More Progress In The Right Direction

An Update On The Unmarked Graves Narrative, And Criticism Of Jonathan Kay's Recent Quillette Piece

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

On Saturday, July 23rd, True North published another of my opinion pieces called Unmarked Graves: Money Or Justice. This one I had the honor of co-writing with Tom Flanagan and Brian Giesbrecht.

So much has taken place since I last wrote about Indigenous issues on The Turn. On July 1st, I posted Re-Examining The Story of Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Canadians, and what I wrote for today, meant to update readers on some key developments turned out to be far too long. So for the next few mornings I will post shorter sections of it, so as not to overwhelm the reader with one big mega post.

Tomorrow I will have more to say about my co-authors and about the content of our True North op-ed Unmarked Graves: Money or Justice. But Tom and Brian are relevant to today’s topic as well. Let’s begin.

Latest Developments

Most of my readers should be aware that on May 26, a turning point occurred in the unmarked graves narrative when Canadian journalist, Terry Glavin published his Year of the Graves piece in the National Post. In my mind I now divide the unmarked graves narrative into the pre-Glavin consensus stage and the post-Glavin confusion stage. I see both as important steps on the way to the truth, but I think we have a long way yet to go. Either way, I commend Terry Glavin and Jonathan Kay for playing the crucial role they have in directing the public far closer to the truth, than we  were in the pre-Glavin consensus stage.

On Friday July 22nd, Jonathan Kay, joined Terry Glavin, in calling out the mainstream media on their shoddy reportage, and refusal to correct the record, regarding the sensational and false unmarked graves narrative. Jonathan’s piece can be found on Quillette.

Before I get into the details of Jonathan’s article, and offer a couple criticisms, allow me to provide some additional relevant background regarding my aforementioned co-authors.

The Dorchester Group

Both Brian Giesbrecht and Tom Flanagan have become associated with what some journalists, like Terry Glavin, are calling the Dorchester Group. This is referring to the Dorchester Review, an outstanding Canadian journal, where Brian and Tom both frequently contribute writing. Others writing for the Dorchester Review on residential schools and unmarked graves include retired anthropologist, Hymie Rubenstein, and French-Canadian historian Jacques Rouillard (who wrote an unmarked graves piece mentioned in Jonathan Kay’s Quillette column).

The Dorchester Group, gets called “denialists” by those I call “activist-academics” (I think I got that from Frances Widdowson). Activist-academics don’t like Dorchester Group-like views, because they feel their entire ideologically assumed existence is undermined by them. Activist-academics are not, like Tom Flanagan, what I refer to as traditional academics (more on that in tomorrow morning’s post). However, I believe that heterodoxy and the truth will prevail, and that most likely activist-academics will expire the patience of everyone around them until their elevated stature will eventually be withdrawn. The question is when.

On July 13th, Nina Green, the independent researcher whose work I have previously posted to Woke Watch Canada,  published on the Dorchester Review - Two-Thirds Did Not Attend Residential School - this is a remarkable work that reveals an important truth that I’m sure the TRC would prefer remain unknown. 

In a nutshell, the number of Indigenous people who attended residential schools has been vastly exaggerated. Sometimes these exaggerations are deliberate and political in nature. Nina Green shows that TRC commissioner Murray Sinclair was repeating falsehoods regarding the number of students who attended IRSs long before the publication of the TRC’s final report, and at a time when there was little chance he did not know what he was saying was untrue. How can the Truth and Reconciliation Commission be considered legitimate in the minds of Canadians, when the commissioners of the process were so dishonest in their vying for narrative optics politically favorable to their cause?

I’ve written about the TRC previously -  in my view, it was a big show that over-represented a victim-centric interpretation of IRSs. This is not to say all survivor testimony at TRC events was untrue, although some of it almost assuredly was, but that an over-representation of a single narrative has vastly skewed and exaggerated the kernels of truth tangled up in the TRC storyline. An authentic Truth and Reconciliation process does not exist in Canada, instead we have lies, guilt and corruption.

A Closer Examination of Jonathan Kay’s Quillette Piece

I admire Jonathan Kay and I think his piece, like Terry Glavin’s, is a step in the right direction. However, I also think the Dorchester Group has taken a few additional steps in that direction. Let’s examine a couple things Jonathan said:

“The whole mission of Canada’s church-run Residential School system was to assimilate Indigenous people into white Canadian society, usually against their will, while forcing children to leave their families and communities for months or even years at a time.”

This is something I do not believe is true. The Dorchester Review has published meticulously researched argumentation that demonstrates fewer than ⅓ of status Indians ever attended a residential school, and they were not forced to attend (more likely their parents wanted them in IRS, or the state needed to remove them to IRS because of abuse and neglect at home).

Here is another point of disagreement I have with Jonathan Kay:

“It bears emphasizing that no respectable academic or journalist is denying the fact that thousands of children died while attending Canada’s Residential Schools”

Terry Glavin cites the TRC report and puts the number who died while enrolled in an IRS at 832 (mostly from tuberculosis). The schools kept meticulous records, all students had student numbers, and since there are no records of missing or murdered children, it appears that statements to the affect of “thousands” of missing children are a creation of activists and the Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Further, In the famous Bryce report, it is noted that almost all the children enrolled in residential schools at the time already had tuberculosis. This implies that whether they had moved to a residential school or stayed home, at least in the cases of those who succumbed, their fate sadly would have been the same.

Conclusion

Both Terry Glavin and Jonathan Kay are aware of the work of Frances Widdowson. From my recollection both have cited her, or mentioned her case. From what I can gather both respect the level of scholarship Frances brings to indigenous issues, and view her firing from Mount Royal as antithetical to academic freedom. I think most reasonable people with classically liberal inclinations feel this way.

But here is my question. Since Frances Widdowson is one of the country’s leading academics challenging the unmarked graves narrative, as well as generally challenging most areas of current public policy related to the indigenous, and also happens to have been the target of an illiberal cancellation by a mob unfriendly to academic freedom (among several other important democratic norms), why is it not questioned, or followed up on more thoroughly, exactly what it is about Frances’ work that has gotten her in so much trouble? 

It would be easy to mention in a paragraph, that Frances Widdowson has a theory, based on meticulous research and exemplary scholarship called, the political economy of neotribal rentierism, which holds that things like the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, and now the unmarked graves issue, are used as a means to both justify and prolong government funded initiatives or programs that do little to address the needs of the indigenous.

It’s a theory, Frances is the first to tell you that. However, there are a lot of things that are not being discussed, even by those who are aiming to correct the record, which indicate that we should be taking Frances’ theories seriously, and start seriously considering the possibility that the guilt Canadians are led to feel over indigenous issues, may in part be meant to hide a corruption that funnels government transfers away from things that could help the situation, towards things that instead ensure a worsening and continuance of present conditions - done deliberately as a con on all Canadian taxpayers, and it can be argued, a human rights violation against poor and desperate indigenous peoples living in the most squalid and remote of Canadian reserves.

In an email exchange regarding the media chatter around the post-Glavin unmarked graves discourse, Frances had this to say:

“There is terrible condescension going on.  No one wants to honestly include indigenous people in the conversation like they would any other individual. This is preventing indigenous people from having a complete understanding of what is happening, which is further entrenching the isolation, dependency, and deprivation.” 

Meet me back here tomorrow morning for more!!!

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