One of two things has happened on the site of the former Indian residential school site in Kamloops BC..Either one of the most horrific of mass murders of children in history occurred, or one of the most socially damaging hoaxes in modern history has occurred..In either case, it's critical that excavations are carried out to confirm what happened. While it has been more than two years since over 200 sites considered to be the possible graves of children were identified with ground penetrating radar (GPR), no further investigation into the matter appears to have been done..Could you imagine the outrage if we never excavated and investigated at the Pickton farm site when it was discovered that murders had taken place there? The allegations at the Kamloops school site are more horrific and involve several orders more victims than Pickton’s crimes yet there has been no forensic follow up..When the GPR anomalies at the school site were publicly reported in 2021, it rocked the nation and made international headlines. Protests erupted and over 70 churches were burned to the ground. Canadian flags were kept at half mast for over six months, a new national holiday was created to address the tragedy, and the government floodgates of spending and apologies opened..Yet no further investigation was done..People are starting to speak up. Questions are being asked and why shouldn’t they be? Stories claimed that 200 children were killed and surreptitiously buried in an apple orchard in the 1950s and 1960s. If this is true, the perpetrators may still be alive and on the loose. We should be bringing them to justice. Also, shouldn’t we try to identify these victims so the remains can be repatriated to their families?.In response to the questions people have been asking, the government has responded by saying it may illegalize the questions. An independent special interlocutor on unmarked graves has asked the justice department to illegalize what they are calling “residential school denialism” and Justice Minister David Lametti has said he is open to the idea. The person assigned to dealing with the alleged graves appears to be more concerned with shutting down discourse than actually dealing with the graves..They are using the term “denialism” to try and draw a parallel to holocaust deniers of course. There are several reasons we can’t compare questioning of the lack of investigation into alleged graves with questioning the existence of the holocaust..To begin with, there were records tracking the horrific mass murder carried out during the holocaust. The Nazis were meticulous record keepers. It was known who entered the camps and who was killed. Records alone demonstrated the murder of millions..Residential schools kept records as well. The schools needed to do so if only to ensure they got their government transfers per child. Deaths were recorded as well but there are no records of over 200 children being buried in Kamloops..The holocaust had witnesses in the millions from allied and Russian liberators, to local citizens, to survivors, to camp guards. The accounts of the atrocities committed were well corroborated..While there are stories of children being hung from hooks in the furnace room at the Kamloops school and claims that children were taken out in the night and forced to dig graves to bury their compatriots, there are no corroborating witnesses..The holocaust left millions of families seeking lost loved ones for decades..There are no records of any families claiming to have had children disappear at the Kamloops residential school site. Where did these kids come from and where were their families?.Most importantly in countering deniers, the holocaust had bodies. Millions of them from pits filled with charred bones and ash to mass graves to piles of bodies found by liberators..At the Kamloops site, not a single body has been recovered..GPR is an effective tool for finding ground disturbances but it can’t distinguish between what could be a grave or an old outhouse pit. Excavations must be done and this was stated as part of the original report on the GPR anomalies found at the Kamloops site..Six months after the discovery of anomalies at the Kamloops site, a GPR survey was carried out on the site of a former hospital in Edmonton where it was alleged that Indigenous victims of ill treatment were buried. The GPR identified 34 anomalies thought to be graves. With the supervision of indigenous elders, the anomalies were all carefully excavated over the course of several days. No human remains were found. .It is not unreasonable or hateful to ask questions about something as important as the possible mass murder of children..Demanding an investigation of these alleged crimes is the opposite of denialism..It’s outrageous that we have allowed the nation to be turned upside down over the GPR anomalies while refusing to investigate further..There are some very valid reasons to question what may or may not have happened in the old apple orchard in Kamloops..Illegalizing questions won’t make them stop. It will only convince people something is being covered up..If we want to end what is being called “denialism”, we need to start digging..Show us the bodies. Then we can get on with trying to find the killers and giving closure to the families..Due to a high level of spam content being posted in our comment section below, all comments undergo manual approval by a staff member during regular business hours (Monday - Friday). Your patience is appreciated.
