‘Denying our truth’: The fight against residential school denialism in Canada

 

For over a century in Canada, Indigenous children were taken from their homes and placed in schools where they were stripped of their identities and abused. Activists have pushed for recognition of this history — but a backlash has formed, seeking to deny the trauma.

"They're trying to share a fake, different story about Canada's history, and they're denying our truth."   READ:  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2025/2/7/denying-our-truth-fighting-residential-school-denialism-in-canada Read on ­

Boarding School Abuse: “To Heal We Must Know the Truth”

"They always go for our babies." -Emily Edenshaw, President & CEO at Alaska Native Heritage Center

Chief Bill Erasmus, Emily Edenshaw, at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, Gunn-Britt Retter at the Saami Council and Benjamin Jacuk at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. (Photo: Trine Jonassen)

 

Anchorage Alaska (High North News): 

He admitted that this was genocide. -Chief Bill Erasmus

 

Most Arctic nations have been affected by assimilating and oppressive boarding school policies. Now indigenous community leaders are looking for healing as they brace for the dark truth of a government-led genocide.

Ground zero

The boarding school practice started in Alaska in 1879, 12 years after the USA purchased the Arctic state from Russia without consulting the indigenous population.

Maybe that is also where the healing has to start.

"Alaska may be ground zero for all of this.  But ground zero can also be the place of healing for indigenous peoples from all over the world," Jacuk concludes.

In 2015 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concluded what happened was "cultural genocide". It identified more than 3,000 children who died from disease due to overcrowding, malnutrition, and poor sanitation or died after being abused or trying to run away.

Most schools had their own cemeteries, and sometimes when children died, their parents were never informed.

 

READ

FRAUD AND IDENTITY: 60s Scoop Canada | Residential school death records to be shared

EDITOR NOTE:  Open our records and give us our papers, including our adoption file and original birth certificate!  Then we won't be accused of fraud or an undetermined identity... Trace

OPINION:

Fraudulent claims of Indigenous identity are risking community for the rest of us

"By the late 1950s, more Indigenous kids in the south were finally living at home. This concerned the mostly white folks who were social workers, and they ‘scooped’ kids, or stole kids out of Indigenous communities because the houses didn’t have perfect picket fences, the stay-at-home moms and working dads, or the kitchens with chrome-plated tables. Blatant racism in social work called Indigenous parents ‘bad’ and their kids were adopted or sold to white families—good families. Hopefully those kids would lose that pesky Indigenous identity. The ’60s Scoop kids were separated from families, and adopted out across Canada, the United States, and around the world. It’s estimated that 22,500 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children were removed from the homes in the ’60 Scoop. Any connection to culture and belonging was severed completely." 

Flash forward to the 1980s and the ’60s Scoop survivors were reaching adulthood, assuming they survived. No Indigenous language left. No knowledge about their own culture. And most were completely lost about their identity.  

 KEEP READING

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Residential school death records to be shared

Action 71 calls upon chief coroners and provincial vital statistics agencies to make their records on the deaths of Indigenous children in care of residential school authorities available to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

As the organization entrusted to receive, hold and archive the commission’s records, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation will add the newly acquired documents to the permanent record of what happened in the residential school system.

The agreement will have a positive impact on survivors and their families who are searching for more information as a means to heal, Debbie Huntinghawk told the Sun on Monday morning.

“That’s a beautiful game changer for a lot of people,” she said.

 

America's Indian Boarding School Discussions – Why Repatriation is Important

 

The upcoming Why Repatriation is Important livestream event will focus on repatriation of the children who died at Indian boarding schools as well as the healing that needs to take place in tribal communities to overcome the intergenerational trauma associated with Indian boarding school experiences. 

Across the United States, many former Indian boarding schools have cemeteries on their grounds, including the former Carlisle Industrial Boarding School in Pennsylvania. The graves of deceased Indian children buried at Carlisle fall under the control of the U.S. Army, which has taken the position that the graves of Indian children buried there are not subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Many Indian law experts disagree with the U.S. Army’s stance.

 

American Bar Association Calls on Congress to Investigate America's Indian Boarding Schools | Vatican fundraising

MORE NEWS HERE

 

CHICAGO — In a resolution with multiple requests, the American Bar Association House of Delegates, a 597-member policy body, is calling on Congress to conduct oversight hearings on Indian boarding schools. The resolution was adopted by the ABA Monday evening.

GOOD: American Bar Association Calls on Congress to Investigate Indian Boarding Schools | Currents

 Looks like lawyers will get in on the action here in the US... Blog Editor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canadian Bishops convey commitment to healing and reconciliation 

The Permanent Council of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) released a statement on Friday noting its support to Bishops of Saskatchewan who are have issued an “Appeal for Support of Healing and Reconciliation” in favor of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. The project aims to generate fundraising to promote healing and reconciliation. It also foresees cemeteries on the sites of former residential schools, as well as educational and cultural support. The goal of the campaign, according to the Bishops of Saskatchewan, is to "support Indian Residential School survivors and their communities, and to engage more deeply in our own ongoing commitment and response to the Truth and Reconciliation process." - Source: Canadian Bishops convey commitment to healing and reconciliation - Vatican News

 

The world's richest church needs to ask others to pay for their actions? Blog Editor

 Not just in Canada, American has a bad history problem, too...

Against Residential School Denialism

Residential school denialism is not the outright denial of the Indian Residential School system’s existence, but rather the rejection or misrepresentation of basic facts about residential schooling to undermine truth and reconciliation efforts.

Residential school denialists employ an array of rhetorical arguments. The end game of denialism is to obscure truth about Canada’s residential school system in ways that ultimately protect the status quo as well as guilty parties.

Residential school denialists begin and end with a firm belief in innate Indigenous deficiency and settler innocence, often rooted in Christian triumphalism. Their ranks include missionary apologists, writers and academics, right-wing and anti-Indigenous editorialists, and relatives of residential school staff who uncritically refer to personal memory and work to defend their family reputations. These are neither informed nor objective commentators.

GOOD READ: Against Residential School Denialism | The Tyee