Judge Brian Giesbrecht in his Winnipeg Sun article, said so many children in residential schools because:

“Disease took many from every demographic, but Indigenous people suffered most. They died mainly in their home communities, where the Grim Reaper was always close by. Infected children entered residential schools, and infected others. Many died”.

All of that is true. Yet such true statements deflect our attention from the real truth. Some people at the time (not with the wisdom of hindsight or with 21^st century sensitivities), described conditions at residential schools as “criminal.”  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (‘TRC’) explained it this way:

“The federal government knowingly chose not to provide schools with enough money to ensure that kitchens and dining rooms were properly equipped, that cooks were properly trained, and, most significantly, that food was purchased in sufficient quantity and quality for growing children. It was a decision that left thousands of Aboriginal children vulnerable to disease.”

In other words, it was a direct result of Canada’s policies that so many indigenous children suffered from diseases. Poor kitchens with poor food supplies were just one of such policy decisions. Canada, and Canadians, cannot use this as an excuse for what happened. Canada controlled the situation. It made the decisions that result in these conditions. Canada is responsible.

As the TRC said,

“…it is clear that until the 1950s, the schools were the sites of an ongoing tuberculosis crisis. Tuberculosis accounted for just less than 50% of the recorded deaths…The tuberculosis health crisis in schools was part of a broader Aboriginal health crisis that was set in motion by colonial policies that separated Aboriginal people from their land, thereby disrupting their economies and their food supplies. This crisis was particularly intense on the Canadian prairies. Numerous federal government policies contributed to the undermining of Aboriginal health.  During a period of starvation, rations were withheld from bands in an effort to force them to abandon the lands that they had initially selected for their reserves. In making the treaties, the government had promised to provide assistance to First Nations to allow them to transition from hunting to farming. This aid was slow in coming and inadequate on arrival.  Restrictions in the Indian Act made it difficult for First Nations farmers to sell their produce or borrow money to invest in technology. Reserve land was often agriculturally unproductive. Reserve housing was poor, overcrowded, sanitation was inadequate, and access to clean water was limited. Under these conditions tuberculosis flourished. Those people it did not kill were often severely weakened and likely to succumb to measles, smallpox, and other infectious diseases”.

The direct effect of Canadian policy was to make conditions in the schools difficult for children and easy for diseases.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (‘TRC’) , after looking at all the evidence, not conspiracy theories, as Judge Giesbrecht would have us believe, concluded that “the badly built and poorly maintained schools constituted serious fire hazards. Defective fire fighting equipment exacerbated the risk and the schools were fitted with dangerous and inadequate fire escapes.” Not a good place to send children, but many indigenous parents were left with no choice. They had to send their children there.

The TRC determined that “at least fifty-three schools were destroyed by fire. There were at least 170 additional fires. At least forty students died in residential school fires.” The schools were no place to send children.

Here is an excerpt from the TRC report on physical conditions in residential schools:

” Well into the twentieth century, recommendations for improvements went unheeded, and dangerous and forbidden practices were widespread and entrenched. In the interests of cost containment, the Canadian government placed the lives of students and staff at risk for 130 years.

         The buildings were not only fire traps. They were incubators of disease. Rather than helping combat the tuberculosis crisis in the broader Aboriginal community, the poor condition of the schools served to intensify it. The 1906 annual report of Dr. Peter Bryce, the chief medical officer for Indian Affairs, observed that “the Indian  population of Canada has a mortality rate of more than double that of the whole population, and in some provinces, more than three times.”  Tuberculosis was the prevalent cause of death.”

 

As a result for Judge Brian Giesbrecht to say, as he did in his Winnipeg Sun article, that the cause of so many people dying in residential schools was the fault of a disease, and not the people in Canada who created and maintained that system that lead directly to great harm on indigenous children is not disingenuous, it is pathetic. And then to suggest as Judge Giesbrecht did, “We should take a look at the history,” is to demonstrate colossal condescension coupled with ignorance. Not a very good combination. As if he knows history that others don’t.

The fact is As Dr. Pryce reported to the government of Canada, the death rate of children in residential schools far exceeded that of the general population. Why is that? I think the answer is obvious—Canada just did not care about the indigenous children. They were not worth the expense of proper care.

Judge Giesbrecht in his recent article in the Winnipeg Sun, blamed tuberculosis for the deaths of indigenous children. He said, “Tuberculosis was a major killer, and it didn’t spare children.” That is true, but it hardly gets Canada off the hook. Why did tuberculosis sicken and kill so many more indigenous children than children in the general population? That is the  question that Judge Giesbrecht dodged.

The truth is that the high death rates were a direct result of Canadian policy.

The TRC report chastised the conditions in schools that led to a tuberculosis crisis:

The tuberculosis health crisis at the schools was part of a broader Aboriginal health crisis that was set in motion by colonial policies that separated Aboriginal people form their land their land, thereby disrupting their economies and their food supplies. This crisis was particularly intense on the Canadian prairies. Numerous federal government policies contributed to the undermining of Aboriginal health. During a period of starvation, rations were withheld from bands in an effort to force them to abandon the lands they had initially selected for their reserves. In making the Treaties, the government had promised to provide assistance to First Nations to make a transition from hunting to farming. This aid was slow in coming and inadequate on arrival. Restrictions in the Indian Act made it difficult for First Nations farmers to sell their produce or borrow money to invest in technology. Reserve land was often agriculturally unproductive. Reserve housing was poor and crowded, sanitation was inadequate, and access to clean water was limited.  Under these conditions, tuberculosis flourished. Those people it did not kill were often severely weakened and likely to succumb to measles, small pox, and other infectious diseases.

Canadians should also recall what we have learned from a professor of medicine at the University of Manitoba, James Daschuk who pointed out that the prairie of North America, before the arrival of Europeans was one of the best places in the world to live, from a health perspective. The ecology was astonishingly abundant, particularly when it came to bison. It has been estimated there were about 60 million or more bison on the plains before they were decimated after Europeans arrived. Indigenous people were shocked at how sickly Europeans were!

Everything depended on the food provided by bison. The calories provided by bison were astonishing. Some have considered it the miracle food. It was one of the greatest food resources on the planet, and the Indigenous people were the beneficiaries. Its ultimate loss was one of the world’s greatest ecological disasters ever! This was a major step on what Anthony Hall called the journey from ecocide to genocide.

As James Daschuk described it, “Studies of skeletons have shown that, in the mid-nineteenth century, peoples on the plains were perhaps the tallest and best-nourished population in the world.”] The Plains of North America supported one the world’s great civilizations, but because they were blinded by the bias of white supremacy, the Europeans failed to appreciate this. But things spiralled into decline after the First Nations of Canada made Treaties with the white supremacists of Canada.

In their home communities, the TRC reported, many students had been raised on food that their parents had hunted, fished, or harvested. “These meals were different from the European diets served at the schools. This change in diet added to the students’ sense of disorientation.” It wasn’t just that the food at the schools was bad, although it certainly was, it was so different from what the children were accustomed to that they suffered as a result. Bernard Catcheway reported to the TRC that “we had to eat all our food even though we didn’t like it. There were lots of times there I seen other students that threw up, and they were forced to eat their own, their own vomit.”

The schools were also places where the only thing that flourished were diseases like tuberculosis. A report from the National Association of Principals and Administrators of Indian Residences concluded,

“In the years that the Churches have been involved in the administration of the schools, there has been a steady deterioration in essential services. Year after year, complaints demands, and requests for improvements have, in the main, fallen upon deaf ears.

The Canadian government was responsible for the condition of those schools. The Canadian government let down the students there who had been ripped out of their homes, often without parental consent. Canadians cannot get away with their neglect by blaming it on disease. Canadians did everything they could to ensure that disease was rampant in the schools they insisted indigenous people attend.

Recently a respected former Manitoba Provincial Court judge, and acquaintance of mine, Judge Brian Giesbrecht, made a serious misstep.  I happen to know Judge Giesbrecht since we were both working as porters in the summer for the Canadian National Railway while we were attending University. We both went to Law School where he was a year ahead of me.

In an article in the Winnipeg Sun last week, Judge Giesbrecht severely criticized what he called a “firestorm” that resulted from the discovery of a mass gravesite where the remains of more than 200 people were discovered  in Kamloops on the school yard of the Indian Residential School. Many of the students there were from the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation. Some of the remains were of children as young as 3 years old. According to Judge Giesbrecht , “It’s also not clear that there was even anything sinister about the discovery.”

I would ask Judge Giesbrecht by what possible explanation that he could give, would this not be seen as sinister? Kelvin High School in Winnipeg is a school in Winnipeg that has been around for a long time. It was always largely populated by white students. What would happen if a mass gravesite were discovered there that contained the remains of more than 200 white children? I suspect there would be an unholy uproar demanding an explanation. Frankly I think the “firestorm” in Kamloops would be a modest flickering flame in comparison.

Judge Giesbrecht complained that the cost of the taking a look at all the possible grave sites in Canada would be “massively expensive.” Again if the families of the victims were white would it be so expensive? That is what the privileged always say about spending money for others. It is always too expensive. At the Kamloops residential school where this happened, the school authorities had not bothered to send bodies home to their families when children died. It was too expensive. Not only that, they often didn’t bother telling the families what happened. This is not an issue of cost. This is an issue of the privileged who just don’t care! They don’t see the pain of others.

Judge Giesbrecht also said this was just a matter of people willing to accept slanderous conspiracy theories about teachers and priests murdering students and secretly burying hundreds of children. First of all, no one to my knowledge  has suggested murder. People are concerned about neglect, lack of interest, and racial bias, not so much murder. No conspiracy theory is needed to be concerned when more than 200 unmarked graves were found. No conspiracy  theories are needed to raise alarms in such a case. After all how often do we find mass gravesites at white schools?

The belief that indigenous children were badly treated at such schools is not based on a conspiracy theory. It is based on the heroic uncontradicted testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the “TRC”) of hundreds of survivors from schools around the country. To suggest this did not happen is nothing short of willful blindness.

As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission  reported, “the number of students who died at Canada’s residential schools is not likely ever to be known in full. The most serious gap in information arises from the incompleteness of the documentary record. Many records have simply been destroyed.” More than 4000 deaths of children from residential schools have been documented, but the real number is believed to be much higher. As Manny Jules, a former chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation where this site was found, and a survivor of that school, said on CBC radio, “As soon as the deaths at a school like the one in Kamloops started to rise the schools stop counting.” [

After making an exhaustive review of the available evidence (and not some conspiracy theory) the TRC concluded as follows about conditions at many of these schools:

“the death rates for Aboriginal children in residential schools were far higher than those experienced by members of the general Canadian population… until the 1950s Aboriginal children in residential schools died at a far higher rate than school-aged children in the general population. It is only in the 1950s that the residential school death rates declined to a level comparable to the general school age population. As late as the 1941-45 period, the Named and Unnamed Combined residential school death rate was 4.9 times higher than the general death rate. In the 1960s, even though the residential school death rates were much lower than their historic highs, they were still double those of the general school-aged population.”

Judge Giesbrecht ignored all these facts, and then dismissed their suffering this way: “There are many forgotten cemeteries in Canada. It is far more likely that the deaths simply reflected the sad reality of life back then.” Yes undeniably life was hard back then, but why was it so much harder for aboriginal children than white children? That is that is the question that Judge Giesbrecht dodges.

I will continue my analysis of Judge Giesbrecht’ article  in my next post.