1971 Leader Post: “Chiefs Request (Marieval) School Be Kept”

By Ruth Shaw, Staff Reporter

YORKTON (Staff) – A resolution asking that the Marieval Residental School be kept open as long as the Indian people want it, was passed by the chiefs and counsellors of eight Indian bands at a regional meeting held Thursday.

The meeting was held in the Royal Canadian Legion Hall, with Joe Whitehawk of Yorkton, district
supervisor, as chairman.

Various spokesmen said the pupils are generally children from broken homes, orphans or are from inadequate homes. There is a great need for the school and the need is increasing, rather than diminishing. Many of the children have no other place to stay, as many have only grandparents, who through lack of space, health or age are unable to look after them.

The alternative is foster homes, which will cost just as much money. Children in the residential school get a measure of correction, discipline and religious training and this should be taken into consideration, when plans are under study for the phasing out of the school, the spokesman said.

While residential schools are not the best, they meet the most needs of the children. Children in foster homes are deprived of correction, discipline and religious training. The older members were disciplined and given religious training and “we must get back to these old traditions,” the spokesman said. The spokesman, who is a community development officer, said the Marievale Residential School must be expanded one step further and a junior high school established.

Another spokesman said the Indian people passed a resolution asking that the school remain open and it should not be up to the department to say whether the school should be closed.

Another said that if the request is made it should remain open and “the people should not be bribed to close the place.”

Chief Antoine Cote of the Cote reserve said the people on his reserve are not satisfied with the integration of Indian students at Kamsack.

“They claim there is no discrimination, but there is and we realize there is. One of the reasons of phasing out the student residential schools is so our children can be sent to so called integrated schools,” he said.

I’ve copied the full text of the report here: Leader Post, November 19, 1971

114 Replies to “1971 Leader Post: “Chiefs Request (Marieval) School Be Kept””

  1. If I’m not mistaken the Stoney Band sued the Anglican Church in the 1960s to keep the residential school open when the Anglican Church was wanting to close it.

    1. Why do you think the left wants so badly to re-write or erase history? Nothing the left says is true, it is all built on lies and an ever changing narratives. If people actually know what has happened then the left’s game is over.

      So they kill history, replace it with their own fluid past.

  2. So, people can believe with all their hearts that they are doing the correct thing, at any given time. And that a future generation can look back at those actions and find them questionable, wrong, or even abhorrent. Maybe today’s progressives and their “allies” should look at themselves in the mirror (but they won’t).

    Any statues of Chiefs that we can tear down?
    How about that Montreal airport? (No, not the hugely expensive, now abandoned one established by Pierre Trudeau. The other one, still working, that is named after Pierre Trudeau.)

    1. Mirabel was always a white elephant and never lived up to its billing. As for the other one, it’ll always be Dorval Airport to me.

  3. That kind of puts the lie to the allegation that residential school operators were outright NAZIS.

    Yes, well that was a little hard to believe that they shot them all in front of lime festooned pit graves, before machine guns were even invented. When the jumped up journalists used the highly loaded term “mass graves”; of course what they really meant to say was that the residential school operators were:

    “Saying Mass over the graves.”

    Yes, yes that’s it, not mass graves, they were saying Mass over the graves!

    Now I’m waiting for the chorus of human rights twats to continue their vicious twaddle of burning churches, synagogues and temples in demonic cacophony.

    Cheers

    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief

    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  4. But, but, but … “ground penetrating radar”!? It’s all sciency-sounding and whatnot! I even saw an episode of On the Case With Paula Zhan on the ID Channel that showed ground penetrating radar, being used to look for corpses under a new section of patio …

    I guess the Marxist, Tribal, shitdisturbers didn’t do any basic research to learn their sciency-outrage-dujour could be easily disproven as nonsensical… with … I don’t know … Newspaper articles to the contrary?

    1. Don’t you know that using actual facts is racist?

      Sciyunts is always settled, even when it changes to suit an ideology that happens to be in vogue.

  5. Anyone criticizing the residential schools needs to spend some time on those reserves with the conditions that existed while the schools were running. That will not happen of course but there are people still alive who know what life on the reserves was like and with many reserves, conditions appalling to most still exist.

    1. Ah! But the only reason why Tribal life was not all sunshine and good times? You guessed it … the white devils. People like MacDonald et.al. … THEY are responsible for Tribal malaise. THEY are the reason the Tribal Family … the Village … can no longer raise their children. It’s all white eyes fault! Now give us more white man wampum. Or else we will block your trains. Lay down in front of your bulldozers, and blow up your pipelines. With help from The Tides Foundation, of course.

      1. There’s a rather bitter grain of truth to that, sadly. I read a study of the Indigenous tribes, by one guy who was sent North to study them and was up there several years. He says that the single biggest factor that turned them into government dependents was restricting their mobility – around which tribal life had always centered.

        Your area is hunted-out, and the fishing is getting bad? – move. Harsh winter and your staple crops likely will not grow to harvest this season ( – and the tribes would know this. They maintained their own Farmer’s Almanac; they had to) – find somewhere they will, and do it fast; starvation was always waiting in the wings. And inevitably, you’re moving back into an area your grandmother remembered as plentiful when she was a girl ( – the real reason the elders were revered; when Argentina invaded the Falklands and supplies from England were interrupted, the local old folks who remembered what plants were edible, became quite popular – ), and there’s another tribe there, just settling-in? Kill them, or famine will kill you. Mobility to pursue livable conditions was the biggest guarantee of survival; but then civilization came along with hydro dams, highways to northern mines, DEW Lines, &c.

        And the natives, no fools they, looked at how much softer life in the settlements was compared to what they had to put-up with just to stay alive. And what was this ‘coco cola’ stuff, anyway? – oh, you mix it with RUM! They already knew all about rum; they’d traded furs for it for a very long time. And the elders and the little ones all start coughing and die, but you say you know how to fix that? And we have to live near this ‘doctor shack’ or you won’t be able to find us?

        The result could’ve been predicted by anybody with half a brain – but nobody knew a better way to ‘settle’ nomadic tribes into our civilization, and we still don’t.

        1. So. The alternative is to eliminate private property. Got it. Then we could ALL be poor nomads.

          In order for the Natives to be nomadic, they must have open access to ALL lands. OK. Let’s end all deeds for all property. No private property for the Settlers. And when the neighbors show up and start hunting, fishing, and farming (Native First “Nations” were farmers?). on your land? Nevermind … now it’s everyone’s land. Puhleeze. Not even The First Nations would have tolerated that. The result would be busted skulls, scalpings, and rape.

          And what about dip netting? That wouldn’t keep you plenty fed? And what of the Tribes who live in the Arctic Circle? Not quite so Nomadic

          Booze, cash payments, and the white mans “easy” welfare life are more likely causes of Native malaise. And now … there is no “reform schools” to help Natives assimilate. Just more cash and more booze.

          And yeah … when your culture is conquered, and replaced by a more-modernized, mechanized one … you’re screwed.

      2. There’s no doubt that native peoples were treated horribly both here and especially in the US where it was closer to genocide. Let’s face it, as conquered peoples they were treated as such and probably worse then, say, the Germans. That said, the residential schools were not the worst of it and throwing cash at the problem doesn’t seem to be the answer.

        1. The saddest thing about the whole kettle o’ fish is that the biggest slayer of children in the Schools was disease, which was also doing the same thing to everybody else’s children. Polio, Diphtheria, Tuberculosis, Cholera, Typhoid, Smallpox… They didn’t take as high a toll over native children not in the schools (if they didn’t) only because the nomadic lifestyle meant they never saw any outsiders, including possibly infected outsiders, for months on end – and if they did and the infection spread into their unprotected band, the results were uniformly horrific.

        2. Sorry, Thomas, but US treatment of the Indians was not “ closer to genocide “. Do you even know what that word means?

          Even a slight familiarity with American history would help your confusion, here. American settlers wished to settle new farmland, which put them in competition with the Indians. They did not head west of the Appalachians to kill Indians, but to find new farmland.

          Although Phil Sheridan waged war on some Indians in the West, there is no evidence that the great Buffalo hunts were anything more than free enterprise to satisfy the demand for Buffalo robes, and to feed railroad work crews. And his Commander in Chief, President Grant sought better treatment of the Indians.

          Would the Great Plains and the vast, fertile continental US really have been better left to nomadic Indians, rather than brought under cultivation to feed the extremely poor European diaspora that settled in the US?”

          The Marxist Indian elimination narrative you casually repeat here has nothing to do with actual US history.

      3. When the Hudson’s Bay ran the interior of Kan-eh-duh, before Confounderation, the Indigenous folks had a job. A real job and not welfare. They got stuff for their efforts. You can argue if it was a fair trade all you SJW history revisers want, but Walmart hadn’t been invented yet.
        Those track blockers, if we had a real Goverrnment, would be declared an terrorist group and dealt with accordingly, like the guy busting through your window to get stuff you worked for. Oh, they aren’t these days. Why not? Not paying enough graft to “government”, I’m guessing. Unfortunately even our “government” is just another biker/triad/drug gang operating “legally” to cream off your efforts. Services? They’re “extra to contract” it seems. Keep watching Bread and Circuses, Sports and movies, folks. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

        1. Back in the day, took a history course and ended up writing a paper on the fur trade. Was able to get hold of some interesting old books on the Hudson’s Bay Company which were written from the Company’s point of view. The Bay kept its trading posts near the coast, so the Indians had to travel long distances to trade. As I recall, they justified it as helping preserve the wildlife in the trapping areas.

  6. GREAT FIND Kate….just awesome..!!
    I’d love to shove that article, rolled up & jam it up Butts Butt.

    Metaphorically speaking of course…lol.

  7. I heard a snippet on Roy Green yesterday about “Indian Agents bringing kids to the schools”. I won’t say the impression I got from that, but could anyone with knowledge elaborate? On who the agents were and how the children were picked?

  8. The media did their job well: They told a bunch of lies to get Canadians to hate each other and to try to start a race war.

    1. Yes, this was made clear by First Nations leaders when they first announced the discovery of the unmarked graves.

      What point do you think you’re making? That because it might not ONLY be Indigenous children buried there, therefore the residential school system (RSS) was actually A-OK? That because some graveyards may pre-date the schools, therefore the RSS’s subsequent use of those graveyards to bury Indigenous children that were taken from their families, brought into their system of cultural assimilation where they frequently faced neglect, malnourishment, mistreatment, harsh discipline, and/or outright abuse, and ultimately died under their care, is just a neutral fact of history, a product of its time, a relic of the past with no connection to the present?

      1. I think his point is that the issue is more complicated than the narrative that is being pushed. Propaganda is based on some kernel of truth, twisted to achieve an aim.

        The narrative here is pushing people towards violence. Who is pushing it and why?

      2. “cultural assimilation”

        So when students speaking 6 different stone age languages are put together in a residential school, which language are they supposed to speak when no teachers speak any of the languages. My grand-daughter goes to a French immersion school and we consider it a privilege. I took years of non-immersion French including university and could barely converse back then and today it might as well be Greek.

        Instead of blaming Macdonald and residential schools for destroying culture, the guilty bastards are Mr. Labatt, Mr. Molson, Mr. Ford, and Mr. Chevrolet.

      3. What point do you think you’re making?

        Personally, I’m making the point that GPR doesn’t have the resolution to detect anything as specific as a human body, and that until exhumations take place any claim of graves, children’s or otherwise, is sensationalistic lying.

        The bands know this. That’s why no exhumations have taken place. The second anybody digs the narrative falls apart.

  9. “There goes the narrative.”

    Not really. Although the fact that you employed this particular tag — eagerly, smugly, almost gleefully, mischief being important blah blah blah — for this post reveals much about your motivations, and your character.

    The request was in the context of First Nations communities wanting greater control over their own school and child welfare systems, when the respective alternatives at the time were school integration and foster care, where Indigenous children routinely faced discrimination and maltreatment. It was a call only for the physical infrastructure of Marieval be preserved (for their own use), not a defence of the historic residential school system or its underlying policies of assimilation/integration. The underlying request — now a demand — for control over their own people’s destinies, for their treaty rights to be recognized, for self-determination such that “if we make a mistake, it’s our mistake”, remains much in place today.

    1. Ted,
      Ah, I love a good fighting argument.
      But your claiming that our Natives own Canada and we are squatters on this land.
      Our governments huge mistake over the decades was not to integrate everyone together in one society.
      Instead we have special interests who get different privileges that we have to pay and pay and pay as they are tax exempt and have free movement to hunt and fish while everyone else gets fines or goes to jail if they cut down a single tree now.
      Giving someone special status is a government perk that, if we’re supposed to be all equal…gives others special advantages that I don’t have and that’s racist?
      To complain that I don’t like someone having a different advantages over me that I can’t have.
      And this is being equal in our Country?

      1. I think it was here on SDA I saw an item about what a bad joke “all Canadians are equal” really was. As I recall. we’ve evolved into a six-tier “equality” where white Anglo-descended men are firmly bottomed-out in sixth place. But at least we get to pay for just about all the rest of it…

      2. Integrating conquered indigenous populations into Western societies has proven impossible in every case. The residential schools were part of a doomed to fail attempt. The whole thing is just sad. At this point, there are no good answers but yes, if possible, integration would be preferable to cultural and actual genocide.

        1. I’ve worked with plenty of the folks you speak of, across Kan-eh-duh. Indigenous ones. Off the reserves. They own property, run businesses, you name it, just like everybody else. As for slagging folks here, well I’m indigenous to Kan-eh-duh, born and raised and schooled at a non-resident “government” run school. Got a problem with that? You want to rewrite history before even your ancestors arrived and set us straight, get out there and pull some more statues down. Have fun doing it.

          1. You assume a lot. And read a lot into things that weren’t said. If you want to be as bad as the Wokists, go ahead and tar those who don’t perfectly agree with that broad brush.

      3. Jojo, You are correct! It doesn’t matter what the perks or disadvantages are. It can be Motorcycle riders with Turbans, or tax free living for certain segments, even wealth transfers from have, to have not Provinces. Special privileges for Quebec, or anti hate rules for a single religion of peace, but not for that other hated religion, the one hated by that first religion, and all those “progressives”. Insisting there is systemic racism only from the majority race to a minority race, when racism is universal throughout the world. Suggesting that POC’s and indigenous are over represented in prisons, and therefore deserving of special treatment. (even though the individual commits the crime, their origins shouldn’t matter) On and on and on.

        Creating divisive laws, rules, and regulations, will create divisive tribal reactions. You cannot have a fair and equal society, if different segments get good or bad special treatment. If you analyze it further, I’m sure it all started out with good intentions, but it has been co-opted by subversive elements to further their own ends, and now is done deliberately to add to the bread, circuses, and entertainment division (that D word again) to keep us occupied. Diversity and multiculturalism is not our strength. We need only to look at the root of the word to realize that for decades we have been lied to, and manipulated. The only way for any decent society to live together in any civilized way, is for equal treatment, equal justice, and equal opportunities. Sigh, I need to return to Shangri La, cuz it ain’t happening here.

    2. Painting all residential schools as hell on earth is a lie. Research Thomson Highway a famous Cree playwright who stated that nine years in the residential schools were the best in his live. But he lives in Paris and the compliance mob can’t touch him there. Over time I saw individual statements from ex residential school students having the same memories. Yes, there were horrible things happening in the schools, but that doesn’t justify a total ban on saying anything positive about them.

      1. I remember talk radio from the 1970s and 1980s. There were endless Indians defending residential schools, particularly women. I am sure that all such people have been cajoled into silence. I saw an article recently by a woman bitching about a residential school but she attended in later years at a time when it was run by a reserve, not a church. I am sure she has been straightened out.

      2. The late Rev. Margaret Waterchief spoke very fondly of her days at the residential school and how the teachers were so encouraging that she went on to high school in the nearby town. That was when she said she first really encountered discrimination – on the school bus. Rev. Waterchief always maintained that it was alcohol, not the residential school system, that was responsible for much of the conditions on the reserves.

    3. Ted, I agree with you; self-determination is key for every human, not just for the original settlers who we call natives. I think it is naive to assume this issue coming to light now is about them, though.

    4. Ted: A book for you : 4 Years and then some — by Mary Bryant (@ Abe Books) Her book is an account of teaching in a residential school. It includes pictures, journal entries, letters, etc. and it makes it clear that the schools were not uniformly bad. There was great variation with many children benefiting from the schools. This is not being acknowledged. We will never solve problems based on half- truths. We have acknowledged and apologized for the problems in residential schools. 3 billion $ have been paid as reparations. Your references to ” smugly, gleefully, etc.” reveals something unpleasant in your own character. Most people here seek a fair minded assessment of issues, and in this case much damage is being done to the country by distorting and exploiting the residential school issue.

      1. “…it makes it clear that the schools were not uniformly bad. There was great variation with many children benefiting from the schools. This is not being acknowledged.”

        Ah, the Senator Belak defence. Ask yourself—really ask yourself, deep down, LindaL—why you insist so much that the “benefits” of residential schools be acknowledged in full in every public discussion about this topic? Who really benefits from this type of “fine people on both sides” mitigation?

        1. Ted
          Maybe civilization benefits from “Fine people on both sides”,otherwise are you advocating war?
          Cause that is where the “some more special than others” always leads.
          Given the resources available to the government at the time,what would your solution be?
          To providing a treaty promise of education for the young of a conquered people?
          And do not give me the crap”We/they were never conquered”.
          As that is the standard lie of the Progressive .

          Lets see industrial age people move into land occupied by stone age people..
          See any one still using stone tools or technology?

          Another question related to the first.
          Do you support the continuation of Canada’s Indian Industry?
          Is “Separate but Equal” OK when Our Government does it?
          As long as we do not call it Apartheid?
          And how do YOU define an Native ?
          What unique collection of ancestry,genetics or culture defines your protected species?

          1. See any one still using stone tools or technology?

            No. But I do hear a LOT of talking about it … from the global warmists who would unilaterally de-industrialize given the chance. Oh, sorry … the global warmists would de-industrialize YOU … and ME … not THEM.

        2. I think it is essential to be honest about the nature of an issue in order to solve problems. Short of that you will get ongoing deception– from one side, then the backlash, on and on. I value Canada and I am very sure many natives do as well. We can address wrongs– and in the case of residential schools, we have done so. Canada has given 3 billion dollars in compensation. Without honesty, there is no closure, and no way forward. Ask yourself — deep down — do you REALLY seek a resolution to the problems natives face? Or is it vengeance, retribution that you are after? If so, the problems will never end.

    5. Weren’t the “treaty rights” for residential schools not only recognized but fulfilled? Isn’t all the bluster about residential schools really about a mistake made but not owned by the native leaders themselves? The churches did fine work until the natives demanded the government take over.

      BTW, my ancestors found water and their villages developed a means to supply it to others without help from Ottawa bureaucrats. Surely self-determination begins with, ‘we can do it ourselves.’ Unless that’s racist too?

    6. Ted, if the aboriginals (NOT indigenous) truly want self-determination then they can call for the abolition of the Indian Act.

      I don’t think that you’ve read the article thoroughly. Clearly there was a need for these schools to be in place.

      Phoenix Sinclair is as withering a counter-argument for handing complete control of the child welfare system to Big Aboriginal as I can think of.

  10. Time to burn down some more churches, and I’m sure there are still a few statues left to topple. The bought and paid for media are promoting another “discovery” of graves in B.C. this morning. Justin will have to get his teddy bear out again.

  11. “He asked why Indian children have to study French, when they could speak their own language…”

    I feel your pain, Chief. Ever notice how some questions survive the test of time only because no one has ever stepped forward with a reasonable answer?

    1. “He asked why Indian children have to study French, when they could speak their own language…”

      I’m going to go with “because you painted savages never invented writing”.

  12. More than likely its been stated here before but weren’t these schools set up by the progressives of the day?

    1. One thing I’ve learned and seen over the decades is how our governments and politicians pass the buck which is exactly what our current politicians are still doing.
      Not fix anything, just allowing any issues to be passed down again.

      At some point, the problem becomes too massive and collapses on itself as our governments do nothing.
      Like our reliance on pipelines running through the US.
      At some point, it WILL be closed…

      1. A month after the next election, “Residential Schools” will fade into the swamp of history and won’t be written, spoken or thought-of again. Until next time some venal politician needs a crying-towel…

        1. Actually the redidential school issue along with other issues relating to our Aboriginal population will go on and on. The purpose is to take down Canada. The attacks on Sir John A. and Queen Victotia, etc. are attacks on our nationhood. In truth, I don’t think most natives support these attacks. It was really a small (and obviously coached crowd in Winnipeg on Canada Day). I think a group of activists (undoubtedly some paid) are using native issues to destroy the country. It is happening in many places. I do not think the issues will go away after the next election. It is an ongoing strategy.

          1. The strategy of keeping bugging our politicians till they break is a well known media strategy.
            Very hypocritical though…
            They get paid by our government and by ads bought by our politicians.

    2. “…weren’t these schools set up by the progressives of the day?”

      As the conservatives of the day were pushing for literal genocide.

      1. That’s an exaggeration but frankly I don’t really care either way because its all about money and has been since Moby DIck was a minnow.

      2. Liberal Party governed 70 years of the 20th century. Don’t get fng cute with your revisionism b.s.

      3. You know bullets are cheaper than building a school right? Your genocide narrative falls apart right there.

        Oh, and the “take the Indian out of the Indian” quote everyone keeps throwing about as proof of genocidal intent? It was actually about bringing people into the modern era so they could have a better standard of living, not to get rid of them.

        If you look through the old documentation, something I have been doing these last few weeks, there was lots written about reserves being self sufficient, but nothing about them being shut down. If genocide was the goal why the preoccupation with how to make the reservations wealthy enough to take care of themselves?

      4. Actually genocide was the favoured method of resolving disputes BETWEEN TRIBES. You won’t hear that spoken of too often.

  13. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

  14. I knew a bunch of people from a you group that went to a Rez to volunteer. One thing they did was clean up the grave yard. It was a disaster. When the elders saw them doing this, they stared kicking some buts to get out there and do it themselves.

      1. Thats a good question.

        When media companies like Vice make docs about the terrible living conditions on the rez how come they never ask who broke the windows and doors,smashed the holes in the wall and stripped the plumbing and siding? Is performing basic home maintenance a sure sign of white supremacy?

  15. I attended Brunskill Public School in Saskatoon from Grades 5 through 8. We had one cohort of First Nations Cree in our school for one year because there were not enough of us to fill all the classrooms. Reading this article, I now understand why they were there. “One of the reasons of phasing out the student residential schools is so our children can be sent to so called integrated school.” But the integration was not complete – they were in classes largely by themselves, and kept largely to themselves, being bussed in daily to the school. I remember that distinctly. It was a failed social experiment. We were never even introduced to them, nor they to us and they kept largely to themselves.

    1. I went to school in a town of a few thousand with no reserve in the county. I did go to school with a few Indians and Metis. Some were foster kids and some were kids of Indians or Metis whose land likely predated settlement. At the time I had no clue they were Indians and didn’t give it a second of thought. I just thought they were French and had darker skin like some Italians. I never witnessed an incidence of racism at school ever. I was a friend of the East Indian kid and a neighbor of the Black kid and didn’t know the Indians were Indians so I wouldn’t even know who to hate if I had the inclination.

  16. Fifty years ago I spent a winter in Pavilion BC where my son was born. We were nomads in those days and stopped in our travels long enough to birth a son and put together a pack horse outfit to move on in the following spring. We lived just off the reserve on the land of th family known as the Shintas though how that name came about I never did figure as their name was originally Louie. The patriarch being Louie Louie,(whom I never met as he had died years before), his wonderful wife Evelina who was in her late 60’s at that time and their grown up sons who were in their 40’s & 50’s with various younger clan members around.These people were fiercely independent and lived on their own deeded land just off the edge of the reserve.
    They told great tales of the early days of Lillooet BC and surrounding area; of when they lived in old Pavilion on the west side of the Fraser River at Leons Creek and had no trouble disclosing that the tribe moved across the river to present day Pavilion in order to be closer to “conveniences” that were available in the village of Lillooet. I’ve been to the old village site on the Fraser River where Leons Creek meets it and could never figure why they would leave as it is truly a paradise oasis in a hot dry country.
    During the course of my time with the Shinta Family, I learned many things of times gone and prevailing attitudes of those times. The boys talked of their time spent at the Kamloops Residential School in the 30’s and of how they came back home in the summers to hay and fish on the river. I can’t recall them ever disparaging their school experience beyond minor things that all young boys will say when they would rather go fishing or some such, and do recall many good things they said about it . They made lots of friends and were grateful for the education.
    The Shintas were a smart crowd and lived well on a smart parcel of land.

    Fast forward many years later to my time in the West Chilcotin in south central BC where I met many other interesting old timers of a bygone era. Amongst them was Alfred Bryant, the son of Cyrus Lord Bryant, (buried in the Quesnel BC pioneer cemetery) , both of whom Rich Hobson fondly talked of in his book ‘Grass Beyond The Mountains’ .
    I got a real treat one time when Alfred pulled out his family albums and showed me an extensive photo collection of his family’s history of living in the Chilcotin dating back into the 30’s. They were rugged times and these people were tough and resilient. Not to get too far off track here ,I’ll mention the pictures taken by his sister Jane (Bryant) Lehman, a graduate nurse who received her training in Kamloops BC at Royal Inland Hospital in the 20’s and then went back to the West Chilcotin as a nurse practitioner to administer to the locals and native population for the duration of her career. Look her up on wiki…lots of interesting information.
    One set of pictures that stood out for me was of Jane Lehman on the side of the trail, administering to an old native man who she and her husband had run across in their travels on their way to someplace. As I looked over the pictures, I couldn’t tell exactly what she was doing to the old man and Alfred filled me in that she was picking lice off of him and that he was dying and had been on his way with relatives to the local rodeo , could go no further and was left on the trail to his own devices as his people moved on down the trail to their destination. Alfred said that his sister stayed with him ’till he passed away.

    Now nobody thought much of that behaviour in those days as that was the way things were in those times when people lived much closer to the land and the old man’s passing was just another part of life. Although this sort of thinking is pretty much past nowadays I can recall it still existing in the Chilcotin specifically up to and including the 1980’s.
    Case in point was when my wife was working as a nurse at the Williams Lake hospital. In this instance she talked about how a group of people had gone off the road at Lee’s Lookout and their old low rider had ended hung up in a tree below the road and out of site. They were hurt but one person got out and managed to flag a ride to the Stampede whereby he ended up partying the weekend away without regard for getting medical help for the others.
    They weren’t discovered for three days in the hot July sun and some needlessly died.

    Its easy to employ modern revisionist history upon the Native and to romanticize the events of the past. Native or European extract … it matters not; people come in all shades of determination,responsibility and compassion. To equate modern values to times past is something akin to criticising members of the Donner party for serviving an impossible ordeal by eating human flesh. In short “you weren’t there so you don’t know the facts”

    1. Akin to…if you haven’t lived the experience, you shouldn’t have an opinion of a subject you have no clue about.
      I was very fortunate to have an adventurous experience packed life in a multitude of areas.
      I have a great deal of appreciation and apathy for any person in the wilderness trying to survive in our Canadian harsh environment or trying to make a living from it no matter the race or gender. Canada can be a deadly country to try to survive in on your own.
      Our politicians and media have made this into a joke as they try to make Canada into a global power as we ban all industries for an import country reliant on the world instead of being self reliant.

      1. Sorry to nit pick Jojo, but I think you mean “empathy” not apathy. At least, I hope you mean empathy 🙂

        1. Yes, empathy as you did get the meaning of post here.
          Apathy is what our politicians do us to belittle us.

          Thanks GerryK.

    2. A moving account. Today’s voices so relentlessly attacking our ancestors should be ashamed. It is a tragic betrayal of our history.

  17. If you ever watched episodes of “Time Team” you would have learnt how erratic and indeterminate are the ‘results’ of ground penetrating radar. Over and over ‘discoveries’ turned out to be something other then the claimed building site, wall, ditch, or pot-of-gold.
    It became the comic interlude of each Three Day Dig.

    1. “How do you know that those actually are graves?”

      “How do you know they aren’t?”

      In other words, nothing will be done, lest any investigation contradicts the prevailing ideology. There’s too much profit in sticking it to whitey to give up now.

  18. Once again we have a situation where the truth has come out after people have cried their phoney-ass tears over a phoney-ass story and you just know they are not going to admit to being wrong about any of it.

  19. This is a bombshell. It demonstrates how extremely valuable Small Dead Animals truly is. On the day this site goes dark and Kate is visited by RCMP thugs in the middle of the night, that’s the day it’s time for all Canadians to dust off dad’s old hunting rifle and take to the streets.

  20. What amazes me is how we’re all acting like this is some big discovery akin to discovering the site of a massacre. Fact is it was never a secret – Everyone knew – you only had to ask. They aren’t “mass graves” as the NYTimes likes to say they’re “unmarked”. A pretty big effin’ distinction.
    The media and the government are playing fast and loose with the facts.
    One of those facts is that most architectural drawings of RS schools included cemeteries… why? Because the Department of Indian Affairs as early as 1938 (PM William Lyon Mackenzie (Liberal) refused to foot the bill for the cost of transporting the deceased back home…noting that it was “an expenditure they weren’t prepared to authorize”. Gee, that’s big of ya Bill.
    So, you tell me: You’re subcontracted by the gov’t to handle the educational needs of aboriginal children at a time when diseases are ravaging the country’s youth and find yourself in possession of a dead child that the gov’t wants nothing to do with.
    Now what are you going to do?
    Over the years most RS school cemeteries through neglect gradually deteriorated to the point where the Department of Indian Affairs actually leased the land to farmers to plow under and plant crops knowing full well what was lying underneath. Nice eh?
    I agree…Catholics, Anglicans and Presbyterians have a lot to answer for with respect to how these schools were run. But for this current government to do Teddy Bear photo ops and demand the Pope apologize while they reneged on promises to provide potable water to a handful of reserves is some fucking weapons grade chutzpah.
    If Indian bands want to rip the scab off to do a little grifting…have at it. You may as well, I’m paying for everything else.
    Better yet…let’s do this every twenty years so my kids can shell out some dough.

    1. Ah, history,
      That amoeba spat on my relative…
      Give me money, now for my hurt feelings!

      We don’t have a qualified or any brains in our current politicians to even look at HALT EVERYTHING and assess what is all the problems we have.
      What works and what doesn’t.
      We have far too much lies and fraud that our government departments carry to break open every single issue that needs addressing.
      Instead, we are on the road to a HUGE reality check when essential infrastructure starts to break.
      We got rid of common sense as the truth was too hurtful to some companies or corporations…lies are now the general rule for higher profits.

    2. They aren’t “mass graves” as the NYTimes likes to say they’re “unmarked”

      It’s easy to forget that nearly everyone being able to afford stone gravestones is a very recent phenomenon. There’s no reason to assume the graves were unmarked since the grave markers were most likely wood and have long since rotted away.

      1. Precisely. Making the claim as the natives have that Catholics carried off headstones when they ceded control to the gov’t very dubious.

      2. Right. There are a fair few unmarked graves even in known graveyards. There was an RC graveyard down the hill from our house and I was wont to wonder through it and wonder who was under the unmarked graves.

    3. burton, “But for this current government to do Teddy Bear photo ops and demand the Pope apologize while they reneged on promises to provide potable water to a handful of reserves is some fucking weapons grade chutzpah.”

      Well stated, and absolutely true.

  21. The bought and paid for media continues to gin up the graves story. National Post calls the latest site Canada’s Alcatraz.

  22. Ground penetrating radar only ascertains that there was digging done.

    It does not show coffins, nor Bones, Nor dead Injun’s.

  23. There is a Cote Cres in Saskatoon. Presumably that name will have to be changed soon too.

  24. Even the ruined Indian culture is better than ours. Its not obsessed with homosexuality, baby-murder and gun-grabbing.

  25. “As the conservatives of the day were pushing for literal genocide.”

    Fine words there Ted.
    Your evidence of this is?
    Or were the Iroquois Confederacy the conservatives of their day?
    The Mohicans want to know.

    1. Bingo! Oh, what happened to the Huron? “New France” was running the tribes back then in that neck of the woods, eh Blackie? Check your lineage, while you’re at it. There’s some “history” there.
      Everybody wants retribution these days. How far do you want to go back?

    2. The Huron want to know too. Same question the Beothuks have for the Maliseet and Mikmac.

  26. It seems quite a few commenters here are trying to insist that the coming of Europeans to North America was the greatest thing to ever happen to the native inhabitants. Perhaps so but it shouldn’t be a surprise that many of them don’t agree with that sentiment. I have no solutions. Assimilation would appear to be the best thing but who am I to say? We’re not giving the country back and this system of blame and bribery is ridiculous and unsustainable.

  27. On a lighter note – Nice to see the Potash mine in Rocanville still chugging along…formerly known as Sylvite of Canada and now renamed the Saskatchewan Potash Corporation after being bought by the Gov’t.
    I’m sure the dapper Mr. A.W. Phillips has shuffled off his mortal coil by now.
    Is that an oiler on the town crest? Looks like it.

    Please carry on.

  28. Clearly some alt-right ultra-right white supremacist fascist nazi has re-written history. By going back in time.

  29. Update at True North. 45 churches have now been burned or vandalized. No comment from Teddy Bear Justin yet.

      1. Quietly supporting what’s going on, since being white, heterosexual, and of European descent are now considered capital sins by most denominations. The burning down of churches is the “social gospel” in action.

    1. The Pope needs to get ahold of Trudeau and demand damages and sue him personally for his encouragement of this ongoing drama of every couple weeks, another graveyard is uncovered and more needless damages to more churches.
      Trudeau could easily have a presentation of what to expect from all these that is the past and not what is currently happening…
      The media being the media has hype this up worldwide as an ongoing genocide.

    2. Can you imagine if those were mosques? Trudeau is a traitor and a disgusting human being.

      1. Yes, I agree with you 100% on his character besides being the best damn empty egghead the globalists(Democrats, Obama) could possibly hope for.

  30. The word is tired. I am tired of lies, tired of people f–king over other people. tired of the intellectual inferior. tired of everyone who is incapable of rational thought, and that seems to be damn near everyone. Sure am glad that when they come and try to force me to take a deadly shot that I will know what to do.

  31. Whinny indians just announced the sudden “discovery” of another cemetery that has been known for years.
    And the media just plays right along ginning up emotions with words like “genocide” and “murder”.
    The media has blood on their hands because it “appears” the fire in Lytton, which killed 2 people(maybe more) was deliberately set in the church and it burned down the WHOLE town.
    But I must say the indians have a good thing going. Pretty soon Trudeau will stop crying and won”t be able to give them enough money.

  32. Someone else here touched on this but it bears repeating: why this story? Why now? Well, pardon the pun, but these are “smoke signals”, or dog whistles as the left like to say, indicating that an election is approaching. These stories particularly appeal to the maternal instincts of women voters (something like 60% of whom still support Le Dauphin), and this is a kind of stoking of the natural maternal (not exclusive) horror at apparent gross injustice, esp. twds children. The response from Wets and the Far Left is a given, but the Prime Narcissist needs the ladies to win. He can then play dress up and make some folks believe he cares about natives or anything other than himself. The reality is that he has done sweet feck-all and arguably, set them back by reversing any scintilla of accountability on the Chiefs’ part. Never mind the billions on everything BUT clean potable water for all Canadians. The ‘mass grave’ spun is all Butt’s handiwork: that devil plays cynical Liberal politics at a (lower) level not seen since the good ol’ days of The Dirty Doxx-ella. These guys are beyond dirty, and unfortunately, it will work.

    1. Why now? That was the first response of one of our offspring to the news. The sense in our family is that the government is trying to obfuscate something really bad – possibly wrongdoing by some of the scientists in the Winnipeg lab.

  33. “why this story? Why now? “……….. pretty damned obvious, and an astute comment above noted it. Tides Canada have been working hand-in-hand with the radical injuns (I make the distinction because there are large numbers of sentient but silent Indians) blocking railroads, disrupting pipelines, blocking roads and bridges.

    Turdeau and Butts are bought-and-paid-for by Tides, so is the Vancouver mayor and no doubt many others.

    The dumber members of our society love this “Its for the environment, its for our children” messaging, and the lie that our injun brethren were noble savages and we owe them literally everything-free health care, free schooling, free housing, preferential hiring, preferential fishing and hunting. They are literally wards of the state, BUT Turdeau screwed up with Jody Wilson-Raybould and may just have alienated some aboriginal votes, hence teddy bears, lisping and weeping.

  34. “spokesmen” … “Children in the residential school get a measure of correction, discipline and religious training and this should be taken into consideration”

    Deedee Lerat attended the Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, Canada, where 751 unmarked graves were recently discovered. “I would be too scared to even ask to pee,” she says, “because you didn’t want to draw attention to yourself.”
    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/residential-school-survivors-reflect-on-brutal-legacy-that-could-have-been-me

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/history-of-marieval-indian-residential-school-1.6078473

  35. How does this square with the ’60’s scoop’?

    You claim your kids were taken away against your wish and adopted out to waiting white couples while at the same time lobbying to keep a residential school open.

    Something doesn’t add up.

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