VIDEO: Professor Tom Flanagan on the latest round of GPR anomalies found on former residential school sites

The must-view video available below features acclaimed political scientist Tom Flanagan who carefully and intelligently interrogates the inconclusive ground penetrating radar (GPR) findings of allegedly missing and buried Indian Residential Schools made in recent years that went balistic after the following May 27, 2021 Kamloops Indian Band media release:

It is with a heavy heart that Tk’emlúps te Secwé pemc Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne
Casimir confirms an unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented by the Kamloops Indian Residential School. This past weekend, with the help of a ground penetrating radar specialist, the stark truth of the preliminary findings came to light – the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” stated Kukpi7 Rosanne Casimir. “Some were as young as three years old. We sought out a way to confirm that knowing out of deepest respect and love for those lost children and their families, understanding that Tk’emlúps te Secwé pemc is the final resting place of these children.”

Tk’emlúps te Secwé pemc will continue to work with the ground penetrating radar specialist to complete the survey of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds. In undertaking this current investigation, Tk’emlúps te Secwé pemc Chief and Council would like to acknowledge the preliminary work that was carried out in the early 2000’s. With access to the latest technology, the true accounting of the missing students will hopefully bring some peace and closure to those lives lost and their home communities.

My first take on this discovery was that it was simply a continuation of the unprecedented way the use of indigenous-only “ways of knowing” and the investigation of aboriginal grievances have displaced modern Western law and science.

Most important, an allegedly aggrieved group/category of people should never be granted absolute and unaccountable charge of every aspect of their alleged grievances, a process that began with the indigenous led 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

During the pre-contact period, indigenous mob justice based on the specious concept called “indigenous law” used to take place when nothing else worked. In such cases, chronically violent or otherwise disruptive individuals were harshly dealt with using avoidance, ostracism, or even murder as the ultimate forms of punishment.

Contrary to Western forms of justice, the very same people punishing incorrigible persons served simultaneously as witnesses, prosecutors, judges, juries, and executioners.

This is 2023 in Canada, not 1423 in a huge expanse of land sparsely occupied by hundreds of scattered preliterate mainly foraging peoples.

The shared national rule of law based on due process and justice as embedded in our constitution needs to be strictly enforced. Justice must not only be done but seen to be done. But such justice is neither done nor seen to be done when it comes to contemporary indigenous issues.

As for scientific evidence, there have been several instances where bones and skeletons of indigenous people have been found accidentally or using GPR but all have been found in known cemeteries. Yes, GPR is a great way to find bodies in known cemeteries but is a very problematic technique in other locales based on unsubstantiated second or third-hand “indigenous knowings” from anonymous knowledge keepers.

Don’t miss finding out much more about these issues in the video on the other side of the paywall.