A warning: this episode discusses the trauma and harms surrounding Canada's residential school history. Please listen with care.

So much of what we know about Canada's residential schools has been established as fact. More than 150 thousand Indigenous children and youth were taken from their families and required to attend these schools. Several thousand students died.

Although all of this is well-documented and verified, there has been a growing discourse calling those facts into question. Researchers, commentators and some politicians have really zeroed in on the 2021 discovery of suspected graves near a former residential school in Kamloops.

Academics and Indigenous leaders call this residential school denialism — similar to Holocaust denialism. Many of them have called for adding the denial of residential school history to the Criminal Code as a form of hate speech.

Earlier this month, a Nunavut senator brought forward a motion to amend Bill C-9, the Liberals’ anti hate bill, to do just that – but it was voted down.

Sean Carleton and Niigaan Sinclair have been tracking the rise of residential school denialism in Canada. Their book, “Truth Before Reconciliation: Confronting Residential School Denialism”, comes out this September.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts