A commentary by a former daily newspaper reporter in Nanaimo.
No doubt, things once unspeakable and for too long unspoken happened to First Nations chidren at residential schools in sa国际传媒.
It is a tragic legacy that requires both silent respect and vehement confirmation.
When those details were first revealed publicly at the Blackwater civil trial in Nanaimo in 1998, the lead case in which the federal government and various churches were sued for what they did and did not do at residential schools, to be present as a reporter was on one hand a privilege. On the other it was a jolt to see the unwholesome things that can and do happen to those who lack privilege.
At the now defunct Nanaimo Daily Free Press/Daily News we gave extensive coverage to both the Blackwater civil trial, as survivors sought redress from those who established and ran the Alberni Indian Residential School in Port Alberni and several other such heinous institutions in sa国际传媒, and related criminal hearings held at the Nanaimo court house.
The ongoing allegation that former residential schools might be sites of multiple secret burials is not consistent with evidence I heard over many weeks covering the Blackwater trial. None of the plaintiffs mentioned such harrowing scenarios in their testimony. They testified to a lot of other horrific things, but not multiple deaths and secret burials. If they did, we would not be where we are now.
A former AIRS staff member who took the stand for the plaintiffs, a woman threatened with her job for seeking to address indignities at AIRS while working there in the 1960s, a woman of integrity who would have been in a position to have heard of such undocumented deaths and burials of children at least at AIRS if not elsewhere, made no such revelations.
Nevertheless, such allegations are not new. Claims of multiple suspicious child deaths and secret burials at residential schools were made at that time, 25 years ago. And nothing factual could be located at that time to support publishing those claims: No one could provide us with first-hand witness accounts of such deaths and burials; no dates, names or exact locations were available; no supporting documents were provided or emerged.
Seeking more information, I asked the RCMP officer who then led the residential-school criminal investigation team in sa国际传媒 about these allegations. If the RCMP had caught even a whiff of enough evidence to back up such allegations, he said, they would have responded with shovels and the required resources. But their inquiries could find no substance to the allegations.
Did First Nations children die at residential schools? Inevitably, though numbers are imprecise. Were there surreptitious burials? Possibly.
Were numerous First Nations children buried at residential schools and forgotten until now? If ground-penetrating radar and student lists indicate that happened it is yet to be proven conclusively, as fact with concrete evidence and accurate and exact data.
Further complicating this situation is the effort to now outlaw what is being called “residential school denialism,” questioning these claims of multiple deaths and secret burials. It has been proposed by special interlocutor Kimberly Murray that new legislation to outlaw “residential school denialism” should be drafted, the result of which would be to make it illegal to raise such questions.
This is a troubling development for more than trying to criminalize dissent. Any effort to characterize residential schools in the main as places where multiple deaths and burials were covered up, when more evidence is required, risks displacing the one established fact we do know about that system: It permanently scarred and damaged the lives of thousands of Indigenous children. For that there is no forgiveness.
There can, however, be reconciliation. But reconciliation has a prerequisite: Truth.
If those who ran residential schools did hide multiple bodies of children in unmarked graves, then the seriousness of that allegation requires more than ground-penetrating radar and old student lists.
Instead of looking to what is effectively a gag law, First Nations and the federal government must look to establish a team of independent, experienced and qualified investigators to produce a definitive report with clear and yes-or-no findings.
Of course, we must entertain the possibility that incontrovertible evidence might show that mulitiple child deaths and hidden burials did occur.
Such a revelation would dramatically transform sa国际传媒 and Canadian history, and we would have to face up to that with all the moral courage we can muster.
In Ireland, where it was revealed that 796 babies and children were surreptitiously buried in a septic field at a Catholic-run institution for unwed mothers in the west of that country between 1925 and 1961, excavations, forensic analysis and DNA tests are being conducted.
If similar atrocities at residential schools in sa国际传媒 are a real possibility then we need to do the same — excavations, forensic analysis and DNA testing — for three reasons.
• First and foremost, for the sake of any victims and their survivors.
• Second, anyone still living who perpetrated such an atrocity must be prosecuted regardless of their age.
• And third, the truth is required to underpin reconciliation. We only move forward by knowing, admitting, and acknowledging the truth, no matter how painful, ugly or odious.
Failing that, and if dissent does become a crime, sa国际传媒 risks becoming a moribund nation made up of a fearful and suspicious population.
Should that happen, we have not only learned nothing from the residential school calamity but laid the groundwork for the next barbarous iniquity.
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