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Good finds. Reading those articles seems to indicate that the entire narrative is wrong and this story is one part bigotry against Catholics and one part they are lying to use because that’s what they do.
I wouldn't say the entire narrative is wrong -- regardless of the laws on the books, there was definitely considerable coercion involved in 'encouraging' attendance -- this spin is similar in nature to how the authors of COVID restrictions said things like "nobody's forcing anyone to be vaccinated, we are just stopping them from eating out/leaving the country/etc if they don't".
What is quite pernicious (and I believe originates with the current government) is the spin towards blaming the church (churches actually -- many of the schools were run by protestant denominations, and at least some by non-religious entities) for the issues.
Whoever was running a given school was acting as an agent of the Canadian government -- so that fault for individual behaviour like molestation etc lies with the individuals involved, and the systemic issues (coercion, underfunding, 'cultural assimilation) with the sitting governments. Government has been trying to downplay this since forever, but have suddenly succeeded due to the surge in people who somehow didn't learn about this in elementary school (starting in the late 70s) and think they have discovered some new thing. (which happens to be the government narrative, and has only tenuous relations with the truth) Plus the general propensity for hating Catholics in the water these days I guess.
The Catholics were known to sometimes cover up instances of molestation and other misbehaviour by moving the offenders around and not reporting to authorities -- like many aspects of the story this is bad enough in itself! Yet someone there is the need to invent other things which would be even worse if they were true, but weaken the case IMO considering that they are not.
I guess Id say the systemic issues was just being poor. Which isn’t something your guilty of. It’s not like the Canadian government had unlimited resources. And it sounds like the schools outperformed alternative Options.
Eh, it shades towards Copenhagen Ethics I suppose, but "you touch it you own it" is still pretty valid in this situation. Conditions on reserves (govt related!) and in generally remote areas (not so much) were not great in the late 19th/early 20th centuries -- but if you want to take people away from their homes the bar should be pretty high to ensure that the results are much much better than just leaving them alone. Which very clearly seems not to be the case -- there's the odd satisfied 'customer' of the residential school system out there, but it's legitimately unusual. And normally the super-succesful FN people that you see in business/law/politics had their education in regular mixed day-schools, whether due to not living on the reserve at all or being in the sweet spot of 'reserve too small for its own school' and 'not too far away from regular towns' where it made the most sense for them to go to school with everyone else.
I guess I reject Copenhagen ethics. That’s basically saying we should only build gated communities because then we never interact with the lower class and can’t be blamed for it. Comes up a lot with trade. Like Nike getting yelled at for using cheap labor. Yet those people are better off because the factory is there.
So I disagree the bar needs to be very high. Improving the world should just be improving the world. 21st century mostly leftist ideology leads to worse outcomes.
My point is that the evidence is slim that residential schools succeeded at improving the world -- at best they made "about as bad but in different ways" and many of the people who went there will tell you that it made their lives much much worse.
So my interpretation of Copenhagen Ethics is that it vilifies making the world somewhat better on the basis that you should have made it perfect (see Mother Theresa) -- this seems like a different shade in that the world was made somewhat worse (or at best equally bad) -- so the people responsible for this should be, um, responsible?
EDIT: To be clear, I don't say this from a "leftist ideology" POV -- more like a "people should stay the fuck away from other people's kids as a general rule" one -- which is pretty right wing these days I think?
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