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Canada probes TB 'genocide' in church-run schools

* 05 May 2007
* Debora Mackenzie

CANADA is to investigate claims that tens of thousands of native Indian and Inuit (First Nation) children died of tuberculosis at church-run residential schools in the early 20th century, and that their deaths were hushed up. Campaigners allege that school officials did nothing to halt the march of TB despite warnings, and charge that their inaction was tantamount to genocide.
Christian churches ran up to 88 boarding schools for aboriginal children across Canada between 1874 and 1985. Their stated aim was assimilation; children were forbidden to speak their native languages. Some 200,000 children passed through the schools, attendance was mandatory and the Mounted Police rounded up truants. Their experiences were often brutal, and Canada is finalising a C$1.9 billion ($1.7 million) class-action settlement for 80,000 surviving former inmates, with extra payments for those who suffered physical and sexual abuse.
So far there have been no lawsuits over deaths at the schools, although survivors tell of children disappearing and secret burials. Under pressure from campaigners, Indian Affairs minister Jim Prentice announced last week that his department would find out "why [children] didn't return and where the bodies are".
Kevin Annett, who led the campaign, says he found reports of high rates of TB at residential schools in records, held at the University of British Columbia, which the government has since sealed. In 1907 Peter Bryce, a chief medical officer for the federal Department of Indian Affairs, recorded that 24 per cent of pupils at 15 schools had died of TB over 14 years. At one school, 63 per cent of the children died.
Other documents show that officials knew death rates were high until the 1940s, Annett told New Scientist. They record children being admitted with active, contagious TB, with no quarantine or even ventilation in their rooms, the only ways to control TB before antibiotics. Former students say they slept in crowded dormitories with sick children, and were often hungry: hunger lowers immunity and exacerbates the spread of TB.
They faced high rates of TB at home too: the infection, brought by European settlers, ran riot in crowded, impoverished aboriginal communities, where even now TB infection is 20 to 30 times higher than among non-aboriginal people born in Canada. Canada's health ministry says the yearly death rate from TB in native communities in the early 20th century, before antibiotics were available, exceeded 7 per 1000, "among the highest ever reported in a human population". However, the ministry also says school death rates reached 80 per 1000 in the 1930s and 1940s.
The question now is whether methods such as quarantine could have prevented deaths, and whether the schools' inaction constitutes genocide. According to Annett, the University of British Columbia records reveal Bryce's thoughts on the matter: yes, on both counts.
From issue 2602 of New Scientist magazine, 05 May 2007, page 11

Canada probes TB 'genocide' in church-run schools

Kevin Annett has persisted for years to try to bring this to the point of a full investigation, with opposition at every turn.

As he says in the film ...
"What does that tell you?"

[ 04 May 2007: Message edited by: saga ]