The fifth anniversary of the claim that the remains of 215 Indian residential school students had been discovered at Kamloops, BC, has come and gone. Despite the fact that millions of dollars have been spent, and not one body has been found, there have been no apologies from those who made the claim. Quite the contrary, Canada’s Indian chiefs are now demanding the criminal prosecution of anyone who even questions the claim. As they see it, anyone disputing their claim — or even claiming that former residential school students had positive experiences at the schools — should be found guilty of “residential school denialism,” and severely sanctioned — even jailed.Ottawa appears to be ready to oblige. Bill C-413 would make me a criminal for writing this article — and perhaps you for reading it and passing it on.But if they get their way, they had better build a very big jail. And they will have to be prepared to throw many former residential school students in that jail. Because it is not hard to find positive residential school experiences described by former students.Here is an example of a man heaping praise on his residential school and the dedicated people there who gave him a first-class education. According to him, if not for the years he spent at his residential school, he would have died as a drunk on skid row, like so many of his reserve friends. Instead, he went on to become a successful lawyer. He credited the 14 years he spent at a residential school for making that success possible. That fellow is Wilton Littlechild, who happens to be one of the three Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Commissioners. He certainly changed his tune later, but for most of his life, he and his family considered themselves very fortunate for his education at the school. Every year, the family and community held a picnic at their rural home, with the chiefs in attendance, to honour the teachers and staff who gave their son and friends the education so many Indians didn’t receive.Littleton shared this revelation during a 2011 interview with University of New Brunswick students and at a TRC hearing. You can read the full interview at Speak Truth to Power Canada. .Will Mr. Littlechild be jailed for making these comments about his overwhelmingly positive experience at his residential school?And while we are on the subject of TRC commissioners, here is what the late Commissioner Murray Sinclair had to say about residential schools.“While the TRC heard many experiences of unspeakable abuse, we have been heartened by testimonies which affirm the dedication and compassion of committed educators who sought to nurture the children in their care. These experiences must also be heard."Would Sinclair have been prosecuted for that?Sinclair’s grandmother — the grandmother who raised him, and who Sinclair credited for his success — received her education at a residential school. Would the chiefs have her jailed for repeatedly declaring how lucky she had been to have had a residential school education?Then there is the famous Indian playwright and musician, Tomson Highway, who wrote a book about his experiences at the Guy Hill Residential School near The Pas, Manitoba. He described his experience there as overwhelmingly positive..“You may have heard stories from 7,000 witnesses in the process that were negative," he adds. "But what you haven't heard are the 7,000 reports that were positive stories. There are many very successful people today that went to those schools and have brilliant careers and are very functional people, very happy people like myself. I have a thriving international career, and it wouldn't have happened without that school.”We didn’t hear the positive stories because the TRC Report actively discouraged the telling of those stories. It wanted only the negative stories. The truth is that the TRC was a highly political, biased body that deliberately omitted the positive and grotesquely exaggerated the negative. Its report was not objective; it was a victims’ manifesto.Here is more of Highway’s description of his residential school experience — a description that was actively suppressed.“All we hear is the negative stuff, nobody's interested in the positive, the joy in that school. Nine of the happiest years of my life I spent it at that school. I learned your language, for God's sake. Have you learned my language? No, so who's the privileged one and who is underprivileged?Highway’s book, “Permanent Astonishment,” remains what is by far the best firsthand account of a residential school student’s experience. He refuses to call himself a “survivor” for obvious reasons — why would he equate his wonderful experience with the terrible plight of doomed Jews during the Holocaust? That term “deniers” is deliberately loaded, and Highway knows that he was being used when Indian activists tried to force the term on him.Other well-known Indian leaders also spoke very highly of their residential schools and their experiences there. Senator James Gladstone was one. Former Liberal federal cabinet minister and senator, Len Marchand, was another. Marchand’s only complaint about his Kamloops Indian Residential School was that the potatoes served at supper were watery. He also wrote a book that refers to his experiences at the school. Former Manitoba Attorney General James McCrae gives more detail here..And, by the way, there were no claims of wrongful deaths or secret burials in Marchand’s book — for the simple reason that those fables were concocted decades after he graduated from the school.Then there are the hundreds of positive accounts from less famous former students.Alberta Report did an extensive report in the 1990s, before the residential school discussion became so political (and so lucrative). Their reporter interviewed dozens of former residential school students who were all willing to candidly discuss their experiences. It is interesting to read their honest accounts. Roughly half were negative, and half were positive.There have also been books, such as “Tapping the Gift,” describing positive accounts from former residential school students, who speak warmly about the teachers, priests, nuns, ministers, and other workers who did their best to provide them with an education that most other Indian children were not receiving.For that matter, there is an entire chapter in the TRC Report, entitled “Warm Memories,” that is devoted entirely to “survivors,” describing their positive experiences at their residential schools. How the TRC can honestly describe these people as “survivors” is a mystery. How the Indian activists can call for the criminalization of anyone who observes honestly that some students had good experiences at residential schools when their own “bible” — the TRC Report — contains firsthand descriptions of exactly those good experiences is similarly mystifying.Then there are the many documented signs of support for residential schools from Indian leaders and community members. How many people know that the infamous Kamloops Indian Residential School was built largely because of strong support for its construction by Chief Louis Clexlixqen? Or that when arsonists burned the Cross Lake Residential School to the ground, the Indian members of the community petitioned the federal government for years to have it finally rebuilt? .Or that an Alberta Indian community sued the federal government to stop the government from closing their residential school?These are not isolated incidents. They are but a few of many examples of Indian leaders and entire communities actively supporting residential school education. They did so because the day school education available to their children just wasn’t working. They wanted something better for their children.None of this is to deny that many Indian children reported bad experiences at residential schools, and that the government and churches did many things wrong during the 100-plus years when residential schools operated. But the large volume of documented positive experiences makes risible the activists’ demands that anyone daring to say anything positive about residential schools should be denounced and prosecuted.The fact is that before residential schools were basically turned into child welfare institutions in the 1950s and 60s, most of the testimonials from former students were positive. Generally, the children who attended the schools in the earlier years were from the leading families on the reserves. The chief’s children would attend residential schools, while the poorer children would attend the inferior day schools, or would not attend school at all. Imagine the lives of those uneducated, illiterate, unskilled people. Grim.But even in the later years, children from stable families tended to do well at residential schools, and there are plenty of positive testimonials to attest to that. Children placed in the schools for child welfare reasons, on the other hand, did not do well. Unfortunately, it is just a fact that children from highly dysfunctional families, where alcohol abuse is rampant, tend to do poorly wherever they are placed. Indian reserves in the post-war years were devastated by decades of alcohol abuse. That is where the intergenerational trauma suffered by entire Indian communities comes from — not from the residential schools that relatively few attended..As for those who choose to believe that the thousands of mainly decent Canadians who worked at the residential schools over the years wrongfully killed and secretly buried tens of thousands of the children in their care, and that everyone involved kept this secret from the Canadian public for a hundred years, they might as well keep believing those stories. There is no hope for them.The chiefs like to scapegoat residential schools for the very serious problems in their communities, such as fetal alcohol, intergenerational incest, rape, violence, and addictions — problems that they don’t even try to solve. And many of those unfortunate children from those dysfunctional homes would rather blame their schools, instead of putting the blame where it belongs — on their dysfunctional families and communities. Residential schools have become Canada’s perfect scapegoat. Paul Bunner had this figured out many years ago.Another person who could easily put a stop to Bill C-14’s egregious attempt to suppress the truth is our own Prime Minister, Mark Carney. His father, Robert Carney, was a highly respected educator who was intimately involved with residential school education. Robert Carney never hesitated to criticize the residential school system where criticism was needed, but he also strongly supported indigenous education, and that included support for residential school education. He understood the positives, as well as the negatives. So does his son. He must speak up.If he doesn’t and these radical Indian chiefs succeed in having truth-tellers, like Professors Tom Flanagan and Frances Widdowson, thrown in jail, they will have to build a jail big enough for the 7,000 former students Tompson Highway mentioned who showed gratitude for their opportunity to attend a residential school.And if the chiefs want to prosecute me for telling the truth, they will have to build the jail even bigger, because there is a growing number of us who won’t be bullied.
