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Worldly

Canada’s reckoning with residential schools

Worldly

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.41.8K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2021

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Zack and Jenn talk about the horrifying discovery of the remains of 215 children at a so-called “residential school” in Canada. They talk about the history of these schools, which were a centerpiece of Canada’s long-running effort to wipe out Indigenous culture and identity, and how the discovery of the children’s bodies is forcing a political reckoning with this history among white Canadians. Then they compare how Canada is handling this issue to the way that other countries like the US, Germany, and Japan have dealt with their own histories of atrocity — and how that shapes both politics inside those countries and their relations with other states today. References: You can read the final report from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission here or on the Commission’s website, where you can find additional information and resources on the commission and the residential school system, including more about the Missing Children Project. And here are the 94 “calls to action” from the report, if you want to check those out in particular. This is the op-ed by Jody Wilson-Raybould that Zack mentioned. This is the infamous 1892 “Kill the Indian...save the man” speech by Richard Pratt, the US military officer who founded the Indian Industrial School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which became a model for similar forced-assimilation schools in the US and Canada. Here’s more on the lawsuit seeking reparations for the cultural impact of the residential schools, which the Canadian government is currently fighting against. And here’s more on the Pope’s comments about the discovery at the Kamloops school, which notably do not include an apology for the Catholic church’s role in running that and many of the other residential schools. Jenn mentioned the “birth alerts” that were only ended in British Columbia in 2019. You can read more about that here. This is a good article contrasting Germany’s and Japan’s national approaches to reconciling with their past atrocities. And here’s more about the ongoing tensions between Japan and South Korea over Japan’s wartime use of Korean sex slaves known as “comfort women.” You can read the full text of the bill apologizing “to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States,” which President Barack Obama quietly signed into law in 2009, here, and read more about why many were disappointed by it here and here. And you can read the report from the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth & Reconciliation Commission here. Hosts: Zack Beauchamp (@zackbeauchamp), senior correspondent, Vox Jennifer Williams (@jenn_ruth), senior foreign editor, Vox Alex Ward (@AlexWardVox), White House reporter, Vox Consider contributing to Vox: If you value Worldly’s work, please consider making a contribution to Vox: bit.ly/givepodcasts More to explore: Subscribe for free to Today, Explained, Vox’s daily podcast to help you understand the news, hosted by Sean Rameswaram. About Vox: Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Follow us: Vox.com Newsletter: Vox Sentences Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:16.0

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0:18.0

That's ASANA.com.

0:30.0

Last month, something horrible was discovered in Canada.

0:37.0

215 bodies of children at a mass grave at a school in British Columbia.

0:43.0

This wasn't just a normal school, though.

0:46.0

It was a residential school, which was a term used for a kind of school

0:51.0

in which indigenous children were taken from their parents

0:54.0

and essentially attempted to be assimilated into white Canadian culture

0:58.0

to have their identities eradicated.

1:01.0

These schools were horrendously abusive and had been known for quite some time in Canada,

1:05.0

but the mass grave shocked the conscience of the country.

1:08.0

It underscored that however much reckoning the country had done

1:11.0

with how bad things were, things were even worse than many people in Canada

1:16.0

or at least many white citizens of Canada believed.

1:19.0

And it sparked a real reconsideration in the country

1:22.0

of how to think and talk about its history of abuses towards indigenous people.

1:27.0

One that has interesting parallels and important parallels

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