Fighting 'denialists' for the truth about unmarked graves and residential schooling
Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation's announcement identifying as many as 215 potential unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
In the year since, the Nation has continued its work to honour and bring home Le Estcwicwéy (The Missing). Many visitors have also traveled to Kamloops in the past year to pay their respects and to show support for Indigenous communities grappling with the ongoing legacies of Canada's Indian Residential School (IRS) system.
While most of the reaction has been respectful, some immediately worked to discredit the findings.
This problem was on full display last week. The day before the Kamloops anniversary, the National Post published a column that suggested the public outcry over the past year was mainly the result of some journalists reporting the findings as "mass graves." Communities have been clear that what is being identified are potential unmarked graves, but the column jumped on the error made by some journalists to then suggest that much of the response — both in Canada and around the world — was erroneous and unjustified.
The New York Post took things further, interviewing prominent denialists to blast the entire situation as fake news and a deliberate hoax to cause outrage.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-residential-schools-unmarked-graves-denialism-1.6474429