Biden Apologizes for Indian Boarding Schools
Has the Rent-Seeking Floodgate Been Thrust Open?
Woke Watch Canada is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a paying subscriber or making a one-time or recurring donation to show your support.
By
It’s amazing to me how many Westerners remain unaware of the battle that continues to rage over our historical narrative. Last Friday the sitting U.S. president, comatose Joe Biden, claiming that it was “long, long, long overdue,” apologized to American indigenous people for the federal boarding school system – which ran for 150 years and ended in 1969.
Biden proclaimed, "The federal Indian boarding school policy and the pain that it has caused will always be a mark of shame, a blot, on American history." And that, "This, to me, is one of the most consequential things I've ever had an opportunity to do in my whole career as president of the United States.” The latter may be true, although it may have more to do with Biden’s entire presidency being of extremely low consequence. The former I find less plausible.
A report for the CBC stated that “It's unclear what action, if any, will follow Friday's apology. The Interior Department is still working with tribal nations to repatriate the remains of children on federal lands.” Let the rent-seeking begin! Biden very well may have ushered in a new era of unwarranted demands for funds to conduct GPR searches for unmarked graves and compensation for “historical injustice” — basically, all the dumb stuff we do in Canada.
Governments are the modern activists' favorite cash cow. Do the American’s not know what Stephen Harper started in 2008 with his unwarranted apology? Do they not know that it is never about apologies? Or that no one thinks an apology from a bureaucratic institution, even a government, is very meaningful? These statements of regret are designed from the beginning to set the stage for reparations. What does Biden care, he won’t be paying it, the American tax-payers will – just like us suckers up North.
The truth is extraordinarily hard to swallow. But the truth remains: indigenous people are responsible for their circumstances today, just as they were responsible throughout the entire colonial period. When the European settlers arrived in Canada, they brought advanced technology and tools, medicine, Christianity, and Western lifeways. All of these things the indigenous were keenly interested in. They wanted access to them, and to the quality of life associated with the non-indigenous newcomers. This included schooling (Indian Residential Schools) – they wanted the white man’s education for their children. They practically begged to be assimilated (although it would not have been put in those terms). Either way, it is farcical to pretend that the Europeans represented anything less than a boon to the Indigenous inhabitants during Canada’s early development by Westerners. Western ways (and technology) offered salvation from an otherwise short and brutish life.
However, it is not surprising that things did not always go smoothly during the early years of indigenous-non-indigenous relations. The relatively unchanging circumstances in which primitive hunter-gatherers had previously existed – in small nomadic kinship bands dispersed over an enormous landmass – made it extremely difficult for the rapid adaptation that was necessitated by contact with a far more advanced civilization. The challenge set out for them was daunting and unprecedented.
The fact that so many indigenous people made the gigantic leap in cultural development – from primitive tribal people to modern citizens of Western civilization – shows an astounding level of fortitude, perseverance, and brilliance. Never before in human history has a people been asked to leapfrog over thousands of years of slow development. It is this historical fact, this cultural scenario, and as the indigenous were sure to have understood it, this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for them to vastly improve their quality of life, which should be central to all positive and critical assessments of Canadian history.
Positive because so many did in fact make the leap. There are countless examples of high-achieving successful indigenous people who are clearly the beneficiaries of the processes of Western cultural assimilation. Do I really need to write again about former Indian Residential School student, the great Tomson Highway? About how he has travelled the world producing plays, giving concerts, and writing best-selling books. About how he describes the residential schools as the happiest years of his life.
But there is a dark side. Those who like to call me a Residential School Denialist, do not seem to understand or appreciate that it was circumstances, and not the deliberate actions of oppressive colonizers who intended to harm indigenous people, that was the source of practically all the darkness and challenges the indigenous faced. The dark side, or “dark chapter” as we like to say in Canada, was entirely dictated by extraordinary and mostly unforeseen challenges that arose after contact. That said, the ubiquity of negatively skewed, overly-simplified, false, anti-Western analysis of the colonial period and beyond is driven by the agenda of social justice activists, and in order to be accepted, requires extreme historical illiteracy (which in Canada, we have in spades).
Let us consider the “firewater complex.” Could you imagine your community being introduced to alcohol for the first time by a group of outsiders who had been consuming it, and adapting to the basket of problems that comes with it, for thousands of years? The introduction of alcohol into the indigenous population at the onset of Indigenous-non-indigenous relations, is one of those critical aspects of the difficult circumstances indigenous people needed to deal with (and sadly, many still need to deal with). With no knowledge of the addictive and destructive capacities of alcohol, many indigenous lives and communities were utterly gutted by the new substance. This upsetting but powerful piece of our Canadian historical puzzle is barely discussed. It seems that most Canadians prefer to cite things where blame can be directed at the European settlers, and those like me who don’t do that, who instead look for plausible evidence-based answers to difficult questions, are apparently just slippery denialists.
Canadians are so damn nice, and so damn culturally sensitive (depending on which culture). We routinely disparage our own history and cultural heritage, so as to provide excuses – ways for the indigenous to disassociate from responsibility – which cast blame entirely on our ancestors. In this incomplete historical telling, we ignore the near impossibility of the state of affairs overcome by indigenous Canadians who no longer live in teepees, are no longer victims of genocidal raids by warring bands, no longer tortured or enslaved by their enemies, no longer die young if they happen to get appendicitis or tonsillitis, and no longer overwhelmingly perish in early adulthood due to the harshness and the dangers of primitive existence.
Europeans definitely played a consequential role in our shared history but ultimately all peoples are responsible for themselves and Canada’s indigenous population is no different. Europeans may have introduced alcohol, but they didn’t pour it down the throats of indigenous people. Many Indigenous people, without much convincing at all, became heavy users of alcohol. Every sip of whisky was entirely the decision of the one drinking it. Of course it was. And even after it was clear that alcohol was decimating lives and communities, in many cases, there was not adequate power of personal or collective responsibility asserted in order to stop the devastation. Again, poor choices that result in poor outcomes must be attributed to the choice-makers. And once a bad decision is made, it is still up to the decision-maker to unmake it, and set things right. Many indigenous people, to their credit, have been able to do this. They have made enough of the right choices, taken personal responsibility, and have earned themselves success. Tomson Highway is far from the only one.
Returning to “Sleepy Joe,” who seems to have been influenced by Canadian activist, writer, and filmmaker Julian Brave NoiseCat. (Readers will know NoiseCat from his recent documentary film “Sugarcane” (2024) on the topic of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. The film is loaded with untruth but has received critical praise from the Sundance film festival regardless). According to a piece in the National Observer from March of 2021, NoiseCat had published an article in Politico "relentless(ly) organizing in Indian Country, in coalition with the environmental movement and the American left,” and ultimately “persuaded Democrats” to nominate New Mexico’s Rep. Deb Haaland for secretary of the interior. Apparently, “The prospect of the Laguna Pueblo leader heading up the department that deals with Native American communities was invigorating.”
In his Politico piece, NoiseCat wrote: “(I)n the wake of Standing Rock, a new generation of Indigenous millennials and Gen Z-ers dream of a future when the United States gives land back to Native nations. In theory, the next secretary of interior could take steps to realize that goal.”
Do Americans not realize that “land back” undermines their private property rights? Maybe Biden’s apology will amount to nothing more than a platitude. But when you consider that in 2021 (before NoiseCat’s Politico piece) Biden had already reaffirmed the federal government's "commitment to tribal sovereignty and consultation". After this he appeared to take direction from activists regarding the appointment of the secretary of the interior, which most recently led to the apology to First Nations that may very well end up costing a fortune. If Canada were to be considered a test case of what happens to nations who go down the apologizing-for-perceived-historical-injustices road, then American taxpayers better get their cheque books out.
Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Just Say No To Truth and Reconciliation
Follow Woke Watch Canada on X - @WokeWatchCanada
Support Woke Watch Canada by upgrading to a paid membership:
Or, by contributing to our Donor Box:
 | A guest post by
|
Apologies like this only open up the door to demands for huge reparations which is why indigenous people keep asking for them.
The part I like best about this timely and cogent essay is in the caption at the beginning — that Indigenous Canadians forget they got a free education when the alternative was no education.