Confronting Indian Residential School Confabulation and Media Irresponsibility
Responding to Gerbrandt and Carleton’s “Debunking the Mass Grave Hoax”
UPDATE: The link to the file Confronting Indian Residential School Confabulation and Media Irresponsibility confronting-indian-residential-school-confabulation-final-1Download was changed on Oct. 30, as Michelle Stirling updated the report to reflect new information about Buffy Sainte-Marie.
On October 19, 2023 , Nigel Hannaford, opinion editor at the Western Standard, gave an eye-opening and thought-provoking keynote address at the 55th Annual Calgary Leadership Prayer Breakfast in the Westin Hotel Ballroom Calgary, Alberta.
Below is a video of that address:
Nigel’s keynote went into forbidden territory when he dared discuss Canada’s unmarked graves hoax. This prompted the “settler historian” who Woke Watch Canada readers are all to familiar with, “Mr. Indian Residential School Denialism,” Sean Carleton, to refer to Nigel as a Christian Fascist in the following X post:
Carleton is of course an idiot, a grievance grifter in the Aboriginal Industry. He has previously published faux-academic papers that claim to “help” people identify the scourge of “IRS Denialism”. Retired judge, Brian Giesbrecht and I wrote about Carleton’s use of the term “denialism” in the context of Canadian Indian Residential Schools, in our piece for the Dorchester Review called The Derogatory Use of ‘Denialist’.
On October 11, Carleton, and his colleague Reid Gerbandt, published a ridiculous paper called Debunking the “Mass Grave Hoax”: A Report on Media Coverage and Residential School Denialism in Canada, which according to Victoria News, “debunks conspiracy theories about a so-called ‘mass grave hoax’ — a narrative that is ‘not supported by the evidence.’
Canadian journalist, Michelle Stirling, has published a comprehensive paper rebutting the claims of Gerbrandt-Carleton. Below is a short introduction by Michelle regarding the contents of her 93-page “Confronting Indian Residential School Confabulation and Media Irresponsibility".
Big Thanks to Michelle for her relentless efforts on this file, putting this paper together was clearly no small feat! Also, a big thanks to Nigel Hannaford for saying the things that need to be said, when so few have the backbone to say them.
I appreciate the sturdy backbones of great Canadians like Michelle Stirling and Nigel Hannaford!!
Confronting Indian Residential School Confabulation and Media Irresponsibility
By
Canada is in the grip of a ‘mass grave/missing children’ psychosis related to Indian Residential Schools. The ‘shock and awe’ media campaign that accompanied the statements by the Kamloops First Nation in May of 2021 claiming that clandestinely buried children’s bodies or remains had been found in an orchard thanks to a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) search sent shock waves around the world.1 Contrary to claims in the Reid Gerbrandt – Sean Carleton report, “Debunking the “Mass Grave Hoax”: A Report on Media Coverage and Residential School Denialism in Canada” the media never corrected these stories.
The image above is from a story reported in the Globe and Mail in August of 2022 when a “historic Catholic church in Alberta First Nation community burned to ground in suspicious fire.”
In addition to rebutting the Gerbrandt-Carleton media claims, this report incorporates a number of articles that set the context of some historical events. I also have included a rebuttal to a Sean Carleton paper, regarding the cancel culture that led to the dismissal of Senator Lynn Beyak from the Canadian Senate. Think of this as a plain language media kit on Canadian history relevant to Indian Residential Schools.
In this document, I make scant reference to the mistreatment or abuse of former Indian Residential School students, simply because the Canadian government has spent >$60 million and about 8 years documenting those statements, and we are spending >$60 billion in compensation and reconciliatory programs on a population of less than 1.8 million Indigenous people – not all of whom ever went to Indian Residential School of any kind, and so many Indigenous do not qualify for compensation – creating inequity. Despite this huge compensation, most Indigenous people will still live in poverty, with no fresh water and lack of housing while the media continue their focus on witch hunts of elderly Christian Sisters, Brothers, Fathers, and priests, who dedicated their lives to the service of their students, many of whom were orphans.
I am looking for media accuracy, inclusion of historical context in Indian Residential School reporting, and rational reconciliation. I do not ascribe to a ‘settler historian’ view of the world and do not support a grievance industry.
Notice when you are holding onto a grievance. How many minor and major irritations and grievances occupy your thinking throughout the day? What do we sacrifice when our attention is centered on grievances? Heed Hayek’s warning: A “decent society” cannot survive when a critical mass of people is focused on grievances. Living for grievances means risking our humanity and liberty.2
Download Confronting Indian Residential School Confabulation and Media Irresponsibility confronting-indian-residential-school-confabulation-final-1Download
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Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, Guatemalan Forensic Team Have a Conflict of Interest and Must Not Work On Canadian Soil
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Thank you for directing and boldly going after the fable from Kamloops with its juvenile tooth that turned out to be animal, the rib bone that disappeared, dead 3-year-olds and the 6-year-olds who secretly buried them at night, a prime minister with a teddy bear kneeling over a known Catholic cemetery, the underlying moral of good hunter-gatherers and evil white Christians, and me - fired for not transmitting to my students the twisted idea that teachers in just one school murdered 215 of their students.
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Thank you Michelle for your tireless efforts to expose the truth. We are all in your debt.