“A book can be understood more deeply by knowing a little about its authors and historical context. Both editors, C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan, are members of the Indian Residential School Research Group (IRSRG), as are most of the authors of its sixteen essays, among them retired judges, lawyers, professors, and journalists.
https://www.amazon.ca/Grave-Error-Misled-Residential-Schools/dp/B0CP465ZPP/
“All members of the IRSRG agree on the main point of ‘Grave Error’,
“that no persuasive evidence has yet been offered by anyone for the existence of unmarked graves, missing children, murder, or genocide in residential schools”.
“This point is not only contentious but, in the eyes of many, seditious in that it undermines the ‘Indigenous’ {sic} ‘reconciliation’ project.
“All members of Parliament in the House of Commons on October 27, 2022 supported a motion by NDP MP Leah Gazan to call residential schools a ‘genocide’,
{“Members of Parliament gave unanimous consent in favour of a motion calling on the federal government to recognize Canada’s residential schools as genocide.”
https://endracebasedlaw.wordpress.com/2023/10/13/a-virtue-signalling-lie/ }
and in 2023 Gazan and other MPs sought to take the issue a step further by drafting legislation to outlaw denial of the ‘genocide’. Gazan, who represents the riding of Winnipeg Centre, stated:
“Denying genocide is a form of hate speech. That kind of speech is violent and re-traumatizes those who attended residential school”.
“The Office of Crown-‘Indigenous’ Relations Minister Marc Miller released the following statement:
“Residential school ‘denialism’ attempts to hide the horrors that took place in these institutions. It seeks to deny survivors and their families the truth, and distorts Canadians’ understanding of our shared history.”
“As a member of the IRSRG myself, I can write with authority that the contributors to ‘Grave Error’ have wondered whether they will end up behind bars.
“In their introduction, Champion and Flanagan write that their
“book is a response to the moral panic unleashed on May 27, 2021, when the Chief of the Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc or Kamloops Indian Band announced that ground penetrating radar (GPR) had located the remains of 215 ‘missing children’ in an apple orchard”.
“I remember that moral panic well.
“I was teaching Calculus to senior students when the principal of my Abbotsford school, Robert Bateman Secondary, asked teachers to address, unscripted and ad hoc, the international news of a mass grave of children (“some as young as three”) tortured, murdered and clandestinely buried at night by their Christian teachers and 6-year-old conscripts. Many students at school that day were wearing orange shirts, wristbands, and face-paint, and walking through the corridor in mood swings from sullen silence to imperious indignancy against their own society.
“After a student in my class said the Christian priests murdered the kids or tortured them and left them out in the snow to die, I said that children who died while enrolled in residential schools did so due to fires and accidents but mostly from disease, particularly tuberculosis.
“Within a half an hour, I was walked out of my school and career. Two male administrators came to my classroom and frogmarched me to the parking lot and the next day, I received an investigation letter that said I
“left students with the impression some or all of the deaths could be contributed [sic] to ‘natural causes’ and that the deaths could not be called murder or cultural genocide” {True!}.
“The Abbotsford School District wrote in my termination letter that I made
“inflammatory, inappropriate, and insensitive comments concerning the finding of unmarked graves of ‘Indigenous’ children at the Kamloops Residential Schools”.
“The charge of insensitivity came from a perception of failure on my part to follow the implicit school direction that any subject matter involving disadvantaged minority groups be seen through rose-coloured glasses.
“Tom Flanagan asks, in one of the book’s sixteen chapters, whether Indian residential schools cause inter-generational trauma. While reading it I thought of the Abbotsford superintendent who said, “What if an ‘Indigenous’ child had been in your classroom when you denied that residential school children were murdered?” {They, especially, need to know the truth!} In other words, I would have contributed to his or her trauma by transmitting historical truth.
“Flanagan writes that “the legacy media routinely present the thesis of intergenerational trauma from the residential school experience as if it were an established fact” .He quotes a CBC story that contends the “trauma can have physical and mental effects for six generations”.
“Flanagan’s conclusion is that
“‘Indigenous’ people can do more for themselves and their children by focusing on things they can change, such as low educational achievement, family disintegration, and governance on reserves, rather than rehearsing the past”.
“Rodney Clifton, who contributed the last chapter of ‘Grave Error’, says
“It’s sad that ‘Indigenous’ children died at residential schools but during those times, many children died of communicable diseases…. It is extremely easy to be virtuous without thinking carefully about the hardships that both students and residential school employees experienced many years ago”.
“Clifton argues that
“Canadian officials, especially the Prime Minister and the Governor General, should verify what was claimed before lowering the Canadian flag…. A democracy cannot function without a commitment to truth”.
“Barbara Kay writes on the book’s jacket that ‘Grave Error’
“will stand as a testament to our era’s shameless abandonment of intellectual integrity in the service of the divisive, anti-science, hate-laundering ‘principle’ of ‘decolonization’.”
“It is also the only book in Canada that does not forward, as Conrad Black says in the Preface,
“a false and defamatory version of a very important part of Canadian history”.
“When my case reaches arbitration – for my union is defending me – I will be carrying the book with me and saying the only thing buried in Kamloops is the truth.”
–‘Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) – Book Review’,
Jim McMurtry, New West Times, Feb. 27, 2024
https://twitter.com/JimMcMurtry01
‘Grave Error: How The Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools)’
https://www.amazon.ca/Grave-Error-Misled-Residential-Schools/dp/B0CP465ZPP/
“Correcting the record: The new book “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (And the Truth About Residential Schools”) pushes back against the genocide myth with the application of careful research and hard evidence.”
“The new book “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools)”
constitutes a response to the moral panic unleashed in Canada on May 27, 2021, when the Chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc (aka, the Kamloops Indian Band {1,463 people}) announced that ground-penetrating radar (GPR) had located the remains of 215 “missing children” in an apple orchard on the grounds of the local residential school.
“Politicians and media seized on this initial announcement of “an unthinkable loss” with a fierce determination. The storyline of “mass unmarked graves” and “burials of missing children” quickly ricocheted around Canada and much of the world, receiving significant coverage in the New York Times and Washington Post as well as The Guardian in the UK. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau set the tone for the federal government’s response on May 30 when he {irresponsibly} ordered Canadian flags to be flown at half-mast on all federal buildings to honour the “215 children whose lives were taken {?} at the Kamloops residential school”. By this act, possible burial sites were elevated to the status of confirmed victims of foul play, making Canada sound like a charnel house of murdered children.
“The discovery of the so-called ‘unmarked graves’ was subsequently chosen by Canadian newspaper editors as the “news story of the year”. And the World Press ‘Photo of the Year’ award went to
“a haunting image of red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside, with a rainbow in the background, commemorating children who died at a residential school created to assimilate Indigenous children in Canada”.
“It appears to have been the single most important thing to happen in Canada in 2021.
‘The Narrative in Full’
“Over time, a more fully-developed and persistent narrative has grown out of that initial announcement from Kamloops. Backed by subsequent announcements from other old burial sites, this narrative can be summarized by the following points:
–Most ‘Indigenous’ children attended residential schools;
–Those who attended residential schools did not go voluntarily but were compelled to attend by federal policy and enforcement;
–Thousands of “missing children” went away to residential schools and were never heard from again;
–These missing children are buried in unmarked graves underneath or around mission churches and schools;
–Many of these missing children were murdered by school personnel after being subjected to physical and sexual abuse, or even outright torture;
–Many human remains have already been located by ground-penetrating radar, and many more will be found as government-funded research progresses;
–Attendance at residential school traumatized ‘Indigenous’ people, creating social pathologies that descend across generations;
–Residential schools destroyed ‘Indigenous’ languages and culture; and
–The above carnage is appropriately defined as ‘genocide’.
“These statements have combined to create a story line about the inherently ‘genocidal’ nature of Indian Residential Schools that has since been widely accepted and largely unchallenged. But regardless of how many times it is repeated by ‘Indigenous’ leaders, political activists, academics and media commentators, the entire narrative is largely if not completely false.
“Slowly at first, but now with gathering confidence, substantial pushback to this narrative has appeared, driven by a small group of professionals, including judges, lawyers, professors, journalists and researchers; most of them have considerable experience in evaluating and discussing contentious evidence. It is no accident that many in this group are retired, since this gives them vital protection against attempts to silence them as “deniers”. As Janis Joplin sang,
“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose”.
‘Not just Wrong, but Egregiously Wrong’
“‘Grave Error’ is a collection of some of the best pushback essays published by these brave researchers in response to the Kamloops mythology. They analyze and critique the false narrative of unmarked graves, missing children, forced attendance and ‘genocidal’ conditions at Indian Residential Schools.
“The book’s title summarizes the authors’ view of the Kamloops narrative. It is wrong. And not just wrong, but egregiously wrong. Because of this, it fully deserves our sardonic title, which normally might have more in common with a tabloid newspaper headline. Our book shows in detail just why and where the narrative is wrong.
“Several of the contributing 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. They quickly learned, however, that corporate, legacy or mainstream media, religious leaders and political figures have little desire to stand up to the narrative flow of a moral panic.
“For this reason, they wrote about residential schools mainly in specialized journals such as The Dorchester Review in print and online; online daily media such as True North and Western Standard; and online journals such as Quillette, Unherd and History Reclaimed, whose raison d’être is to challenge conventional wisdom. C2C Journal has played a distinguished role in this intellectual resistance, publishing work by Hymie Rubenstein on the absence of evidence for unmarked graves,
Greg Piasetzki on Peter Henderson Bryce’s often misunderstood critique of residential schools,
and Rodney Clifton’s personal experience working in the schools.
https://c2cjournal.ca/2022/09/my-life-in-two-indian-residential-schools/
“The editors of ‘Grave Error’ are C. P. Champion and myself. In addition to an introduction and conclusion, it contains 18 chapters plus a foreword by Conrad Black and cover endorsement by columnist Barbara Kay. The first contribution is “In Kamloops, Not One Body Has Been Found”, by Montreal historian Jacques Rouillard. This essay, originally posted on The Dorchester Review website, is now closing in on 300,000 views.
https://www.dorchesterreview.ca/blogs/news/in-kamloops-not-one-body-has-been-found
“It has done more than any other single publication to punch holes in the false narrative of unmarked graves and missing children. The author has updated his version in ‘Grave Error’ to cover other false claims related to GPR since Kamloops.
“Other contributors include retired professors Clifton and Ian Gentles, retired judge Brian Giesbrecht, well-known author and editor Jonathan Kay and inimitable academic provocateur Frances Widdowson, plus several others who are perhaps not so well-known but are equally immersed in the subject matter.
“Their contributions to this volume confront all the main fallacies head-on. Widdowson shows how the legend of murdered children and unmarked graves was spread by defrocked United Church minister Kevin Annett before it popped up again at Kamloops. Rubenstein and collaborators examine the evidence proffered in support of unmarked graves, such as the results of GPR, and find there is nothing – repeat nothing – there. One author, who published anonymously because of his fear of retaliation, shows how the GPR results at Kamloops probably are radar reflections of buried tile that was part of the school’s sewage disposal system.
“Other contributors include Kay, who explains how the media got the story so completely wrong, generating the worst fake news in Canadian history. Gentles examines health conditions in the schools and shows that children were better off there, than at home on reserves. Former Manitoba judge Giesbrecht demonstrates that attendance in residential schools was not compelled in any meaningful sense of the term. My contribution criticizes the prolific-but-weak body of research purporting to show that attendance at residential schools created a historical trauma that is responsible for the subsequent social pathologies to which native people are subject. And Clifton shows from personal experience how benign and positive conditions in the schools could be.
“In full, 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 early 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. What, if anything, lies beneath the surface remains unknown. Where excavations have taken place, no burials related to residential schools have been found. What artifacts have been unearthed prove nothing.
“The truth is that 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”. The myth of missing students arose from a failure of the ‘Truth’ and ‘Reconciliation’ Commission’s researchers to cross-reference the vast number of historical documents about residential schools and the children who attended them. This documentation exists, but the Commissioners did not avail themselves of it.
“Media stories about Indian Residential Schools are almost always accompanied by the frightening claim that 150,000 students were “forced to attend” these schools. Such a claim is misleading at best. Children were not legally required to go to residential school unless no reserve day school was available; and even then, the law was only sporadically enforced. For students who did attend residential school, an application form signed by a parent or other guardian was required. The simple truth is that many Indian parents saw the residential schools as the best option available for their children. In some years and in various places, there were actually waiting lists to get in.
‘A False Narrative Takes Shape’
“Prior to 1990, residential schools enjoyed largely favourable coverage in the media, with many positive testimonials from students who had attended them. Indeed, alumni of the residential schools made up most of the emerging ‘First Nations’ elite. That changed in October 1990 when Manitoba regional chief Phil Fontaine appeared on a popular CBC television show hosted by Barbara Frum and made claims about how he had suffered sexual abuse at a residential school. He did not give details, nor did he 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’ {Party} government of Prime Minister Paul Martin negotiated a settlement in 2005, which was accepted shortly afterwards by the newly-elected ‘Conservative’ {Party} minority government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Ultimately, about $5 billion in compensation was paid to about 80,000 claimants, and in June 2008 in the House of Commons, Harper delivered a public apology for the existence of residential schools, which he {foolishly} called a “sad chapter in our history”.
“Harper might have thought the compensation payments and his apology would be the end of the story but instead, they became the beginning of a new chapter. The {Aboriginal} ‘Truth’ and ‘Reconciliation’ Commission that he appointed took off in its own direction after the initial set of commissioners resigned {Because of the one-sided nature of the Commission} and had to be replaced on short notice. The Commission held emotional public hearings around the country at which “survivors” {The billion-dollar Aboriginal Industry’s pejorative term for ‘former students’} were invited to tell their stories without fact-checking or cross-examination. It concluded in 2015 that the residential schools amounted to “cultural genocide”.
“‘Cultural genocide’ is not a substantive term but 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 even “mass graves” reinforced a literal genocide scenario. In the autumn of 2022, the House of Commons gave unanimous consent to a previously rejected motion “that what happened in residential schools was a genocide” {See below}. Of course, none of what was even claimed to have happened meets the formal, internationally recognized definition of ‘genocide’ (which also explicitly rejects the idea of cultural genocide).
{These are REAL Genocides:
‘The Genocide of the Dorset’:
“The Thule (ancestors of today’s Inuit), originally from Siberia, were gradually expanding across the Arctic, displacing the older, aboriginal Dorset people. By roughly 1200 AD, the Dorset had vanished, killed off in warfare with the Thule… Inuit oral traditions tell of how the Dorset were a gentle people without bows and arrows, and thus easy to kill and drive away…”
https://endracebasedlaw.com/2019/08/05/the-genocide-of-the-dorset/
And:
‘What Happened To The ‘Neutrals’?‘:
“This is the tribe that occupied southwestern Ontario until the 1650s, when fellow Iroquois tribes from what is now the U.S. rendered them extinct. In modern terminology, they were ‘victims of genocide’…”
https://endracebasedlaw.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/what-happened-to-the-neutrals/ }
“Perhaps sensing the weakness of their evidence-free position, purveyors of the Indian Residential Schools-as-genocide narrative have begun to double-down on their own claims, demanding that any criticism of their ideology be made illegal. First off the mark was Winnipeg NDP MP Leah Gazan, who introduced the original House of Commons resolution declaring Indian Residential Schools to be genocidal.
{‘No Accountability Again’ {Sept.1, 2023}:
“Rather than deal with the proven fact that the violence directed at Aboriginal women comes mainly from Aboriginal men – and the poisonously-dysfunctional culture on many reserves – this Aboriginal Industry fanatic uses the issue to falsely accuse contemporary Canadians of ‘genocide’…
“An NDP member in parliament had a borderline psychotic episode…screaming at her fellow MPs to declare the “ongoing genocide” against ‘Indigenous’ {sic}, ‘trans women’, and ‘two-spirit people’ a “Canada wide emergency”.”
https://endracebasedlaw.ca/2023/09/01/no-accountability-again/ }
“Then, federal government ministers got involved. Marc Miller, then Minister of Crown-‘Indigenous’ Relations, took specific offence at Rouillard’s initial, ground-breaking essay, claiming on Twitter (now ‘X’) that it is “part of a pattern of denialism and distortion” about residential schools in Canada. David Lametti, then the Minister of Justice, followed suit with a vague threat that Ottawa might consider “outlawing” residential school ‘denialism’. ‘Denialism’ is generally defined as any debate that contradicts the official narrative as outlined at the beginning of this article.
“So, here we are. A false narrative about genocide in residential schools has become firmly established in the public domain without any requirement for actual proof or due diligence. Media and government have eagerly collaborated in perpetuating this falsehood. And anyone who questions any part of the story is labelled a “denialist”, and possibly threatened with criminal prosecution. To such a world, “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools)” offers exactly what we have been missing so far – clarity, rigour and evidence.”
–‘Grave Error: Correcting the False Narrative of Canada’s ‘Missing Children’,
Tom Flanagan, C2C Journal, December 7, 2023
“The book reveals that Canadian politics are not guided by reasonable thinking and the patience necessary for a statesmanlike approach to national problems or a potential crisis.”
“Two years ago, I wrote a book review for VoegelinView where I shared the wonders of {former Residential school student} Tomson Highway’s book, “Permanent Astonishment”.
“At the time I wrote the review, Canada was reeling as it tried to make sense of the apparent discovery of 215 clandestine burials of ‘Indigenous’ {sic} children in an apple orchard in Kamloops, B.C., where a former Indian Residential School (IRS) had operated.
“The IRS system operated in Canada for over one hundred years, until 1996. The intention of these schools was to help ‘Indigenous’ {Aboriginal} people enter mainstream Canadian culture, economically, politically, and socially.
“And even as I wrote the review of Highway’s book, other grave sites across Canada were being located with ground penetrating radar (GPR), with the Canadian and American media calling these sites “mass graves”. The suggestion from the media reporting was that there were hundreds, and possibly thousands, of ‘Indigenous’ children who had been murdered and buried in clandestine fashion. These were dark days in Canada, with flags lowered to half-mast for almost half a year and Canadians everywhere reflecting on the {supposedly} gruesome foundations of their nation.
“The IRS system has left a dark legacy. Many students were physically and mentally abused, and the schools have been accused of attempting ‘cultural genocide’ against ‘Indigenous’ Peoples in Canada.
{NOTE: Canadian Aboriginals are ‘Indigenous’ to Siberia and Mongolia.}
“Beyond Tomson Highway’s book, there are all sorts of projects and community work by ‘Indigenous’ people and Canadians of every cultural background that promote reconciliation and hope. The Kamloops discovery continues to obfuscate conversations and interpretations of the IRS system and Canada’s history generally, because no proper forensic or legal resolution over the 200 possible grave sites has ever been achieved, nor even attempted.
“A new book was recently published, titled “Grave Error”, and the book brings to light the confusion currently surrounding grave sites at former IRS’s. According to Amazon, ‘Grave Error’ was the best-selling non-fiction book in Canada for an extended number of months through 2023-24, yet the book has not been acknowledged by the mainline press in Canada, with the notable exception of the National Post newspaper. This muted response by Canada’s talking heads reveals something of the political disorder currently gripping Canada.
“While the intention of ‘Grave Error’ is to appeal for “rationality and truth” in the project to fully appreciate the legacy of IRS’s, the attention the book draws toward Canadian politics and Canada’s national media highlights a deeper problem. The book reveals that Canadian politics are not guided by reasonable thinking and the patience necessary for a statesmanlike approach to national problems or a potential crisis. The national media, meanwhile, appears as an impotent estate that has been corrupted by popular narratives and ideology, with no desire to seek after the truth, nor to cast reasonable doubt on the messages delivered by politicians.
“‘Grave Error’ has the tone of a book published in the midst of a national crisis. This alone makes the work interesting for political scientists. But the book also brings some light to a country that has become culturally constipated by its own self-made existential crisis.
“Can Canadians be proud of their history? Can Canadians be proud of their institutions and their growth through time? Is it necessary for Canada as a nation to deconstruct itself in some type of post-modern suicide attempt, or can she begin to reinvigorate herself through serious and mature statesmanship? This may seem extremely stated, but the disorder in Canadian political life is hinted at when, in the introduction, the book’s editors, C.P. Champion and Tom Flannagan, remind the readers that the contributors to the book are risking their careers to be published in ‘Grave Error’. Furthermore, they suggest that in the Government of Canada there has been “speculation about criminalizing divergence of opinion about historical issues” that would include interpretation of the IRS legacy.
“The contributors to ‘Grave Error’ are fastidious in their research and their reasoning. There is also a careful acknowledgement of the pain and suffering so many {some} students endured in the IRS system. The book is not challenging the fact of Residential Schools, only that words like “murder”, “mass graves”, “forced attendance”, and “genocide” need to be handled with greater scrutiny…
“Ultimately, the reason I have written this review is that I do believe a book like ‘Grave Error’ should be exposed to the light. If the uncomfortable assertions of the book are not faced with the same academic rigour with which the book was written, then future generations will have to deal with the subject matter in political and cultural circumstances beyond our control. The work of {One-way} ‘reconciliation’ in Canada is not a neat and tidy three-year program with a final end goal in sight, but rather the ongoing mission of a nation as it continues to evolve into the future. In some manner that is admittedly not clear to me, the book ‘Grave Error’ is part of this ongoing process.
“The strength of Tomson Highway’s “Permanent Astonishment” was his brushing aside of broad, sweeping narratives of the IRS system so that individual experiences could be remembered, including the work of good teachers. The contributors to ‘Grave Error’ also challenge the dominant narrative about the IRS system. As I have tried to suggest, this will make the book difficult reading for many readers.
“The idea that mass graves and secret burial sites have been discovered is challenged. ‘Grave Error’ argues that school and government records do not support the idea that hundreds or thousands of ‘Indigenous’ children went missing or were murdered at the schools. This argument is ultimately highlighted by referencing Canada’s ‘Truth’ and ‘Reconciliation’ Commission that found no credible evidence of any ‘Indigenous’ child being murdered through the entire history of the IRS system.
“Grave sites that have been discovered with GPR are shown to be old grave sites whose wooden markers simply rotted away with time, or were intentionally cleaned up. The 215 purported grave sites in Kamloops, BC, since reduced to 200 soil anomalies, have never been investigated, and more than one contributor to the book draws attention to the mystery of why the government and Canada’s national police force (the RCMP) have not sought to investigate what could be one of Canada’s most heinous crime scenes. Could murder charges not be laid, even posthumously? Could serious investigating of the Kamloops site not help bring closure to the legacy of the schools?
“The book also challenges the idea that the IRS system contributed to a broader national attempt to commit ‘genocide’ against Canada’s ‘Indigenous’ Peoples. Because there are strong feelings involved in the discussion over the term ‘genocide’, I will list some of the book’s arguments here.
“Statistics published in ‘Grave Error’ shows that ‘Indigenous’ populations in Canada have grown since the first schools were established, from approximately 125,000 in 1867 to 1.8 million ‘Indigenous’ People in 2021. In Canada {In English}, the use of the term ‘genocide’ typically refers to the idea that a ‘cultural genocide’ was carried out in the IRS system against ‘Indigenous’ culture. Contributors like Pim Wiebel attempt to challenge this assertion, including a quote from a 1937 government record about the importance of ‘Indigenous’ culture:
“An encouraging feature of the educational effort during the year was discovered in the … tendency and willingness of the Indians to recognize the value and distinctiveness of their arts and crafts. Consideration has been given to ways and means whereby the Indian population can be encouraged to conserve still further their ancient values and skills and thus contribute to the cultural life of the nation”.
“Wiebel also draws attention to the low numbers of students who attended IRS’s – approximately 33% of ‘Indigenous’ children attended IRS’s – relative to those students who attended day schools or who didn’t attend schools at all. This data counters claims that every child was forced to go to the schools, and subsequently, have their culture taken from them.
“‘Grave Error’ does attempt to touch on the problem of cultural assimilation and integration. Tomson Highway also draws attention to the issue of cultural assimilation and integration in ‘Permanent Astonishment’ when he looks at the development of ‘Indigenous’ language after European contact, as well as intermarriages between ‘Indigenous’ and European people.
“While English was the language used in the schools, Wiebel draws from the records to show that sometimes there was a sensitivity toward ‘Indigenous’ culture. For example, ‘Indigenous’ students in Cluny, Alberta, wore traditional ceremonial dress and danced to traditional drumming songs for an audience of over 300 people. An IRS choir sang in English and Cree at ‘Expo ‘67’ and at one school in BC, an ‘Indigenous’ artist taught traditional art. At a school in Saskatchewan, there was a powwow dance troupe.
“Religious orders like the Oblates were strongly encouraged to learn the native tongue of their students. Pim Wiebel’s study of the records leads them to write that IRS students were never forced to convert to Christianity. Ian Gentles writes that, based on a 2017 survey, ‘Indigenous’ people who attended Residential Schools were less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol than those community members who did not attend an IRS.
“Hymie Rubenstein draws attention to records that show how ‘Indigenous’ communities valued Residential Schools. When Blue Quills IRS was going to be closed in 1970, for example, the community protested its closure. The question that arises with stories such as this is why ‘Indigenous’ communities valued these schools if those same schools were attempting a ‘genocide’?
…
“Most recently, Tk’emlups te Secwepemc ‘First Nation’ {a ‘nation’ of 1,541 people} (where the Kamloops IRS was located) and the Dioceses of Vancouver and Kamloops entered into a Sacred Covenant, which reaffirms the close relationship between these parties over four hundred years and the work of Reconciliation that will continue into the future. Church newspapers like the ‘Catholic New Times’ and the ‘Catholic Register’ were publishing articles and essays about the IRS system in the’ mid-1990’s when the national media could have cared less about the subject. Now that the mainstream media have picked up the story, they treat IRS’s like a type of discovery they have made, which is not the case…
“One of the most heinous forms of violence toward children is sexual abuse, and many {? some} IRS students were victims of this violence. It is to be appreciated that the editors of ‘Grave Error’ wanted to expand the reader’s understanding about the good and bad of Residential Schools. In doing so, they draw upon a great deal of evidence from school and government inspection records and share a range of data that includes attendance records, school infirmary records, and death certificates. They also share a wide swath of evidence from the records that suggests IRS’s were often highly regarded by ‘Indigenous’ communities, and that students of these schools tended to be more successful in finding further study and employment than children who did not attend.
“In my own visits with Residential School ‘survivors’ {The billion-dollar Aboriginal Industry’s pejorative term for ‘former students’}, however, the evil of sexual abuse in the schools remains a fixture of the IRS experience. This is also recognized by Tomson Highway in ‘Permanent Astonishment’. In ‘Grave Error’ I did not see this experience acknowledged in depth. How many lives were destroyed by this vilest form of child abuse, short of murder? This abuse cannot be minimized.
“It is an unfortunate aspect not only of some religious schools, but of Aboriginal culture itself to this very day:
{“Evidence points to an epidemic of sexual abuse across the territory. The police-reported sexual assault crime rate across Treaty 3 in 2021 was 10 times higher than the national average.”
“An APTN investigation has identified dozens of sexual abuse victims across ‘First Nations’ {‘Aboriginal communities’} in ‘Treaty 3 territory’ in what survivors describe as a silent epidemic that has gone unaddressed for generations.”
https://endracebasedlaw.ca/2023/08/24/rampant-sexual-abuse-in-treaty-3-territory/ }
“Finally, one error that occurs repeatedly with contemporary interpreters of Canadian history is that of anachronism. Without seeking to downplay the suffering experienced by IRS ‘survivors’, could ‘Grave Error’ have broadened the reader’s understanding of the context in which the IRS system was developed?
“For example, the history of British boarding schools in England and abroad, and the strict program of corporal punishment in those schools, is well documented {So why would they need to document it again?}. In a sense, the fictional account of a boarding school for orphans as written by Charlotte Bronte in her novel “Jane Eyre” is as good a place to begin as any other when it comes to understanding the roots of the IRS system.
“During the time of IRS’s, there were also the British Home Children, when over 100,000 poor children were taken from their impoverished parents in England and sent overseas to Canada for cheap labor on farms across the Dominion. There were also the Poor Houses in Nova Scotia, where poor children and adults were essentially incarcerated until the end of their lives, farming for much of their own food in conditions rife with abuse. How were children, orphans, the poor, and education systems generally, understood and designed by previous generations of Canadians who did not live with the government budgets and general comforts we live with today?
“Ultimately, it is the disorder of the Canadian political landscape that ‘Grave Error’ draws attention to. Politically, economically and socially, Canada is a nation that is struggling. Entering into this summer of 2024, Canadian productivity is suffering, and the deeply unpopular Prime Minister Trudeau and his governing ‘Liberal’-New ‘Democrat’ coalition are overseeing public dissatisfaction over government healthcare and high taxation. University campuses and city streets have been disrupted by anti-Israel protests {Driven by a massive influx of Mohammedan migrants}, and there is a growing homelessness problem born out of widespread drug addiction {Exacerbated by a lack of police and judicial enforcement}, a housing crisis {Due to ridiculously-inflated numbers of Third World immigrants}, and what appears to be a mental health pandemic.
“How the Canadian government and the mainstream media reacted to the 200 soil anomalies discovered in Kamloops in the spring of 2021 seems to be indicative of how all sorts of problems that currently weigh Canada down are handled by the Canadian establishment.
“When the news from Kamloops was first released in 2021, the Canadian media began to tell the story in their own words, reporting on {unsubstantiated} ‘secret murders’ and ‘mass graves’. At this critical moment, it was up to Prime Minister Trudeau to inject a sense of statesman-like calm into the emotional pandemonium upsetting Canadian society. Instead, the Prime Minister was the first to jump into the proverbial lifeboat, lowering the flags to half-mast for over five months and leading the breast striking of shame and despair, lamenting over the evils of Canadian history.
“When churches began to be burned down or desecrated—eighty-three churches were harmed in this way, many of them churches used largely by ‘Indigenous’ people—the Prime Minister still did not bring any sense of authority to the situation in order to bring patience and calm.
{“83 Christian churches in Canada have been vandalized, burned down or desecrated since the announcement of the apparent discovery of graves found near a residential school in Kamloops, B.C.”
{No graves were found…
“Here is the full list of churches that have been targeted by the radical vandals…”
https://endracebasedlaw.ca/2023/10/31/terrorists-burning-canadian-churches/ }
“Instead, the Prime Minister suggested it was understandable why there would be anger directed against the churches, thereby condoning the violence against Christians. The Prime Minister did not lead, he swooned and grew faint. Most amazingly, Michael Melanson writes, the entire Parliament followed Trudeau’s lead, Parliamentarians declaring as one voice in 2022, and without debate, that the IRS’s were a genocide.
{“One of the most foolish and irresponsible motions to ever pass the House of Commons. Too bad there are no Members of Parliament who think for themselves:
“Members of Parliament gave unanimous consent in favour of a motion calling on the federal government to recognize Canada’s residential schools as genocide.”
https://endracebasedlaw.wordpress.com/2023/10/13/a-virtue-signalling-lie/ }
“Jonathan Kay writes that following erroneous reporting by Canadian media and the New York Times of mass graves at the Marieval IRS, the Prime Minister brought a teddy bear to the grave site in order to go through the motions of praying, all for a photo op. Meanwhile, Cadmus Delorme, Chief of Cowessess ‘First Nation’ {a ‘nation’ of 4,641 people} where Prime Minister Trudeau’s act of prayer took place, tried to downplay the Prime Minister’s actions by stating publicly,
“This is a Roman Catholic grave site. It’s not a Residential School grave site”.
“The damage done by Trudeau’s photo-op could not be undone. His actions affirmed that there was indeed a mass grave beneath him. Is the Canadian system of governance and security so broken that the Prime Minister’s office was clueless as to where the leader of a G7 nation kneels in his own country to honor the dead, or was Trudeau cynically trying to further his own agenda?
“‘Grave Error’ cites a wide range of incorrectly-reported stories in the national media, and the reader senses that the contributors would like to address each of them individually because the spread of misinformation has multiplied since the Kamloops announcements. Through the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, there were national news shows in Canada like ‘The Fifth Estate’ and ‘W-5’, and magazines like ‘MacLean’s’, that sought after the truth behind stories without hesitation. Where has that type of journalism disappeared to? Are national media organizations in Canada kept afloat with federal money so they have become loudspeakers instead of sleuths? Has the national media been co-opted by ‘progressive’ {Actually. ‘regressive’} boards and editors so that truth has fallen to ideology, and reason has been lost to a dream? Or has the loss of a sound humanistic education in Canadian Universities created a generation of semi-literate social justice revolutionaries in the media who do not recognize objective truth?
“Trudeau once said that Canada was a ‘post-modern’ nation {with no national identity}. His silence over the desecration of historical figures, national accomplishments, and churches makes one wonder if Trudeau sees the IRS’s as an opportunity to continue the deconstruction of the Canadian nation. When ‘Grave Error’ highlights the anti-Catholic element to the IRS narrative of our day, one wonders if ‘progressives’, beginning with Trudeau, are happy to see that story continue to be spun. After all, the social teachings of the Catholic Church will at times resist the ‘progressive’ {perverted} agenda.
“Tom Flanagan and Brian Giesbrecht rightfully suggest the role of the Catholic Church in the IRS system has been overemphasized (approximately half of the IRS’s were run by Catholic Religious Orders), creating a troubling anti-Catholic mood in Canada that extends to resources used in schools.
“For example, Gord Downie’s graphic {propaganda} novel “Secret Path”, a widely-distributed book in Canada’s schools about the real-life death of Chanie Wenjack in 1966, misrepresents his story {!}. Chanie Wenjack attended a public school in Kenora and boarded at a Presbyterian hostel. Yet in the book, a priest and some nuns are the villains – even though Wenjack was not Catholic and probably never met a priest or nun in his life.
“‘Grave Error’ will trouble the reader for any number of reasons, some of which have been highlighted here. But why can’t a book be troubling? Why can’t the average Canadian deal with a troubling book? In two thousand years of book publishing in the Western world, a decade has not passed when one book or another did not trouble its readers. Some people will call ‘Grave Error’ a lie, or suggest the book’s contributors are driven by their own ideological agenda. Yet the facts and data cited by the book’s contributors, and the sources of those facts and data, are shared openly, and stand ready to be engaged with academic rigor.
“The contributors to ‘Grave Error’ appear to be open-minded and willing to have their arguments debunked. In fact, one central premise of the book is that there be a formal investigation of the 200 sites discovered by GPR in Kamloops in 2021. The writers admit to their own ignorance about who or what lies beneath the ground in Kamloops, and suggest that no one actually does know.
“The question is, does Canada have the political leadership required to honor ‘First Nations’ {Aboriginal} People, to support an open spirit of debate among academics who study the many facets of Canadian history, and to seek out the truth of purported IRS grave sites? Without saying so explicitly, the collective voice of ‘Grave Error’ would suggest that in the current state of politics in Canada, no such leadership will be found.”
–‘Grave Confusion’,
Michael Buhler, Voegelin View, September 2, 2024
https://voegelinview.com/grave-confusion/
“We live in an age of competing truths, of narratives, and counter narratives.
“‘Grave Error’ sets out to counter the narrative that the historical and ongoing treatment of ‘Indigenous’ {sic} people in Canada constitutes ‘genocide’; and that the residential school system was at the heart of it…
“In this book’s Introduction, the editors say the following:
“Canada … is already very far down the path not just of accepting, but of legally entrenching, a narrative for which no serious evidence has been proffered. [It is a narrative of tortures and murders, secret burials, coverups and politicians blocking the truth from coming out.] This book is an attempt to appeal for rationality and truth amid a moral panic of stories about Canada that are so implausible that they should not be believed without convincing evidence.
“Publication in book format [of the various contributors’ articles and podcasts] will make it easier for readers to appreciate that these questions are not just isolated queries or knee-jerk dismissals—but constitute a powerful, research- and facts-based indictment of the moral panic over residential schools … [an indictment which deserves] a degree of permanence [and availability] for future readers.”
“The editors admit that there is a certain amount of repetition from chapter to chapter, as might be expected in such a collection… The myriad of repetitions also presents a challenge for any reviewer. It is simply not possible to treat the chapters one by one or include all the issues raised. The best I can do in the space available here is provide a guide to general themes, focusing on points in select chapters of greatest potential controversy or interest.
…
‘Jacques Rouillard, “In Kamloops, Not One Body has been Found”’
“Chapter 1 is a compendious version of our other authors’ telling of the counter narrative. A point-form review will illustrate what readers can expect to be repeated in other chapters.
“In Chapter 1, Professor Rouillard describes:
–the announcement of the discovery of supposed graves of missing children at the former Kamloops Residential School;
–the panicked reaction by politicians and protestors without any actual evidence sufficient to prompt official investigations;
–the response of the RCMP, who are damned for intruding in the Tk’emlups matter and then damned for later backing off;
–the spate of official apologies and the international reactions to Canada’s having made them;
–the limits of ground penetrating radar and alternative explanations for the findings in the Kamloops orchard and elsewhere;
–the truth about the residential schools experience.
“Rouillard continues by suggesting that the stories of missing and murdered children were simply made up:
“Chief Casimir asserts that a certain gnostic ‘knowledge” of the alleged presence of children’s remains has been present within the community for an extended period—in spite of the fact that such “knowing” has nowhere been mentioned until the past couple of years”.
“He suggests, based on Frances Widdowson’s article (now Chapter 5 in this book), that the ultimate source of those stories was defrocked clergyman Kevin Annett, saying:
“[w]hether or not he was the first to invent the story … Annett either planted or reinforced in the “memory” of ‘Indigenous’ people around Kamloops the belief that numerous childrens’ bodies were clandestinely buried in an orchard”.
“Rouillard thus joins with Widdowson, albeit by innuendo, in suggesting that the Tk’emlups graves announcement was and remains a cynical money grab…
‘The History of the Kamloops Apple Orchard’
“Chapter 2 provides a refreshing contrast. It sets out the several phases of the Kamloops orchard’s historical past, to contextualize and provide a reasoned basis for questioning the findings of anthropologist Dr. Sarah Beaulieu of possible children’s graves. It is a detailed, fascinating, and balanced account of the history of use and excavations in the orchard.
“One cannot help but wish that the Tk’emlups leadership had had access to this history when they engaged Dr. Beaulieu because once they had done so, received her preliminary report and made their initial announcement, events were set in motion which have become increasingly difficult to reverse.
‘How Media Fomented Moral Panic and Then Failed to Correct the Record’
“…Chapters 6 and 11, by journalist Jonathan Kay, are notable for their balanced telling of the so-called ‘legacy media’s’ role in generating and maintaining the moral panic arising from the Tk’emlups graves announcement. In the media’s defence, Kay notes that they reasonably expected hard evidence would soon be to hand. But none was forthcoming.
“He then describes the
“perverse incentive structure … whereby no media outlet had any interest in walking back … misinformation … [and thereby taking a] gratuitous reputational hit … when all your competitors are staying mum”.
“In Chapter 7, James Pew, an online journalist, adds the following apt conclusion to the media piece:
“Even if every one of the thousands of graves they find turn out to be children from residential schools, the fact will remain that the legacy media rushed to condemn the Canadian government and the Catholic Church for an assumed ‘genocide’—well before a proper investigation was possible. Is it wrong to think that Canadians deserve better?”
‘What it Takes to Prove a Genocide’
“In chapter 3, retired professor Hymie Rubenstein sets out to rebut the charge of a Canadian ‘genocide’ made manifest by graves at the residential schools. As he notes, quoting Irwin Cotler, chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights,
“If we say everything is a genocide, then nothing is a genocide”.
“The best part of Rubenstein’s chapter is its treatment of allegations of the ‘forcible transfer’ of ‘Indigenous’ children to residential schools. Any such forcible transfer would fulfill the fifth element of the United Nations 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. He begins by quoting from the Convention’s formal post-1948 commentary:
“To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of the perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice”.
“He then demonstrates (as others have) that at no time did even close to a majority of ‘Indigenous’ children ever attend the residential schools, as would seem to be a prerequisite to achieving ‘genocide’ in fact.
“But even more compelling is Rubenstein’s treatment of the required mental intent with respect to forcible transfer. He refers to the legislative history of the ‘Indian Act’, showing that attendance at residential school per se was never legally compulsory. Lack of legislative compulsion is key in demonstrating the government’s lack of an intention to cause genocide through forced removal of children. In fact, it is a complete answer. That remains true even if geography, poverty, family malfunction or truancy may, in fact, have compelled attendance in many individual cases.
“In Chapter 8, Michael Melanson builds on Rubenstein’s earlier chapter with a helpful analysis of what formal (i.e. unqualified) genocide actually entails under the 1948 UN Convention. Melanson deals one by one with the various headings of genocide as described by the Convention:
homicide;
causing serious bodily or mental harm,
deliberately causing physical destruction,
forced sterilization,
and forcible transfer of children.
I only wish space allowed for a description of his arguments. The points he makes are quite compelling.
“I think Rubenstein is better on the forcible transfer point, but let’s allow Melanson the last word overall:
“Canada has brought into the world the concept of non-criminal, uncorroborated genocide and is threatening to criminalize those who deny that characterization of what happened”.
“Strange, indeed.
‘Residential Schools Were Really Not That Bad’
“One of the arguments of fact made by our authors against the charge of genocide is that residential schools were actually a good experience for a great many of the children who attended and in addition, they produced many success stories.
“Chapter 12 by the pseudonymous Pim Wiebel is a veritable panegyric on the benefits of attending residential school. The chapter draws heavily on the positive points made in the annual reports of the Department of Indian Affairs…
“Chapter 14, by Professor Ian Gentles, follows much the same lines. He asserts that residential schools “were actually in the forefront of the battle to reduce childhood mortality” and to combat TB brought in by the children from the reserves. He takes issue with allegations of poor food and inadequate nutrition. He points to little or no drug and alcohol abuse at the schools, unlike back on the reserves. [280-282] He argues that the frequency of sexual abuse has been overstated. He then reports on the benefits of extracurricular activities, under headings like “The Fun We Had at Treaty Time”, “Sledding”, “A Long Sleigh Ride”, “Hockey and Skating”, “The New Radio and Record Player in the Girls’ Room”, “Hunting with Sling Shots”.
…
“Then there are the testimonials from eminent graduates. These are also quoted in various other chapters in this book, with a testimonial from Rodney A. Clifton comprising its entire final chapter.
“As described by Wiebel and Gentles and in the testimonials, it all sounds quite idyllic: much better than life on the reserves, better than life of local non-‘Indigenous’ children, better than it was at my own private boarding school in the early 1970s. One wonders why anyone ever ran away from the residential schools.
{Because they missed their families. This has always been true at boarding schools, not just in Canada…}
“On reflection, it is a mistake to treat the residential school experience monolithically—to suggest it was essentially the same for everyone, at every school, down through the years. Both the ‘Truth’ and ‘Reconciliation’ Commission’s report and this book make that mistake.
{That’s an unfair criticism. The book is an attempt at correcting the one-sided TRC report so, of course, it’s ‘one-sided’…}
“Of course, there were success stories. Also, for many students, the schools were not completely bad {THAT has never been presented to the Canadian public!}. Yet undeniably, for many others, it was a shattering experience. Incidents of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse were well documented. There were disappearances and there were deaths {But the evil implication – without evidence – is that the deaths were a result of murder…}.
“History is never simple and nor is the truth. The sooner everyone steps away from the rhetoric of ‘genocide’ on the one hand and benign paternalism on the other, the better in terms of healing those who feel they need it, and their reconciliation with those whom they feel were responsible. Saying that intergenerational trauma does not exist—that it has no real basis to exist—does not make it simply go away.
{But it does help counter the absurd pretense that Aboriginal cultural dysfunction is due to the Residential schools…}
‘Following the Science’
“Chapter 13, entitled “Everybody’s Favorite Dead White Male”, describes the background and personality of Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce, the supposed government whistleblower on health care issues at the early residential schools.
“As chapter author Greg Piasetzki demonstrates, Bryce was very much a man of his times and motivated by his own preoccupations. What Bryce really thought and did makes him an unlikely hero in the residential school story for those who would at the same time tear down the reputations and statues of others like John A. Macdonald or Egerton Ryerson.
“We also have Chapter 16, entitled “The Tainted Milk Mystery”, persuasively debunking the narrative of government experiments with the health of select residential school students.
“At issue were double blind studies in which select children got extra vitamins and others did not. That is hardly in the realm of Dr. Mengele, even given the lack of ‘Indigenous’ parents’ informed consent to their children’s participation.
“I hazard that the real reason for the studies was quite mundane, but nevertheless troubling. They were likely an attempt by the Department of Indian Affairs to protect its annual budget by not wasting money on the health of the children in giving them extra vitamins unless and until doing so had been proven worthwhile.
{“It is not unlikely that many characteristics, such as shiftlessness, indolence, improvidence and inertia, so long regarded as inherent or hereditary traits in the Indian race may, at the root, be really the manifestations of malnutrition”.
“Studies were conducted on about 1,000 aboriginal people, about 300 of whom were Cree from Norway House and Cross Lake in northern Manitoba.
“The figure includes the ‘control group’, who received dietary supplements to improve their condition.”
–‘Natives focus of ‘colonial science’,
Bill Redekop, Winnipeg Free Press, 10/27/2013
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/natives-focus-of-colonial-science-229427301.html }
‘The Knowledge Keepers Have an Agenda’
“Dr. Frances Widdowson’s Chapter 5 relates the various elements of the counter narrative, with specific focus on an alleged lack of credibility in the “tellings” of the Tk’emlups ‘Knowledge Keepers’. In fairness, her coverage of those elements is more persuasive than elsewhere in this book.
“As for her specific focus, she says that the ‘Knowledge Keepers’
“pretend to believe things that are highly unlikely to be true”.
“She says their doing so is
“part of the wider rent-seeking efforts that rely upon characterizing Canada as a perpetuator of genocide”.
“She further suggests that the ‘Knowledge Keepers’ and their friends and relations have shaped the narrative for personal gain:
“…[that] funding billions of dollars [based] on the allegations of unmarked graves … only benefits a tiny elite of ‘Indigenous’ and non-‘Indigenous’ rent-seekers {‘allies’} to the detriment of ordinary ‘Indigenous’ people.” {!}
…
“Conrad Black supplied the preface to this book. He calls it
“profoundly needed for the restoration of sobriety in public discourse ….”
“Black is a Canadian patriot in the American sense of the word…
{Actually, it’s the ‘sense’ everywhere but in ‘post-national’ Canada where patriotism is considered ‘American’ and ‘conservative’…}
…
“A reader’s appreciation of this book will depend largely on what he or she wants to take from it:
“Readers who already embrace the counter narrative will be glad to have a compendium of points to use in persuading their friends:
“See, I told you so”.
“Readers who cling to what Paulette Regan terms the Canadian “peacemaker myth” in its historical relations with ‘Indigenous’ people will find some comfort here.
“Readers who have wondered about specific aspects of the narrative, such as the history of the Kamloops orchard, the media backstory, Dr. Bryce or the alleged experiments with tainted milk, will appreciate the care and balance with which those issues are explored in this book.
“‘Survivors’ of residential school trauma will be confused and saddened by this profoundly different version of what the schools were really like and what those who attended them really experienced.
“Friends and family of survivors will be enraged on their behalf. So will those who brand anyone with anything good to say about residential schools as “genocide deniers”.
“However—like Lord Black’s adjectives—this book is not going to change anyone’s mind about anything. Rather, it will only harden positions…”
–‘This is a worrying book’,
Richard Butler, B.C. Review, July 2, 2024
https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/02/2216-butler-champion-flanagan/
COMMENT: “Tom Flanagan, Widdowson, Black books and newspapers bonfire will take place on September 30. Before then, see MP Leah Gazan’s Private Member’s Bill ~~ focus: federal Indian Residential School deniers.
Waving from Treaty Six in Saskatoon Saskatchewan.”
“Dr. Thomas Flanagan, co-editor of “Grave Error: How The Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools)” sits down with Nigel Hannaford of The Western Standard to discuss his new book and the moral panic that gripped Canada on May 27, 2023.”
–‘Challenging the narrative of unmarked graves’,
Tom Flanagan, Indian Residential Schools Research Group, DECEMBER 20, 2023
https://irsrg.ca/videos/flanagan-challenging-the-narrative-of-unmarked-graves/
See also:
‘Teacher Cancelled For Telling The Truth’ (Abbotsford) {Nov.9, 2022}:
“Canadian teacher gets cancelled for teaching truth about residential school deaths.”
(Video interview)”
https://endracebasedlaw.ca/2022/11/09/teacher-cancelled-for-telling-the-truth/
‘Hate, Combined With Ignorance’ {Aug.16, 2023}:
“Barbara Kay announced the creation of a new website dedicated to finding the truth about Residential schools: https://irsrg.ca
“The responses were largely indicative of how successful the billion-dollar Aboriginal Industry propaganda has been in convincing Canadians – particularly the youth, thanks to educational indoctrination and shaming – of the myth that Residential schools were organized to be ‘Genocidal’ institutions {It also shows the need for websites like this}. The hatred expressed by many of the responders – very few claim to be Aboriginal – is indicative of the emotional brainwashing that so many of them received in our schools.
“P.S. These hate-filled messages are typical of the abuse we were deluged with when we were first trying to get ERBL off the ground…”
https://endracebasedlaw.ca/2023/08/16/hate-combined-with-ignorance/
‘Residential Schools: Myths vs. Evidence’ {Sept.03, 2019}:
“Canadians are constantly being told that the Indian residential school system is at the root of the many dysfunctions in ‘indigenous’ {No, aboriginal} society today. Alcoholism, violence, poverty and poor educational attainment are all blamed on these schools, the last of which closed in the 1990s.
“Here are some myths and some facts:
“Myth: residential schools robbed all native kids of their childhoods.
“Fact: the average stay was only 4.5 years and the vast majority of aboriginal youth never attended such a school...”
https://endracebasedlaw.ca/2019/09/03/residential-schools-myths-vs-evidence/
‘Blown Out of Proportion’ (Residential Schools) {Aug.29, 2019}:
“My great uncle was a Catholic priest teaching at a far north residential school in the 1960’s. I can tell you, this man had integrity, and would never have been involved in abuse, or even tolerated it around him. I believe a few cases of such abuse have been multiplied and blown out of proportion, to obtain settlements and perpetuate victimhood by some aboriginals. But not all. We don’t hear about the ones who had positive experiences in residential schools, do we? Why?”
https://endracebasedlaw.ca/2019/08/29/blown-out-of-proportion/
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