Michael Higgins: There’s no justice in jailing people for residential school ‘denialism’

Five years after the Kamloops “graves” controversy first erupted, and with zero bodies discovered, First Nations chiefs are pushing hard to make residential school denialism an imprisonable offence.

But Canadians should not have to face up to two years in jail for denying what the chiefs describe as their “truth.” Are we only to speak about the horrors of residential schools, or will survivors with “warm memories” face prison?

Or could it be that the push to criminalize denialism is an attempt to stop legitimate discussion about the presence of unmarked graves at the Kamloops former residential school? If so, then a denialism law isn’t so much to protect the truth as it is to stifle debate, restrict free speech and impose on everyone a narrative written and dictated by Indigenous leaders.

In the spring, Nunavut Sen. Nancy Karetak-Lindell tried to amend the Liberals’ anti-hate law, Bill C-9, to include residential school denialism. This would have made it illegal for anyone to engage in the “condoning, denying or downplaying” of residential schools, with a proposed maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment.

Thankfully, a vote by the whole Senate threw out the amendment.

This wasn’t the first time a parliamentarian had tried to criminalize residential school denialism: NDP MP Leah Gazan tabled a similar bill in 2024, which never made it past first reading.

But on Wednesday, First Nations chiefs gathered at a press conference to once again push for a law that would criminalize denialism. The issue of Kamloops cropped up repeatedly, and while no one said it outright, the implication appears to be that denying that there are bodies at that particular former residential school amounts to denialism and should, therefore, be a crime.

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee said he recently went to Kamloops. “I went to the sacred site where 215 anomalies were found. As my chief said: crime scene…. This is genocide. Not only cultural genocide. It is genocide, to try and get rid of a people deliberately.”

It is worthy of note that Settee talked of “215 anomalies” and not graves.

At the same press conference, B.C. Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee referred to the 215 “findings” at a “grave site” in Kamloops.

If this kind of careful language had been used at the start of the Kamloops controversy, we would be having a very different public conversation.

Instead, in 2021, it was Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir who said in a statement that ground-penetrating radar had confirmed “the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School.”

“Some were as young as three years old,” she added.

This led to the explosive and inaccurate headline in The New York Times: ‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada.

A consequence of all this was that churches were burned, flags across the country were lowered for six months and our prime minister was seen kneeling with a teddy bear beside a grave in a once-marked cemetery.

Some parliamentarians and First Nations appear to want us to continue hanging our heads in shame.

“This country still tries to commit genocide,” said Pimicikamak Cree Nation Chief David Monias.

This country has paid out some $280 million to First Nations to locate missing children at former residential schools. It’s a strange genocidaire that pays to find evidence of its crime.

“We have unmarked graves. I don’t like to call them unmarked graves; these are crime scenes that need to be protected as well, and investigated,” said Monias.

So far, five years of investigation at Kamloops have not unearthed any evidence that bodies are buried there. A February update from Casimir talked of “potential burials” and noted that “Signatures that resemble burials were found in some areas.”

Asked what he would say to “denialists” who demanded to “see the bodies,” Teegee said, “Those denialists? Stop it. This is the truth, that Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc truth.”

“Denialists need to hear our stories and also need to know the truth, and I think it’s right there. It’s bare. It’s the truth,” he continued. “We know that many of these residential schools had graves. Many had unmarked graves and this is the truth.”

For its part, Canada has certainly laid bare the truth about residential schools. From 2008 to 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) heard from residential school survivors, their families and communities. It documented the attempts at forced assimilation at the schools, the sexual abuse, the physical punishment beatings, the poor conditions, the denial of rights as well as the deaths and unmarked graves.

For most students, life was hellish.

But one of the TRC’s reports, “The Survivors Speak,” has a chapter entitled “Warm memories” which notes, “Many students have positive memories of their experiences of residential schools and acknowledge the skills they acquired, the beneficial impacts of the recreational and sporting activities in which they engaged, and the friendships they made.”

In documenting this truth, should Murray Sinclair, the chair of the TRC, be prosecuted for denialism?

No man or nation holds a monopoly on truth, for, as Oscar Wilde said, it is rarely pure and never simple. Demanding people uphold the “truth” on pain of imprisonment isn’t just draconian; it is tyrannical.

Indigenous people suffered greatly under the residential school system, but a denialism law would be retributive.

National Post