Allie Ward

So it's like those are the same word for really different things.

Yeah.

It's so frustrating.

So going back in time, we have a medieval codicology episode about weird old manuscript art and memes and snails with Evan Pridmore.

And it involves more nuns harvesting dongs from trees, as you probably expect.

We also discuss depictions of snails to represent some dark anti-Semitic sentiment and some old-timey harmful propaganda.

So let's talk a little bit about that history.

Ken points out that we, of course, can call people who commit acts of atrocity evil, but they often use notions of impurity or evil to oppress their victims.

In his 2019 memoir, From Bear Rock Mountain, The Life and Times of a Dene Residential School Survivor, author Antoine Mountain writes that, quote,

And Ken referenced the residential schools in Canada.

And for a little more background, Canada specifically, their residential school system began in the late 1800s with 150,000 estimated First Nations children removed from their homes and family to attend Christian-run schools that would supposedly civilize them and change their clothing and keep them from learning their native languages and ways of life.

And up to a third of these children may have died and a mass amount of unmarked graves are still being found.

And the last residential school in Canada closed in the late 1990s.

Not 1890s, 1990s.

They were operating up until the late 1990s.

So for more on this, including survivor's testimonies, you can see the 2015 paper, Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

And we talked to Dr. Dirk Moses about this in the Genocidology episode.

And here's a clip of that.

Now, the last residential school finally closed in 1996.

And in 2022, the Canadian government finally recognized these acts as genocide, which is historical progress, like finally an admission of a genocide.