Letters: it was kidnapping and abuse, but not genocide

The discovery of 215 bodies on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops has prompted other searches for bodies. Some describe what took place as genocide.

Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group. Bodies have been found, but jumping to the conclusion that they were killed is premature. Until such time as we have the cause of their deaths, we can only grieve the loss of young lives.

The crime we should be discussing is kidnapping – the forced removal of children from their parents and homes. But there were reasons for implementing this horrible plan. Missionaries wanted to protect the children and suggested education, teaching the ways of the white men. Government took it much further, and education became a way of destroying their culture and brainwashing them. They were not simply going to school during the day, but were forcibly taken from their homes, from their parents and put in institutions for years!

Cemeteries are part of our past. That is how we dealt with the bodies of our loved ones. Bodies were buried, some in marked graves and others not. Why? That is the question that needs to be answered as we look at residential schools during a time when millions around the world died from the Spanish flu, tuberculosis, and other childhood diseases. To make assumptions is a reflection of today’s poor and biased journalism.

Unfortunately at residential schools, like every institution from boarding schools, to orphanages, to seminaries, to mental hospitals, to reform schools, to jails, corporal punishment was the norm until the 1970s and attracted abusers. What happened to the Indigenous happened to people in all institutions, but so much worse since they were innocent children disciplined for speaking their language and wanting to go home. They were denied the love of their parents!

Yes, some priests and some nuns of the Catholic Church abused these peoples, but the first culprit is the government. May God have mercy on them! The Catholic Church in Canada has apologized. Catholics have expressed their sorrow and have asked for forgiveness. The Pope did not create this situation, the Canadian government did. The rulers of those days are dead but today’s rulers still persist in depriving the Indigenous peoples of clean water while the Church continues to be the biggest charitable organization in the world helping in many ways to atone for its wrongdoings.

Diane D. Lebrun
Coquitlam

Genocide and mass graves are words used to illustrate the tragedy of these ill-conceived residential schools, but they were not built as a means of exterminating the entire First Nations community, like Nazi Germany tried to do with the Jewish people, or what our government is doing to 100,000 unborn human babies a year.

As Dr. Scott Hamilton, an anthropology professor who spent two years studying residential school grave sites, said in the June 7 B.C. Catholic, deaths in these schools had something to do with epidemics, such as tuberculosis which continued until the 1950s. As federal authorities provided no funding to have the bodies of the deceased children sent back home for proper burial, they were buried in “pauper’s graves” with simple wooden crosses which have deteriorated and disappeared throughout the decades. He found no evidence that school officials intended to hide the graves.

Communicable diseases were prevalent in those days which contributed to the demise of many aboriginal people. Some of these children might have contracted them prior to attending school, while others were likely infected within crowded, unsanitary, and poorly built schools.

Hamilton said the late 19th century was a time of poor health care. Vulnerable Indigenous populations coming into contact with European newcomers was the main reason for the transmission of diseases. His full 44-page report can be found online, entitled “Where are the Children buried?”

That doesn’t invalidate the stories of other serious types of abuses some children suffered. The government at the time had the authority to shut these schools down; they had them built. These days it is easier to blame our Pope for everything, but the Holy See had nothing to do with these schools. They were under the autonomous authority of the bishops at the time. A thin line separates fiction from fact.

John Bueno
North Vancouver

Thank you to Colleen Roy for her spot-on June 28 column, “Be kind, be calm, be safe, but choose Christ.”

She put into words exactly how I feel. We are living in the middle of madness and I refuse to listen the to the mantra “be kind, be calm, be safe.”

Instead, we are called to fear the Lord, and be courageous and brave for Christ.

I too am tired of being told by godless men and women what to do and how to live. Christian church, wake up! Be bold for Christ, he is our saviour, not the experimental vaccine created by power-hungry, worldly men using the bodies of innocent children killed by abortion.

It is time to take our stand. I choose Christ as well!

Mary Tabada
Maple Ridge

Thank you for Colleen Roy’s June 28 column, the best column I’ve ever read!

Kathleen Wallden
Chilliwack