Mass graves or not, Canada and the U.S. were complicit in tearing native families apart, sending the children off to boarding schools where they were stripped of every aspect of their native culture, forced to have their hair cut, forced to wear white people’s clothes, denied the right to speak their own language, and in some schools, forced to become Catholic.
Yeah. Indian schools were a screwed up thing. That kept on until the 70s. We don’t need mass graves to know it was bad.
Too true. It's a shame that when the white men came here they had to continue the same practices that the native tribes had done to each other for centuries.
SOme of that happened to be sure, which made this so believable.
But doesn’t this piss you off? Raging infernoes, churches destroyed, millions wasted; on nothing!? And we were suppoed to feel guilty about something we had nothign to do with?
How else are you going to move a people still in the Stone Age into the modern world with a new language to have commerce between you? Sure it sounds bad but it has to be done! Today so many still look back and wish for the “good old days” of the Stone Age.
Look at what happened when the Romans invaded barbarian Gaul and Britain. Same problems.
When the Romans finally left centuries later they had planted the seeds of civilization, writing and learning among the tribes.
And were the Whites really all that bad?
How the tribes treated each other BEFORE The White Man arrived...
https://ournativeamericans.blogspot.com/2018/07/1300s-crow-creek-massacre-in-south.html
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/massacre-sacred-ridge
https://bonesdontlie.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/basketmaker-ii-cave-7-massacre-or-cemetery/
https://mcclungmuseum.utk.edu/1991/12/01/scalping-victim/
https://prezi.com/z9ioohxrdgat/anasazi-cannibalism/?fallback=1
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39268873
https://www.historynet.com/when-the-sioux-ambushed-pawnee-hunters-at-massacre-canyon/
http://www.dickshovel.com/scalp.html
https://lostworlds.org/ancient-massacre-discovered-in-new-mexico-was-it-genocide/
https://www.archaeology.org/news/2269-140630-colorado-torture-evidence
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1593823
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archeologists-find-evidence-torture-1200-year-old-massacre-180951922/
https://blairmastbaum.substack.com/p/the-terrifying-final-days-of-the
https://archive.archaeology.org/9709/newsbriefs/anasazi.html
and that is equivalent to mass graves?
Back in the early 1960’s, I attended one of those schools in Montana for four years. The school had been available only to tribal kids, but was opened to whites and my folks scared up the tuition to send my brothers and I. The school was run by Catholic nuns. We wore uniforms - white shirts/blouses and dark blue or black trowsers/skirts.
After the total defeat of the natives some decades earlier, the culturally nomadic tribes were restricted to reservations. Alcohol and sex were the main respites. My tribe buddies were a tough group. Drinking at recess - the school was first-thru-eighth grades - wasn’t uncommon. Tattoos were common. Getting beat up was commono.
The tribe kids loved the nuns, who were tough as leather, because so many tribal parents were completely AWOL and the nuns cared.
Years later, when the tribe became wealthy after a lengthy lawsuit with Montana Power, nearly all the heads in the tribal positions were men and women who’d been students alongside me.
Your comment reminds me of similarly uninformed comments when this story first aired a couple of years ago. Your faux outrage is noted and rejected. Grow up. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
All true and sad. We (living Canadians) are not so far removed from it generationally that the sense of a desire to right a wrong remains. I can only speak for myself of course. Others may not give a damn and that is their prerogative. Another generation or two from now it will just be a story from the past.
Isn't that what virtually every people group did? Look at what the Iroquois admit to being the "Dark Times" -- when the tribes fought each other before Columbus. And not just the Iroquois tribes. When they'd fight each other, kill each other, take over each other's land, and force the survivors to become part of the conquering tribe, which meant learning new customs.
Just like the white groups did to each other and other groups. Just like the Muslim groups did to each other and other groups. Just like the Asian groups did to each other and other groups. Just like the black groups did to each other and other groups.
Look at the climate graph in post 46. Know that most of the atrocities we fuss about occurred during the Little Ice Age, when everybody was struggling to survive. It's unfortunately too easy to justify taking over someone else's lands when your crop yields are low and you're starving. And when your rain patterns are less predictable. And when you're experiencing more deaths by plague. Such is life during the centuries-long cooling periods like the Little Ice Age (roughly AD 1300 to mid 1800's), or the Dark Age before that (roughly AD 300 to 900), or the Greek Dark before that (roughly 11th century BC to 3rd century BC, sometimes called the Era of Kings by us Bible geeks).
I'm not saying it's the only reason for those atrocities. But it's very much a factor. That includes the atrocity of my Anglo-Saxon ancestors forced out of modern day Germany during the Dark Age cooling period. (Call it the English version of a Trail of Tears. In fact, the word "Anglo" probably comes from the fact that they lived in Anglia in modern day Germany.) Many believe that the reason the Huns took over land west and south of them was because the Dark Age cooling period forced them to seek land that could grow crops. That displaced the Germanic Goth tribes and forced them to move into what was left of the Roman empire, taking it over by migration. The Huns kept coming and the Germanic Goth tribes had to keep moving, which forced out the Anglos, Saxons, and Jutes, pushing them north into the Denmark area. (Hint: forced north is bad during a cooling period if you're in the northern hemisphere.) They were starving out in that marsh land, so they crossed the channel into Britannia (some say the Huns were moving into the Denmark area and forced the Anglos out).
So the Anglo-Saxons ourselves are a displaced people.