From: Stephanie M. Schwartz - Thanks
Indybay News: US: Racial
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469727.php

Missing Kin, Dead Kids: Gone, but not forgotten
by Monica Davis ( davis4000_2000 [at] yahoo.com )
Wednesday Jan 2nd, 2008

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.

Monica Davis ( davis4000_2000 [at] yahoo.com )






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