The Conversation: Confronting residential schools denialism is an ethical and shared Canadian responsibility
As written in The Conversation by Associate Professor, Departments of History and Indigenous Studies, University of Manitoba and Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta.
In May 2021, when the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation announced preliminary results of their search for unmarked burials of children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (IRS), Canada was forced to reckon with a truth that Survivors had always carried: children were taken, and many never came home.
This difficult truth was already established years earlier, in 2015, by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada’s final report, which confirmed more than 3,200 deaths of children as a result of the IRS system, including 51 at Kamloops.
The Kamloops announcement shook many Canadians and revealed that more children likely died at residential schools in Canada than the TRC reported. This was something the commission anticipated would happen with new research, and additional deaths have now been confirmed by First Nations and police as they have undertaken their own subsequent investigations.
Read the full story at The Conversation Canada
Research at the University of Manitoba is partially supported by funding from the Government of Canada Research Support Fund.