Today's the day that, unlike the lying losers in the Canadian government and media and corporate world, we refuse to immolate ourselves over the fact that Red Indian kids had to go to school.
And now yet another year after that post, yet more developments have proven me right and Injun activists wrong. Let's start with Jonathan Kay slightly missing the mark about the continued failure to find any of these supposed thousands of mysteriously dead kids:
Slogans were minted. T-shirts were sold. Hundreds of millions of dollars in new grants were sent to Indigenous communities. Trudeau himself, always in his element when things get overwrought, went down on one knee and placed a teddy bear on the site of a former residential school.That third paragraph is unnecessarily mealy-mouthed. It wouldn't really be that surprising that no bodies are ever discovered that prove the "evil Residential Schools" thesis because the thesis itself is flawed. There's no reason to have any "unpleasant surprises" because everybody on earth knew that Red Indian kids were from a broken and diseased race (more on that in a minute), and their deaths weren't anything to be ashamed of.As noted above, this happened almost two and a half years ago. Yet during that time, not a single actual grave has been discovered, much less anything in the way of human remains.
This is not to say that some graves won’t be found. Indeed, it would be surprising if the grounds of some of these old schools, which typically featured churches and graveyards, did not have unpleasant surprises to surrender. But by now it is clear that the hysterical (and that is the right word) media claims of 2021, which suggested vast swathes of corpse-filled killing fields, were the product of unchecked herd behaviour among Canada’s intellectual class.
Even now, in fact, few of the leading figures who fed this hysteria have gone back to correct their flawed statements, much less investigate how their fact-checking processes allowed it all to happen. (A notable exception here is the National Post newspaper, which published a full and frank piece on this subject by columnist Terry Glavin in 2022.)
I have no special insight into why the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, which made the first unmarked-graves announcement in May 2021, hasn’t yet investigated those 215 radar-identified soil dislocations. When this question is raised in the media, one often hears it vaguely said that the ceremonial and technical challenges associated with such a dig would take many years—which is of course ridiculous. McGill University recently performed a complex search for Indigenous remains on its campus, under the watchful eye of Indigenous cultural monitors, in a matter of months.No special insight is required: Red Indians love making up hardships (and again, more on this in a bit) and they especially love the lies that result in huge amounts of free money from the hardworking white taxpayers they hate for being inferior to. Also, as one of the only people who in May of 2021 knew that these "GPR anomolies" didn't mean anything, Jon could at least acknowledge that we existed and were better than him from the get-go.It should be said that, in the period that followed the original Kamloops announcement, other First Nations tended to be more guarded in announcing their own radar-located ground “anomalies.” By now, many Canadians had educated themselves on the limitations of GPR technology, which typically cannot identify actual graves (much less bones or bodies), but simply picks up soil dislocations that can be associated with graves, yes, but also with irrigation pipes, drainage ditches, and tree roots.
One of the first Indigenous communities to actually start digging has been Pine Creek First Nation in Manitoba, whose lands include the site of the (long ago demolished) Pine Creek Indian Residential School. Former students at the school, which operated between 1890 and 1969, claimed to remember bodies of dead children being stored in the basement of the school’s church, as well as secretive burials outside—the same sort of dark legends that had circulated in Kamloops.Yet again, when they tried to dig they found nothing. As we noted, Kate McMillan nailed it with her succinct summary:The search at Pine Creek’s former church was thorough, and centred on fourteen radar anomalies located in the church basement. On August 18, Pine Creek Chief Derek Nepinak announced to his community that nothing was found during this search. There were no graves, no bodies, no human remains. (The community still hasn’t decided whether it will pursue an investigation of the other GPR-identified anomalies, which lie outside the church.)
On social media, some have seized on this news, suggesting that it “proves” the whole unmarked-graves narrative was always a “hoax.” But language like that is inaccurate, unhelpful, and arguably even cruel—because there is no evidence (at least none that I’ve seen) indicating that the unmarked-graves social panic was any kind of deliberate con. Just the opposite, it seemed to originate organically from a stew of historical fact (yes, many of the residential schools were cruel and dangerous places), urban legends (no, they were not concentration camps), and performative white guilt (starting at the top, with Trudeau himself, who clearly saw political currency in the maudlin extremes of his reaction).
Certainly, no one can credibly accuse Chief Derek Nepinak of bad faith: Not only did he mobilize his community to search for human remains, but he even invited journalists to come watch it happen. And he did it knowing full well that finding nothing would run up against the grain of media-fueled expectations, and perhaps even serve to raise pressures on other First Nations that have made announcements concerning their own GPR-identified anomalies.
Shovels 1, Knowledge Keepers 0
Yet former students "claimed to remember bodies of dead children stored in the basement" which is totally a real thing that we can continue to claim isn't made up bullshit by the same people who don't acknowledge that they are just a bunch of expelled Mongolians. And while "we caught you lying jackpine savages lying again and you should all be horsewhipped in punishment" may be "arguably even cruel" it's certainly more helpful and absolutely more accurate than any "every child matters" sticker on a minivan that you see all over the place. They did lie†. We did catch them.
Indeed, Kay's "historical fact" of Residential Schools being "cruel and dangerous places" is itself not a fact. The cruelty is always exaggerated and culturally ignorant (again, more on this below), which of course is a deliberate provocation by the Lysol Drinkers to generate that performative (and legitimate, if misguided) White guilt which they profit from so much. While it is nice that Nepinak was open an honest about the digging that would prove or disprove the outrageous claims, and we should probably be appreciative, we also should acknowledge that this should be the absolute bare minimum required from any Indian Chief who wants to even insinuate that there may be a carcass on the section of land His Majesty has graciously permitted him to occupy and even more graciously permitted him to falsely claim is sovereign.
† How much the jackpine savages have internalized these lies is a matter for some debate. Certainly there was a performative aspect to the "where are all the bodies" bullshit when the lies about the Charles Camsell were exposed, and they were much more muted when the McGill lies were exposed this past month.
It is nice that the narrative is always flowing my direction, but again there's never been any doubt about that. Anybody with half a brain knew two years ago that the "215 dead kids in Kamloops" was a complete fabrication.
This fake holiday based on a lie ("Residential Schools aren't awesome and children were killed as a result") was designed to coincide with another day, the "Orange Shirt Day", also about a girl supposedly mistreated as a Residential School student (laughably called a "survivor"). Would it therefore surprise you to learn that the infamous orange shirt incident is also a lie? Well, I guess it shouldn't. Here's Nina Green with the amazing fact check the legacy media wouldn't bother doing:
The text states that the nuns made her shower, took her orange shirt away, gave her other clothes to wear, and cut her hair short.This was a routine procedure when children arrived at residential schools across Canada in September. In his book From Truth Comes Reconciliation, Rodney Clifton, who worked at Stringer Hall, the Anglican student residence and hostel in Inuvik, explains that it was a practical necessity for the students’ health and well-being. He noted that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report failed to state that:
Some of the children arrived at Stringer Hall in September wearing the same school clothing they wore when they went home in the spring, not having bathed or changed in two months. Some of these children had been standing in smudge fires, trying to escape the hordes of blood-sucking insects, and a number had arrived with infected bug bites on their scalps. A few children arrived with ear infections so severe that pus was running down their necks. At the beginning of the year, these children cried themselves to sleep. As you might expect, the first priority of the residential school staff, particularly the nursing sister, was to clean up the children, and treat their infections.The Orange Shirt Story does not provide this much-needed context, and makes it appear that giving Phyllis Webstad and other children from remote Indian reserves in the Cariboo a shower, a change of clothing, and a haircut on their arrival at St. Joseph's in September were callous acts perpetrated by 'cold and unfriendly' nuns.
To put the students’ living conditions and infections into context, anyone reading this account needs to realize that it wasn’t until the early 1950s that a weekly bath with a change of clothes became the norm for most urban Canadians. For people living on farms and in small communities where water had to be hand-pumped from wells and heated on coal and wood stoves, a bath with a change of clothing was a luxury reserved for special occasions. In the North, it was even more difficult to bathe and change clothing, especially for the children who were with their parents in tents at hunting and fishing camps.
There is little doubt that the hostel children appreciated ending a busy week with a hot shower, clean pajamas, and a chance to slip between clean sheets in their very own beds, just as other Canadian children did. (pp. 281-2)
There's a lot to unpack right there: the reason the little squaw had her precious orange shirt removed had nothing to do with some Principal Skinner inspired institutionalized blandness as is commonly promoted but instead an act of mercy when dirty and diseased little redskins started showing up for the schools whose very design was centred around giving them some civilizing influence for a change. Her beautiful long locks of hair that now she claims made up her identity was actually to get the disgusting lice under control now that she was no longer in third world conditions typically suited to her race. Her fancy favoured shirt probably had more smallpox on it than every fictional white-provided blanket in history. While a 21st century person might find it crazy, in practical reality the clothing students arrived with couldn't be practically stored and kept disinfected and ended up having to be destroyed. It wasn't an act of malice but an act of charity (as indeed the entire Residential School system was).
Okay, I can hear a couple of you objecting to this explanation of the circumstances. For one, Clifton's book quoted above refers to the 1950s as the tipping point for 20th century hygiene to make its way into rural Canada (I know of some homes that didn't get electrified until the 60s, and some that were torn down in the 80s having never gotten running water), but the fact that Webstad is alive today basically precludes her having gone to school in the early third of the century and extremely unlikely to be in the early half. Indeed, her experiences were from the 70s. So you'd think my justification of what happened to her would evaporate, and maybe it does. But long before that happens, her story goes poof in the wind with far greater certainty. Which is a fancy way of saying Phyllis Webstad is a lying squaw who deserves to be tied to a fencepost and pelted with rocks.
The fact that Phyllis Webstad puts nuns at centre-stage on the cover and in the text and illustrations of The Orange Shirt Story contrasts rather markedly with her failure to mention nuns in her other accounts of her year at St. Joseph’s, which, to clarify, was no longer a school when she arrived there in 1973, but a student residence or hostel in which students lived while attending public schools in town in Williams Lake.As the federal government’s policy of integrating status Indian students into provincial public schools and turning the former residential schools into student residences or hostels progressed during the 1950s and 1960s, nuns were no longer required as teachers, and many had left by the time the federal government formally took over administration of the schools from the churches on 1 April 1969. Thus, if there were still a few non-teaching nuns working alongside lay staff at St Joseph’s residence/hostel during Phyllis Webstad’s one-year stay there in 1973/4, it does seem a rather glaring omission that she never specifically mentions nuns in other accounts of her life there.
In a subsequent book, Beyond The Orange Shirt Story, published in 2021, she merely refers to the persons who took away her orange shirt as ‘them’:
I can remember arriving at the Mission. The building was huge, unlike any building I’d ever seen before. I remember lots of crying and the feeling of terror, pee your pants terror! When my clothing, including my orange shirt, was taken, it didn’t matter how much I protested or told them I wanted it back, they didn’t listen.On the Orange Shirt Society webpage, she merely says ‘they’:I went to the Mission for one school year in 1973/1974. I had just turned 6 years old. I lived with my grandmother on the Dog Creek reserve. We never had very much money, but somehow my granny managed to buy me a new outfit to go to the Mission school. I remember going to Robinson’s store and picking out a shiny orange shirt. It had string laced up in front, and was so bright and exciting – just like I felt to be going to school!In a recent CBC Kids article and interview, she merely says ‘staff’':When I got to the Mission, they stripped me, and took away my clothes, including the orange shirt! I never wore it again. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t give it back to me, it was mine!
But once she got to the school, Webstad said staff took away her clothes, including her orange shirt. She never had the chance to wear it again.Why does Phyllis Webstad shy away in subsequent accounts from stating that it was nuns who took her orange shirt away when she had stated so emphatically in The Orange Shirt Story that nuns were responsible?
Why? Because the deal the Lysol Liars have made with the progressive left is that their little school history is a great way to diminish and insult the Catholic Church in particular and the Christian religion in general. Yet its important not to have it too definitively on the record to be proven as wrong as the Kamloops graves.
The Christians who invented and administered the Residential School System were clearly a superior people doing good work that exposed how their own race was incapable of any of it. Attacking and belittling and hating and diminishing them was a key aspect of this whole affair. Again remember that 2021 saw a level of anti-Christian fervor and hatred and hate crimes unseen in Canadian history against any religious group. Catholics in the summer of 2021 could only wish they had been treated as "poorly" as Muslims claimed to be threatened of feeling in the winter of 2001.
How many churches in 2021 were burned to the ground versus how many mosques in 2002? That's in no small part thanks to the slander committed against the nunnery by this worthless piece of disgraced Mongolian trash. Tie her to a fencepost already.
In fact, there were many Indigenous staff throughout the years of the residential school system. The schools couldn’t have run without them. In 1961, 8.9% of the total teaching staff were Indigenous. 96 status Indian teachers were employed in day schools, and 25 in residential schools. Those figures, of course, do not include the many hundreds of Indigenous staff members like Gloria Manuel who were employed in other capacities in the schools over the years.The foregoing facts raise an obvious question: Was it actually lay staff members, and perhaps even Indigenous lay staff members, who gave Phyllis Webstad a shower and haircut, and took her orange shirt away when she arrived at St Joseph's? If so, The Orange Shirt Story has clearly misinformed the Canadian public, and in particular, Canadian schoolchildren.
It’s even possible that Phyllis Webstad’s orange shirt was eventually returned to her. She can’t say for certain that it wasn’t, because she admits to having no memory of going home at the end of the school year.
I don’t have a memory of getting my shirt back, or going home when school was out.There are other aspects of Phyllis Webstad’s story about which the public has not been accurately informed. For example, the CBC Kids article erroneously states that she attended school at St Joseph’s:In 1973, when Webstad was six years old, she started attending St. Joseph's Mission Residential School near Williams Lake.As noted above, the CBC is in error. St. Joseph’s was no longer a school when Phyllis Webstad arrived there. It was a student residence and hostel where students lived while attending public school in Williams Lake:The Mission was the place where we slept and ate. When I attended in 1973, there were 272 students in total, boys and girls. All of the students were bussed into Williams Lake to attend public school, about 20 minutes away. ... I liked my teacher there, she had crazy red curly hair, she smelled good, and she was kind — I wished she could take me home with her.Moreover it seems Phyllis Webstad’s experience in public school In Williams Lake was a pleasant one. She has positive memories of it.
To quote Mary McCarthy, it seems that "every word she [Phyllis Webstad] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" While she on occasion again seems almost forced to admit the truth, the "journalists" writing activist polemics about the orange shirt experience certainly aren't interested in telling us the truth about the story. Meanwhile the book she supposedly wrote doesn't jive with her other accounts, and absolutely doesn't line up with the actual written history that (superior white) people actually recorded with documentary evidence.
Nina ends with some hot fire that is desperately needed:
Have a great White People Are the Best Day this September 30th, and have another great White People Are the Best Day tomorrow October 1st, and indeed every other day we celebrate our misrepresented race of superior acheivers.Phyllis Webstad needs to level with Canadians, and tell them:
- whether it really was nuns who greeted her at the school, forced her to shower, took her orange shirt away, and cut her hair, or whether it was lay staff members, and perhaps Indigenous lay staff members
- that her school year with a teacher she liked in Williams Lake was a happy one
- that her parents had both abandoned her, and that she had no one to care for her on the reserve apart from an aging grandmother, and
- that childhood on the reserve, as experienced by her aunt, was horrific, as opposed to her own year at St. Joseph’s, which was not horrific at all.
