June 2, 2021
Toronto Star – Susan Delacourt
It took children buried in unmarked graves to bring home the horror of residential schools to non-Indigenous Canadians
” Three days after the horrifying discovery of children’s remains outside a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., the country feels on the verge of an important moment — one that could punch through complacency in a way that reports, inquiries and “calls for action” have not.
In Canada’s long conversation over Indigenous truth and reconciliation, the discovery of these children’s bodies inscribes a brutal, indelible entry in the “truth” part of the ledger.” https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2021/05/31/it-took-children-buried-in-unmarked-graves-to-bring-home-the-horror-of-residential-schools-to-non-indigenous-canadians.html Related twitter from Jessica Hutchinson The genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada is not a thing of the past. https://twitter.com/Jessichutchison/status/1398991965153382404 Related article: Toronto Star – Alex Boyd, Omar Mosleh and Alex McKeen ‘There’s another Kamloops coming’: Here are some Canadian sites believed to hold more unmarked graves of Indigenous children https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/06/01/theres-another-kamloops-coming-here-are-some-canadian-sites-believed-to-hold-more-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children.html
Queen’s University – Faculty of Health Sciences – Blog of Dean Jane Philpott
Mourning the children of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc
“But let us not assume that this is a problem of our past. It is a crisis in the present. The same root problem of the denial of Indigenous rights is perpetuating ongoing discrimination that affects the Indigenous children of today.
There are more First Nations children in foster care now than there were children in residential schools at the height of that abhorrent policy. Twenty-five years after the last residential school closed, there are still hundreds of Indigenous babies and children taken away from their families every year. They are taken into foster care using contemptible explanations, including excuses that the parents are too poor, or they lack adequate housing. Beyond the obvious trauma for children scooped from their homes, we know that Indigenous children in care will be set on a dangerous path. Evidence shows how many of them become homeless or entangled in the criminal justice system. Some will suffer from problematic substance use, while others will be numbered in the statistics of Indigenous youth who are missing or murdered.” https://healthsci.queensu.ca/stories/blog/mourning-children-tkemlups-te-secwepemc
incarcerated women, CBC Radio Podcast: Ideas with Nahlah Ayed
Ideas from the Trenches: The Resilience of Incarcerated Women
The stats on the number of women in prison, especially for survival crime, is upsetting in itself. Disproportionately Indigenous women (42% against less than a 4% population) the problem is compounded when the pointlessness of the imprisonment admits of the need for these women to become resources to one another in order to survive the imprisonment. The podcast is just over 50 minutes interviews with women who explain what circumstances in life brought them to prison and how they helped one another while there. “PhD student Rachel Fayter was incarcerated for more than three years. She draws from her experience and the relationships she formed in jail to inform her ‘ground breaking’ research into the resilience of criminalized women.” https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/15828331-ideas-trenches-the-resilience-incarcerated-women
NY Times (US) – Dan Levinson
Illinois Lawmakers Bar Police From Using Deception When Interrogating Minors – A bill that passed the General Assembly with bipartisan support on Sunday would make Illinois the first state to prohibit officers from lying when interrogating those under 18.
Spurred by a 30% false confession rate, Illinois has become the first state to ban the practice of police lying to youth in interrogation to get confessions to serious crime. The bill includes making false or unauthorized promises around the prosecution of the crime as well. “Any confession in which a police officer “knowingly engages in deception” with a person under 18 would be presumed to be inadmissible in court under the bill.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/us/Chicago-police-interrogation.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
CBC News – Vera-Lynn Kubinec
‘A dungeon inside a prison’: lawsuit seeks compensation for Manitoba inmates held in solitary confinement
The use of solitary confinement has been stubbornly resistant to efforts to curb its use and to bring it within the court’s direction. Manitoba prisoners have now brought a lawsuit dating back to 1992 against the provincial government branding the practice for more than 15 consecutive days as torture. “Solitary confinement is “a dungeon inside a prison,” says the statement of claim filed May 21 in Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench at Winnipeg… It says solitary confinement cells are often smaller than parking spaces, and many of them don’t have windows. “Inmates often sleep on mats on the floor. The cells are often covered in filth, blood and excrement,” the claim says.” https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/solitary-confinement-lawsuit-class-action-1.6047810
The Pew Foundation (US) – Michael Dimock and Yolanda Lewis
Race and Research: Representation in Data
This major US social researcher is suggesting that the changing diversity of the US population needs to show up better in the methodology of social research for the sake of accuracy. The researchers Dimock, the President of Pew, and Yolanda Lewis, the Senior Director of Safety and Justice, are calling the needed change “inclusive research” and “the Center is addressing these changes in public opinion polling and why examining the nuances behind these demographic shifts helps us better understand society’s diversity…and why inclusive research is vital in informing how the criminal justice system handles mental health issues.” https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2021/05/28/race-and-research-representation-in-data?utm_campaign=2021-06-01+ATF+Race+and+Research+2&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Pew
The Washington Post – DeNeen L. Brown
His arrest sparked the Tulsa Race Massacre. Then Dick Rowland disappeared.
The link offers what historians know about the start of the Tulsa Race killings. Diamond Dick Rowland appears to have accidently startled a white girl operating an elevator who squealed in surprise and who later when Rowland was arrested told authorities that she had not been assaulted. After the initial white reaction to the alleged assault, the details are sketchy but an estimated 300 were killed. So was the incident in the history of the Black Wall Street. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/05/30/dick-rowland-tulsa-massacre-sarah-page/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F32f77fc%2F60b503a09d2fdae3026877e1%2F597720279bbc0f6826c0ca16%2F14%2F70%2F60b503a09d2fdae3026877e1