Jack Anawak says he doesn’t know how people can deny what occurred at residential schools.
“It really is questionable to see whether the deniers really believe that or they just want to go through the process of assimilation and forget about the First Nations and Inuit,” he said. “It is unbelievable to see that there’s still that racism out there.”
Anawak, a longtime Nunavut politician who attended residential school at Chesterfield Inlet, said there are still people who believe residential schools were good for Indigenous people.
“We lived through the abuses: physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual and the attempt at assimilation,” he said. “It really doesn’t have much of an impact when people [deny] this, but it still hurts too. I guess it brings us back to our younger days.”
Earlier this month, Nunavut Sen. Nancy Karetak-Lindell, also a residential school survivor, brought forward an amendment to Bill C-9 — dubbed the Combating Hate Act — that would have made residential school denialism a crime. The bill would make it a criminal offence to promote hatred against identifiable groups using certain hate- or terrorism-related symbols.
Karetak-Lindell believes her amendment didn’t pass because of concerns over freedom of expression. She said she tried to put the amendment in similar terms as a Holocaust denialism bill that passed in 2022.
“We tried to put it in exactly the same wording as Holocaust denialism, so it’s hard to understand how one can go through and be accepted and this not be,” she says.
Sean Carleton, an associate professor in history and Indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba, said Holocaust denialism being a crime when residential school denialism is not shows an imbalance of the law.
“The downplaying of a genocide far away is a criminal offence in Canada and yet the denial, the downplaying, the minimizing of a genocide in our own backyard where many Indigenous people continue to live with the reality and ongoing intergenerational effects is fine,” he said. “This is not a step in the right direction.”
Carleton says residential school denialism is treated differently than Holocaust denialism because it asks Canadians to confront ideals the country was built upon.
“Genocide against Indigenous people in a variety of different ways is ongoing. It is foundational to Canada’s creation,” he said. “The relationship between Canada and Indigenous peoples requires Canada to pivot, Canadians to pivot, to build a more respectful relationship…. That on the surface can seem threatening.”
Kimberly Murray, Queen’s University national scholar in Indigenous legal studies, says the amendment’s defeat is revealing.
“There’s the inequity between groups of people in this country,” she said. “We’re not worthy of having protections that other groups in Canadian society are entitled to and that’s very problematic.”
Carleton says he was surprised the federal government didn’t address residential school denialism in the original version of Bill C-9.
“That’s actually where we need to start with this story,” he said. “What is the federal government doing to combat the rampant anti-Indigenous racism that we are seeing taking the form of residential school denialism?”
In 2024, the federal government pledged $5 million over three years to establish a program to combat residential school denialism. A spokesperson for the minister of Crown-Indigenous relations details will be released in the coming months.
A spokesperson for the federal justice minister wrote in an email that residential school denialism is a serious issue, but that it “does not fit within the scope of what the Combatting Hate Act was designed to do.”
Instead, a spokesperson said, the federal government believes the issue warrants further parliamentary study and consultation with Indigenous peoples.
Anawak says consultation is important, but Indigenous people have already been clear.
“There doesn’t really need to be a widespread consultation because Inuit and First Nations have spoken on these issues,” he said.
Carleton says the federal government needs to take the issue more seriously.
“[The federal government] needs to set the agenda and the tone for the whole country that this is not acceptable,” he said. “It needs to be held accountable. It needs to own its lack of progress on this, and it needs to learn those lessons.”
NDP MP Leah Gazan is also critical of the lack of action from the federal government on this issue.
“It’s unfortunate the senators voted it down,” Gazan said.
“Residential school denialism continues to intensify and this Liberal government continues to turn a blind eye to the rising dangers and hate that are being perpetrated.”
Last October, Gazan drafted a private member’s bill in Parliament to amend the Criminal Code to protect Indigenous peoples against hate. It’s waiting for its second reading in the House of Commons.
Though Carleton says criminalization is a good first step, it’s not the only thing Canada should be doing.
“Even criminalization, if it does move forward and in a different form, it will not be a silver bullet,” he said.
Beyond criminalization, Murray and Carleton say they’d like to see the federal government improve public education on residential schools.
With this amendment shot down, now Karetak-Lindell says she’s speaking with other Indigenous senators looking into an inquiry or study to push the law forward.
Anawak says he admires Karetak-Lindell’s efforts.
“There will always be those people [deniers]. But, we did not survive in the North by giving up,” he says. “Our ancestors moved forward in a very harsh environment. We can do the same.”
