The new book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) constitutes a response to the moral panic unleashed in Canada on May 27, 2021, when the Chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc (aka, the Kamloops Indian Band) announced that ground-penetrating radar (GPR) had located the remains of 215 “missing children” in an apple orchard on the grounds of the local residential school.
Politicians and media seized on this initial announcement of “an unthinkable loss” with a fierce determination. The storyline of “mass unmarked graves” and “burials of missing children” quickly ricocheted around Canada and much of the world, receiving significant coverage in the New York Times and Washington Post as well as The Guardian in the UK. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau set the tone for the federal government’s response on May 30 when he ordered Canadian flags to be flown at half-mast on all federal buildings to honour the “215 children whose lives were taken at the Kamloops residential school.” By this act, possible burial sites were elevated to the status of confirmed victims of foul play, making Canada sound like a charnel house of murdered children.
A moral panic: Following the May 27, 2021 announcement that the remains of 215 “missing children” were found at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, a narrative quickly took hold at home and abroad that Canada was guilty of genocide against native children. At bottom left, the World Press Photo of the Year showing red dresses on crosses; at right The Guardian from May 28, 2021. (Sources of photos: (top left) History Reclaimed; (bottom left) Amber Bracken, retrieved from Global News; (screenshot) The Guardian)The discovery of the so-called unmarked graves was subsequently chosen by Canadian newspaper editors as the “news story of the year.” And the World Press Photo of the Year award went to “a haunting image of red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside, with a rainbow in the background, commemorating children who died at a residential school created to assimilate Indigenous children in Canada.” It appears to have been the single most important thing to happen in Canada in 2021.
The Narrative in Full
Over time, a more fully-developed and persistent narrative has grown out of that initial announcement from Kamloops. Backed by subsequent announcements from other old burial sites, this narrative can be summarized by the following points:
- Most Indigenous children attended residential schools;
- Those who attended residential schools did not go voluntarily but were compelled to attend by federal policy and enforcement;
- Thousands of “missing children” went away to residential schools and were never heard from again;
- These missing children are buried in unmarked graves underneath or around mission churches and schools;
- Many of these missing children were murdered by school personnel after being subjected to physical and sexual abuse, or even outright torture;
- Many human remains have already been located by ground-penetrating radar, and many more will be found as government-funded research progresses;
- Attendance at residential school traumatized Indigenous people, creating social pathologies that descend across generations;
- Residential schools destroyed Indigenous languages and culture; and
- The above carnage is appropriately defined as genocide.
These statements have combined to create a storyline about the inherently genocidal nature of Indian Residential Schools that has since been widely accepted and largely unchallenged. But regardless of how many times it is repeated by Indigenous leaders, political activists, academics and media commentators, the entire narrative is largely if not completely false.
It is no accident that many in this group are retired, since this gives them vital protection against attempts to silence them as ‘deniers.’ As Janis Joplin sang, ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.’
Slowly at first, but now with gathering confidence, substantial pushback to this narrative has appeared, driven by a small group of professionals, including judges, lawyers, professors, journalists and researchers; most of them have considerable experience in evaluating and discussing contentious evidence. It is no accident that many in this group are retired, since this gives them vital protection against attempts to silence them as “deniers.” As Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”
Not just Wrong, but Egregiously Wrong
Grave Error is a collection of some of the best pushback essays published by these brave researchers in response to the Kamloops mythology. They analyze and critique the false narrative of unmarked graves, missing children, forced attendance and genocidal conditions at Indian Residential Schools. The book’s title summarizes the authors’ view of the Kamloops narrative. It is wrong. And not just wrong, but egregiously wrong. Because of this, it fully deserves our sardonic title, which normally might have more in common with a tabloid newspaper headline. Our book shows in detail just why and where the narrative is wrong.
Correcting the record: The new book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (And the Truth About Residential Schools) pushes back against the genocide myth with the application of careful research and hard evidence.
Several of the contributing authors, as well as others who have helped research and edit these publications, had for many years been writing for major metropolitan dailies, national magazines, academic journals, university presses and commercial publishers. They quickly learned, however, that corporate, legacy or mainstream media, religious leaders and political figures have little desire to stand up to the narrative flow of a moral panic.
For this reason, they wrote about residential schools mainly in specialized journals such as The Dorchester Review in print and online; online daily media such as True North and Western Standard; and online journals such as Quillette, Unherd and History Reclaimed, whose raison d’être is to challenge conventional wisdom. C2C Journal has played a distinguished role in this intellectual resistance, publishing work by Hymie Rubenstein on the absence of evidence for unmarked graves, Greg Piasetzki on Peter Henderson Bryce’s often misunderstood critique of residential schools, and Rodney Clifton’s personal experience working in the schools.
The editors of Grave Error are C. P. Champion and myself. In addition to an introduction and conclusion, it contains 18 chapters plus a foreword by Conrad Black and cover endorsement by columnist Barbara Kay. The first contribution is “In Kamloops, Not One Body Has Been Found,” by Montreal historian Jacques Rouillard. This essay, originally posted on The Dorchester Review website, is now closing in on 300,000 views. It has done more than any other single publication to punch holes in the false narrative of unmarked graves and missing children. The author has updated his version in Grave Error to cover other false claims related to GPR since Kamloops.
Other contributors include retired professors Clifton and Ian Gentles, retired judge Brian Giesbrecht, well-known author and editor Jonathan Kay and inimitable academic provocateur Frances Widdowson, plus several others who are perhaps not so well-known but are equally immersed in the subject matter.
Their contributions to this volume confront all the main fallacies head-on. Widdowson shows how the legend of murdered children and unmarked graves was spread by defrocked United Church minister Kevin Annett before it popped up again at Kamloops. Rubenstein and collaborators examine the evidence proffered in support of unmarked graves, such as the results of GPR, and find there is nothing – repeat nothing – there. One author, who published anonymously because of his fear of retaliation, shows how the GPR results at Kamloops probably are radar reflections of buried tile that was part of the school’s sewage disposal system.
Myth busting: Among the many false narratives tackled by Grave Error are the legend of murdered children spread by defrocked United Church minister Kevin Annett (top left), the unreliability of ground-penetrating radar searches (top right) and the allegation that 150,000 Indigenous students were “forced to attend” residential schools. At bottom, native artist Kent Monkman’s historically inaccurate painting Study for the Removal of Children.
Other contributors include Kay, who explains how the media got the story so completely wrong, generating the worst fake news in Canadian history. Gentles examines health conditions in the schools and shows that children were better off there than at home on reserves. Former Manitoba judge Giesbrecht demonstrates that attendance in residential schools was not compelled in any meaningful sense of the term. My contribution criticizes the prolific but weak body of research purporting to show that attendance at residential schools created a historical trauma that is responsible for the subsequent social pathologies to which native people are subject. And Clifton shows from personal experience how benign and positive conditions in the schools could be.
In full, our book demonstrates that all the major elements of the Kamloops narrative are either false or highly exaggerated. No unmarked graves have been discovered at Kamloops or elsewhere – not one. As of early August 2023, there had been 20 announcements of soil “anomalies” discovered by GPR near residential schools across Canada; but most have not even been excavated. What, if anything, lies beneath the surface remains unknown. Where excavations have taken place, no burials related to residential schools have been found. What artifacts have been unearthed prove nothing.
The truth is that there are no “missing children.” The fate of some children may have been forgotten with the passage of generations – forgotten by their own families, that is. But “forgotten” is not the same as “missing.” The myth of missing students arose from a failure of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s researchers to cross-reference the vast number of historical documents about residential schools and the children who attended them. This documentation exists, but the Commissioners did not avail themselves of it.
Harper might have thought that the compensation payments and his apology would be the end of the story, but instead they became the beginning of a new chapter. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he appointed took off in its own direction.
Media stories about Indian Residential Schools are almost always accompanied by the frightening claim that 150,000 students were “forced to attend” these schools. Such a claim is misleading at best. Children were not legally required to go to residential school unless no reserve day school was available; and even then, the law was only sporadically enforced. For students who did attend residential school, an application form signed by a parent or other guardian was required. The simple truth is that many Indian parents saw the residential schools as the best option available for their children. In some years and in various places, there were actually waiting lists to get in.
A False Narrative Takes Shape
Prior to 1990, residential schools enjoyed largely favourable coverage in the media, with many positive testimonials from students who had attended them. Indeed, alumni of the residential schools made up most of the emerging First Nations elite. That changed in October 1990 when Manitoba regional chief Phil Fontaine appeared on a popular CBC television show hosted by Barbara Frum and made claims about how he had suffered sexual abuse at a residential school. He did not give details, nor did he specify whether the alleged abusers were missionary priests, lay staff members or other students. Nonetheless, things went south quickly after Fontaine’s appearance, as claims of abuse multiplied and lawyers started to bring them to court.
Public attacks on Canada’s residential school system began in earnest on October 30, 1990 when Manitoba regional chief Phil Fontaine (left) alleged he suffered sexual abuse at a school as a child on Barbara Frum’s (right) CBC television show The Journal. (Source of screenshots: CBC)To avoid clogging the justice system with lawsuits, the Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin negotiated a settlement in 2005, which was accepted shortly afterwards by the newly-elected Conservative minority government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Ultimately about $5 billion in compensation was paid to about 80,000 claimants, and in June 2008 in the House of Commons, Harper delivered a public apology for the existence of residential schools, which he called a “sad chapter in our history.”
Harper might have thought the compensation payments and his apology would be the end of the story, but instead they became the beginning of a new chapter. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he appointed took off in its own direction after the initial set of commissioners resigned and had to be replaced on short notice. The Commission held emotional public hearings around the country at which “survivors” were invited to tell their stories without fact-checking or cross-examination. It concluded in 2015 that the residential schools amounted to “cultural genocide.”
Cultural genocide is not a substantive term but a metaphor, an emotive term for assimilation or integration of an ethnic minority into an encompassing society. The next step, in turned out, was to start speaking with increasing boldness of a literal, physical genocide involving real deaths. The claims about missing children, unmarked burials and even “mass graves” reinforced a literal genocide scenario. In the autumn of 2022, the House of Commons gave unanimous consent to a previously rejected motion “that what happened in residential schools was a genocide.” Of course, none of what was even claimed to have happened meets the formal, internationally recognized definition of genocide (which also explicitly rejects the idea of cultural genocide).
Perhaps sensing the weakness of their evidence-free position, purveyors of the Indian Residential Schools-as-genocide narrative have begun to double-down on their own claims, demanding that any criticism of their ideology be made illegal. First off the mark was Winnipeg NDP MP Leah Gazan, who introduced the original House of Commons resolution declaring Indian Residential Schools to be genocidal. Then federal government ministers got involved. Marc Miller, then Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, took specific offence at Rouillard’s initial, ground-breaking essay, claiming on Twitter (now X) that it is “part of a pattern of denialism and distortion” about residential schools in Canada. David Lametti, then the Minister of Justice, followed suit with a vague threat that Ottawa might consider “outlawing” residential school denialism. Denialism is generally defined as any debate that contradicts the official narrative as outlined at the beginning of this article.
So here we are. A false narrative about genocide in residential schools has become firmly established in the public domain without any requirement for actual proof or due diligence. Media and government have eagerly collaborated in perpetuating this falsehood. And anyone who questions any part of the story is labelled a “denialist,” and possibly threatened with criminal prosecution. To such a world, Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) offers exactly what we have been missing so far – clarity, rigour and evidence.
Tom Flanagan is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary and co-editor of Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools), published by True North.
Source of main image: Shutterstock.
