Reconciliation, the quest to repair the relationship with Indigenous peoples, isn’t a “woke” fantasy.

By Paul Racher

NationTalk: The Hamilton Spectator – Recent articles in some corners of the Canadian media landscape have made much of the fact that the number of suspected graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School has been revised downward.

Indeed, some columnists have gone so far as to suggest this proves the Indigenous residential school system was not genocidal and that the national outpouring of grief for its victims has been overblown.

Much of the debate has centred on the pitfalls of ground penetrating radar (GPR).

I cannot speak to what took place at Kamloops, but I can summarize my experience with it as follows: GPR is hard. It isn’t like an MRI. It’s more like radar was in the 1930s. It can identify anomalies in the soil, but it rarely indicates if they are natural or human-made.

Accordingly, GPR is useful, but tends to work best in conjunction with other forms of evidence.

Simply digging to confirm results presents problems, too. For most Indigenous peoples, any such acts would be deeply sacrilegious. I was recently told by an Indigenous elder that his people had ceremonies for putting people into the earth — but not for taking them out again.

The resulting impasse has created a factual void into which both sides have poured their own narratives.

There are, however, carefully collected facts that are not in dispute.

Over a century and a half, some 150,000-plus children attended more than 150 Indigenous residential schools across Canada. Some children found it a positive experience. Many did not. The running of those schools was delegated to churches. The system was underfunded. The buildings were often substandard. The food could be appalling.

And the staff, which was unvetted, poorly paid and frequently required to live in isolated areas, often took advantage of the vulnerable children in their care.

Accordingly, the children living in these schools died at a rate that far exceeded their counterparts in the regular school system. When doctors and bureaucrats called attention to these facts, the federal government rarely changed course.

When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) travelled across Canada to collect survivor stories, the testimonies of thousands of Indigenous individuals who had never met one another coalesced around these themes.

The question of whether or not the Indigenous residential school system constitutes “genocide” inspires a lot of heated rhetoric. Some say that, because the school system was not designed to kill, the charge of genocide is outrageous.

Others point out that there was clear intentionality when the federal government became aware that flaws in the system were killing children and did nothing to correct them.

Still others have noted that forced acculturation, as the goal of the system, constitutes “cultural genocide.”

I understand the passions on all sides, but as an archeologist, I must cling to the data available.

Thankfully, it was brilliantly summarized by Lakehead University archeologist Scott Hamilton in the TRC report “Where Are the Children Buried?” His work does not suggest that children were intentionally murdered on an industrial scale and secreted in mass graves. It was, rather, a decades-long tragedy.

Children at the schools perished from disease and abuse, exacerbated by poor nutrition and sheer misery.

Thousands of deaths are recorded. They died from many of the same afflictions as settler children, but at much higher rates. Many were buried without their names or cause of death being recorded. School cemeteries were often poorly documented and maintained. The whereabouts of some of have been lost.

Genocide or not, that is simply tragic — and it must be reckoned with.

The after effects of the Indigenous residential school system continue to reverberate through generations of Indigenous suffering. First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples are more likely to be poor, sick, homeless or incarcerated than most other demographics. Their traditional and treaty rights are routinely ignored or given short shrift.

Reconciliation, the quest to repair the relationship with Indigenous peoples isn’t a “woke” fantasy. It’s simple, old fashioned, compassion — that most Canadian of values.

Paul Racher is an archeologist in Burlington.