The Truth is Not Buried in the Earth, It is Buried in Our Pride

Kamloops Indian Residential School, circa 1930 (photo from Parks Canada)

Every May, I am reminded how much work we have left to do in building our nation.

On May 27, 2021, Roseanne Casimir announced an “unthinkable loss” as ground-penetrating radar confirmed regular rows of disturbed earth in regularly spaced grave-sized shapes at the same location where a child’s jawbone had recently been unearthed.

For a year or so, the horror of this discovery seemed to be shared widely enough that the gap between the reality of non-Indigenous Canadians and of First Nations seemed to shrink.  First Nations, Métis and Inuit have always known that residential schools were lethal places for children; after all it was their own family members who had died there. But after Kamloops, many non-Indigenous Canadians finally absorbed what that unthinkable loss was really like.

The truth has been extensively documented, Survivors forced a reckoning with the nation’s churches in the early 2000s, almost bankrupting them with class-action lawsuits before the government rescued them with the promise of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The TRC only scratched the surface in its eight years, documenting more than 4000 student deaths and extrapolating from the gaps in the record that there are likely thousands more. Soil erosion at one former school in Alberta had revealed the bones of more than 70 children.

But we live in a post-truth age. In this age of social media and polarization, emotion trumps truth.

No one can deny that May 27 triggers some intense emotions. Anger surged across both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Sadness gripped many others, triggering memories of trauma.  Some non-Indigenous Canadians expressed shame, with the City of Victoria BC even cancelling their Canada Day celebrations that year.

Emotions override our capacity to assess information objectively, reinforcing the psychological tendency we all have to confirm existing biases. Our inclination to agree or disagree becomes imbued with moral purpose, reducing the likelihood that we might examine information that could challenge those purposes.

Of all the emotions, the one that erases the truth most effectively may be pride.  Anger, sadness, shame, these are negative emotions that few want to hold on to. When their intensity subsides, we return to equilibrium.

But pride has greater staying power. A positive emotion, it helps us attach ourselves to others, further reinforcing the benefits of maintaining the emotion.

Kamloops offended our pride as a nation. The awful realization that residential schools had intentionally harmed generations of children contrasted with our self-image as a nation.

It was too much for many non-Indigenous Canadians. Pride in our country offered many an easy escape from the horror of children dying as a result of institutions our nation created for the purpose of erasing entire nations.

It allowed non-Indigenous Canadians to search for a different truth from the painful one staring us in the face.

Of the thousands of children whose died at residential schools, the focus to a small number – just 215.  That was the number that came up in Chief Casimir’s announcement.

For most non-Indigenous Canadians, the entire question of our colonial history and the blatant, persistent inequality is no longer “how could Canada do this? but “were 215 children buried in Kamloops?”

If we can’t handle the much larger truth, it becomes easier to focus on a smaller truth.  If doubts can be found, perhaps we can then avoid the larger truth altogether.

But aversion to the truth comes at a significant cost for Canada.

It leads to a society that expresses greater sympathy for those who deny the suffering of children than the children themselves.

Just think of the outrage that arose this last week with news that a few privileged members of non-Indigenous society had been caught in a prank TV show.

When news emerged that First Nations comedians had called up prominent denialists who have sought fame for minimizing the harm suffered at residential schools, non-Indigenous Canadians rushed to defend their own, in complete disregard for the thousands of Indigenous children that died in these repressive institutions.

Media coverage invited us to consider the plight of Frances Widdowson, a denialist who has disrupted ceremonies of grieving victims. We were asked to sympathize with Lindsay Shepherd, who wrote a children’s book instructing children not to question the authority of past political leaders responsible for residential schools.

Denying the truth makes us smaller as a nation.

It also weakens our very existence as a country. This past month, we have also been treated to the spectacle of a minority of non-Indigenous Albertans who seek to break up Canada and take land that was granted for our shared use by nation-to-nation treaties. When an Alberta court asserted that treaty rights predate Confederation and so must be taken into account, the Premier of Alberta proposed to remove the rights of Indigenous peoples from our Constitution.

This kind of callous and divisive politics would not take root in a country that acknowledge the truth of our founding.

How do we ensure that Canada not be hijacked by the likes of Frances Widdowson, Lindsay Shepherd and Danielle Smith, that instead we hold firm to our commitment to human rights and the rule of law?

We can start with the truth about residential schools.

We know that denialism is not fought with facts.  Facts speak to truth but not to the more powerful force, emotion. Perhaps it is our emotions we need to mobilize for Canada to be healed from the wounds of colonial rule and forced assimilation.

The emotion that can save us is grief.  Grief for the children whose lives our nation destroyed. And grief for the nation we love, as we acknowledge the harm it made happen.

Grief can lead us to true patriotism.

It takes true love for our country to acknowledge not only what it does right, but what it does wrong.  And then, quietly and without fanfare, to accompany it through the pain, the sweat and the tears of its failures not just through the celebrations of success.

This is a pride that doesn’t bury our past, but that looks at it with our eyes wide open.

Residential schools were a failure of our nation. True patriots allow themselves to acknowledge that.  Perhaps even to feel the crashing waves of sadness that come with the unthinkable loss that Chief Casimir shared. That kind of emotion drives us to make sure the Canada of tomorrow will be better than the Canada that harmed thousands of children.