Much of the content of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (TRC) multi-volume Report is based on allegations of abuse made by 6,500 to 7,000 former Indian Residential School (IRS) students who told their stories during the Commission’s deliberations across Canada.
These stories have always been accepted as absolutely true, presumably based on the assertion that, unlike all other human beings, indigenous people never exaggerate, distort, or prevaricate even when there are material and other incentives for them to do so.
Moreover, their testimonies has never been carefully examined even though they were given both publicly and privately (“in camera”) with no collaboration or other supporting evidence, including naming those who criminally assaulted them. This was because such admissions were prohibited by the terms of reference governing the TRC unless these individuals has already been convicted by a court of law.
In short, the rules of Western natural justice never applied to the TRC which was precluded from acting as a legal tribunal based on the provisions of Schedule “N” of the IRS Settlement Agreement.
The most telling feature that something was amiss besides the recollections of TRC story tellers told decades after the fact is that all former IRS students are habitually referred to as “Survivors” — a word almost always capitalized — including the thousands who would vehemently reject this term to describe their joyful and productive school experience.
More worrying still, this misuse of the survivor label is a deliberate and defamatory misappropriation of the Holocaust survivor designation to describe the thousands of people, mainly European Jews, who were physically persecuted by the Nazis or their collaborators in ghettos, concentration camps, and labor brigades, barely escaping physical execution in the process.
Based on these well known facts about authentic genocide survivors, calling former IRS students “Survivors” is a monumentally libelous assertion not the least because there is not a single proven case of an IRS student murdered by a staff member while attending one of these boarding schools.
This does not deny that orphans or children who were abused or neglected in their homes were obliged to attend a residential school for social welfare reasons or that harsh physical and other abuse sometimes took place at some schools during some historical periods — just as this sometimes also occurred in other schools across Canada during the same period — or that a handful of staff, mainly non-clerical, were not charged, convicted, and imprisoned for sexually exploiting the children under their protection, a heinous crime to be sure.
Selected excerpts from a December 28 CBC report of one such “survivor,” Randy Fred, is documented below the paywall.
It begins with the assertion that “Randy Fred was five years old when his parents were told they'd go to jail if he didn't go to residential school,” a declaration suggesting the rest of the piece is also full of falsehoods. This is because children were not voluntarily allowed to attend these schools until the age of six, unless they were orphans or the product of dysfunctional homes.
Yes, there was sexual assault at some IRSs — mainly student-on-student — and many abusers were charged, convicted, and punished. In this case it was "… dormitory supervisor Arthur Henry Plint, who was ultimately convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison, twice, for the decades of sexual abuse he committed against children at residential school.”
Accordingly, justice was done in this case, as in dozens of others.
Being physically forced to go to an IRS (when no day school was locally available) even after 1920 when Status Indian education became mandatory was extremely rare. The comment, "That fall, his parents dropped him off at the Alberni Indian Residential School on Vancouver Island, much to his surprise” suggests his attendance was voluntary and that he was at least six years old.
Yes, students were often bathed and deloused upon school arrival to prevent the spread of lice to other children. Their often filthy clothing was also burned for the same reason.
That he "endur[ed] starvation, illness, humiliation” is both unproven and contradicted by the testimonies of students at other schools and in Nina Green’s references to the Catholic nuns’ Chronicles found here in her groundbreaking Indian Residential School Records site. Conversely, many children were sent to the schools to escape starvation, illness, disease, neglect, and abuse at home.
Even today, most victims of sexual assault never receive any civil compensation, let alone nearly the $100,000 that Randy Fred was given.
Perhaps the most egregious omission in this piece is the lack of acknowledgment that his school experience gave Mr. Fred the education that allowed him to become a successful book publisher.
Readers also need to be advised that I have recently purchased a subscription to Medium, an open platform where over 100 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. I hope this will increase my readership.
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