Aboriginal Civil Disobedience

[Rhea]

1500+ indigenous children were murdered and their bodies hidden.

Is this actually what is being alleged? I cannot find any information about it, other than the discovery of the graves.

Not sure I understand.
Children’s bodies are being found in unmarked mass graves using ground penetrating radar.
Are you saying that you know people were aware of the graves and similar numbers of children were dying at other (non-indigenous) schools and you assume this, then, is all normal?

 

[Rhea]

Question for the "don't blame the church" people: Of the 100+ schools not yet searched, given all that we know so far, how many of them would you expect will have children's bodies buried under them?

Since we do not yet know of a single child’s body returned to its family for sacred burial, I am going to estimate 100% of them.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Generally, I am not againt using expressions like 'the police' or 'the church' or whatever as shorthand for the claim that some individuals who do not need to be further specified for the purposes of the point one is making, have some obligation or do something, etc. The problem begins when someone forgets that and begins to treat them as a collective actor whose individual members inherit guilt by membership, or things like that.

Indeed, members of the KKK should not be blamed or assume any guilt at for the cross burnings, because you don’t know that that particular hooded figure is the one who lit the match. KKK members are a hale and hearty, blameless crowd, on the whole.

Do you actually believe that your objection makes sense?
I mean, there is nothing in what I said that would reasonably suggest that. But:

1. First, what a person deserves and what another person should reckon he deserves on the basis of the available information are two different things.
2. A KKK member who burned crosses is guilty of that and of being a member of the KKK (which involves generally engaging in all sorts of other immoral behavior), regardless of what others know.
3. A KKK member who did not burn crosses is not guilty of that, though he is guilty of being a member of the KKK (which involves generally engaging in all sorts of other immoral behavior), regardless of what others know.

And of course, the above is no proper objection to anything I said.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

You interpret those posts in that way.

Yes, and I argue that that is the correct way of doing so. That is in my posts. Sure, you disgree, and we can keep debating if you like.

Those posts about the Pope (and this is my interpretation) is about the show of remorse and taking the leadership role that is the Pope.

Remorse is a proper feeling when one behaved immorally. Remorse for the behavior of others is confused if nothing else.

The Pope has on many occasions shown remorse for things that the Pope hasn't physically done.

Well, more precisely, I'm saying moral guilt is for choices (broadly speaking, including failing to make choices), so it's a mental thing. In which sense that is physical is another matter. But in any case, I have seen the pope apologizing for things he is not guilty of. I do not know whether:

1. He is being insincere.
2. He is making a mistake.
3. Both.

This is not something out of the norm for the position of Pope.

Yes, that is true, if I grok the sort of examples you have in mind. And I'm saying if he sincerely apologized in those cases, he should not have (if it was insincere, the matter is more complicated, and I would have to look at it on a case by case basis, but probably he should not have, either).

Now I'll grant that a lot of hyperbole has been used VIA choice of words (like begging) but reading between the lines I do not see any post explicitly naming the Pope or anyone in particular who didn't actually commit the horrors as an actual first party. The evidence you've provided is questionable (again in my interpretation/opinion).

What I'm saying is that that is implicit in what it is to apologize, and the use of words around the demands for an apology also indicate blame is being attributed, and not just to the pope, but to many other people in the RCC, as if they were part of some interchangeable collective when it comes to guilt. I'm arguing that guilt is personal, not transferable.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I chose to not put words in your mouth. It’s an open question, asking you what YOU think should be done and by whom. I asked you to say what you think SHOULD happen, because so far you’ve spent a lot of time just telling everyone what should not happen, which so far has sounded a lot like providing cover. So I’m giving you a chance to say in your own words what you think SHOULD happen. You get to pick by whom and to whom.

I do not know, given my limited information. For example:
Probably, some people in the police should investigate, though I am not sure who.
Very probably, some people in the RCC hierarchy should open some records if they have them and they are requested by people interested in investigating, but I do not know what they have.
Perhaps, some people in the RCC hierarchy should allocate some money to investigating, but that is very difficult to tell, given alternative uses of the money (e.g., saving children today) vs. potential obligations to compensate due to the damage done to some of the victims or their closed ones.

On the other hand, it's easier to realize what sort of things some people should not do - e.g., people should not sincerely blame others (or seek punishment, even if light punishment) without conclusive evidence of guilt of the individuals involved.

1500+ indigenous children were murdered and their bodies hidden. What do you think should be done, and by whom and to whom? What actions should anyone in the world now take - now that we know this.

I do not know whether 1500+ indigenous children were murdered and their bodies hidden, but assuming this is so, see above for the answer.

 

[Rhea]

I find myself morally unable to look in the face of the families of these children and say,

I KNOW that 1500+ of your relatives were found in unmarked graves.
And I shrug my shoulders and walk away, murmuring, “maybe someone somewhere could maybe look if they felt like it, but I don’t have any will to think about who. Don’t count on me for help.”


That’s not me.

I say, instead, “ I KNOW that 1500+ of your relatives were found in unmarked graves, therefore,”

• Definitely the police in that jurisdiction should investigate 700, 600, 215 bodies found in a mass grave. Investigation of found bodies and following evidence trails to new suspect locations is what they do.
• Definitely the people in the RCC hierarchy should open all relevant records of their own volition if they have any sense of morals themselves. And they should be required by the police if they don’t do it voluntarily, as part of a crime scene investigation.
• Definitely the people in the RCC hierarchy should allocate some money to investigating the sites where they already know schools were held and may be in the same condition as the ones dug up by investigators - again, if they have even a shred of a soul.
• Definitely the organization that prides itself on morals and caring about human suffering should not be bothered in the least about the potential cost of compensating due to the damage done to any of the victims or their close ones, especially since the money that the church now has was not all accumulated yesterday, and may have even been gained through criminal means of accepting funding or donations for these schools which then committed the crime of burying bodies of children in unmarked graves without government approval.

My morals do not permit me to shrug and say, “yeah, not really my deal, I’m moving on,” and they especially do not permit me to argue with those who are trying to do something and tell them to stop because I personally don’t know who to ask.

Your contributions to this thread have been 100% about stop looking, stop asking, stop expecting a response.
Ironically (maybe not, maybe, sadly,) this is the same response those Indigenous families have been getting for 100 years… resulting in at least one of them saying “fuck it. Burn that fucking church down.”

 

[TomC]

I find myself morally unable to look in the face of the families of these children and say,

I KNOW that 1500+ of your relatives were found in unmarked graves.
And I shrug my shoulders and walk away, murmuring, “maybe someone somewhere could maybe look if they felt like it, but I don’t have any will to think about who. Don’t count on me for help.”

I don't know you, really. So please don't take this personally.

Most Americans live on land stolen from indigenous people. There are unmarked graves everywhere. Zillions of them, especially of children.

Have you ever considered tracing your property deeds to their original source? The original legal entity that gave someone the right to ownership, which came down to you?

Most Americans live on land that was stolen from some indigenous tribe or another. That land is full of unmarked graves. Graves so old that they don't turn up on radar, but they're there.

That's true almost everywhere in the inhabitable world. From Africa to North America to Asia, there are unmarked graves everywhere. You probably walk on some every day when you go outside, on your way to your car or your neighbor's place.

Do you feel as much obligation to resource an investigation into who was buried there as you feel the Canadian Catholics should feel?

Why?

Tom

 

[Rhea]

I have already traced my land to the people who originally inhabited it, yes. There is a website that can start you on your search to understand or at least acknowledge that ownership. https://native-land.ca/. I live on Haudenosaunee land. There were no schools, churches or businesses on my land. There are definitely no mass graves of hundreds of children here. We do have a pile of bones at the edge of the woods, but they are cow bones. The only thing my land has ever been is undersea (ancient), under glacier, woods (thousands of years), cow pasture (a few hundred years), and now grassland bird habitat (20 years).

 

[laughing dog]

I find myself morally unable to look in the face of the families of these children and say,

I KNOW that 1500+ of your relatives were found in unmarked graves.
And I shrug my shoulders and walk away, murmuring, “maybe someone somewhere could maybe look if they felt like it, but I don’t have any will to think about who. Don’t count on me for help.”

I don't know you, really. So please don't take this personally.

Most Americans live on land stolen from indigenous people. There are unmarked graves everywhere. Zillions of them, especially of children.

Have you ever considered tracing your property deeds to their original source? The original legal entity that gave someone the right to ownership, which came down to you?

Most Americans live on land that was stolen from some indigenous tribe or another. That land is full of unmarked graves. Graves so old that they don't turn up on radar, but they're there.

That's true almost everywhere in the inhabitable world. From Africa to North America to Asia, there are unmarked graves everywhere. You probably walk on some every day when you go outside, on your way to your car or your neighbor's place.

Do you feel as much obligation to resource an investigation into who was buried there as you feel the Canadian Catholics should feel?

Why?

Tom

Wow, that is one really hare-brained straw man.

 

[Rhea]

Do you feel as much obligation to resource an investigation into who was buried there as you feel the Canadian Catholics should feel?

But I ask you - why would you compare a private landowner who has never run a school with an instiution that KNOWS it ran a “school” of forced students and KNOWS that at three of those schools hundreds of bodies have been found and KNOWS it has over 130 more schools, and KNOWS it resisted calls for investigation for decades KNOWS it has not lifted a finger to check the others after volunteers found over 1500 bodies?


Why would you attempt to create an equivalence between those? Do you think those deserve the same level of inquiry?

Really?

That sounds an awful lot like another verse of the song, “stop asking, stop looking, I have no concern about those bodies, can we talk about something else?”

 

[Elixir]

Most Americans live on land stolen from indigenous people. There are unmarked graves everywhere. Zillions of them, especially of children.
Have you ever considered tracing your property deeds to their original source? The original legal entity that gave someone the right to ownership, which came down to you?

Yes. How about you?

In case you're curious, I'm quite certain that there are no graves on my property dating from less than 10,000 years ago. (I built on an alluvium, and over the last 10K years it has probably filled in 15+ feet with layers of cobble and clay. There's a stretch of about a 15' cliff at the river's edge cut by a geologically recent meander, and some charcoal looking bits exposed near the bottom. Est by a geologist friend at around 10k years old. So maybe at that or greater depth.)

AFAIK there were no deeds to this property prior to the land and water claims filed in the early 1800s by the ancestors of the ranchers who are still my neighbors. It had been occupied Ute Indians/indigenous/First Nations people and I still find traces of their encampments. As it happened, and as the early photographs seem to show, the Ute and the ranchers got along quite well. The farmhouse grounds became winter grounds for the Indians, and early tintypes show teepees literally within a stone's throw of the main house. The hay fields fed the Indians' horses as well as the ranchers' horses, mules and cattle. During particularly hard winters the ranch family fed up to 50-70 Utes. I don't think they ever contested the ranchers' claim to the ground - they weren't in the habit of doing that kind of thing since the whole concept of "owning land" was so foreign to them as to be incomprehensible. In the early days it would have been well within their power to wipe that ranching family out of existence, and vice versa. But neither thing happened. As the story goes, most of the Ute eventually moved off to the north side of the valley, following game as the south side was converted from high desert Pinon forest to irrigated fields.

I don't know how I'd respond if a Ute family showed up telling their great great great great great great grandpa used to live here and they want their land back.

 

[Gospel]

I find myself morally unable to look in the face of the families of these children and say,

I KNOW that 1500+ of your relatives were found in unmarked graves.
And I shrug my shoulders and walk away, murmuring, “maybe someone somewhere could maybe look if they felt like it, but I don’t have any will to think about who. Don’t count on me for help.”

I don't know you, really. So please don't take this personally.

Most Americans live on land stolen from indigenous people. There are unmarked graves everywhere. Zillions of them, especially of children.

Have you ever considered tracing your property deeds to their original source? The original legal entity that gave someone the right to ownership, which came down to you?

Most Americans live on land that was stolen from some indigenous tribe or another. That land is full of unmarked graves. Graves so old that they don't turn up on radar, but they're there.

That's true almost everywhere in the inhabitable world. From Africa to North America to Asia, there are unmarked graves everywhere. You probably walk on some every day when you go outside, on your way to your car or your neighbor's place.

Do you feel as much obligation to resource an investigation into who was buried there as you feel the Canadian Catholics should feel?

Why?

Tom

If they found over 1,000 unmarked children's graves and remains on my property you god damn right I'd want an investigation. You're comparing graves that have been found to imaginary whoopty doo graves.

 

[Jarhyn]

I find myself morally unable to look in the face of the families of these children and say,

I KNOW that 1500+ of your relatives were found in unmarked graves.
And I shrug my shoulders and walk away, murmuring, “maybe someone somewhere could maybe look if they felt like it, but I don’t have any will to think about who. Don’t count on me for help.”

I don't know you, really. So please don't take this personally.

Most Americans live on land stolen from indigenous people. There are unmarked graves everywhere. Zillions of them, especially of children.

Have you ever considered tracing your property deeds to their original source? The original legal entity that gave someone the right to ownership, which came down to you?

Most Americans live on land that was stolen from some indigenous tribe or another. That land is full of unmarked graves. Graves so old that they don't turn up on radar, but they're there.

That's true almost everywhere in the inhabitable world. From Africa to North America to Asia, there are unmarked graves everywhere. You probably walk on some every day when you go outside, on your way to your car or your neighbor's place.

Do you feel as much obligation to resource an investigation into who was buried there as you feel the Canadian Catholics should feel?

Why?

Tom

If they found over 1,000 unmarked children's graves and remains on my property you god damn right I'd want an investigation. You're comparing graves that have been found to imaginary whoopty doo graves.

As it happens and as a fact I had not truly processed yet until just now, I have a friend whose land sits on an old catholic Burial ground.

One day he was digging a fence post and heard some sounds, and they happ ned to be the sounds of a post hole digger breaking through a coffin.

Now, he didn't know about the history of the plot before this. And when he dug up the source of the sound, he found a few strange bits of metal, an old, strange nail, and a pile of human bones.

His first thought was to call the police, but they said the bones and remains were old. Then he called the city to find out that it used to be a cemetery. Finally, he contacted the RCC. They had no records at all of who was interred there.

Of course, this is where his (and mine, and likely a few others') course differs from here, as he spent the day talking to this bag of bones, telling these inanimate leftovers of the world that existed that day, and laying them out so as to "see" the sunset of one last day again before going back into the earth.

The moral of this story is simply this: if the RCC canot remember the names of people buried in consecrated graves, what is it that you expect them to have as records of unmarked graves?

 

[TomC]

Yes. How about you?

I'm certain that I do.

It might not be stolen by European standards. It's on a hill near some lowland. The local story is that the indigenous people didn't understand the concept of "buying" land. To them, it was like buying air. Most of land around here was flood plain. Bottom land was extremely fertile cropland, but nobody wanted to live there.

So the indigenous people took the valuables from some dumb palefaces in exchange for living in the mosquito infested swamp that was most of this county.

I'm not sure if the indigenous people understood that selling the property meant that they couldn't hunt or fish there anymore. If you don't understand the concept of private property, as European people do, you might not understand why building a home there gives you the right to shoot people who continue to hunt and fish and gather as you've done for millennia.

But that's what happened.
Tom

 

[Bomb#20]

I use her words because I see the wisdom in them. Where the devil did Ursula K. Le Guin ever demand to be taken on faith?

Your characterization of anything I demand as to be taken "on faith" is so misplaced as to be laughable.

In case any of our readers care, they can judge for themselves whether what you wrote in the following posts amounts to you condemning me for not taking you on faith.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...lmost-but-not-quite/page2&p=919641#post919641

https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...-but-not-quite&p=919645&viewfull=1#post919645

https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...-but-not-quite&p=919678&viewfull=1#post919678

I demand that people look at the thing I look at, and make some attempt to occupy my perspective for a moment to see how and why I do, until they successfully communicate back to me in a way that satisfies in my mind that they have, and then honestly ascertain which of the two ways of looking at the thing will serve best.

You want to post apologetics for the godawful way you behaved in the To Kill a Mockingbird thread, do it over there.

If you don't take my word for it perhaps you should try reading the book assuming you have not actually done so.

Don't bother posting apologetics for the godawful way you're behaving here. For you to repeat your trumped-up and asinine false accusation after I already corrected you on it is inexcusable.

 

[Gospel]

If they found over 1,000 unmarked children's graves and remains on my property you god damn right I'd want an investigation. You're comparing graves that have been found to imaginary whoopty doo graves.

As it happens and as a fact I had not truly processed yet until just now, I have a friend whose land sits on an old catholic Burial ground.

One day he was digging a fence post and heard some sounds, and they happ ned to be the sounds of a post hole digger breaking through a coffin.

Now, he didn't know about the history of the plot before this. And when he dug up the source of the sound, he found a few strange bits of metal, an old, strange nail, and a pile of human bones.

His first thought was to call the police, but they said the bones and remains were old. Then he called the city to find out that it used to be a cemetery. Finally, he contacted the RCC. They had no records at all of who was interred there.

Of course, this is where his (and mine, and likely a few others') course differs from here, as he spent the day talking to this bag of bones, telling these inanimate leftovers of the world that existed that day, and laying them out so as to "see" the sunset of one last day again before going back into the earth.

The moral of this story is simply this: if the RCC canot remember the names of people buried in consecrated graves, what is it that you expect them to have as records of unmarked graves?

I'll improve your question. What records are needed to tie the Catholic church to gravesites found at a catholic church that was always owned and operated by the catholic church?

 

[Bomb#20]

The first part was allegory.

As for the second part, you had written: ... That's kind of ironic, no?

In my allegory, I sarcastically called the people on this thread Catholic because they took the position to speak in said Catholics' defense & then I brought up what actual Catholics believe for contrast. I thought this was obvious bro.

It wasn't obvious that you knew they weren't Catholic; but yes, the rest of it was obvious. Hence my counter-allegory. If some progressives were trying to censor a fascist, and the ACLU filed suit to stop them, on account of how the First Amendment protects even a fascist's right to speak his mind, would you sarcastically call the ACLU "fascists" because they took the position to speak in said fascist's defense, and then bring up what actual fascists believe about free speech?

I think it's a good thing when people are principled enough to apply their principles to their outgroups as well as to their ingroups. YMMV.

 

[Gospel]

The first part was allegory.

As for the second part, you had written: ... That's kind of ironic, no?

In my allegory, I sarcastically called the people on this thread Catholic because they took the position to speak in said Catholics' defense & then I brought up what actual Catholics believe for contrast. I thought this was obvious bro.

It wasn't obvious that you knew they weren't Catholic; but yes, the rest of it was obvious. Hence my counter-allegory. If some progressives were trying to censor a fascist, and the ACLU filed suit to stop them, on account of how the First Amendment protects even fascists' right to speak their minds, would you sarcastically call the ACLU "fascists" because they took the position to speak in said fascist's defense, and then bring up what actual fascists believe about free speech?

I think it's a good thing when people are principled enough to apply their principles to their outgroups as well as to their ingroups. YMMV.

Yes, you are correct. It would have started with "Fascists at the ACLU:" I presume you would have had no difficulty catching the sarcasm in that case.
Yeah, it is a great idea to apply your principles across the board.

Thanks for sharing this hard-to-find information I guess.

 

[Bomb#20]

He also assumes this "arson" is against "own clan". The point is rather that it's not...

If I pray in a hut constructed from the corpses of your parents, it makes little difference that I am your "uncle", I am likely no family of yours.

If a Jew converted to Lutheranism and brought up his child Lutheran (as many many Jews did), Jarhyn could pontificate about how because Luther and the Lutheran Church and a great many individual Lutherans were deeply entrenched in anti-Semitism, that child is no family of his Jewish uncle or of his Jewish cousins. He could decide it's up to some third-party atheist to determine whether a Jew and a Lutheran are family. And yet, somehow, I don't think he'd do that.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I KNOW that 1500+ of your relatives were found in unmarked graves.
And I shrug my shoulders and walk away, murmuring, “maybe someone somewhere could maybe look if they felt like it, but I don’t have any will to think about who. Don’t count on me for help.”

Obviously, there are many more people in need in the world than the number each of us can help. You're not helping all of those people. They're not even asking you. And the people whose relatives were found are not asking me. You are asking me what I think should be done by someone. I am talking to you, not to them.

Definitely the police in that jurisdiction should investigate 700, 600, 215 bodies found in a mass grave. Investigation of found bodies and following evidence trails to new suspect locations is what they do.

The police have a limited amount of resources, so they have to choose where to allocate them, depending on factors such as the probability of finding a perpetrator. For the graves that are several decades old, that's almost impossible. If there are recent graves, that's much more likely. Also, there are statutes of limitations for some crimes, and so on. But I am not saying that there aren't police officers with an obligation to investigate. That may very well be the case.

Definitely the people in the RCC hierarchy should open all relevant records of their own volition if they have any sense of morals themselves. And they should be required by the police if they don’t do it voluntarily, as part of a crime scene investigation.

I said very probably they should open those records if they have them and can help with the police investigation. The 'very probably' is because there is the question of why those records are not public, what private information they may contain, etc., so maybe they should give access to the police instead of just opening them to everyone. But I do not know enough; I'm not saying it is not they case that the should open them, but that very probably they should.

Definitely the people in the RCC hierarchy should allocate some money to investigating the sites where they already know schools were held and may be in the same condition as the ones dug up by investigators - again, if they have even a shred of a soul.

One might as well say: definitely the people in the RCC hierarchy should instead allocate the money to saving people alive today instead. But I'm not sure about that, either. It's a difficult matter, depending on a number of factors. Maybe for most, the obligation is just to quit the RCC, denouncing Christianity as a false religion. It's hard to tell.

Definitely the organization that prides itself on morals and caring about human suffering should not be bothered in the least about the potential cost of compensating due to the damage done to any of the victims or their close ones, especially since the money that the church now has was not all accumulated yesterday, and may have even been gained through criminal means of accepting funding or donations for these schools which then committed the crime of burying bodies of children in unmarked graves without government approval.

Again, that depends on how the RCC is organized. I'm not sure which money who should give to which victims, or if there is another overriding use - e.g., save people living today, like with millions of vaccines or whatever.

My morals do not permit me to shrug and say, “yeah, not really my deal, I’m moving on,” and they especially do not permit me to argue with those who are trying to do something and tell them to stop because I personally don’t know who to ask.

Your morals do permit you to not help the vast majority of the people in need, because you cannot do otherwise. Further, you do not spend your whole life maximizing help, right?

That said, I am not arguing with those who try to do something like demand an investigation or compensation - not on the basis of their doing so, anyway. I am arguing with some people who blame the innocent - though my moral assessments say it is also permissible not to argue. But it's permissible to argue as well.

Your contributions to this thread have been 100% about stop looking, stop asking, stop expecting a response.

Some of my main contributions have been to show the unethical blaming of the innocent, for the most part, and out-of-place demands resulting from that - and generally, against group-thinking, collective blaming, and the like.

Ironically (maybe not, maybe, sadly,) this is the same response those Indigenous families have been getting for 100 years… resulting in at least one of them saying “fuck it. Burn that fucking church down.”

And also I contributed by arguing against arson apologies, even when those engaging in them do not realize they are doing that.