A former Manitoba judge and fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy says the Kamloops residential school site should be excavated and that journalists should probe for the truth as well..Brian Giesbrecht said the ground-penetrating radar analysis that suggested 215 bodies has never been released for scrutiny..“They can detect soil disturbances that can be almost anything, tree roots, that can be a badger hole,” Giesbrecht told the Western Standard..“So that’s what makes it really suspicious, because you’d think if they had something, some solid evidence to put forward, they’d want people to look at it. They’d want people to be able to test it and that sort of thing. But no, they simply won’t release it.”.Giesbrecht noted how the anthropologist who did the radar work in Kamloops drew on community knowledge in a press conference last year and in a CBC Fifth Estate story in January..“That’s basically sort of hearsay. In other words, whatever is being discussed in the community, that is the way of knowing. So the actual evidence for bodies under there is very, very thin. But for reasons that are not clear to me, the press just ran with this, they didn’t ask any questions. And the whole country went into a hysteria over this. So, it is extremely odd,” Giesbrecht said..“Some of the more common claims include priests supposedly impregnating indigenous girls and then throwing the fetuses in the furnace. And the other one that is recurring that you find all over the place is children being wakened up in the middle of the night to help bury their fellow students.”.Giesbrecht said evidence to back the stories or the alleged number of 215 deaths has not been provided. Records show 51 students died during the years they attended the school, and death certificates often showed disease was the cause..“Some of them died at residential school, some of whom died elsewhere, but most of them are buried in their home community. Some were buried in cemeteries close to the residential school. The entire missing children thing, Tom Flanagan described it as the biggest fake news story in the history of the country. I think that’s the truth,” Giesbrecht said..“The country has a huge black eye internationally and nationally. We’re now thought of as a genocidal nation and that’s just simply not true. I think our media is going to be exposed as being completely incompetent, the fact that they haven’t even asked questions.”.One question worth asking, Giesbrecht sayid, is how so many children could not only disappear without a trace but without being missed..“You would have 215 sets of parents would be desperate, wanting to know where their children went, that sort of thing. There is no historical evidence, no newspaper report, nothing in any history that indicates even one parent looking for a lost child. Indigenous parents are just like any other parents. They love their children, and they would be horrified if the child went missing. And they would go to the police, they’d go to the chiefs, there would be an uproar. But there’s never been anything like that,” he said..Giesbrecht also wonders why distinguished alumni in Kamloops and elsewhere didn’t mention alleged atrocities before now..“Len Marshand was the first indigenous federal cabinet minister. He went to the Kamloops school. He wrote a book about it, and his only complaint really was that the food was not good,” Giesbrecht said..“So, you have a person like that, a very distinguished alumni, who has said nothing about burials on the apple orchard or anything like that. You also have a lot of indigenous teachers, distinguished people, who went through that school who have written about their experience, and nobody has said anything about secretly buried bodies.”.Giesbrecht believes the only way to dig up the truth is to dig up the ground..“You don’t have to exhume the bodies, what you’ve got to do is excavate. And if you excavate, you’ll find out whether there are any graves there or not. And then the decision would be made, okay, do you exhume or not. But they will not excavate, and that is also very suspicious,” he said..“This is going to continue as long as we let it continue. The residential school issue has been basically a financial bonanza. And billions of dollars have been spent on it. And as long as people continue to just accept all of these claims without any hesitation, the money claims will continue.”.Lee Harding is a Western Standard contributor living in Saskatchewan.
A former Manitoba judge and fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy says the Kamloops residential school site should be excavated and that journalists should probe for the truth as well..Brian Giesbrecht said the ground-penetrating radar analysis that suggested 215 bodies has never been released for scrutiny..“They can detect soil disturbances that can be almost anything, tree roots, that can be a badger hole,” Giesbrecht told the Western Standard..“So that’s what makes it really suspicious, because you’d think if they had something, some solid evidence to put forward, they’d want people to look at it. They’d want people to be able to test it and that sort of thing. But no, they simply won’t release it.”.Giesbrecht noted how the anthropologist who did the radar work in Kamloops drew on community knowledge in a press conference last year and in a CBC Fifth Estate story in January..“That’s basically sort of hearsay. In other words, whatever is being discussed in the community, that is the way of knowing. So the actual evidence for bodies under there is very, very thin. But for reasons that are not clear to me, the press just ran with this, they didn’t ask any questions. And the whole country went into a hysteria over this. So, it is extremely odd,” Giesbrecht said..“Some of the more common claims include priests supposedly impregnating indigenous girls and then throwing the fetuses in the furnace. And the other one that is recurring that you find all over the place is children being wakened up in the middle of the night to help bury their fellow students.”.Giesbrecht said evidence to back the stories or the alleged number of 215 deaths has not been provided. Records show 51 students died during the years they attended the school, and death certificates often showed disease was the cause..“Some of them died at residential school, some of whom died elsewhere, but most of them are buried in their home community. Some were buried in cemeteries close to the residential school. The entire missing children thing, Tom Flanagan described it as the biggest fake news story in the history of the country. I think that’s the truth,” Giesbrecht said..“The country has a huge black eye internationally and nationally. We’re now thought of as a genocidal nation and that’s just simply not true. I think our media is going to be exposed as being completely incompetent, the fact that they haven’t even asked questions.”.One question worth asking, Giesbrecht sayid, is how so many children could not only disappear without a trace but without being missed..“You would have 215 sets of parents would be desperate, wanting to know where their children went, that sort of thing. There is no historical evidence, no newspaper report, nothing in any history that indicates even one parent looking for a lost child. Indigenous parents are just like any other parents. They love their children, and they would be horrified if the child went missing. And they would go to the police, they’d go to the chiefs, there would be an uproar. But there’s never been anything like that,” he said..Giesbrecht also wonders why distinguished alumni in Kamloops and elsewhere didn’t mention alleged atrocities before now..“Len Marshand was the first indigenous federal cabinet minister. He went to the Kamloops school. He wrote a book about it, and his only complaint really was that the food was not good,” Giesbrecht said..“So, you have a person like that, a very distinguished alumni, who has said nothing about burials on the apple orchard or anything like that. You also have a lot of indigenous teachers, distinguished people, who went through that school who have written about their experience, and nobody has said anything about secretly buried bodies.”.Giesbrecht believes the only way to dig up the truth is to dig up the ground..“You don’t have to exhume the bodies, what you’ve got to do is excavate. And if you excavate, you’ll find out whether there are any graves there or not. And then the decision would be made, okay, do you exhume or not. But they will not excavate, and that is also very suspicious,” he said..“This is going to continue as long as we let it continue. The residential school issue has been basically a financial bonanza. And billions of dollars have been spent on it. And as long as people continue to just accept all of these claims without any hesitation, the money claims will continue.”.Lee Harding is a Western Standard contributor living in Saskatchewan.
