Hymie Rubenstein, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba, is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.In an August 12 media advisory, the government agency Parks Canada announced a plaque unveiling ceremony scheduled for August 14 to commemorate the “historic significance” of Manitoba’s former Portage La Prairie Indian Residential School (Portage IRS).According to the advisory, the long-shuttered Portage IRS was built in 1914-1915 as part of a system “whereby the federal government and certain churches and religious organizations worked together to assimilate Indigenous children as part of a broad set of efforts to destroy Indigenous cultures and identities and suppress Indigenous histories.”“Destroy Indigenous cultures” certainly is a less inflammatory designation than “cultural genocide,” the term popularized by the 2015 final report of the federally sponsored Truth and Residential Commission (TRC) to describe the intent and outcome of Canada’s IRSs..EDITORIAL: BC nurse's $94,000 fine shows Canada's free speech crisis.Former prime minister Justin Trudeau in a 2015 statement told the CBC: “I accept the Commission’s report including the fact they used the word ‘genocide.’”According to Blacklock’s Reporter, Parks Canada quietly deleted all reference to “genocide” on August 13 in its sixth historic site designation of an IRS. This is a recent deletion, says Blacklock’s Reporter, because the agency as recently as February 12 claimed the schools fostered “cultural genocide.”No explanation was given for this change in terminology..No reason was given for a closely related change in terminology by the Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, formally called the Kamloops Indian Band. On May 27, 2021, the Band’s chief “confirm[ed] an unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented by the Kamloops Indian Residential School. This past weekend, with the help of a ground penetrating radar specialist, the stark truth of the preliminary findings came to light — the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School.”On May 18, 2024, the Band suddenly changed its designation of “confirmation of the remains of 215 children” to “the confirmation of 215 anomalies,” meaning soil disturbances of unknown content, yet continued to insist it had “confirmed an unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented.”.EDITORIAL: CBC's gaslighting defence of ‘two-tier’ justice for migrants.The dropping of the genocide label by Parks Canada and the switch from “remains” to “anomalies” by the Kamloops Band are straightforward reminders of William Shakespeare's fictional play Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet famously asks, "What's in a name?" and answers that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” This line has since been used to argue that the name of something is irrelevant to its true nature or essence. Juliet is simply, but elegantly, saying that Romeo's family name, Montague, shouldn't prevent them from being together because the name itself doesn't change who he is.When used to summarize the purpose or operation of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools, terms like “destroy indigenous cultures,” “forced assimilation,” “cultural genocide,” and unqualified “genocide” are equally rancid because their “true nature or essence” are said to be confirmed by aboriginal children physically forced to attend terribly abusive institutions devoted to destroying their cultures, the results of this destructive process transmitted like some contagious disease from generation to generation..Echoes of Shakespearean fiction also reverberate at the more famous Kamloops IRS where Parks Canada continues to promote the following:“As part of the government policy of forced assimilation, these institutions separated Indigenous children from their families and communities in order to eradicate their cultures, spiritualities, languages, and traditions … Many, including Pope Francis and the Canadian House of Commons, have referred to it [the effect of school attendance] as genocide.”“Forcibly removed from their homes, these children experienced physical, emotional, spiritual, and sexual abuse, forced labour, malnutrition, inadequate and overcrowded living conditions, poor healthcare, and high rates of infectious diseases and death …The traumas experienced by Survivors have had profound, lifelong, and intergenerational consequences that continue today.”.MORGAN: The horrors of communism are being forgotten.Parks Canada has also claimed that “Thousands of children died at residential schools, and the burial sites of many remain unknown.”As for the PLPIRS, Parks Canada opined:“The design of this three-storey building is typical of residential schools built in the early 20th century and reflects the norms of Euro-Canadian school design. Its imposing size, confining and institutional configuration, and isolated site generated feelings of dislocation, intimidation, and fear in the Indigenous children who lived there. The building was not culturally appropriate for children who were accustomed to living in familiar, open environments where they were free to explore.” .These claims come straight out of the historically and culturally decontextualized six-volume 2015 TRC report. Like the Report, Parks Canada fails to mention that nearly identical assertions have been made about boarding schools for the children of elite parents around the world.Prime Minister Carney has not repeated the residential school genocide assertion promoted by his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, since taking office on March 14. Nor has he spoken about the allegations of schoolchildren’s hidden graves at IRSs across the country.There is no way to know whether Carney has been influenced by internal Parks Canada memos disclosed on July 3 showing that its managers were privately skeptical of the “missing children buried in unmarked graves” claim based on the inconclusive technique called ground-penetrating radar..RUBENSTEIN: Is indigenous approval now mandatory?.“Ground-penetrating radar often throws up false positives, anomalies that are not indicative of anything significant,” one Parks Canada consultant wrote to management. “I suggest that until there is further investigation of the sites at Kamloops, the report refer to them as ‘possible graves’ or ‘probable graves’ or ‘likely graves’ rather than ‘graves.’”“Authors refer to the 215 ground-penetrating radar hits that were reported in 2021 as ‘graves’ or ‘burials,’” wrote the consultant. “But none of these sites have been investigated further to determine that they are graves.”No remains have been recovered to date, though the Kamloops Indian Band received $12.1 million in federal funding for field work, including “exhumation of remains,” coroners’ analysis, and DNA testing..Regarding the other school accusations — forcible IRS attendance of children seized from the loving arms of their parents, chronic physical, emotional, spiritual, and sexual abuse, forced labour, malnutrition, poor living conditions, inadequate healthcare, high rates of infectious diseases and death, thousands of missing children buried in unmarked graves, and devastating intergenerational trauma — they have all been carefully debunked or properly contextualized by skilled and objective researchers here, here, here, here, and here.Four years have passed since the Kamloops Band announced its burial “confirmation.” That message and dozens of copycat dispatches like it from coast to coast to coast are slowly beginning to fall on deaf ears, as a just released Angus Reid poll shows.According to the poll, 63% of Canadians and 56% of indigenous people believe that further evidence through exhumation is necessary to accept that the physical remains of children are buried at the site..COHEN: How to solve Canada’s human rights commissions problem in one easy step: Shut them all down.While Canadians are beginning to question the accepted IRS narrative, the poll nevertheless showed that two-thirds (68%) believe that the IRS project was a form of cultural genocide. Half (54%) also say that Canada needs to keep addressing the destructive legacy left by these schools on indigenous people.Other results in this poll also suggest that it will take a long time and much more impartial research to unmask the prevailing IRS narrative as perhaps the greatest delusion in our country’s history.In the meantime, it is unlikely that there will be any official government rejoinder or much informal reaction, let alone fact-based pushback, from indigenous actors because of the Parks Canada name change and the results of the Angus Reid poll, with the exception of continued charges of “residential school denialism” from those benefiting from or hyper-committed to the boarding school hoax.As for brilliant playwright Shakespeare, it seems inconceivable that he could have invented such a phantasmagorical work as this.Hymie Rubenstein, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba, is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
