Residential schools were not instruments of genocide

The following opinion piece written by Ian Gentles, emeritus professor of history at York University, and distinguished professor of history and global affairs at Tyndale University, was first published by a prominent Canadian media house on February 6, 2023. It is re-posted here in full with the kind permission of the author.

Dr. Gentles nicely contrasts the groundless accusations that Canada’s Indian Residential Schools were murderous houses of horror with the many positive accounts of their former students.

He also shows that:

First Nations people often demanded that residential schools be built on or near their reserves. When a school was destroyed by fire they were quick to demand that it be rebuilt. Waiting lists to get into the schools were common right up until the 1960s, when the government began to phase them out, sometimes in the face of protests from First Nations parents. While it has been alleged that students were forced to attend these schools against their parents’ will, there is little if any hard evidence to support the charge. 

This must-read article cogently dispels these and other myths — some even peddled by those seeming to be critical of much of the negative mainstream narrative — surrounding attendance at these boarding schools.