It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Canada needs to be as welcoming to Afghan refugees as it is to Ukrainians
Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Fury personally greets Angelika, the first Ukrainian refugee off the plane at St. John’s, NL, on May 9, 2022.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Greg Locke
THE CONVERSATION Published: May 25, 2022
“When we talk about systemic racism, we’re not talking about what the government intended; we’re looking at outcomes — and the outcomes speak for themselves,” says Sharry Aiken, a law professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
Since Afghanistan was forcibly returned to Taliban rule nine months ago, Canada has approved only 13,000 Afghan refugee applications for immigration.
The processes for Afghan and Ukrainian refugees are different and operate at different speeds because the political climates of their respective countries are different, says Rémi Larivière, a media relations adviser at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).
But Anna Triandafyllidou, a professor and Canada Excellence Research Chair at Toronto Metropolitan University, says that’s not the entire story. She says that seeing such disparate treatment of Ukrainians compared with other refugees reflects unfairness in our immigration process — treatment that others say may result from systemic racism and pressure from diasporas.
An Afghan refugee stands outside the Mississauga, Ont., hotel where he and his family stayed when arriving from Afghanistan in October 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Eduardo Lima
Inequity has many root causes
When asked why Canada offers one process for Ukrainians and another for Afghans, “we really don’t have an answer,” says Usha George, director of the Toronto Metropolitan Centre for Immigration and Settlement.
Aiken says the fact that Afghans are racialized but Ukrainians are not may play a role in this disparity. However, George says there’s more nuance to this: “It’s easy to say that it’s just racism but that’s an oversimplification.” George says that over time, the Canadian public has lost sensitivity to the human suffering going on in Afghanistan. By contrast, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, without regard to treaties or human rights, “strikes people at the very core of their being” — giving Canada no choice but to act. Then there’s political pressure from the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, which George says is also a factor. In Canada, there are 1.3 million people of Ukrainian descent, but only 84,000 of Afghan origin, according to the 2016 census.
Vastly different immigration experiences
For Olga Charnetska, a 49-year-old event company owner in Kyiv, the CUAET process has been relatively quick.
Within weeks of applying for emergency travel authorization for her husband and two younger children, they were approved on May 6. Charnetska and her family flew to Toronto on May 18, where they were met by her two older daughters who already live here.
Larivière explains that CUAET “is not a refugee program.” Instead, it uses an existing temporary-resident visa process to quickly bring as many Ukrainians as possible to Canada. Their stay is meant to be temporary while the situation in Ukraine unfolds, and then they return home. However, Larivière’s written statement does not explain why the same process couldn’t be used for Afghans instead of the current refugee process, which leaves many to suffer in limbo.
Recently caught in that limbo is Najib Zafar, who was an interpreter for the Canadian Forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
For seven months, Zafar and his family hid from the Taliban in Afghanistan as they waited for Canadian documents to facilitate their escape to Pakistan.
Former Afghanistan interpreters protest on Parliament Hill in March 2022. The group who helped the Canadian military accused the federal government of lying to them about bringing their family members to Canada. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
When the family finally was able to leave, “it took nine hours of inch-by-inch walking and pushing to reach the border,” says Zafar.
“It was too hot and too loud. My wife was sick. The Taliban knew that we had worked for foreigners and that we were fleeing, so they treated us with a great degree of cruelty,” he says. “They would beat anyone — whether a kid, an adult or elderly.”
Zafar and his family were kept waiting an additional two months in Islamabad before the Canadian government finally flew them to Calgary on April 5, 2022. But he considers himself among the fortunate.
“There are people who have been waiting for five months in Pakistan now. No one cares. No health care is provided there,” he says.
Triandafyllidou says that Afghans are going through “nine degrees of security scrutiny” compared with Ukrainians, slowing down their application process.
Also notable is the lack of a limit to the number of applicants who can be approved under the CUAET program, compared with the government’s goal of admitting 40,000 Afghan refugees. Triandafyllidou says this is the first time Canada has not capped an immigration program for refugees.
“The thinking is that this will be a group that will be easily absorbed into Canadian society,” she says.
However, not all differences in the two programs work to Ukrainians’ advantage. Triandafyllidou explains that Afghan refugees resettle as family units and can later add on other family members from abroad to their original applications, facilitating reunification in Canada.
In contrast, most Ukrainians coming to Canada are women, children and older people who left behind male relatives aged 18 to 60, who cannot leave Ukraine due to mandatory conscription. These immigrants may have to return to Ukraine if they want a family reunion.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau playfully reaches for 20-month-old Haris Sadaat’s sucker as he meets with families who have resettled from Afghanistan in Hamilton, Ont., on May 6, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Bridging the gap
When it comes to bridging the gap between how we treat different groups of refugees, Triandafyllidou suggests: “Maybe what we should do is be more generous towards Afghans. Two wrongs are not going to make one right.”
George says the government should aim to be proactive to refugee crises rather than just reacting to political pressure and the visibility of an issue. “There is no use of previous lessons and experiences to create a better system,” she says.
In the end, Zafar says, Afghans just want to be treated fairly. “We’re also humans and deserve equal treatment,” he says.
“I know there’s a war in Ukraine. [But] in Afghanistan, people are forcibly disappeared without being reported. No one can raise their voice.”
Authors
Anthony Fong Global Journalism Fellow, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto
Zamir Saar Dalla Lana Fellow in Global Journalism, University of Toronto
For a few tokens, this vending machine aims to help undo centuries of colonial narratives
"Colonialism is someone else telling the story, but what they're going to see is someone who is First Nation telling the story."
Colin Butler - CBC
Avending machine might seem like an unexpected item to undo centuries of colonialism, but this isn't any old vending machine. It still spits out goodies — but not the goodies you're used to.
The Indigenous books from the vending machine are "culturally relevant" for children, said Sheree Plain, the Akwe:Go program co-ordinator at the N'Amerind Friendship Centre in London, Ont.
Plain works with Indigenous children between ages seven and 12. She helps them keep their cultural traditions alive while living in the city and away from their community.
The books are free. For a couple of brass tokens, which the friendship centre gives out, the youngsters can unlock a personal window into their own culture — one unfettered by non-Indigenous voices — something Plain said she never had growing up. 8-year-old inspired by dispensed books
"When you don't have that as a child, you almost feel like you don't belong," she said. "It makes us seen. It makes our kids seen. I think I'm going to cry thinking about it."
Sheree Plain, the Akwe:Go program co-ordinator at the N'Amerind London Friendship Centre, says the books give kids a window into their own culture that she never had growing up.
It's an emotional moment for the grownups and kids alike.
Eight-year-old Kaida Lynn Aquash was the machine's first customer, and from the moment she deposited her "bookworm" tokens, she felt a jolt of anticipation.
"I jumped because I haven't used a vending machine in a while."
With time, she'll become better acquainted with the machine, the thump of the books as they're dispensed and the stories they tell — her stories.
"You can imagine lots of things. You can make your own books. You can have dreams," the youngster said.
"I can learn our language from these books and I feel like it inspires me, and I love it." Putting tokens in machine a symbolic gesture
It's music to the ears of Brian Warren, the founder and director of Start2Finish, a charity that helps foster the well-being of children through fitness and education.
Brian Warren is executive director and founder of Start2Finish, a Canadian charity that helps foster children's well-being through fitness and education. He's holding one of the brass tokens used to buy books from the vending machine.
"Kids love tokens and getting things," he said. "Something popping out — what we're saying is, 'Literacy is going to be the same thing.' They're going to look and read them in culturally relevant terms.
"Colonialism is someone else telling the story, but what they're going to see is someone who is First Nation telling the story."
Warren said he hopes the vending machine helps connect the kids with their own culture in ways their parents never had, and that by inserting tokens into the machine, they understand a symbolic gesture of investing in their own culture to gain knowledge.
"Once you see yourself, you can believe it too. This is where we say, 'Yes, you have a strong connection to learning and achievement.'
"Once we help them learn to read, we have started them on the path to a brighter future."
‘Every child matters’: One year after the unmarked graves of 215 Indigenous children were found in Kamloops
People march in Ottawa during a rally to demand an independent investigation into Canada’s crimes against Indigenous Peoples, including those at Indian Residential Schools on July 31, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
THE CONVERSATION Published: May 26, 2022
Editor’s note: This article contains details that some readers may find distressing
“Every child matters” has become a rallying cry, adorning banners, orange shirts, decals and memorials to the Indigenous children who died at or went missing from Indian Residential Schools and similar institutions.
Indigenous communities have used these words to recognize the thousands of Indigenous children who were taken, never to return.
Despite this truth being something communities knew for decades, it took the use of scientific methods to locate potential unmarked graves of children buried near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School to garner the attention of non-Indigenous people, both in Canada and globally.
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In the first rush of media coverage and public outrage, governments were quick to commit millions of dollars worth of funding for communities to undertake searches around the sites of former Indian Residential Schools.
As someone who has worked with Indigenous communities for several years to help locate potential unmarked graves, it is very important to me that people to understand the difficult journey survivors and communities must take in order to find justice and healing.
Who is responsible for their deaths?
Finding the graves of children who died at Indian Residential Schools is a challenging task. Information exists in archives about the deaths of children, which has contributed to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation’s Memorial Register. As of May 24, 2022, the register has 4,130 confirmed names of children who died while at Indian Residential Schools.
People listen as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a ceremony to mark the one-year anniversary of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc announcement on May 23, 2022.
The questions that haunt families and communities are: Where are their children buried, and who is responsible for their deaths? Ground penetrating radar
One year after the announcement, Indigenous communities across the country are working to find the specific locations where children may be buried.
At best, ground-penetrating radar can find anomalies in the ground that look grave shaped, based on interpretations of results from scans. In some cases, such as in unmarked sections of historic cemeteries, these are likely to be graves. In other cases it is less clear. In all cases, further investigation is warranted. And the nature of that investigation will have to be decided by the communities whose children were forced to attend that school.
A child touches an orange flag, representing children who died while attending Indian Residential Schools in Canada, placed in the grass at Major’s Hill Park in Ottawa on July 1, 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
The technical results of ground-penetrating radar surveys have become vital, but they are not the first step, nor the last, in the search for justice. Communities are working to find their lost children and hold those who were responsible for the horrors of Indian Residential School accountable, but they need certain supports to be able to do so.
There needs to be ongoing funding and access to expertise in a co-ordinated manner to ensure families and communities get the answers they deserve.
There are likely thousands of graves at former Indian Residential Schools across the country, but we don’t yet have enough information to know where most of them are located — some are likely lost forever.
As the number of anomalies reported increases over the months and years to come, we can’t forget that every child matters. Each grave represents a beloved member of a family who was torn away from their community. Each grave represents a story of a child stolen. Every family that lost their children to this genocide deserves answers. Reconciliation isn’t possible without truth and we must not turn away from the truth. Every child matters.
If you are an Indian Residential School survivor, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419.
Author
Kisha Supernant Director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology, University of Alberta
Kamloops Woke Up the World to the Subject of Indian Boarding Schools
Kamploops Indian Boarding School (Photo: Change.Org)
BY LEVI RICKERT MAY 27, 2022
Opinion. A year ago, as we headed into Memorial Day weekend, news broke from British Columbia of the discovery of 215 remains of innocent school children at the Kamloops Industrial Residential School.
For those of us in Indian Country, the disclosure was a reminder of what most of us already knew for decades about Indian boarding schools, as they were known in the United States.
We knew for decades about the stories of the physical, emotional and sexual abuse suffered by many of the children who attended these schools. We knew that these children were beaten if they tried to speak their tribal languages. We knew that Native students died at these boarding schools. We knew that hundreds of graves, some unmarked, existed at these Indian boarding schools.
We knew that the children who attended Indian boarding schools were part of a federal policy that sought to assimilate Native American children under the mantra “Kill the Indian, save the man.”
Even though we knew of these gross atrocities committed against our ancestors and boarding school survivors, most non-Natives had very little or no knowledge of this federal policy up until late last May.
Kamloops woke up the world to the atrocities committed against Native children.
Within three weeks of the Kamloops’ announcement, U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland established the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to investigate and shed light on this dark era of cultural genocide.
Kamloops caught the attention of the national and international media. On an ongoing basis, there is so much news to be covered that large media outlets tend to take a “shiny object” approach to news. They cover stories for a short duration of time, then move on to the next new thing. The story of the children’s deaths at Kamloops became a shiny object for much of the mainstream media.
Our editorial team at Native News Online decided that as a leading national Native American publication, we would continue to cover Indian boarding schools when the subject was no longer the shiny object to the non-Native media.
We knew we had to cover various aspects of Indian boarding schools from the Native perspective. We decided we would write the articles that needed to be told about boarding schools. The scenario played out over the past year, culminating with the release of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report on May 11, 2022.
Since the Kamloops’ story broke, Native News Online has published nearly 100 articles about Indian boarding schools. In addition, we hosted several live streams to examine the topic in depth.
In a year of coverage, two stories stick out in my mind. The first article is Surviving Kuper Island Residential School: ‘I Hear Little Children Screaming in My Head’, written by Andrew Kennard, an Drake University intern. The article is about Eddie Charlie who provided vivid recollections of his time attending the Kuper Island Residential school that was located near Chemainus, British Columbia.
Charlie told of the physical beatings and even starvation. He recounted how children disappeared. Years later, he would learn over 200 children were buried at the Kuper Island Residential School. Charlie’s experiences at Kuper Island led him to attempt suicide. His recollections led our editorial staff to issue a warning to our readers due to its content.
The second article, entitled The Remains of 10 Children at the Carlisle Indian Boarding School are Returning Home, written by our senior reporter Jenna Kunze, tells the story of the repatriation of 10 children who died at the well-known boarding school located in Pennsylvania.
The story describes the long rigorous process involved having the bodies of the students exhumed and returned to their tribal communities.
As we commemorate the first year since Kamloops’ announcement, Kunze, who has been reporting from the Rosebud Indian Reservation this past week, recounts how covering the Indian boarding schools has impacted her.
“Listening to the stories of survivors, reading federal documents, and visiting Carlisle Industrial School in Pennsylvania and the former St. Francis Mission in South Dakota has changed the core of my entire understanding of reporting on Indian Country: that Indian Boarding School impacted its survivors on a genetic level, and they passed that trauma down to their children. But along with trauma, survivors also passed down resilience,” Kunze told me.
Kamloops certainly woke up the world to the subject of Indian boarding schools. The announcement provided a new spotlight on what many of us already knew, but often didn’t talk about. Now, the conversation has started and is growing louder and more insistent. More and more Native people are talking about the intergenerational impact of boarding schools on their families and their communities. And, for the first time, many non-Natives are learning about this dark period in our nation’s history.
After a year of closely covering Indian boarding schools, we are not stopping. Native News Online remains committed to providing coverage of this important issue in a way that informs, inspires and uplifts. We hope you'll join us
About The Author Levi Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) is the founder, publisher and editor of Native News Online. Rickert was awarded Best Column 2021 Native Media Award for the print/online category by the Native American Journalists Association. He serves on the advisory board of the Multicultural Media Correspondents Association. He can be reached at levi@nativenewsonline.net.
INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS: After Kamloops, a Year of Reckoning and Initial Steps Toward Reconciliation
BY JENNA KUNZE
WARNING: This story has details about boarding schools, assimilation and trauma. If you are feeling triggered or unsafe, here is a list of resources for trauma responses from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
It's been a year since the news first broke about an unmarked gravesite holding the bodies of more than 200 Indigenous children who had attended a former residential school in Canada. The discovery at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia made international headlines, shining a spotlight on a dark era of forced assimilation of Indigenous children by the federal governments of Canada and the United States, with help from several Christian denominations and churches.
As communities around the world processed the news about Kamloops, many non-Indigenous leaders — including the Canadian Prime Minister and Pope Francis — expressed their shock. For most Indigenous people throughout North America, the overriding feelings were sadness and anger, but not shock.
“Absolutely not shock,” one Native leader told us. “We’ve known about this."
The assimilation and, some would say, genoicide of Native children at boarding schools may not have been a secret to Indigenous families, but it also wasn’t something that was openly discussed in many Native homes. That changed in a matter of days after the Kamloops story rocketed around the globe.
Beginning last May, Native News Online has committed its newsroom to covering Indian boarding schools and their intergenerational impacts on Native families and communities. Over the past year, we’ve produced nearly 100 stories about Indian boarding schools, traveled to former boarding school locations, and interviewed survivors and their descendants, as well as tribal leaders, boarding school researchers and government officials studying this dark period of assimilating Native children.
Since the news of Kamloops first broke, we’ve seen and reported on the remains of Indigenous children buried at former boarding schools being returned to their ancestral homes. We’ve written about the discovery of additional gravesites at other boarding schools. We witnessed Pope Francis attempting to apologize to Indigenous people for the Catholic Church’s role in the boarding school era. We tracked legislative efforts to create a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding Schools. And we’ve watched the U.S. government take a remarkable step forward as it produced an investigative report on Indian boarding school history and admitted, for the first time, its twin-policy goal of assimilating Native youth while dispossessing their families of their land.
Native News has compiled a timeline of events below to recognize the progress and momentum Native peoples have spearheaded to truth telling, and to highlight the healing work that remains in the wake of a centuries old policy built on the words of Henry Pratt, who infamously said the goal of Indian Boarding Schools was to “kill the Indian, save the man.
A memorial honoring the 215 children whose remains were found on the former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery. (Photo credit: GoToVan)
May 2021
On May 27, 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation in British Columbia’s southern interior announced it had found unmarked gravesites holding the remains of at least 215 children — some as young as three-years old — on the former property of the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The tribe hired a specialist in ground-penetrating radar to find the gravesite during a site survey on its property.
While non-Natives across the world expressed shock and horror, Indigenous peoples said the findings confirmed what they’d long known.
“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify,” Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir said at the time. “To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths.”
In both Canada and the United States, Native people demanded accountability even as they mourned, holding memorials and marches to bring visibility to the legacy of boarding schools on both sides of the border.
Deb Haaland at NCAI in June 2021 (Screenshot)
June 2021
Less than a month later, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo), the first-ever Native American to lead a cabinet department within the United States government, announced the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative.The initiative’s work was, in part, to investigate the work of Haaland’s predecessors at the Interior Department, which had been tasked with assimilating and eradicating Native peoples, beginning in the mid 1800s.
“For more than a century, the Interior Department was responsible for operating the Indian boarding schools across the United States and its territories,” Haaland said in an address during the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) 2021 Mid Year Conference. “We are therefore uniquely positioned to assist in the effort to recover the dark history of these institutions that have haunted our families for too long.”
The new initiative, prompted by Kamloops, directed Interior Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland and his team to comb through government records with a goal of identifying how many boarding school facilities the federal government ran or paid for, how many potential burial sites exist near the schools, and the identity of the children who were taken to the schools.
On June 5, after a meeting with two Canadian Cardinals the day before, Pope Francis spoke to a congregation in his typical Sunday morning address at Saint Peter’s Square in Vatican City. The Pope expressed “sorrow” “about the shocking discovery,” according to a translation of his prepared statement, though he offered no official apology for the role the Catholic Church played in the displacement of an estimated 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children.
Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians, said that, in order to apologize for something, you must first know what you’re being held accountable for.
“While we seek an apology for this instance, until we do a complete fact finding of every instance, every life that was murdered, an apology is going to be incomplete,” Sharp told Native News Online.
The same month, the Cowessess First Nation announced the discovery of as many as 751 unmarked graves at the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.
Carlisle Cemetery (Photo: Jenna Kunze)
July 2021
In July, the United States Army—which inherited and controls the grounds of the country’s first off-reservation Indian boarding school, called Carlisle Indian Industrial School—completed the exhumation of several Native children buried at Carlisle. These Native children died there and were never returned home to their families.
The Army, compelled by one tribal member's insistence in 2017, exhumed and returned the remains of nine Rosebud Lakota Oyate youth to their next of kin, more than 140 years after they left home.
During Carlisle’s four-decade history, roughly 7,800 Native children from nearly every tribal nation across the country were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to the Pennsylvania boarding school as part of the U.S. government’s assimilationist agenda, according to records from the Cumberland Valley Historical Society.
Today, 173 children still remain buried in the school’s former cemetery—the majority of which have records with their names and tribal affiliations. Following the return to Rosebud Lakota Oyate last year, the Army announced it would attempt to return each of the remaining children to their homelands, including those with headstones marked ‘unknown.’
Meanwhile, in Canada another 182 unmarked graves were discovered by the Lower Kootenay Band of the Ktunaxa Nation, which used ground-penetrating radar near the former St. Eugene’s Mission School in Cranbrook, British Columbia.
August 2021
Seattle’s city council passed a resolution in support of the U.S. Department of the Interior's Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative and the Truth and Healing Commission.
A makeshift memorial for the dozens of Indigenous children who died more than a century ago while attending a boarding school that was once located nearby is growing under a tree at a public park in Albuquerque, N.M. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File)
September 2021
The city of Albuquerque announced it will become the first U.S. city to use ground-penetrating radar to search for remains of Native American children buried in unmarked gravesites over a century ago.
Later that month on the National Day of Remembrance for U.S. Indian Boarding Schools, September 20, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and the Co-Chairs of the Congressional Native American Caucus — U.S. Reps Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) of the Ho Chunk Nation and Tom Cole (R-Okla.) of Chickasaw Nation — reintroduced The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States Act.
The bill, originally introduced in 2020 by then-Congresswoman Haaland, seeks healing for stolen Native children and their communities.
Specifically, the legislation would establish a formal commission to investigate, document, and acknowledge past injustices of the federal government's Indian Boarding School Policies with a wider scope than is included in the DOI’s federal initiative. The commission would also develop recommendations for Congress to aid in healing of the historical and intergenerational trauma, and provide a forum for survivors to share their boarding school stories.
December 2021
In the first public move of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, the DOI entered into an Memorandum of Understanding with the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS).
Christine Diindiisi McCleave (Citizen of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe Nation), the CEO of NABS at the time, agreed to exclusively license Interior to use their historical research “without restriction.” NABS is the only organization with a count on how many Indian Boarding Schools were and continue to be in operation.
Additionally in December, Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak (D) apologized for the state’s role in the government’s forced assimilation of Native youth into Indian Boarding Schools.
January 2022
An increasing number of Catholic organizations join in the discussion about Indian boarding schools. Native News Online spoke with tribal leaders on what role they have to play in the pursuit of truth and healing, and who their participation is serving.
In a related story, Canada tentatively agreed to a $31 billion (U.S.) settlement to right its discriminatory child-welfare system that disproportionately separated Indigenous youth from their families over the past three decades, then chronically underfunded the welfare programs meant to serve them.
April 2022
For the first time in history, the leader of the Catholic Church acknowledged the role of the church in perpetrating harm on the more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children sent to residential schools in Canada.
In the nine months since Kamloops discovery, the remains of more than 1,400 Indigenous children were located at the sites of former residential schools where kids often died of disease, neglect, and abuse. The Catholic Church was responsible for running nearly three-quarters of the 130 residential schools operated across Canada.
“It's chilling to think of determined effort to instill a sense of inferiority to rob people of their cultural identity, to sever their roots, and to consider all the personal and social efforts that this continues to entail: Unresolved traumas that have become intergenerational trauma,” Pope Francis said, addressing a delegation of nearly 100 Indigenous leaders who Canadian traveled to Italy to ask for an apology this week. “All this made me feel two things very strongly: indignation and shame,” the Pope said.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland at a press conference on the Indian Boarding School Report (Courtesy NABS)
May 2022
After a two-week forum at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, the UN’s United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues adopted its final report on Friday, May 6.
Included in the report was the Forum’s decision to create a working group dedicated to truth, reconciliation, and transitional justice, including in post-conflict areas, for lasting peace that respects the rights of Indigenous Peoples and promotes their full and effective inclusion, including Indigenous women.
The U.S. Department of the Interior on May 11 released its initial findings after a nine-month investigation into the fraught legacy of Indian Boarding Schools that the U.S. government ran or supported for a century and a half.
The 106-page report—penned by Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Bryan Newland—details for the first time that the federal government operated or supported 408 boarding schools across 37 states, including Alaska and Hawai’i, between 1819 and 1969.
About half of the boarding schools were staffed or paid for by a religious institution. The investigation identified at least 500 children in marked and unmarked burial sites at 53 of those schools, though the DOI expects to find the number of children buried at boarding schools across the nation to be in the “thousands or tens of thousands,” as the investigation continues.
“This report, as I see it, is only a first step to acknowledge the experiences of Federal Indian boarding school children,” Newland wrote. He recommended a second report that specifically focuses on investigative findings of locations of marked or unmarked burial sites associated with the Federal Indian boarding school system; names, ages, and tribal affiliations of children interred at such locations; and an estimation of federal dollars spent supporting the Federal Indian boarding school system as well as Native land held in trust by the United States used to support the Federal Indian boarding school system.
Simultaneously, Haaland announced her year-long Road To Healing tour that will take her across the country to connect with and listen to boarding school survivors’ stories.
“Recognizing the impacts of the federal Indian boarding school system cannot just be a historical reckoning,” Haaland said. “We must also chart a path forward to deal with these legacy issues.”
While many across Indian Country rejoice over the past year’s progress in shedding light on the history of Indian boarding schools, they say we’re still at the very beginning of a long road.
“It is good news to hear that federal Indian boarding schools are being investigated at such a high level,” American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council Co-Chair Lisa Bellanger told Native News Online. “There is an intense amount of work that needs to happen to bring our children home.”
About The Author Jenna Kunze Staff Writer Jenna Kunze is a reporter for Native News Online and Tribal Business News. Her bylines have appeared in The Arctic Sounder, High Country News, Indian Country Today, Smithsonian Magazine and Anchorage Daily News. In 2020, she was one of 16 U.S. journalists selected by the Pulitzer Center to report on the effects of climate change in the Alaskan Arctic region. Prior to that, she served as lead reporter at the Chilkat Valley News in Haines, Alaska. Kunze is based in New York.
Megalodons were driven to extinction by great white sharks
Shivali Best For Mailonline -
Measuring up to 65ft long and weighing an estimated 100 tons, the megalodon was one of the most ferocious animals when it swam in oceans around the globe between 23 and 3.6 million years ago.
So why isn't the megalodon around today?
A new study claims that the beast was driven to extinction by great white sharks, which out-competed them for food – despite being three times smaller.
Measuring up to 65ft long and weighing an estimated 100 tons, the megalodon (artist's impression pictured) was one of the most ferocious animals when it swam in oceans around the globe between 23 and 3.6 million years ago
In a new study, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Goethe-University Frankfurt looked at whether great white sharks (tooth pictured right) could have played a role in the megalodon's (tooth pictured left) extinction.
How big was the Meg?
With a dorsal fin as large as a fully grown human and a total length of up to 65ft, the megalodon dwarfed the great white, which maxes out at 15ft to 20ft long.
In previous studies academics estimated the meg had a body size of up to 52ft.
An individual of this size would likely have had a head around 15ft long, a 5ft 4in dorsal fin and a 12.6ft tall tail.
This means an average-sized adult human could stand on the back of the shark and just manage to peer over the top of the dorsal fin.
However, a new study suggests the calculations used for estimating a megalodon's size were wrong.
Researchers now say the gigantic extinct shark may have grown up to 65ft in length – the size of a cricket pitch.
The megalodon, meaning big-tooth, lived between 23 and 3.6 million years ago.
O. megalodon is considered to be one of the largest and most powerful predators in vertebrate history, and fossil remains suggest it grew up to 65ft (19 metres) long.
It's thought the monster looked like a stockier version of today's much-feared great white shark, and weighed up to 100 tons.
Previous studies have put forward various theories around the demise of the megalodon, with its diet and dietary competition often thought to be key factors.
In a new study, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Goethe-University Frankfurt looked at whether great white sharks could have played a role in the megalodon's extinction.
The team analysed zinc stable isotope ratios in the teeth of 20 living species, as well as 13 fossil species, including the megalodon.
This method allows scientists to investigate an animal's trophic level – how far up the food chain it feeds.
Their analysis revealed that when the great white shark and megalodon overlapped during the Early Pliocene (5.3 to 3.6 million years ago), the two animals' trophic levels (position in the food web) also overlapped.
Professor Michael Griffiths, a professor at the William Paterson University, said: 'Zinc isotope values from Early Pliocene shark teeth from North Carolina suggest largely overlapping trophic levels of early great white sharks with the much larger megalodon.'
This means the two species likely competed for the same food resources, including marine mammals.
Professor Kenshu Shimada, a professor at DePaul University in Chicago, said: 'These results likely imply at least some overlap in prey hunted by both shark species.
'While additional research is needed, our results appear to support the possibility for dietary competition of megalodon with Early Pliocene great white sharks'.
The team analysed zinc stable isotope ratios in the teeth of 20 living species, as well as 13 fossil species, including the megalodon
Previous studies have used nitrogen isotope analysis of tooth collagen to learn about what ancient animals ate.
However, collagen isn't always preserved over time.
Instead, the new isotope method using zinc could provide a unique window into the past, according to the researchers.
'Our research illustrates the feasibility of using zinc isotopes to investigate the diet and trophic ecology of extinct animals over millions of years, a method that can also be applied to other groups of fossil animals including our own ancestors,' concludes lead author Jeremy McCormack.
Killer Whale Cruising Cape Cod Waters Is 30ft Bull Named 'Old Thom'
The killer whale recently spotted swimming in the waters off Cape Cod is a huge 30-foot bull known as Old Thom.
Just under two weeks ago the killer whale was spotted swimming 40 miles east of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Fisherman Jerry Leeman managed to capture a video of the rare sighting. In the footage, an orca can be seen swimming alongside his fishing boat.
Killer whales are commonly seen off the West Coast of the U.S, however, it is incredibly rare to see them in New England—these waters are usually great white shark territory.
Gregory Skomal, a marine biologist at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, told Newsweek that this particular individual has actually been spotted a handful of times in the last decade.
The killer whale known as Old Thom is a huge bull, and according to the Orca Conservancy, he reaches up to 30 feet in length. The orca is usually always alone.
Old Thom stands out as orca are highly social animals and usually travel in pods. The solitary orca has been sighted off the coast of northern New England and Eastern Canada before—however it is still a rare appearance. While he is never usually seen with other orcas, Old Thom has been spotted keeping the company of white-sided dolphins. According to the whale's Wiki Fandom page, this is an "affiliative relationship."
Orca Swims Alongside Fishing Boat Off Cape Cod In Extremely Rare Sighting
"Not much is known about killer whales in the western North Atlantic. They appear to be somewhat rare south of Nova Scotia, but have been documented as far south as the Caribbean," Skomal said.
Old Thom is well known for breaching near vessels, as he does in Leeman's footage.
Despite killer whales being socially complex animals, Josh McInnes, a marine ecologist and killer whale researcher, told Newsweek that male killer whales have been known to become "nomadic" and "roam vast distances on their own."
"Transient killer whale off the U.S West Coast are frequently encountered on their own. Killer whales are second to humans in having the largest distribution and can be found in all major ocean basins. They are most common in temperate and polar latitudes but can also be encountered in subtropical and tropical regions," McInnes said. "The male killer whale off Nantucket might belong to a small population that frequents large ranges off the eastern United States or Canada." When the killer whale was first spotted, it was around the same time a few great white sharks appeared to be making their way to the area on their annual migration route.
According to OCEARCH's shark tracker, one or two had already arrived in the area. Killer whales and great white sharks have been known to come into conflict before.
Bob Hueter, chief scientist at OCEARCH, previously told Newsweek that most great white sharks have not arrived in the area just yet. But he said that when these two predators come face to face "there can be conflict." "Orcas have been seen harassing white sharks and even killing them at times," he said.
Hueter said if the orca sticks around or others appear this summer, there could be some effects on the white sharks.
While Old Thom's diet is not certain, he has never been observed chasing after great whites. He has also never been observed eating seals, which may mean he prefers schooling fish.
Skomal said that the white sharks are drawn close to the Cape Cod shore by the "growing presence of seals" in the area—a common prey for the species.
"They generally start to arrive in mid to late May, but much depends on water temperature. The bulk of the population doesn't come until July—peak months are August, September, and October," Skomal said.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, left, appears with Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe in July of 2019 in Saskatoon, Sask.
We know Alberta will get a new premier, but Saskatchewan might get a new leader, too.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced this month that he will quit as leader of Alberta’s United Conservative Party, but some wonder whether he also announced his resignation as Saskatchewan’s de facto leader.
Many see Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe as so much a reflection of Kenney in terms of policy and strategy that you can’t help but wonder whether Moe is feeling a little lost.
What will he do without his mentor/role model/chief strategist? Who will Moe copycat now? Kenney’s successor?
Sometimes, the similarity between Kenney and Moe seemed eerie, particularly in their reckless responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of Kenney’s most-referenced blunders was declaring the “best summer ever” in June 2021 prior to the lifting of pandemic restrictions and a predictable surge in cases.
Moe followed two days after Kenney with a similar toast to a “great Saskatchewan summer” and ditching restrictions.
As with Alberta, Saskatchewan suffered through one of the worst stretches in Canada during the pandemic last fall, with Moe only reluctantly opting to impose restrictions, including a vaccine mandate, after Kenney had.
Moe takes an almost identical approach on federal-provincial relations to Kenney, relying on western victimization and bashing of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the carbon tax. Call Moe a carbon copy.
Yet Kenney was consumed by the conflict within his own party and challenges to his leadership from the right wing inside his party. Moe appears to have emerged relatively unscathed.
Five years ago, you could hardly have predicted that outcome.
Kenney arrived from a career in federal politics as a conquering conservative hero to unite the right and defeat the NDP in Alberta. That worked until division by the very forces Kenney tried to unite consumed him.
Kenney won the UCP leadership in 2017 with 60 per cent of the vote on the first ballot, an outcome almost unheard of for a contested leadership.
Moe, a few months after Kenney was elected UCP leader, trailed in the Saskatchewan leadership race until the fourth ballot, when he topped 30 per cent for the first time. Moe edged bureaucrat Alanna Koch on the fifth ballot.
If you had to forecast based on their leadership wins who would be leaving in less than five years due to internal division, you probably would have predicted Moe.
But the forces that doomed Kenney in Alberta also exist in Saskatchewan, except perhaps the serious threat the NDP poses to any right-wing party.
Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP is competitive, while the Saskatchewan edition is not seen as a viable alternative to form government.
On the right flank, however, the Saskatchewan Party faces the same threats.
There could soon be three registered right-wing parties aiming to syphon support, with True North Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan United Party trying to get the signatures needed to join the Buffalo Party.
So many parties with Saskatchewan in their names might mean a bigger ballot is needed.
Yet Moe has mostly given people opposed to vaccine mandates everything they wanted, starting with leading Canada in ending pandemic mandates despite the threat to public safety. More than 400 people have died of COVID-19 this year.
None of that proved enough for some in Saskatchewan. And if you try too hard to accommodate the right-wingers, you alienate the moderates, the so-called middle that is crucial to election wins, which the Saskatchewan Party has courted so successfully.
We see this dynamic playing out in the federal Conservative race with Pierre Poilievre’s divisive right-wing bid opposing pandemic mandates, supporting anti-mandate protesters and pandering to conspiracy theorists.
Poilievre’s campaign website claims the support of 21 Saskatchewan Party MLAs, including cabinet ministers Dustin Duncan and Christine Tell. That compares to six MLAs from all the other provinces.
Moe’s critics fail to give him credit for his political shrewdness, but no leader trying to hold together a centre-right coalition can avoid certain realities.
A tent can only hold so many before it bursts.
Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
Ex-boss of Quebec anti-corruption unit orchestrated sensitive leaks to media: judge
MONTREAL — A Quebec court judge is accusing the former head of the province's anti-corruption unit of derailing a high-profile fraud trial by orchestrating a system of controlled leaks to the media.
Judge André Perreault says in a heavily redacted court document that Robert Lafrenière was behind sensitive leaks to journalists in order to pressure the government at the time to renew his mandate as head of the anti-corruption squad.
The revelations are included in a 2020 court ruling involving ex-deputy premier Nathalie Normandeau, who was granted a stay of proceedings due to unreasonable delays in her fraud case.
The information was only released this week because the 81-page court decision was kept under a publication ban that media organizations were able to have lifted.
In his decision, Judge Perreault reproaches Lafrenière and other senior members of the police force, known as UPAC, for "serious misconduct" that he says was largely responsible for delays in Normandeau's case.
Lafrenière, who resigned in 2018, denied he leaked any information for personal gain in an interview this week with La Presse.
Perreault endorsed the conclusions of Michel Doyon, an investigator with Quebec's police watchdog, who found that Lafrenière was behind the leaks and was pushing for another mandate and for the squad to be turned into a specialized police unit.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 31, 2022.
The Canadian Press
'Lost confidence:' Nova Scotia mass shooting inquiry resumes amid public backlash
HALIFAX — The Mountie in charge of the RCMP's initial response to the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia began testifying before an inquiry Monday, but the public has been barred from listening.
For unspecified health reasons, Staff Sgt. Brian Rehill was granted permission to testify via a Zoom call, which is being recorded and will be released later.
Rehill has also been exempted from facing cross-examination by lawyers representing relatives of the 22 people killed on April 18-19, 2020. That decision last week prompted most of the families to boycott the proceedings,and some staged a protest outside the hearings in Truro, N.S.
The backlash is believed to be unprecedented for a public inquiry on this scale.
"I have never encountered a situation like this where the commissioners of a public inquiry appear to have lost the confidence and trust of key parties and potentially the general public," said Ed Ratushny, professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa and author of the 2009 book, "The Conduct of Public Inquiries."
"My opinion is that this commission must have lost sight of the fundamental, crucial role of a public inquiry. Instead of a full public process of fact-finding, it has ... limited opportunities to challenge its investigation."
As well, Ratushny said the commission of inquiry should adhere to the legal principle of "fairness," which states that administrative tribunals must allow participants to "test the evidence ... through vigorous questioning."
A second senior Mountie, Sgt. Andy O'Brien, has been granted the same accommodations as Rehill. O'Brien is expected to testify behind closed doors on Tuesday.
In a statement Friday, the commission defended its approach. "Given the health information provided, allowing the witnesses to provide evidence this way will reduce the stress and time pressure that arises from giving oral evidence in live proceedings," it said. "This format will facilitate the testimony and therefore provide clear evidence."
Participating lawyers, including those representing victims' families, were asked to provide questions for Rehill and O’Brien, but it will be up to the commission to decide what questions are put to the witnesses. Once the first round of questioning is done, participating lawyers will be asked if they have more questions.
The commission has said the reasons behind the special arrangements must remain confidential because its decision is based on private personal information, such as physical or psychological health needs.
In an earlier interview with commission lawyers, Rehill confirmed he had been off work for 16 months after the tragedy, saying he struggled with questions about the decisions he made.
For some of the victims' relatives, the commission should never have offered the two Mounties an exemption from cross-examination.
"If the officers who were in charge ... can't get on the stand and defend the decisions that they made, then there's something wrong with this whole process," Charlene Bagley said Thursday during the Truro protest. Her father, Tom, was fatally shot by the gunman early on April 19, 2020, as he was out for a walk in West Wentworth, N.S.
Bagley said cross-examination is a must.
"It's easy to sit there and tell the story you've been told to tell," she said. "It's a lot harder to face hard questions. The truth hurts, but we need it."
Nova Scotia lawyer Adam Rodgers, who has been analyzing the inquiry's progress on his blog, said that kind of anger is justified.
"Participants have been marginalized throughout the ... proceedings, and the inability to effectively cross-examine witnesses is central to that marginalization," Rodgers said in an email.
On May 19, the Nova Scotia RCMP issued a statement saying the inquiry would be violating its own rules if Mounties who endured trauma were called to testify without some form of accommodation. The inquiry's mandate calls for it to adopt a trauma-informed approach.
Toronto-based lawyer John Mather, who has worked on inquiries as commission counsel, said the Mass Casualty Commission — as it is formally known — is facing a challenge because it can't reveal why Rehill and O'Brien were granted special status.
"I believe they must have seen some real concern that ... testimony under cross-examination could create a real risk of trauma for these two officers," Mather said in a recent interview.
"At the same time, I empathize with the victims' families because they really don't know why that decision was made, and that question will probably never be answered."
As for the assertion that the inquiry may be facing a loss of public trust, Mather said the impact of the special accommodations won't be known until the commission submits its final report on Nov. 1.
"The importance of these officers' testimony cannot be understated," he said. "Will there be a gap because of the decision and the boycott? It's hard to say .... The (final) report could be excellent, but it could still suffer from a lack of public confidence."
On the night of April 18, 2020, Rehill was the RCMP's risk manager at its Operational Communications Centre in Truro, N.S. When the centre received 911 calls confirming an active shooter was on the loose in Portapique, N.S., Rehill immediately assumed command.
Though O'Brien was off duty and had consumed four to five drinks of rum at home, he retrieved his portable radio from the detachment — with the help of his wife — and joined in offering direction to responding officers.
The inquiry has heard there was confusion over who was in charge that night. Commissioner Leanne Fitch, a former chief of police in Fredericton, said testimony had revealed "a considerable breakdown in communication."
Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press
Time for military to scrap harmful traditions: retired Supreme Court justice
OTTAWA — The Canadian Armed Forces found itself at a crossroads on Monday as the military faced calls to finally end some of its closest-held traditions to end decades of broken promises — including by permanently leaving the prosecution of sexual offences by its members to civilian authorities.
Even as the federal Liberal government, through Defence Minister Anita Anand, promised to provide the political oversight needed to bring about such change, there remained deep skepticism over whether a well-established pattern will repeat itself.
The latest calls for change came Monday in a highly anticipated report by retired Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour, who was tasked last year with charting a way forward after a series of scandals involving allegations of sexual misconduct by some in the upper ranks of the Forces. The result was a scathing indictment of the Armed Forces’ resistance to change, with the respected jurist who previously served as the United Nations’ top human rights official taking dead aim at many of the military’s most important structures and institutions.
Arbour questioned not only the military’s insistence on investigating and prosecuting incidents of sexual assault, which she said should be permanently transferred to the civilian authorities, but also the way it recruits, trains and promotes service members.
She also questioned the justification for having dedicated military colleges in Kingston, Ont., and St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., which are responsible for grooming future officers but carry a reputation for perpetuating the military’s sexualized culture.
“The continued prevalence of sexual misconduct at the military colleges is well documented, and I think it's harder to address these issues there than in a civilian environment,” Arbour said during a news conference in Ottawa on Monday.
“I was not in a position to examine in detail the quality of the academic stream, (but) the military leadership and physical training at these colleges is problematic and does not, in my view, justify the continuation of this model as an undergraduate university environment.”
One of the main themes of Arbour’s report was the military’s resistance to past recommendations that had also stemmed from detailed reviews sparked by scandals.
The retired judge painted a picture of foot-dragging and half-hearted action.
The former UN human rights czar nonetheless did not specifically recommend the creation of an independent oversight body, as many experts and observers had requested, but instead called for more involvement and oversight by existing civilian authorities.
“I don't see the need for an inspector general, if everything else in this report is implemented,” Arbour said of the 48 recommendations contained in her report.
“If you create too many of these so-called oversight bodies, you dilute the political responsibility.” Still, Arbour revealed that she had repeatedly followed up on her interim recommendation made in October to temporarily transfer the criminal sexual offences to civilian courts. “Had I not had monthly contact with the prosecuting authorities and the investigating authorities … on a monthly basis, and with the minister, they'd still be drafting the letter to the provincial authorities about how to move forward,” she said.
Anand, who was at the news conference alongside Arbour as well as defence chief Gen. Wayne Eyre and Defence Department deputy minister Bill Matthews, announced that 17 recommendations were being immediately accepted.
Others will need "further analysis, planning and consultation," Anand added, promising to come report to Parliament on the progress.
One recommendation being reviewed is whether to permanently transfer the investigation and prosecution of cases involving criminal sexual misconduct to civilian authorities.
"This is a system-changing recommendation and we will examine it in earnest," Anand said.
A recommendation to study the pros and cons of military colleges will also get further review.
One of the accepted recommendations was the appointment of an external monitor who will oversee the implementation of Arbour’s recommendations, with regular reports to the minister and public. Another is for Anand to report to Parliament on those that will not be implemented.
The military has in recent years agreed “in principle” with all recommendations from external sources, before then implementing them half-heartedly or letting them collect dust.
Asked whether she or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was not present for Monday’s news conference, would take responsibility if Arbour’s recommendations fall by the wayside and another scandal occurs, Anand said: “This report will not fall by the wayside.”
“If we do not take this moment for what it is and implement the recommendations that identify deep areas of need for change in the Canadian Armed Forces and the defence team broadly, we run the risk of not being a fully effective military,” she added.
“We must grab the bull by the horns and make the changes now.”
Later Monday, Trudeau said the Liberal government would work "closely and rapidly" with survivor groups and others "to make sure that we're moving forward in the right way" on the remaining recommendations in the Arbour report.
Federal opposition parties and organizations such as the Royal Canadian Legion wasted no time on Monday calling for the Liberal government to quickly act on Arbour’s recommendations, as well as independent oversight of their implementation.
“We know that one report will not ‘fix’ systemic violence and harassment," said June Winger, national president of the Union of National Defence Employees. "But this report is a tool that we will use to push the government towards meaningful and concrete actions."
While experts on military sexual misconduct were largely supportive of Arbour’s report and recommendations, which they described as extremely comprehensive, there was also a fair amount of skepticism about whether it would finally result in real change.
Megan MacKenzie, who studies military sexual misconduct at Simon Fraser University in B.C., said she would have liked to have seen Anand voice stronger support for all the recommendations. She also questioned the appointment of an external monitor.
“Who's going to be on this external review?” MacKenzie said. “I'm not sure how you can have someone holding the minister accountable who's an appointee of the minister.”
Charlotte Duval-Lantoine of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute was also concerned about the external monitor’s independence, adding it is now up to the government to ensure Arbour’s recommendations are acted upon — a situation that has previously resulted in failure.
“The ball is in the government’s camp,” Duval-Lantoine said.
“It is up to it to make those recommendations happen, and to make them work for the CAF. This is where we have seen most gaps.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 30, 2022.
