Thoughts on BC Politics and More

If Canadians are serious that every child matters, we should at least know the names of the “missing” Indian Residential Schools children about whom we hear almost daily in mainstream media reports. There are frequent reports of news conferences staged by indigenous band leaders proclaiming new ground penetrating radar (GPR) “discoveries” of unmarked graves at former residential schools. But the reality is that the small number of excavations which have occurred have yielded no human remains, despite stories of clandestine burials told by indigenous knowledge keepers. It’s more than passing strange that excavations have been happening at Winnipeg landfills to find the bodies of indigenous women who were the victims of murder, yet after more than four years of gut-wrenching stories about the apple orchard at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, there has been no excavation at all for the bodies of 200 or more indigenous children alleged to have been secretly buried there ... C...

Four years ago  the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc [Kamloops] Indian Band of British Columbia issued a press statement of seismic implications, literally and figuratively. The Band claimed that a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey of the area surrounding the city’s former Indian Residential School had located the “remains of 215 children who were students” of the school. Despite making explosive assertions about “missing children” and “undocumented deaths,” the Band was still careful to add that, “At this time, we have more questions than answers.” Such a note of caution didn’t stop the media, politicians and nearly everyone else from acting as if they had more answers than questions ... ... Almost instantly there were angry vigils, public displays of grief and shame, solidarity speeches and promises to revolutionize society as we know it. Flags on government buildings were lowered to half-mast for almost six months beginning on Canada Day, turning what was once a day of national celebr...