Jawbones, Gophers and Tainted Milk

What Do We Really Know About Missing Children at Canada’s Residential Schools?

The essay on the other side of the paywall, written by yours truly and acclaimed political scientist Tom Flanagan, was first published in a leading Canadian journal on February 28, 2023. It was subsequently re-published by an international journal devoted to debunking historical disinformation.

It details and debunks two recent discoveries of the graves of alleged buried students who attended Canada’s Indian Residential Schools largely based on “indigeneous knowings” augmented by the inconclusive technology called “ground penetrating radar.”

With so much pressure being used to accept “indigenous ways of knowing” on so many subjects and public policy imperatives, it has become necessary to remind ourselves of the critical importance of Western Enlightenment ways of knowing to describe and explain reality in the 21st century.

Empirical evidence, the scientific method, free discourse, verified historical facts, and the rigorous use of logic undergird modern civilization and all its benefits. Using this toolbox of time-tested concepts, Tom Flanagan and I investigate some of the most recent claims of missing students and unmarked graves at Canada’s allegedly genocidal Indian Residential Schools. And we find the current narrative to be pitifully lacking in facts and other reliable evidence.