Across this country, residential school denialism is not new. It is part of Canada’s long history of refusing to confront colonial violence. While voices like Aaron Gunn have brought it into sharper public focus, this form of denial has always existed. It is not only about denying the past. It is about repeating it.

Let’s be clear: denialism is not just disagreement. It’s harm.
It silences Survivors.
It erases the lives of thousands of Indigenous children who never made it home.
And it reinforces the same systems that created the residential school system in the first place. Systems rooted in white supremacy, control, and erasure.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) documented the horrific experiences of Indigenous children who were taken from their families, stripped of their cultures, abused, and in many cases, never seen again. This is not speculative. It is not up for debate. It is truth shared courageously by Survivors and families who continue to carry the weight of intergenerational trauma.

Denialism is not new. For over a century, residential schools were framed as “benevolent” institutions meant to civilize and educate. In reality, they were sites of cultural genocide, designed to sever Indigenous Peoples from their identities, families, languages, and Nations. The erasure we are seeing today is not a sudden resurgence. It is a continuation of a long pattern where Indigenous truths are questioned, invalidated, and buried.

On December 10th, hundreds of Quebec and international civil society organizations led by Indigenous delegations sent a powerful signal to countries that are currently gathered in Montreal for COP15 to negotiate the next Global Biodiversity Framework. This key international agreement will shape global efforts to preserve ecosystems for the next decade. At the forefront of these demands was protecting human rights, including protecting Indigenous peoples and reversing biodiversity loss. © Greenpeace / Toma Iczkovits

And that pattern is not just playing out on fringe YouTube channels. It is being echoed at the highest levels of Canadian politics. Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has continued to support Aaron Gunn, even after Gunn released a video denying the reality of unmarked graves and challenging the findings of the TRC. This is not  just irresponsible. It is a deliberate alignment with denialism. It shows us exactly how comfortable some political leaders are with erasing Indigenous truths if it serves their narrative or consolidates their base.

As a non-Indigenous person, I know it is not my place to speak over Indigenous communities or claim to understand the full weight of this violence. But I also know that silence serves the status quo. That when denialism spreads unchecked, it creates space for more harm. My role, as a settler on these lands, is to listen, to learn, and to speak out where I can.

Even among settlers who support reconciliation in principle, there is often an unspoken hope that we can move on. That wearing an orange shirt, reading a land acknowledgement, or posting a hashtag is enough. But truth is not a checkbox. It is a commitment. And that commitment must include challenging denialism wherever it shows up, on YouTube, in political platforms, in classrooms, and in our own families.

Canada cannot move forward while refusing to look back. We cannot talk about healing while Survivors are still fighting to be believed. And we cannot talk about reconciliation while politicians and content creators deny the basic facts of this country’s history.

Reconciliation without truth is just another form of denial.
And truth, real truth, is not easy.
It demands that we sit with discomfort, not run from it.
It asks us to see how we are connected. Not just to the land we live on, but to the systems we benefit from.
And it calls on us to show up again and again with humility, courage, and care.

So if you’re reading this and wondering what you can do, start here:

  • Believe Survivors. Read their testimonies. Share their voices.
  • Speak up when denialism is disguised as “just asking questions.”
  • Challenge the people in your circles who minimize the violence.
  • Support Indigenous-led organizations, education, and land back movements.
  • Reflect on what it means to be a guest and what kind of guest you want to be.

Because the truth is not optional.
And if reconciliation is going to mean anything, it has to start with telling the truth.

How Museums Can Respond to Residential School Denialism

How Museums Can Respond to Residential School Denialism

Updated: October 12, 2023

Content Warning: This post contains content about Residential Schools, denialism, and genocide.

A note on safety, self-care, and self-regulation. The content covered in this post can be triggering and upsetting. As you read and think about this information, try to pay attention to your body’s cues that you might need to come back to this topic another time. Your well-being is important.

If you are an Indian Residential School survivor or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419

Museums, and all arts, culture, and heritage spaces, have a critical role to play in confronting residential school denialism.

This post is the first of a series of resources the BC Museums Association is developing to support our sector in being prepared to address residential school denialism in all forms – from online comments, to in-person questions, to internal misinformation.

In response to Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc’s announcement of the location of 215 potential unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in 2021, there has been a renewed effort to subvert, manipulate, or outright deny the role of residential schools in the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the lands now known as Canada. Like other forms of mis- and disinformation, residential school denialists seek to undermine society’s understanding of the truth in order to further their own destructive political and social beliefs.

As Dr. Niigaan Sinclair and Dr. Sean Carleton state in their op-ed Residential School Denialism Is on the Rise. What to Know, “Denialism is a barrier to reconciliation… The TRC was clear that reconciliation is not an Indigenous burden but a Canadian responsibility — and an opportunity to build stronger relations with Indigenous peoples.” Non-Indigenous Canadians have a responsibility to confront denialism and as heritage and museum professionals, we have the power to inform public conversations about the past, giving us an obligation to take action.

What is Residential School Denialism?

Residential school denialism, like other forms of genocide denial, can take many forms. Regarding Holocaust denial, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum writes, “The denial of the Holocaust and genocide take many forms, from simply ignoring obvious facts by manipulating the sources, through minimizing the dimensions of genocide, to trivializing and rationalizing genocide by analogy and claiming that it is an acceptable example of the kinds of things that happen in wartime.”

Definition

Residential school denialism is defined by scholars Dr. Daniel Heath Justice and Dr. Sean Carleton as “the rejection or misrepresentation of basic facts about residential schooling to undermine truth and reconciliation efforts… in ways that ultimately protect the status quo as well as guilty parties.” (The Walrus)

Similarly, residential school denialism is a spectrum that ranges from minimizing, to doubt, to outright denial. Denialist talking points or misinformation can insidiously influence people who would not identify as a “residential school denier.” For this reason, it can be difficult to quantify the number of deniers in Canada. Since the closing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2015, and more recently in response to increasing public discussions about the destruction caused by residential schools, deniers have been more vocal. Many have spoken up in recent opposition to, and impatience for, the ongoing work of Indigenous communities, the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, and other involved parties completing research work in relation to residential school gravesites.

It is similarly challenging to definitively describe the forms denialism can take. Dr. Justice and Dr. Carleton have written a good resource offering strategies for identifying and confronting denialism. The article cites the 2015 final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, stating “too many Canadians know little or nothing about the deep historical roots’ of the ongoing issues stemming from settler colonialism generally and residential schooling specifically.” This lack of historical knowledge, combined with the positive images that the church and government have for many Canadians, can often lead to the “positive” framing of residential schools.

As Dr. Justice and Dr. Carleton argue, denialism is not exclusively the outright denial of the existence of residential schools, but rather “the rejection or misrepresentation of basic facts about residential schools.” This can take the form of rhetoric tricks like hyper-focusing on narrow definitions of genocide to contest the idea that genocide is applicable to Canada, drawing false comparisons between boarding schools or orphanages and residential schools, focusing on the “new skills” and “education” offered by residential schools, accusing their opponents of ignoring “all the good things” associated with the schools, suggesting that historians must offer a “balanced” or “apolitical” assessment of residential schools, or attempting to justify residential schools by saying such actions were normal “for the times.” Each of these tactics attempts to subvert the truth and rewrite history to make it more favourable to settler colonialism.

About the Special Interlocutor’s Interim Report

Unmarked gravesites have reignited national awareness of the destruction caused by residential schools and therefore have been a target for denialists. To support Indigenous communities and the government in the work to identify, research and protect unmarked gravesites, the Federal Justice Minister appointed Kimberly Murray as Special Interlocutor in June 2022. Murray’s role is to identify barriers to the work, the legal changes needed and to make recommendations for a new federal legal framework to ensure the respectful and culturally appropriate treatment of unmarked graves and burial sites of children associated with former residential schools (Office of the Special Interlocutor). Her June 2023 Interim Report includes findings on the increase of residential school denialism in Canada and offers recommendations for addressing denialism, including a significant increase in public education.

In the Special Interlocutors interim report, two community assessments of communications and reactions from the public stand out and are relevant to discussions of the damage of denialism: Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc and Cowessess First Nation. The report noted that in both communities, information was leaked to the media before a communications plan could be developed and this led to miscommunications in the media that fueled denialism and pain among the communities.

At Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc “Denialists entered the site without permission. Some came in the middle of the night, carrying shovels; they said they wanted to ‘see for themselves’ if children are buried there. Denialists also attacked the community on social media. Kúkpi7 Casimir explained that the hate and racism was so intense that she no longer uses social media without heavy filters. She said that the toxicity of denialism on social media needs more attention.” (OSI Interim Report, pg 98)

Similarly at Cowessess First Nation, Barbara Lavallee, Survivor and Lead Researcher, said that “whenever news about unmarked burials at Indian Residential School sites appear in the media, including relating to Cowessess, communities have been targeted by denialists. She said that her community has learned that the best response to denialism is no response at all.” (OSI Interim Report, pg 100)

Gravesites being found at former residential school locations often fall between conflicting legal protections offered by various levels of government, often due to a lack of existing or accessible records, property sales, and other challenges. In some cases, private security has had to be hired to protect gravesites that are currently being worked in. The fact that residential school gravesites have been visited with the intention to disturb the ground by residential school deniers seeking “the truth” is deeply troubling. Not only is it disrespectful of the cemetery and the ongoing processes of community healing and truth-telling, but it also denies Indigenous people their right to self-determination and the revitalization of Indigenous law, not to mention the basic right to be free of discrimination.

Findings to date on the increase in the violence of denialism

  1. Denialism is a uniquely non-Indigenous problem; it therefore requires non-Indigenous people to actively work to counter denialism and to create and implement strategies to do so. 
  2. Broad public support for Survivors, families, and communities conducting search and recovery work can be strengthened through public education about the history and ongoing legacy of Indian Residential Schools in Canada. 
  3. Urgent consideration should be given to legal mechanisms to address denialism, including the implementation of both civil and criminal sanctions. 
  4. Consistent with Article 15 of the Declaration, Canada has an obligation to combat denialism and ensure that education and public information reflects the truth about missing children and unmarked burials. This is important to ensure non-repetition in accordance with the UN’s ‘Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law.’ (OSI Interim Report, pg 188)

This report reflects a theme expressed by Dr. Sinclair and Dr. Carleton in their recent publication; that all Canadians have a role to play in standing up to the rising tide of denialism. Indigenous communities from coast-to-coast-to-coast have spent decades telling the truth in courtrooms, in Truth and Reconciliation Commission testimonies, in community documentation, and within their families. They are working to heal and find answers. Combatting residential school denialism is our responsibility as settler Canadians, as heritage workers, and as members of the broader community.

What you can do

Indigenous communities and advocates agree that responding to denialism is the responsibility of all Canadians. Everyone from museum volunteers, to public-facing staff, to managers/boards have tangible actions they can take to address and reject residential school denialism. Here are a few initial steps that arts, culture, and heritage workers/volunteers can take:

1

Familiarize yourself with common misrepresentations that residential school deniers use to spread misinformation and prepare yourself with the evidence that supports the truth.

We recommend the following introductory resources:

Truth before reconciliation: 8 ways to identify and confront Residential School denialism
Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials TRC Volume 4
Residential School Denialism Is on the Rise. What to Know
Residential-school denialism doesn’t stand up to reality

2

Support Indigenous staff, volunteers, and community members.

It is critical that Indigenous staff, volunteers, and community members are supported in every step of this process and to avoid making assumptions about what support looks like. This involves consulting staff/volunteers/community members about what level of involvement they would like in the development of policies and programs that address residential schools and residential school denialism. Steps can include establishing internal policies for who is responsible for addressing denialism from patrons and community members and who is responsible for responding if these comments escalate, creating protocols for how Indigenous staff/volunteers/community members are supported if they face traumatic experiences in your organization, and creating systems of accountability so that everyone in your organization feels equipped to respond effectively. All of these steps require care, time, and ongoing dialogue and may be complex or uncomfortable. Creating accountable spaces for your volunteers/staff/community members is an investment and cannot be rushed. We recommend the following resources and programs as good starting points for reflecting on how to create supportive and accountable spaces:

Webinar: Introduction to Brave Spaces
Psychological First Aid Courses
Bystander Intervention Training

3

Assess how your organization tells the story of local history.

Does your organization address residential schools in its collections, programs, or exhibits? Do your staff and volunteers know what residential school sites and gravesites are in your area and if they are under active investigation? Have you trained public-facing staff and volunteers on how to address the history of residential schools and colonization? Are your board members able to speak about these topics? You can play a role in helping to educate the community about the history of the residential schools of your region.

Map: Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites

4

Audit the language you use when discussing residential schools.

Be mindful of the language you use when discussing sensitive topics, including residential school gravesites. Terms like ‘mass grave’ are targets for denialists to attack in their quest to create skepticism and mistrust of communities and undermine the process of reconciliation.

A good case study on the importance of language
Debunking the “Mass Grave Hoax”: A Report on Media Coverage and Residential School Denialism in Canada

5

Review your codes of conduct for volunteers, board members, and staff to ensure that denialist sentiment is outlined as unacceptable with clear consequences.

Please note – if you or your organization are a member of the BC Museums Association, you have already agreed to a code of conduct that “[supports] the goals set out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)…[and] encourages members to embrace the ideals of the Rod Naknakim Declaration and incorporate them into their professional practices.”

CMA’s recent Moved to Action report offers resources to reassess governance and HR policies to better align with UNDRIP.

Becoming Better Employers
Reassessing Your Governance Toolkit

6

Understand the processes being undertaken to investigate gravesites.

Reading the Interlocutors Interim Report and understanding how the provincial government is assisting communities can lead to helpful discussions about this process with others.

Interim Report
Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation’s Residential School Response Webinar

Keep in mind that well-intentioned discussions with persons firmly rooted in denialism will not likely change their minds, and you need to take care of yourself and your colleagues both mentally and physically. Instigating a debate can escalate into defensiveness or aggression, and your personal safety is a priority.

If you have feedback about this article or would like BCMA to develop specific resources, policies, or training materials to support effective responses to residential school denialism, please email us.

Thank you to the BCMA Indigenous Advisory Committee for their feedback and trust in the development of this article!

“Residential School Denialism and How to Counteract it” – Fifth Presentation in the “Reconciliation Through Education” Series

“Residential School Denialism and How to Counteract it” – Fifth Presentation in the “Reconciliation Through Education” Series

“RECONCILIATION THROUGH EDUCATION”

Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba and the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation welcome the fall session of a seven-part free public speakers’ series at Government House

Lt.-Gov. Anita R. Neville is pleased to welcome back the fall session of Reconciliation Through Education. This initiative is in partnership with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) and is designed to provide Manitobans the opportunity to learn about the truth of our history from First Nations, Métis and Inuit knowledge keepers. Presenters will share experience and insight on how all we can all play a role in the ongoing work of truth, reconciliation and healing to build a more respectful and just society for all.

“Residential School Denialism and How to Counteract it” will be the focus of the fifth presentation in the “Reconciliation Through Education” series. The series will be held on Thursday, Sept. 19 and will feature Dr. Sean Carleton, professor of Indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba.

Those wishing to attend MUST register in advance with the Office of the Lieutenant Governor by calling 204-945-2753. Seating is limited. Guests may reserve a maximum of two seats per registration. There is no cost to attend.

Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Program begins at 7 p.m. at Government House, 10 Kennedy St., Winnipeg. Parking is available on both sides of the driveway. Light refreshments to follow.

Please consider bringing a non-perishable food item for the Lieutenant Governor’s Sharing Hope Initiative.

Presentations will be livestreamed (registration is not necessary to view the livestream) and permanently available through our website: www.manitobalg.ca.

https://www.thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025/04/22/Who-Benefits-Residential-School-Denialism/

Who Benefits from Residential School Denialism?

Undermining Indigenous experience aids powerful interests looking to extract resources.

Robert A Hackett 22 Apr 2025The TyeeRobert Hackett is vice-president of the qathet Climate Alliance. This article expresses his personal opinions.

Grey concrete steps feature a large memorial display of children’s shoes on an orange carpet, children’s toys, flowers, candles and a large orange flag that reads ‘Every child matters’ in white and black text with a pair of eagle feathers.

A memorial display for residential school survivors on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery, August 2021. Photo by EB Adventure Photography via Shutterstock.

Defending Indigenous land rights is not just a matter of justice, argues Naomi Klein in This Changes Everything. It may be “the last line of defence” against a juggernaut doubling down on a high-carbon economy regardless of the costs, including the possible collapse of organized human society.

Extractivist and climate-threatening projects, like the Coastal GasLink pipeline, are sometimes driven through the territories of Indigenous Peoples without their prior and informed consent.

So it’s no surprise that those who favour expanding fossil fuel and resource extraction-based development would be drawn to viewpoints — “elective affinity,” sociologist Max Weber called it — that limit or delegitimize Indigenous claims to land or self-determination.

One weapon for doing so is residential school denialism. It’s an ideological project born of colonialism. It doesn’t deny the existence of the residential school system but rather downplays, excuses or misrepresents facts about the harms it caused.

Professors Sean Carleton and Daniel Heath Justice outline the many ways residential school denialism distorts history.

Residential school denialism narrowly defines the term “genocide” as ethnic cleansing like the Holocaust, thus excluding the deliberate erasure of cultures as a form of genocide applicable to Canada.

It underplays the nightmarish distinctiveness of residential “schools” as prisons, where legally kidnapped youngsters obtained little effective academic or vocational instruction, and were often abused.

Denialism asserts the “good intentions” of some administrators, constructs a false balance between “good” and “bad” elements of the system and focuses on a minority of individual positive recollections from the schools.

Like deniers of the Nazi Holocaust, residential school denialism seizes upon and exaggerates data ambiguities — like precise body counts of victims — that are inevitable in any complex historical process, particularly those deliberately shrouded in secrecy.

It’s a strategy to discredit the overwhelming historical evidence and survivor testimony, particularly through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, of the genocidal nature of the schools.

Residential school denialism has reared its head in major party politics. In my home riding of North Island-Powell River, the federal Conservative candidate, Aaron Gunn, has been called out by First Nations leaders and many others for his dismissive views on residential schools. Is it a coincidence that his financial backers have included oil tycoons?

A local grassroots campaign called on the Conservative party leadership to “drop the Gunn” as their candidate and, if he remains on the ballot, encouraged progressive voters to strategically vote NDP as the most realistic option for defeating him in this riding.

‘This wasn’t about finding truth. It was about exerting power’

Last summer, I attended a lecture in my hometown, Powell River, by an individual denialist associated with the controversial book Grave Error. (That event was reported in The Tyee.)

In my view, the speaker misrepresented the core purpose of residential schools, used ambiguities about the evidence of graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School site to downplay the extent of children’s deaths in the system, trivialized the cultural value of preserving Indigenous languages, dissed the international phonetic alphabet as a guide for pronouncing Indigenous names and, for added measure, apparently denied the existence of trans people who do not fit into one of two genders.

The highly partisan audience frothed and applauded. Several declared their intention to run for council. This wasn’t about finding truth. It was about exerting power.

Given how the spread of residential school denialism retraumatizes survivors, Winnipeg MP Leah Gazan last year introduced a private member’s bill in Parliament proposing that it be criminalized, as Holocaust denial already is.

I’m not convinced we need to outlaw residential school denialism, but people and organizations have the right to decide not to spread it.

Regrettably, Powell River’s largest neighbourhood association, the Westview Ratepayers Society, used its newsletter to announce the local event. To be fair, it withdrew a previous, more fulsome announcement, did not mention the topic and ran a disclaimer that it wasn’t sponsoring the event. There are indications that its policy will be reviewed in the future.

More encouragingly, last fall, the city council endorsed a statement from the Union of BC Indian Chiefs condemning residential school denialism and asking municipal governments to challenge it.

And recently, the Powell River Peak newspaper declined to advertise a return event by the same speaker I heard last year.

That triggered an avalanche of flak. It included a scolding by National Post columnist Conrad Black, a convicted felon who was once described by Bob Rae, before he became Ontario’s first NDP premier, as “a symbol of bloated capitalism at its worst.”

My colleagues on the board of the qathet Climate Alliance pledged not to use our own communication outlets “to disseminate hate speech or to publicize events by speakers who have a track record of promoting disinformation or contempt towards other individuals or groups in the community, one that includes our neighbours in Tla’amin Nation.”

Our statement specifically mentions both Holocaust denialism and residential school denialism, both complicit in whitewashing genocide.

We don’t need a U.S. hedge fund-owned newspaper chain, or an addition to criminal law, to connect the ideological dots between extractivism and denialism.

Or to take action in our own communities to counteract their spread.  [Tyee]

Read more: Indigenous, Rights + Justice, Election 2025

Exposing Residential School Denialism’s Transnational Network

Exposing Residential School Denialism’s Transnational Network

       No Commentson Exposing Residential School Denialism’s Transnational Network

By Sean Carleton, Alan Lester, Adele Perry, and Omeasoo Wahpasiw

Residential school denialism is on the rise in Canada and meaningful reconciliation is at risk.1 After the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report in 2015, and especially since the Tk’emlúps te Secwe?pemc Nation’s 2021 announcement about the location of potential unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School and the confirmation of additional deaths at other schools across the country, many priests, pundits, and politicians across the country have engaged in what is known as residential school denialism.2

Denialists do not usually deny the residential school system’s existence, or even that it did damage. Rather, like in other cases of denialism, they employ a discourse that twists, distorts, and misrepresents basic facts about residential schooling to shake public confidence in truth and reconciliation efforts, defend guilty and culpable parties, and protect Canada’s colonial status quo.

Denialism spikes at predictable times, such as the anniversary of the Kamloops announcement (May 27) and Orange Shirt Day (marked in Canada on September 30 as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation). Indeed, in the period leading up to and just following September 30, 2024, there were a number of concerning incidents of denialism – from the usual far-right publications promoting the “positives” of the genocidal IRS system to the spreading of conspiracy theories and disinformation by politicians and social influencers.3

In response, a number of Indigenous writers have pointed out the harms that denialism causes and stressed the need for settler Canadians to confront this dangerous phenomenon if Canada is serious about its commitment to truth and reconciliation.4

What is getting less attention, however, is residential school denialism’s global spread. Residential school denialism may have its origins in Canada, but it is increasingly circulating and being used around the world as part of a wider matrix of imperial apologetics – a transnational network of discourse that aims to defend the legacy of the British Empire in the metropole and former colonies.5

Colour lithograph map showing a Mercator projection of the world, with trade routes and the British Empire in red.
“Highways of Empire,” 1927. C.G. Holme. Victoria & Albert Museum.

Circuits of Empire

To better understand denialism’s transnational nature, it is important first to contextualize this phenomenon as a continuation of the imperial project itself. As historians have demonstrated in recent decades, raw resources during the age of empire were often extracted from colonies and shipped back to the metropole to be manufactured, consumed, and sold on the global market through transimpeiral networks for profit. This multidirectional circuit of draining wealth from the colonies and consolidating imperial power – often legitimized discursively by insisting on the benevolent and even humanitarian intentions of empire – was a cornerstone of European empires.6 Today, the old circuits of empire are being repurposed in bitterly contested culture wars. Imperial apologists are drawing on denialism created in former colonies to redeem the empire, protect its spoils, and weaponize imperial heritage as a political tool today.7

In this context, residential school denialism in Canada has become a common feature of the surge in imperial apologetics across the former British Empire.

The Truth About Empire

Exposing residential school denialism’s transnational network is one contribution of a chapter we (Carleton, Perry, Wahpasiw) have written about the manipulation of Canadian and Indigenous histories by imperial apologists for the new collection, The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of the British Empire, which is edited by our fellow co-author (Lester).8 The book brings together the expertise of historians from different parts of the former empire to confront the tactics of denial and disavowal used by apologists generally and, as an example, specifically Nigel Bigger’s best-selling book, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning.9

As Lester explains in The Truth About Empire’s introduction, “the culture war is about politics rather than historical understanding.”10 Moreover, he explains, “For its most avid participants, interpretations of the past are simply a weapon to be wielded in a struggle between progressive and reactionary philosophies and instincts.”11 In gathering subject experts “intent on telling the truth based on the evidence we have analyzed and debated over many years,” The Truth About Empire marshals a defence not of the imperial past but the expertise of imperial historians.12

Yet, the power of the collection, at least in our eyes, is that we do not simply assert our expertise as the truth because we say so. Instead, we do the work of historians. We reveal how Biggar’s argumentation (like imperial apologetics generally) is flawed by triangulating and interpreting facts about the colonial past in rigorous ways to guide public understanding. We base our analyses on careful examinations of records generated at the time and preserved in oral history, written records kept in archives, and published accounts that draw out nuance, complexity, and historical understanding. This may be less appealing to a popular audience than the easy comforts offered by right-wing pseudo-historians profiting from publishing books and articles that soothe the conflicted consciences of readers during a period of imperial reckoning, but it is important to stick up for the truth about empire nonetheless.

Residential School Denialism’s Transnational Network

Biggar’s recent writings are also a good example of how apologists use residential school denialism specifically as part of their efforts to justify British imperialism on the whole. As Lester has made clear, cherry-picking, or selectively using evidence to misrepresent the complex truth, is a key tactic of apologists, and it is easy to see how writers like Biggar cherry-pick the history and historiography of residential schooling for the purposes of justification.13

In Colonialism, Biggar misrepresents Canadian and Indigenous scholarship to recast the process of settler colonialism in the northern part of North America as beneficent. Drawing on dubious and often discredited sources – such as the work of right-wing strategist Thomas Flanagan and the pseudo-history journal The Dorchester Review – Biggar makes a number of problematic arguments, from painting Métis resistance leader Louis Riel as recognizing a logical rationale for colonization to discounting and discrediting Indigenous experience and epistemologies and defending residential schools as being essentially “humanitarian” institutions.14 Moreover, Biggar selectively engages with Canada’s colonial history, leaving out important aspects that do not fit his narrative. The long history of the Hudson’s Bay Company, for instance, receives no mention in Colonialism.

Concerning residential schooling specifically, Biggar draws on right-wing sources to discredit the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report, which demonstrated the system was genocidal, and cherry-picks from one book, J.R. Miller’s Shingwauk’s Vision, to stress the so-called “positive” aspects of the system. Overwhelmingly, Canadian historians will, of course, see through such flimsy argumentation for what it is: disingenuous source engagement obviously meant to justify what scholars agree – despite a handful of detractors – was a genocidal school system.15 Even Miller’s work, which denies the genocidal intent of the system and stresses certain positive aspects, acknowledges the residential school system’s overall destructive consequences for Indigenous Peoples. Quite simply, Shingwauk’s Vision does not support Biggar’s assertion that residential schools were “humanitarian” institutions. The issue is that Biggar’s audience are not likely to pick up on the misrepresentation of the history and historiography in Canada, and his ideas are spreading as legitimate knowledge rather than a repackaging of dubious and discredited denialism that must be refuted.

Biggar has doubled down on denialism in even more recent writing.16 Worse, he has moved from a simple misrepresentation of scholarly work to an open embrace of far-right, conspiratorial publications on residential schooling.

This summer, Biggar weighed into the discourse on empire again and invoked the positives of residential schooling in Canada as the crescendo of his argument. For his evidence, he references the book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools). Biggar does not inform his readers that, in Canada, Grave Error has been discredited by experts as right-wing propaganda.17 Among many falsehoods, the book promotes the debunked “mass grave hoax” conspiracy theory.18 Grave Error is not a peer-reviewed book; the majority of authors are not scholars; there are no residential school historians; and there is not a single Indigenous author included. Nevertheless, Biggar draws on the book’s clumsy argumentation to cast doubt on deaths in residential schools and thereby minimize their hurt and harm. Specifically, he employs a discursive sleight of hand used in the book: insisting that not one “murdered” child has been proven, strategically changing the narrative/moving the goalposts to deliberate killings and murder rather than the overwhelmingly documented neglect, abuse, disease and death in the institutions established by the TRC.19

Self-published works such as Grave Error find an audience all too willing to consume denialism as legitimate – and comforting – discourse. But as Biggar’s use of the book demonstrates, the spread of misinformation and disinformation about residential schooling is no longer a provincial, local matter; it is a global problem.

Truth Before Reconciliation

But the problem is bigger than Biggar, of course. His work is but one example of the dangers of residential school denialism’s transnational spread. Culture warriors looking for new ways of defending the British Empire are eagerly consuming and promoting residential school denialism created in Canada and using it to stress the empire’s beneficent and humanitarian nature to resist an imperial reckoning and rebuff calls for reparations and reconciliation.20

In short, denialism is no longer restricted to Canada. It is increasingly circulating as part of a transnational network and being used globally to shape international opinion in concerning ways.

Fighting to put truth before reconciliation, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada stressed, is thus no longer a domestic issue but rather an international one as well.

This means that new transnational tools and strategies – as the recent report by Kimberly Murray, the Special Interlocutor on Unmarked Graves and Missing Children Associated with Residential Schools – will be needed to combat the rise of residential school denialism.21 Indeed, Murray makes clear that governments, churches, institutions, and Canadians have legal, moral, and ethical obligations to implement an Indigenous-led Reparations Framework for Truth, Accountability, Justice, and Reconciliation.

We must have truth – both at home and abroad – before reconciliation.

Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools Kimberly Murray delivers remarks on an Indigenous-led reparations framework during a national gathering in Gatineau, Que. (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)
  1. See Niigaan Sinclair and Sean Carleton, “Residential School Denialism is on the Rise,” The Tyee, June 20, 2023, https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2023/06/20/Residential-School-Denialism-On-Rise/; Brett Forester, “Residential School Deniers, White Supremacists Biggest Barrier to Reconciliation says Murray Sinclair,” APTN, January 12, 2021, https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/residential-school-deniers-white-supremacists-biggest-barrier-to-reconciliation-says-murray-sinclair/. ↩︎
  2. Daniel Heath Justice and Sean Carleton, “Truth Before Reconciliation: 8 Ways to Identify and Confront Residential School Denialism,” The Conversation, August 5, 2021, https://theconversation.com/truth-before-reconciliation-8-ways-to-identify-and-confront-residential-school-denialism-164692; Ashley Joannou, “At Least 55 Children Died or Disappeared at Residential School Near Williams Lake, B.C.: Report,” Global News, October 12, 2024, https://globalnews.ca/news/10809465/williams-lake-residential-school-remains/; Brett Forester, “Coroner’s Probe Finds 220 Additional Deaths at Ontario Residential Schools,” December 2, 2024, https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/coroner-ontario-residential-schools-investigation-1.7396884. ↩︎
  3. See, for example, Charyl Chan, “BC Election: Conservative Candidate Under Fire Again, This Time Over Residential Schools,” Vancouver Sun, October 11, 2024, https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/bc-election-conservative-candidate-under-fire-again-this-time-over-residential-schools. ↩︎
  4. Tanya Talaga, “Canada Must Stand Against Residential School Denialism,” Globe and Mail, October 10, 2024, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-must-stand-against-residential-school-denialism/; Drew Hayden Taylor, “Residential-school Denialists Are Adding Insult to Injury,” TVO Today, October 9, 2024, https://www.tvo.org/article/opinion-residential-school-denialists-are-adding-insult-to-injury. ↩︎
  5. Sathnam Sanghera, “Imperial Nostalgia Has Become So Extreme,” The Guardian, June 8, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jun/08/imperial-nostalgia-has-become-so-extreme-sathnam-sanghera-on-the-conflict-surrounding-colonial-history. ↩︎
  6. See Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, “The Drain of Wealth: Colonialism Before the First World War,” Monthly Review, February 21, 2021, https://monthlyreview.org/2021/02/01/the-drain-of-wealth/; Alan Lester, “British Settler Discourse and the Circuits of Empire,” History Workshop Journal 54, no. 1 (Autumn 2002): 24–48. ↩︎
  7. Charlotte Lydia Riely, “Battleground in the Culture Wars,” New Lines Magazine, July 5, 2024, https://newlinesmag.com/essays/britains-imperial-past-has-become-a-battleground-in-the-culture-wars/. ↩︎
  8. Alan Lester, ed. The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism (Hurst, 2024). ↩︎
  9. Nigel Bigger, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (William Collins, 2023). ↩︎
  10. Lester, The Truth About Empire, 11. ↩︎
  11. Lester, The Truth About Empire, 11. ↩︎
  12. Lester, The Truth About Empire, 15. ↩︎
  13. Alan Lester, “The British Empire in the Culture War: Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 51, no. 4 (2024): 763–795. ↩︎
  14. Adele Perry, Sean Carleton, Omeasoo Wahpasiw, “The Misuse of Indigenous and Canadian History in Colonialism,” in The Truth About Empire, 73–92. ↩︎
  15. See J.R. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (University of Toronto Press, 1996). On the matter of genocide see, for example, Andrew Woolford, This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States (University of Manitoba Press, 2015); Sean Carleton and Andrew Woolford, “Ignore Debaters and Denialists, Canada’s Treatment of Indigenous Peoples Fits the Definition of Genocide,” The Conversation, October 25, 2021, https://theconversation.com/ignore-debaters-and-denialists-canadas-treatment-of-indigenous-peoples-fits-the-definition-of-genocide-170242. ↩︎
  16. Nigel Biggar, “History Lessened: Who Gets to Decide How We See the Past?” The Spectator, June 12, 2024: https://nigelbiggar.uk/2024/06/13/history-lessened-who-gets-to-decide-how-we-see-the-past/. ↩︎
  17. Richard Butler, “This is a Worrying Book,” The British Columbia Review, July 2, 2024, https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/02/2216-butler-champion-flanagan/. ↩︎
  18. Sean Carleton and Reid Gerbrandt, “We Fact-checked Residential School Denialists and Debunked Their “Mass Grave Hoax” Theory,” The Conversation, October 17, 2023, https://theconversation.com/we-fact-checked-residential-school-denialists-and-debunked-their-mass-grave-hoax-theory-213435. ↩︎
  19. C. P. Champion and Tom Flanagan, eds., Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (And the Truth About Residential Schools) (Truth North and Dorchester Books, 2023), 10. For more on this kind of rhetorical strategy, see Alan Lester, “The Right Wing Culture War and the Refusal to Listen,” November 19, 2024, https://alanlester.co.uk/blog/the-right-wing-culture-war-and-the-refusal-to-listen/. ↩︎
  20. See, for example, “‘Astonishing Bit of Fake News’ Exposed in Canada,” Sky News Australia, February 1, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egbXE18omy0; Matt Walsh, “The Newest and Most Shameless Hoax to Demonize Christians,” August 21, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ5qHwxDM50. ↩︎
  21. Kimberly Murray, Upholding Sacred Obligations: Reparations for Missing and Disappeared Indigenous Children and Unmarked Burials in Canada, 2024, https://osi-bis.ca/osi-resources/reports/. ↩︎

Sean Carleton is a settler historian and Associate Professor in the Departments of History and Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia.

Alan Lester (FRHistS) is Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Sussex and Adjunct Professor of History at La Trobe University. His books include Colonialism and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance: Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-Century British Empire and Deny and Disavow: Distancing the Imperial Past in the Culture Wars.

Adele Perry is Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Manitoba, where she is also director of the Centre for Human Rights Research. She is committed to creating and disseminating critical histories of empire in the lands she was raised and lives as a settler.

Omeasoo Wahpasiw is a néhiyaw iskwew living in Anishinaabe territory. She co-wrote the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nation’s Women’s Commission submission to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People and is cross-appointed with Carleton University School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies and the Department of History.

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Residential-school denialism doesn’t stand up to reality

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Residential-school denialism doesn’t stand up to reality

NCTR   

 

Authored by Raymond Frogner, head of archives for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

Canada’s Supreme Court has acknowledged that Canadian governments and Christian organizations weaponized education to govern and forcefully assimilate Indigenous peoples through a system of residential schools. Seven generations of Indigenous children endured unconscionable physical, emotional and sexual abuse, poor health care, deficient educational standards, inadequate shelter, chronic malnutrition and disproportionately high rates of death.

And yet there are still commentators who deny or question the trustworthiness of the records, the transparency of the research and even the merit of investigating the residential school experience.

This prevents understanding, and must be addressed.

Detractors have stated that both federal and provincial governments kept careful records around the deaths of children sent to residential school. They claim government offices delivered, years ago, almost all these records to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) or, later, to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) – and that the Centre is not making these records available.

This is false. The NCTR is still negotiating with governments in Saskatchewan, Quebec and the Northwest Territories to acquire their vital statistics records, including coroners’ reports. These are the records that most clearly indicate the death of a child.

None of the schools identified by the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) have a complete set of admission registers, quarterly returns, or discharge records. These records trace the life of a child at residential school, but it was common practice for schools and government offices to destroy them.

In addition, records from schools run by the Catholic Church are almost inaccessibly scattered in parishes and other offices across the country. To date, the NCTR has consulted more than 105 private-records repositories to find residential school records of Christian denominations, and is still working to acquire relevant records from religious entities.

These information gaps challenge researchers and communities searching for the final destiny of lost relatives.

Schools also inconsistently recorded children’s names. During admission, children were assigned a number, with a European name replacing their Indigenous names. The NCTR holds records of students with more than 15 different recorded versions of their names.

The NCTR is filtering a maximal list of names, to arrive at a more definitive list. But the records’ inconsistency guarantees that a comprehensive list of names of children who attended residential schools, and who was lost, is unachievable.

Meanwhile, some commentators have portrayed residential schools as rewarding sites of learning with pleasant extracurricular activities. Some have cited examples of children enjoying cultural events and sporting competitions to prove the schools’ benign character.

There are, of course, happy anecdotes. But for every one, there is a tenfold experience of trauma. For example, in 1970, the Long Plain Residential School Glee Club was sent to the World’s Fair in Osaka, Japan, where, dressed in false regalia, they were recorded singing O Canada and other settler anthems in Indigenous languages. But those students also remember their return to Long Plain, where they suffered corporal punishment, solitary confinement, and restricted meals for speaking their languages.

The reality of the schools is more accurately portrayed in the unconscionably high death rates of residential schoolchildren across the country and the addiction, unemployment, and suicide experienced by traumatized survivors.

The NCTR has so far identified 4,135 deaths of students who attended a residential school, and more will be added in an upcoming inclusive report. With the guidance of Indigenous communities, the NCTR constructed a memorial website to honour and commemorate these losses.

Some deniers have misunderstood the meaning of this memorial. They have found burial sites of children named on the website, and noted that some died in their home communities.

However, there were children who were sent home and died shortly afterward – or as the TRC darkly phrased it, “sent home to die.” The website thus includes children who passed away within approximately a year of discharge.

The site’s purpose is to commemorate loss, and it is the families left behind who determine the respectful and appropriate acknowledgment of this loss. Our goal is an ongoing and true record of this loss in its totality.

The NCTR holds more than 7,000 statements from school survivors. These are personal gifts – vulnerable expressions of school traumas offered with muted dignity. But the survivors have not been acknowledged and honoured; instead, they have been marginalized in our colonial forums of culture and law. Deniers would prefer to forget them.

We choose to remember these events because they are a significant part of our national history, and because deliberate acts of remembrance acknowledge our common humanity. For we are what we choose to remember – but also what we choose to forget.