyvonne’s parent or parents had to make a formal application — she was not just forcibly ‘taken’ away as described in the report.
According to the “Sacred Responsibility…” report the family’s search for the Osborne girls’ records was difficult and convoluted and occurred many years after the fact — now 84 years. There was sufficient recordkeeping by the various agencies involved that it was possible to find their death certificates and determine where they had been and where they were buried.
However, all three sisters died of TB, Betsey at age 15, Isobel at age 22, and Nora at age 25. Other than the fact that all three sisters presumably attended Indian Residential School for some time, it is unclear why the deaths of young adults Isobel and Nora should be conflated with Indian Residential Schools. The report says they were never seen again. One has to wonder at the sequence of allowing your children to go to school one-by-one if no one is returning. However, once a person was diagnosed with TB and sent for care, people were generally required to remain at the care facility until the TB was cleared from the body, or they passed on.
Canadians are Paying Millions of Dollars for Faulty, Incomplete Research
Clearly, there is a problem with Kimberley Murray’s multi-million-dollar national organization with a mandate to find missing children, as it has made false statements to the public in the interim report. Either the organization’s researchers cannot find or have concealed the archived government registration forms, while independent researcher Nina Green found the documents cited above within a few days.
The 1920s and 30s were extremely lean times in Canada. It is historically documented that many families began sending their children to Indian Residential Schools following World War I because the cost of living rose dramatically. Having the children housed and fed by the Indian Residential School system alleviated the burden on the family.
The interim report “Sacred Responsibility…” proves there was a Tuberculosis plague in Canada, as was reported in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) documents.
Residential Schools Fulfilled Treaty Obligations and Indigenous Council Requests for Education
Though many Jews have expressed empathy for the situation of Indigenous people in Canada, the plethora of documented historical evidence about Indigenous Residential Schools does not provide for any scintilla of comparison with the Holocaust. If the objective of the Canadian government and religious leaders was to obliterate Indigenous people, why were Indian Residential Schools built in the first place, providing shelter, clothing, medical care, food and practical skills training? Why did missionaries create syllabic ‘alphabets’ and dictionaries to maintain aboriginal languages? Though many of the services at Indian Residential Schools were meager at the outset, in the context of a time when all people were poor but the few wealthy, Indian Residential Schools saved the lives of thousands of orphaned Indigenous children and provided skills for everyone who had to prepare for the entry into a changing society. This type of radical change is a recurring generational theme — one we face now in all of society with the “Just Transition.” It should be noted but is nowhere in the report that only about 1/3 of the relevant potential student body attended Indian Residential Schools — 2/3rds did not go to residential schools. Based on this, even the claim of ‘cultural genocide’ falls. Why did that majority not preserve the Indigenous culture?
Few Canadians know much about their own history. Nor do they understand the superficial method of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The process was cathartic, allowing individuals to express their personal stories. The reports rely on personal recollections that were not subject to cross-examination, nor was there any requirement to present substantiating evidence. We can say that the ~6,000 voices that were heard (about 4% of all those who ever attended Indian Residential Schools) do not represent the experiences of the other 96%.
Many of those positive stories, like that of Pauline Gladstone Dempsey, or her father, Senator Gladstone, recount that they were enriched by their experience and training at Indian Residential Schools.
That many children suffered is evident in the TRC documentation. Compensation payments have been made with little demand for evidence other than that a person attended the school and stated that they were harmed.
However, this does not meet the typical minimum standards for justice in the context of rule of law, where evidence, witnesses, cross-examination and proof are required, but in light of the time passed and the pain expressed by many Indigenous people, the basic judicial standards were waived.
It is no surprise that Canadians are asking themselves, should the real and perceived trauma of aboriginal people deserve to be placed above all the standards of knowledge, trial and discovery that we used to abide by?
Now we have the Special Interlocutor, Kimberly Murray, ramping up the emotions surrounding this painful topic by claiming that residential factualism — like the information I am providing here — is some kind of crime.
According to a Radio Canada report (in French) she said: “Holocaust denial is violent. Holocaust denial is calculated. Holocaust denial is harmful. Holocaust denial is hate,” Ms Murray said, adding that it was the last stage of genocide.
In fact, it is hateful and an incitement to accuse Canadians and their forefathers and mothers of genocide against Indigenous people. The evidence shows that thousands of Canadians died of tuberculosis, including most of the children who died at Indian Residential Schools. TB was the largest killer of all Canadians until the 1950’s, and that is the ‘forgotten plague’ in Canada and by extension, the reason for some missing children and unmarked graves.
As a Canadian Jew who travelled many hours on buses in Israel over the course of a decade, alongside elderly men and women wearing short sleeved shirts in the hot summer air, I could never accustom myself to seeing the arms with tattooed numbers, nor could I cope with the Holocaust stories of what they went through in Nazi Germany, told to me by the survivors or their children.
It is deeply offensive to suggest there is anything in common in the Canadian history of Indian Residential Schools with the genocide of the Jews in the Holocaust of World War II. My rejection of this myth and provision of factual information is not a criminal offense. It is an act of truth and honesty in keeping with the Elders’ wisdom.
- 30 -
Many thanks to Nina Green and Pim Wiebel for the detailed research of archival records and statistics and to Mark DeWolf, contributor.
Michelle Stirling is a 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.
Additional references:
