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   From: nowomr@protonmail.com   
      
   Fighting 'denialists' for the truth about unmarked graves and residential   
   schooling   
      
      
      
      
   Residential schools are not fake news. There is no big lie or deliberate   
   hoax   
   Kisha Supernant and Sean Carleton · for CBC Opinion · Posted: Jun 03, 2022   
      
   This column is an opinion by Kisha Supernant, director of the Institute of   
   Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology and associate professor of anthropology   
   at the University of Alberta, and Sean Carleton, assistant professor in   
   the departments of history and Indigenous studies at the University of   
   Manitoba. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the   
   FAQ.   
      
   Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc   
   First Nation's announcement identifying as many as 215 potential unmarked   
   graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.   
      
   In the year since, the Nation has continued its work to honour and bring   
   home Le Estcwicwéy (The Missing). Many visitors have also traveled to   
   Kamloops in the past year to pay their respects and to show support for   
   Indigenous communities grappling with the ongoing legacies of Canada's   
   Indian Residential School (IRS) system.   
      
   While most of the reaction has been respectful, some immediately worked to   
   discredit the findings.   
      
   Politicians and journalists have openly engaged in residential school   
   denialism. Denialists, to be clear, do not deny the existence of   
   residential schools or even some of the harms of the IRS system. Rather,   
   they seek to downplay or distort basic IRS facts and question the validity   
   of ongoing research to shake public confidence and undermine truth and   
   reconciliation efforts.   
   Problem on display   
      
   This problem was on full display last week. The day before the Kamloops   
   anniversary, the National Post published a column that suggested the   
   public outcry over the past year was mainly the result of some journalists   
   reporting the findings as "mass graves." Communities have been clear that   
   what is being identified are potential unmarked graves, but the column   
   jumped on the error made by some journalists to then suggest that much of   
   the response — both in Canada and around the world — was erroneous and   
   unjustified.   
      
   The New York Post took things further, interviewing prominent denialists   
   to blast the entire situation as fake news and a deliberate hoax to cause   
   outrage.   
      
   Such stories spread disinformation and can shake people's confidence in   
   the investigative process. It shouldn't, and here's why.   
      
   It is true that, in the rush to report on the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc's   
   announcement, some journalists — in Canada and abroad — mistakenly called   
   the unmarked graves being located "mass graves," inadvertently invoking   
   the horrors of the Holocaust. But the vast majority, following the lead of   
   Indigenous spokespeople, got it right, and people responded with shock and   
   horror that thousands of children died at residential schools, some of   
   them being buried in unmarked graves or graves that are no longer marked.   
   At this point, no mass grave has been discovered, but more than a thousand   
   potential unmarked graves have already been located, with many more   
   Indigenous Nations just beginning their investigations.   
   Water soaked and weathered toys rest on the steps of the Vancouver Art   
   Gallery as a memorial to the children who died at residential schools.   
   More than 4,000 Indigenous children and youth died in Canada’s Indian   
   Residential Schools. (CBC)   
      
   Most importantly, an error made by some journalists does not change the   
   fact that we already know more than 4,000 Indigenous children and youth   
   died in Canada's Indian Residential Schools. Many of these deaths were   
   reported in church and government records, and the TRC has made these   
   findings publicly accessible in Volume 4 of the TRC's Final Report. New   
   research by Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc and other Indigenous Nations, including   
   ground penetrating radar (GPR), could locate the burial places of some of   
   these children, as well as add additional numbers.   
      
   But it is important to clarify that GPR is just one tool being used to   
   find the children. It can confirm soil disturbances and point to possible   
   burials based on established scientific methods, but it cannot confirm the   
   presence of remains or identify who was buried where. That's not how the   
   technology works. Other research tools are needed to comprehend the whole   
   picture. Some Nations want to exhume to confirm and bring home the   
   missing, while others don't, and are instead relying on other kinds of   
   evidence to get closure.   
      
   A total count for the number of children who died or went missing will   
   likely never be known. Many Indigenous Nations have asked for people not   
   to focus on tallies — treating relatives as mere numbers, as was done in   
   many residential schools — but instead to remember that every child   
   matters. One child in an unmarked grave is one too many.   
   Nothing to prove   
      
   Ultimately survivors and communities will make the decisions that best   
   facilitate their healing. This is not being done to prove anything to   
   Canadians; just because some people want to see exhumation before they   
   believe the already documented deaths in residential schools does not mean   
   Indigenous Nations are under any obligation to dig up their relatives to   
   prove what we already know happened.   
      
   Indigenous people do not owe anyone the bodies of their children.   
      
   Residential schools are not fake news. There is no big lie or deliberate   
   hoax. Just the complicated nature of what the TRC calls the "complex   
   truth" that denialists are trying to twist.   
      
   Fighting for the truth thus requires us to take residential school   
   denialism more seriously. Denialism is, as TRC chair Murray Sinclair   
   argues, the "biggest barrier" to reconciliation. It needs to be confronted   
   at every opportunity. Taking comfort in delusions and disinformation will   
   not advance healing and justice in this country.   
      
   There is no shortcut. We need truth before reconciliation.   
      
   https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-residential-schools-unmarked-   
   graves-denialism-1.6474429   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)