Kimberley Murray was appointed to her role in June 2022, a year after Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation potentially uncovered 215 unmarked graves at the site of Kamloops Indian Residential School.
Speaking of those unmarked graves in Kamloops any idea when they are going to dig them up. It’s a crime scene right? Of course, the suspicion is they’ll dig the area up and find nothing. There is a growing consensus that these Kamloops graves which made sensational headlines in 2021 is nothing but a hoax. In fact the whole residential school question is starting to feel like a an endless grift. The Truth and Reconciliation commission devoted a whole volume to unmarked graves and found the vast majority of the 4,000 graves were victims of tuberculosis and other diseases which were rampant at the time. Nothing sinister at all.
The notion that the unmarked graves are a "hoax" is based on misreporting in a very small percentage of news articles that they were "mass graves," rather than "unmarked graves," which are being used by certain individuals in the Catholic Church and right-wing media to cast doubt upon there being any unmarked graves.
Many of these children died of TB, which, in the case of Blue Quills IRS, was the result of them being served unpasteurized raw cow's milk to drink.
The fact that most children died from disease isn't in dispute. But if you look at the conditions at the schools in question and the wildly disproportionate rates of TB there, it becomes clear that it was the product, at best, of severe negligence.
In the 1930s and '40s, TB death rates in residential schools were 8,000 per 100,000 children, compared to 700 per 100,000 on reserves.
In 1907, upon visiting some of the schools, chief medical officer of the Department of Indian Affairs Peter Henderson Bryce noted that it was "almost as if the prime conditions for the outbreak of epidemics had been deliberately created." He called for improvements in the schools' infrastructure and children's diets, but was ignored and prevented from doing further research.
By 1922, he wrote "this trail of disease and death has gone on almost unchecked by any serious efforts on the part of the Department of Indian Affairs."
8,000 per 100,000 children? Where do these numbers come from? The Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated the number to be around 4,000 as I recall, the majority dying from TB in the late 19th century and early 20th, the numbers afterwards falling dramatically with the introduction of antibiotics.
There is a lot of confusion about the residential schools. People have this idea they were imposed on the native populations to wipe out indigenous culture. They were part of the treaty obligations. The treaty chiefs, recognizing that their nomadic way of life was gone forever, wanted these schools so that the younger generation can better assimilate into the modern world.
Speaking of those unmarked graves in Kamloops any idea when they are going to dig them up. It’s a crime scene right? Of course, the suspicion is they’ll dig the area up and find nothing. There is a growing consensus that these Kamloops graves which made sensational headlines in 2021 is nothing but a hoax. In fact the whole residential school question is starting to feel like a an endless grift. The Truth and Reconciliation commission devoted a whole volume to unmarked graves and found the vast majority of the 4,000 graves were victims of tuberculosis and other diseases which were rampant at the time. Nothing sinister at all.
The notion that the unmarked graves are a "hoax" is based on misreporting in a very small percentage of news articles that they were "mass graves," rather than "unmarked graves," which are being used by certain individuals in the Catholic Church and right-wing media to cast doubt upon there being any unmarked graves.
Although I will note that suspected mass graves have been found at the former site of Blue Quills IRS: https://www.albertanativenews.com/up-to-179-remains-could-be-in-saddle-lake-mass-grave/.
Many of these children died of TB, which, in the case of Blue Quills IRS, was the result of them being served unpasteurized raw cow's milk to drink.
The fact that most children died from disease isn't in dispute. But if you look at the conditions at the schools in question and the wildly disproportionate rates of TB there, it becomes clear that it was the product, at best, of severe negligence.
In the 1930s and '40s, TB death rates in residential schools were 8,000 per 100,000 children, compared to 700 per 100,000 on reserves.
In 1907, upon visiting some of the schools, chief medical officer of the Department of Indian Affairs Peter Henderson Bryce noted that it was "almost as if the prime conditions for the outbreak of epidemics had been deliberately created." He called for improvements in the schools' infrastructure and children's diets, but was ignored and prevented from doing further research.
By 1922, he wrote "this trail of disease and death has gone on almost unchecked by any serious efforts on the part of the Department of Indian Affairs."
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/researchers-say-that-tb-at-residential-schools-was-no-accident-1.5513755.
8,000 per 100,000 children? Where do these numbers come from? The Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated the number to be around 4,000 as I recall, the majority dying from TB in the late 19th century and early 20th, the numbers afterwards falling dramatically with the introduction of antibiotics.
There is a lot of confusion about the residential schools. People have this idea they were imposed on the native populations to wipe out indigenous culture. They were part of the treaty obligations. The treaty chiefs, recognizing that their nomadic way of life was gone forever, wanted these schools so that the younger generation can better assimilate into the modern world.