Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report, a retired professor of anthropology, and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” is the opening line of Charles Dickens’ famous historical novel A Tale of Two Cities, a book that came instantly to mind after reading two June 19, House of Parliament Question Period notes prepared for Gary Anandasangaree, Canada’s Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations.These talking points are called Combatting Residential School Denialism, the other Indian Residential School Sites – Unmarked Burials.Whether the suggested responses offered in these notes to possible questions raised by the opposition Progressive Conservatives were enunciated in the House or not is less important than the Dickensian implications of their contents, statements that serve as allusions to the rest of what this master storyteller meant about periods of history in which radical opposites simultaneously clash with each other.When it comes to interpretations of issues involving indigenous people, especially the role played in their lives by attendance at Indian Residential Schools, Dickens’ words ring loud and clear 165 years after they were written:“… it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”On the one side of superlatives are leaders like Rev. Fred Hiltz, former Archbishop and Primate, Anglican Church of Canada, who have argued that there was “nothing good” about the Indian Residential Schools; on the other, there are prominent Canadians like former Conservative Sen. Lynn Beyak who have always claimed, “remarkable works, good deeds and historical tales in the residential schools go unacknowledged for the most part.” The ongoing contest, then, is between those who see only darkness, despair, and evil as characterizing these boarding schools and those who find much light, hope, and goodness in their intent, operation, and legacy.According to the first anti-denialism memo, “As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has taught us, ‘Without truth, justice, and healing, there can be no genuine reconciliation,’” implying that the Commission’s deeply flawed and biased 2015 report must be considered an infallible document.Just as infallible is its unstated but perverse analogy to Holocaust denial, the still widespread belief that the best-documented genocide in human history has been grossly exaggerated.The note also asserts that indigenous residential school “denialism” is undermining reconciliation with indigenous people without defining what boarding school denialism means except to say, “We must not deny what happened to indigenous children at residential schools across the country, and the resulting pain and intergenerational trauma that still haunts Survivors, families, and communities,” ignoring evidence showing that the residential school attendance cannot explain the many differential adversities affecting Canada’s aboriginal people.In a 2023 report, the Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples even proposed a legal ban on “denialism” — an assault on the constitutionally protected free speech rights of Canadians, if there ever was one — also without defining it. “Denialism serves to distract people from the horrific consequences of residential schools and the realities of missing children, burials and unmarked graves,” said the report Honouring The Children Who Never Came Home.The other June 19 Crown-indigenous Relations note, Unmarked Burials, said investigations were ongoing in the search for children who never returned home from their residential school. “The truth about residential school unmarked burials continues to be revealed,” it said. “Funding is available.”In Dickensian contrary fashion, the note ignored the near total absence of children who attended indigenous residential schools whose fate is unknown. As Kimberly Murray, Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, admitted to the Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples on March 21, 2023: “The children aren’t missing; they’re buried in the cemeteries.”Instead, the note referred to the presence of the cabinet-appointed National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools, Missing Children and Unmarked Burials overseeing this work. “The committee brings together a diverse range of expertise that contributes to a holistic understanding of the search process including archival research, oral histories, archaeology and ground search technology, forensics, criminal investigations and community health and well-being,” it said, failing to note that not a single child’s remains have been discovered outside the confines of known and named cemeteries.As Blackrock’s Reporter implicitly reminds us, both denialism and the search for the remains of children said to be buried in unmarked graves near the residential schools they attended began in 2021. That was when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered the Peace Tower flag lowered for nearly six months after the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation/Kamloops Indian Band announced on May 27 that “the stark truth of the preliminary findings came to light — the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School” in Kamloops, B.C. “I think Canadians have seen with horror those unmarked graves across the country and realize that what happened decades ago isn’t part of our history, it is an irrefutable part of our present,” Trudeau told reporters at the time.What is actually irrefutable at the present time is that “residential schools denialism” is no such thing, despite ongoing efforts to criminalize it. Instead, it has been a patient and thorough effort by many researchers, including professional historians, political scientists, lawyers, and anthropologists, to discover verifiable truth by interrogating the contents of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Report and other documents. The result has been two books and hundreds of articles found here, here, here, here, and here disputing many of the unsubstantiated, distorted, and exaggerated assertions in the Report, a document based on sloppy methodology and intellectual partiality.The Liberal government continues to accept every word written in the 2015 Report and the research findings that have followed it, proving that it is trapped in a self-serving fictitious Dickensian time warp of its own creation.Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report, a retired professor of anthropology, and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report, a retired professor of anthropology, and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” is the opening line of Charles Dickens’ famous historical novel A Tale of Two Cities, a book that came instantly to mind after reading two June 19, House of Parliament Question Period notes prepared for Gary Anandasangaree, Canada’s Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations.These talking points are called Combatting Residential School Denialism, the other Indian Residential School Sites – Unmarked Burials.Whether the suggested responses offered in these notes to possible questions raised by the opposition Progressive Conservatives were enunciated in the House or not is less important than the Dickensian implications of their contents, statements that serve as allusions to the rest of what this master storyteller meant about periods of history in which radical opposites simultaneously clash with each other.When it comes to interpretations of issues involving indigenous people, especially the role played in their lives by attendance at Indian Residential Schools, Dickens’ words ring loud and clear 165 years after they were written:“… it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”On the one side of superlatives are leaders like Rev. Fred Hiltz, former Archbishop and Primate, Anglican Church of Canada, who have argued that there was “nothing good” about the Indian Residential Schools; on the other, there are prominent Canadians like former Conservative Sen. Lynn Beyak who have always claimed, “remarkable works, good deeds and historical tales in the residential schools go unacknowledged for the most part.” The ongoing contest, then, is between those who see only darkness, despair, and evil as characterizing these boarding schools and those who find much light, hope, and goodness in their intent, operation, and legacy.According to the first anti-denialism memo, “As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has taught us, ‘Without truth, justice, and healing, there can be no genuine reconciliation,’” implying that the Commission’s deeply flawed and biased 2015 report must be considered an infallible document.Just as infallible is its unstated but perverse analogy to Holocaust denial, the still widespread belief that the best-documented genocide in human history has been grossly exaggerated.The note also asserts that indigenous residential school “denialism” is undermining reconciliation with indigenous people without defining what boarding school denialism means except to say, “We must not deny what happened to indigenous children at residential schools across the country, and the resulting pain and intergenerational trauma that still haunts Survivors, families, and communities,” ignoring evidence showing that the residential school attendance cannot explain the many differential adversities affecting Canada’s aboriginal people.In a 2023 report, the Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples even proposed a legal ban on “denialism” — an assault on the constitutionally protected free speech rights of Canadians, if there ever was one — also without defining it. “Denialism serves to distract people from the horrific consequences of residential schools and the realities of missing children, burials and unmarked graves,” said the report Honouring The Children Who Never Came Home.The other June 19 Crown-indigenous Relations note, Unmarked Burials, said investigations were ongoing in the search for children who never returned home from their residential school. “The truth about residential school unmarked burials continues to be revealed,” it said. “Funding is available.”In Dickensian contrary fashion, the note ignored the near total absence of children who attended indigenous residential schools whose fate is unknown. As Kimberly Murray, Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, admitted to the Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples on March 21, 2023: “The children aren’t missing; they’re buried in the cemeteries.”Instead, the note referred to the presence of the cabinet-appointed National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools, Missing Children and Unmarked Burials overseeing this work. “The committee brings together a diverse range of expertise that contributes to a holistic understanding of the search process including archival research, oral histories, archaeology and ground search technology, forensics, criminal investigations and community health and well-being,” it said, failing to note that not a single child’s remains have been discovered outside the confines of known and named cemeteries.As Blackrock’s Reporter implicitly reminds us, both denialism and the search for the remains of children said to be buried in unmarked graves near the residential schools they attended began in 2021. That was when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered the Peace Tower flag lowered for nearly six months after the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation/Kamloops Indian Band announced on May 27 that “the stark truth of the preliminary findings came to light — the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School” in Kamloops, B.C. “I think Canadians have seen with horror those unmarked graves across the country and realize that what happened decades ago isn’t part of our history, it is an irrefutable part of our present,” Trudeau told reporters at the time.What is actually irrefutable at the present time is that “residential schools denialism” is no such thing, despite ongoing efforts to criminalize it. Instead, it has been a patient and thorough effort by many researchers, including professional historians, political scientists, lawyers, and anthropologists, to discover verifiable truth by interrogating the contents of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Report and other documents. The result has been two books and hundreds of articles found here, here, here, here, and here disputing many of the unsubstantiated, distorted, and exaggerated assertions in the Report, a document based on sloppy methodology and intellectual partiality.The Liberal government continues to accept every word written in the 2015 Report and the research findings that have followed it, proving that it is trapped in a self-serving fictitious Dickensian time warp of its own creation.Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report, a retired professor of anthropology, and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
