Jamie Sarkonak: B.C. lawyers shouldn't face residential school 'denialism' accusations for telling the truth - "“Be politically correct or we’ll call you racist” doesn’t cut as deep as it used to, but it’s an approach line that the BC First Nations Justice Council is willing to bludgeon over the heads of lawyers who favour truth. Two B.C. lawyers are receiving this treatment from the Indigenous advocacy group because they are trying to correct, factually, their regulators’ training materials. Since 2021, all lawyers regulated by the Law Society of British Columbia are required to take a course on Indigenous culture, the materials for which contain the following inaccurate statement:
“On May 27, 2021, the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc Nation reported the discovery of an unmarked burial site containing the bodies of 215 children on the former Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds. Although the discovery was shocking to many Canadians, many Indigenous residential school survivors had previously reported the existence of unmarked burial sites, and the unexplained disappearances of children; the discovery confirms what survivors have been saying all along.”...
Some B.C. lawyers noticed the error in the training documents, and one even reached out to the law society’s course providers to flag that a correction was in order. Receiving no response, he, in conjunction with a colleague, is now motioning at the law society’s upcoming annual general meeting to use the term “potentially unmarked burial site” instead. It’s a sensible ask: law is a profession that depends on its practitioners being able to separate fact from everything else, and training materials should reflect that principle. This notion didn’t resonate with the BC First Nations Justice Council, a non-profit whose aim is to bring “transformative change to the legal system,” which on Monday called the motion “racist.” In a statement, it denounced the correction for containing “alarming Residential School denialism.” “These so-called corrections seek to supplant countless testimonies, reports and investigations with a factually incorrect narrative that is rooted in the silencing and dismissal of Residential School survivors,” it wrote. Not only did the core of the council’s statement ignore the facts, its writers proceeded to scold anyone who dared to ask that lawyer training materials stick to facts by invoking “truth.”... It’s the kind of unfounded and hyperbolic accusation that should have no place in shaping the way the law works. Unfortunately, the government of B.C. is actually in the process of giving the BC First Nations Justice Council even more powers to do just that. In April, B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma tabled a bill in the provincial legislature that would introduce an array of mandatory Indigenous roles into professional governance, and task the legal regulator with carrying out reconciliation . Under Sharma’s scheme, a new Indigenous council would provide advice to the law society’s board regarding “Indigenous legal traditions and Indigenous practices”; it would also be granted a mandatory seat on the selection committee for the law society’s chief executive officer. A maximum of nine people would comprise the council, and a maximum of four of these would be appointed by the BC First Nations Justice Council — not a majority, but nearly. Race-based seats shouldn’t be a component of legislation like this. And, though it might make sense for the law society to consult with the BC First Nations Justice Council on specific Indigenous-related issues from time to time, it should be out of the question to give it a formal role in regulating the legal profession — especially now that it has used baseless accusations to attack certain law society members while rallying others to its cause. All of this is a foreseeable consequence of saturating government and government-adjacent bodies with reconciliation mandates. Mandate training, expect debates over the content of said training."
Michael Higgins: B.C. law society can't handle the truth, pretends facts are 'racist' - "In his 22 years as a defence lawyer, Mark Berry has represented a significant number of Indigenous men and women. So it came as a bit of a shock to him to be accused of racism by colleagues, especially when all he is attempting to do is present the truth — a reasonable objective not unheard of for a lawyer. The ever-increasingly vogue accusation of “denialism” has also reared its head because Berry and another lawyer, James Heller, had the temerity to try to get the Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) to insert the word “potentially” — just one word — into a mandatory training document. But when the issue is unmarked graves in Kamloops — or potentially unmarked graves, as Berry and Heller would have it — then things start to get very ugly, very quickly. “I’m surprised that my own professional regulator, having said, ‘We welcome any and all input with no qualification,’ has responded to us pointing out the tiniest and the most unassailable of corrections by calling us racist,” said Berry... Such was the level of vitriol that a comment portal used by lawyers to discuss the topic had to be shut down. We have now reached the stage where a large body of lawyers are more interested in burnishing their Indigenous bona fides than they are in the truth. And if, in that process of solidarity, they have to tear down and defame Berry and Heller then it appears they are willing to do so. On Tuesday, the LSBC’s annual general meeting voted on a Berry-Heller resolution to insert the word “potentially” into the training document. The resolution was defeated with 1,683 voting against and 1,499 in favour... Lawyers in B.C. have to take the LSBC’s Indigenous Intercultural Course which references the “discovery of an unmarked burial site containing the bodies of 215 children on the former Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds.” No bodies have been discovered at the site since that assertion was made by the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc Nation in 2021. This year, instead of referring to “the remains of 215 children,” the B.C. First Nation merely mentioned the “215 anomalies” discovered by ground penetrating radar. Since the LSBC course is mandatory, Berry and Heller believed that it should also be accurate and urged the Law Society to insert the word “potentially” before “unmarked burial site.” It was at this point that Berry and Heller should have removed themselves from the vicinity of any fan-like mechanism. The B.C. First Nations Justice Council responded with outrage. “The resolution is distressing, painful, and disrespectful to survivors,” said a statement from the Justice Council headed, “Racist Resolution Proposed by Law Society of British Columbia Members Supports Residential School and Genocide Denialism — Trust and Reconciliation Will Be Broken.” The LSBC said the resolution highlighted that much still needed to be done to “eliminate racism in our profession.”... as the two lawyers pointed out, a recent B.C. Court of Appeal case — headed by Leonard Marchand, the Chief Justice of British Columbia and the first Indigenous person to hold that role — found a judge had not been biased when referring to “potential” unmarked burial sites at Kamloops. The appellant had alleged the use of the word reflected “a dismissive attitude, intolerance and, worse, outright denialism” by the judge, said the court. But the appeal court pointed out “that word is the very same word Indigenous communities and others have used to describe the results of tests using ground penetrating radar in and around former residential school sites.”... “Residential schools were universally awful. They are the darkest stain on Canada’s conscience,” said Berry. He doesn’t discount that bodies may be discovered in the future at Kamloops... why don’t facts matter? Because this isn’t about truth or accuracy. The hatred toward Berry and Heller isn’t that they are right — which they are — but that they are challenging a narrative that in three short years has become sacred. In May 2021 everything changed. The conscience of a nation wasn’t just pricked it was bludgeoned. As a country we mourned with flags at half staff for those “215 children” lying dead and forgotten in unmarked graves. We hung our heads in shame as the world detailed our wicked and evil history. But if the narrative isn’t true, if people should even raise the suspicion of it not being true, then the national angst might turn to anger. And so, better to protect the story at all costs, and truth be damned."
The truth is distressing, painful, and disrespectful when it impedes the left wing agenda
The irony is that even Berry exaggerates the universality of residential schools' harm, but the left brooks no disagreement
No evidence of ‘mass graves’ or ‘genocide’ in residential schools - "Rosanne Casimir, Chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc (Kamloops Indian Band), announced that ground-penetrating radar (GPR) had located the remains of 215 “missing children” in an apple orchard on the site of a former residential school... According to Canadian newspaper editors, the discovery of the so-called unmarked graves was the “news story of the year.”... These events created a narrative about the genocidal nature of residential schools... That narrative went unchallenged at first. Yet substantial pushback gradually developed among a group of retired judges, lawyers, professors, journalists and others who have had careers in researching and evaluating evidence. It’s no accident that most are retired, because that gives them some protection against attempts to silence them as “deniers.” In the words of Janis Joplin, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” I published a book, which has been an Amazon Canada bestseller, proving Canadians’ desire for accurate information on this topic. The book is a collection of some of the best pushback essays published in response to the Kamloops mythology. They analyze and critique the false narrative of unmarked graves, missing children, forced attendance and genocidal conditions at residential schools. The book’s title, Grave Error, summarizes the authors’ view of the Kamloops narrative. It is wrong, and not just wrong, but egregiously wrong. It deserves our sardonic title. And our book shows in detail just why and where the narrative is wrong. Several of these authors, as well as others who have helped research and edit these publications, had for many years been writing for major metropolitan dailies, national magazines, academic journals, university presses and commercial publishers. However, they quickly learned that the corporate, legacy or mainstream media—in addition to religious leaders and politicians—have little desire to stand up to the narrative flow of a moral panic... “In Kamloops, Not One Body Has Been Found,” by Montreal historian Jacques Rouillard—has done more than any other single publication to punch holes in the false narrative of unmarked graves and missing children. Other essays punch more holes. Academic provocateur Frances Widdowson shows how the legend of murdered children and unmarked graves was spread by defrocked United Church minister Kevin Annett before it popped up at Kamloops. Retired professor Hymie Rubenstein and collaborators examine the “evidence” of unmarked graves, such as the results of the GPR, and find there’s nothing—repeat, nothing—there. Journalist Jonathan Kay explains how the media got the story completely wrong, generating the worst fake news in Canadian history. Retired professor Ian Gentles examines health conditions in the schools and shows that children were better off there than at home on reserves. My contribution criticizes the prolific but weak body of research purporting to show that attendance at residential schools created a historical trauma that’s responsible for the social pathologies in Indigenous communities. Retired professor Rodney Clifton recounts from personal experience how benign conditions could be in residential schools. And other essays explore other fallacies. 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. As of August 2023, there had been 20 announcements of soil “anomalies” discovered by GPR near residential schools across Canada; but most have not even been excavated, so what, if anything, lies beneath the surface remains unknown. Where excavations have taken place, no burials related to residential schools have been found. In other words, there are no “missing children.”... Media stories about Indian residential schools are almost always accompanied by the frightening claim that 150,000 students were “forced to attend” these schools, but that claim is misleading at best. Children were not legally required to attend residential school unless no reserve day school was available; and even then, the law was only sporadically enforced. For students who did attend residential schools, an application form signed by a parent or other guardian was required. The simple truth is that many Indian parents saw residential schools as the best option available for their children. Prior to 1990, residential schools enjoyed largely favourable media coverage, with many positive testimonials from former students. Indeed, alumni of residential schools comprised most of the emerging First Nations elite. But then Manitoba regional Chief Phil Fontaine appeared on a popular CBC television show hosted by Barbara Frum and claimed he had suffered sexual abuse at a residential school. He did not give details nor specify whether the alleged abusers were missionary priests, lay staff members or other students. Nonetheless, things went south quickly after Fontaine’s appearance, as claims of abuse multiplied and lawyers started to bring them to court. To avoid clogging the justice system with lawsuits, the Liberal government of Paul Martin negotiated a settlement in 2005, which was accepted shortly afterwards by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. Ultimately about $5 billion in compensation was paid to about 80,000 claimants, and in 2008 Prime Minister Harper publicly apologized for the existence of residential schools. Harper might have thought that the payments and his apology would be the end of the story, but instead it became the beginning of a new chapter. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that he appointed took off in its own direction after the initial set of commissioners resigned and were replaced on short notice. The TRC held emotional public hearings around the country where “survivors” told their stories without fact-checking or cross-examination. The TRC concluded in 2015 that the residential schools amounted to “cultural genocide.” Cultural genocide is a metaphor, an emotive term for assimilation or integration of an ethnic minority into an encompassing society. The next step, in turned out, was to start speaking with increasing boldness of a literal physical genocide involving real deaths. The claims about missing children, unmarked burials and “mass graves” reinforced a genocide scenario. Perhaps sensing the weakness of their evidence-free position, purveyors of the genocide narrative are beginning to double down, demanding that criticism of their ideology be made illegal. For example, in 2022, Winnipeg NDP MP Leah Gazan, introduced a resolution declaring residential schools to be genocidal—the House of Commons gave unanimous consent. So, there we are—a narrative about genocide in residential schools firmly established in the public domain while unbelievers are called heretics (“denialists”) and threatened with criminal prosecution"
BLOG: No evidence of ‘mass graves’ or ‘genocide’ in residential schools : r/Canada_sub - "Remember everyone trying to cancel Canada Day over it? Lmao"
"I remember churches being burned for it. This reason I cannot support this holiday. New truth holiday founded on a lie. How ironic."
"They didn’t just try, they made it happen. I lost out on my favorite holiday—one of the days I felt happiest to be Canadian, and celebrate our country—because we needed to “pause and reflect” on imaginary sins."
" It seems that this was part of the globalist “greater agenda” in Canada…generate shame in patriotic Canadians and generate division and hatred toward the Christian churches. The chiefs and councils were so quick to jump on this bandwagon also…it served to generate more wealth for their corruption and greed. I speak as an Algonquin, whose Grandmother tried to hide our ancestry when Grandfather volunteered for WW2 and Korea, leaving the community to keep her children away from the churches and residential school system…which likely caused much of the strife my family has endured while making me a stronger Canadian, wise enough to read, research, ask intelligent questions, and not blindly follow the narratives of those seeking power and wealth at the expense of their own people. If my words offend, I recommend a bit of reading. A good start would be “Grave Error” by Champion. Certainly the church and country were not kind to my uneducated ancestors, but it is not our place to bear that guilt, nor use it as a generational trophy to shame our country…we’re all Canadians that are being manipulated from those greedy fear mongering globalists that seek to divide and subjugate us."
BLOG: No evidence of ‘mass graves’ or ‘genocide’ in residential schools : r/Canada_sub - "So I worked for the company that made the equipment and helped process the data, that did the GPR surveys, (it wasn't seismic) and they made it VERY clear that what they were seeing was strata anomalies, and the only way to tell for sure was to do core sampling and GCMS. suddenly the band was concerned about "the spirits" being disturbed. They had the thinnest of evidence needed to whip the media into a frenzy, they didn't actually want to risk the evidence that they were wrong."
BLOG: No evidence of ‘mass graves’ or ‘genocide’ in residential schools : r/Canada_sub - "Early on I was banned from a number of subreddits for explaining to people how crappy gpr surveys are for doing this kind of work. Pretty much useless. In fact you would have to know exactly where the graves were to even be able to come to a conclusion that there 'might' be an anomaly in the ground. It was a complete con job from the beginning. That and having a complete newb of a scientist who was only a year or two out of school, lead the investigation. Canadians should rightly be angry about this whole sham and the upheaval it has caused."
"Releasing the press report after 4 pm on a Friday was a master class in public manipulation. There was at least 2 full days of delay before the gov could even think about preparing a reply. It was too late by then, social media opinion had exploded. Worldwide."
BLOG: No evidence of ‘mass graves’ or ‘genocide’ in residential schools : r/Canada_sub - "Mass graves were used for non natives too... Dunno why they're so offended by them. I know someone's father's brother who died at year 1 from a heart issue was buried in a mass grave, it was cheaper in the large populated areas where death was common in influzena struck areas."
BLOG: No evidence of ‘mass graves’ or ‘genocide’ in residential schools : r/Canada_sub - "truth and reconciliation means their truth not the truth."
BLOG: No evidence of ‘mass graves’ or ‘genocide’ in residential schools : r/Canada_sub - "My mum was forbidden from speaking Gaelic in Northern Ireland. I should get paid too."
BLOG: No evidence of ‘mass graves’ or ‘genocide’ in residential schools : r/Canada_sub - "In other words, there are no “missing children.” The fate of some children may have been forgotten with the passage of generations—forgotten by their own families, that is. But “forgotten” is not the same as “missing.”"
"This is all laid out in the Truth And Reconciliation Final Report, Volume 4. https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2015/trc/IR4-9-4-2015-eng.pdf We, Canadians, spent 8-ish years and a huge pile of money to run the commission and publish the TRC Final Report. I've found it balanced and logical in its wording and findings."
Artist behind residential schools monument says ‘truth needs to be told’ - "Celebrated Kwakiutl First Nation artist Stanley Hunt has carved massive totem poles and other works around the world to great acclaim"
Ironic, since speaking the truth makes you a "denier"/"denialist"
NDP MP tables bill seeking to criminalize residential school denialism - "An NDP MP tabled a bill Thursday seeking to change the Criminal Code to criminalize downplaying, denying or condoning the harms of residential schools in Canada. Leah Gazan, who represents Winnipeg Centre, presented her private member’s bill, several days before the country is set to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation next week. Private member’s bills rarely pass... Gazan, whose mother was a Chinese and Lakota woman and whose father survived the Holocaust, said the history of genocide on one side of her family “is never up for debate.” “That is not true for Indigenous People of Canada,” she said on Thursday. “I cannot think of anything more violent to survivors and their family members and community to constantly have their history with genocide up for debate.” “If this country is serious about reconciling it has to come to terms with some of our history and take the actions necessary to protect those that are most impacted by it.”... Last fall, Gazan also tabled a motion that called on members of Parliament to recognize the residential school system as a genocide, which received unanimous consent from Parliament. She told National Post she respects free speech, but said “all rights have limitations.”... Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse posted on X that she supports the bill. “Each political party should be in support of this bill”"
i/o on X - "The "bodies are buried everywhere" claim made by Justin Trudeau and others is the most audacious attempt ever to turn an "anti-racist" hoax into state-enforced dogma — with no physical evidence to support it, it now requires Orwellian speech controls to sustain it."
There will never be either truth nor reconciliation as long as money can be made from grievance mongering. South Africa is a good case study (as well as showcasing descent into chaos)
Jamie Sarkonak: New York Times fails again to get the ‘unmarked graves’ story right - "“Despite possible evidence of hundreds of graves at former schools for Indigenous children, challenges in making a clear conclusion have given rise to skeptics,” reads the headline. The next 1,500 words feature sympathetic interviews with Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation, whose premature announcement that “remains of 215 children” had been found at the Kamloops site ignited protests across the nation in 2021, and lawyer Kimberly Murray, who the federal government appointed to brainstorm legal changes in the aftermath. Last year, Murray suggested that Canada make it a crime to downplay the harms of residential schools, an extreme proposal that snuffed out much of the legal activist’s credibility in the mainstream. Of course, no mention of this in the pages of the Times. Murray is quoted, however, stating that evidence for mass graves does exist, and that the government purposely “disappeared” Indigenous children. At very least, the reporter of Friday’s tale, Ian Austen, tells us off the top that “no remains have been exhumed and identified” three years after 215 blips in ground-penetrating radar readouts were found at the Kamloops site. Casimir delivered that correction in May: instead of the original “children,” she referred to those radar blips as “anomalies” to reflect the fact that they could be anything — stones, roots, hunks of clay and, yes, possibly the bones of students. Austen, who also authored the viral Times story about a “mass grave” near Kamloops in 2021, has adjusted his reporting accordingly. No longer “remains,” he now writes about “possible unmarked graves.” Instead of interrogating why answers are still far away, he frames the slow-walking of the truth-seeking process as a passive fact. "Many communities are struggling with a difficult choice: Should the sites be left undisturbed and transformed into memorial grounds, or should exhumations be done to identify any victims and return their remains to their communities?” he asks. Later, he re-hashes Casimir’s vague answer: the decision is “difficult” and “very complex”; “it’ll take time”; “we have many steps to go”; more must be done to confirm whether a particular anomaly is a grave. Funny how all the urgency evaporated. Not mentioned in the Times is the mountain of state funding that has been doled out since 2021. Since that year, $216.6 million has been handed out by the federal government to Indigenous communities to “document, locate and commemorate the children that did not return home and unmarked burial sites associated with former residential schools.” While these grants were once capped at $500,000 per community, the feds apologetically threw that limit out the window — because “Communities know best what is needed to undertake this important work, on their own terms.” And so the work drags out... Before shovels hit the ground in Pine Creek, CBC News relayed a secondhand quote by First Nations elders referring to “those kids in the basement.” Other CBC coverage vaguely referred to “horror stories” by former students who claimed that children’s bodies were stored and buried downstairs in the winter. It’s not the end of the road for the site — dozens more anomalies were found elsewhere on the grounds, and they, too, could be excavated — but it did hush up the mumblings of a nefarious basement crypt that had driven an emotional local news cycle. And that might also be part of why so little progress has been made elsewhere. At Pine Creek, CBC wrote that the lack of grave findings would “feed into a denialist narrative of what happened at residential schools.” At Kamloops, Casimir seems to be aware of the possibility here as well, telling Austen that the “denialists, they’re hurtful. They are basically saying that didn’t happen.” Most people, though, aren’t arguing that the residential school system didn’t exist, or that Indigenous students were not often subjected to abuse, or that there weren’t significant problems with how the schools were managed. The issue is whether there are any “unmarked graves” — for now, none have been found — and if so, whether they were intended to be secret — which is unlikely, considering how wood crosses biodegrade over time — and finally, whether such graves represent casualties of genocide. The answer to the latter is “probably not.” Though the residential school system is often thought of as an instrument of cultural genocide, it was a tool for assimilation, not extermination. Most students who died at residential schools succumbed to diseases that medicine at the time could not cure, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission detailed . But this kind of nuance escapes the New York Times, which has yet to report on a single grave in three years, let alone pry apart whether such a discovery would signify horrors on par with the Holocaust. Great care, however, has gone into discrediting anyone who insists (correctly) that graves have not been found as rube “denialists.” Austen refers to this group as a “small universe of conservative Catholic and right-wing activists” represented by Tom Flanagan, who edited a book on the controversy called Grave Error. Flanagan doesn’t dispute that children died, but he does maintain that no bodies have been recovered, and that a distinction should be made between regular and “clandestine” burials — points that deviate from the supposed consensus, according to the Times: “Flanagan and other skeptics have been roundly denounced by elected officials across the political spectrum who say evidence clearly suggests that there are many sites of unmarked burials.” But that’s the kind of reporting you can expect on this topic. People are cast as unreasonable genocide deniers simply for asking to see yet-nonexistent evidence behind vast claims of wrongdoing — evidence which could support a finding of genocide if combined with many more pieces of yet-nonexistent evidence. The others, well, they can say what they want."
Meme - Jonathan Kay @jonkay: "Found your “denialism” right here, Leah When do your officers raid the Globe & Mail offices to arrest the offending thought criminals?"
"CORRECTION: A Monday news feature on The Globe and Mail's history of covering residential schools included a photo caption that incorrectly stated Tk'emlUps te Secwincpemc First Nation had announced the discovery of dozens of remains buried in unmarked graves. The nation announced that it had used ground-penetrating radar to find what First Nations leaders described as potential unmarked graves."
Leah ProudLakota (she/her) @LeahGazan: "Since Orange Shirt Day, we’ve seen countless examples of residential school denialism. This is concerning when leaders like Poilievre have done fundraisers with residential school denialists. The Liberals must support my bill to protect survivors from violence."
Disagreeing with the left wing narrative is "violence"
Governor General ends Quebec trip when reporters notice she can't speak French : r/canadian - "She speaks Inuktitut. That's a major Canadian language. But it gets dismissed by racists because it's not a white people language, it's an Indigenous language."
"“Major Canadian language.” Spoken by 0.086% of the population. Also it isn’t in the top 20 languages spoken in Canada by percentage. Hopefully my statistical facts aren’t offensive."
Of course, if it's a non "indigenous" language, left wingers will claim that 0.086% of the population must be ignored
Governor General ends Quebec trip when reporters notice she can't speak French : r/canadian - "Especially at the federal level with two official languages... Tons of people in Canada speak more than one language. I think the criticism, is because they said they'd do something they didn't do. As a software developer I could move to a company that uses a different language than I am familiar with, but the expectation is that I get up to speed. If I didn't, I'd get fired. She should be fired. There was an expectation, there was an agreement, and then there was a failed delivery on that expectation. It's not that she fumbled some words, it's that she hasn't bothered, clearly...at least based on the report. It'll be interesting to see if she comes back with "actually there were other issues I had to attend to, and I'm more than happy to conduct a Q&A in French", but I won't hold my breath."
