Lance of The Serfs (who is Métis himself) debunks a viral “documentary” full of racist lies from a cadre of odd ducks and usual suspects. Far-right politicians, conspiracy kooks, and racist old cottage-industry opportunists put their heads together and concocted a hot steaming heap of residential school denialism. They assert that nobody actually died at residential schools, and in fact, those schools did those ungrateful Injuns good! And furthermore, if you’re not a denialist, you must be “making a killing” at selling the “lie” that kids ever died in those venerable institutions of godliness!
They really will say anything, won’t they?
Anything but face the terrible fact that those “schools” were often akin to concentration camps, where infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza were permitted to run rampant, physical and sexual abuse were commonplace, and psychological abuse was baked right into the entire program. And that it was all done by our own government, in the name of white supremacy and cultural genocide.
Meanwhile, a lot of inconvenient facts remain: Actual residential school records confirm a large number of deaths. The historical record is clear that the schools were designed to “kill the Indian in the child”. Child-sized skeleton remains have been found clandestinely buried on a number of campuses, confirming the testimonies of survivors who assert that the schools had their own cemeteries. There are even photos of students being forced to dig graves and help bury their deceased classmates in them.
And most damning of all, there’s the testimony of Dr. Peter Bryce, a public-health physician tasked with monitoring the health and hygiene of the students at residential schools. What he found horrified him, and he duly reported on it. So thorough and so embarrassing was Bryce’s condemnation of the program that his official reports upon it were bowdlerized by government censors, and none of the reports’ recommendations even made it to publication, much less implementation. Dr. Bryce was also stripped of his post for having the audacity to actually do his job, and appealed the decision (unsuccessfully) in 1921. He was so indignant about the whole affair that in 1922, he wrote a book titled The Story of a National Crime: Being a Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians of Canada from 1904 to 1921.
Today, Dr. Bryce is honored and recognized as an early humanitarian and supporter of indigenous rights.
It only took a hundred years.
