Thoughts on BC Politics and More

Representatives of the Métis Nation British Columbia visiting the legislature Monday got up and left the public gallery in disgust as OneBC Leader Dallas Brodie asked a question rooted in residential school denial. Brodie’s question “felt incredibly disrespectful,” said Patrick Harriott, the organization’s acting vice-president. “We have people, we have relatives that went to residential schools that witnessed these things, and so it’s denying all of those statements from all of those people and all that inter-generational trauma that’s still being carried" ... CLICK HERE for the full story 

Last year, on a cool October day in Gatineau, Quebec, Kimberly Murray presented her final report on burial sites and missing children associated with Indian residential schools. It marked the culmination of over two years of work tasked to her as independent special interlocutor by the government of Canada. Days after meeting with survivors, Elders and youth, releasing her report and talking to media, the lawyer met with Canada’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General Arif Virani and Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Gary Anandasangaree over a video call. On that call, Murray told The Tyee, she found the federal government evasive about what would happen next ... CLICK HERE for the full story

... Canadians were led to believe, actual human remains would be lifted from the earth—child martyrs whose suffering symbolized the barbarous cruelty of the Canadian colonial state. Slogans were minted. T-shirts were sold. Hundreds of millions of dollars in new grants were sent to Indigenous communities. Trudeau himself, always in his element when things get overwrought, went down on one knee and placed a teddy bear on the site of a former residential school. As noted above, this happened almost two and a half years ago. Yet during that time, not a single actual grave has been discovered, much less anything in the way of human remains. This is not to say that some graves won’t be found. Indeed, it would be surprising if the grounds of some of these old schools, which typically featured churches and graveyards, did not have unpleasant surprises to surrender. But by now it is clear that the hysterical (and that is the right word) media claims of 2021, which suggested vast ...