On May 27, 2021, an announcement was made that would create shockwaves around the world.
This was the press release of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc (formerly the Kamloops Indian Band) in British Columbia, Canada, revealing “the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School [KIRS].”
As a result of this announcement, The New York Times blared out the headline, “Horrible History: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada,” and for five months flags were also flown at half-mast on government buildings. Presidents of Canadian universities even made “Statements on the remains of Indigenous children found,” encouraging their employees to help Indigenous students through the grieving process.
In the several months that followed, carefully controlled communications by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc reinforced the belief that 215 children had been buried clandestinely in KIRS’ apple orchard, presumably by the priests and nuns who worked at the school.
When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police opened an investigation into the matter, they were accused of being “heavy-handed” by Murray Sinclair, the former head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and control over any further inquiries was turned over to the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc.
In July, a presentation was made by the ground penetrating radar (GPR) expert Sarah Beaulieu admitting that her GPR findings actually consisted of “possible burials” or “targets of interest.” Although the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, an indigenous government within the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council, promised that the report would be released to the public, it reversed course and has since kept the details secret. The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc’s lawyer even strongly advised the Simon Fraser University archaeology department “not to respond to any queries from the public regarding the search for unmarked graves in Kamloops.”
In spite of Beaulieu’s reference to “possible burials,” this did not stop Rosanne Casimir, the leader of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, from putting forward two “emergency resolutions” at the Assembly of First Nations about the discovery of a “mass grave” at Kamloops, and linking this to “genocide” that required intervention from the International Criminal Court. Casimir repeated this stance in September at the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, when she stated that “215 unmarked mass graves of children were located utilizing ground-penetrating radar.”
The gravity of these allegations led Canada’s most renowned investigative journalism program, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, to produce the documentary, The Fifth Estate. In this program, Rosanne Casimir stated that it was important for KIRS to be “looked at as a crime scene with that many children … that are in unmarked graves.” Numerous allegations were made, such as Audrey Baptiste remembering that, when she was ten years old, she “saw the lifeless bodies of four boys hanging” in a barn. The program also spoke to a former chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, Manny Jules, who stated that a committee of family heads had made a “decision to exhume” after coming to terms with “the reality of the grisly discovery.”
To date, however, no excavations have been undertaken.
This is surprising since one would expect an allegation about a “crime scene” of 215 clandestine burials to spur immediate action to hold the perpetrators accountable for such a “grisly discovery.” But despite all the recriminations, few journalists, politicians, or academics have noticed that not one parent has claimed that their child never came home from KIRS. If no such child has been identified, who would constitute the 215 ‘remains’ buried in the KIRS’ apple orchard?
In spite of the lack of evidence in the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc case, the lurid references to the 215 bodies of children, some as young as three years old, soon spawned more allegations in Canada. The most sensational was the announcement that 751 unmarked graves had been “discovered” at Cowessess (the former home of the Marieval Indian Residential School). This resulted in the famous photo of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kneeling with his head bowed, holding a teddy bear. The “unmarked graves,” however, actually turned out to be a community cemetery, where the grave markers had deteriorated. While this had been well known in the community for years, it did not stop the chief, Cadmus Delorme, from distorting this reality and stating that the site would be treated “like a crime scene.”
With respect to the other insinuations of clandestine burials, there have been a number of alleged sites so far—none of which have found remains of indigenous children (in the case of the Shubenacadie Residential School, remains were found, but these were those of Irish immigrants buried long before the building of the school). One of the most recent excavations was at the Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Catholic Church, which sits on the former Pine Creek Residential School Site in Manitoba. Although former students claimed that bodies were buried in the church’s basement, the 14 anomalies detected by GPR turned out not to be graves.
In spite of this confusion between previously-marked graves in cemeteries and clandestine burials, and the fact that nothing sinister has been revealed by GPR, the hysteria in Canada soon began spreading to other countries.
In the United States, for example, nearly every article that discusses graves at Residential Indian Schools mentions the Kamloops case as the reason to investigate whether in the U.S. there were clandestine burials of children too. A government report on Residential Schools, prompted by the discoveries in Canada, was produced in 2022 at the bequest of Deb Haaland, the U.S. Secretary of the Department of the Interior. The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ assistant secretary Bryan Newland submitted his report in May 2022. In this report, he noted that the U.S. had 408 Indian Residential Boarding Schools across 37 states that were operating from 1819 to 1969. His research further noted that there were likely 53 burial sites with 33 marked grave sites, six unmarked grave sites, and 14 combined marked and unmarked grave sites. All of these, however, are from cemeteries with documented deaths. Nineteen of the schools accounted for over 500 deaths but estimates, with no reasonable method of determination, of 40,000 deaths are common in media stories.
Although the death of a child is always sad, this does not necessarily mean that children were murdered or that genocide occurred. To put children’s deaths into archaeological and historical perspective, at just one Californian site (CA-Ala-329), 37 percent (127 out of 345) of pre-European contact remains belonged to children. The same site contained 34 children’s remains out of 108 (31 percent) dated to the last period—which encompassed 300 years from about 1500 AD to 1800 AD.
Children dying was a common fact of life for much of prehistory and history—even fairly recent history.
Early school directors, such as Walter Runke from Utah’s Panguitch Boarding School, noted that Native American children seemed to be inherently susceptible to diseases, such as tuberculosis. Journalists, such as Courtney Tanner of the Salt Lake Tribune, write that tuberculosis is not heritable, but greater immunity to these diseases has been found to be inheritable. However, in regard to Indian Residential Schools, even in Newland’s report, there is an admission that schools got better over time and fewer children fell ill or died.
At the Genoa Indian School located in Nebraska, researchers have noted that 86 children died at the Genoa school, but archaeologists, such as Dave Williams, believe the actual number is likely far higher. He based this estimate on other residential schools in the U.S. and Canada coupled with the 50 years that the school was open. Additionally, James Nash, who attended the school, believes that two classmates’ deaths were covered up. And thus, Williams and his team began to use GPR to try to find the undocumented graves, leading to the discovery of ground anomalies.
However, excavations of these locations of interest have found no bodies.
At Holy Rosary Mission (now known as the Red Cloud Indian School) in South Dakota, it was also reported that multiple GPR anomalies were discovered. An excavation found the anomalies related to building products and animal activity. Some animal bones were also discovered, but no murdered children.
If all of these claims about murders and clandestine burials in the U.S. and Canada have been unfounded, how have they received so much attention?
Part of this is due to the insistence that survivor’s stories be believed—stories that have not been found to be valid. Such tales include babies being thrown into the boiler at the Muscowequan Indian Residential School, children being kidnapped by Queen Elizabeth at KIRS, or white crosses in an unfinished basement of a church at Holy Rosary Mission.
Spooky images of long-abandoned buildings, photos of serious-faced students, and tales of abuses, such as haircutting and corporal punishment—commonplace in all Residential Indian Schools—ensure the reader will believe these places were bound to contain the ghostly evidence of murdered children. Yet, survivor tales, like oral histories more generally, are often inconsistent with one another, can be altered to conform to stories told by other survivors, and, thus, evolve in the telling. Such narratives are akin to scary campfire horror stories—interesting as modern folklore, but not something to be taken as factual.
The most significant source of misleading information, however, has come from the reporting of GPR discoveries. Articles, such as those published in the New York Times, NBC, and the CBC, have strongly led readers to conclude that hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of children were killed—perhaps even murdered—and buried secretly.
The media has irresponsibly failed to report on the inability of GPR to detect details. GPR, which has been used in forensic anthropology and archaeology for years, can be an extremely useful tool, especially to help avoid the destruction of materials during excavation. In forensic cases, where bodies are in shallow graves, often less than three feet (or one meter) deep, GPR has led to the discovery and excavation of recently murdered victims. GPR has also been used to map out historic cemeteries.
Yet, GPR is beset by problems of accuracy, and environmental noise can hinder successful discoveries.
GPR is best used on level sites with few surface obstructions. Roots, rocks, and pipes can lead to false positives. GPR discerns subsoil disturbances, but it does not have the ability to define a precise burial outline or body detail. Experimental research has even demonstrated that GPR images can be altered by the moisture in the soil.
But, it is not just clutter from trees, rocks, and soil changes that affect GPR acuity. Even depth is an important factor. GPR resolution deteriorates as one searches for deeper burials. GPR rarely enables the identification of skeletal remains—often only soil disturbance of a natural sort is found. GPR cannot validate the presence of human remains; this can only be done through excavation. And, even in the best environments, GPR images are not visually intuitive. And, thus, before coming to conclusions about buried—and murdered—children in Kamloops or any other Indian Residential School, excavation—not GPR—is needed to provide the evidence.
Researchers know of these limitations and yet they continue to perpetuate the myth that GPR images confirm the presence of buried children, rather than just provide possible places to excavate. We must ask ourselves why these anthropologists are not eager to excavate and substantiate their claims further. Why, especially, have excavations not taken place in Kamloops, ground zero of the current hysteria? And why do indigenous leaders appear to be disappointed, not relieved, when excavations turn up no remains?
The answer to these questions is revealed by listening to the old adage: follow the money. After the Kamloops discovery, a long list of demands was drawn up, including funds for “supportive infrastructure” and “reconciliation progress” reporting. Further discoveries resulted in the dispersal of $321 million for “unmarked graves” searches and associated contracts.
This, however, is only the tip of the iceberg and distracts us from considering the main prize—claims about the discovery of thousands of clandestine burials are used as evidence for the existence of genocide. This is part of the long game of indigenous neo-tribal elites and their lawyer-brokers to divert transfers from governments, churches, universities, and other institutions as reparations for supposed crimes against humanity. Also known as the machinations of the Aboriginal Industry, this self-serving group of lawyers and consultants siphon away billions of dollars from much-needed services in isolated and deprived indigenous communities.
The influence of the Aboriginal Industry in creating the unmarked graves hysteria has been reinforced by a reactionary position that is sweeping our institutions in Canada and the United States—a stance pejoratively referred to as “wokeism.” In wokeism, identity politics becomes totalitarian—all beliefs of oppressed identities must be affirmed. A prominent one of these in Canada is the “residential school genocide survivor” identity. As a result, no one in Canada can challenge the claim that the residential schools are genocidal, and there are even proposals to make “denial” of these unsubstantiated claims a criminal offense. Even without such a law, skepticism of the genocide and clandestine mass burial narrative is disingenuously compared to denying the Holocaust. As the American Anthropological Association put it, “skepticism is violence.”
Wokeism has been made possible by the assault on science and reason in universities, and the resulting claims that oppressed groups, like indigenous people, have a special “way of knowing.” It is claimed that pretending to believe this will somehow empower indigenous people and assist them in their aspirations for self-determination. As a result, the obviously false claim of indigenous neo-tribal elites and their “allies” that there are “215 murdered children” at KIRS doesn’t seem to matter. But the oppressed need to know the truth just like everyone else. To condescendingly deny the truth prevents critical analysis of the claims grievance-grifters make to increase their wealth and power at the expense of the genuinely marginalized.
Photo by Tandem X Visuals on Unsplash
Excellent reporting, fact checking, and summation! Great comments section, just a little bit of gruff, but majority is useful info.
*Note to editors: Deb Haaland of the Laguna Pueblo Tribe is actually the US Secretary Of Interior, not Sec of State.
I am ethnic Irish, and “was” catholic. I have lived around the world, embedded as a minority, with my time in California bringing me into local Native American people, and the the Powwow Trail across USA to film dancing.
Also, I had other duties in my day job the included a lot of interaction. A very good amount of cultural and historical flowed into my brain.
I filmed Philip Espinoza reenact his great uncle’s running away from Sherman Indian School in Riverside, CA 90 miles to Mesa Grande Reservation in moutains above San Diego, CA. Was an early effort of mine, no vetting of the story. It too Philip 3 days to run/jog the route thru urban & rural areas, and up the mountains.
Why uncle ran away was explained as missing his family, not abuse. Today, Sherman School affirms Tribal cultures & languages, as well as overall education. I have filmed powwow dances, and Bird Singing there.
My nonprofit filming then included 2 of the late Dennis Banks’ Longwalks across USA to Washington DC ( I did not film the entire 5 month run/walk, mostly starting end, the finish)
This put me around many activists and operatives aligned with American Indian Movement. Dennis Banks, was a human mountain of charisma, amazing leader in many settings.
Of course, the Longwalks reeact the many tribal relocations, and AIM began by simply demanding Govt act upon the yet unfulfilled promises in the Treaties.
Dennis told me that he ran away from his own Indian Boarding School twice, but he did not reveal any specific abuse. Dennis just wanted to be back home. But, then Dennis tells me of the many abuse stories that Natives have shared with him in confidence, and Dennis stares with the “You don’t want to know” look.
While some Natives are quick to say that boarding school was “okay” and they grew up fine, many want to keep quiet out of respect for those who suffered.
Now, in my Ireland, in 2014, a found manifest of deceased children at the Sisters of Bon Secour “unwed mothers & babies home” made a local woman question “where are all the graves? ”
Long ago, these children were denied baptism, and “catholic burial”.
Finally, info was provided to check the underground septic system, which brought up a roar of anguish.
Resulted that there was an unused large septic tank which held over 800 child or baby bodies from decades ago.
Ireland is still resolving the Babies Of Tuam incident/situation, nobody is alive today from the era. The remains will be moved.
Indian Boarding Schools involved moving kids with a young immune system, with little exposure to the outside world viruses, illnesses, and industrial pollution into a closed air system during winter months.
This was a recipe for disaster.
New York City when horses were still common, had vast piles of horse manure in stacks, waiting removal. The amount of flies was like a plague swarm. Child mortality was high, even with many doctors, hospitals, and medicine on hand.
The story of a little Aleutian (Alaska) tribal girl taking boats and trains all the way to Carlisle School in Pennsylvania, and passing away there is very tragic. She worked on a farm during the summer when class was in recess, she was healthy, but her system could not deal with a new type of illness.
She was buried in the small Native Cemetery near Carlisle School, which closed down later. The property was on US Military property, so later on, the Govt quietly decided to relocate the graves to make space for new construction.
I don’t have all the facts, but the graves were moved by subcontractors who mixed-up the grave markers at the new site!
Later, when tribal family wishing to bring this little girl’s remains back to Alaska for tribal rites burial, the mix up of the Carlisle graves caused a big reaction across Native Country.
DNA testing confirmed the correct set of remains, the little girl is now back in her ancestral homeland.
I typed this on my phone, hope it makes sense. No offense to anybody, just sharing real world perspective.
I lived on the Island of Guam for several years, we were close to the Garrido Family of Agat Village. The matriarch Rosa had a large scar on her heel, usually visible from always wearing sandals on this tropical island.
Eventually, she shared how WW2 Japanese soldiers cut her heel. Guam was brutally occupied 3 years during WW2, with Army of Japan killing Islanders. Rosa, then age 5, and other female islanders, were rounded up for a “work detail” .
They were marched away to a location to be used as human targets in a “cave clearing” training.
Once inside the cave, grenades were thrown inside, exploding. The older women circled the younger, and they began to collapse in a pile of bloody bodies.
Rosa was trapped underneath.
Japan soldiers rushed in to stab the women with bayonets, cutting Rosa’s heel, she remained silent.
The soldiers left, Rosa waited until darkness of night to limp home, and relay the horrific news to families.
I was floored by her story. I had never met a more loving or caring person than Rosa Garrido, she had 11 kids, lived in a plywood house, with the Island economy very sparse, they were doing well.
Decades later, I was asked to do some media at the military services for Joe Morris, Sr USMC Navajo Code Talker. Joe was part of the liberation of Guam. After services, we all went to the feeding, and speeches. At the end, I was able to share Rosa’s story with some Morris relatives, and to relay thanks from Guam’s Chamoru People. Joe Morris, and all the others in that beach landing at Agat Village, Guam in 1944 saved them from the hellish occupation.
Considering what many American Indian Tribes went thru, the Navajo Longwalk Relocation to Bosque Redondo, NM, this was profound.
I only met Joe Morris once, when he was very old, not speaking much anymore. He was selling jewelry & his life story DVD at a powwow. All I could do then was buy a DVD, and some jewelry, and say thanks.
I had been on that beach at Agat many, many times, they went uphill into jungles, with Army of Japan ready with deady ambush positions, and hidden tanks ready for the counterattacks.
Joe Morris, and many other Navajo Code Talkers were able to difuse the enemy plans, and carry the victory.
A lot of good, and good people all over in Indian Country. Rebuilding today, and creating good future.
Guam was liberated with help of the USMC Navajo Code Talkers
Very good Kevin James Byrne
How is it that the “House of Commons ” , in October of 2022 ( by which time the above evidence was easily verafiable and available) voted unanimously (not a single dissenter!) to condem Canada’s IRS system as an unqualified “Genocide “?
I too noted that and immediately ceased donating to the Conservative Party because of it and have told them so. Should they one day retract that declaration I might consider donating to them, or anther Party that does so.
Q. Why did they all vote genocide? (asks Ken)
A. Because they only listen to the media. On June 4, 2021, I wrote to my parliamentarian an email entitled, “Another scam on parliament and church.” where I told him to review the, then, single “discovery”, known to the 3 Truth and Reconciliation Commissioners for 7 years [I said at the time; It was actually 6 years] prior to the recent “discovery” at Kamloops. I also said he should read Dr. Scott Hamilton’s Report at the NCTR.ca [National Centre For Truth and Reconciliation] website to confirm that it was a “known” neglected cemetery where grave markers had apparently disappeared because of grass fires or whatever other possible reasons wooden crosses disappear from formerly marked graves, as proven upon page 15, 1st paragraph, of Hamilton’s Report entitled “Where are the Children Buried?”
The response I received was, in effect: “It is just terrible that they discovered a Mass Grave at Kamloops. The Conservative Party supports our natives. Blah blah yaddety yak, etc.” — thereby proving that my “Representative” or the member of his staff who replied (Both?) are utterly ILLITERATE.
That is the reason — dumb, deaf and blind except to media reports which report them to be the useless clucks that most of them are — virtue signaling dim wits — no matter what Party, or constituency, they allegedly represent. Our “representatives” are a mob of badly “educated” dimwits, just like too many of our so-called “educators” on Campus. It’s a universal problem.
Don’t take my word for it! You may go to page 15 of the Report and read the locations of all 3 of the first 3 (Kamloops, Cowessess and St. Eugene’s at Cranbrook) so-called “discoveries” of unmarked graves on that single paragraph. Each of the 3 locations was described as a CEMETERY by Hamilton on his report — 6 years before their “discoveries”!!!
Hamilton was correct about both Cowessess and Cranbrook, but he apparently made a mistake with respect to Kamloops. Their cemetery, across from St. Joseph’s Church, was in a completely different location — away from the residential school, unlike most of the other “missionary” locations which, in the majority of cases, featured a Church, graveyard, community-center and school all in one area. The document is still up at:
https://nctr.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AAA-Hamilton-cemetery-FInal.pdf
On the 1st paragraph of page 15 you may read the first 3 bogus “discoveries” [Kamloops, May 27, 2021; Cowessess, June 24, 2021 and St. Eugene’s at Cranbrook, June 30th, 2021] for yourselves. With the June 30th bogus “discovery”, Churches were being burned and vandalized all across Canada. And every one of the 3 so-called “Truth” and Reconciliation members KNEW why they had successfully promoted hate against Churches and successfully suckered politicians into paying more reparations to so-called “Day Scholars” in a different law suit from the suit where Residential School “survivors” and their lawyers had collected 5 Billion from gullible tax payers and politicians.
As they say, FOLLOW THE MONEY.
Kevin James Byrne
My experience with Indigenous Canadians is they have no desire at all to work or even fix up their own homes. It’s all alcohol, drugs, hunting and fishing. That’s all they want to do, paid for by taxpayers forced to think they’re to blame. Throw in child and sexual abuse on each other while living in the middle of nowhere and blaming others for their poor quality of life and you have a culture that needs to die or change, much like the reason for the residential schools to begin with.
I just realized one other thing — children who died on the reservation (as children sadly did back then) might have been brought to the church for a “Christian Burial” and then buried in the churchyard.
Remember that the goal was to save their souls by making them good Christians, and what would people who believed that do if a child died in an Indian village?
And as to bad drinking water, a lot of White Americans were drinking it in the 1960s and even later. No one tested for radon or arsenic back then, and it’s a real issue with well water along the coast of Maine. I know of one house where the last three women who lived there died of cancer, yes I have my suspicions as to what caused it…
Not testing water today would be an issue (at least in the US) but back in 1923?
As late as 1974 they were still installing lead water pipes, the advantage being that lead is flexible so when you built on filled-in wetlands (which was also being done back then) the pipes would flex rather than break. Lead is a big issue now, but in the 1960s the best quality water pipe was lined with lead so that you wouldn’t get rusty water.
And you can’t hold people in the past accountable for what wasn’t yet known to humanity.
Neither of the above links worked. The %5D appendage at the end of the first link was not typed by myself and clicking that link gives you an “oops no page” found at Widdowson’s website. So I’ll try that link again:
https://wokeacademy.info/documents-for-murray-sinclairs-involvement-in-the-kamloops-case
The link to Chief Casimir’s 2019 Summer Report to her “Nation” didn’t even show as a link. So I’ll try that link again:
https://tkemlups.ca/files/2019/09/2019-Summer-Lexeyem-web-1.pdf
When I directly type either link into a browser, they work. But the interesting thing about Nina Green’s research demonstrated at Frances’s website, with respect to Sinclair’s, Wilton Littlechild’s and Marie Wilson’s testimonies to that emergency meeting, is the update that I obtained after the translations of Littlechild’s statements in Cree were added to the record. Green’s report states that Littlechild was speaking “in his own language” or “Cree”. But when I went to the same site, quite a bit later, there were transcriptions of his Cree dialect as well as translations thereof. Very interesting translations too!
QUOTE (INAN minutes/record):
● (1205)
Dr. Wilton Littlechild (Former Commissioner, Truth and
Reconciliation Commission of Canada, As an Individual): [Wit‐
ness spoke in Cree as follows:]
Nitotêmtik, nîkan ninanaskomaw Kisê-Manitow âsamina
pêyakwâw ê-iyinamâkoyâhk. Ka-pîkoskahk wiyasiwêwin maki oh‐
pinayahkik awâsisak.
[Cree text translated as follows:]
My relatives, first of all I want to thank the Creator. Once again,
he provides for us by breaking the law to lift up the children. [end quote; page 9 right column]
Requote: BREAKING THE LAW to LIFT UP THE CHILDREN!!! ( What the heck was he talking about in a language that the committee members didn’t know or understand?) Note that at Frances’ website, Green didn’t have either the Cree transcription or the translations thereof.
Here is Green’s transcription at the time of her submission to Frances, quote:
● (1205)Dr. Wilton Littlechild (Former Commissioner, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, As an Individual): [Wit‐ness spoke in Cree][Translation]
Ms. Sylvie Bérubé: Sorry, but I don’t hear the interpretation.[English]
The Chair: I believe Mr. Littlechild is speaking in his language. Mr. Littlechild, please go ahead.
Dr. Wilton Littlechild: I was acknowledging and thanking you for this GREAT, although very sad, MOMENT for you to call a special session where we can recognize and uplift the spirit of the child’s life, which in our culture is very important.
[Witness spoke in Cree]
[English] My name is Walking Wolf, from the Maskwacis Cree territory, and I want to thank you again, first of all, for calling this special session. [ END QUOTE ]
Notice that Littlechild didn’t mention anything about “breaking the law” in his own translation to the committee of his own speech in Cree. Fascinating.
Kevin
#MassGravesHoax
Did we learn nothing from the child abuse hysterias & witchhunts of the 1980’s?
We can’t always believe stories that current children tell, let alone ones being told by adults sixty years later.
In one case, children claimed to have been sodomized with the blade of a butcher knife — something that would have been fatal without immediate and skillful surgical intervention (and no small amount of luck) to save the lives of said children. In addition to everything else, there would be medical bills — paid or unpaid, there’d still be medical bills which don’t disappear….
Notwithstanding the complete lack of any of this, they convicted Tooky Ameralt in what is now known nationally to have been a miscarriage of justice.
So, sadly, I’m not surprised something similar is happening again — sad that people haven’t learned from history, but really not surprised. And maybe the solution is to bring in the United Nations, the folks who have investigated actual genocides in places like Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia — and have them exclaim “why are you people wasting our time?”
And reality is that — until the development of antibiotics 70 years ago — a significant percentage of children didn’t make it to adulthood. I wouldn’t have…
And as to Yugoslavia, there are lessons to be learned about the consequences of stirring up past injustices — I’m just waiting for Quebec to start talking secession again…
To demonstrate just how primitive medicine was even a century ago, I think it is important to note that both President Garfield and President McKinley would have survived were they shot today — Reagan was far more seriously injured, and he did survive. Even Lincoln might have survived, as James Brady did, although you don’t know how much brain damage there would have been.
Reagan and Brady survived forty years ago, with medical technology that was primitive by today’s standards. The fact that Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley were Presidents and hence received the absolute best medical care available at the time negates any claims of racism or anything else. George Washington received the best medical care of his era — it consisted of bloodletting, which probably hastened his death, but it was the best they had back then.
One of the reasons Garfield died was that they couldn’t find the bullet — something that a simple X-Ray machine could do today, although they’d likely go with a CAT scan which could not only produce (essentially) a 3-D picture of the bullet, but all of the organs it might have damaged along the way. Taken with contrast, it could also show if he had any internal bleeding and were it was coming from, or if his digestive system was leaking. All of these are digital images that any MD with an internet connection can pull up on a laptop at home — we truly do live in an age of miracles.
For example, the (all Black) 54th Massachusetts unit had so many volunteers that it could have what were probably the strictest medical standards of any unit in the war — yet even it had a few men die of disease before they ever left Massachusetts. Such is how it was back then, and hence any group of children would have a mortality rate that would be considered horrific by today’s standards — but was to be expected back in the 19th and early 20th Century. So of course there are bodies buried somewhere, but this isn’t evidence of a genocide…
And there is a very big difference between condemning the practice of literally kidnapping Indian children to be placed in these schools and holding the schools responsible for deaths that they couldn’t prevent back then. It’s also important to note that these schools were well-intended — misguided as heck, but still well-intended with lofty Christian ideals. Had the intent instead been to perpetrate a genocide, they could have simply done what the Mohawks did to the Pocomtucs and simply massacre them in their villages.
Let me restate that: The Pocomtucs are extinct and if the Mohawks could do something like that, the Canadian Government could have as well — had it wanted to…
This piece really is, if you’ll excuse an ironic re-use of the trite cliche, “stunning and brave”. No doubt the two authors have dug their own graves (albeit figurative academic ones) a little deeper by publishing this. And the whole story (I’d heard parts of it from Jonathan Kay’s writings), including the contagion into the US and the “money trail” is magnificent in both the scale of disinformation involved, and how bankrupt the credibility of the professional anthropological association and the mainstream media have become, by doggedly insisting something now so obviously fake must not be questioned on pain of “racism”.
Another point could have been made to open out the conclusions, and that is the woke differentiation between empirical truth (which is merely a white supremacist colonial construct), and moral truth, in which facts don’t really matter because the moral narrative has its own inherent “truthiness” that cannot be questioned without inflicting grievous moral harm.
And now that this example has been so well documented by the authors, including their portrait of the powerful groups who are actively creating and protecting this disinformation blockbuster, one has to go back and question every other “truth telling” narrative created by indigenous activist elites and their “allies” in the humanities faculties. Because if they’re willing to go to such extremes in this episode, i.e. escalating from flaky ground radar anomalies to full-blown cries of genocide, it’s pretty likely, on the principle of pattern evidence, the same practice has been building up for years, in the creation of other, less well known, oppression and victimisation narratives.
Fake mass graves earned natives aprox, $73 Billion from Trudeau. Once this fraud has run dry, what new scandals, tragedy, horrors and genocide will they have to come up with to beat that. What is happening right now, today, as we speak that is such horrific evil they will claim to be victims of, that we don’t even know what it is yet?
More like 7.3 Billion. 5 Billion for residential schools. 2.8 Billion for the Day Scholars. But then there was the “60’s scoop” award and now awards for bad drinking water. It’s a real legal industry, where nobody is being required to actually prove their cases. The fact that nobody is actually being required to prove anything reeks of collusion between indirect party lawyers and “Judges”, which no competent lawyer ever even wants to allege — it’s like cops hating to “rat out” other cops even when those “ratted out” cops are crooked cops.
Kevin
Excellent! Is the January 2023 date for Frances’ arbitration not a typo? If it was held, what was the outcome?
This is an outstanding addition to the growing collection of scholarly essays that debunk the false Kamloops claim, and the equally false copycat claims. There was no credible evidence in the first place that justified the hysteria that followed these claims. Congratulations on an excellent article.
Mount Royal’s case, against Frances, was heard by the arbitrator from January of 2023, through June of 2023 on various dates. Her case, as to an unjust firing, begins on November 14th and goes to the 17th. Then continues on Nov. 27 and 28th and finishes on December 13th – 15th of 2023.
Someone has told her; and she won’t talk about who (apparently her arbitrator has threatened to withdraw if she publicizes details); that collusion must be proved and is very difficult to prove, which is non-sense. It is certainly true that any pair of lawyers representing the cases of their direct party clients, would have extreme difficulty in proving that their respective DIRECT PARTY clients were colluding. The lawyers wouldn’t, normally, even suspect direct parties of colluding.
But it’s a piece of cake to be fairly certain that indirect parties may be colluding with absolutely no “onus” on anyone to “prove” such potential collusion. The simple fact of suspecting collusion between indirect parties or between direct and indirect parties places the onus on all officers of the Court to be “satisfied of no collusion” [e.g. Sect. 11. (1)(a) of The Divorce Act of Canada; re. the Duty of The Court in Divorce Actions]. That is, arguably, because, since collusion SUBVERTS the administration of Justice, then the onus must be INVERTED in order to prevent such a subversion — an inverse onus goes upon the so-called “impartial officers of the court”, to wit, Judges and Lawyer-representatives. Hence, no “proof” is required. The mere suspicion of collusion requires “dismissal” of suspect cases.
I notice Frances once again mentioned Murray Sinclair’s role in alleging that the R.C.M.P. were “heavy handed” in investigating the Kamloops allegation of “remains”. Sinclair made that allegation after receiving a telephone call from Kamloops, the morning of his appearance of June 3rd 2021 at an emergency meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs [43rd PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs EVIDENCE NUMBER 039 Thursday, June 3, 2021]. His testimony to that committee was dug up by a researcher named Nina Green and found to be “strange” by Frances in a September 2022 post to her website [ https://wokeacademy.info/documents-for-murray-sinclairs-involvement-in-the-kamloops-case/%5D.
But there is nothing “strange” about his involvement at all. In 2019 Roseanne Casimir pointed out to her own people that their DAY SCHOLARS law suit continued [Filed in the Federal Court, in Vancouver, in 2012, by the Secwepemc and one other B.C. “nation” as against Canada; elevated to a Canada wide “class action” on behalf of all indigenous Day Scholars in 2015; joined by Cowessess etc. etc.] and that they were being encouraged in that “day scholars suit” by The Truth and Reconciliation Commission. [https://tkemlups.ca/files/2019/09/2019-Summer-Lexeyem-web-1.pdf Page 11 right column].
Two years later, Canada hadn’t settled out of Court (as hoped for in Casimir’s 2019 report to the First Nation) and were going to trial later in 2021. But about 7 days after their announcement of “remains” [May 27, 2021] and Murray Sinclair’s mention of “bodies” on a CBC promulgated public announcement (June 1st, 2021), the case was settled out of Court about June 7th or 8th, 2021. Frances and friends like to talk about 100s of millions of dollars for more Ground Penetrating Radar searches. But the Day Scholars suit was where the “real money” happened — about 2.8 Billion Dollars at last count, which is 28 hundred million dollars. Sinclair and friends (Littlechild, Wilson and their Executive Director of the TRC from 2010 to 2015, Kimberly Murray] have been colluding with various First Nations people, including Casimir and Cadmus Delorme of the Cowessess First Nation, all along — and people like you, Mr. lawyer Best, as well as Brian Giesbrecht (retired Judge) ought to have been able to see it. It’s right in front of your eyes, although colluders do deceive Courts right in front of the eyes of such deceived Courts.
But if you go to Dr. Scott Hamilton’s Report of 2015, presented in confidence to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that year, entitled “Where are the Children Buried?” (with a companion set of illustrations), and peruse the first paragraph of page 15, you can clearly see “Kamloops Cemetery” at the bottom of that single paragraph (which was arguably a mistake by Hamilton since the Secwepemc grave-yard; not “cemetery”; was across from St. Joseph’s Church in a different location from the residential school). At the top of the same paragraph is the Cowessess CEMETERY at Marieval. And halfway down that very same paragraph you can see the mention of St. Eugene’s Residential School CEMETERY at Cranbrook B.C. And those were the first 3 so-called “discoveries” of unmarked graves — all of them KNOWN to all 3 “Truth” and Reconciliation Commissioners exactly 6 years before their so-called “discoveries” of May 27, 2021 (Kamloops), June 24, 2021 (Marieval at Cowessess) and June 30, 2021 (St. Eugene’s at Cranbrook).
If those bogus “discoveries” don’t actually PROVE collusion between and among all 3 truth and reconciliation commissioners (and their executive director) and the bogus “discoverers” of their own grave yards (Casimir, Delorme etc.) then I am incapable of proving anything — despite being a medical laboratory scientist since 1971. And lab techs know how to prove their cases. You, Mr. Best, Brian Giesbrecht and Hymie Rubenstein, et alia, should be making that COLLUSION allegation between and among the TRC commissioners and AFN Chiefs at your earliest possible opportunity, in various Courts, in 3 jurisdictions, to wit, Manitoba (for Sinclair) Alberta (Littlechild) and wherever for Wilson and Murray — although accusing all of them at a Federal Court would be just as salutary. And once again — the onus would be on the Judge and all those so-called “impartial” Officers of The Court, should you real lawyers actually allege collusion.
Giesbrecht, himself, has asserted that these large “settlements” may be among some of the biggest frauds in Canadian history. He’s right. And according to the law and the facts you can actually make a serious case for those frauds with evidence which is already on the record at the TRC and at the Parliament of Canada.
Kevin James Byrne