Residential School Excavation

[fjlip]

Sounds like GOOD intentions...

[Blaithin]

Sounds like GOOD intentions...

Because everyone wants to, and should be, Christians?

Okay, Tom.

Can only imagine the outcry if kids were taken from farms and sent to boarding schools to get them to be Liberals and denounce farming as integral.

[jazz]

They were set up to remove the culture which fits as cultural genocide.

The goal wasn’t to exterminate the Natives, the goal was to make them Christians and stop them from fighting the Europeans.

Thats doesnt exactly fit either, the fastest way to remove culture is to remove the people by killing them and the army of the day easily could have accomplished that long before.

Maybe, just maybe, the simplest answer is the right one. That a ham fisted attempt at assimilation and integration was made but it went off the rails like every other govt program eventually does creating widespread neglect and abuse.

And by your definition, making any new immigrants learn and use english or french and have education credentials in our country, live by our laws and general customs is cultural genocide on a daily basis.

[Blaithin]

Thats doesnt exactly fit either, the fastest way to remove culture is to remove the people by killing them and the army of the day easily could have accomplished that long before.

Maybe, just maybe, the simplest answer is the right one. That a ham fisted attempt at assimilation and integration was made but it went off the rails like every other govt program eventually does creating widespread neglect and abuse.

And by your definition, making any new immigrants learn and use english or french and have education credentials in our country, live by our laws and general customs is cultural genocide on a daily basis.

No, making them learn new skills or languages isn’t cultural genocide. Not allowing them to use their previous language is.

You exterminate a people by killing them all. The Church wanted the people. They needed to save their souls. Killing them didn’t save the souls.

All assimilation is ham fisted. No conquered nation in history was assimilated nicely. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t fit as a genocide.

[littledoggie]

Take a look around. Every ethnic group is ghettoized. It's the Laurentian way.

[blackpowder]

Dictionary defines genocide as murder.
The term cultural genocide is analogous.
Beliefs of cultural and racial superiority commonplace in the past. We are human, it still exists somewhere.
It happened. It was wrong.
But as far as my limited knowledge goes, only certain oppressed/oppressor groups around the world are stuck in the time warp we are.
I remember the impression left watching the '78 TV series Holocaust on our black and white set.
The hypervigilant use of labels, all or none word manipulation and extreme, rigid position stance by the Chucks will always set off alarm bells for me.

[jazz]

Dictionary defines genocide as murder.
The term cultural genocide is analogous.

By conflating those two, you really dilute the meaning. By that defintion, when the romans invaded gaul it was cultural genocide. Same as the welsh, the scots, the french etc.

Basically every country and group of people on the planet have been on both ends of the issue. Invaders and invaded.

What happpened when people crossed over the bering straight 1,000 years after the first batch. Was that all harmony and kumbya. No culture stays stagnant and one crossing over 1,000 years later would be very different. Which culture won that battle and the dozen migrations that happened afterwards.

Cultures have been clashing for 20,000 yrs on this planet. The usual method was to kill the men and breed the women, just like Ghengis did.

[blackpowder]

Indeed. And it will happen again. Keep your powder dry.
But perhaps the goal should be to listen to the better angels of our nature.

[Blaithin]

Cultures clashing isn’t always on par with cultural genocide.

Still, cultural genocide has been happening for eons. It’s hardly new since North America was “discovered”. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth acknowledging that it did happen.

But acknowledging it shouldn’t mean apologizing in perpetuity or taking the blame. That would be like the current English being blamed for the Scottish clearances or all Italians constantly apologizing for Rome.

It’s happened. Move forward.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

They were set up to remove the culture which fits as cultural genocide.

The goal wasn’t to exterminate the Natives, the goal was to make them Christians and stop them from fighting the Europeans.

And viewed through the lens of 2023, that is horrific. But by the standards of the day, that was an incredibly generous offer compared to any of these one-sided interactions throughout history, where extermination would have been the outcome if not the explicit goal.