Native Leaders Demand "Reconciliation" but Obfuscate the Truth

The truth is now "disgusting, repugnant and ugly," whenever it diverges from the official storyline, which is often.

Mar 04, 2025

Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. — Christopher Hitchens

Here's a strange: it matters much less if a thing is true or false than it does who says the thing. What's worse is that in the world of news and journalism, not only has the truth ceased to matter, but it seems that it no longer matters a whole lot that the truth has ceased to matter.

A perfect example of this phenomenon is the swift and fierce reaction to B.C. Conservative MLA Dallas Brodie’s statement on X, where she said:

The number of child burials at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site is zero.

For this statement, she was “called out” by her own leader as well as the usual suspects.

The Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) immediately released a statement by their president, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip which stated, in part:

“The comments made by Ms. Brodie are deeply disturbing, and ignore the ample physical, archival, and testimonial evidence which detail horrific human rights abuses and atrocities against Indigenous peoples at Residential Schools. Racist denialist rhetoric from those who feel threatened by the truth about Canada and the Churches’ crimes against Indigenous peoples at Residential Schools come as no surprise; however, for someone in an elected position and holding the important role of Attorney General Critic to deny well-documented facts and misrepresent the truth to the public in this way is beyond troubling.”

“Ample evidence,” eh? Evidently these people have a different interpretation of that word than the rest of us, since that was quite literally the entire point of Ms. Brodie’s post on X.

Chief Phillip also added in a subsequent interview with CBC, "I find such remarks to be absolutely disgusting, repugnant and ugly."

This (we are told) is denialism. Others would simply call it truth. A casual observer might also assume that this is what the so-called Truth and Reconciliation people are interested in as well. Evidently that's not quite the case.

Sean Carlton, a self-described “settler-scholar” and “residential school denialism expert” from just down the road from me at the University of Winnipeg says that it is merely a “strategy to try and shake public confidence in established truth by minimizing, downplaying and twisting facts… to shake public confidence in the truth."

Riiiiight. Established truth. Twisting facts. So far the only truth that's been established here is precisely what Dallas Brodie said in her X post: zero confirmed child burials.

And as far as twisting facts goes, that descriptor really only applies to those in charge of telling us what we are supposed to believe - people like Sean Carlton, most politicians, and these indigenous chiefs.

Here's another thing Carlton said:

If they can deligitimize Kamloops, then they can deligitimize the entire residential school narrative.

Did he seriously mean to say this? Because maybe this is precisely what they're really afraid of. I mean, so far there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of legitimacy left in Kamloops. And this is hardly the fault of the "denialists," or "misinformation". It's just that more people are starting to notice and starting to ask some of those questions that our news media has never bothered to ask. So I can see why they're concerned. Can you imagine if someone ever went down there and actually stuck a shovel in the ground and found nothing? All those months with the country's flags at half-mast, all those churches burned, statues torn down, names changed, a brand new statutory holiday, allegations of genocide, hundreds of millions of dollars spent (on what we're not sure), all those T-shirts with 𝟮𝟭𝟱 emblazoned across the front. All because of a bunch of anomalies? You better believe they don't want Kamloops delegitimized.

To put this in perspective, you can go to Google Maps right now, and see pictures of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site, as well as several pictures of a monument lamenting those “who all suffered the genocide period”. Presumably, this is meant to refer to every year the school was in operation, though it's not quite clear from the inscription. I'm also not sure how long this monument has been there, but for sure since 2022.

What I find truly amazing is that Dallas Brodie has refused to take down her post, even after BC Conservative leader John Rustad ordered her to. This is a rare development, but a telling one because it shows that the tolerance for this sort of laissez-faire approach to truth telling is beginning to wear thin.

Thankfully, this issue seems now to have taken on a life of its own, particularly since the publication of Grave Error: How the Media Mislead Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools). This book has been on the top of the best seller list for the last six months or more, which again shows that there are many in this country that are very interested in the truth. That is, the actual truth, rather than a manufactured official story that they're all supposed to just nod along with.

A big part of the problem has been that most people haven't really been paying much attention to this story, so when they listen to those of us that have been, it sounds to them that we're making a big deal out of nothing, and it's much easier for them to believe that we’re all racist bigots. The fact is that Canadians are being taught (or at least encouraged to believe) that Canada is some racist, genocidal cesspool based on indigenous knowings and crazy allegations that no sane person would even believe were they not propagated by our own government - that a group of priests conspired with the government to murder thousands of children, incinerate unwanted, illegitimate babies fathered by priests, and secretly bury them in schoolyards all over the country. There are thousands (maybe millions) of Canadians who still believe that 215 bodies of indigenous children were discovered in Kamloops 4 years ago, as well as many other places around the country, even though not one has been found.

To bring it back to the quote at the top by Christopher Hitchens, not only are these claims extraordinary, but they are quite literally incredible, meaning “without credit” or “impossible to believe”, and they should have discredited that entire story within the first few months, if not sooner. What needs to happen now is an official statement from our government that says precisely this and the allegation of genocide needs to be completely withdrawn by our lawmakers.

I'll leave it to the reader to predict the possibility of that happening any time soon, but until then the country will need to continue to tolerate the voices of this growing cohort of Canadians who really do want the actual truth.