[Chief Cece Hodgson-McCauley, of the Inuvik Dene Band] claims that a lot of the bad stories told about residential schools are a lie.
“They’re only reporting the bad side, and the more you lie, the more you say it’s bad the more money you make, and the lawyers are making money because they’re pushing people to tell their stories.”
She said some people have contacted her, wanting to tell their positive stories about the schools, but are too scared to come forward.
Hodgson-McCauley wants the truth to come out, and she plans on being the person to start it.
h/t Derek
Well they’re going to need a lot more res school attendees to come forward with positive stories to convince anybody of anything different.
Unfortunately, I suppose there’s no money incentive to do so.
I have often wondered where the native leadership did their schooling. They are mostly well educated, articulate, lawyers in many cases.
“Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly – and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.” – Thomas Sowell.
Can’t have a grievance industry without grievances, so if you’re running out of grievances, exaggerate what happened and then fabricate.
My partially deaf coworker has the CBC on constantly. When they were talking about the residential schools a few weeks ago, they compared putting the kids on trucks to Nazis putting Jews into railroad cars. No bias there, nosirree.
Cece tells it like it is.
So naturally CBC will either ignore or slander her..
That “Cultural Genocide” is amusing.
So I wonder what these same idiots call MTV?
Or just the introduction of TV to the North in general?
However the NWT has little income from non government sources, hence the so called leaders here all play the “poor indian” card.
Endlessly.
Funny how they then complain that taxpayers are developing a contempt for these same poor dumb indians.
You just have to love the stupidity of our do-gooders.
What I have always thought of as ironic is the fact that the “upper crust” also sent their children to boarding/residential schools…they saw it as “the proper thing to do”.
Having been stiffed with a $400 phone bill by a UCC grad/room mate while at Queens in the late 70s and more shockingly, attempted rape by my (male) boss (a Montreal boarding school grad) while passed out after a trade show in Peterborough in the mid 80s, I can understand that bad things happen in these places.
My would be rapist’s boss (my publisher) pooh-poohed the whole thing saying gay rape/experimentation was the rule, not the exception in boarding school.
This lady’s story is one we used to hear a lot. Maybe 30 years ago it was more common to hear positive stories about residential schools than negative ones. When the whole claims process started and someone could get $250,000 for taking it up the wazoo based on minimal or no evidence, no-one strayed from the narrative. Maybe now that the arse money has all been paid out, honesty will return. The schools were essentially charity and compassion played a big part in educating the kids. Did they try to destroy the culture? Messrs. Labatt, Molson, Ford and Chevrolet did that. The schools taught skills essential to coping in modern society like English and English immersion was used. Two other lies seem to be perpetuated. One is that kids were forced into residential schools. One Indian lady I know says her father signed her up. Another myth is that kids were transported far from home. In most cases residential schools were right on the reserve, although in a minority of cases kids were sent a long way.
It’s about bloody time this side of the Residential school story came out. Our family knew many people who attended RS’s in the 30’s and 40’s,they all said the same thing, they learned how to cook,sew, manage a household,speak English, and got a basic education,none ever mentioned any sexual or physical abuse.
There WAS strict discipline, but the same existed in off-Rez schools as well, as I know very well from being on the receiving end of “the strap” many times.
Today,what we perceived as righteous punishment for transgressions is viewed by the pansy generation as abuse.
There WAS some abuse, statistically that is highly probable,but the Indian Industry has taken the entire issue and perverted it for their own gain.
Now we witness the absurdity of young Indians using the fact that their Grandfather or Grandmother attended an RS to excuse their illegal behavior,in Court! And worse, the Judge gives them a lighter sentence because of it!
Activists toss about accusations of “cultural genocide”, but no one can explain exactly what that means or how it would affect someone negatively. If you come from a backward culture and that culture is expunged in order to bring you into the modern age and learn the skills essential to survival,how is that a negative?
There is too much money involved in the grievance industry to allow it to die. It has been the horn of plenty for white lawyers and such easy picking since all that’s required to stay on the gravy train is revisionist verbal history. As in so many other situations, if a lie is told often enough, it becomes the truth. There was some abuse, of course, as there was also abuse by today’s standard in all white schools. A small portion was serious abuse. The difference being that whites have never turned it into a victims industry.
One thing you take to the bank: when a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” exists, there shall be neither truth nor reconciliation, since the existence of either renders the Commissioners redundant.
To put the subject in context:
https://www.dundurn.com/books/marjorie_too_afraid_cry
Marjorie Too Afraid to Cry:
A Home Child Experience
Patricia Skidmore
Marjorie Arnison was one of the thousands of children removed from their families, communities, and country and placed in a British colony or commonwealth to provide “white stock” and cheap labour. In Marjorie’s case, she was sent to Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School, just north of Victoria, British Columbia, in 1937. As a child, Patricia was angered that her mother wouldn’t talk about the past. It took many years to discover why — it wasn’t because she was keeping a dark secret, but because she had “lost” her childhood.
For 10-year-old Marjorie, forgetting her past, her family, and England was the only survival tool she had at her disposal to enable her to face her frightening and uncertain future. This is Marjorie’s account as told by her daughter. It is a story of fear, loss, courage, survival, and finding one’s way home.
http://patriciaskidmore.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Marjorie-Book-cover.jpg
Don;
Perhaps a discussion of what the down side was for residential school students who were not able to acquire the skills offered there. Back to the rez where conditions were sad to say the least.
The only contrary doc I ever saw was a school in Manitoba where the school was a working farm. Students were taught how to run a farm along with literacy lessons. In this doc ex-students were interviewed and the vast majority appeared to have had productive lives and were positive about their experience.
The sad reality in the native community are those who exploit their circumstances by skimming ‘their’ take off the top from monies sent by the feds. This skimming is not
limited to native government members but also by many in the white bureaucracy who are supposed to deliver funds and services.
My mother in law attended one.
Her response when I’d asked of her experience, “They forced us to drink cod liver oil every morning but I got new clothes and was taught english”
Also mentioned attending the school with a current Northern Manitoba activist. Said she’s “making stories”.
All of the above, and PeterJ sums it up well with,”There is too much money involved in the grievance industry to allow it to die. It has been the horn of plenty for white lawyers and such easy picking since all that’s required to stay on the gravy train is revisionist verbal history.”
The lie now is ingrained too deep for too long to be erased, and as long as unscrupulous politicians can make hay out of it this lie will be well rooted.
Could explain why the natives at Morley in the 1960s sued the Anglican church to keep the residential school open when the Anglican church tried to close it. Strangely, that never seems to get much press.
“Like”
Not much money for lawyers and the media when it comes to positive stories and experiences.
I somewhat suspect that Chief Cece Hodgson-McCauley’s views and stories will not appear on the front page of the Vancouver Sun.
I suspect her views and stories will disappear down the rabbit hole of Alice’s Wonderland, never to be seen again.
I am reminded of this Free Press article which I suspect is more than anecdotal, in that it is with an Aboriginal leader, and as you read it, you will see he appears to be very forthright and honest in expressing his opinion – at least I could feel his personal range of emotions and sentiment to residential schools.
A few of the more salient points in the article that give food for thought
The new agreement to compensate everyone for the “common experience” also promises to expedite the claims for grave physical and sexual abuses.
But I know that the government’s plans to spend $60 million on a “truth and reconciliation” process has already dispensed with the truth. Reconciliation will become historical revisionism, cementing a myth that all native families today suffer from the irrevocable harm of residential schools.
If he had a choice, he says, he’d send the kids to a residential school, where they’d get a better education.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/historic/31632544.html
I am reminded of this Free Press article which I suspect is more than anecdotal, in that it is with an Aboriginal leader, and as you read it, you will see he appears to be very forthright and honest in expressing his opinion – at least I could feel his personal range of emotions and sentiment to residential schools.
A few of the more salient points in the article that give food for thought
The new agreement to compensate everyone for the “common experience” also promises to expedite the claims for grave physical and sexual abuses.
But I know that the government’s plans to spend $60 million on a “truth and reconciliation” process has already dispensed with the truth. Reconciliation will become historical revisionism, cementing a myth that all native families today suffer from the irrevocable harm of residential schools.
If he had a choice, he says, he’d send the kids to a residential school, where they’d get a better education.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/historic/31632544.html
I am reminded of this Free Press article which I suspect is more than anecdotal, in that it is with an Aboriginal leader, and as you read it, you will see he appears to be very forthright and honest in expressing his opinion – at least I could feel his personal range of emotions and sentiment to residential schools.
A few of the more salient points in the article that give food for thought
The new agreement to compensate everyone for the “common experience” also promises to expedite the claims for grave physical and sexual abuses.
But I know that the government’s plans to spend $60 million on a “truth and reconciliation” process has already dispensed with the truth. Reconciliation will become historical revisionism, cementing a myth that all native families today suffer from the irrevocable harm of residential schools.
If he had a choice, he says, he’d send the kids to a residential school, where they’d get a better education.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/historic/31632544.html
I am reminded of this Free Press article which I suspect is more than anecdotal, in that it is with an Aboriginal leader, and as you read it, you will see he appears to be very forthright and honest in expressing his opinion – at least I could feel his personal range of emotions and sentiment to residential schools.
A few of the more salient points in the article that give food for thought
The new agreement to compensate everyone for the “common experience” also promises to expedite the claims for grave physical and sexual abuses.
But I know that the government’s plans to spend $60 million on a “truth and reconciliation” process has already dispensed with the truth. Reconciliation will become historical revisionism, cementing a myth that all native families today suffer from the irrevocable harm of residential schools.
If he had a choice, he says, he’d send the kids to a residential school, where they’d get a better education.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/historic/31632544.html
I’ve said that the Residential Schools were a good thing many times here.
At many of these schools the teachers lived there with their own families, their own children in attendance.
And these schools and those who taught there were slandered as operators of centers for child abuse and sexual assault.
Think about it. Where are all the white kids who witnessed this abuse?
@Peter B
Jeez, I heard you the first time.
“If you come from a backward culture and that culture is expunged in order to bring you into the modern age and learn the skills essential to survival,how is that a negative?”
Because Whitey, that’s why.
Someone should take a real close look at how the tax dollars were paid out and why to the victims.
I have heard from a couple of different sources that the amount paid out was based on the number of years attended PLUS extra points($)for abuse.
The abuse did not have to be documented, it only had to be ‘remembered’. The more someone ‘remembered’ the more they were paid and just coincidentally the law firms that were involved got a cut of the payouts.
Fortunately, we all know that the native grievance industry and their lawyers alwaystell the absolute truth without any embellishments.
As the only boy in the family, with four sisters, going to a boarding school was an unfufilled dream of my childhood. I pleaded with my parents and always resented not being allowed to go. Now I realise it wasn’t their fault, I couldn’t go because I’m white.
Anyone got Tony Merchant’s number? I need compen$ation for this racial discrimination.
My blogpost of 19Jun2015
I recently criticized the Toronto Star for its editorial use of the odious expression “to kill the Indian in the child.” The basis of my objection was the Star’s placing these words in quotation marks and failing to attribute them to some actual person.
This occurred in the midst of the vacuous debate of whether the Indian residential schools constituted cultural genocide. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Beverley McLachlin, waded in thereby shedding her robes of judicial impartiality and exposing the legal activist.
Toronto Star apologist Cathy English replied with an excerpt from a speech by Stephen Harper where he used phrase again in quotation marks, again without attribution. On occasion the expression was attributed to the poet Duncan Campbell Scott, long-time Superintendent of Indian Affairs responsible for the residential schools.. Worse still, one correspondent claimed it appears in Canadian legislation.
Statements in quotation marks must be the exact words uttered by an attributable source. Neither the Star nor the Prime Minister followed this essential rule.
For the record, an excerpt from “Conversations with a Dead Man; the legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott” by Mark Abley:
“But the offending phrase is not Scott’s. He never used those words. Neither did any other Canadian official. The quotation can be traced back to a somewhat different statement uttered by a high-ranking officer in the U.S. Army, Richard Henry Pratt, the nineteenth-century superintendent of a residential school in Pennsylvania: ‘All the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man’.”
In the 1960’s Half my classmates were from the Portage Residential School ,most were happy , some were very shy and quiet by nature but never unhappy , a lot of the guys were in the reserve militia like me , in high school they were our hero athletes in running , high-jump , baseball and football , the Indian girls had a choir that was semi-famous and always in demand.
In many ways I envied them , they had nicer clothing , got to see movies once a month , and rode to school in a bus , I had to walk a mile , and my clothing was sewn by my mom , and I never got allowance or movies.
Never a hint of racism , we did not even know the word or thought , mostly it was fondness and friendships.
I do feel there was a “cruel” aspect to tearing children from their mothers arms , putting them on a plane to a southern residential school , but what else were we to do ? We had a treaty to educate them , there was no other way at the time , we did the best we could , can you imagine the outcry if we had just left them alone in the isolated north bush country ??
Live in the same building as a Fairbridge School resident. He is now 86, and although he never really found out why his parents okayed him being sent to B.C., he said it was all a big adventure for a young boy at the time. Frank says that some of the House Mothers (not female religious) were crankier than others, but he never felt a need to be “compensated” for his life. Sadly his mother died just days before he returned home to England, after several years in the merchant marine, when he came of age. I almost envy his life, and it was probably done to ease poor families, while helping to settle the empire and give it fresh blood. On the matter of Native Residential schools, I have always believed that few of the attendees would be alive today, had they not existed. It is disgusting how many people have benefitted financially from this lie, and I feel bad for all the men and women religious who gave their lives to a cause, only to be villified for doing so.