As Canada continues to deal with Indian Residential schools, new research shows most people believe the schools caused “cultural genocide.”
However, a significant majority also feel more evidence is needed before accepting soil anomalies at the former Kamloops school represent unmarked graves.
The defamatory non-stop claim that Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, committed genocide against indigenous people, including Indian Residential School children, is the most scurrilous slur hurled against him by his critics. Accordingly, it is necessary to examine this claim using the gold standard for doing so: the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The Convention lists five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group,” any one of which constitutes genocide.
What is a “boondoggle,” and how does it differ from a “scandal”?
Although its modern meaning is “an extravagant, or useless project,” “boondoggle” originally came from the name that was given to the bracelets and neckerchief slides made by Boy Scouts a century ago, while “scandal” originally came from the Greek “to stumble” before eventually arriving at its modern meaning of “disgrace” or “wrongdoing”.
(Incognito)
In a July 31, 2025, op-ed in the Globe and Mail, Mark Kersten, an assistant professor in criminal justice at the University of the Fraser Valley, conflates the war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel with various global genocides. Unbelievably, he also ties Canada’s Indian Residential School (IRS) history to a claim of genocide, using it as the anvil to hammer out his theme that genocide is a process and not an event. I say ‘unbelievably’ because this is a disgusting conflation, but since Canada’s House of Commons compliantly adopted a motion by ‘unanimous consent’* to recognize Indian Residential Schools as genocide on Oct. 27, 2022, without a shred of evidence or debate, nor any due process, maybe it’s now par for the course to exploit the word ‘genocide’ for any activist cause.
A must read. Please do. @fancypants_s https://t.co/0x4kMWbNke
— Auntie Polly (@auntie_polly) August 6, 2025
h/t Auntie Polly
If you want to understand who has benefited most from Canada’s residential school reckoning, look not to the survivors, but to the lawyers and consultants in what critics call the ‘Indian Industry.’
From the 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) to the present-day push for grave exhumations, federal indigenous policy has funnelled billions not just to victims, but to lawyers, academics, activists, and administrators whose fortunes depend on keeping the narrative of abuse and grievance alive — regardless of the evidence.
On February 12, 2025, Parks Canada announced the designation of the Kamloops, B.C. Indian Residential School as a national historic site. Surprisingly, it omitted any reference to the alleged graves containing 215 missing children in an adjoining apple orchard.
“The Kamloops Indian Residential School was the largest institution in a system designed to carry out what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission described as cultural genocide,” Parks Canada said in a statement. No reason was given for omitting reference to unmarked burial sites.
… On Thursday, English River announced that a ground-penetrating radar search at the site that began in 2021 has identified dozens more anomalies at the site of the school.
An estimated 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were forced to attend the government-funded, church-run residential schools across Canada, which were largely overseen by the Catholic Church. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has recorded the names of more than 4,000 who died, but many experts believe the number to be higher.
On the anniversary of a national psychotic episode. . .
Four years ago this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered the flags lowered on all federal buildings across Canada. He’d already ordered the flags lowered on Parliament Hill over the weekend before. All the flags remained at half mast for six long months.
There were riots. Statues of Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth, John A. Macdonald, Egerton Ryerson, Joseph Hugonard, James Cook and other historical figures were toppled by mobs or formally removed in Charlottetown, Winnipeg, Toronto, Kingston, Hamilton, Lebret and Victoria.
A former teacher has been asked by the Abbotsford School District to change the location of his book launch, which was set to take place outside MJ Mouat High School on Friday afternoon.
Officials told Jim McMurtry that the event was “intimidating” indigenous students, given that his book, The Scarlet Lesson, goes against the prevailing narrative on residential schools in Canada.
Four years ago today — May 27, 2021 — the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc [Kamloops] Indian Band of British Columbia issued a press statement of seismic implications, literally and figuratively. The Band claimed that a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey of the area surrounding the city’s former Indian Residential School had located the “remains of 215 children who were students” of the school. Despite making explosive assertions about “missing children” and “undocumented deaths,” the Band was still careful to add that, “At this time, we have more questions than answers.”
Such a note of caution didn’t stop the media, politicians and nearly everyone else from acting as if they had more answers than questions.
The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in British Columbia was classified as a “priority client” for federal grants after it announced the discovery of 215 potential children’s graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, newly released records show.
Blacklock’s Reporter says before the 2021 announcement, federal documents reveal that the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc, with a population of 1,500, had twice been denied funding by the Department of Heritage, including a request to support the development of a local museum.
OTTAWA – A leading residential school expert is questioning the Conservative party’s decision to stick with a candidate accused of denying the history of residential schools.
In videos posted on social media, Aaron Gunn — the Conservative candidate in North Island-Powell River in British Columbia — has said Canada’s program of residential schools did not constitute an act of genocide and that the schools are “much-maligned.”
Sounds like a keeper.
When in February, Dallas Brodie, a British Columbia MLA, declared on X that the number of burials of missing children confirmed at the Kamloops Indian Residential School was “zero,” her fellow Conservative, Áʼa:líya Warbus, condemned her for “questioning the narratives of people who lived and survived … atrocities.” And the president of the Métis Nation of B.C., Walter Mineault, responded that the residential school experiences were “not objective truths for Métis people,” but their “lived experiences.”
This column is prompted by the refusal of the Powell River newspaper, the Powell River Peak, to publish an advertisement for a talk to be given on March 30 in Powell River by Frances Widdowson, a contributor to the excellent book “Grave Error.” It was an honour to have been asked to contribute a foreword to that book, which was a carefully researched collection of learned and impartial opinions about the controversy in 2021 over the so-called unmarked graves of Indigenous children near the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The excuse given in writing by the publisher of the Peak, Kelly Keil, on March 17 for refusing to advertise this event was that “Grave Error” “appears to centre around the denial of well-documented historical facts regarding residential schools, which contradicts the overwhelming evidence provided by survivors, historical records and independent inquiries.… Our advertising standards require that we do not publish content that promotes misinformation or undermines established historical facts. This is not an issue of limiting free expression but rather of ensuring that our platform is not used to spread content that distorts history and may cause harm, particularly to Indigenous communities.… We cannot in good conscience facilitate the promotion of material it denies documented historical atrocities.“
The Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) has responded to a libel suit brought by one of its own lawyers, in a case involving claims that “bodies” were found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS), by implying that he has committed that most pernicious of crimes: denialism.
The LSBC doesn’t outright accuse James Heller of denialism, but it certainly points the finger of suspicion his way.
