I applaud the decision of Seth Cardinal Dodginghorse and Tina Guyani to remove their work from the University of Calgary. Promoting or elevating Residential School Denialism perpetuates hate and diminishes Canada. While I am far more liberal than many in Alberta, I have never confused Conservative politics with the politics of hate.
I would argue that conservative politics in its highest expression seeks to conserve what is best about Canada. It seeks to slow change to preserve what is the best of Canada. Mocking or discriminating against those who are weaker, different, poorer, or of a different heritage is not reflective of shared Canadian morals. It is why we have preserved the universal extension of human rights in our Charter.
To conserve what is best about Canada, we must stand up to ideas and provocations that offend those ideals. Residential School denialism is a dangerous racist practice designed to oppress the testimony of those abused. It is akin to the good slave stories that were popular in the 1930s to minimize the barbarity of slavery. Residential Schools happened.
More children died at residential schools (Murray Sinclair stated the number could be as high as 30,000) than the NAACP says were lynched in the US after the Civil War (3,446). While Canada is having difficulty accepting the genocide at Residential Schools were are farther ahead than our American cousins where Notre Dame still runs a collection of the Mission Schools Ryerson copied (ace.nd.edu).
Worse, the American College of Surgeons has estimated that from 1970-2022, 3.083 victims of school shootings in the US. Would Pamela Wallin have interviewed Alex Jones after Terry Glavin on her All Nonsense podcast? I am glad the Beyakian Senator from Saskatchewan is no more.
Arguing over whether it was 3,000 or 30,000 is a dismissive argument designed to silence uncomfortable truths about the criminal actions of Canada’s past. The intent to destroy the Indian not the man, did not end with Residential Schools but has carried on with Forced Foster Care.
Canadians mock the US’s ICE attacks and police shootings, but in the spring of 2020, when George Floyd was killed, 6 Indigenous people were killed by Canadian Police, and no charges were laid. The horrific footage from the Eishia Hudson murder was comparable to Renee Good’s, yet the NHL held its #BLM moment with the Chicago Blackhawks in Edmonton.
We have to start looking at things more critically and in view of the false promises of the Charter. When the Calgary Flames fired Bill Peters it replaced him with Darryl Sutter whose family charity sponsors the Red Deer Sutter Chiefs, who won the 2026 Esso Cup. When Mark Carney opened his Liberal leadership campaign in Quebec, he did so with the Cataractes de Shawinigan, the same team that played on TSN in the Memorial Cup on Indigenous Peoples Day 2022, the same day Melanie Joly suspended funding for Hockey Canada for hiding abuse.
I can tell you there were similar actions taken in the Mississauga hearing where Hockey Canada did not come forward with its knowledge of Indigenous abuse in the MHL/GTHL, yet the HRTO turned a blind eye. In the same way the Human Rights Commission of Ontario did, when with CHRC help, they claimed the individual human rights system is not ideally suited to deal with Indigenous issues.
The media is not better. My documentary, Systemic Injustice, about the culture of Indigenous racism in Canada won awards in the US and Italy, and I am 0 for 24 on Canadian festivals. My application for CBC Gem has resulted in the pitch acquisitions team blocking me, I found out yesterday, and HNIC interviewers let Leafs’ players regularly call Berube “Chief”. They ignored the Sutter Chiefs and Cherry’s use of the Charleston Chiefs Jersey on Coaches Corner, which resulted in Kevin J. Johnstone harassing me for a week. The Flames owner who paid for illegal tests on Indigenous children was not forced to sell. Tolerance of Indigenous abuse is A-OK.
I tried to follow up my documentary Systemic Injustice in a PhD program at U Windsor, but a professor kept calling Indigenous societies primitive at Savage during a Fall 2022 course. I drove 7 hours, paid for my own hotel, to be abused by an idiot professor too stupid to realize the racist garbage of his “academic” idols. I left the program rather than cast my lot with a nest of abuse, as the one tolerated at U Calgary.
I regret ever getting involved in the Human Rights Process. I was used by their officers; my rights were sacrificed at the altar of their careers. Support Dodginghorse and Guyani, who stood up to Residential School Denialism and for the best ideals falsely promised by the Charter. They possess more courage than using a Chicken Wing any day of the week. And far more courage than those at the Canadian Council of Indigenous Business who continue to ignore the Bank of Montreal selling Chicago Blackhawks MasterCards in the USA.
Brad Gallant is an Indigenous activist and educational video producer who would never put his faith in Canada’s Human Rights Institutions again.
