“Four Years. Zero Graves. Now What?” asks Jonathan Kay in Quillette.
“I find this story astonishing as an outsider,” a British historian told me on social media last week. “Can I just confirm what I believe to be the case: There is no proof of any burials… just GPR [ground-penetrating radar] ‘anomalies’ [that] haven’t been investigated? The 215 children are, as things stand, entirely notional?”
The answer, in a word, is yes. Of the 215 “unmarked graves” of Indigenous children that were said to have been “discovered” on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia four years ago, not a single one has actually been shown to exist.
The astonishing thing is not that a remote detection system gave a reading that suggested something dramatic which upon further investigation turned out not to be. That happens all the time, in every field from mining to astronomy. Nor was there anything astonishing about the furore or about the swarms of reporters who converged on the site. If the inconsistencies in soil density had turned out to be dead bodies rather than “old pipes, septic lines, irrigation ditches, bedrock cracks, groundwater sources, mineral deposits, buried utility lines, and landfill artefacts” it would have been a knife to the heart of Canada’s view of itself.
What is astonishing, what raises the whole Kamloops affair to the level of mass psychosis, is Official Canada’s response. No graves were found, but it decided to have the whole ‘knife to the heart of Canada’s view of itself’ jamboree anyway.
… Canadians were given the impression that these radargrams displayed unmistakable images of child graves—perhaps even skeletons of the (claimed) victims.
Reporters accompanied these reports with descriptions of unspeakable crimes, supposedly sourced to the eyewitness memories of Indigenous elders—including children woken up in the middle of the night to dig shallow graves for their murdered friends
Mr Kay charitably says that Canadian journalists did not realise how many of these tales could be traced to “a defrocked priest named Kevin Arnett—a man who’d also claimed he’d witnessed Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip personally kidnap a group of Kamloops students in 1964.” I suspect that quite a few Canadian journalists did realise it. It is not as if the former Reverend Arnett concealed his views. Unlike many of the journalists, Arnett himself was probably sincerely deluded. Like false positive errors from machines, folk who think that they have secret information about a terrible conspiracy involving someone famous are not that rare. Poor old Arnett missed a trick by only witnessing the late Queen and her consort engage in a humdrum spot of kidnapping and murder. If he had just looked a little longer he would have seen them turn into shape-shifting pan-dimensional alien lizards and would have died richer than he did.
So twelve million Canadian dollars and heaven knows how many tons of earth1 later, the story that led Justin Trudeau to fly the flags on federal buildings at half-mast for almost six months and to hundreds of arson attacks on churches has finally been acknowledged to be a false alarm.
Just kidding over the last bit. Official Canada has not acknowledged it. They are in too deep.
As I suggested above, what made this period in Canada’s history unusual is not that the likes of Kevin Arnett – correction, “Eagle Strong Voice”2 as he later preferred to be called – made bizarre claims and that Noam Chomsky believed them. It’s that the likes of the Law Society of British Columbia believed them.
Not just believed them, but made them into an official doctrine that had to be affirmed by anyone wishing to practise law in British Columbia. The second half of Jonathan Kay’s article tells a story that in its implications is at least as frightening as the hysteria and fury described in the first half. Reading it, one keeps expecting to reach the point where one of the eminent lawyers entrusted with maintaining the standards of their profession in Canada’s westernmost province will finally issue a carefully-worded statement about waiting for evidence before making accusations, or about how both sides of any case must be heard, or about any of that old lawyer stuff that they used to believe in. Four years have gone by and that point has not yet come. More to the point, judging from their behaviour none of these eminent lawyers has yet dared to say to their colleagues, “Guys, I hate to be the one to ask, but have we got a watertight case?”
*
Related post: There will be no “truth and reconciliation” if an inconvenient truth is made illegal.
1Exactly how many tons of earth remains unclear. As CayleyGraph2015 commented in response to the earlier post, for all the talk of urgent investigation, less actual digging seems to have been done than one might expect given the severity of the allegations and the millions of Canadian dollars given to the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation to investigate the site.
2The “Eagle Strong Voice” link takes you to an excellent article by Terry Glavin in the independent Canadian news website The Tyee about Arnett and his claims, including one that might have been the model for “Pizzagate”. It was written in 2008, demonstrating that Arnett was well known on the conspiracy circuit even then. Interestingly, an editor’s note was added to Glavin’s article in 2021 apologetically saying that despite Glavin’s scepticism the remains of 215 children had been detected at Kamloops residential school. I await an editor’s note to the editor’s note.
You could understand the ‘enthusiasm’ for such events if you consider them to be part of a wider witch hunt. An anti-woke hunt if you prefer.
There will be a few core nutters that *believe* despite any contrary evidence, many that go along to avoid the fickle finger pointing at themselves, and others exploiting the enthusiasm for their own benefit.
Why Canada should be so ‘ripe’ for such things is another part of the puzzle.
Canada’s leftist elite accepted this “evidence” without question because it served their political narratives. It provided another excuse to demonise white people and Western culture, and to promote the destruction of Canadian identity. The story was simply too good for their purposes for them to ever risk checking if it was actually true. So they can’t admit that they were wrong without admitting that they are frauds and liars who despise their own country and will use any possible excuse to attack it.
One of the things that occured was that many Indian tribes immediately declared that the supposed burial sites were sacred ground and that no digging should be allowed at them, a notion that quickly became law.
There has been a massive smear campaign giving people the impression that there was a campaign of murder against children in the residential schools – this smear campaign has led to the burning of churches and so on.
I can understand why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went along with this smear campaign, he is a radical leftist who hates Western culture and history, what baffles me is why Pope Francis went along with the smear campaign – even going to Canada and apologizing for things that did-not-happen.
Nor were there “unmarked” graves for people who did die (of natural causes – not murder), grave markers were made of wood (normal in the culture in this area at that time) and decayed over time.
By the way the word “racist” was first used to describe people OPPOSED to the residential schools policy, these people holding that Indian (“First Nation” or “Native American” or whatever term you wish to use) behaviour was “in the blood” rather than cultural.
The residential school policy, pushed by the first Prime Minister of Canada and his successors, may well have been a terrible blunder – but the intent was not “racist” it was “anti racist” – the idea was to assimilate via education.
Today most people would crawl over broken glass to avoid being called nasty or any synonyms thereof. See also the kneeling to BLM performative supplication. Canada, New Zealand (oops, sorry, Aotearoa) UK are particularly prone to this problem, the U.S. and Australia slightly less so. The U.S. is a mixed bag, large swathes of the country are as affected as Canada or the UK but large areas seem barely affected by it.
It seems that being seen as nasty is just about the worst thing in the world for many people these days. A lot of people just go along with the “nice” people, many of whom are anything but nice but they are seen as being nice. They don’t really believe in anything any more. No religion, no faith, no moral positions of any kind, just an earnestness about being nice. Their niceness is, of course, wafer thin.
I assume then that an underreported, parallel story concerns elite Canadians’ fervent support for getting to the bottom of the Epstein files and “unearthing” all the abused children involved there? No?
Might these stories be related? Trudeau et al pre-paying for their sins on Epstein island?
In any event, I believe I’ve stumbled onto a connection that shows the Canadian liberal elites are not consistent in who or what they choose to condemn. I am shocked, shocked I tell you!
“The U.S. is a mixed bag…”
Only in the sense that its moonbat left laps up “progressive” nonsense while its wingnut right goes gaga over an increasingly unhinged Oval Office occupant.
The common element for US presidents at the moment would appear to be incoherent senility.
I am a Quaker warden. Yeah, I know. Sometimes the dice roll in interesting ways. I may be the only Quaker Warden who loves combat flight sims. I doubt it – I suspect there are some of us who enjoy “guilty” pleasures. Anyway, I donated to the Quaker kids a load of Lego from my yoof. As did my wife and my brother. This included “Castle” Lego and “Pirates” Lego. The kids love it. The folks in charge of the children’s meeting love it because it’s like, “If you listen to these Bible stories you then get to play with the Lego!”
Anyway, one of the most sanctimonious anti-fun cunts I have ever had the misfortune to have darken my carpets who I shalt not name (though everyone calls him, “Fat Keith”) got on his holy, high horse and went through the large Lego pile (and it is large – we are not the only donors) and confiscated all the weapons: small plastic battle axes and swords, pirate cutlesses and cannon. He didn’t touch the “Space” Lego so on the next Sunday the kids assembled nuclear missiles and lasers. Fat Keith had accelerated Minifig warfare from the medieval/early-modern into the space-age!
The “offending” items have since been returned. Which is good on so many levels (not least that there was no longer any need for me to do something to Fat Keith with a wire coat-hanger that no proctologist on this Goodly Earth could fix).
Is this OT? I don’t think so. Many believe there is an eternal tension between good and evil but I have increasingly seen the eternal struggle to be between sanctimonious “do-gooders” and those grounded in reality. And white guilt is sanctimonius “do-gooding” with no grounding in reality plus-ultra. It is the “white-man’s burden” wearing hippie clothing.
I think the reason for this thing is fairly straightforward and perfunctory. People form their opinions based on their tribe’s philosophy rather than evidence. I mean nearly everyone does that. When you find evidence that supports your thinking (such as white people were monsters in the way they treated first nations) then you will quickly assimilate it and be extremely resistant to any facts contradicting it.
This is not a failure in thinking only restricted to the left. We all do it. We see it right now as people (such as myself) who have spent their whole lives opposing tariffs now support them because that is what their tribe says. You see this PARTICULARLY in religious circles where people believe the most ridiculous things, or at least claim they do, because that is their tribe’s philosophy.
And in many respects, although it is the opposite of all that science and the enlightenment represent, it actually is a quite a logical position to take. If I might pick on religion again, here in the US an amazingly large number of people believe that the earth is 6000 years old. The scientific evidence against this is overwhelming, so why do they think that way? Simply because it is beneficial for them to do so. Their religion offers them a huge number of benefits — a community, a support system, a moral code that is absolute, an answer to difficult questions like why did my child die in that terrible accident and will I ever see her again, a meaning and purpose for life, a sense of worthiness, and a hope that death is not the end of them. These are overwhelmingly positive benefits so that the sacrifice of a little intellectual honestly seems a very small price to pay indeed. Especially so since the age of the earth has almost no bearing on our day to day lives.
So, subscribing to the tribe’s belief lets you be in the the tribe, and that is a super powerful motivator to wink at anything that challenges it, while gulping down anything that supports it.
We are tribal animals. One human against a lion is not a good match. But a community against a lion, especially when enhanced with language and a little basic critical thinking (though not too much) does not look good for the lion. Which is to say, it is the way we are made. And the fight against that to establish an honest science, an honest empirical approach to life, is a tough row to hoe indeed.
Nothing new. Anyone else remember the big “scandal” back in the 1970’s about the “Tasmanian Genocide” of native Aborigines claimed by research and books by left wing Australian academic historians? Got big coverage in the UK media at the time as well as in Australia. To such a dgree that it became a “historical fact”
Turned out the “data” and the “research” was either grossly overstated to the point of fraud or just outright fraudulent. Made up. Deaths never happened. Not in the numbers claimed. Cause of death not the one claimed. And so on.
In the end it was shown that the “Tasmanian Genocide” research was almost all fraudulent. There was no “genocide”. Never happened. What happened in Tasmania was just like the collapse of the tribal populations in the Western Coastal US. Before the Anglos turned. It was mostly due to diseases and collapsing fertility rates. The rest was alcohol and related violence.
So when I first saw the Canadian story on CBC it sounded remarkably like another “Tasmania Genocide” story. Made up for purely political reasons. By “activists”. Which is what it proved to be. Another politically motivated fraud. By the usual suspects.
Apparently none of the reporters ever watched Time Team.
As Henry Cybulski pointed about above, very quickly after the announcement of the “discovery” of the dead kids, the tribes announced that these were protected religious sites, and so no investigation could proceed.
This announcement came so quickly that it appeared, to overly cynical people like me, to have been pre-planned.
The tribes benefited hugely from this “discovery”, and so further investigation would only imperil their enrichment.
“He beat me near to death, so please grant me a million dollars. No, you can’t see my bruises, they’re private.”
I’m reminded by this of the Haut Le Garenne case in Jersey: https://thylacosmilus.blogspot.com/search?q=Jersey&m=1
As for ‘why Canada?’, well, why not?
This situation is another one of those cases that only seems to occur in nations that have their basis in English traditions.
In most parts of the world, the general message to marginalized or historically-oppressed peoples, or those who have been driven out of their historical lands, has been ‘Well, that’s the march of history. Sucks to be you.’ And that’s an end of it.
Only in English-rooted nations – the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and of course, in the UK itself – are such populations treated as the innocent victims of unexampled oppression, and allowed – nay, encouraged – to assume both a mantle of universal victimhood and an entitlement to perpetual preference. Hardly surprising when such populations realize that, with a little suitable propaganda and some heart-string-tugging examples, these things can be easily moulded into a perpetual, unquestionable gravy train?
Not surprising, is it? If, in the hurly-burly of modern politics and society, you were granted an unassailable position of moral superiority over others, purely by accident of birth – wouldn’t you take advantage of it, and organize others around it? And the surest sign of this process developing is the emerging of clear cultural expressions with easily-understood and morally-unambiguous headlines. So each descendant of Caribbean economic migrants to the UK struggles mightily to identify with the ‘Windrush generation’, with the highest status accorded to those who were actually on the very vessel. Native and aboriginal peoples in the US, in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, all fall over each other to identify, to magnify and (as in this case) to fabricate easily-grasped and hard-to-question examples of past oppression and injustice that can be used to somehow justify present and future advantage and preference.
The surest way to see this process in action is whwn you see non-members of the preferred groupings working hard to fabricate their identities – think Elizabeth Warren, or Beverley-Jean SantaMaria, or Iron-Eyes Cody, or any one of a zillion of what are known in the US and Canada as ‘pretendians’, and for which there are suitable local names in other lands.
What is it about the English tradition that renders it so uniquely susceptible to this particular form of guilt-tripping?
llater,
llamas
What is it about the English tradition that renders it so uniquely susceptible to this particular form of guilt-tripping?
Two things: success and protestant Christianity. We are successful enough that we have the resources to do this type of self flagelation — and let’s be clear, the Anglosphere has been far and away the most successful culture in the history of the world. Protestant Christianity is imbued with the idea that we are all sinners, and perhaps more so, even if we ourselves aren’t sinners we inherit the sins of our forefathers. Although Christianity is not an explicit driving force in the modern anglosphere it is absolutely baked into our culture, institutions and thinking patterns. We want to search out our sins and nail ourselves to a tree for them.
We love nothing more than a self sacrificial righteous cause, even if we have to make one up out of whole cloth.
I do not believe that this is anything to do with being English speaking or being part of an Anglosphere, or with Protestant Christianity.
All Western nations are vulnerable to various forms of Critical Theory Marxist attack (which is what this is) – including such nations as Korea and Japan. Looking at the education systems and media of the various nations – the vicious doctrines are clear and dominant.
The objective is simple – to destroy “capitalist” societies, by capturing their institutions and convincing the population they are guilty of “exploitation and oppression” against women, other races, sexual groups (rainbow), and-so-on.
Even the biological destruction of Westerners is followed – by such things as the collapse of the fertility rate and destruction of stable families. Mass immigration is offered as a “solution” to this problem – but this “solution” is not meant kindly, on the contrary it is meant to help destroy Western “capitalist” societies.
I repeat – even such distant nations as Japan are being targeted, and the targeting is (sadly) working.
Western nations are unlikely to survive. The institutions are riddled with these, poisonous, doctrines – and most of the people pushing them have-no-idea of their Critical Theory Marxist origins – or that the purpose of the doctrines is to destroy society.
I repeat – most of the people who push these doctrines have no idea of the origin or the purpose of the doctrines.
It was what the late Antonio Gramsci would have called “ideological hegemony”.
The vicious leftism of the Republic of Korea Parliament needs no comment – and it is not because they are English speaking or whatever (because they are not) – they spout leftist cultural doctrines because this is what they have been taught in school and university, and the People’s Republic of China (which quietly backs various things in Korea and other nations – which it would not tolerant in China) laughs (silently – but the laughter-of-the-mind is there).
Japanese media presents the same seeming contradictions that we see in Britain, the United States, France, Germany. Canada and so on.
Feminism (for example women to go out to work – “empowering”), support for homosexual and Trans Sexual practices, and, at the same time, insisting that the Japanese welcome in Islamic immigrants – who are wonderful people….
I say “seeming” contradictions – as whilst it might seem like a contradiction to push feminism and Rainbow stuff and at-the-same-time the immigration of people whose beliefs are about crushing such things – but it is only a “seeming” contradiction when one considers the objective is the same.
The great leftist thinkers (and they were profound thinkers – incredibly evil, but also incredibly intelligent) did not love feminism, or Rainbow stuff any more than they loved Islam (which is in contradiction with these things) – all these things were, in their eyes, just TOOLS – to convict “capitalist” societies of “exploitation and oppression” and exterminate these societies.
All the seeming contradictions fall away when one understands the objective – destruction.
For example, the senior leftists in Canada (not the ordinary brainless leftist activists – the senior leftists who are the opposite of brainless) do not give a damn about the “First Nations” – all the tribal people could be burned alive for all the senior leftists care, but they see this matter as a useful tool, a WEAPON.
That is all these groups, women, homosexuals, racial groups, whatever, ever were to the senior leftists – tools, weapons to USE to destroy the West. They do not care about these people at all – they never did. The ordinary activists may care passionately – but the thinkers behind them do not, and never did.
The “environment” serves the same function. Ordinary activists may care passionately – but the thinkers behind them do not, and never did. The great leftist thinkers care only about destroying “capitalist” society.
Consider the woke mind virus (and the aforementioned and related “guilt tripping”) within Europe.
The woke mind virus is far more prevalent in Protestant countries like Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, UK, Norway, Denmark than it is in Catholic countries or Eastern Orthodox countries like Italy, Russia, France, Serbia, Spain, Belarus, Greece, Hungary.
Why is this? I suppose there are many possible explanations. But it is not at all clear to me that religion has nothing to do with it given the obvious pattern.
@Shlomo Maistre
Catholic Ireland (or post-Catholic Ireland if you prefer, although the same could be said of Italy, France and Spain) is as infected as anywhere else with wokery, even if we’ve largely managed to keep the worst excesses out of primary and secondary education (not entirely but largely).
I think it’s the fact that we’re part of the English-language online world that is key. Ideas today are most effectively propagated via social media and that’s the world our younger people inhabit. It isn’t primarily about social, political, religious or cultural traditions. They are a lot less influential than what people consume online.
Ireland may be an exception. But overall countries like France, Serbia, Greece, Romania, Russia, Italy, and Spain are not nearly as infected as UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway. I am talking about on average.
There are exceptions to any rule, but on average there is far more wokery in Protestant countries within Europe than there is within Catholic or Eastern Orthodox countries within Europe.
You will recall, for one of many examples, that Catholic countries like Spain and Italy rejected the MeToo movement unlike Protestant countries like Sweden, Denmark, and the UK.
There are exceptions to any rule, but on average there is far more wokery in Protestant countries within Europe than there is within Catholic or Eastern Orthodox countries within Europe.
I still think it’s worth noting that the Protestant countries of northern Europe are also countries where a very high proportion of people have a very high level of English. (Netherlands English, for example, is pretty much a regional variant at this stage.) This is much less the case further south and further east.
The idea that we are all sinners is not unique to Protestant Christianity. The term ‘Catholic guilt’ may be a cliché but it doesn’t come from nowhere.
I don’t understand what your point is. I said:
You disagree with what I said or you agree?
I have no idea what your point is with this. Please feel free to clarify
@AFT
The idea that we are all sinners is not unique to Protestant Christianity. The term ‘Catholic guilt’ may be a cliché but it doesn’t come from nowhere.
I was actually thinking about that over the weekend before you mentioned it. Catholic guilt seems to be different in character than Protestant guilt. I’ve never been a Catholic, but I have known many, so if I misrepresent them, please forgive. For Catholics it seems more a judgement of God or a fear of hell. And Catholics have designed various mechanisms, extrinsic all, for countering this, the confessional, penitence, the rosary, indulgencies, holy absolution, self flagellation, some of the weird shit Opus Dei does, purgatory etc. Protestants have none of these, just prayers for forgiveness and the idea of atonement through substitutionary sacrifice (which, FWIW, is a horrific belief). These are intrinsic. So I think protestants tend to take guilt as more of an internal locus of identity, whereas Catholics tend to take it more of an external.
But it is not Protestantism itself that produces wokeism. In fact most practicing protestants hate wokeism. Rather it is that mechanism of thinking buried into the mindset of that culture that can be repurposed toward wokeism. Wokeism has many of the features of a religion, and so the fact that religion is so deeply embedded in our culture and mindset allows it to be hijacked for other purposes. And I think that is also why actual practicing protestants so hate wokeism. You can only have one religion at a time.
But I could be wrong. I’m just spitballing here.
Shlomo.
First of all remember what the “Woke mind virus” actually is – Critical Theory, Frankfurt School Marxism.
As for say, the government in, for example, Catholic Spain being less “Woke” than, for example the government in, for example, Protestant Sweden – NO IT IS NOT.
The government of Spain is “Woke” and has been for many years.
As for the culture – the fertility rate of “Catholic Europe” countries have collapsed – it is worse in countries such as Spain and Italy than it is in Denmark and Sweden.
This is all nothing to with Christianity – other than the fact that the Churches have been saturated in Marxist doctrines, in the case of the Roman Catholic Church this dates back many decades. There was infiltration campaign even in the 1920s. As for modern times – Liberation Theology and a Jesuit Pope (although, it-is-alleged, that was more the United States government and the corporations allied to it, pushing out Benedict and putting in someone who would “get with the program” of the international leftist establishment).
The Protestant churches have, often, trod the same path – it is often forgotten that formal infiltration (Marxist agents such as Cardinal McCarrick) is often NOT necessary – just the spread of Marxist ideas (often among people who have no idea they have a Marxist origin) is enough.
“Climate Justice”, “Racial Justice” and-so-on. The “capitalist” West as exploiter-and-oppressor, which-must-be-destroyed.
Paul I think maybe you are misunderstanding me. I am not saying that Protestantism causes Wokism. I am saying two things:
1. There clearly is a pattern where wokeism is more prevalent in Protestant European countries than in Catholic or Eastern Orthodox European countries.
2. I suppose there are many possible explanations for #1. But it is not at all clear to me that religion has nothing to do with it given the obvious pattern. For example, Fraser Orr stated the following:
This is pretty close to what I consider a real possible PARTIAL explanation. Even if true, I am not suggesting this explains the entire phenomenon by any means.
Anyway you seem to dispute #1. Consider MeToo movement. MeToo is a key part of Wokeism and MeToo was treated culturally *VERY* differently in countries like Serbia, Russia, Italy, Spain than in countries like UK, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands.
Another example is how transgenderism is treated culturally in countries like Italy, Greece, Hungary, Belarus, and France as compared to in places like Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the UK.
There are many other examples as well. There does seem to be a pattern in terms of Protestant countries vs Catholic/Eastern Orthodox, and there may be some kind of mechanism related in some manner to Protestantism to help explain this pattern, at least partly.
Others have brought up other explanations as well. Perhaps it is the prevalence of English speaking which is more common in northern Europe than in southern or eastern Europe. That is definitely possible and plausible, as well.