MORGAN： 'Myths are dominating truth with residential schools'
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
200.4662
Summary
In this episode, I talk about the dark history of residential day schools, and how the government covered up the truth about what happened in them, and the cover-ups that kept the truth hidden from the public for decades.
Transcript
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Ken observed its fourth one, and the truth was often actually nowhere to be found.
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In fact, myths and fabrications were just more deeply entrenched
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as Indigenous people were invited and encouraged to share tales of historical abuse
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while never being challenged on the veracity of their claims.
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Now, the granddaddy of all those myths is, of course, the false claim of 215 children
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having died of abuse being buried at the Kamloops Residential School.
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Now, that hoax endures despite years of passing and not a single body's been found,
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nor are there any records of children actually disappearing at the institution.
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The local Indigenous band, though, was given $8 million to investigate the issue,
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but they didn't really tell anybody what they did with the funds
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or release any of the conclusions of their alleged investigation,
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The claims of abuse, though, they're escalating,
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as it appears to be like a race between people to recount a historic horror that outdoes prior ones.
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I mean, one of the enduring and ludicrous claims is that children in Kamloops' school
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were awakened in the night to go out and bury bodies of murdered children as recently as in the 1960s.
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Now, if this was true, the RCMP should be exhuming these grave sites
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and trying to find the perpetrators of these crimes.
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There's no investigation, of course, because it never happened.
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The state broadcaster aired the claim of surreptuously interred children
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The mythology isn't just spread through news broadcasts.
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A Canadian-produced detective series I was watching had a scene depicting
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an electric chair sitting in the basement of an abandoned residential school.
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It was explained that the chair was used routinely by priests and nuns to torture students.
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The electric chair myth is an unfounded story among many
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that include other alleged atrocities like hanging babies from hooks
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and forcing children to work in crematoriums in the basements of residential schools.
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These things never happened, yet we have Canadian productions reinforcing the belief they did.
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It's been improperly applied in Canada for years.
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With no actual genocide to be found, activists have broadened the definition of genocide instead,
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It's an abuse of the term, and it's an insult to the races and cultures that experienced real genocide.
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Canada is an imperfect nation, but it's not a genocidal one,
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and to state that truth is to invite an onslaught of abuse on social media
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and bring about the labels, of course, of denier and racist.
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The NDP is even trying to criminalize disputing allegations of Canadian genocide,
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and their bill to do it might just pass in the Canadian House of Commons.
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The cycle of victimhood continues to expand as people self-identify as intergenerational victims of residential schools.
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And one young social media influencer, he was applauded on X for his bravery
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as he announced his grandparents, uncles, and aunts all went to residential schools.
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Now, while it's not impossible, it's pretty unlikely that his family members were residential school attendees.
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Only 150,000 children attended those schools over the course of a century.
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In the last generation, there were very few who actually attended.
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it appears as if every Indigenous person in Canada over the age of 50 attended a residential school,
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and nobody ever questions those claims for fear of being labeled intolerant or insensitive.
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When I questioned the gentleman's assertion, he responded with a tirade of obscenities and blocked me.
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Typical response to questions rather than presenting evidence.
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He also identified himself, though, as a residential day school survivor.
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Well, residential day schools were structures built on reserves
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where children would leave home in the morning, attend classes, then return home.
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The only difference is the ones on reserves were under federal management.
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but we don't have to put the label survivor in front of everything we say.
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Now, with true residential school attendees becoming actually a rare commodity,
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race hustlers in the legal world turned their attention to regular schools, and it paid off.
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Children who attended these day schools took part in a massive class action suit,
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which the government settled rather than fought.
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150,000 survivors of these day schools qualify for payouts between $10,000 and $200,000 each.
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Now, the widespread in compensation is based on the alleged suffering due to attending the schools.
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That's quite an incentive for claimants to make up horrific stories about their time in the school, isn't it?
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And since nobody dares to question the assertions, the stories get wild and unbelievable.
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Ironically, there probably would have been a class action suit launched if there weren't day schools either,
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as children would have lost the opportunity to get an education.
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The provision of education is entrenched in most treaties, actually, because bans signing on to the treaties demanded it.
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Yes, indigenous people actually asked for the schools.
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The residential school system was not a success.
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I mean, there's no doubt there was some abuse, and that the manner of imposing the system caused terrible social damage.
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That doesn't mean the system was genocidal, though, and we don't have to accept every spacious claim of abuse at face value.
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Canada's indigenous people are in dire socioeconomic straits, and something must change.
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But, I mean, things are only going to get worse for them, no matter how much money is tossed their way.
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To start with, we're entrenching a culture of victimhood based on falsehoods, and it's not helping matters.
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It's causing social division, and it's led to hundreds of churches being burned or vandalized, and it's costing a fortune.
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We do need reconciliation, and we need to put the old divisions to rest.
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But we need the truth first, though, and as long as we continue to let mythology dominate the day,
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healing and reconciliation are never going to come.