Some say it’s time for Canada to criminalize refusing to attend residential schools

OTTAWA –

As a young child, Dennis Saddleman’s mother always assured him that she knew how much she loved him, kissed him on the forehead and told him how beautiful he was.

Everything changed when he was six, and those warm words turned icy when he was sent to an Indian boarding school in Kamloops. The priests and nuns charged with caring for him constantly criticized him, beat him, forbade him from speaking his language or practicing their culture, and sexually assaulted him.

“When I got there, I didn’t know what I was getting into,” he said in an interview on Parliament Hill in front of the Survivors Flag, which honors and commemorates residential school survivors.

“I didn’t understand why they treated us like dogs. They punished us even though we were innocent.”

More than 150,000 indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools, the last of which closed in 1996.

An estimated 6,000 children died in schools, although experts say the real number may be much higher.

Many survivors who testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission shared stories of abuse in these institutions, similar to what occurred at Saddleman, and their words are included in its reports.

But increasingly, these stories are becoming the subject of what historian Sean Carleton calls “residential school refusal.”

He said denial is a strategy used to twist, misrepresent and distort basic facts about residential schools in order to undermine public confidence in the stories of survivors and in the truth and reconciliation process between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada.

“Generally speaking, the purpose of denial is to protect the colonial status quo,” said Carleton, an assistant professor of history and indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba.

He also said that some media outlets were being used to spread this disinformation.

This includes misrepresenting the number of children who died from tuberculosis in schools by claiming that many people died from the disease at the time, as well as omitting the fact that federal government policies exacerbated the effects of the disease in residential schools through overcrowding, poor nutrition, and a lack of appropriate facilities. sanitary and ventilation.

Another common theme Carleton sees is that residential schools had “good intentions.” Deniers ignore the fact that the stated purpose of the institution was to sever the ties of indigenous families and accelerate their assimilation into settler society in Canada.

“It is a constant sowing of seeds of doubt in matters that do not need to be doubted because we have already established the truth about them,” he said.

Some even deny that students died in institutions at all, even though it has been documented in Canadian and church records.

Following US President Joe Biden’s historic apology on Friday for the country’s equivalent of residential schools, Carleton fears more attention will lead to even more denial.

Survivors are calling for protection from the harm caused by those who try to discredit their stories or those who try to take matters into their own hands and engage in hateful behavior.

NDP MP Leah Gazan introduced a private member’s bill in the House of Commons ahead of the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation that would criminalize refusing to attend residential schools.

“Denying access to private schools is hate speech, period,” Gazan said in an interview.

“Why, after all the time residential school survivors have spent in schools, do we allow hate speech and violence to continue against them? Why aren’t elected officials doing their due diligence to protect residential school survivors from hate speech? That’s exactly what I think the bill is going to do.”

The bill proposes that anyone who, other than privately, promotes hatred against indigenous peoples by “tolerating, denying, downplaying or excusing the Indian residential school system in Canada or by misrepresenting facts relating thereto” could be sentenced to a maximum sentence two years in prison.

The bill provides for certain exceptions, including: if the statements are true, are of public interest, seek to draw attention to hatred of indigenous people or are religious opinions. It has little chance of becoming law if it is not adopted by the ruling Liberals.

Canada passed a similar law in 2022 to combat Holocaust denial, although to date no case has been successfully brought against the law.

Canada’s special interlocutor on missing children and unmarked graves, Kimberly Murray, has long called for government intervention to stem the tide of residential school rejections.

Last year, a report documented increasing attacks by denialists against communities investigating possible discoveries of unmarked graves.

In May 2021, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced that ground-penetrating radar had discovered possibly 215 unmarked graves on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, which Saddleman attended. The case made headlines around the world and sparked the ire of people who attacked the community online.

“Some came in the middle of the night with shovels; “said they wanted to see ‘with their own eyes’ whether any children were buried there,” Murray wrote.

Its final report is expected to be released this week at a meeting in Gatineau, Que.

Saddleman said the abuse he suffered in Kamloops haunted him for years after he left the school. He faced issues with substance use and homelessness, and at the height of his pain, he attempted to take his own life.

He said he stopped when he saw his pursuers in a vision, saying they continued to mock him and encourage him to move on.

Instead, he took the hate, pain and shame he received at boarding school and “gave it away – I gave it away because it’s not mine.”

“I came out of the darkness and into the light,” he said. “The spirit and all that is within me made me stand tall and know who I was.”

Carleton said that while federal legislation may not be able to end the denial and discrediting of survivors’ stories, it would be a step in the right direction, along with more education about residential schools and their ongoing impact on people and communities.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September that his government needed to take a “very careful look” at Gaza’s bill, saying that whenever freedom of speech is restricted, careful steps must be taken.

“Canadians understand that recognizing the truth and reconciling does not mean feeling bad or guilty about Canada – it is about making a daily commitment to be a better Canada and understanding that for us to be the country we all want to be, we must work hard at reconciliation,” he said .

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree said earlier this month that he supported the bill and that he would work with his colleagues on the next steps. There was no commitment that the Liberals would take up the legislation and pass it.

“This is a deeply painful problem that particularly affects survivors and their descendants,” he said.

In a statement, Crown-Indigenous relations critic Jamie Schmale did not say whether his party supported the new laws, but said he would “examine them thoroughly” and participate in the debates.

Gazan said survivors are waiting for action.

“Knowing that this was an institutionalized genocide by the Canadian government, it’s the least they can do.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 27, 2024.