RUBENSTEIN: No progress on the ‘215 unmarked graves’ — Kamloops Indian Band owes Canadians answers

According to Blacklock’s Reporter, Canada’s premier investigator of federal government machinations, the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations waived a requirement that the Kamloops Indian Band account for the spending of a $12.1 million grant for the “exhumation of remains” at its former Indian Residential School, according to records disclosed on July 23. In particular, the Band made no attempt to exhume even a single grave despite this generous funding.“Officials were asked about what appears to be missing reports,” Canada’s Information Commissioner wrote in concluding an Access to Information investigation. “Quarterly reports for the periods identified were not consistently generated.”The Band received these millions in 2021 to pay for exhumation, DNA testing, and coroners’ analyses after announcing it found 215 graves in an old apple orchard close to its long-shuttered boarding school.This funding was conditional on the Band filing quarterly Activity Progress Reports.None of the Band’s documents disclosed to date explained why exhumations did not occur. “Officials were asked about the discrepancy,” wrote the Information Commissioner.Crown-Indigenous Relations cited numerous reasons for the lack of accounting. “COVID-19-related impacts, 2021 wildfires and staffing turnover affected administrative functions including reporting,” managers told the Information Commissioner..Such constraints did not deter the Band from spending the monies granted to them on non-excavation projects and issues like archival research, site security, and community support. Costs included $37,500 for “marketing and communications,” $54,000 in travel, $100,000 as six months’ pay for two trauma counsellors, and $405,000 in “administrative costs” including speaking fees and tent rentals.The department said in one bookkeeping entry called Community Support Funding Envelope that the First Nation hired 25 consultants to “provide advice and support to the Chief and Council” and paid publicists to develop “communications strategies.”No consultants were named, and some $532,000 was paid for security while other funds were proposed for public works projects.Indeed, last February 18, the Band confirmed it never tried to recover any remains. “Possible future outcomes could be to preserve the orchard as a sacred site, a place of memory and healing, or excavate,” the Band Chief Rosanne Casimir said in a statement.Chief Casimir, in March 25 testimony at the Senate Indigenous Peoples Committee, said exhuming any graves would take more time and money. “Holocaust investigations have continued for more than 75 years,” she said. “Truth takes time.”She failed to mention that ongoing “Holocaust investigations” have been based on: over 3,000 tons of captured Nazi administrative documents; transport train schedules; SS statistical reports, memos, and architectural blueprints; clandestine collections compiled inside ghettos by groups in Warsaw; Allied and Soviet military intelligence files; official military photographs; aerial reconnaissance images of camps; secret pictures captured by camp prisoners; non-invasive archaeological research; ground-penetrating radar; and selective excavations at sites like Sobibór and Auschwitz mapping mass graves and structural remnants; verification of gas chamber designs; physical residue analysis; and eye-witness testimonies by Holocaust survivors.All this evidence has countered historical distortion and Holocaust denier claims..In popular culture, gas chambers are considered synonymous with the Holocaust and the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. Of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their helpers in the Holocaust, between 2.3 and 3 million were murdered using poisonous gas, most of whose names have been discovered by painstaking research. However, as hard evidence has shown, the Nazis and their helpers also murdered millions of Jewish people using other means, including mass shooting operations and deliberate deprivation.In the decades after the Holocaust, people engaging in Holocaust denial and distortion often lie or misrepresent the truth about Nazi gas chambers. They do so even though there is a large body of verified, undeniable proof about the existence, purpose, and use of Nazi gas chambers. This evidence exists even though the Nazis attempted to destroy paperwork, demolish buildings, and burn the bodies of their victims. Sources of information on Nazi gas chambers include documents created by the Nazis related to their construction, maintenance, and use, as well as wartime intelligence reports based on firsthand accounts of gassing operations. There are also a few surviving gas chamber buildings and rooms, along with sworn testimonies from perpetrators detailing mass gassings of Jews and others. Eyewitnesses provided descriptions of gas chambers after the war, and drawings and models were created during and after the conflict. Reports from postwar investigative bodies and courts, a limited number of wartime photographs, and postwar archaeological studies further contribute to the understanding of these events.As for the half-hearted Kamloops search for the remains of children with no names, “Investigating what happened to the children cannot be completed in a few years or through short-term funding cycles,” testified Kamloops Chief Casimir. She did not elaborate.“How many people have you identified that you believe are within that 215 [children in graves]?” asked Senator Scott Tannas (AB) on March 25. “That is out of my realm right at this time,” replied Chief Casimir.“How do we get to the truth and begin to take children home where the families want them?” asked Senator Tannas. “Well, I definitely see this here; it’s definitely not a one-, three-, or five-year process,” replied Casimir. “I definitely see it as a longer process that is going to take some time.”Compared to the Holocaust and other universally recognized genocides like the Armenian and Rwandan genocides, Casimir’s confession that her Band has made no attempt to recover any reputed remains at the site, not even a single body of a missing student, simultaneously endorses two outrageous processes: the trivialization of known genocides and the false legitimization of the unverified Kamloops burial claims.Hymie Rubenstein, editor of REAL Indigenous Report, is a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

RUBENSTEIN: No progress on the ‘215 unmarked graves’ — Kamloops Indian Band owes Canadians answers

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