Canadian Minister Confronted For Pushing Revisionist History Of Anti-Indigenous Schools

Alan Lagimodiere, Manitoba's newly minted minister of Indigenous reconciliation, was skewered by an opposition leader for defending "residential schools."

Mere minutes after being sworn in on Thursday, the new minister of Indigenous reconciliation in Manitoba, Canada, found himself in hot soup for defending the country’s so-called “residential schools,” where thousands of Indigenous children were held after being forcibly taken from their families. Alan Lagimodiere, the minister, was answering a question about the schools at a news conference when an opposition leader interrupted him. “They thought they were doing the right thing,” Lagimodiere said of the people running the residential school system at the time. “In retrospect, it’s easy to judge [the past], but at the time, they really thought that they were doing the right thing.”