“Lies, damned lies, and statistics” is a well-known phrase describing the persuasive power numbers often have in bolstering weak arguments.This well applies to the sketchy use of figures by B.C.’s Kamloops Indian Band, locally known as Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, in a May 27, 2021, media statement of seismic numerical implications, literally and figuratively:“This past weekend, with the help of a ground penetrating radar [GPR] 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.“‘We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,’ stated Kukpi7 [Chief] Rosanne Casimir. “Some were as young as three years old.”But GPR cannot determine the age or other important features of the soil disturbances it locates; the 215 figure was quickly reduced to 200 on July 15, 2021 after the existence of previous excavations at the site close to the former boarding school “that could have influenced the results” was discovered; and GPR can’t organic material, human or otherwise.What failed to be acknowledge as well, presumably based on the neglect of the history of the site, was that there had been considerable sub-surface disruption at the site over the decades, including the laying of sewage tiles whose layout could have given the appearance of grave shafts.More important, three years to the day later, there has been no effort to disinter even a single presumed burial site a necessity to confirm the existence of buried children. An unwillingness even to employ a minimally intrusive technique like core sampling despite no indigenous or Christian spiritual taboo on exhuming buried remains when foul play is suspected continues to be troubling.Still, despite making explosive claims about "missing children" and "undocumented deaths," Chief Casimir was careful to add that, "At this time, we have more questions than answers,” in her May 27, 2021 statement.This note of caution didn’t stop the media, politicians, and nearly everyone else from acting as if they had more answers than questions.The Kamloops discovery became Canada's George Floyd moment. There were angry vigils and public displays of grief and shame almost instantly. Flags on government buildings were lowered to half-mast for nearly six months. Statues of former Canadian heroes were defaced, destroyed, or removed, alongside growing demands to rename streets and public schools. At least 85 Catholic Churches were set ablaze or vandalized both on and off indigenous reserves.Some of this outrage may have been provoked by Chief Casimir herself. After first denying the widespread media account that there was evidence of a “mass grave,” a sign of possible criminal activity, she reversed course at a September 2021 meeting of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations in a resolution stating that “215 unmarked mass graves of children were located utilizing ground-penetrating radar” at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.From 215 bodies to 200, then back to 215, and a back and forth from individual to mass burials does nothing to enhance the credibility of the original announcement or the work behind it. Instead, it has turned a possible tragedy into a tragicomic parody of truth telling.Still, the furor over and false allegations about the “discovery” of buried students has not subsided. The Canadian Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations (CIR) confirmed on May 8 it had spent $7.9 million to fund a study of these 215 allegedly unmarked graves, part of the $320 million in new money the federal government committed in August 2021 for programmes to help indigenous communities search burial sites at former residential schools and to emotionally support survivors and their communities.But there has there been no public accounting of what became of the $7.9 million by either the leadership of the Kamloops reserve or the Canadian government, according to Blacklock's Reporter.Apart from the unconvincing 2021 ground-penetrating radar “disturbed soil” findings, alleged consultation with the families of deceased students who attended the school, and some purported archival research, the results of which have never been released, no other work seems to have been done at the site.Chief Casimir has claimed the RCMP and B.C. Coroners Service were contacted shortly after the May 2021 discovery, but has never elaborated on this assertion. The RCMP's local division said in a May 2022 statement, “While we did open an investigative file, we are not actively investigating.”Why such a hands-off decision to a story about alleged criminality reported around the world was made may never be revealed though it is likely that either police and forensic authorities dismissed it as indigenous myth making or the federal government ordered local authorities to give full control over the matter to the band. Nevertheless, unfunded but meticulous historical research by dozens of objective scholars and other writers whose results have been published in two edited volumes and several hundred essays found here, here, here, here, and here reveals the Kamloops scandal and others like it as the largest hoax in Canadian history.This careful scholarly research has found that no "missing children" went away to residential schools and were never heard from again; instead, their attendance was carefully recorded from registration to completion. The suggestion that missing children were murdered by school personnel after being subjected to physical and sexual abuse or even outright torture had also been exposed as a totally undocumented blood libel. In fact, no human remains have been located using ground-penetrating radar at any former Indian Residential School save for persons properly registered and buried in known and named cemeteries.This has not prevented indigenous leaders like Dene National Chief Gerald Antoine from relentlessly peddling a mass murder canard by claiming in late March “residential schools amounted to genocide and a crime.” “The truth is being revealed,” Antoine said. “There are many people who are missing,” though he could not name a single missing child.Chief Antoine and genocide peddlers like him need to answer a simple question: why is the Jewish Holocaust the best documented mass murder event in human history while its nearly 500-year alleged Canadian indigenous counterpart has been so carefully hidden that the name of even a single victim is unknown. Even Kimberly Murray, the federal government's special interlocutor on the missing children, unmarked graves, and burial sites, has dismissed the assertion that many children are “missing” because they were murdered and tossed in unmarked graves. On March 21, 2023, she confirmed the absence of any missing children – as opposed to countless forgotten ones – in her testimony before the federal government Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples when she proclaimed: “The family doesn't know where their loved one is buried. They were taken to a sanatorium [or] an Indian residential school. They were just told that they died. The children aren't missing; they're buried in the cemeteries. They're missing because the families were never told where they're buried. Every indigenous family needs to know where their child is buried. When we find that and we know that they're going to have a little bit closure now, they know the truth and they have some answers, that's what keeps us going.”Though there is no evidence that thousands of children's deaths were not reported to their parents, and lots of evidence to the contrary, Murray's statement repudiates the established indigenous narrative about missing children.As for the Kamloops Indian Band, when asked about the nearly $8 million allocated to uncover the truth about the mass graves, its representatives declined to comment, again highlighting the applicability of the lies, damn lies, and statistics aphorism to a successful hoax employing fake historical grievances aimed at creating a moral panic demonizing all non-indigenous Canadians, the extraction of blood money its transparent goal.The latest revelation coming out of the Kamloops Indian Reserve emerged on May 18, 2024 when it was announced that its offices would be closed on May 23 for a Day of Reflection, presumably because that date was when the results of the GPR study was presented to its officials. The May 18 notice was accompanied by the following words:With the help of a ground penetrating radar specialist, the stark truth of the preliminary findings came to light — the confirmation of 215 anomalies were detected. [emphasis added]Recall that the May 27, 2021 press release, referred to above, contained the following words: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. [emphasis added]:There was no commemoration of the Kamloops “discovery” for the second year in a row accompanied by an inexplicable transformation of “remains” to “anomalies” — soil disturbances of unknown origin or content — a clear repudiation of the original “discovery.”Looking at the big picture, the rent-seeking tragicomedy at Kamloops needs to be seen for what it is: a silly but expensive battle in a larger cultural war against Western civilization. Guess which side is winning?Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a retired professor of anthropology, the University of Manitoba.
