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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30634 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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You don't think that the conditions on reserves are the responsibility of the Federal government, or you don't think that they were bad, or what?

How familiar are you with Canadian history?

I find implausible and frankly preposterous the notion that the authority of the federal government and the Church in Canada over local aborigines resulted in an increase of average child mortality among that population. The idea that the average aborigine child had a higher chance of surviving into adulthood before the evil colonizers showed up is simply ludicrous.

What are you talking about? Do you think that they were hopping in a time machine to get to their "home" in the 1860s when they were attending school in the 1960s?

Of course the conditions improved in a hundred years. You've correctly identified that it's simply ludicrous to deny that, but I'm not sure why you felt it was relevant.

In fact, let's imagine an alternate history: Colonization, settlement, and the Treaties happen like normal, but then the native population gets locked in and experiences zero changes in welfare/wealth/happiness/etc. from the pre-contact baseline. Would you think "Wow, the Federal Government is doing a great job. We haven't worsened their nasty, brutish, and short lives at all!"?

Maintaining the status quo doesn't meet my standards, and neither do the (frankly huge) improvements we have done in reality. This goes double when you cast your eye back a few decades.

According to these accusations (to the extent they can even be called that), in which timeframe were these mass murders of Native children committed?

Nevermind, I've fallen for the narrative. Death rates at residential schools reached acceptable mortality rates by 1949 (Source Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials (PDF), p17, from this website).

Honestly this is what perplexes me the most about indigenous culture war. I feel like one side reads the horrors of colonialism, but then doesn't engage with the horrors of general pre-modern human life.

Why would I engage with the horrors of pre-modern life? Residential schools were only shutting down around the 1960s, so it's appropriate to judge them based on contemporary standards.

Were the 1960s Residential Schools subject to outbreaks of Cholera in a literal frontier?

Nevermind, I've fallen for the narrative. Death rates at residential schools reached acceptable mortality rates by 1949 (Source Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials (PDF), p17, from this website).

Because the ones being shut down around the 1960's weren't doing any of the things that are trotted out to show how horrible residential schools were.

You're right, I've fallen for the narrative. Death rates at residential schools reached acceptable mortality rates by 1949 (Source Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials (PDF), p17, from this website).

I assume that is due to ignorance, as there is no Disney movie with the horrors of pre-colonization life, it must have been rainbows and flowers and all that noble savage jazz.

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