After the orange T-shirts worn by Canadians to reflect and remember Indian residential schools (IRS) are washed and put away, there is still something else that everyone – especially those yearning to do more – can do.
That is, to make sure the Canadian government stands up and supports survivors and their communities, and that it gives them the space and resources they need to make sure every disappeared child, youth and young adult is found and remembered.
Canada knows that First Nations, Métis and Inuit people died in these places. At these government-built school sites – many with unmarked graves – there are plenty more records to be found and digitized, and the truth is getting harder to find with the passage of time. These IRS cemeteries are sites of Canada’s truths and conscience.
To deny that this recognized genocide happened is an abomination. Yet the creep of denialism is spreading, growing unchecked and unfettered by the institutions that caused the harm in the first place.
In 2022, all members of Parliament recognized that the Indian residential school era provided cover for genocide. Winnipeg NDP MP Leah Gazan brought a motion forward calling on the federal government to recognize it as such. The motion passed with unanimous consent.
It is now 2024 and in late September, Ms. Gazan rose again in Parliament, this time to bring forward a private member’s bill that would make denying this genocide a crime under the Canadian Criminal Code. It would fall under the code’s same section, 319, that says denying the Holocaust is a crime. The bill would make it illegal to wilfully promote hatred toward Indigenous people by condoning, denying, justifying or playing down the harm caused by residential schools in Canada, she said.
“The government has an obligation to keep their word,” said Ms. Gazan, whose father is a Holocaust survivor. Her mother’s family is First Nations. She says the genocide experienced on both sides of her family should not be up for debate.
But denialism continues: on websites, in pamphlets, books and in all the hate literature directed at communities who are doing the important work of looking for the children who didn’t come home. Some communities have had to hire security firms to keep outsiders at bay.
Canada and the Christian churches have failed to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, in particular Calls 71 to 76, which are meant to serve as a framework for a national strategy for the documentation, maintenance, commemoration and protection of IRS cemeteries, and to properly honour the children who died.
It has been nearly 10 years since the TRC released its 94 Calls to Action, and every year, we see a rise in anti-Indigenous racism. Why? Because the road map to truth and reconciliation contained in those calls has been ignored.
Hate speech hurts. Parliamentarians have a duty to stand firm against the denial of the tragedy of residential schools in Canada – they should not partake in stoking the flames and supporting those who deny. And they can’t be soft about this, calling it a “freedom of speech” issue – not after Parliament’s motion in 2022.
Some say criminalizing speech is not a Canadian value, that you should be able to say whatever you want, whenever you want to whomever you want. But we are still trying to build a society of mutual respect, where there is no hate, intolerance and violence. To do so, we need agreed-upon societal parameters, and a recognition of the harms of denialism.
I reached out to survivor Elder Fred Thomas to ask what he thinks. As a little boy, he spent five years at the McIntosh Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ont., and during those years he never went back home to Obishikokaang, or Lac Seul First Nation, near Sioux Lookout. Then he spent another five years at Pelican Lake Indian Residential School.
“A person can deny a wrongdoing and a nation can deny a great wrongdoing. Euro-Canadian government policies show clear denials and only they benefit,” he told me on Wednesday. “We always knew who never came back home.”
Ignorance from a settler society is denialism, he said. “And, denialism doesn’t help us to heal. Denialism is a crime.”
It will take years to complete the histories of Canada’s sites of truth and conscience. A society that tried to erase Indigenous people wasn’t careful with its recordkeeping on the matter. Children suffered from neglect, disease, malnourishment and abuse. They were dehumanized by the churches and the government – by all of Canadian society – when they were sent to these schools.
Canada, don’t allow it to continue. Stand up against denialism.