I am going to review an article with some pretty typical caker attitudes so you can see what we're dealing with here. The article is about Kevin Annett and the documentary Unrepentant (viewing it will help to better understand this post).
The following are quotes from residential school survivors featured in the documentary.
These are some of the stories relating to murder. Other stories include: sexual abuse, rape, physical abuse; electric-shocking, being experimented on; witnessing burials, finding bodies, being asked to dig graves; children freezing to death; babies being killed after birth - as the result of sexual intercourse between students and school patrons.
Virginia Baptiste (St. Eugene Residential School 1955 - 1963)
"I know a lot of you people out there, don't understand. But, there's a need for the world to know about this. Because the church is hiding and the government is hiding ... there is a lot of people that died in those places."
Rick LaValle (Portage La Prairie Residential School)
"My brother died because of a cattle prod - of a shock - of the cattle prod. When he was fi-- when he was four years old, they dragged him by the hair and they cut it, they cut his skin right off his head, the pastors did that, with a whip - like a horse whip. It was sharp, with these little blades on it. And when I was in there, I heard him scream for help. And right away there was a lot of blood on the floor and they wouldn't take him to the hospital or the nurse, or nothin'. What happened then, what happened when I was in there - I heard him still scream for help 'Rick! Help! They're torturing me! I'm gonna die!' So he died right away. Like that. He was my only, uh, my only, uh best friend and my only brother that I always loved."
"I witnessed the death of Maisie Shaw."
"So I watched, and she was standing at the top of the stairs and he [principal] kicked her. She went rolling down the stairs. She ended up, she was, she was uh, laying like this [motions to her head], her eyes were open but she wasn't moving, she wasn't crying. So, I see that all the time."
Lillian Shirt (Bluequills Residential School)
[Pointing in crematory] "But this is where we found those uh, we seen those little skulls ... we found them in here ... there was coal, like coal, see ... we weren't allowed to come here."
[Later] "Jennie would cry out and then all of a sudden, this blood just spurted all over the place, it was on her back, the small part of her back here [crying] and it opened up, it opened up wide, then the blood came. Oh god! That's the last time I ever saw my sister."
Constable George Brown
[Tells story of a rebellious student whose teacher drove a pencil through his hand]
"I'm 100% sure that we were used as guinea pigs in these local hospitals, for some unknown reason."
Bill Seward (Kuper Island Residential School)
"Her name was Maggie. She was two years older than me. And she was murdered in there, by a nun, pushed out the window, second story up and she died. But nothing was done about it, we weren't allowed to see a lawyer or nothin'. They just covered this up."
[Written statement] Steven H (St. Paul's Catholic Day School)
"When I was six years old, I saw a little girl killed right in front of me by a nun, Sister Pierre, whose real name was Ethel Lynn. The girl she killed was Elaine Dick, who was five years old. The nun kicked her hard in the side of the neck and I heard this terrible snap. She fell to the floor and didn't move. She died right in front of us. Then the nun told us to step over her body and go to class. That was in 1966."
Beverly Breber [on her brother at Kuper Island Residential School]
"He said 'You know what sis', he says, 'I can't wait to get out of this hell hole, I'm gonna tell everything', and then the phone went dead, uh, people, at Kuper Island always listened to our phone calls and censored our letters back, you know, coming in and going out, so, you know, like, I was afraid for him but I didn't think it was going to be as bad as it was, turn out as bad as it was. Two days later we got a phone call saying that he hung himself - committed suicide - but I never ever, ever ever believed it in my heart, that he'd ever do that. They had them walk through the gym while Richard was still hanging, and told them that it could happen to them."
Truly disgusting stuff. Now we come to this article in The Tyee: Truth and Native Abuse
1.
"But if you do believe these things, I'm afraid there are quite a few more things you are going to have to believe, because you can't have it both ways. If Kevin Annett really is prize-worthy and courageous, you will also have to believe this:
-One of Canada's most respected First Nations' leaders is trafficking in children from Northern British Columbia in a profitable pedophilia ring that's run out of the West Hastings Street premises of the swish Vancouver Club. His clients are Vancouver judges, politicians, and church leaders."
What is so unbelievable about this? According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime:
"sexual exploitation is by far the most commonly identified form of human trafficking (79%) ...
By and large the exploitation of women tends to be visible, in city centres, or along highways ...
... most trafficking is national or regional, carried out by people whose nationality is the same as that of their victims."
According to Statistics Canada on human trafficking:
"The majority (91%) of victims of human trafficking reported by police between 2009 and 2014 knew the person accused of the crime. More specifically, the most common relationship between the victim and accused was a business relationship (23 %), followed by a casual acquaintance (22%), and a non-spousal intimate partner (18%)."
The vast majority of these victims were female (93%). Victims of human trafficking were generally young. Among victims of human trafficking reported between 2009 and 2014, close to half (47%) were between the ages of 18 and 24. Additionally, one-quarter (25%) of human trafficking victims were under the age of 18."
Regarding high-profile clientele, this is not unheard of. A quick Google search will show countless scandals involving establishment figures in both politics and entertainment. See also:
This could go on and on, but a few links will suffice to prove the point. Does this mean the First Nations' leader is guilty? No. But does it exonerate him? Not at all, as plenty of history and current events show the absolute possibility of the claim; it's not at all 'unbelievable'. Who would be a better choice of victim than poor, neglected Aboriginal children? (But I guess Terry thinks that Bill Cosby is just some nice old dad too, right?)
2.
In the 1930's within the United States was the 'German-American Bund': a pro-Nazi, quasi-military organization made up of supporters with mostly German ancestry. It was most active in the years preceding the USA's entry in the Second World War.
Aside from this organization there were many others, and non-formal fascist Nazi-supporters in both the US and Canada. (Now this is where the cakers say "we had no Nazi sympathizers!" - just like their were none in the KKK, right cakers?)
Wrong! There was the Deutscher Bund Canada (a pro Nazi party):
"... established for the so-called Volksdeutsche (Germans who had been born outside the Reich). The Bund held monthly meetings for its members and staged pro-Nazi celebrations such as Hitler birthday parties; it imported and distributed Nazi propaganda materials to Germans and non-Germans alike ; it joined with other indigenous German-Canadian organizations and clubs to organize social events and to establish German language schools.
The second arm of the Canadian Nazi movement was a separate Nazi party organization (NSDAP). This group was composed of non-naturalized German Canadians and Reichsdeutsche (Germans born in Germany proper) residing in Canada who had applied for and been accepted into the National Socialist Party. Although frequent contact existed between the NSDAP units and the Bund (the two groups often combined to hold public displays and to promote common causes), efforts were made to keep the memberships separate."
"The Canadian ranks of the Nazi Party were filled with persons born outside Canada. Reichsdeutsche made up the vast majority of the membership (seventy-eight of the eighty-eight). With regard to the members' birthplace in Germany, Canada's Nazis reflected a general balance. All the major German states such as Bavaria, Prussia, and Saxony as well as most of the important cities were represented."
So what do we have here? We have pro-Nazi and Hitler sympathizers residing in Canada in the 1930's, as well as American sympathizers down south. Is it possible they were willing to experiment on children? Well, it's not out of the realm of possibility as in the early 1930's the Nazis were already sterilizing the 'undesirables' and by the end of the 30's they would be euthanizing the disabled.
"German proponents of eugenics were part of an international phenomenon... German biologist August Weissmann’s theory of “immutable germ plasm,” published in 1892, fostered growing international support for eugenics ...
... Eugenicists more successfully promoted sterilization laws in individual provinces, cantons, or states in Canada, Switzerland, and the United States."
And again, just because the survivors now assume they were German, doesn't mean these doctors were. They could have been other foreigners or people with heavy accents. A young, barely educated Native child is not going to know the difference, especially in a state of fear and shock.
Considering the general eugenics movements world wide at the time, and later events (I'll touch on) does that mean we can state with certainty these things happened? No. But again, it's not outside the realm of possibility.
3.
"As recently as the 1950s and 1960s, aboriginal children at a Vancouver Island medical research facility were tortured with electrodes implanted in their skulls. At least one child was beaten to death with a whip fitted with razors."
Consider the following history just south of the border: forced sterilizations of minorities (which included Native Americans into the 1980's, and Mexican women into the 1970's).
Eugenics champions existed in North America:
"In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples."
"The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz."
In the 1950's-60's these programs took place in the US:
- infecting women and disabled children with viral hepatitis
- injecting live cancer cells into prisoners
- testing nerve gases and toxic chemicals on US ships and their passengers
- radiation experiments
- giving iodine to babies
- Project GABRIEL
- Project SUNSHINE
-whole body radiation experiments on poor black cancer patients
"From 1950 through 1953, the U.S. Army sprayed chemicals over six cities in the United States and Canada, in order to test dispersal patterns of chemical weapons. Army records stated that the chemicals which were sprayed on the city of Winnipeg, Canada, included zinc cadmium sulfide, which was not thought to be harmful."
This isn't even a full list. And, as with the Nazi party and KKK, if it was happening south of the border there's no reason to assume it wasn't happening in Canada on at least a smaller level; especially considering American involvement in subjecting Canadian residents to testing without their knowledge.
As for 'electrodes implanted in skulls' ... I doubt very much a child has the mental capacity to understand medical testing, especially when terrified or in a state of shock. What a survivor may remember can constitute abuse, even if he doesn't have the specific medical terminology or recall of exact testing-details. Given the era, I don't find the idea of medical testing on poor Indian children to be beyond reasonable doubt.
4.
"At the Hobbema and Saddle Lake Indian residential schools in Alberta, children were incinerated in furnaces. At St. Anne's Indian residential school in Fort Albany, Ontario, children were executed in an electric chair. At McGill University in Montreal, there is a mass grave containing the bodies of aboriginal children killed in experiments undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency's top-secret MK-ULTRA program."
I don't know the exact details of this, so I can only comment on what I've seen in the documentary until I research further. I do know that Nazis managed to kill and incinerate millions of people, so the prospect of a cover up (burning bodies) at some schools isn't beyond reason. I sometimes meet Holocaust deniers who love to say "but where are all the bodies?"
All one has to do is google "MK Ultra" to read all about it. Quoting from the McGill Daily:
"Cameron’s experiments, known as MK-ULTRA subproject 68, were partially funded by the CIA and the Canadian government, and are widely known for their use of LSD, barbiturates, and amphetamines on patients. In the media, they were known as the “mind control” studies done at McGill and were reported as a brainwashing conspiracy from the CIA and the Canadian government. For journalists, the story was a goldmine. LSD use in a CIA experiment was an angle no sensationalist media could reject, especially in the anti-drug frenzy of the 1960s. However, these studies were much more complex than a Timothy Leary scare in la belle ville.
At its worst, the prolonged periods of sensory deprivation and induced sleep used in the experiments left many patients in a child-like mental state, even years after the experiments were finalized. Even today, remnants of Cameron’s experiments at the Allan Memorial appear in torture methods at places like Guantanamo Bay.
... In a report to the Canadian government in the mid 1980s, sources reveal that Cameron was “ruthless, determined, aggressive, and domineering … He seemed not to have the ability to deeply empathize with their [patients] problems or their situation.”
When the whistle blew on Allan Memorial, Cameron’s stern portrait turned into the evil stare of a “mad scientist,” as media reports explained the nature of his research.
... The experiments done at McGill were part of the larger MK-ULTRA project led by Sidney Gottlieb of the CIA. In 1963, the year in which MK-ULTRA ended, the CIA compiled all the research into a torture manual called the Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation Handbook. Yes, a “torture manual” that would eventually define the agency’s interrogation methods and training programs throughout the developing world."
Could Native children have been exposed? It's possible ... at this point, I wouldn't suggest laughingly (like some) that it wasn't. Could children who were killed through neglect or otherwise have been 'disposed of' in a manner as to hide evidence? Sure, it's entirely possible.
5.
"These are just a few of the stories Annett has been circulating since the early 1990s. He has failed to produce a shred of evidence. RCMP investigators who have looked into Annett's allegations always come up empty. Some of these stories the RCMP hasn't investigated because nobody's reported them, for reasons Annett explains as a distrust of the police."
First, I'm quite sure that when you've been mocked, laughed at and disregarded your whole life - you aren't going to want to share your story with the people who have neglected or openly opposed you. If these survivors have undergone all of that in the name of 'government and authority', it's quite understandable why they would have issues trusting authorities, namely the police.
In fact, right here in front of us we have a whole article essentially mocking their claims (they made on video tape, in a documentary about their experiences) and suggesting it's ridiculous. Is it any wonder they have lost faith, and don't reach out for help?
As for the investigations, I would love the details! Perhaps the RCMP can fill us in. I know children and women that have been molested or raped and made formal complaints the same year as the incidents occurred - yet nothing was done because "there was no evidence" and therefor formal charges wouldn't stick.
I'm not sure how people expect the victims in this situation to come up with evidence 40 to 50 years after the fact? The Native children didn't have access to paper records and there's no doubt the institutions likely destroyed most of what was incriminating, if it was ever marked down to begin with.
The writer then goes on to say:
"It matters because the thousands of aboriginal people who really did suffer unspeakable torment in residential schools deserve something rather more from us than our complicity in the act of dumping their very real suffering down a rabbit hole into the same parallel universe where you'll find alien abductions, Masonic plots, crop circles, and 9-11 conspiracies."
I'm not sure how it qualifies as a 'conspiracy theory' when it's an assertion made by an individual (or group) who claims to have witnessed it first-hand? Which brings us to a fork in our conclusions: 1) either they are crazy lying drunk ol' Indians, or 2) they are telling the truth, as best they can remember it.
So which is it? While we're busy "respecting" the survivors of residential schools that fit the government narrative - what about the ones who are claiming to have witnessed murders, to have buried bodies, to have seen children killed and know there are unmarked graves?! How do we "respect" their truth? Right, by dismissing it! Wouldn't want the cakers to look bad, would we?
Then we get to the crux of the issue: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
"If the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gets dragged into the strange, alternative reality where Annett and his followers thrive, the commission's purpose could be easily defeated. If that happens, we will have lost an historic opportunity to see justice properly done in finally turning the page on one of the darkest and most disgraceful chapters in Canadian history."
Wouldn't want to interrupt that government-settlement process, eh? Wouldn't want to disrupt the "closing of this chapter" so we can all merrily move on, eh?
"It matters to me because I can count several old friends and colleagues among the people who show up as villains, collaborators and stooges in Annett's conspiracy, and I know a thing or two about Annett from when we were both young socialists, back in the 1970s."
Right, because people we know personally can't possibly commit crimes, can they? Just like the serial killer next door with a dozen bodies in the basement and the neighbor goes, "but he was such a nice fellow!"
"One does not need to exaggerate or embellish anything about what happened in those places."
No, one does not. And if this were Annett saying it alone, I would be more skeptical. But when individuals come together and make these claims I highly doubt they are embellishing their own stories - to what end? But it comes full circle again: whether you choose to believe people who claim to have lived certain events, or not. He goes on:
"There were front-page stories a century ago, too. In 1897, senior Indian Affairs officials started blowing the whistle on the cavernous, shoddily-built, creaking institutions, pointing out that you couldn't have built more efficient incubation vectors for contagious disease, and for mass death, if you tried.
Back then, P.H. Bryce, the Indian department's chief medical officer, conducted a study of 1,500 children interned in 15 different Indian residential schools across Canada. He found that one in four of the children never made it out alive. A separate study of the Kuper Island school found that four of every 10 children sent there over a 25-year period never survived to graduate.
This is sufficiently damning. It is not necessary to assert, as Annett does, that infectious diseases were deliberately employed as part of a plot to "cull" Canada's aboriginal population. Everybody knows what happened. It is no secret, and is not even a secret that there are mass graves."
No ... not everybody knows what happened. What an ABSURD assertion! In fact, I would venture to guess that 90% or more Canadians do NOT know there were "mass graves". As for Bryce:
He himself said "conditions are being "deliberately created" to spread disease. It doesn't get much clearer than that.
His contemporary Duncan Campbell Scott said:
“It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habituating so closely in the residential schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards a final solution of our Indian Problem.”
We can go back all the way to Jeffrey Amherst:
"Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them."
Bouquet replies:
"P.S. I will try to inocculate [sic] the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard's Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine."
Amherst in response:
"P.S. You will Do well to try to Innoculate [sic] the Indians by means of Blankets, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present."
But the writer goes on to dismissively wave off "conspiracy theories" about the purposeful extermination of Indians through disease ... because if the cakers don't have log books with date stamps and signatures on them then "it didn't happen" in their fevered pro-Canadiana dreams.
Finally the warbling is rounded down to one comment I can agree on:
"After all this suffering, the very least we owe the dead, and the living, is the truth."
Indeed. And I do believe the survivors and their stories. If they say they were molested and raped - I believe them. If they say their friends went missing or showed up dead - I believe them. If they claim to have witnessed something as shocking as murder - I believe them. If even a portion of them think there are still unanswered questions, cover ups, or purposeful disinformation - I support them in their quest to uncover the truth, whatever that may be.
And in the meantime, if one man has ventured to help these people and expose crimes, tell their stories - then I don't want to kick him down for being an 'inconvenience' to Canadian officials, the government, the media or those he's accused.
Even if he has gotten paranoid or is wrong about some things ... at least he's trying which is more than 99% of cakers in the caker-kingdom. And one must ask: where did he get these ideas from in the first place? If from Natives, are those Native people lying? If they're not - why can't we listen? And if they are - what benefit do they gain?
One thing is for certain: smug, patronizing caker attitudes stink!
O Canada!
Post Script - For more witness testimonies & documentation read: Hidden from History (PDF)
Also see: Government won't prosecute child-abusers
