On November 14, 2024, the First Nations House of Learning hosted an unique educational experience on the subject of confronting Indian residential school denialism, with panelists Dr. Sean Carleton, Associate Professor of History and Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba, Michelle Good, author of Five Little Indians, and Dr. Andrew Martindale, Professor at the UBC Department of Anthropology — see their bios below.
This special presentation was made possible by funds from the estate of Maureen Douglas, who generously donated to the First Nations House of Learning. Thank you.
Media Coverage
- CityNews: UBC First Nations House of Learning hosts panel on Indian residential school denialism
- The Ubyssey: ‘Before there can be reconciliation, there must first be truth’: UBC FNHL hosts panel on confronting residential school denialism
- FNHL Stories: Truth before reconciliation
Resource
- UBC Beyond: Truth before reconciliation: 8 ways to identify and confront Residential School denialism
Presentations
Truth Before Reconciliation: How to Identify and Confront Residential School Denialism
by Dr. Sean Carleton
In its Final Report, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was clear: without truth there can be no genuine reconciliation. While many Canadians and organizations have embraced the TRC’s 94 Calls to Action and are committed to the hard work of reconciliation, others are increasingly deploying and consuming residential school denialism as a way of protecting the colonial status quo by undermining public confidence in truth and reconciliation. As an expert on residential school denialism, Dr. Sean Carleton speaks about how we can learn to identify and confront residential school denialism as part of the work of putting truth before reconciliation.
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Who is Not Speaking Out Against Denialism?
by Michelle Good
In the psychology of human behaviour, denialism is a person’s choice to deny reality as a way to avoid believing in a psychologically uncomfortable truth. In this case, it is a way to maintain the fundamentally oppressive nature of colonial dominance and oppression of Indigenous peoples and lands, and their exploitation. Michelle Good’s presentation focuses on the dynamics and politics of denialism as a continuation of colonial violence.
Video Recording
About the Panelists
Sean Carleton
Dr. Sean Carleton is a settler historian and associate professor of history and Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba. His research examines the history of schooling and settler colonialism in British Columbia, and he is the author of the award-winning Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia (UBC Press, 2022) as well as articles and book chapters addressing the phenomenon of residential school denialism. He is also the Historical Consultant on the Squamish Nation’s Yúusnew̓as project looking into history and legacy of the St. Paul’s Indian Residential School in North Vancouver, British Columbia.
Michelle Good
Michelle Good is a writer, lawyer, and member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Her poems, short stories, and essays have been published in magazines and anthologies across Canada. Her award-winning novel, Five Little Indians, which chronicles the desperate quest of five residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward, was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her latest work, Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous life in Canada was released in 2023, and was subsequently shortlisted for the Writers Trust Balsillie Prize for Public Policy, the Saskatchewan Book Awards, the Indigenous Voices Award and the High Plains Book Award. She holds an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Simon Fraser University and the University of the Fraser Valley, respectively.
Andrew Martindale
Dr. Andrew Martindale is a professor with UBC Department of Anthropology. His research is intertwined with material legacies of people of and on the Pacific coast, including partnerships with Tsimshian and Musqueam people. His endeavours inhabit intersections of colonialism and race, of materiality and text, of knowledge and experience, of landscapes and sentience. His recent work is an explicit evaluation of the links between the science of material history and the literature of Indigenous oral records over the Holocene, which demonstrates the capacity of Indigenous oral records to accurately record millennia of history. In addition to teaching and research, he works with First Nations communities using archaeological methods to locate unmarked cemeteries and graves, including those associated with Indian Residential Schools. He is a member of the National Advisory Committee on Missing Children and Unmarked Burials.