Residential School discussion
The Lasqueti email list moderators have decided to not accept further posts about this topic on the email list. Many email list subscribers have expressed their opposition to carrying this type of discussion, which usually elicits further reactions, and people don't want it cluttering up their local Lasqueti email service. We currently restrict posts to Lasquet issues only, and this one is close to a local issue, but it is much wider and we expect it will dominate the email list for at least a while.
I'll be posting a link to this page, and moderators will reject posts on RS issues and suggest that posts be put at this page of the Lasqueti web site. To post, you must be a registered site user, but anyone with an internet connection can read it. You can look up how to register and use the site at https://lasqueti.ca/node/328
Anna has agreed that I post her message here.
On the Lasqueti email list March 13:
Dear community,
I was greatly distressed to see a post on the e-list promoting Dallas Brodie's visit to the island. Dallas Brodie is known to be extremely racist and demeaning toward indigenous peoples and that rhetoric is what she and her fellow presenters plan to continue today at her "event". While there was no directly racist content in the email, it was promoting a *highly *racist and history denying event. I believe that promoting such events has no place in our e-list.
I understand and appreciate the difficulty that our e-list moderators face when assessing posts that do not specifically violate "the rules" but may still cause harm. I hope we can come together and publicly show that this type of racist content and promotion has no place on our e-list or in our community.
Anna Smith
Here is Dave Olsen's next day response, posted with his permission:
Below is some of the background to why Dallas Brodie has, and continues to, publicly state that zero bodies have been found at the former Indian Residential School in Kamloops.
I request a public retraction of Anna's defamatory email. Anything less would mean that she is also calling the Chief Justice of BC a racist. Here's what Wikipedia says about him:
Justice Leonard Marchand, Chief Justice of British Columbia, is a Syilx member of the Okanagan Indian Band who grew up in Kamloops, British Columbia. He has played a significant role in advancing justice and reconciliation for Indigenous peoples, particularly in relation to the legacy of the residential school system by serving on the Oversight Committee for the Independent Assessment Process and the Selection Committee for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
*Reasons for Judgment of the Honourable Chief Justice Marchand:
*[50] The circumstances of the interaction between the judge and defence counsel demonstrate the judge was aware of the inquiry into unmarked graves and burial sites at residential schools in Canada. The judge clarified and corrected defence counsel’s inaccurate submission that human remains had been “unearthed” at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. It was the judge’s subsequent use of the word “potential” that caused uproar and hurt. However, that word is the very same word Indigenous communities and others have used to describe the results of tests using ground penetrating radar in and around former residential school sites.
[53] Within this broader context it is simply not possible to objectively interpret the judge’s comment about “potential” remains at unmarked burial sites as indicative of apparent or actual intolerance, denial or bias.
To read the whole judgment yourself, simply go to:
https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/ca/24/02/2024BCCA0272.htm
Chief Justice Leonard Marchand is the son of a former Liberal cabinet minister and senator of the same name, who in his autobiography, Breaking Trail (2000), wrote: “I was never abused, and I never heard of anyone else who was mistreated at the Kamloops school.” He did not fear writing positively about the priests, nuns and brothers: “… they meant well by us, they genuinely cared about us, and they all did their duty by us as they saw fit.”
“Another motivation took root in the back of my mind: that somehow, by getting educated, I would be able to do something to help my people. I don’t remember the first time that idea came to me, but it probably sprouted sometime during the year that I spent at Kamloops Indian Residential School.”
Dave Olsen
