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By James Pew
The first in a series of “Common Misconceptions” videos (embedded below) have now been posted to the YouTube, Tiktok and Instagram profiles of the Indian Residential Schools Research Group (IRSRG). The project is set to culminate into fifteen videos which will tackle different aspects of the most commonly held misconceptions about the nature of the IRS system. The IRSRG’s lofty ambitions include injecting a little truth into the many false and overtly politicized narratives concerning Canadian history.
Founded in 2022 as “a response to poor standards of research and reporting on the residential school system,” the IRSRG website has consistently published articles ever since which examine the complexities of IRS history in a way not done by mainstream publishers. The IRSRG bravely challenges the conventional pieties which govern what is deemed acceptable within the IRS discourse.
The groups chairman is Tom Flanagan, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary and author of many books and articles on Indigenous issues. Tom has won nine national awards for excellence in research, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Along with Chris Champion (the publisher of the Canadian historical journal The Dorchester Review), Tom edited two best-selling books on IRSs, each with chapters provided by various writers and researchers, many who have written articles for the IRSRG. The first was the 2023 volume Grave Error, and the second, Dead Wrong was published in 2025. This author, along with penning articles for the IRSRG, contributed chapters to both Grave Error and Dead Wrong.
In an email exchange Tom relayed the following:
“The IRSRG is a voluntary organization of researchers and writers dedicated to providing the public with accurate information about Indian Residential Schools. Acting as a clearinghouse and archive for printed publications, we have had considerable success in debunking the "Kamloops Narrative" of missing children and secret graves. We now want to broaden our audience by producing audio-visual materials, based on the extensive research that our members have carried out. AV is expensive, so financial support would be appreciated, Donate | IRSRG.”
Two other contributors to the IRSRG are Pim Wiebel (a pseudonymous former IRS teacher and excellent historical researcher) and Ian Gentles (a brilliant and badass Canadian historian who also serves as the treasurer of the IRSRG). From Ian’s short IRSRG bio:
“Dr. Ian Gentles is professor emeritus of History, York University, and Distinguished Professor of History and Global Studies at Tyndale University. A fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is the author of several books and articles on British History, as well as books and articles on bioethical and political questions.”
In an email exchange, Dr. Gentles shared that in addition to the fifteen “Misconception” videos produced by the IRSRG (supervised by John Bonnett), “Pim Wiebel and I are preparing a comprehensive history of the Indian Residential Schools, which we hope to have ready in the next year or so. In addition to refuting the ridiculous accusation of genocide we will be demonstrating that the schools did an immense amount of good for Canada’s indigenous people.” Based on previous knowledge of the detailed historical research of Pim and Ian, this author expects their comprehensive IRS history to be not only eye-opening and enriching, but of the highest scholarly quality.
Regular readers of this newsletter are likely to view the IRSRG as a breath of fresh air and a necessary corrective to Canada’s politicized and fraught historical narrative. We have an outstanding country that has been exceedingly good to the aboriginal people who first inhabited it. Modern activists have been involved in a desperate struggle to revise Canadian history and engender feelings of guilt and shame in heritage Canadians. We are not settlers, we are citizens, and our stories, customs, culture and founding myths are no less important than those of the aboriginals. There is no group better poised to correct the record and dispel the widespread myth that Canada was or is guilty of genocide, ongoing or otherwise, than the remarkable researchers, the journalistic and academic rebels at the Indian Residential School Research Group.
Learn more about the Common Misconceptions of Indian Residential Schools.
For your viewing pleasure, the first in a 15-video series produced by the IRSRG: We’re Children Forced to Attend Residential Schools?
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"We are not settlers, we are citizens, and our stories, customs, culture and founding myths are no less important than those of the aboriginals."
Exactly correct.
No one was called 'indigenous' in those days. That's why it was called the Indian Act.
A superb and essential video series project ruined by using terminology that did not exist until the United Nations came to town to socially engineer us. And it has worked...an important project starts off using UN terminology, which includes every possible race and mixes of races that never existed in the days of IRS.
Many Indians will find it hard to take this project seriously when you deliberately use terms describing them that are false and never existed. My status Indian sister-in-law said that the insistence on using UN terminology is one of the reasons most Indians want nothing to do with taking a side in this issue...she says the 'historians' using such terminology are lying just as are the elected Chiefs.