Category: We Are All Treaty People

Grave Error

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At the Western Standard;

Having lived at two residential schools when he was a university student in the mid-sixties, Clifton is Canada’s senior statesman about indigenous affairs.

He and Professor Rouillard take us from ground-zero at KIRS two and a half years ago, when the suggestion of burials had some mandarins, journalists and pundits convinced that it was a mass grave containing pupils from the school.

This revelation initiated a spiral of false claims which shook the world and caused moral panic among Canadians the likes of which has not been seen since the last world war.

And yet there is no evidence to substantiate the allegations that otherwise benign people, priests, nuns, teachers and staff at residential schools across Canada had a hand in malfeasance.

In fact, in every chapter, Grave Error puts the boots to false allegations. The handful of exhumations that have taken place — mind you, not at KIRS — have given up not so much as a missing shoelace.

Narrative Massacre

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Looking for a Christmas gift that eviscerates a common historical narrative for yourself or a like-minded family member? If you’re undecided, here’s a review that goes over the main points of Flynn-Paul’s work.

Alleged massacres resulted in the deaths of less than 1% of the Indian population and numbers in the thousands, not millions–a record long obscured thanks to Stannard’s embellishment of native population estimates. Colonialism is not an outgrowth of capitalism because the church and nobility were fervently opposed to such economic systems. The “logic of tribal anarchy” meant no land was in possession of one tribe for more than a few generations and natives were invariably locked in intratribal disputes. No evidence exists that settlers engaged in biological warfare by giving natives smallpox-laced blankets. In fact, Thomas Jefferson established an immunization program for Indians, going so far as to task Lewis and Clark with disseminating the smallpox vaccine on their famed expedition.

The “Appeal to the Noble Savage” Fallacy

The "W" Word We Are All Treaty People 52 Comments

The “Appeal to Authority” fallacy holds that experts are infallible: if a credible source believes something, well then, that thing must be true!2 The fallacy is not only that even truly knowledgeable people can be wrong, but also that many so-called authorities are not, in the end, all that knowledgeable.

If that’s the “Appeal to Authority” fallacy, let’s call this new thing the “Appeal to the Noble Savage” fallacy. It holds indigenous people to be the most worthy among all peoples, and incapable of engaging in human acts of cruelty. It holds them on a pedestal. The Appeal to the Noble Savage fallacy imagines indigenous people to be, well, not exactly human.

Mass Graves, Mass Psychosis

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Mattias Desmet’s book The Psychology of Totalitarianism details the rise of mass formations in which crowd psychology behaves like an engine with no governor. These movements begin with an initial incident that soon takes on a life of its own as narratives spin out of control into outright absurdity. The current obsession with alleged graves in residential schools seems to fit that bill.

“They should not be pursuing those who are revealing information. They should, in fact, be looking for those records. They should be looking at what it is that we do know, as opposed to trying to pursue witnesses.”

“Many are in unmarked graves, but there are also accounts of bodies that were buried within walls. There are bodies buried in the hills or by river sides, and bodies that were never found after children died trying to escape the schools,” she said.

Leave your brain at home, please

I, Napoleon Insufferable Twits More Pavilions At Folkfest nannystate We Are All Treaty People 23 Comments

The only thing staff at the office of the BC Provincial Health Officer will be doing is undoing and unlearning their capacity for critical thought if they take any of these admonitions seriously.

One snippet explicitly endorses a secular version of original sin that, naturally, applies only to white people:

Recognizes the truth that Indigenous-specific racism is perpetuated through white supremacist policies and practices that remain hardwired into our systems and processes, and that impede the health and wellness of Indigenous Peoples.

 

I, Pocohontas

Chief Big Screen TV The "W" Word We Are All Treaty People 41 Comments

Canadians are so racist people pretend to be Indians.

A Canadian news documentary airing at the end of the week focuses on the Native identity claims of one of the most celebrated performers in entertainment history.

Titled “Making an Icon,” the description for the upcoming episode of The Fifth Estate on CBC News does not mention the name of the subject. But multiple Native people who took part in the documentary process told Indianz.Com that it’s about Buffy Sainte-Marie, whose decades-long career in music, television and education rests on her claim of being Cree from the Piapot Cree Nation, one of the First Nations in the province of Saskatchewan.

“An icon’s claims to Indigenous ancestry are being called into question by family members and an investigation that included genealogical documentation, historical research and personal accounts,” the description for the October 27 episode reads.

The documentary comes at a defining time for a performer whose life has been filled with groundbreaking moments. On August 3, Sainte-Marie, who turned 82 earlier this year, surprised her followers by declaring her “retirement from live performance. The announcement cited “travel-induced health concerns and performance-inhibiting physical challenges” facing the aging musician. […]

But the Native people who participated in CBC’s documentary process believe Sainte-Marie’s decision to step away from the spotlight is directly connected to the questions about her First Nations identity. According to the sources, work on the hour-long episode began more than a year ago and it grew to include interviews with individuals in the United States, where the performer was raised following claims to have been born in Canada and adopted out of Piapot.

Due to the lengthy production time associated with the CBC project, Sainte-Marie would have been well aware of the nature of the documentary — especially of its potential to unravel a career that began in the 1960s, the people said. The award-winning singer and songwriter has largely remained silent about her retirement decision, with no significant interviews appearing in mainstream media since her announcement more than two months ago.

Truth And Reconciliation

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Normally, I oppose the prosecution of decades old “historical” sex offense charges as fundamentally unfair to the accused. But given the current culture of truth and “reconciliation”…

A First Nations leader and reconciliation spokesman in Saskatchewan has been accused of sex crimes dating back two decades.

Theodore (Ted) Quewezance, a residential school survivor and former chief of Keeseekoose First Nation, was scheduled to appear in Kamsack provincial court Tuesday charged with four historical sex offences.

Keeseekoose is a Saulteaux community in southeastern Saskatchewan, located about 20 km north of Kamsack.

Court documents obtained by APTN News show Quewezance is charged with single counts of sexual assault, touching a young person under the age of 16 for a sexual purpose, counselling a person under 16 to touch for a sexual purpose, and being in a position of trust while counselling a person under 16 years to touch for a sexual purpose.

The documents show the alleged offences involve a male victim who was a minor on Keeseekoose First Nation between September 1997 and September 2004.

h/t Kelly, who adds – The person in question also ran as a federal Liberal candidate in Yorkton-Melville

They Are Not “Treaty People”

The "W" Word The Tolerant Left We Are All Treaty People 29 Comments

Australians have cast their vote in the Voice to Parliament referendum.

The proposal, to formally recognise Indigenous Australians in the constitution and to create an advisory body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to make representations to the federal government, has been resoundingly defeated. […]

Opposition leader Peter Dutton says the result is “good for our country”.

He thanked No campaign leaders Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine.

“No one is owed more gratitude than each of these individuals,” he said.

“They have suffered through deeply personal and offensive attacks.”

Mr Dutton said the Coalition wants to see Indigenous disadvantage addressed.

“We just disagree on the Voice being the solution,” he said.

Senator Price;

Calling for an end to “academics and activists” thinking they knew better than people on the ground in remote communities, she said that a new way of thinking was required.

“We should not maintain the racism of low expectations in this country,’’ she said. “We are all part of the fabric of this nation.”

Senator Price said she wanted to thank the Australian people for “believing in our nation.”

“The Australian people have overwhelmingly voted No. They have said No to division in our Constitution along the lines of race,” she said.

“They have said No to the gas-lighting, bullying, to the manipulation. They have said No to grievance and the push from activists to suggest that we are a racist country when we are absolutely not a racist country. […]

In an emotional speech, she described the Voice referendum as the “biggest gaslighting event our nation has ever experienced”.

“We are sick to death of being told how racist we are, how horrible we are. Our own children are being taught not to be proud to call themselves Australians in this country,’’ she said.

Senator Price has argued a Voice would “constitutionally enshrine” a victimhood mentality in the country.

“It doesn’t belong here,”

Shovels 1 – Knowledge Keepers 0

Chief Big Screen TV The "W" Word We Are All Treaty People 26 Comments

Jonathan Kay delivers the grim news.

A group called Mohawk Mothers has been seeking to delay/block McGill U’s “New Vic” project in Montreal—based on claims of secret burials & unmarked Indigenous graves on the site. Today, @mcgillu’s provost reported that no graves were found, including in areas identified by GPR. (no word yet on whether McGill’s leadership team will be indicted on charges of “denialism”)

The determined Mothers aren’t about to let colonialist concepts like “facts” stop them.

Canada’s Hateful Indigenous Blood Libel

Chief Big Screen TV The "W" Word We Are All Treaty People 15 Comments

Those who think such repugnant myths would never gain traction in a civilized multi-cultural country like Canada should think again because we have our very own version of the Jewish blood libel, supported by numerous Protocols look-alikes such as the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, namely an indigenous blood libel grounded in the belief that the Canadian nation-state, aided and abetted by the Roman Catholic Church, have been trying to exterminate the aboriginal people of our country from early contact in the 16th century to the present day.

The goal of this sentiment is to fuel hatred against the Catholic Church and the country of Canada, paralleling the 2004 US Department of State’s “Report on Global Anti-Semitism” (2004) that “The clear purpose of the [Protocols is] to incite hatred of Jews and of Israel.”

But the indigenous genocide blood libel — that countless children were murdered Nazi-style in Indian Residential Schools as part of a plot to wipe out all aboriginals— did not begin with stories by unnamed and unknown indigenous knowledge keepers, as most people assume.

Although many indigenous actors have been involved in this tangled web of deceit, what was originally a blood libel against Jewish people was re-jigged by a white man, a defrocked United Church of Canada minister named Kevin Arnett. And its strongest promotion since then has been at the hands of an NDP member of the House of Commons…

Read it all, pass it along.

“Chief Derek Nepinak said he is aware the results will feed into a denialist narrative…”

We Are All Treaty People 42 Comments

They seem disappointed.

No evidence of human remains has been found during the excavation of a Catholic church basement on the site of a former Manitoba residential school.

Chief Derek Nepinak of Minegoziibe Anishinabe shared the results of the four-week excavation in a social media video Friday. He said the outcome takes “nothing away from the difficult truths experienced by our families who attended the residential school in Pine Creek.”

Fourteen anomalies were detected using ground-penetrating radar in the basement of the church on the site of the former Pine Creek Residential School last year. Survivors had spoken about “horror stories” in the basement.

The First Nation, northwest of Winnipeg, hired an archeological team from the University of Brandon to do the excavation earlier this summer. It is the same team that assists police on archeological digs and excavations in the province.

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