Truth Before Reconciliation: How to Identify and Confront Residential School Denialism

• In-person event

• Contact
• Laura Madokoro, LauraMadokoro@cunet.carleton.ca

The Department of History’s Decolonization Committee is pleased to host a lecture by Dr. Sean Carleton, University of Manitoba, entitled “Truth Before Reconciliation: How to Identify and Confront Residential School Denialism”.

The talk will be held on 20 September 2023 at 3 pm. EST via Zoom. Please RSVP by emailing LauraMadokoro@cunet.carleton.ca. A Zoom link for the event will follow.

As context, the committee invited Dr. Carleton to speak following a series of emails sent to various academic units at Carleton University and other institutions across Canada over the course of 2022-2023 intended to cast doubt on the history of residential schools in Canada and current efforts around Truth and Reconciliation. Dr. Carleton has been researching the role of denialism and his talk will shed light on this topic.

Abstract: In 2017, Lynn Beyak, a Canadian Senator, delivered a controversial speech defending Canada’s Indian Residential School system (1883–1996) as being ‘well-intentioned.’ Made shortly after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released its final report to show Canadians the evidence of how residential schooling for Indigenous children and youth constituted genocide, the Senator’s speech sparked national debate. This talk historicizes and theorizes the role of denialism in colonial settings to argue that speech acts such as Beyak’s can be understood as a discursive strategy used by colonizers to legitimize and defend their material power, privilege, and profit. The talk examines Beyak’s public comments as well as 100 support letters she received and published on her Senate website to show how they embrace anti-Indigenous racism generally and employ residential school denialism specifically to attack and undermine truth and reconciliation efforts in Canada.

Dr. Sean Carleton is a settler historian and assistant professor in the departments of history and Indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia (UBC Press, 2022).

We look forward to seeing you there. As a reminder, you can email LauraMadokoro@cunet.carleton.ca to RSVP. A Zoom link for the event will follow.