STIRLING: Note to Ottawa, 'just say no'

Tanya Talaga’s book “The Knowing” is coming out later this month, so no wonder she’s up on the bandwagon for more funding for grave-digging for Canada’s phantom genocide. Her book relies on indigenous 'knowing’ that someone, decades ago, ‘knew’ that so-and-so disappeared from their community because they went to residential school. No one can remember the person’s name, but everyone knows they disappeared.And pretty much everyone knows that something nefarious happened to them — that’s the growing thesis.In her Aug. 08, 2024, Globe and Mail article, she claims that Wally Mackay, a former Grand Chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, was ‘forced’ to go to an Indian Residential School “because Wally had no choice once the colonial system got ahold of him.”She reports that Wally was five when he first attended the Indian Residential School in Sioux Lookout.The minimum age for admission to an Indian Residential School was seven. This age requirement was waived for children who had been orphaned, whose families were destitute or if the child was at risk of negligence or domestic violence.So, it looks like Wally was saved by the system, though we don’t know the details at this time and obviously as a child, Wally probably didn’t know or remember why he went to Indian Residential School.Many leading Indigenous figures in Canada were sent to Indian Residential Schools because their families were too big to be supported by hunter-gatherer families. Phil Fontaine came from a family of ten children. Chief Wilton Littlechild came from a family of 12 children. Both were sent to an Indian Residential School, which may have saved the lives of other members of their families in a time of destitution.Just as today the federal government is pitching $10/day daycare so that parents can go to work, back in the day, Indian Residential Schools offered similar convenience to families with trap lines. Not to mention, many parents then realized that the new agro-industrial-tech world would require skills such as reading, writing and speaking English or French, the basic tools of contemporary society. The parents could teach their kids how to hunt, trap and fish, but not how to read books, do calculus or write grant applications.Which brings us back to Tanya’s article. The federal government made a one-time funding of $320 million for grave searches. Tanya and Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray want there to be permanent funding of this nature.The question is that since the ‘finding of 200 potential unmarked graves in Kamloops’ has still not turned up any actual graves, despite $8 million of tax dollars being unloaded on the Kamloops First Nation, why should there be any more money from taxpayers?If there is no list of names of people who ‘disappeared’ at Indian Residential Schools, then we are looking for ghosts which live on in the ‘knowings’ of indigenous communities. But the names we don’t know.Consider that for a moment. I went to public school at age six. There was a girl in our class who was there one day and then we never saw her again. She disappeared. Turns out she had been hit by a car while crossing the busy highway on her way home from school. I still remember her name. Darcy.Since only one third of indigenous students ever went to Indian Residential School, and some of the students who went were orphans, they might never have come home to their reserve until they were adults. If both parents had died, they might never come home at all. On the home reserve, the conclusion drawn by the remaining two thirds of young people and adults would be that the child had ‘disappeared’ into the Indian Residential School.This is the ‘knowing’ — but it is based on false perceptions. And more funding for phantom grave digging is based on false pretences.Canadian taxpayers have had enough of this wild ghost chase. We are now “Sorry No More.” Why? Because the devoted priests, nuns, lay staff and clergy of other denominations, including indigenous priests, nuns, clergy and lay staff gave their lives, for pennies, to care for the 150,000 children in their care.And now Canadian taxpayers are sick of being extorted over a genocide for which no evidence has been produced.Tanya’s book sales for “The Knowing” will undoubtedly skyrocket with more articles by her promoting this phantom genocide. But at some point, people will put their foot down and say to the gravers, the cupboard is bare. As they should.

STIRLING: Note to Ottawa, 'just say no'

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