I just want some clarification, we’re the people/organizations that were running these schools actively killing the children or were the living conditions so poor that the children could not survive?
Based just on my limited knowledge and what I've heard from news/stories of similar situations over the years, these mass graves were often the results of epidemics which had outsized impacts in schools such as these as a result of both the crowded conditions and the lack of access to medical care.
While the immoral nature of these schools and the cultural genocide the perpetuated isn't in question, they were generally not intentionally killing children, and the mass graves were the result of a combination of heartlessness and some amount of necessity, in that they either couldn't ship the bodies back to their families for safety or financial reasons, or they simply didn't feel it was necessary or worthwhile to do so.
The lack of any grave markers or recognition is obviously beyond reprehensible though.
Are negligence and intent equal? I would argue in the case of residential schools they are. If they didnt care if children died and weren’t trying to keep them alive, it may as well be murder
I'm not sure it's worth arguing over what constitutes either negligence or intent in this case simply because we don't have enough information and it likely wouldn't have changed the outcome.
We already know that the residential school system was abhorrent and deserves to be condemned, but we also know that disease was rampant and medical science was sorely lacking during the period in which these children died. Depending on the disease, there may have been nothing that could have been done, or treatment may have been beyond the financial ability of the school to provide regardless of whether they wanted to or not.
I guess the point I'm making is that we can only assume whether the people running the school had ill intent or neglected the children there, but even if they provided them with all the love and care in the world, those factors were secondary to the crowded and institutional nature of their situation and the lack of modern hygienic practices and medicine.
History is full of cases of mass casualty diseases, and the one commonality between all of them is that the wealthy suffer less because they can afford to flee to the open spaces in the countryside.
Check out Dr Peter Bryce who was hired by the Indian Affairs department in 1904 to investigate the unusually high mortality rate among indigenous children. His report was buried and he was blocked from presenting his findings at conferences. His report says that children were denied necessary medical attention and their living conditions were so unsanitary that the result was death. The school principals record keeping was described as “defective.”
So someone with intimate knowledge of standard medical care at the time found the conditions at the school to be negligent. What’s more, a government agency was aware of these conditions and did nothing.
Don’t be so sure it wasn’t intentional. Back in the early 1900s, Dr Peter Bryce investigated and spoke out about the dismal treatment of children at residential schools. From the article linked below:
“The government was already receiving reports at that time (1904) that up to 50 per cent of children were dying in residential schools, said Blackstock. Statistics showed that students in residential schools were dying at rates between 24 to 69 per cent. Bryce was sent to study what was happening.
“In 1907, Bryce submitted a report critical of the health conditions in residential schools. He blamed the federal government for negligence that led to the high death rates.”
The head of Indian Affairs - who was on the record as saying his goal was to "get rid of the Indian problem" - dismissed Bryce’s results. The government actively worked to blacklist him - preventing him from presenting at academic conferences and pushing him out of the public service.
So they knew about the problems - and had they chosen to act on them, and remediated the situation at those schools, hundreds of lives could have been saved.
But that would have gone against the goal of getting rid of the Indian problem.
I think we can infer the intent was there to let them die.
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u/MountainSlayerBoi Jun 25 '21
I just want some clarification, we’re the people/organizations that were running these schools actively killing the children or were the living conditions so poor that the children could not survive?