Denialist doling out distraction not worth the time of anyone who cares about the truth

Opinion

A former university professor who built a career by attacking the Black Lives Matter movement, “woke-ism” on university campuses, the accounts of residential school survivors and the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is speaking at the University of Manitoba this week.

Her presentation is titled The Grave Error at Kamloops Was a Hoax.

In videos posted online, she promises to confront the leaders of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, researchers on residential schools and the administration of “an unbelievable institution that is being run by activists” in order to address the “lie” that children died and were buried at the former Kamloops Residential School.

Full disclosure: I am one of the people she wants to confront.

I won’t speak her name and am aware that you’re probably going to look her up. If you do, make sure to look up why she was removed from her job as a professor.

’Nuff said.

People who work on truth, reconciliation and the histories and legacies of residential schools get attacked all the time. I’ve written many times about the searches which detected anomalies that suggest graves at residential schools, and I’ve noted that it will take decades to uncover what is, essentially, a needle in a haystack.

This professor’s talk isn’t really about Kamloops, though. It’s about something else.

Like this person, there’s a handful of former professors and politicians in Manitoba who argue residential schools were essentially good and necessary, and that anyone who claims they were harmful, violent or genocidal is spreading propaganda and lies.

They are residential school deniers, and their basic argument is almost always based on the idea Indigenous peoples and their allies dupe Canadians by exaggerating harm that occurred in residential schools, inappropriately blame the government and churches and try to exploit guilt with the goal of making money.

Confronting these claims is, in a word, exhausting.

It’s also a waste of time, because at the core of all of these arguments is the ardent refusal to believe legitimate, peer-reviewed and published academic and archival work.

Confronting arguments advanced by residential school deniers means engaging in near-endless use of random and singular anecdotes, claims with questionable and often unprovable evidence and the central idea that Indigenous communities, academics and institutions who work with them aren’t to be trusted.

In other words, it’s about as worthwhile as arguing gravity exists. Someone can throw a rock into the air and watch it hit the ground 1,000 times, but if someone else simply believes magical fairies are the reason, it’s a pointless endeavour.

To cite just one example, look at reference sections of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report. They contain hundreds of pages of wide-ranging, credentialed and vetted research by widely recognized researchers.

If people won’t read or take the time to consider legitimate work, that is their right. I also have the right not to engage in a clear waste of time. So, on the day this denier speaks on the U of M campus, I will speak to about 3,000 people on live and virtual platforms across the country about how reconciliation is this country’s most important issue to address.

That brings me to why I am writing about this person at all. Since hearing about her invitation, which came from a professor in the economics department, campus has been abuzz with protest plans.

This is what happened at the University of Lethbridge in February 2023. A week before this individual was to speak, a protest attended by both students and faculty led to the event’s cancellation.

The denier seized that attention, went to the campus anyway, and was met with a huge demonstration that prevented her from speaking.

She filed an injunction months later, requiring the university’s administration to allow the cancelled event to take place. She spoke with media (most of whom had never covered her before) and began a lecture tour, profiting from the controversy.

Now, she is promising to go across Canada.

It doesn’t matter. Nonsense is easy to spout, and doing so is a pretty good gig for someone who doesn’t have a job. The rest of us, however, have to deal with the burden of gravity.

I’d encourage people who’ve learned the truth about residential schools from legitimate sources not to be distracted.

The distraction is the real hoax.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca