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The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) has passed an emergency resolution that calls on Canada to criminalize residential school denialism.
The advocacy organization, which represents chiefs countrywide, is holding its annual general assembly in Ottawa this week. The resolution was passed on Tuesday.
First Nations chiefs spoke about the importance of the resolution at a news conference Wednesday.
“Today the country that we live in perpetuates hate crimes” by not criminalizing residential school denialism, said Garrison Settee, grand chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, which represents 26 First Nations across Manitoba.
“It is a shame to live in a country that will not protect our people from hate crimes.”
Several leaders including Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Linda Debassige and AFN B.C. Regional Chief Terry Teegee said they spoke to the Senate about including residential school denialism in the recently passed Combating Hate Act (Bill C-9). The Senate voted down a proposed amendment to add it to the bill.
A spokesperson for the Justice Minister said in a statement the Combating Hate Act was intended to make spaces like places of worship, schools, cultural centres and community spaces safer by strengthening laws against hate crimes.
“Indian Residential School denialism is a serious and distinct issue that does not fit within the scope of what the Combating Hate Act was designed to do,” said the statement.
“Our government has said this issue warrants dedicated further parliamentary study. Any legal response should be developed carefully in genuine consultation and co-operation [with] Indigenous peoples and the communities most affected.”
Settee said the government should work with First Nations to create legislation to combat denialism.
The federal government estimates about 150,000 Indigenous children attended residential schools, which were a church-run, state-funded system of assimilation that operated countrywide for more than a century. More than 4,000 deaths have been documented.
Residential school denialism does not deny the existence of the school system, but rather downplays, excuses or misrepresents facts about the harms caused by it.
The resolution calls for the government to either amend Bill C-9 or create new stand-alone legislation that “criminalizes the public condoning, denial, justification, or minimization of Indian residential school denialism as a form of hate speech against First Nations.”
“These are not opinions, these are historical facts,” said David Monias, chief of Pimicikamak Cree Nation in Manitoba.
“When people deny or minimize this history they do more than deny the past, they reopen the wounds of survivors, they dishonour the children, they fuel anti-First Nations racism.”
Teegee said residential school denialism is on the rise, with more extreme conservative ideas bleeding into Canada from the U.S. resulting in private citizens and politicians feeling emboldened to perpetuate anti-Indigenous racism.
Regional Chief of the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations Terry Teegee said violence, anti-Indigenous rhetoric and hate speech are linked to residential school denialism and that, if left unaddressed, denialism ‘undermines truth and reconciliation.’
Teegee said atrocities committed at residential schools should be accepted as fact.
“Denialists need to hear our stories and also need to know the truth,” said Teegee.
It is a crime in Canada to promote antisemitism by condoning, denying, or downplaying the Holocaust. Debassige said it is a simple ask for Canada to include a similar amendment to the criminal code on residential school denialism.
Debassige said she wanted to remind people that Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for residential schools on behalf of Canada in 2008, but that apology, “without work, is dead.”
NDP MP Leah Gazan tabled a private member’s bill in Parliament last fall to criminalize residential school denialism. It’s waiting for its second reading in the House of Commons.
