Missing Kin, Dead Kids: Gone, but not forgotten

A Kentucky coroner searches for the relatives of a dead man, enlisting a public appeal for assistance in identifying a body. An Indiana woman has been stoically expecting death notification about her drug-addicted sister for years. Mothers, fathers, wives, husbands and children lose relatives every year. Sometimes the disappearances are voluntary. Sometimes they are not.

Tens of thousands of people disappear every year in the United States and Canada, but none of the disappearances are more heartbreaking than the disappearance, or death of children, especially when those children are in the custody of state run facilities.

After generations of hiding evidence, burying information and even keeping medical records out of the hands of relatives, the truth is coming out about Canada’s “Indian Schools.”

Children died in those schools. Children were molested, tortured and experimented on in those schools. Children were ripped from their parents, often at gunpoint and taken to state or church run schools for more than a century. And, in that time, thousands never came home again. Their parents and kin didn’t even have a body to bury.

In Canada, tens of thousands of tribal families have wondered what happened to their juvenile kin for generations. Now, some of them may find out.

In Canada, in the United States, and in Great Britain children die in the custody of the state. Some die of natural causes. Some die in the course of being punished for not obeying the rules. Some die because their custodians went too far and, intentionally or not, became executioners of children.

Gareth Myatt was just three days into a six-month sentence at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre in Northamptonshire when he was restrained by three members of staff after refusing to clean the sandwich toaster. He tried to tell them he couldn't breathe, but they did not release him. As they held him down, Gareth choked on his own vomit and died. He was 15. (Location: Great Britain. Source: The Guardian, 7-4-07)

Young Myatt’s case has spurred a series of investigations in Great Britain. The government is taking a closer look at the entire issue of restraint, punishment and juvenile incarceration procedures. One newspaper reports that
Thousands of assaults are being carried out each year on children in custody by the people employed to look after them. Hundreds suffer cuts and bruises and some require hospital treatment for dislocated or broken bones. (Source: The Independent, 1-2-08)

A British government official says some of the tactics used in juvenile facilities in his country may actually violate international Human Rights Treaties.
"The use of techniques to inflict pain is in violation of the child's right under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) to be free from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.... We believe the practice in relation to restraint in some YOIs and STCs is in clear breach of the UNCRC." In some circumstances it may also contravene the European Convention on Human Rights, he said. (Ibid)

Such sentiments are of little comfort to the thousands of indigenous people in Canada whose children were forcibly removed from their families and died in “Indian schools” for generations. The United States practiced a similar “residential Indian school system”, and, as one Native American journalist put it, Americans have no room to stick their noses up at what is currently happening in Canada. She says:
The same is true of the USA; they're everywhere. Clear up into the 1960's, mandatory boarding schools for all Indian kids. Kids were beaten, abused, sexually assaulted, and killed. Mass graves are all across this country and they weren't all church-run. Many were plain-out government run schools. The kids were taken at age 4, at gun(point if necessary. There was no negotiation allowed. (Stephanie Schwartz, member Native American Journalist Association, home page http://silvrdrach.homestead.com/)

The residential schools in the United States operated well in to the last half of the twentieth century. The last one reportedly closed in 1986. More victims, more pain, still living victims. (Ibid)

Film maker, activist and writer, Kevin Arnett (Eagle Strong Voice), has been instrumental in shedding light on the issue. Arnett is a powerful advocate of opening records and uncovering the truth. His website (http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/) highlights his work, including his new film, “Unrepentant”, which investigates the horror of the Indian residential school system.

In his ezine, Arnett writes:
This past year witnessed an historic first in Canada: the public acknowledgment by the government that thousands of children died in church-run "Indian residential schools". Just yesterday, the Globe and Mail newspaper announced that witnesses to these deaths will give testimony before upcoming public hearings concerning criminal acts in these schools. Suddenly, the reality of genocide is staring Canada in the face. (Arnett, email)

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has opened an investigation, an act which has serious and far-reaching political and social implications. This is particularly so because of past conflicts of interest between institutions and individuals who conducted earlier investigations.
Not surprisingly, the groups responsible for this genocide are doing their best to conceal their guilt. In late December, on the eve of an investigation, the United Church of Canada closed their residential school records to the public; and yet one of the officials responsible for hiding these records, former Moderator Bill Phipps, was, amazingly, appointed by the government to the Selection Panel that will choose the Commissioners who will be investigating the residential school deaths! (Ibid)

The legacy of destruction generated by these schools permeates Canadian aboriginal society. No “settlement” can ever rebuild the minds and souls, which these atrocities destroyed. As one former student-survivor put it: "Ten thousand bucks" said one man, a survivor of the Catholic school in Mission, B.C. "It's just enough to drink myself to death with." (Ibid)

Death follows this story like stench following sweat. Equally troubling is the creation of pseudo-investigative bodies, organizations created by, staffed by and under the control of the very government and religious bodies being accused of complicity in the rape, torture and murder of untold numbers of indigenous children.

Activists, including Arnett are outraged, not only at the inclusion of possibly complicit church organizations and officials, but also at the very naming of the investigative body.

We are equally shocked by the collusion in these wrongs by the so-called "Assembly of First Nations" (AFN), a body not elected by indigenous people but created and funded by the colonial state of Canada. (Ibid)

To cap the horror, families have not even been able to bury their dead, because the bodies of thousands of children remain ‘in custody’, buried on school grounds. This is a major point of contention with parents, relatives and human rights activists. Among other things, they want to

Force the government and the Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada to return the remains of all those who died in Indian residential schools and hospitals. (Ibid)

Most troubling, however, is the convenient death of an activist who was a former student/resident at a residential school.

They picked the wrong kid to mess with when they dragged nine-year-
old Nora Bernard off to the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School
in 1945. Sixty-one years later, the determined Millbrook woman has won
what's being called the largest class-action settlement in Canadian
history - worth somewhere between $4 billion and $5 billion - for
an estimated 79,000 survivors of the residential school system. (The Daily News, 12-16-06)

Newspapers say foul play is involved. Other activists say Bernard’s death was no accident.

It’s no accident that the very week the government is announcing that criminal acts occurred in residential schools, and that mass graves exist across the country filled with the remains of residential school children, Nora was killed. The criminals responsible are covering their tracks. (Ibid)

In the middle of all the madness, the living, the survivors try to stay sane and live with the horror. A website gives survivors and their relatives access to information from the Indian Residential School Survivors Society. In the words of the operators:

This web site attempts to give voice to the untold stories of so many Aboriginal boys and girls who attended residential schools in Canada from 1831 to the 1990’s. (http://www.wherearethechildren.ca/)

In the United States, Canada and throughout the world, children continue to die in state run schools and juvenile detention centers. Sometimes their families receive justice. Some times not. Many deaths either remain “a mystery”, and neither the dead child, nor their grieving survivors receive justice.