A new book challenges the prevailing media and government narrative that Canada's residential schools were death camps where tens of thousands of indigenous children were abused, murdered, and secretly buried in unmarked graves.
Grave Error: Correcting the False Narrative of Canada’s “Missing Children” | C2C Journal | Tom Flanagan:
December 7, 2023 - "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.... The storyline of “mass unmarked graves” and “burials of missing children” quickly ricocheted around Canada and much of the world.... 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....
"Over time, a more fully-developed and persistent narrative has grown out of that initial announcement from Kamloops ... to create a storyline about the inherently genocidal nature of Indian Residential ools 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....
"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.... 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....
"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 [Rodney] Clifton and Ian Gentles, retired judge Brian Giesbrecht, well-known author and editor Jonathan Kay and inimitable academic provocateur Frances Widdowson....
"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. [Hymie] 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....
"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....
"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.... Winnipeg NDP MP Leah Gazan ... 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."
No comments:
Post a Comment