WAS CANADA'S TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION A SHAM?
What the CBC didn't tell you about Truth and Reconciliation
Hey Folks,
Well, today I’m going to be advancing a controversial theory - that the Canadian doesn’t care about truth and reconciliation.
Actually, I guess that’s not the controversial part. It’s widely accepted amongst people who care about such things is that Canada's “Truth and Reconciliation Era” ended in Januar, 2019, when Justin Trudeau’s Liberals sent a heavily armed SWAT team to invade sovereign Wet’suwet’en territory in Northern B.C.
The story of this historic day is told in the documentary Yintah, which was recently bought by Netflix, who is apparently going to nominate it for an Oscar.
I have yet to see the movie, but given that I have been involved in the Wet’suwet’en struggle for over 10 years, I’m pretty excited that this story is going to be getting out to an international audience. Hopefully the renewed attention provides the boost that the movement needs to actually win.
But that’s not what I want to talk about today. Today I have a controversial thesis to advance - that Canada was never interested in truth or reconciliation to begin with.
For those of you who don’t know, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has basically transformed the public’s understanding of Canadian history.
Ostensibly, it focused on uncovering the truth about Canada's dark history of horrific mistreatment of indigenous people, particularly that of the residential school system.
Because I have many non-Canadian readers, I’ll use Chat GPT to provide a brief history lesson:
Background: The Indian Residential School System
Indian residential schools were government-sponsored religious schools established in the 19th century and funded by the federal government of Canada. Operated mostly by Christian churches, these schools were designed to assimilate Indigenous children into European-Canadian culture.
The aim was to "kill the Indian in the child" by removing them from their families, communities, and languages. Children were often forcibly taken from their homes and subjected to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, neglect, and trauma.
Over 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children attended these schools from the 1880s to the 1990s, with the last school closing in 1996. Many children died from disease, malnutrition, and mistreatment, and their graves were often unmarked.
Early Efforts for Justice
In the 1980s and 1990s, survivors of residential schools began to organize and seek justice for the abuses they endured. Legal cases were launched, and by the early 2000s, a growing movement demanded recognition of the harms caused by the residential school system.
These efforts culminated in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) in 2006, the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history. The agreement was a response to thousands of lawsuits filed by survivors, and it included:
Financial compensation for survivors.
The establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
Funding for healing programs and the creation of a national archive of residential school records.
The Work of the TRC (2008-2015)
The TRC's work was carried out between 2008 and 2015 under the leadership of Justice Murray Sinclair (a First Nations judge), Marie Wilson, and Chief Wilton Littlechild.
Over the course of seven years, the TRC hosted numerous events, including national hearings, community gatherings, and public education sessions, to record the stories of residential school survivors.
In June 2015, the TRC released a summary report that officially labeled the residential school system a form of "cultural genocide." The final report was published in December 2015.
To the best of my knowledge, all of this information is accurate, with the possible exception of graves being unmarked. I believe that in many cases the graves were marked with a wooden cross, which was a common practice at the time. A century later the graves were unmarked, because wood rots when exposed to the elements.
In any case, marking graves is not a traditional practice amongst Turtle Islanders.
There has been much focus on “unmarked graves” in recent years, but no one contests that thousands of children died at residential schools.
Nor does anyone deny that residential schools aimed to assimilate indigenous people into Euro-Canadian culture. Whether you choose to call that policy “assimilation” or “cultural genocide” is a matter of semantic preference. What is certain is that it absolutely failed. There were less than 100,000 indigenous people living in Canada at the time of Confederation. Now there are at least 1.8 million. And although many traditions and languages have been lost, many different indigenous cultures are alive and well in Canada.
As an anarchist, I always had mixed feelings about the TRC, because I believe the government is evil. It struck me as weird that the state was putting so much effort into “Truth and Reconciliation”, because neither of those things tend to benefit evildoers.
That said, there were a lot of very clearly well-intentioned people involved in the Commission, and Canada started actually listening to indigenous people during the Truth and Reconciliation era. I thought that was a very positive development. I still do.
But there is more to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission story than most people know.
For example, did you know that there have more than 30 Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in dozens of countries since the 1970s? I don’t remember the CBC ever mentioning that. Do you?
Here’s a history lesson from Chat GPT:
The first-ever Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established in Uganda in 1974. It was set up by President Idi Amin to investigate human rights violations, though its effectiveness and credibility were highly questionable, as it operated under a regime that continued to commit atrocities.
You read that right. The first Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set by Idi Amin. Save that fun fact for trivia night.
Since then, there have been numerous TRCs in various countries. Here's a list of known Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (or similar bodies) around the world:
Africa
Uganda – 1974
Zimbabwe – 1985
Chad – 1991-1992
South Africa – 1995-2002 (Apartheid-era crimes)
Rwanda – 1999 (Gacaca Courts after the 1994 genocide)
Sierra Leone – 2002-2004 (Civil war)
Liberia – 2005-2009 (Civil war)
Mauritius – 2009-2011 (Slavery and indentured labor)
Kenya – 2008-2013 (Post-election violence)
Tunisia – 2014-2018 (Dictatorship-era human rights abuses)
Burundi – 2014-present (Civil conflict and genocide)
Americas
Chile – 1990-1991 (National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, Pinochet dictatorship)
El Salvador – 1992-1993 (Civil war)
Haiti – 1995-1996 (Military rule)
Guatemala – 1997-1999 (Civil war)
Peru – 2001-2003 (Internal conflict)
Paraguay – 2004-2008 (Dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner)
Ecuador – 2007-2008 (Human rights abuses during military rule)
Panama – 2001-2002 (Military dictatorship)
Colombia – 2016-present (Peace process with FARC rebels)
Canada – 2008-2015 (Residential schools and Indigenous peoples)
Asia
Sri Lanka – 2015-present (Civil war and human rights abuses)
South Korea – 2005-2010 (Colonial and military rule)
East Timor (Timor-Leste) – 2001-2005 (Indonesian occupation)
Nepal – 2015-present (Civil war)
Indonesia (Aceh) – 2016-present (Conflict in Aceh)
Europe
Germany – 1992-1994 (Stasi files and East German communist rule)
Northern Ireland – Ongoing discussions, no formal TRC
Spain – Discussions regarding the Franco era, no formal TRC
Oceania
Solomon Islands – 2008-2012 (Civil conflict)
The exact number can vary depending on how commissions are defined (e.g., if smaller local or thematic commissions are included), but there have been at least 30-40 formal Truth and Reconciliation Commissions across various countries since Uganda's in 1974.
WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF ALL OF THIS?
At this point, I’m not advancing any thesis about truth and reconciliation commissions in general, other than that they are clearly a technique of modern statecraft.
What purpose do they serve? Well, it’s possible that they serve different purposes in different times and places.
If one wanted to be cynical, perhaps one could say that TRCs exist to relegitimize the state when it has lost legitimacy in the eyes of people it claims dominion over. It might also service to improve its reputation internationally.
But before we jump to conclusions, I should mention that the most famous Truth and Reconciliation Commission of all time was undertaken by Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, two of the only heroes the world has been allowed to have in the past 30 years.
I know very little about the history of South Africa, so I’ll have to rely on Chat GPT here.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of South Africa was established in 1995 as part of the country's transition from apartheid to democracy. It was a central component of South Africa’s efforts to deal with the human rights abuses committed during the apartheid era, both by the state and liberation movements. The TRC was tasked with promoting national unity and reconciliation by uncovering the truth about past atrocities.
Key Events and Background:
Apartheid and its Legacy (1948-1994):
From 1948 to 1994, South Africa was governed under the system of apartheid, a regime of racial segregation and discrimination against the non-white majority. The apartheid government used state violence, imprisonment, and torture to suppress resistance, leading to widespread human rights violations.
Anti-apartheid movements, such as the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), fought against the regime, and some of their members also committed acts of violence.
Mandela’s Presidency and the End of Apartheid:
After the fall of apartheid and Nelson Mandela’s election as president in 1994, South Africa sought a peaceful transition to democracy. The new government decided to pursue truth and reconciliation rather than revenge or retribution.
The Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act was passed in 1995, leading to the creation of the TRC.
Structure of the TRC:
The TRC was divided into three committees:
Human Rights Violations Committee: Investigated gross human rights abuses that took place between 1960 and 1994, including killings, torture, and abductions.
Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee: Provided recommendations on how to support the victims of apartheid-era abuses and repair the harm done.
Amnesty Committee: Considered applications for amnesty from individuals who had committed crimes during the apartheid era, granting it in exchange for full disclosure of the truth. This was based on the belief that full disclosure was necessary for reconciliation, and it offered perpetrators a chance for legal immunity if they came forward.
Key Findings:
Revelation of Widespread Abuses:
The TRC heard testimony from over 21,000 victims and witnesses, many of whom had suffered or witnessed torture, murder, and violence. It exposed the extent of human rights violations committed by the apartheid regime, including acts by state security forces, police, and death squads.
It also documented abuses committed by liberation movements, including bombings and attacks on civilians.
Public Hearings and National Engagement:
The TRC held public hearings, which were widely broadcast and attended. This was a critical step in creating transparency and ensuring the public learned about the atrocities committed during apartheid.
These hearings provided a platform for victims to share their stories and for perpetrators to confess their crimes, which was a powerful and emotional aspect of the process.
Amnesty and Controversy:
One of the most controversial aspects of the TRC was its amnesty process. While some saw it as essential for national healing, others criticized it for allowing serious offenders to avoid prosecution if they fully disclosed their crimes.
The TRC granted amnesty to over 1,000 individuals, but many applications were denied, particularly those from officials who failed to give a full account of their actions.
Final Report and Legacy:
The TRC released its final report in 1998, with further volumes added in 2003. The report concluded that the apartheid state had committed widespread human rights violations, which it described as part of a systematic policy of oppression.
The TRC also called for reparations to victims and their families and made a series of recommendations for institutional reforms and measures to prevent future human rights abuses.
The TRC's work is seen as a crucial part of South Africa’s transition, as it allowed the country to confront its violent past while promoting healing and forgiveness.
Impact and Criticism:
Positive Impact: The TRC helped South Africa move forward from its violent history without descending into further conflict. It is considered a pioneering model for restorative justice and has influenced similar truth commissions in other countries.
Criticism: Despite its achievements, the TRC has been criticized for failing to achieve full justice. Many victims were dissatisfied with the amnesty provisions, and critics argue that not enough was done to hold perpetrators accountable. Additionally, there has been limited progress on reparations, and deep social and economic inequalities from apartheid remain unresolved.
Hmm… interesting. Could South Africa’s TRC been carried out to pre-empt the threat of revolution that would have liberated South Africa from British rule?
I don’t claim to know, but I do know that there were a lot of fishy things about Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
For one thing, the original group of commissioners - Harry S. LaForme, Jane Brewin Morley, and Claudette Dumont-Smith - had all stepped down by June of 2009, apparently due to disagreements with the government’s handling of the commission.
After former judge Murray Sinclair became Chief Commissioner, he went to the U.N. and just straight up lied, claiming that:
"For roughly seven generations, nearly every Indigenous child in Canada was sent to a residential school.”
This is wildly inaccurate. According to Chat GPT:
Approximately 30% of Indigenous children in Canada attended residential schools from 1867 to 1996, based on available estimates. This figure includes First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children who were part of the residential school system during that period.
It is estimated that around 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools over the more than a century that the system operated.
Not all Indigenous children were sent to residential schools. Many attended day schools, while others did not attend any school due to geographic or logistical reasons.
During certain periods, attendance at residential schools was more widespread, especially after 1920, when compulsory attendance laws were introduced. However, even then, many children attended day schools or stayed on reserves.
While the residential school system affected a significant portion of the Indigenous population, the majority of Indigenous children did not attend residential schools.
Let’s talk another look at Murray Sinclair’s statement to the U.N.:
"For roughly seven generations, nearly every Indigenous child in Canada was sent to a residential school.”
So, no, I wasn’t exaggerating. That’s an outright lie.
This lie might not seem a big deal to some people, but remember, we’re talking about the Chief Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. His job was, ostensibly, to investigate the truth and report it accurately, in order to raise the public’s level of consciousness about Canada’s history. The word “Truth” was literally in his job title. Yet he went to the U.N. and told a whopping lie to people who presumably knew even less about Canadian history than Canadians do.
If you can’t see that that’s a problem, I don’t know what to tell you.
Thankfully, the truth is slowly coming out. Unfortunately, it is being led by people who definitely are not friends of indigenous people, such as Tom Flanagan, Conrad Black, and Ezra Levant.
If you don’t know who Tom Flanagan is, you should. He’s long been the eminence grise of the Conservatives in Canada. His students include Stephen Harper, Pierre Poilievre, and Ezra Levant.
I personally feel that Tom Flanagan in particular has ulterior motives, but at the same time, I’m can’t not respect him for publishing Grave Error, which goes a long way towards setting the historical record straight.
That said, certain chapters of Grave Error really do minimize certain aspects of Canada’s abusive policies towards indigenous people, such as the Pass system and the banning of traditional ceremonies, including the potlatch and the Sun Dance. If you’re going to read Grave Error, I suggest reading 21 Things You Didn’t Know About the Indian Act too. That should balance things out for you.
But, really, does any in the world actually believe that indigenous Turtle Islanders have not been oppressed for centuries?
C’mon.
In years to come, I have no doubt that historians will respond to the information contained in Grave Error, and we’ll slowly get closer to the truth. For now, most academics are ignoring the truth, but ignoring the truth won’t make it go away.
I have included a chapter from Grave Error, which is a review of a book called From Truth Comes Reconciliation, which offers a rare critique of the TRC, which has become a sacred cow in Canada.
This review is offered as part of my ongoing efforts to set the historical record straight.
It’s a thankless job, but someone’s gotta do it.
In Defence of the Truth,
Crow Qu’appelle
Neither Truth Nor Reconciliation
D. Barry Kirkham KC
Review of From Truth Comes Reconciliation: Assessing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report.
Rodney Clifton and Mark DeWolf, eds. Frontier Centre for Public Policy, 2021. 343 pages.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) published its multi-volume report in 2015. These documents purport to be the definitive history of Indian Residential Schools (IRS) in Canada, and they have certainly been treated as such. Virtually all commentary from the media, government, and universities has accepted it as gospel. The report was denunciatory in the extreme in respect to residential schools, and it has been profoundly influential. For example, the vandalizing and removal of statues of Sir John A. Macdonald can be traced to the fact that IRS were initiated under his government. The people who seek to cancel Sir John ignore the fact that Canada was committed in various treaties to provide Aboriginals with an education, and IRS were the only means to fulfill that obligation in respect to small reserves without the population to justify a day school.
They also ignore the fact that Macdonald did not make attendance mandatory. Egerton Ryerson, a famous educator, has also been canceled due to his support in the middle of the 19th century for government-sponsored education facilities to teach agrarian techniques to Aboriginals, despite the fact that he had nothing to do with the IRS system, which commenced in Canada in 1883, as two historians pointed out in The Dorchester Review. Senator Lynn Beyak, who stated that while the residential schools did considerable harm, they also did some good — something that the TRC Report itself argues in its Part 1 and Part 2 "History" volumes — was removed from the Senate’s Aboriginal Peoples Committee and from the Conservative Party caucus for suggesting that IRS were anything other than an unmitigated evil and that her correspondents should be allowed to say so and have their views published.
Internationally, Canada’s reputation has been stained. The United Nations has called Canada to account, though the International Criminal Court has refused to hear any case for “genocide.” Still, dictatorships such as Russia and China have been delighted to deflect criticisms of their own human rights violations by pointing to the TRC’s denunciations of Canada’s schools for Indigenous children. The absurd accusation of “mass graves” could never have gained traction but for the TRC’s having created a climate where such an outrageous claim could seem plausible.
The TRC performed a valuable public service in taking extensive testimony concerning the history of residential schools. It provided the opportunity for Aboriginals who had suffered greatly from abuses perpetrated at the schools to tell their story. The report is comprehensive, to say the least, in summarizing all the things that went wrong. It is not my purpose to address the 94 recommendations or “Calls to Action” made by the report, nor to advocate a favorable view of IRS. Rather, my purpose is to address the question of whether the TRC Report is a reliable history.
In From Truth Comes Reconciliation: Assessing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, authors Rodney Clifton and Mark DeWolf — both of whom were students and/or staff at residential schools — demonstrate that the TRC Report is not a fair and balanced history. Their work is supported by eight other contributors: Joseph Quesnel, Frances Widdowson, Gerry Bowler, Hymie Rubenstein, Brian Giesbrecht, Masha V. Krylova, Lea Meadows, and Marshall Draper, who worked with Clifton and DeWolf on the project over several years.
The authors acknowledge that there is much truth in the TRC Report but point out that its bias and incendiary claims “display a contempt for truth that helps to make a reader suspicious of anything else the Commission asserts,” as Gerry Bowler, professor of history at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, writes on p. 132 of the book. The contributors make it clear that their objective is not to denounce the TRC but to provide a good faith critique and restore balance to the legacy of the schools. There is much of importance in Clifton and DeWolf’s fine corrective to what is fast becoming the received and indeed authorized version of Canadian residential schools history.
Genesis
Professor J. R. Miller has written elsewhere a comprehensive review, Residential Schools and Reconciliation, of how Canada came to confront its unhappy legacy. The federal government announced in 1969 that it intended to phase out residential schools. By the 1980s, the various churches that had run them began reassessing their work, recognizing they had failed in many respects. Numerous apologies were issued. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) sat between 1992 and 1996. Its lengthy report dealt with most aspects of Canadian treatment of Aboriginals..486 It heard much testimony concerning terrible experiences some native children had experienced at the schools. In its report it recommended a further inquiry. One consequence of the RCAP was the creation of the Aboriginal Healing Centre. Funded with $600,000,000 of public money, the Centre worked on the process of healing “survivors” of the schools. In the period 2003-2012 it published several books on the history of IRS, which were made available throughout Canada free of charge. In the 1990s revelations of abuse at residential schools began to surface. Some criminal convictions were obtained against perpetrators of sexual and nonsexual assaults. A torrent of civil litigation followed. By 1999 thousands of legal actions had been commenced. Widdowson quotes a figure of over 5,500 from Miller, whereas she herself reports 11,000. (p. 99). Class action lawyers became very active importuning natives to sign on to various lawsuits. Eventually all parties managed to negotiate the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, 2005 (“IRSSA”).Every Indigenous student who attended a residential school was entitled to a payment of $10,000 plus $3,000 for each year of attendance, for merely being an IRS student (the “common experience” payment).
If a student alleged abuse, the student would receive substantial additional compensation (the "Independent Assessment Process"). This process invited former students to file a claim listing all complaints of abuse. Compensation was awarded on a points system: the more complaints, the higher the compensation. The claims were not investigated with much scrutiny (Clifton-DeWolf, p. 46). Many former students received awards of over $100,000, and some awards were as high as $450,000.
One of the terms of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) was that Canada would establish a commission to conduct a full investigation. The primary mandate of such a commission was to provide a complete historical record. The establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was the fulfillment of that commitment.
South Africa
There have been several Truth and Reconciliation Commissions established throughout the world in the 21st century, drawing their inspiration from South Africa. Both the Canadian and South African commissions were charged with the momentous task of determining the true history of events where there would inevitably be much disagreement and varying interpretations. However, there are profound differences in the approaches of the two commissions. The story of the South African TRC is told by its vice-chair, Alex Boraine, in A Country Unmasked (Oxford, 2000).
The first major difference was in the selection of the members of the Commission. President Nelson Mandela refused to appoint the commissioners until a rigorous process was followed. An independent committee was formed, which sought out potential members and held public hearings. After vetting 299 potential commissioners, the committee submitted 25 names to Mandela, who then appointed 17 commissioners, choosing from a broad range of experiences to ensure the Commission represented a full spectrum of society. In South Africa, the commission was not packed with adherents of the African National Congress (ANC).
The IRSSA stipulated that "consideration shall be given to at least one of the three commissioners being an Aboriginal." Appointments were made by Order-in-Council. The chief commissioner, Justice Murray Sinclair, is a Métis. The other two commissioners were Chief Wilton Littlechild and Dr. Marie Wilson, who is married to an Aboriginal. All three are distinguished Canadians, but there was no attempt to appoint anyone who might have a view that IRS were anything other than an unmitigated evil. The TRC report commences with a mission statement from each of the three commissioners. Chairman Sinclair leaves no doubt where he stands: he denounces IRS in the harshest possible terms and attributes virtually every single problem experienced by Canadian Aboriginals to the IRS.
The second major difference between the two TRCs is that the South African commission was mandated to discover the full truth as to violations of human rights, no matter who committed them. While this was a contentious point at the commencement of the process, Mandela wanted a truthful history from the Commission. The South African Commission insisted on hearing evidence about human rights violations committed by members of the ANC. For example, the Commission spent nine days investigating the reign of terror perpetrated by Mandela’s wife, Winnie, and her United Football Club, during the time Mandela was incarcerated. The Commission also insisted on investigating the covert operations in Kwazulu-Natal. There was a clear commitment to producing a reliable history, believing that only such a history could provide a basis for reconciliation.
Of course, South Africa had the gift of leadership from Nelson Mandela, the very embodiment of truth and reconciliation, who inspired not just South Africa but the entire world. Boraine summarizes the purpose of the Commission this way:
"What a truth commission can do, and what the South African Commission certainly attempted to do, is to seek not only knowledge, acknowledgment, and accountability, but also restoration. One of the primary motivations for and objectives of the Commission was to bring about a measure of healing to a very deeply divided society in which many citizens have been severely hurt. The search for reconciliation and restoration is, in my view, an integral part of coming to terms with the present … We come to terms with the past not to point a finger or to engage in a witch hunt, but to bring about accountability and to try and restore a community which for scores of years has been broken."
The South African Commission sought testimony from both the violated and the violators. It was uniquely empowered to grant amnesty to violators who agreed to confess to the full truth of their crimes. There has been almost no criticism of the South African TRC’s factual findings regarding what occurred during apartheid. Consistent with its mandate and its balanced group of commissioners, it produced a fair and balanced history of a despicable regime that practiced apartheid, tyranny, torture, and murder in pursuit of its goals.
In contrast, the Canadian TRC was given a biased mandate: "to reveal to Canadians the complex truth and the ongoing legacy of the church-run residential schools, in a manner that fully documents the individual and collective harms perpetuated against Aboriginal peoples," writes Hymie Rubenstein in From Truth Comes Reconciliation (p. 161), a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba who blogs about Indigenous matters.
Given this biased mandate, Bowler asks the question, “Is this a case of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Sentence First – Verdict Afterwards?’” While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) rigorously pursued the task of fully documenting "all individual and collective harms perpetrated against Aboriginal peoples," it failed to provide a balanced picture of "the complex truth."
The Process
The TRC held hearings throughout Canada over three years. The purpose was to hear the stories of anyone who wanted to appear. Both Aboriginals with favorable and unfavorable experiences shared their stories, as did former employees at the schools. There was no power of subpoena, nor was there cross-examination. Witnesses could tell their stories either in public or in private. Over 6,000 witnesses appeared. In many cases, a hostile environment existed, which deterred people with favorable stories from coming forward. According to Frances Widdowson (p. 108), the environment encouraged former students to provide the most lurid accounts, and in some cases, to change their previously favorable testimonies.
Brian Giesbrecht, a former Manitoba superior court judge, concludes that some of the testimony would not withstand cross-examination. He comments that the TRC "showed a lack of concern with the truthfulness of the evidence" (p. 495). Volumes 1 to 4 of the TRC report record the testimonies, some of which came from witnesses who had positive things to say about their experiences. However, a serious problem arises with the report's summary, contained in Volumes 5 and 6, titled Legacy and Reconciliation, as well as with the introduction to Volume 1. Murray Sinclair claimed that his Commission’s report would provide Canadians with a permanent record where all experiences and perspectives would be "woven into the fabric of truth" (p. 496).
However, this book rigorously challenges the validity of Sinclair’s self-congratulatory claim to have woven the "fabric of truth." Certainly, the TRC had sufficient resources to perform its task well. It spent $60,000,000 of public money over six years, and the report totals 3,500 pages. Yet Clifton and DeWolf’s introduction concludes:
"Surprisingly—and more than a little disheartening—the Commission’s Summary and Legacy volumes do not adequately or even-handedly summarize the material found in the other four volumes."
Given the amount of media coverage these two volumes received, this is a grave concern. Another issue is that the number of negative generalizations stated in the Summary and Legacy volumes are not supported by evidence presented in the other volumes. Testimonies favorable to the IRS system, collected from school administrators, employees, and non-Indigenous IRS students, are provided in many volumes, but these testimonies and their significance are absent from the crucial Summary and Legacy volumes. Consequently, those two highly publicized volumes appear to be little more than biased interpretations of the Commission’s findings.
The TRC report also makes several incendiary claims that go well beyond the actual evidence the Commission collected. Many of these claims appear designed to inflame readers' emotions rather than present well-reasoned and balanced arguments. The collection thereafter proceeds to fully document these criticisms. Professor J. R. Miller, the foremost expert on residential schools and generally a supporter of the TRC, also commented on the harshness of Volumes 5 and 6 compared to the testimonies actually taken. Miller added, "The Final Report contained far too many errors, some of them serious."
Genocide
The TRC report begins with an interpretation of Canadian policy towards Aboriginals. It stakes its ground at the outset of Volume 1, concluding that:
"The central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal people to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada."
Not content with making this accusation, the TRC goes on to show its true animus:
"Physical genocide is the mass killing of the members of a targeted group, and biological genocide is the destruction of the group’s reproductive capacity... In its dealings with Aboriginal people, Canada did all these things." (Emphasis added)
The TRC claims that the IRS system was based on the assumption that Aboriginal peoples were “subhuman."
The allegation of physical genocide, defined as the intentional extermination of an identifiable group, likens Canadian Aboriginal policy to the Final Solution of the Nazis. One could hardly imagine a more serious charge. However, it is a charge utterly devoid of factual foundation. As Richard Gwyn states in Nation Maker, the second volume of his biography of Sir John A. Macdonald:
"The defining difference [between Canadian and American policies on Aboriginals] is that Canada did not kill Indians; in the course of the 19th century, some 400,000 American Indians were killed, principally by the U.S. Army in the West. [In Canada] the only deaths were the small number killed during the N.W. Rebellion." (p. 499)
One would expect the horrific allegation of physical genocide to be supported by some data or facts, but there is no attempt anywhere in the TRC report to provide any support for this blood libel.
Then there is the charge of biological genocide, the accusation that Canada destroyed the Aboriginals’ reproductive capacity. This is another blood libel, equally devoid of factual foundation. Indeed, the Indigenous population in Canada at the commencement of IRS was fewer than 100,000. Today, it is around 1,600,000 (p. 500).
The book under review concludes that allegations of genocide are "simply untrue and historically indefensible" and are "fabrications." It notes that the TRC cites no evidence to support the charges. The genocide charge "displays a contempt for truth that helps to make a reader suspicious of anything else the Commission claims" (p. 501).
Indeed, much stronger language is justifiable. These two charges of genocide are reprehensible, and utterly incompatible with the search for truth. It is quite astonishing that the TRC has not been broadly denounced for these false charges. And yet, on the contrary, the House of Commons on October 27 passed an NDP-sponsored motion "calling on the federal government to recognize Canada's residential schools as genocide." That such a motion was unanimous is inexplicable. Such madness would normally be supported only by a handful of extremist MPs firmly in the grip of a post-colonial mindset.
Cultural Genocide
The TRC also charges Canada with the offense of "cultural genocide," which it defines as follows:
Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group. States that engage in cultural genocide seek to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated and destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next.
The charge of "cultural genocide" gained traction when it was repeated by Beverley McLachlin, the Chief Justice of Canada, who relied on the TRC Report as her source of information. In doing so, the Chief Justice breached a fundamental rule that sitting judges must not comment publicly on such issues. Justice Tom Berger of the B.C. Supreme Court was previously strongly criticized by the Canadian Judicial Council for doing just that and felt he had no choice but to resign. McLachlin, as ex officio chair of the Council, apparently felt immune from its strictures. The fact that such a charge could be believed and repeated by such an eminent person underscores how influential the TRC has been.
Bowler, in the book under review, refutes the cultural genocide claim as reaching "the territory of just plain fiction" and comments:
"Finding a reference to ‘cultural genocide’ at the very beginning of this important report probably forces readers to wonder why the government of Canada signed treaties, established reserves, published dictionaries in Indigenous languages, banned relatively few Indigenous traditions—such as the potlatch—that actually hindered their economic progress, and never forbade Indigenous people from speaking their languages in residential schools or anywhere else."
Widdowson adds:
"The use of the word ‘genocide’ in connection with culture is a rhetorical strategy designed to impede rational discussion of the residential schools. The term ‘genocide’ has historically been used to refer to the intentional extermination of an identifiable group of people. Adding the adjective ‘cultural’ completely changes the meaning of the word by turning the inevitable and unstoppable processes associated with integration into a crime against humanity."
Clifton and DeWolf remark in their Introduction:
"From a commission charged with discerning and communicating the truth, this false statement is worrying and even incendiary. Not only is there little evidence supporting this claim, but the policies and actions of both missionaries and government officials clearly contradict it."
Unlike the TRC, Clifton and DeWolf quote actual testimony to support these statements. They also cite Canada’s historical goal, partly through IRS, to provide Indigenous children with the knowledge, skills, and values needed to participate in Canadian society, which certainly was laudable in the face of the collapse of their way of life—the disappearance of the buffalo and the much-reduced fur trade.
Alleged Medical Experiments
The TRC claims that IRS students were repeatedly made the subject of medical experiments and even compares those experiments to those carried out by Nazi doctors in concentration camps. As Clifton and DeWolf state:
"This claim is so serious that we have spent a considerable amount of time and effort examining it for relevant information that the TRC has not identified."
The details of these so-called "experiments" are then reviewed. One was, in fact, a medically supervised change in diet to increase the intake of Vitamin D. Another was an attempt to deal with an outbreak of dysentery, where doctors tried to determine whether five-day or ten-day treatments were most effective. The book mildly suggests that "the TRC’s comparison to Nazi death camps weakens the credibility of the TRC report." Much stronger language would appear to be in order.
Forced Attendance?
Central to the TRC report is the contention that Canada "forced" attendance on reluctant Aboriginals. In the words of Commissioner Wilson, "Aboriginal children were torn from their mothers' arms." On April 10, 2010, at the beginning of the TRC's work, Sinclair addressed the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and asserted:
"For roughly seven generations, nearly every Indigenous child in Canada was sent to a residential school. They were taken from their families, tribes, and communities, and forced to live in those institutions of assimilation." (Emphasis added)
As to this foundational claim, three points are of critical importance:
The Aboriginals themselves required, in the treaties signed with Canada, a commitment from Canada to provide their children with an education. For instance, Treaty 6 with the Plains and Wood Cree states:
"Her Majesty agrees to maintain schools for instruction in such reserves as Her Government of the Dominion of Canada may seem advisable, whenever the Indians of the reserves shall desire it."
Thus, by the 1870s, Canada was legally required to provide schooling for Aboriginals. Day schools were built and staffed on reserves where the population was sufficient, but many reserves were not large enough to justify a day school. Residential schools were the only means by which Canada could fulfill its treaty obligation.
When Canada commenced the IRS system in 1883, attendance was not compulsory. It was only in 1920 that legislation was enacted granting the government the power to make attendance compulsory, but that power was rarely exercised. The book observes, "As historian J.R. Miller correctly points out, 'At no time in the history of residential schooling in Canada were parents compelled to send their children to residential schools.’"
An article published in The Dorchester Review online and later in print, "They Were Not Forced," by Nina Green, Brian Giesbrecht, and Tom Flanagan, demonstrates that prior to 1920, attendance was only compulsory at day schools. If there was no day school on the reserve, children were not sent to residential schools because it was not the Department's policy to separate children from their parents.
Green et al. point out that IRS were mostly "filled to capacity, and some had waiting lists." They note that "this is a far cry from Commissioner Marie Wilson's claim that status Indian children were ripped from their parents’ arms." Several bands were anxious to have the schools and even contributed to the cost of construction. Further, Rubenstein writes that as late as the 1940s and 1950s, when the federal government began closing residential schools, many tribes, bands, and parents requested that they remain open.
Contrary to Sinclair's claim that "nearly every Indigenous child was sent to a residential school," a majority of the children attended day schools. About 30% of Aboriginal children did not attend any school. Most residential school students were able to return home regularly. Furthermore, the average attendance for the one-third of Indigenous children who did attend IRS was 4.5 years.
The statement made by Chairman Sinclair to the United Nations is demonstrably untrue, and he could not have been unaware of it.
Positive Experiences
While the TRC stated it wanted to hear from school staff and non-Native peoples, the oral record that the Commission collected was overwhelmingly from people self-identified as Survivors. A professional historian on the TRC staff said that the commissioners' actions were "not consistent with its claims to wish to include non-Aboriginal voices on the record." Her budget for the project on school staff was cut from $100,000 to $10,000, and she was told the Commission would not transcribe the interviews she had conducted. Thus, very few former staff came forward to speak publicly.
The TRC refers to positive testimony from staff but frames it negatively: "Many staff members spent much of their time and energy attempting to humanize a harsh and destructive system." The book under review remarks that the TRC "attempted to make positive evidence into something negative," lamenting that "it is not surprising that the legacy of the IRS system has generally been regarded as wholly negative by the Canadian public."
Rodney Clifton and Mark DeWolf, both of whom attended residential schools, speak of positive experiences. Their book contains lengthy accounts of such experiences. Tomson Highway, a Cree playwright and Order of Canada recipient, said this about his experience at an IRS:
"All we hear is the negative stuff, nobody’s interested in the positive, the joy in that school. Nine of the happiest years of my life I spent at that school. I learned your language, for God’s sake. Have you learned my language? No, so who’s the privileged one and who is underprivileged? You may have heard stories from 7,000 witnesses that were negative, but what you haven’t heard are the 7,000 reports that were positive. Many very successful people today went to those schools and have brilliant careers. I have a thriving international career, and it wouldn’t have happened without that school."
One can only wonder at the Orwellian process that led to the cancellation of Senator Lynn Beyak by Conservative colleagues, including Andrew Scheer, for stating that some Aboriginals had positive experiences. She was suspended and faced expulsion for permitting "offensive" letters submitted by Canadian citizens on her website and for refusing to submit to "anti-racism" training.
This chapter was originally published as “Neither Truth Nor Reconciliation” in The Dorchester Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, Autumn-Winter 2022, pp. 75-84.”