When he was a child, Dennis Saddleman’s mother always made sure he knew how much she loved him, giving him kisses on the forehead and telling him how beautiful he was.
That all changed when he was six years old, and those warm words turned icy when he was sent to Kamloops Indian Residential School. The priests and nuns who were tasked with caring for him constantly berated him, beat him, forbade him from speaking his language and practicing his culture, and sexually assaulted him.
“I didn’t know what I was getting into when I got there,” she said in an interview on Parliament Hill, in front of the Survivors Flag, which is meant to honor and remember residential school survivors.
“I couldn’t understand why they treated us like we were 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, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Many survivors who testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission shared stories of abuse in those institutions similar to Saddleman’s, and their words are included in their reports.
However, those stories are increasingly subject to what historian Sean Carleton calls “residential school denialism.”
He said denialism is a strategy used to twist, distort and distort basic facts about residential schools to undermine public trust in survivors’ stories and in the truth and reconciliation process between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada.
“In general, the goal of denialism 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 have been used to spread this misinformation.
This includes misrepresenting the number of children who died of tuberculosis in schools by saying that many people at the time died from the disease and omitting the fact that federal government policies exacerbated the impact of the disease in residential schools because to overcrowding, poor nutrition and lack of adequate sanitation and ventilation.
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Another common theme Carleton sees is that residential schools had “good intentions.” Deniers ignore that the stated goal of the institutions was to disrupt the connections of Indigenous families and accelerate their assimilation into Canadian settler society.
“It’s a constant sowing of seeds of doubt in things that we don’t need to have doubts about, because we’ve already established the truth about them,” he said.
Some people even deny that students died in the institutions, even though that has been documented through Canadian and church records.
With US President Joe Biden’s historic apology on Friday for that country’s equivalent of residential schools, Carleton worries that increased attention will lead to even greater denialism.
Survivors have been asking for protection from 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 for Truth and Reconciliation that seeks to criminalize residential school denialism.
“The denial of residential schools is hate speech, period,” Gazan said in an interview.
“Why, after all the time boarding school survivors spent in schools, do we continue to allow hate speech and violence to be perpetrated against them? Why aren’t elected officials doing their due diligence to protect survivors of hate speech? “That is exactly what my bill aims to do.”
The bill proposes that anyone who, except in private, promotes hatred against Indigenous peoples by “approving, denying, minimizing or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada or by misrepresenting facts relating to it” could be subject to a maximum of two years. in jail.
The bill provides for some exceptions, including if the statements were true, if they were relevant to the public interest, if they were intended to point out hatred towards indigenous people or if it is a religious opinion. It has little chance of becoming law unless it is adopted by the ruling liberals.
Canada enacted a similar law in 2022 to combat Holocaust denialism, although no cases have so far been successfully prosecuted under that provision.
Canada’s special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves, Kimberly Murray, has long called for government intervention to stem the tide of residential school denial.
In a report last year, he documented increasing attacks by deniers on communities exploring possible discoveries of unmarked graves.
In May 2021, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced that ground-penetrating radar had discovered what are believed to be 215 unmarked graves at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, which Saddleman attended. That made international headlines and drew the ire of people who attacked the online community.
“Some arrived in the middle of the night, carrying shovels; They said they wanted to ‘see for themselves’ if the children were buried there,” Murray wrote.
Their final report is expected to be released this week at a meeting in Gatineau, Quebec.
Saddleman said the abuse he suffered in Kamloops haunted him for years after he left school. He faced substance use issues and homelessness, and at the height of his pain, an attempt to take his own life.
He said he stopped when he saw his abusers in a vision, saying they continued to mock him and encourage him to keep going.
Instead, he took the hate, pain, and shame he was given in residential school and “given it back to them; I returned them because they are not mine.”
“I was walking out of darkness and I walked into the light,” he said. “The spirit and all this inside of me made me stand tall and know who I am.”
Carleton said that while federal legislation may not be able to stop all denialism and discrediting of survivors’ stories, it would be a step in the right direction, along with more education about residential schools and their continued impact on people and communities. .
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September that his government needs to “study very carefully” the Gaza bill and said that whenever limits are placed on free speech, careful steps must be taken.
“Canadians are understanding that recognizing truth and reconciliation is not about feeling bad or guilty about Canada; It’s about committing every day to being a better Canada and understanding that to be the country we all want to be, we must work. “It is difficult to achieve reconciliation,” he said.
Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree said earlier this month that he supports the bill and would work with his colleagues on next steps. There has been no commitment that the Liberals would adopt the legislation and pass it.
“It is a deeply painful issue and especially affects the survivors and their descendants,” he said.
In a statement, Jamie Schmale, a Conservative critic of Crown-Indigenous relations, did not say whether his party supports the legislation, but that it will “look closely” at it and participate in debates.
Gazan said survivors are waiting for action.
“Knowing that this is institutionalized genocide by the government of Canada, this is the least they can do.”
