They were Children. We are Taxpayers.
By Michelle Stirling ©2024
Blacklocks Reporter recently broke the news that despite a payment of some $8 million to the Kamloops First Nation, no excavations have been done at the site of the alleged unmarked graves of former Indian Residential School children.
This news comes just about a month after the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), headquartered in The Hague, issued an interim report on this grave exploration project titled “They Were Children.” Yes. That’s who normally goes to school.
Children.
The ICMP is an organization that deals with exhumations and repatriation of human remains following wars, conflicts, and natural disasters. The federal government engaged them for a $2 million contract which was met by a loud outcry in February 2023 from Indigenous people and Kimberley Murray, Special Interlocutor on Missing Children and Unmarked Graves, because this was not done with Indigenous consultation. The agreement was signed by Public Works Canada on 26 January 2023, and by ICMP on 01 February 2023.
Since that time, based on what is in the ICMP interim report, there has been found an Indigenous-led way to complete that contract, and as Brian Giesbrecht recently reported in the Western Standard, some $320 million more in unmarked grave exploration funding awaits.
It is unlikely most Canadian taxpayers know that so much money is being channeled to Indigenous groups to look for bodies. This is the problem with having an Indigenous-led process. Indigenous people are part of Canada. But it is other Canadians who are the taxpayers who are funding this relentless effort to make Canadians look like genocidal murderers of children, when the historical record shows that:
A) Indigenous people began adopting Christianity here in the 1600s of their own volition.
B) Treaty Chiefs requested education, it was part of treaty obligations, and many of them toured the Mohawk Industrial School in eastern Canada to see it as a model for residential schools on the prairies; they agreed that this was a suitable way for their children to learn new ways for a ‘just transition’ to a new economy.
C) Children were enrolled by their parents, according to the parents’ Christian religious denomination; there was no forcible removal of a child from a home except cases where a child was at risk of domestic violence, disease or destitution. (Note: During the height of the Tuberculosis plague police were granted the power to remove people from a disease risk situation, just as was done during COVID).
D) Children who died at schools (typically from accidental injury, Tuberculosis, Spanish Flu or influenza) had death certificates issued in accordance with provincial or territorial laws; these were typically signed by a parent or guardian; their bodies were returned to the home reserve for burial with few exceptions. The ‘unmarked graves’ cited in staggering numbers are those of community settlers who are more likely my relatives than those of any Indigenous family.
E) The National Truth and Reconciliation (NTRC) Memorial Register is a list of thousands of people whose deaths had nothing to do with Indian Residential Schools. Of a list of 2800, research colleagues with no government funding, have found 500 death certificates showing that most children who died, did not die at or because of Indian Residential School attendance. Many additional names have been added to the NTRC register out of love and a desire by individuals to memorialize loved ones — but few of the names have any relationship to Indian Residential Schools! The names, like Helen Betty Osborne, who were later added to the list, had once attended residential school, but their deaths came after they left the school and had nothing to do with their school attendance. The Memorial Banner is deceptive as are the numbers in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Reports (TRC) as the numbers include children who died within a year after attending the school, but from many different causes unrelated to the school. The names added-on to the banner include many adults, an 85-year-old, someone who died of gunshot wounds, etc. They were NOT children.
F) There is no list of names of missing persons and no police records indicating that thousands of children are missing and who were never looked for by anyone in that time, especially not their parents. Truth and Reconciliation Commission documents keep referring to the ‘unnamed register’ -but every child was registered by name at the Indian Residential School of their parent’s choice; they were cross-registered on their Status Band Treaty Roll. The local Indian Agent and the Department of Indian Affairs, as well as the school/church authority had to document every child’s whereabouts so as to ensure the annuity went either to the school (if the child was attending) or to the family/band. As noted in the CBC Fifth Estate documentary denouncing Buffy Ste-Marie as a ‘pretendian,’ those who searched her records stated that Status Indians are the most documented people in Canada. That is why it was relatively easy for them to call Buffy out.
According to the official contract, [1] it appears that the International Commission on Missing Persons has taken everything presented by Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray at face value and has not sought historical documentation to confirm claims of missing persons.
Not only have taxpayers paid out $8 million to the Kamloops First Nation, but we are also now on the hook for $320 million and the ICMP has found a new source of income. For decades. You, dear taxpayer.
In their interim report, ICMP claims certain rights for Indigenous people under the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). But UNDRIP was forced through the Canadian parliament under duress because of the Kamloops Band’s claim of finding mass graves and the related global outcry. In fact, based on previous land use records, it is more likely the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) operator found the abandoned trenches of an old septic field in the Kamloops orchard.
The outcome is a crime against humanity. Canada, falsely accused of genocide in the court of public opinion, now potentially facing the International Criminal Court and excoriation by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights (who also blindly believes everything in Kimberly Murray’s unvetted reports) based on no evidence at all. And now to add fuel to the flaming accusations, the taxpayer-paid ICMP’s blind acceptance of Kimberly Murray’s unvetted reports, which are rife with lurid tales that are completely unsubstantiated by evidence!
At the very least, someone in Kamloops simply jumped the gun on graves without verifying facts and thus spewed atrocity misinformation to the media which loved and proliferated the ghastly headlines. The ‘find’ (which taxpayers also paid for in the form of a Heritage Grant meant to upgrade the park, not find bodies) may also be a case of confirmation bias of the long-held rez myth of disappeared students; if so, then this is mischief. And if it is revealed that this scenario was planned and contrived in some way, then it is fraud and extortion.
It is curious that after the ‘find,’ the Kamloops First Nation issued an open letter from their 13 grassroots families which was published in the Globe and Mail in Oct. of 2021, (but no longer seems to be online):
The open letter also calls for control over taxation, rights and resources across Tk’emlups [Kamloops] territories, recognition of that control by the courts, and the lowering of the Canadian flag to half-mast every Sept. 30 “in memory of the lost cultures, languages, childhoods and lives taken by residential schools.” [bold added]
This seems a suspiciously bold ‘jump’ from the Kamloops First Nation feeling gutted over alleged unmarked, unexcavated ‘graves’* and the ‘215’ — requesting media privacy to process feelings… to suddenly demanding in the press ‘control over taxation, rights and resources.’
Yes. That will make you feel better, won’t it?
*Note: ground disturbances, GPR cannot identify graves, coffins, bodies or bones.
Contrary to the ‘genocide’ narrative, historical evidence shows that children’s lives were saved by Indian Residential Schools. Languages and cultures were saved by the clever Oblate fathers, many of whom were trained anthropologists or linguists, or both, as well as Holy Men. It was they who created written syllabic ‘alphabets’ and dictionaries of formerly oral-only Indigenous languages. It was they who translated Biblical and traditional stories into more than one language for teaching, sharing and cultural preservation. Thousands of orphans, especially girls, were saved from deprivation and certain death or horrible abuse by the Grey Nuns, who, with their sparse resources and limited physical strength as woman in a wilderness world, created a safe haven for orphaned Indigenous girls who had no place in a subsistence tribal world.
Has no one read history? ICMP, I’m looking at YOU.
What is clear is that UNDRIP never would have passed into law as written, without the sudden global outcry about mass graves and the alleged genocide of Indigenous children in Canada. Canada was guilted into giving up >150 years of Confederation; decades of peace, order and good government, to be replaced by a morass of moving parts under UNDRIP where any piece of land may be declared sacred or traditional and thus untouchable to mainstream Canadian taxpayers.
Like the orchard in Kamloops. As the news of the ‘mass grave’ broke, it was declared a crime scene and an RCMP investigation began. Then, mysteriously, the RCMP were driven off, despite the Kamloops RCMP police chief at the time being an Indigenous officer who theoretically, would have had the cultural sensitivity to handle the alleged crime. The area was suddenly declared sacred ground and untouchable. The crime scene was handed over to the Kamloops band to investigate! This is unheard of in conventional law. But maybe Indigenous law is something different. Who can know? It was never written down and varies significantly by tribal custom and which Knowledge Keeper is saying it.
As for the residential school kids?
Yes. They were children — and most of them had a wonderful time at Indian Residential School, if anyone takes the time to review historical documents like school newsletters, priest and nun diaries, Department of Indian Affairs reports, school and Indian Agent records. That’s a lot of work, of course.
Much easier to cry wolf and cash in.
There’s nothing sacred about bearing false witness. Nothing sacred about burning churches. Nothing sacred about indoctrinating school children that our ancestors were heartless White supremacists, when in fact what Duncan Scott, former Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs actually said was: “I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone…”
If people don’t want to spend time digging in the archives and cross-referencing evidence, but instead want to spend years digging up graves that they and their ancestors forgot to tend to, let them. But not on the taxpayer’s dime…or…billions of dimes.
ICMP is supposed to be an elite organization in this field. Show us the list of names of the allegedly missing children. Let’s see if you’re earning your $2 million before we go a step further.
And BTW, please stop the desecration of existing community graves by wanton excavation as in the case of Blue Quills (formerly Saddle Lake First Nation). This has been going on, according to their own statements to the media, since 2000. Desecrating graves of people who were buried with appropriate rites is both immoral and a crime in Canada. The remains found cannot be claimed as victims of ‘genocide’ when the sacramental records and historical documents show they were community members who simply died as G-d called them home and were buried in the cemetery whose markers were lost to time. Any ‘mass graves’ there are victims of epidemics, well-documented in historical records.
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[1] A0340–224053 Between The Government of Canada, as represented by Public Works and Government Services Canada (hereinafter referred to as “PWGSC”) on behalf of the Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC), (hereinafter referred to as “CIRNAC”) and the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) (hereinafter referred to as the “ICMP”)
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, former curator of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta.
