Thread by @sunnshiiny

Mass grave has a clear definition.

It means one pit, several bodies.

It does not mean several unmarked graves.

What happened to First Nations children at residential schools is horrific. No school should have a graveyard. Ever.

But it is sensationalism to use mass grave.

https://twitter.com/alliespins/status/1403875088487698433

We don’t need to embellish or exaggerate the mass number of graves found at Residential schools. The abuse suffered and the fact there are any children buried on site is a testament to the inhuman conditions these children endured and suffered.

I am certain there are mass graves of indigenous people.

But for the Catholic administrators to bury children in unmarked graves is tantamount to commissioning their souls to hell and for their existence to be forgotten.

When I grew up, my family went to the traditional homestead of my Métis family every weekend. As a family we gathered to visit, fish, hunt, and be together. Some lived in the small community and most lived in urban settings.

Every time we went out to “the farm” we stopped at the graveyard on the way home. My grandmother would visit her parent’s graves & her younger brother’s.

She would always have a little cry. Stare silently at the graves remembering happier times she had shared with the deceased.

She would wipe her tears and begin to pick weeds or lay the wildflowers we had picked in the fields and hillsides before we left the farm.

I would often get bored as she picked weeds and would wander around the graveyard.

On the outside of the barbed wire fence marking consecrated ground were a number of rusty steel posts with the top six inches marked in bright blue paint.

Since I was there so often, I noticed flowers laid at the foot of the steel rod.

When I asked what those markers were for, my grandmother explained it was for the children born out of wedlock & unbaptized.

Parents still remembered them with love.

The children were forbidden to be buried in consecrated ground because they had been born from sin. None of the burials were contemporaneous to the 1970’s when I asked that question. All were from when my grandmother grew up in the farming community.

So that would have been between 1938 to 1950 approx. When she lived in the area.

Those graves were at least marked. While the religious belief at the time of burial was banishment to hell for the soul & burial on unconsecrated land, they were at the boundary of the graveyard.

A plea for God’s sympathy to accept their innocent souls. From what my grandmother said, they were all children. Most under 5 years of age. Priests, pastors and reverends would not baptize them, so if they died, they were condemned to hell for their parent’s sins.

The grave had a marker but there was no name or identifying information. Just a steel rod in the ground about 2 feet outside of the graveyard. I always thought it was harsh to punish children who hadn’t done anything but be born. It was scornful abusive act burned in my memory.

An unmarked grave is an enormous slight made against the deceased and their soul. For a Catholic religious order to bury children in unmarked graves was a comment on the worth of their souls and their lives.

They were deemed unworthy of even marking their final resting place.

Maybe their parents weren’t married in a church ceremony. Maybe they were born out of wedlock. That’s no excuse not to bury those children with the sacraments the church reserved for saved souls which those buried in graveyards received.

Maybe the priest and nuns were hiding the number of children that perished in their care? TRC documented several cases of abuse. Surely many were buried hurriedly to conceal any crimes.

But that is speculation. Further investigation would be warranted before any conclusions.

But that was the belief at the time. A moral judgement that the children of a union not blessed by the church were condemned to hell for eternity because their parents created life outside of Christian wedlock.

Harsh judgement for an act the victim had no part in.

Over the years people around the farm softened their beliefs.

More of my family members are buried there. Including my mother & brother.

So I still make the trip at least once per year to visit and pay my respects, pick weeds, remember the good memories.

Now it’s my turn to have a little cry like my grandmother did. It’s my kids who are bored.

But I noticed a few years ago those steel posts are no longer there.

The parents of those children are all deceased now. There is no one who loved them to remember them and no need to mark their final resting spot. They are forever condemned to be forgotten. A family secret. Never to be mentioned.

That’s the harsh judgement imposed by strict religious moral codes that shaped and regulated rural life in mid 20th century northern Alberta.

I know those posts bothered my grandmother as well.

One thing she stressed to me as a teenager. Do not have children before you’re married.

She was adamant. Get the ring before the baby.

She was a product of her time. The fear of a child burning in hell for eternity because of it’s parents sins still haunted her.

I sometimes wonder if she knew who any of the children were that those steel posts marked. But she took that secret to her grave if she did. As did their parents.

The church ruled peoples lives without mercy and without any compassion.

Who would believe so fervently in god and Jesus’s teachings of love and compassion and then be able condemn an innocent child to eternal damnation for an act they had no part in?

All churches did this. Not just Catholics.

It was every church that enforced rigid beliefs that controlled the lives of those who believed in god.

That’s called ordered liberty.

Enforcement in a strict moral code in which you govern your own behaviour or burn in hell. There is no forgiveness. Only judgement.

The over 300 First Nations children now located in unmarked graves, some perhaps mass graves, deserved better. Their families deserved better.

Religion is not an opiate, it’s a behaviour control mechanism.

Control that was used to debase and humiliate indigenous children.