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Residential school denialism refers to the misrepresentation or rejection of established facts about the Canadian Indian residential school system in order to undermine truth and reconciliation efforts.[1][2][3] Denialists do not reject that Indian Residential Schools (IRS) existed.[1][2][3]

Background

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A January 26, 1998 Alberta Report article entitled "Canada's Mythical Holocaust" said that "many teachers and graduates" were "still proud" of the Canadian Indian residential school system and the "services they provided". The article blamed "white liberal guilt about cultural assimilation, on the transformation of residential schools "into symbols of shame."[4][5] The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) recognized the damage inflicted by the residential schools. The 2006 IRSSA's C$1.9-billion compensation package for all former IRS students,[6][7] was the largest class action settlement in Canadian history.[8]: 1 

Justice Murray Sinclair, the Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which began investigations in 2008, clarified in an 8 August 2010 comment in the Calgary Herald that the TRC had "heard many experiences of unspeakable abuse'. He also acknowledged that the TRC had been "heartened by testimonies which affirm the dedication and compassion of committed educators who sought to nurture the children in their care."[9] The chapter, "They Came for the Children" published in 2012, included accounts of positive aspects of the school system described by a dozen individual students.[10]

In May 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission submitted its report "The survivors speak" following a 7-year-long investigation.[11][12] In 2016, historian J. R. Miller, author of Residential Schools and Reconciliation: Canada Confronts Its History, wrote a review of the report, in which he questioned the research into former child students in the residential school system.[13] While Miller is critical of the system, he did not agree with the use of "genocidal" to describe it.[13]

In a lengthy March 7th, 2017 speech to the Senate of Canada, then senator Lynn Beyak urged Canadians to consider ways in which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission failed to acknowledge the postive aspects of residential schools.[14][15] In a CBC interview, Beyak said , "There were two sides to every story."[16]

One of TRC report's 2015 Call to Actions included the documentation of Indigenous children who died while attending Canadian residential schools, and the creation of a National Student Memorial Register.[17] With Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) funding in 2018, the Memorial was created.[17] This is an important step in remembering and honouring the children who never came home.For over a decade, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation collected the names of former residential school students in the National Student Memorial Register to remember and honour them.[18] As of 2019, 4,037 names had been added to the list.[17]

In their 2020 collection of essays, From Truth Comes Reconciliation: An Assessment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, published by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and edited by Rodney Clifton and Mark DeWolf, authors criticized the 2015 report for it lack of balance and its methodology, including reliance on oral statements.[19]

Since 2013, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has been used by archaeologists to investigate unmarked graves.[20] The Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology (IPIA) at the University of Alberta has focused on the use of this technology and in the summer of 2021, the IPIA began to work collaboratively to create ArcGIS StoryMaps of potential unmarked graves near residential schools in Canada, under the guidance of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.[20] On May 27, 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc reported that the "remains of 215 children" were found using GPR at a burial site at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.[21][22]University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) anthropologist, Sarah Beaulieu, clarified that the number of potential unmarked graves was 200 not 2015.[23] On Canada Day 2021, the Canadian Historical Society, which represents 650 professional historians, recognized that the "long history of violence and dispossession Indigenous peoples" fully warranted their use of the word "genocide", marking a shift within the community.[24] The response from multiple media sources was rapid and mainly in agreement with the CHA.[25] More than sixty Canadian historians wrote an open letter rejecting the CHA's Canada Day statement, that the use of genocide had "broad scholarly consensus." This included Margaret MacMillan, Jack Granatstein, David Bercuson, Éric Bédard, and Robert Bothwell.[26] [27]

In March 2023, the Indian Residential Schools Research Group (IRSRG) website was launched with Tom Flanagan as Director, to address "poor standards of research and reporting on the residential school system".[16][28] IRSRG members include Barbara Kay, and retired academics.[16]

In December, Flanagan co-authored Grave Error: How The Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) with the The Dorchester Review's Chris Champion in 2023 and published it independently with True North Media and Dorchester Books.[29][30] Black wrote the Foreword to Grave Errors. The IRSRG webpage includes to "right-wing media outlets, a newsletter called “Woke Watch Canada."[16] The authors wrote that, "There is no record of a single student being murdered at a residential school—never mind thousands—in the 113-year history of residential schools. Nor—and this is key—are there any records of Indigenous parents claiming that their children went to residential schools 'never to be seen again.'"[29]

The Dorchester Review has published a number of articles and blog posts by residential school denialists.[31][32] One of these by Jacques Rouillard entitled "In Kamloops, Not One Body Has Been Found"[33] was described in a 2022 Twitter thread by then Crown-Indigenous Relations minister Marc Miller as a "ghoulish demand to see corpses" that was "not only highly distasteful but also retraumatizing for survivors and their families."[34] Rouillard's blog post was cited by the United Kingdom's The Spectator.[35] In his thread, Miller expressed concern about the rise of residential school denialism and rebuked those that criticized "the nature and validity of these and other recovery efforts" following the announcement of the discovery of potentially unmarked grave at the St Joseph's Mission School.[34][36]

In 2020, then leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and the official opposition, Erin O'Toole, made the claim that Canada's residential school system was established to "provide education" to First Nation's children.[37] In December 2020, he retracted his statement and added that, "The very existence of residential schools is a terrible stain on Canada's history that has had sweeping impacts on generations of Indigenous Canadians."[37]

Frances Widdowson filed law suits against Mount Royal University for firing her and against the University of Lethbridge for cancelling her talk. Widdowson says that there were "benefits to the residential school system". She rejects the TRC's commission's "conclusion that the school system was genocidal".[38]

In the June 2023 interim report "Sacred Responsibility: Searching for the Missing Children and Unmarked Burials" by Kimberly Murray, Independent Special Interlocutor (ISO) for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites Associated with Indian Residential Schools, concerns were raised about "access to and destruction of record and sites; complexity of ground searches; and the shortcomings of existing investigation processes; as well as the "increase in the violence of denialism". Denialists claim that Survivors are "lying, exaggerating, or misremembering" in spite of the documentation in volume 4 of the TRC report. Denialists challenge the truth of "missing children, unmarked burials, and cemeteries" at IRS as "sensationalist". They say that claims of unmarked burials are ‘fake news’.[39] Knowledge Keeper and Elder Barbara Cameron described denialism as a "fringe movement", whose protangonists have power, influence, and access to the media, providing them with both "attention and airtime".[39]

In a June 2023, National Post article a journalist said that the inventors of the concept of "residential school denialism" formed the "true fringe movement".[40]

"Mass grave hoax" rebuttal

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In October 2023, history professors, Sean Carleton and Reid Gerbrandt, who have been funded by University of Manitoba's Centre for Human Rights Research, published a rebuttal of claims spread by deniers that there was a "mass grave hoax". [41] Carleton, who receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, has co-authored other articles responding to claims made by residential school deniers.[1][3] Carleton and others said that a May 2023 statement by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights that the "remains of 215 children were discovered in unmarked graves" was not entirely accurate. The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nations now refer to the "likely presence of children—L’Estcwicwéý (the Missing)".[3] Evidence based on the GPR technology that "identified soil anomalies", was one more step towards confirming the existence of unmarked graves that had previously been known through communal memory. Forensic investigation and excavations have to be undertaken before results will be conclusive.[3]

See also

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Citations

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  1. ^ a b c Justice & Carleton 2021a.
  2. ^ a b CBC 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d e Sinclair & Carleton 2023.
  4. ^ Alberta Report 1998.
  5. ^ Bueckert 2021.
  6. ^ CBC News 2008a.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference residentialschoolsettlement was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference AFN_2014 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Calgary Herald 2010.
  10. ^ TRC 2012.
  11. ^ TRC 2015.
  12. ^ Cooper 2015.
  13. ^ a b Miller 2016.
  14. ^ Howell & Ng-A-Fook 2022.
  15. ^ Carleton 2021.
  16. ^ a b c d Cyca 2023.
  17. ^ a b c University of Manitoba News 2019.
  18. ^ NCTR n.d.
  19. ^ Clifton & deWolf 2020.
  20. ^ a b Wadsworth 2021.
  21. ^ Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc 2021.
  22. ^ CP & APTN News 2021.
  23. ^ Pruden & Hager 2021.
  24. ^ Canadian Historical Association 2021.
  25. ^ High 2021.
  26. ^ Collins 2024.
  27. ^ Lubyl 2019.
  28. ^ IRSRG 2023.
  29. ^ a b Champion & Flanagan 2023.
  30. ^ Dorchester Review 2023.
  31. ^ Flanagan & Giesbrecht 2022.
  32. ^ Rubenstein 2022.
  33. ^ Rouillard 2022.
  34. ^ a b Miller 2022.
  35. ^ Stannus 2022.
  36. ^ Kirkup 2022.
  37. ^ a b Zimonjic & Cullen 2020.
  38. ^ Rodriguez 2023.
  39. ^ a b Murray 2023.
  40. ^ Glavin 2023.
  41. ^ Gerbrandt & Carleton 2023.

References

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A

  • "Canada's Mythical Holocaust". Alberta Report. Vol. 25, no. 6. January 26, 1998.

B

C

D

  • * "Books". The Dorchester Review. Retrieved 29 March 2024.

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

P

R

S

T

  • The survivors speak: a report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Report). [Winnipeg]. May 2015. ISBN 9780660019833. OCLC 907968278.

U

W

Z

{{Discrimination against Indigenous peoples in Canada

[[Category:Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [[Category:First Nations history [[Category:Residential schools in Canada [[Category:First Nations education [[Category:Assimilation of indigenous peoples of North America [[Category:Truth and reconciliation reports

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