Sep 6, 2023 09:14 PM
(This post was last modified: Sep 6, 2023 09:21 PM by C C.)
RELATED (wikipedia): Canadian Indian residential school gravesites ..... 2021 Canadian church burnings ..... Media reporting in 2021
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Who started calling residential school burial sites mass graves?
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/fir...ons-graves
EXCERPTS: In the last week, some international news outlets published claims that Canada has fallen for one of the biggest hoaxes in its history.
“Alleged mass grave of Indigenous children at Catholic schools across Canada contains NO BODIES,” declared Britain’s Daily Mail last Thursday. “No human remains found two years after claims of ‘mass graves’ in Canada,” headlined the New York Post. The American Conservative claimed Canada has perpetrated an “anti-Catholic blood libel.”
In the spring of 2021, a series of ground-penetrating radar surveys near the sites of former Indian Residential Schools uncovered anomalies that appeared to be consistent with children’s graves. In the nationwide protests that followed, more than 60 Canadian churches were vandalized or destroyed, and statues were pulled down in virtually every major city.
[...] And then, just last month, an excavation at the Pine Creek Residential School in Manitoba determined that fourteen “anomalies” suspected to be children’s graves were actually nothing. To date, of the hundreds of suspected graves identified starting in 2021, Pine Creek is the only one that has been followed up with an archaeological dig.
But there’s just one problem with claims that this was all an engineered hoax: The preliminary claims of First Nations performing the surveys did not state that these were “mass graves,” that they were deliberately concealed or that they were the result of homicide. At least in the beginning, the claims of “mass graves” or mass murder would stem mostly from foreign outlets.
[...] Three similar announcements followed throughout the summer, each one spurring a new wave of sensationalized domestic and international headlines. But in all these cases, First Nations were careful to note that the graves were either within existing cemeteries, were previously known about or may not even be children’s graves with any link to a residential school.
“Although these findings are tragic, they are still undergoing analysis and the history of this area is a complex one,” cautioned one July announcement by the Ktunaxa community of ʔaq̓am regarding the discovery of 182 suspected graves near the former site of the St. Eugene’s Mission School outside Cranbrook, B.C.
ʔaq̓am Chief Joe Pierre would later clarify that it was “extremely difficult to establish whether or not these unmarked graves contain the remains of children who attended the St. Eugene residential school.”
[...] In the weeks that followed, other international press reports would similarly misrepresent the four surveys, often framing them as confirmed, clandestine burials of dead children. “Over 600 bodies found at Indigenous school in Canada,” read the Associated Press’s report on the Cowessess announcement. “Mass grave with remains of 215 children found at Indigenous school in Canada,” wrote USA Today. When a statue of Queen Victoria was pulled down by protest mobs in Manitoba, The Daily Beast said that it was an act of “rage” over “the discovery of mass graves for Indigenous children.”
In the wave of statue desecration and church vandalism that hit Canada in the spring of 2021, the term “dig them up” would become a frequently graffiti’ed term. But First Nations nearest to the discoveries were often hesitant to move on to exhumation out of respect for their dead, and fears about igniting local traumas. T’kemlups, for one, has seen a massive community divide among members who want the 215 suspected graves exhumed, and those who want them left undisturbed.
[...] None of the events of 2021 disturbed the core facts that Indian Residential Schools were explicitly designed to forcibly remove Indigenous children from their parents, and assimilate them into white society in underfunded schools awash with corporal punishment and sexual predation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 2015 final report found 3,201 confirmed student deaths, mostly due to disease — although the poor state of record-keeping led commissioners to conclude there was likely many more... (MORE - missing details)
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Who started calling residential school burial sites mass graves?
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/fir...ons-graves
EXCERPTS: In the last week, some international news outlets published claims that Canada has fallen for one of the biggest hoaxes in its history.
“Alleged mass grave of Indigenous children at Catholic schools across Canada contains NO BODIES,” declared Britain’s Daily Mail last Thursday. “No human remains found two years after claims of ‘mass graves’ in Canada,” headlined the New York Post. The American Conservative claimed Canada has perpetrated an “anti-Catholic blood libel.”
In the spring of 2021, a series of ground-penetrating radar surveys near the sites of former Indian Residential Schools uncovered anomalies that appeared to be consistent with children’s graves. In the nationwide protests that followed, more than 60 Canadian churches were vandalized or destroyed, and statues were pulled down in virtually every major city.
[...] And then, just last month, an excavation at the Pine Creek Residential School in Manitoba determined that fourteen “anomalies” suspected to be children’s graves were actually nothing. To date, of the hundreds of suspected graves identified starting in 2021, Pine Creek is the only one that has been followed up with an archaeological dig.
But there’s just one problem with claims that this was all an engineered hoax: The preliminary claims of First Nations performing the surveys did not state that these were “mass graves,” that they were deliberately concealed or that they were the result of homicide. At least in the beginning, the claims of “mass graves” or mass murder would stem mostly from foreign outlets.
[...] Three similar announcements followed throughout the summer, each one spurring a new wave of sensationalized domestic and international headlines. But in all these cases, First Nations were careful to note that the graves were either within existing cemeteries, were previously known about or may not even be children’s graves with any link to a residential school.
“Although these findings are tragic, they are still undergoing analysis and the history of this area is a complex one,” cautioned one July announcement by the Ktunaxa community of ʔaq̓am regarding the discovery of 182 suspected graves near the former site of the St. Eugene’s Mission School outside Cranbrook, B.C.
ʔaq̓am Chief Joe Pierre would later clarify that it was “extremely difficult to establish whether or not these unmarked graves contain the remains of children who attended the St. Eugene residential school.”
[...] In the weeks that followed, other international press reports would similarly misrepresent the four surveys, often framing them as confirmed, clandestine burials of dead children. “Over 600 bodies found at Indigenous school in Canada,” read the Associated Press’s report on the Cowessess announcement. “Mass grave with remains of 215 children found at Indigenous school in Canada,” wrote USA Today. When a statue of Queen Victoria was pulled down by protest mobs in Manitoba, The Daily Beast said that it was an act of “rage” over “the discovery of mass graves for Indigenous children.”
In the wave of statue desecration and church vandalism that hit Canada in the spring of 2021, the term “dig them up” would become a frequently graffiti’ed term. But First Nations nearest to the discoveries were often hesitant to move on to exhumation out of respect for their dead, and fears about igniting local traumas. T’kemlups, for one, has seen a massive community divide among members who want the 215 suspected graves exhumed, and those who want them left undisturbed.
[...] None of the events of 2021 disturbed the core facts that Indian Residential Schools were explicitly designed to forcibly remove Indigenous children from their parents, and assimilate them into white society in underfunded schools awash with corporal punishment and sexual predation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 2015 final report found 3,201 confirmed student deaths, mostly due to disease — although the poor state of record-keeping led commissioners to conclude there was likely many more... (MORE - missing details)
