I read Robert McBain’s The Lonely Death of an Ojibway Boy, which, as James Pew writes, “tells the tragic tale of former Indian Residential School student, Charlie Wenjack, who died of exposure in 1966 after running away from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in northwestern Ontario.”
Robert McBain describes how Charlie is asked to leave an isolated cabin by his friends’ uncle and aunt and given only matches. He had no chance of survival and dies of hypothermia.
It is said that McBain “demonstrates that the commonly accepted narrative around the death of Charlie Wenjack has little congruence with the truth.”
Agreed. Charlie was killed by his own people, not Christian teachers.
And wasn't the administrator or principal of the school indigenous? I believe he was. was it even a religious run school at that time? Regardless, the "Secret Path" graphic novel is distributed to young children in school all across Canada and its distribution promulgates falsehoods. There are buildings and foundations bearing Wenjack's name. If it weren't Downie and Boyden, would this lie have gotten so much traction?
It was a Presbyterian-run residence, though prior to the 1960s it had been a residential school. By the time Charlie Wenjack arrived in 1963, Indigenous kids just boarded there but went to a public schools in Kenora. The principal was Colin Wasacase (Cree) from Saskatchewan, who had attended residential school himself and had taught at two IRS as an adult. He'd only been the administrator at Cecilia Jeffrey for a few months at the time of Wenjack's death.
Yeah, Downie and Boyden exploited the story alright, but I figure that, given the tenor of the time (just after the TRC report, etc.) that if those two hadn't, somebody else would have.
I enjoyed the book, and was particularly moved by the impact that the vilification of residential schools, and of Cecilia Jeffrey in particular, had on its long-time former principal Stephen Robinson. Thank goodness he and his family had saved all those interesting letters from students and parents.
One thing I found a little odd was MacBain's final chapter, in which he relays the stories of three former IRS students he had interviewed in the 1990s. They’re essentially just the transcripts of the students’ narratives, with a few words of context but no other commentary by MacBain. They may have been tacked into the book just because MacBain had them and wanted them published; or to fill out his page count; or possibly to show his empathy for people who had suffered in the system (or in their post-school lives).
Anyway I found those stories a little rambling and disconnected to the rest of the book, and certain statements that we were (I presume) expected to take at face value rankled just a little, such as the romanticization of the “old ways,” or the one man’s claim that “drinking is one of the characteristics of a colonized person.” (The speaker of those words had earned a Bachelor of Social Work from U of T but had struggled with alcoholism most of his life. He’d managed to stay sober for 18 years but then started drinking again after the trauma of his IRS experience “bubbled to the surface” while he was preparing his submission for the Independent Assessment Process. His settlement money all went to his ex-wife, who bought a boat and an SUV with it.
Did that final chapter strike you as somewhat disconsonant, Jim?
There is a mountain of lies when collectivists are involved. They are liars, cheats, thieves and murderers. Commonly known as communism, universities churn out these degenerates in their work product. They weaponize everything to their advantage.
American Indians are being used as a weapon against the people of America, just like the European settlers fleeing Catholicism were used as a weapon by the British Empire against the American Indians. Divide and conquer. We are experiencing unrestricted warfare and the brainwashed university-educated American Indians are being used to bring in "Agenda 21", 15-minute cities and rewilding America. They have no idea they are being used. Find out how on this podcast:
I read Robert McBain’s The Lonely Death of an Ojibway Boy, which, as James Pew writes, “tells the tragic tale of former Indian Residential School student, Charlie Wenjack, who died of exposure in 1966 after running away from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in northwestern Ontario.”
Robert McBain describes how Charlie is asked to leave an isolated cabin by his friends’ uncle and aunt and given only matches. He had no chance of survival and dies of hypothermia.
It is said that McBain “demonstrates that the commonly accepted narrative around the death of Charlie Wenjack has little congruence with the truth.”
Agreed. Charlie was killed by his own people, not Christian teachers.
And wasn't the administrator or principal of the school indigenous? I believe he was. was it even a religious run school at that time? Regardless, the "Secret Path" graphic novel is distributed to young children in school all across Canada and its distribution promulgates falsehoods. There are buildings and foundations bearing Wenjack's name. If it weren't Downie and Boyden, would this lie have gotten so much traction?
It was a Presbyterian-run residence, though prior to the 1960s it had been a residential school. By the time Charlie Wenjack arrived in 1963, Indigenous kids just boarded there but went to a public schools in Kenora. The principal was Colin Wasacase (Cree) from Saskatchewan, who had attended residential school himself and had taught at two IRS as an adult. He'd only been the administrator at Cecilia Jeffrey for a few months at the time of Wenjack's death.
Yeah, Downie and Boyden exploited the story alright, but I figure that, given the tenor of the time (just after the TRC report, etc.) that if those two hadn't, somebody else would have.
Useful lies are pushed to further the hidden agenda.
I enjoyed the book, and was particularly moved by the impact that the vilification of residential schools, and of Cecilia Jeffrey in particular, had on its long-time former principal Stephen Robinson. Thank goodness he and his family had saved all those interesting letters from students and parents.
One thing I found a little odd was MacBain's final chapter, in which he relays the stories of three former IRS students he had interviewed in the 1990s. They’re essentially just the transcripts of the students’ narratives, with a few words of context but no other commentary by MacBain. They may have been tacked into the book just because MacBain had them and wanted them published; or to fill out his page count; or possibly to show his empathy for people who had suffered in the system (or in their post-school lives).
Anyway I found those stories a little rambling and disconnected to the rest of the book, and certain statements that we were (I presume) expected to take at face value rankled just a little, such as the romanticization of the “old ways,” or the one man’s claim that “drinking is one of the characteristics of a colonized person.” (The speaker of those words had earned a Bachelor of Social Work from U of T but had struggled with alcoholism most of his life. He’d managed to stay sober for 18 years but then started drinking again after the trauma of his IRS experience “bubbled to the surface” while he was preparing his submission for the Independent Assessment Process. His settlement money all went to his ex-wife, who bought a boat and an SUV with it.
Did that final chapter strike you as somewhat disconsonant, Jim?
Beautifully and accurately stated, Alison.
There is a mountain of lies when collectivists are involved. They are liars, cheats, thieves and murderers. Commonly known as communism, universities churn out these degenerates in their work product. They weaponize everything to their advantage.
American Indians are being used as a weapon against the people of America, just like the European settlers fleeing Catholicism were used as a weapon by the British Empire against the American Indians. Divide and conquer. We are experiencing unrestricted warfare and the brainwashed university-educated American Indians are being used to bring in "Agenda 21", 15-minute cities and rewilding America. They have no idea they are being used. Find out how on this podcast:
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soberchristiangentleman/episodes/S2-EP-36---American-Indians---We-need-to-have-a-talk----They-are-using-you-as-a-weapon--let-me-expla-e2hsndq