NY Post Erroneously Claims Mass Graves at Kamloops Residential School is "Debunked"

A year ago, a mass grave of 215 children was discovered on the grounds of the former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. Several other mass graves were subsequently found casting a pall on Canada Day festivities.

A couple of days ago, I came across this headline from the New York Post:

‘Biggest fake news story in Canada’: Kamloops mass grave debunked by academics

This is a very misleading headline because when one reads the story one learns there are a group of academics who are questioning the existence of mass graves disputing the reliance on "ground penetrating radar".

These academics are making a claim which might be right or wrong or somewhere in between. But their claim has not been substantiated. The mass graves have been not "debunked." The headline ought to have read something like:

Group of Canadian Academics Raise Skepticism About Mass Graves at Residential Schools

The 'fake news' quote is attributed to Tom Flanagan, a retired professor at the University of Calgary. What the story doesn't tell you is that Flanagan is a well known Canadian conservative/libertarian intellectual who was involved with Canada's Reform Party in the 1990s and later served as an adviser to former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Nor does it disclose that Flanagan authored a book called First Nations? Second Thoughts in which he refers to Aboriginal peoples as "savages".

In view of these facts, it should not surprise one that Flanagan takes a benign view of residential schools. In the article, Flanagan claims Aboriginal people enrolled their children in these schools willingly because there was no other choice. Well, if you have no other choice then that isn't much of a choice at all. Flanagan also fails to take into account that the aim and objective of residential schools was "killing the Indian" in the child. In Kamloops, they evidently settled for killing the child. 

The article does cite Eldon Yellowhorn, the founder and chair of the Indigenous Studies program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, who is skeptical of the mass graves claim. However, despite his skepticism, Yellowhorn hasn't called the mass graves story "fake news" and states it is possible bodies could be found if an excavation is ever done.

Yellowhorn's skepticism is academic while Flanagan's is political. To call the mass graves is fake news without the facts can only be meant to minimize the suffering of those children who died in Canada's residential schools as well as those who survived them. When you add in Flanagan referring to Aboriginal peoples as "savages", such remarks are also meant to deny the humanity of Canada's indigenous population.