Residential school ‘denialists’ growing increasingly violent, special interlocutor warns

Canada has a role to play to combat this sentiment and that “urgent consideration” should be given to what legal tools exist to address the problem, Kimberly Murray says.

The independent special interlocutor on unmarked graves says “urgent consideration” should be given to legal mechanisms as a way for Canada to combat residential school denialism.

Kimberly Murray made that call in an interim report released Friday, just over a year after she was appointed to an advisory role focused on how Ottawa can help Indigenous communities search for children who died and disappeared from residential schools.

The former executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada spent much of the past year travelling the country and hearing from different communities, experts and survivors.

The Liberal government created her role as it looked for ways to respond to First Nations from across Western Canada and in parts of Ontario using ground-penetrating radar to search former residential school sites for possible unmarked graves.

In her interim report, Murray raised concerns about increasing attacks from “denialists” who challenge communities when they announce the discovery of possible unmarked graves.

“This violence is prolific,” the report said. “And takes place via email, telephone, social media, op-eds and, at times, through in-person confrontations.”

Murray listed several examples, including after the May 2021 announcement by the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation that it had discovered what are believed to be 215 unmarked graves at the former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

The findings garnered international media attention and triggered an outpouring of grief, shock and anger from across the country, both in Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.