How to counter residential school denialism

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Jordan Heath Rawlings How do you refer to the tragic discoveries made on the sites of former residential schools across Canada? It matters, more than you think. Most of us, including me in the interview you’re about to hear, would probably call what was found by ground penetrating radar, unmarked graves, the remains of children who perished at the schools. In most cases, though, that’s not technically what has been found, and even though that shouldn’t matter. There are those who pounce on any hint of inaccuracy to broadly deny the reality of the residential school horror. So what exactly, precisely has been found and how, why are some people so determined to undermine this awful part of our history? How can we prevent that from happening? And how can we talk to the people who may not be trying to deny what happened, but have been spun into utter confusion by the terminology and politicization of all of this?

I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Niigaan Sinclair is a professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba. Hello Niigaan.

Niigaan Sinclair Nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Thank you for joining us. And maybe to start, I’m gonna ask you to go back to the period, I guess in May, June, 2021 when unmarked graves were found at Kamloops Residential School and then, you know, over the next few weeks in Brandon, and other places. Can you describe the general reaction of maybe Canadians who don’t have a deep background in Indigenous studies?

Niigaan Sinclair Well, this is a really good example of really being precise with your wording because this is what has the led to some of the confusion and then some of the denialism that has emerged in the, in the country. We, we don’t yet know what are, those things in the anomalies that people have found at residential school sites. They are suggestive that they are unmarked graves. But the issue is, is that when we’re not really precise with our wording, particularly at, you know, Kamloops for example, and certainly the, First Nations near Kamloops, the ones who are most impacted by that residential school, you know, certainly they are going to exhume parts of those sites where those anomalies exist. The problem is, is that we’re not a hundred percent certain. Are they all 215 unmarked graves? Are they more, are they less? And, and so that’s the challenge and the, the country, however, moved very quickly upon hearing this news. There is a, a feeling of tragedy across the country by most Canadians because of what was exposed during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And, and, for full disclosure, I mean, my father was the head of that Truth and Reconciliation Commission, so clearly I have an investment in the findings of that, but, any, any scholar, any researcher, any academic across the country, will tell you that the TRC is the most exhaustive analysis involving the most amount of accounts of residential schools. And in every single account survivors talked about, and those who worked at the schools too, talked about children who had died at the schools, mostly due to tuberculosis, but also due to physical abuse, also due to, in some cases murder. And in, in some cases the fact of the lack of health, starvation, even though it was happening within institutions. There’s been researchers that have talked about slavery that have been used in terms of what happened within those schools. And so there’s a whole host of abuses that took place during residential schools that would absolutely suggest in the TRC validated this, that there were people who died at those schools. In many communities that had children that left and never came home, nothing ever knows what, what had happened to those children in the tens of thousands of children, from hundreds of communities. And so what we’re left with is we’re left with a big question mark, wondering what happened to those children and certainly, the anomalies at those residential school sites suggest that those children are buried in those places. But the first thing that the Secwe̓pemc, those who were impacted at Kamloops said is that these are anomalies that we need to investigate further. And, that means that the case is not yet closed. There’s still investigation to be done, and we have to have some patience for these communities who do cultural protocols, do ceremonies. You, we can’t just simply put a shovel in the ground, all of a sudden we have to be respectful of families. Who are already traumatized by this experience, and that’s what we are going through now.

Jordan Heath Rawlings So the way I just asked that question gets to exactly what we’re talking about today. That was unhelpful, I guess.

Niigaan Sinclair It’s not unhelpful. I mean, you know, I think it’s extremely helpful that you’re having time on your show to talk about the topic, and I’m not interested in telling people what they can and cannot say. I mean, I’m not a person who controls free speech, but I also think that we have to be really precise with our language. And because it’s a very sensitive issue, we’ve come from a very delicate and difficult time going through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and so emotions are heightened. And what you’re seeing across the country are those who are quite upset, traumatized. We’re talking about people from all different walks of life. I think every Canadian is traumatized by hearing about the fact that this country participated in genocide of children. And that’s upsetting and I understandably so. And there’s perhaps no one that’s been more kind to those who have come to this place than Indigenous peoples who, who have shown care and consideration and empathy to those who came from far off to to be cared for and shown how to eat in this place and where the medicines are. And what I hope is that our communities, as we are now showing with each other as we begin to look for our lost children. We also show that that care and that consideration for those who are learning along the way, and it’s also very important, we don’t jump to conclusions. And so that’s where I think people who have other agendas, political agendas, start to spread falsehoods and misinformation because they’ll pick up on little things like this and say, Oh, are they really unmarked graves or not? And here’s the proof that they aren’t and, and whatever. And then that’ll sow misinformation to say, don’t believe. Don’t believe indigenous peoples don’t believe residential school survivors. Right? You know, indigenous peoples are lying because they’re exaggerating to get money, and that’s what people with certain political agendas are interested in doing. I’m interested in listening to survivors, many of whom are my relatives and people from my community. I’m also interested in hearing from people who worked at the schools and people who have firsthand experience at the schools and Canadians as well. And that we can collectively come to an understanding about this experience, and that means that Canadians have been misinformed about the schools. So it wasn’t that it was unhelpful, it was just that we, we really gotta be precise because it’s just such an emotionally charged issue.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Well, that’s why we wanted to talk to you, not because we haven’t talked about the tragedy of residential schools on this program in the past, but because of what I’ve seen called residential school denialism. And it does involve the kind of language we just discussed, but maybe just to set the stage, what is that and, and where does it come from, and how prevalent is it?

Niigaan Sinclair Well, residential school denialism or, what has really emerged as a result of this issue around anomalies at residential school sites that suggest graves, has been a movement that’s been brewing for a very long period of time. If, you go to any TRC event or look at the history of the rise of the Truth Reconciliation Commission, there have been decades upon decades upon decades of people in Canadian society. Who oftentimes have been miseducated or misinformed about residential schools, or sometimes just have their own agenda. And therefore, when residential school survivors talk about their experiences, they are not listened to. They’re said, they’re, they’re, they’re lying to get money or lying for attention or, and, and so residential school denialism is something that my colleague, Sean Carlton, who works with me here at the University of Manitoba, he’s been working at this for a very long time in his research. He’s sort of known as, one of the coiners of that term. and oftentimes I think when we talk about denialism, we sort of draw up Holocaust deniers, people who deny that people in the World War II had Jewish people, had experiences in those extermination camps. It’s, it’s somewhat similar, but still a little bit different in that residential school denialists oftentimes aren’t denying that residential schools happened or even that they were violence that happened within those particular context or specific cases. It’s that residential school, denialists most oftentimes are denying the facts of the case or misinterpreting, mis-spreading, misinformation around what survivors are saying and saying that, you know, don’t believe them because they, hey, you know, they want attention or money or, or whatever. So the denialists are saying, don’t believe survivors. They’re saying, don’t believe those who are listening to survivors. And so that’s the challenge here. The challenge is, is that denialists are really sowing division between Canadians, and spreading misinformation about what residential schools, what happened at residential schools, which we. In any other situation, like if you had a, a crime that was perpetrated, you would want to hear from the victims of that crime. You would wanna hear the two from the participants in that crime. But in the case of Denialists, they’re saying we know better than those who have firsthand experience. We know better than those who participated within the incident. We know better because, we don’t see any bodies, which is absolutely atrocious, offensive, and quite racist. I mean, If you walked up to somebody and said, you know, I don’t believe the abuse happened until you show me your bruises and your scars. Absolutely that is offensive and absolutely that is atrocious. And when you add race into that, it is evidence that still in, in certain elements of Canadian society, there is a racist treatment of indigenous peoples. And that they, you know, certain people say, I don’t believe you. And I’ve been taught not to believe you by the textbooks I took in school or the pop culture that surrounds me, or, or that I simply just see indigenous peoples as inferior. And that’s a very problematic way to live. And I also think it’s very divisive.

Jordan Heath Rawlings I want to talk about the practicality of searching, for these anomalies. And I know we could spend an entire episode talking about exactly how the ground is searched, but, but just quickly, if you could maybe explain how we do it and how the manner in which we do it makes very specific language required, lest these anomalies get dismissed.

Niigaan Sinclair Yeah, that’s a great question. And, I point people to the special interlocutor Kimberly Murray’s, report that she just released. She is tasked with leading the searches or certainly helping oversee the searches that are being done by communities today. That the government are participating and partnering with communities in which to do these searches because, you know, everybody wants answers. I mean, everybody wants answers very quickly and they want answers because of this terrible tragedy. Everybody is, they want to know what happened to these children who are missing. And so I point people to that report. There’s a very intricate descriptions in that and case studies, examples of what communities are doing. So for me to be able to do, you know, and oversee it would be impossible on our, our short time together. But what I can say is that whenever there is anomalies that are uncovered, usually by ground penetrating radar, and there’s many cases actually happening right now in Manitoba, there’s certain sites that are identified as looking grave like, that these ground penetrating radar can look like. So it looks like human remains. it oftentimes are in bunched in areas that suggest an either marked or unmarked cemetery. In the case of Brandon, for example, the cemetery at the Brandon Residential School was, sold by the city. The land was sold to private developers who built an RV park right on top of that cemetery. So there was, you know, parked RVs, paved areas, private land owners that frankly didn’t know the history of the site or, or maybe they did know some of the history. There’s some debate around that. But the problem of course, is that accessing that territory is very complicated sometimes because private land owners now own that land. Because the church has sold it or the government sold it, or the city has sold it or whatever. And so it takes often a very long time just to search, just to be able to do that ground penetrating radar to find those anomalies. And then there’s all the other things that go into this. So how do we respectfully work with people who have been impacted by those schools? And in some cases, because of the records at residential schools are either lost or ruined or or unavailable. Sometimes churches are holding documents from from communities. We don’t know exactly who attended those schools. We don’t have all the names, and so you can’t just come in with shovels, a blazing. You have to be able to work with communities to find out who potentially would be impacted by an exhumation or a digging project. What are the ceremonies necessary? Because not all indigenous peoples are the same. What are the proper ways that we treat those human remains? And then on top of that, how do we then disseminate that information to the public? One of the things that Kimberly Murray suggested was for many First Nations, they don’t have, a PR department. And so what’s happening is that there’s media are taking advantage of different elements within a community that haven’t had 500 reporters drop in on them on a Friday. And therefore the message is quite uneven. A lot of people are speaking to those people who aren’t directly involved with the search, cuz media either doesn’t know or they don’t care, or they perhaps are misinformed and therefore talking to some of the wrong people. So the wrong information is being disseminated. So it’s very complicated and what Kimberly Murray said in the report was, it’s likely gonna take at least a decade for the searches that are currently underway. Nevermind the searches that have yet to come, because many communities are waiting for that ground penetrating radar, which is very expensive. And sometimes these communities are quite remote. Sometimes the residential school is inaccessible because the private land owners and so on. And so it’s going to take upwards in a decade just for the existing searches. Nevermind for those yet to come. And just, those are just a few different steps that are indicated and and why these searches are so complicated.

Jordan Heath Rawlings You know, you make a great point about the media just kind of swarming in and talking to anybody who’s willing to speak to them. And you know, it’s one thing for me who is just a asking questions, trying to understand this better, to talk about unmarked graves. But in your piece you write about a recent tweet by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which is, you know, an organization I would hope that we could hold to a high standard when it comes to these kind of matters and how they made this kind of mistake that that really left the door open for, those kind of attacks.

Niigaan Sinclair Yeah. I mean, full disclosure, I’ve been previously involved with the Museum of Human Rights. It’s right, located right here in Treaty One Territory, Winnipeg. I’ve been on the board, the Indigenous Advisory Board. I’m no longer on that board for other reasons. Years ago, I stepped away from that board because of other work commitments and so on. There’s very good people there, people who are doing incredible work. In fact, I wrote a column recently commending their work, on, Indigenous People’s Month, which is this month. And simply making a misstep because of a tweet, is not a condemnation, but it’s pointing out that, what then happened is those who have other agendas to argue that deaths at residential schools didn’t happen or that we shouldn’t believe survivors or whatever that might be, then jumped on this to say, oh, well, the museum clearly doesn’t know the story, so don’t listen to them, and those who are perpetrating the idea of unmarked graves and, and you know, saying outright nonsensical things like those of us who are working hard with communities are spreading misinformation and sowing division and Canadian society, just a bunch of lies. Preciseness is so important. That’s why it’s so important to listen to those who are the first impacted. Those are those indigenous communities who are leading those searches. Look to see and be responsible, be kind and generous to those who are learning. I think it’s so critically important that when we come to each other in almost any discussion, you know, like I criticize the media just a minute ago, but you know, I also work with the media and I work at the Winnipeg Free Press. I’m a columnist there. I never call out my colleagues publicly. I step aside to them. I talk to them. I disagree with them all the time. And we sit down and we, we are committed to one another as colleagues in a workplace to make sure that we learn and we support each other and that we got each other’s back. I don’t have to agree with somebody to, say that you are my relative in this place. And in fact, that’s what treaties are supposed to do, are supposed to be able to disagree with one another, but still stay in the room. That’s what I hope that we do, unfortunately, because of, many different factors in our community and in our our society. We’re taught to sort of ignore the other side, or different sides, or disagreeing sides. We’re taught to walk away from them. We’re taught to act as though we don’t live beside them when in fact we do. And so my hope is, is that more dialogue is produced from a, misstep by the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. And that we also see that I make missteps too. You know, I’m not perfect. I may have said over the past, you know, unmarked graves and I too am learning to say, be very precise with my language because I also have a responsibility to be very precise. So be kind and generous and that’s how we’re gonna get through this. It’s not through more violence dealing with the issue of violence. That’s not gonna solve anything. When we do that. All we do is we produce more discourses that lead to residential schools or other policies like that. Our job is to be adults and to treat each other as adults, in kind, respectful, generous ways, but then also realize that even if we disagree, we still have to live beside one another. We still have to work together. We still have to look at one another because we’re both in the room whether we want to admit it or not.

Jordan Heath Rawlings That’s a really good point and a, and a good way to put it. And the last thing I want to ask you about is, I have found, you know, while following this, argument online that a lot of it is in bad faith. The way you point out it’s driven by racism or denialism or whatever you want. But I, I also wanna ask you, how can we talk to people who aren’t, who aren’t doing that in bad faith, but who have been confused by the language that maybe the media has used by some of the statements made by denialists who, who are basically at a place where they’re like, well, I thought we found these bodies and now they’re telling me that we haven’t. Like, how do we try to straighten that out and, and be more clear with one another so that we all understand exactly what’s going on here and what isn’t?

Niigaan Sinclair Yeah. The truth is that, this is not gonna be easy. My father, who is head of the commission, who I constantly am learning from. And, and thinking back, you know, you’re at that age where my father’s at the sort of twilight of his life, his career, and, and I’m just in the midst of it. And you look back to things that you, your parents say over the years and you kind of go, oh, that was actually very wise. And I remember one thing he would often say during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is he would say, If you think the truth is harder, reconciliation is going to be much, much, much harder. Hearing that truth of what happened at the schools is very hard, but now taking action on that truth is even harder. It was very hard to hear about the violence against children. It’s very hard to hear that there are segments of this country who were targeted, who were assaulted, and that the government paid for that and the churches ran those institutions. And so therefore, every Canadian is complicit. Every Canadian paid for those schools, every Canadian, whether they knew what was happening in those schools or not, were in communities with those schools. Every Canadian lived in a society that benefited from the violence against Indigenous peoples, whether it was the stolen land or whether it was the stolen resources or the stolen children. It’s hard to hear that. I know I have both Indigenous and non-Indigenous sides of my family and and it’s hard for both sides to hear that. Because for Indigenous peoples, it brings up a lot of trauma, a lot of anger for non-Indigenous peoples, it brings brings up a lot of guilt and a lot of pain and a lot of feelings of sadness, a lot of feeling of betrayal because people didn’t learn about this growing up. The challenge will be is how do we then live together when we are all so impacted by this? How do we sit and have food together? And most importantly, like how do we teach our children about this and that we make our children’s lives a little bit easier so that when we carry this and we go travel to the west, or we pass on from this life, that we can create something better than we inherited. That’s the challenge. That’s going to be the challenge of our lifetime. I mean, all of us, especially if you’re a parent, want your children to have, a bit of an easier time than you did. You want them to not have to face the challenges and the violences that you did. And so when I looked to my daughter, that’s what drives me to this work. And what she needs is she needs people to be responsible to one another and kind and generous and to not, you know, scream over tweets at each other. But to say, what does it mean to live together? What does that mean for me to not vote the same way as the person who I’m sitting and having lunch with, but that they still want to be and hear that person’s story. That’s the biggest challenge. that’s where reconciliation comes in. It involves, a whole lot of bravery and courage from both sides to believe one another, to accept one another, and most importantly, do not always agree, but to stay together and listen, to be able to see one another as partners, and that to realize that it’s our kids. Our kids are really what matters in all this.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Niigaan, thank you so much for sharing your time with us and, and for putting it like that.

Niigaan Sinclair Yeah, miigwetch and thanks so much for, giving attention to this issue on your show. You didn’t have to do this, and the fact that you’re doing it says to me that there’s, you’re contributing to a really important process that’s happening across the country. So miigwetch.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Niigaan Sinclair, professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba. That was The Big Story for more including our previous coverage of this issue. You can head to TheBigStorypodcast.ca. If you’d like to ask us a question about this episode or any other, you can find us on Twitter @TheBigStoryfpn. You can email us at hello@TheBigStorypodcast.ca, or you can call us up and just ask it in a voicemail 416-935-5935. The Big Stories available on all of your podcast players. That’s available on smart speakers. All you have to do is ask yours to play The Big Story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.