I have recently become aware of a letter entitled “The Other Side of the Story” whose date of origin I am unable to ascertain, written by one James Bissell, a 70 year old resident of northern Alberta who chose to respond to a Sun newspaper article on the issue of Canada’s Residential Schools. His Center in Edmonton is described as a “tireless” advocate for Indigenous rights, yet the letter in question refuses to succumb to the simplistic, black and white narrative of innocent Canadian Indians mercilessly exploited and abused by their White oppressors. With no apparent malice towards our Indigenous whatsoever, Bissell’s letter would seem to be committed to the unequivocal facts of History.
His youth in Athabasca, he points out, exposed him to a large Indigenous community which was predominantly warm, friendly and generous. While his pictures identify him as White, he celebrates his Indigenous daughter who has apparently given him several Indigenous grandchildren. Whether she is the product of his marriage to a Native Woman or simply adopted, I have not been able to ascertain. Prefacing his defense of Residential Schools with his insistence that he is not a Catholic and indeed belongs to no Church whatsoever, he nevertheless proceeds to debunk the utterly simplistic, ideologically biased narrative that has come to dominate contemporary discussion of Canada’s Residential School System
Citing the presence of four Indian reserves and two residential schools in his Alberta community, Bissett says deaths due to TB, smallpox, diphtheria, etc. were commonplace amongst all peoples in the far north throughout much of the last Century. Insisting that most of those employed in the residential schools were motivated by a benevolent concern for the welfare of the Indigenous, he implies they would be horrified to learn that the Western education they deemed so necessary to the futures of their students is now considered a form of cultural genocide. Yes, he says, there were members of the clergy who were arrogant and cruel in their treatment of Native kids but, the consensus back then seems to have been, Canadian governments, both provincial and federal, were blithely unaware of that fact, indeed thought they were accomplishing nothing but good within Indigenous communities. His implication, it would seem, is that the notion of official “systemic” indifference to the plight of Canada’s Indians is a gross exaggeration, one no more valid than the theory that today’s governments don’t give a damn about the elderly in spite of the inefficiency and cruelty recently exposed within many of our Nursing Homes. Governments both then and now, by dint of their privileged mandate, are simply more prone to dysfunction than those competing within the free enterprise system whose shortcomings must inevitably come back to haunt them. And yet, Bissell claims, acts of kindness and compassion within the Residential Schools, particularly those of Catholic nuns, were celebrated by many throughout his youth, the contemporary Leftist inclination to reduce all of human history to issues of Identity proving, once again, to be unforgivably inadequate.
I have only scratched the surface of Bissell’s letter. It is available online. If you are interested in the complex permutations of human behavior rather than the simplistic rantings of the contemporary Left, please read it.