https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/cowessess-graves-unmarked-residential-school-marieval-1.6077797The parents were REQUIRED to send the kids to these residential schools. Church and State working together. No constitutional separation between the two, like we have in the USA. Maybe demographically, it made sense to gather them into a relatively large institution. It was more economically viable. In fact, I worked as Activities Director at just such a religious-sponsored High School in the Alaskan bush for the school year, 1983-84. The place is closed, now.
Ya. With rules designed to suppress their own culture and language. (Quite the opposite was true in my Alaskan experience, however.) The product of a time when white, western European ideals, culture and religion were understood to be THE only way to be cultured, sophisticated and civilized. In Kamloops, parents were not allowed to even see their kids for Christmas the next year, if they got them back to school late for the next semester. Imagine.
And just in the past couple of days in the USA, I'm seeing headlines about (sometimes literally) unearthing the sordid truth about what happened on this side of the border, too.
Press conference on Thursday morning in Saskatchewan. HUNDREDS of UNMARKED graves of children, forced away from their parents. I am sitting here in a
rage. In Canada, there was a Truth and Reconciliation Commission which ended its work in 2016. It was hamstrung and the gov't did not take it very seriously.
A deep stain on Canadian history. And we will surely find out about similarly awful things from within the USA. I have no doubt.
