Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

Child mortality rates were high in those days. Just to add some numbers, 30% of Canadian children died before reaching the age of 5 around the year 1900[1]. Presumably at a school the mortality rate would be lower because the children were older. But this is not necessarily an unreasonable death rate for a school that operated many decades. Especially for undernourished native kids who would've been much more vulnerable to diseases they had no historic immunity to. This would have been common in other countries and other Canadian schools too. The difference, of course, is usually a boarding school would contact the parents to notify them.

People are spinning this story like this was a death camp for native kids. It's not. It was a real tragedy that children were removed from their parents forcibly and the institutions couldn't be bothered to report if your kid freaking died...

Given the period in time and lack off oversight, I don't doubt there was abuse too, and let's not forget this is the Catholic church, which has a poor record, but it's clueless to account these deaths to abuse just on the basis of possible graves existing on ground penetrating radar. We're not even sure these are all graves, you have to excavate to have an idea what the error rate is.

One last thing to keep in mind is at this point in time the government barely existed. There were no social safety nets or programs and hardly any government oversight out west. It's called the wild west for a reason. The church was operating these schools as a charity because the government had neither the resources not inclination to do it themselves.

Things were different back then, and they often don't look good judged through our modern eyes. That's a sign of how far we've come in less than a century.

To us today this looks about the same as what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs. Definitely not a moment in history to be proud of.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-time-...

> The church was operating these schools as a charity because the government had neither the resources not inclination to do it themselves.

The first CA residential schools were a Christian effort. The first was started in 1820 by missionary John West in the Red River colony, with funding from the (British) Church Mission Society.

By 1901, though, "In Canada, the Indian residential school ... network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...] The compulsory schooling of children between 7 and 16 was the result of 1894 amendments to Canada's 1876 Indian Act ... often mentioned by the First Nations.

Edit: Adding a link to a very good article posted after Kamloops, called "Why so many children died at Indian Residential Schools". It also quickly details the scope of the operations and conditions across Canada.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/newly-discovered-b-c-gr...

Thanks for the historical background and correcting me about the role of the government in the program.

The Residential School Program continued well into the 20th century, when Canada was very much a modern nation state with resources.

It's not just that these children died. These were indigenous children that died without the knowledge of their families because the Residential Schools intentionally uprooted them from their cultures.

> The Residential School Program continued well into the 20th century, when Canada was very much a modern nation state with resources.

Yes. I apologize if I implied otherwise. I was talking more about what conditions were like when they were created.

> It's not just that these children died. These were indigenous children that died without the knowledge of their families because the Residential Schools intentionally uprooted them from their cultures.

Agreed. I did also make that point.

> Presumably at a school the mortality rate would be lower because the children were older.

Well, from a quick Google according to government numbers in 1907 there was a 40 – 60% mortality rate in Indian residential schools. Doesn't quite square with your assertion.

> But this is not necessarily an unreasonable death rate for a school that operated many decades. Especially for undernourished native kids who would've been much more vulnerable to diseases they had no historic immunity to.

These schools operated for many decades, far into the 20th century. At which point that death rate becomes even more unreasonable. And "undernourished kids without immunity are worse off" is not a defense if you are the one not caring for them properly and forcing them to live in such dense groups with inadequate medical care.

> Well, from a quick Google according to government numbers in 1907 there was a 40 – 60% mortality rate in Indian residential schools. Doesn't quite square with your assertion.

That's roughly double the population average. I expect it to be higher due to them lacking immunity, but still that's surprisingly high.

> These schools operated for many decades, far into the 20th century. At which point that death rate becomes even more unreasonable.

Obviously the death rate declined over time.

> And "undernourished kids without immunity are worse off" is not a defense if you are the one not caring for them properly and forcing them to live in such dense groups with inadequate medical care.

Yes and no. The schools obviously had nothing to do with them being undernourished or lacking immunity before entering the system. If they continued being undernourished after that, that's is on the schools and the government. Maintaining poor living conditions is also on them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say they're blameless - because there are plenty of reports to the contrary. What I'm trying to say is a couple hundred graves outside a school in the modern era sounds like a crime against humanity. Placed properly in the historical times in which it happened, where child mortality was insanely high, especially among natives, it may well have been not that remarkable. It requires more careful analysis and not the knee jerk emotional reaction that I've been seeing.

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