EXCLUSIVE: Flanagan challenges Indigenous leaders’ push to ban residential school "denialism"
Thomas Flanagan, a member of the Indian Residential School Research Group, disputes several claims made by Indigenous leaders calling to outlaw what they deem to be “residential school denialism."
After Indigenous leaders called for “residential school denialism” to be criminalized, with one Chief saying asking for proof of claims of unmarked mass graves was “disrespectful” to Indigenous culture, a researcher of the residential school system spoke with Juno News, disputing many of the claims.
During a press conference last Wednesday, Indigenous leaders from the Assembly of First Nations delivered an emotional address to the nation calling on the state to be empowered to “force” Canadians to change their minds about alleged injustices to Canada’s Indigenous population perpetrated during Canada’s residential school system.
Leaders made the case that disputing the “survivors of residential schools truths” causes immense harm to those survivors and that the sites of alleged unmarked graves at historic indian residential schools should be treated as “crime scenes.”
Over 130 churches have been burned or vandalized since the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc tribe said they discovered the unmarked graves of 215 residential school students in Kamloops, British Columbia. Since then, the tribe has restated that the discovery was soil anomalies that they “suspect” are unmarked graves. No excavations of the site have been done, and no bodies have been found.
Leaders such as Grand Chief Garrison Settee believe asking for proof should be considered “residential school denialism,” and made into a hate crime.
Settee, at the same press conference, said getting proof of the alleged grave sites would be “disrespectful to our culture,” insisted that listeners trust him and other leaders, saying “I don’t think we should have to prove to anybody what happened” because the children are “there; they send us messages.” He also said he and another chief can “feel the energy and the power” at the site, and that they inherently “know” that the former residential school is the site of unmarked graves of its former students.
In an exclusive interview with Juno News, Thomas Flanagan, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary, Co-editor with C.P Champion of Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) and Dead Wrong: How Canada Got the Residential School Story So Wrong, disputed many of the claims made by Settee.
