OTTAWA — When he was a young child, Dennis Saddleman’s mother always made sure he knew how much she loved him, gave him kisses on the forehead and told him how handsome he was.

Everything changed when he was six, and those warm words turned cold when he was sent to the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The priests and nuns charged with caring for him constantly reprimanded him, beat him, forbade him to speak his language and practice his culture, and sexually assaulted him.

“I didn’t know what I was getting into when I got there,” he said in an interview on Parliament Hill, in front of the Survivors’ Flag, meant to honor and remember the survivors. boarding schools.

“I didn’t understand why they treated us like we were dogs. They punished us even though we were innocent.”

More than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools, the last of which closed in 1996.

An estimated 6,000 children died in these schools, but experts say the real number could be much higher.

Many survivors who testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission shared stories of abuse in these institutions similar to Saddleman’s, and their words are included in its reports.

However, these stories are increasingly subject to what historian Sean Carleton calls “residential school denial.”

He said denial is a strategy used to twist, distort and misrepresent basic facts about residential schools in order to undermine public confidence in the stories of survivors and in the process of truth and reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and non-indigenous in Canada.

“Overall, the goal of Holocaust denial is to protect the colonial status quo,” said Carleton, an assistant professor of history and indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba.

He also said that some media outlets had been used to spread this misinformation.

This includes misrepresenting the number of children who died of tuberculosis in schools by saying that many people at the time had died of the disease, and leaving aside the fact that federal government policies exacerbated the disease. The impact of disease in boarding schools due to overcrowding, poor nutrition and a lack of adequate sanitation and ventilation.

Another common theme observed by Carleton is that residential schools were “well-intentioned.” The deniers ignore that the declared objective of the institutions was to disrupt the links between Aboriginal families and accelerate their assimilation into the Canadian colonization society.

“It’s a constant seed of doubt about things that we don’t need to doubt, because we’ve already established the truth about them,” he said.

Some people even deny that students died at these institutions, even though it has been documented in Canadian and church records.

With US President Joe Biden’s historic apology on Friday for this country’s equivalent of residential schools, Carleton fears the increased attention could lead to even more denial.

Survivors are demanding protections from harm caused by those who attempt to discredit their stories or by those who attempt to take matters into their own hands and engage in hateful behavior.

NDP MP Leah Gazan introduced a private member’s bill in the House of Commons ahead of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which seeks to criminalize residential school denial.

“Residential school denial is hate speech, period,” Gazan said in an interview.

“Why, after all the time residential school survivors spent in schools, do we still allow hate speech and violence to be perpetrated against them? Why aren’t elected officials doing their due diligence to protect survivors of hate speech? This is exactly what my bill intends to do.

The bill proposes that anyone who, other than privately, encourages hatred against Indigenous peoples by “tolerating, denying, minimizing or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada or by distorting facts relating to it” could be punishable by a maximum sentence of two years. in prison.

The bill provides certain exceptions, including if the statements were true, if they were relevant to the public interest, if they were intended to highlight hatred towards indigenous people or if it was a religious opinion. It is unlikely to become law unless it is passed by the ruling liberals.

Canada enacted a similar law in 2022 to combat Holocaust denial, although so far no cases have been successfully prosecuted under the provision.

Canada’s special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves, Kimberly Murray, has long called for government intervention to stem the tide of residential school denialism.

In a report last year, she documented growing attacks by Holocaust deniers on communities exploring possible discoveries of unmarked graves.

In May 2021, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced that ground-penetrating radar had discovered what are believed to be 215 unmarked graves at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, where Saddleman attended. It made international headlines and angered people who attacked the online community.

“Some came in the middle of the night, carrying shovels; they said they wanted to ‘see for themselves’ if children were buried there,” Murray wrote.

Its final report is expected to be released this week at a meeting in Gatineau, Quebec.

Saddleman said the abuse he suffered in Kamloops haunted him for years after he left school. He faced substance abuse issues and homelessness and, at the height of his pain, attempted suicide.

He said he stopped when he saw his attackers in a vision, saying they continued to taunt him and encouraged him to follow through.

Instead, he accepted the hatred, pain and shame inflicted on him at residential school and “gave them back – I gave them back because they don’t belong to me.”

“I was coming out of darkness and walking toward the light,” he said. “The spirit and everything in me allowed me to stand up and know who I am.”

Carleton said that while federal legislation may not be able to end the denial and discrediting of survivors’ stories, it would be a step in the right direction, as would greater education about residential schools and their continued impact on people and communities.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September that his government needed to “look very carefully” at the Gaza bill, saying that whenever limits on freedom of expression were imposed, careful steps had to be taken.

“Canadians understand that recognizing truth and reconciliation is not about feeling bad or guilty about Canada, but about committing every day to becoming a better Canada and understanding that for us to be the country that we all want to be, we must work hard at reconciliation,” he said.

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree said earlier this month he supported the bill and would work with colleagues on next steps. There was no commitment that the Liberals would take the bill and pass it.

“This is a deeply hurtful issue, one that particularly affects survivors and their descendants,” he said.

In a statement, Conservative Crown-Indigenous Relations critic Jamie Schmale did not say whether his party supported the bill, but that he would “look at it closely” and participate in the debates.

Gazan said survivors are waiting for action.

“Knowing that this is an institutionalized genocide perpetrated by the Government of Canada, this is the least they can do.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published October 27, 2024.

Alessia Passafiume, The Canadian Press