Sincere thanks to Dougald Lamont for permission to share this carefully researched “catalog of errors of fact, errors of reasoning, and unsupported assertions” found piled high in the book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools edited by three known residential school denialists. Grave Error has been widely condemned by Indigenous organizations and legitimate historians. Lamont began releasing his work in parts on his Substack last week.
Instead of simply refusing to read the ugliness packaged as “truth” by residential school denialists (as many of us prefer to do), Lamont chose to face it head-on, with step-by-step analysis that dismantles each of the essays in Grave Error.
Lamont’s text becomes a roadmap for deconstructing the popular tropes of denial that Canadians, collectively, need to stand up and refute to help extinguish the flames denialists work continuously to fan. It deserves to be read widely and cited often. The title “Canadamnesia” is a fitting label for the willful disregard and misrepresentation of the solemn survivor testimony and reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Canadamnesia: Reconciling Truth with the Absence of Facts and Reason in Champion, has two parts:
- Part One: Testing Grave Error’s Sources and Reasoning on Residential Schools for Accuracy.
- Part Two: Presenting a documented history of Residential Schools and the Child Welfare Systems that ultimately replaced them.
- The edition shared here is a working draft. I hope it can find its way to a publisher soon. It deserves to be seen and quoted wherever residential school denial is found.
