September 2025
An absence of balance. That’s what I see with much of the talk regarding the Indian Residential Schools. A recent column written by Sean Carleton, associate professor in the Departments of History and Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba, and Benjamin Kucher, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta, suffers from an absence of balance.
Let’s get one thing straight first off: I’m not a residential school denier. I want the truth, no matter how good or bad.
There is no such thing as “my truth,” or “your truth.” There is only “The Truth.” What many mistake for “their truth” is actually their interpretation. That’s not to say they are wrong, but people can perceive an event differently, even if they all saw exactly the same thing. This is why witness testimony is the most unreliable form of evidence that can be presented in a court of law. Sometimes, that’s all you have, so you go with it.
One of the things I learned very early in my career as a police officer was that the truth really doesn’t matter. It only matters what you can prove in court. Evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, is the standard for our courts of law. It shouldn’t be different when it comes to what happened, or didn’t happen, at the residential schools.
There is no doubt that bad things, regrettable things, happened at Indian Residential Schools. What is in doubt is the alleged murder and clandestine burials of Indigenous students by Priests and Nuns at these schools. Some infants were allegedly thrown into furnaces by Priests seeking to hide the rapes of students. As of today, all we actually have are “anomalies” found by ground penetrating radar. That’s it.
There have been very few excavations of these “anomalies” to determine if there is actually a child buried in spots identified by these anomalies, such as at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Of the sites that have been excavated, like the Pine Creek Residential School in Manitoba, nothing has been found to indicate that children were secretly murdered and buried. So, is it denialism to ask why no bodies have been found? Of course not.
You would think that the fact that no bodies have been found would be a great relief, seeing as that could mean no children were murdered and clandestinely buried. Instead, it appears there is too much money and power involved in keeping the murder narrative going. If children were indeed murdered and buried in unmarked graves, we need to find the truth, even if those responsible are long dead and will never see the inside of a courtroom. If no such crimes happened, then we need to stop perpetuating that narrative.
I want to know the truth and I should hope that all First Nations across Canada want the truth too, no matter what the truth turns out to be. Carleton and Kucher get a little inflammatory in their column, belittling those who dare to “…demand impossible ‘proof,’ discredit survivor and expert testimony and attack the reputations of researchers. Denialists often present themselves as ‘skeptics’ or ‘truth seekers,’ cloaking harmful narratives in the language of free speech and rational inquiry. They cast survivor testimony as unreliable, ’emotional’ or politically or financially motivated.” I find that statement incredibly insulting.
Like many Canadians back in 2021, I mourned the children “discovered” at Kamloops. I took my daughter to the makeshift memorial that popped up in my city, where we reflected on this horrible tragedy, while standing near the sacred fire that had been lit. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
I even took the time to visit the former Spanish Residential School, west of Sudbury, where I left a note repeating a phrase I heard that touched me to my soul: “…and a small voice whispers, ‘They found us.’” I was proud to have been included in a smudging ceremony that took place while I was visiting the remains of the former school.
I did find it a little troubling that some public figures and media outlets continually referred to the “found graves” as a “mass grave,” which has a drastically different connotation than an unmarked grave. Most of these accounts have since been corrected to reflect this misrepresentation.
I’m not in any way saying that nothing bad happened at residential schools, including criminal acts, because there is objective evidence confirming such incidents, but as of today, there is nothing to substantiate that clandestine murders and burials in mass graves occurred.
If any First Nation across Canada has records of children who went to a residential school and simply vanished, I urge those Nations to speak up. It’s true that many students and adults died at the residential schools from influenza, tuberculosis, or from the many diseases that killed many people before our current medical advances, who for a variety of reasons, were not repatriated to their Nations for burial. How many of those students were buried locally, in proper graves that may or may not still have a marker on the grave, along with being properly recorded in church or municipal records?
There are some, who have attempted to answer these questions, like Candace Malcolm of Juno News, author and historian Dr. Tom Flanagan, chair of the Indian Residential Schools Research Group in the book he co-edited “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (And the Truth about Residential Schools),” and Rebel News reporters Drea Humphrey, an Indigenous woman, and Matt Brevner in their documentary “Kamloops: The Buried Truth,” only to be told they are Residential School deniers and perpetuating lies. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. The truth is, we don’t know the truth.
As of today, all we have are unverified allegations that have been used to incorrectly paint Canada as a genocidal nation, full of “settlers” who “stole” Indigenous land. I say it’s more important to find the truth. As author K.A. Tucker pointed out in her book, Burying Water, “…the truth is like that water: it doesn’t matter how hard you try to bury it; it’ll always find some way back to the surface. It’s resilient.”
Now, Prime Minister Mark Carney, where are we on thing like the poverty, housing and clean water issues on First Nation communities across Canada? Are there any updates you wish to share with us?
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Read my other columns on the Indian Residential Schools, where you can see the evolution of my opinion of this topic:
Barrie Memorial grows for victims of Kamloops residential school – Canadian Military History
As You Like It, or Truth and Reconciliation hypocrisy – Canadian Military History
Many more tears to be shed – Canadian Military History
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The original column that inspired my column:
Canada needs to confront residential schools denialism
Opinion | Confronting residential schools denialism is an ethical and shared Canadian responsibility
Denialism is not just an attack on truth. It also increasingly has many of the hallmarks of an attack on truth-tellers and anyone who is listening.
Updated Oct. 1, 2025 at 8:12 a.m.
Sept. 30, 2025
By Sean Carleton and Benjamin Kucher
Sean Carleton is an associate professor in the Departments of History and Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba. Benjamin Kucher is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. This is republished from The Conversation.
In May 2021, when the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation announced preliminary results of its search for unmarked burials of children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (IRS), Canada was forced to reckon with a truth that survivors had always carried: children were taken, and many never came home.
This difficult truth was already established years earlier, in 2015, by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada’s final report, which confirmed more than 3,200 deaths of children as a result of the IRS system, including 51 at Kamloops.
The Kamloops announcement shook many Canadians and revealed that more children likely died at residential schools in Canada than the TRC reported. This was something the commission anticipated would happen with new research, and additional deaths have now been confirmed by First Nations and police as they have undertaken their own subsequent investigations.
Vigils sprang up across the country. Shoes, toys and teddy bears were placed on the steps of legislatures and churches to remember the children who died at residential schools. For a brief moment, Canada mourned with Indigenous peoples; the truth of survivors was acknowledged.
But four years later, residential school denialism — the downplaying and minimizing of residential school facts and the disavowal of the system’s abuse and harm — is on the rise.
As community initiatives and research related to missing children and unmarked burials have persevered and expanded, so too have efforts to diminish and disavow this very work.
Residential school denialism, as historian Crystal Gail Fraser has outlined, is an attack on truth. It seeks to dismiss the validity of ground searches and recast residential schools as humanitarian and benevolent.
Residential school denialism is not simply an alternate perspective. It is a form of harm that retraumatizes survivors, undermines truth and perpetuates colonial ideas that jeopardize Canada’s ability to work with Indigenous peoples to create a stronger future.
Confronting denialism is an ethical and shared responsibility.
The denialist playbook
Residential school denialism follows a pattern familiar from other forms of atrocity denialism. Holocaust denialism, genocide denialism and similar movements employ similar strategies: demand impossible “proof,” discredit survivor and expert testimony and attack the reputations of researchers.
This can include denialists turning their attention toward those who dare to speak openly: survivors, Indigenous communities and the experts who support them. What is often framed as “debate” seems more like a campaign of intimidation.
Residential school denialism, then, is not just an attack on truth. It also increasingly has many of the hallmarks of an attack on truth-tellers and anyone who is listening.
Denialists often present themselves as “skeptics” or “truth seekers,” cloaking harmful narratives in the language of free speech and rational inquiry. They cast survivor testimony as unreliable, “emotional” or politically or financially motivated.
In doing so, they promote an alluring colonial narrative that absolves Canada of responsibility. The reach extends beyond Canada: denying the harms and facts of residential schooling is increasingly being used globally to shape international opinion related to the legacies of the British Empire.
At its heart, denialism is not about evidence. It is about power — who gets to tell the story of residential schooling and whose voices are considered trustworthy — and it causes harm along the way.
The human cost
The damage caused by denialism is immediate and personal. Survivors who bravely share their experiences are accused of fabrication.
Kimberly Murray, who serves as special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, received abuse, threats and hate mail.
Via social media and online commentary, people advocating denialist claims have targeted individual university employees.
Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, including ourselves, have seen their names dragged into online forums, their work misrepresented, their credibility attacked.
Cumulatively, efforts that discredit and delegitimize prominent truth-tellers contribute to backlash by creating space — for example, in comment sections or via re-circulating media — for people to voice ignorant views about Indigenous peoples and perpetuate anti-Indigenous racism.
The cost is not limited to reputation; it is emotional and psychological. It has also resulted in disrespectful physical presence at former IRS sites: Murray reported that at the former Kamloops IRS: “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.”
Survivors and elders, those who should be most honoured, are retraumatized by these attacks on their integrity.
We, among other scholars, calculate the risks of speaking publicly, knowing it may bring harassment. And we know some community leaders for whom it is the same.
Denialism thrives on fear and hate
Residential school denialism has flourished in today’s political and digital climate. The rise of far-right populism, entrenched anti-Indigenous racism and the ecosystem of social media provide fertile ground for dedicated people to flood online spaces with disinformation.
Denialists exploit the deliberate, careful pace of ground searches and archeological work. They portray the absence of immediate excavation results as evidence that nothing is there, and ignore the confirmed deaths from exhumation when they are announced.
Proper archeological and community-led work takes time. It requires ceremony, consent and cultural respect as multiple Nations work collaboratively to figure out how to honour children who attended schools from various communities. Excavation is not always possible, or even desired. Denialists twist these hard realities into narratives of doubt.
Gaps in education, inconsistent coverage
This manipulation is made easier by gaps in public education, inconsistent media coverage and government hesitancy. Too often, denialist claims circulate unchallenged. In these silences, mis- and disinformation thrives.
Denialism is not an Indigenous problem; confronting it is a Canadian responsibility.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Non-Indigenous Canadians must take an active role: learning the history, correcting misinformation and standing with survivors and communities as they confront the truth about residential schooling.
Journalists and scholars also have a responsibility to report with care, refusing to legitimize denialist rhetoric under the guise of “balance” and disingenuous “debate.”
Truth and reconciliation cannot survive if the truth is minimized, downplayed or disavowed.
Shared responsibility
Despite these challenges, Indigenous communities continue the work of truth-telling. Survivors share their stories with courage: for example, one has launched a defamation lawsuit.
Communities organize and lead ground searches. Journalists fight to reveal hidden truths about residential school crimes.
Writers and scholars contribute expertise to raise awareness and meet community needs. Each act of testimony, ceremony and research is also an act of resistance against erasure and disavowal.
The children we are searching for, and remembering, deserve nothing less than our courage to confront the truth in an effort to create a better future. This is our shared responsibility.
Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events.
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Sources: The Candice Malcolm Show | This is a low point in the history of Parliament: political scientist | True North, Kamloops: The Buried Truth – Rebel News, Success of Residential Schools Book Shows Writers Don’t Need Big Publishers | IRSRG, Canada needs to confront residential schools denialism, No evidence of human remains found beneath church at Pine Creek Residential School site | CBC News, No remains found at Manitoba residential school – Rebel News, So-called ‘denialists’ tried to dig up residential school unmarked graves | Watch News Videos Online.
