September 23, 2026
The information in this report may be upsetting for some because it contains content relating to the deaths and forced disappearances of children at former Indian Residential Schools and other institutions. If you require immediate support, please contact the following toll-free:
The Indian Residential School Survivors Society’s 24/7 Crisis Support Line: 1-800-721-0066
The 24-hour National Indian Residential School Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419
The Hope for Wellness Help Line: 1-855-242-3310, or by online chat at hopeforwellness.ca
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IN TRUTH BEFORE RECONCILIATION: CONFRONTING RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL DENIALISM, nearly two dozen historians, educators, Survivors, archivists, and archeologists join editors Niigaan Sinclair and Sean Carlton in subjecting to critical analysis the discursive methods used by residential school deniers.
In the book’s introduction, the editors define residential school denialism as “the rejection, minimization, distortion, or misrepresentation of basic facts about residential schooling to shake public confidence in the truth and undermine reconciliation efforts.”
They write that denialists “rarely say that residential schools never existed, and many … even acknowledge some of the system’s harm and abuse.” Instead, they continue, denialism is “a kind of sophistry similar in nature to Holocaust denialism … where bad faith discourse is used to question or downplay established truths in order to minimize claims of genocide and protect guilty parties.”
Launched in September 2026 with a panel discussion at McNally Robinson in Winnipeg, the book in its final chapter contains an interview with Kimberly Murray, the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools (IRS). Appointed by the federal government in 2022, the Independent Special Interlocutor released her Final Report in October 2024.
The report includes Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience: Unmarked Burials and Mass Graves of Missing and Disappeared Indigenous Children in Canada, a 256-page historical report that contains several Appendixes, among them historical and contemporary information about select IRS cemeteries and burial grounds—including two in British Columbia, St. Eugene’s in Cranbook and Lejac near Vanderhoof. (At Lejac, community-led geophysical searches continue, while potential involvement of an archaeological team is contemplated. A rich collection of education resources may be downloaded from the Lejac Site Search website.)
In the 285-page Executive Summary, the Independent Special Interlocutor included a section called “Fighting Denialism: Reframing Collective Memory, National History, and Commemoration”. There, she wrote:
Indian Residential School denialism is “not the outright denial of the Indian Residential School (IRS) system’s existence, but rather the rejection or misrepresentation of basic facts about residential schooling to undermine truth and reconciliation efforts.… The end game of denialism is to obscure truth about Canada’s IRS system in ways that ultimately protect the status quo as well as guilty parties.”637 There are several key elements of this definition that should be emphasized:
- It is not the existence of the Indian Residential School System that is being denied: it is the intent, outcomes, and impacts of the System.
- This form of denialism relies on rejecting or misrepresenting the well-established facts about the System. It relies on the techniques of historical research and analysis and falsely presents itself as a correction of the historical record.
- This denialism is not a simple misunderstanding of the facts: whether consciously or unconsciously, denialists are working towards the accomplishment of psychological, practical, or political goals.
- Indian Residential School denialism must be taken seriously because it puts at risk the important work of truth and reconciliation. It should not be dismissed as a harmless fringe phenomenon.
637. Daniel Heath and Sean Carleton, “Truth before Reconciliation: 8 Ways to Identify and Confront Residential School Denialism,” The Conversation, August 5, 2021, https://theconversation.com/truth-before-reconciliation-8-ways-toidentify-and-confront-residential-school-denialism-164692. For an example of the positive images of Indian Residential Schools government and church officials portrayed to the Canadian public, see “Canadian Residential School Propaganda Video 1955,” YouTube, May 2, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_V4d7sXoqU.
In a later section called “Developing Historically Literate Citizens: Public History Education, Memorialization, and Commemoration,” the Independent Special Interlocutor wrote [footnotes omitted]:
Creating a more truthful and inclusive national history to counter the denialism of settler amnesty and impunity requires acknowledging that genocide and mass human rights violations against Indigenous Peoples are part of Canada’s history. Governments have an important and ever-growing role in shaping and preserving collective memory, identity, and national history through both informal and formal education about a nation’s past, including:
- Civic celebrations and commemorations, such as public holidays and days of remembrance;
- Designating and preserving “sites of memory,” such as heritage sites, archives, cemeteries, and museums;
- Funding cultural productions, such as Canada’s “Heritage Minutes”;
- Developing and overseeing educational curricula; and
- Funding scholarly research.
The work of the TRC in Canada can be understood as an effort to build a new collective memory for Canadians, thereby transforming Canadian identity and history. The TRC concluded that:
Reshaping national history is a public process, one that happens through discussion, sharing, and commemoration. As Canadians gather in public spaces to share their memories, beliefs, and ideas about the past with others, our collective understanding of the present and future is formed.
The TRC’s Calls to Action emphasized a collective responsibility to understand and come to terms with the truth of the Indian Residential Schools System as a foundation for the work of reconciliation.
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We acknowledge that the land on which we work is the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.