Out Of Kamloops

No reconciliation without truth, when the truth is inequitably guarded, leaves us with a lot of conflict we are unable to reconcile.

The thought-provoking article titled “There is no reconciliation without truth” was published May 30th, 2026, by the Globe and Mail editorial board. While article titles are usually chosen by the editor, not the writer, given that this is an editorial board piece, we can assume whoever chose this title was also one of the people who wrote the article. I will treat it as the thesis of the piece. The article contains enough misleading examples and omits so much to have motivated me to write this response. I can only assume starting conversations is what the editorial board wanted out of this, so I will work with them on that.

The article is one quarter mea culpa three quarters tsk-tsk regarding what it considers to be an important reality of the last five years of First Nation history.

“there have been no human remains found at Kamloops”

It frames this reality as being in tension with another, that

“3,200 Indigenous children, at least, died at residential schools.”

However, the piece spends undue time on the first reality compared to the second. This is a gross false balance. What the editorial board is upset about is that the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation jumped the gun on confirming the presence of 215 bodies using ground penetrating radar. This is the kernel of truth to this article. The word “confirmation” implies a level of surety in this specific set of facts that was not there. The hand-wringing and blame-smearing that follows is not necessary given the actual turn of events. They describe the deaths of Indigenous children as

“a negligence so deep-rooted that it came “within unpleasant nearness” of manslaughter, according to a government official in the early 1900s.”

It is strange to use the words of someone who is presumably complicit in the atrocity to describe it no matter how they describe the atrocities. The board probably thought that was rhetorically powerful to call back to a contemporaneous account the show that the violence of residential schools was known to their perpetrators, they could have instead quoted someone Indigenous who lived through it. The Truth and Reconciliation commission has gone to great lengths to preserve exactly those narratives. This is about how the Globe and Mail editorial board views its paper as an institution, and whose voices the paper itself represents. This article is designed for talking points.

“Many students were physically abused or sexually abused. And all were the target of a systemic effort by the Canadian government, over decades, to snatch them from their homes and families, and to eradicate their culture and heritage. That, too, is reality, a damning reality.

But those two realities cannot be used to negate the other.”

Think about how it reads to put a ‘but’ there. Students were abused, but, kidnapped, but, eradicated, but. What kind of a construction is this? As Stephanie Scott put in a Globe article from last year, “How can we still be debating how “bad” residential schools were?” The suggestion of a but goes a long way in undermining the severity of the violence the piece ostensibly attempts to establish. What the board wants to say is the way we spoke about First Nations from 2021 to now was wrong, and this is the right way. Abused, but, kidnapped, but, eradicated, but. Late-pandemic peak woke is dead, and deference to First Nations should go with it. Whenever Indigenous people speak, it’s time to debate.

“That there have been no human remains found at Kamloops does not mean children did not die there. … A contention otherwise is denialism, and it is morally repugnant.

But the converse is also true. The fact of the crimes committed against Indigenous children at residential schools over many decades does not automatically validate claims that hundreds of students were dumped into unmarked graves in Kamloops and other residential schools. That is an extraordinary assertion, one that requires proof.”

What exactly is the extraordinary assertion? We know the names of over 60 kids who were killed in the Kamloops residential school. Why isn’t that mentioned? This article says at least 3200 kids were killed across the country. Away from their families. Dumped, unmarked, Kamloops? Are these the details the Globe is sparring over? The historical relevance of the exact process of killing kids is undetectable next to the relevance of the existence of said process in the first place. Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation did not assert the existence of mass graves, that is something the Globe parroted.

“the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation first issued a press release announcing the “confirmation of the remains of 215 children of the Kamloops Indian Residential School” through the use of ground-penetrating radar that identified subterranean anomalies.

The media, including The Globe and Mail, did not initially scrutinize, much less challenge, that assertion. … Many of those early stories, including in this newspaper, made reference to “mass graves””

Let’s be clear about the status of the Kamloops site. The band has not been excavating. Remember, whatever they should say following excavation will be up for further debate. This article would have you believe that 215 is bigger than 3200. But let’s talk about numbers, because why does the article use 3200 instead of the more recent total from the National Student Memorial register of 4200? 1000 more killed kids, no big deal? Since we know at least 60 kids were killed at Kamloops, that difference alone is over six times larger than the greatest possible Kamloops delta. Let us not pretend the Globe cares about being fast and loose with numbers here. The article goes on to chastise the late John Horgan and Justin Trudeau for being overly morose over findings with “had no factual basis.” How’s 4200 kids killed for a factual basis?

The article ends with

“Nor has Ottawa provided clarity on how the hundreds of millions of dollars sent to First Nations to establish whether the soil anomalies are human remains have been spent. Canadians are owed an explanation.”

This is just a tired racist trope that Indigenous people are living large off of undeserved federal funding. They continue

“First Nations are owed a greater debt. Lasting reconciliation between Indigenous communities and the rest of Canada has barely begun. But that reconciliation must be founded on the truth, wherever it leads.”

Abused, but, kidnapped, but, eradicated, but, owed a greater debt, but. Let’s talk about how the media can “fuel public perceptions,” as stated in the article. Denialism. The idea that the stories of kids who were killed is overblown does not preclude taking the position that residential school violence is fake. What public perceptions does this article want to fuel? Canadians are owed an explanation into millions of dollars sent to First Nations. Bigger than just residential school denialism, this is just classic anti-Indigenous racism.

Most charitably, the title means that First Nations won’t get reconciliation, which is what we all want, without all of us being truthful. Another way to read it is that reconciliation will be withheld if falsehoods like this spread again. I’m sorry, but why should First Nations suffer consequences because the media, including the Globe, failed at their job? The false confirmation of exactly 215 bodies is enough to call off reconciliation because it flies in the face of the ideal of truth. It doesn’t matter that the band knew their children had died there.

Consider “thousands of children were killed but the specific 215 number associated with Kamloops is not as was initially presented” versus “thousands of children were killed and each and every one of them left a hole that still affects Indigenous people and their communities today.” To present the former and not the latter as meritorious of an editorial is a choice, not the whole truth. The technology was there in the press release, but the Globe messed up and we’re all living with it, but now it’s Justin Trudeau’s responsibility to set the record straight and scrutiny must be applied to federal funds for Indigenous people. This is the appropriate response, the Globe thinks, to what they admit are their own mistakes. This wasn’t a chain of failures the whole way. The Globe is the institution we expect to act like the media, with all its privileges and responsibility. Just because the Globe and others wrongfully made this a symbol in the last five years does not mean it’s actually at the crux of reconciliation. The 4200 children killed might actually be.

This article has the appeal of being challenging without actually being challenging. It suggests “We’ve listened to Indigenous people, but residential school violence denialists are making a point we should listen to.” This does not challenge a supposed Indigenous elite, the second half of that idea is in spirit the status quo operation of Canada. The truth of 215 potential bodies being called confirmed too soon is nowhere near as important as the 4200 confirmed bodies, many from other residential school gravesites. Some graves were marked with wooden crosses, but the fact that some Indigenous kids might have been given proper Christian burials does not change the moral history. The differences are a little insulting to litigate.

All Globe editorials on Indigenous politics have been critical of First Nations since last August. There is too much truth to print, so this is the subset of truth the Globe chooses. When dealing with their communities missing children, the Globe offers First Nations no grace, only scrutiny. Their own mistake to not carefully read Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation’s 2021 press release and inquire as to what the capabilities of ground penetrating radar is means we should all consider mourning those 215 kids a mistake, nevermind all the multiples of 215 that fit in 4200.

The Kamloops 215 have not defined the last 5 years of First Nations lived experience. Not everything that is true can be construed as being important. The media makes the choice. The Globe here has chosen to construe Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation’s choice to forgo excavating their possible burial site as evidence that First Nations writ large deserve scrutiny. The 4200 kids killed and the burial sites that have been excavated are not construed as evidence for any point. This amount of hand wringing over the veracity Kamloops 215, a fraction of the kids who were definitely killed overall, fuels anti First Nations sentiment. The Globe is clear as to what it wants reconciliation to look like, what direction it wants to go. In their 2021 statement, Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation Chief Rosanne Casimir said that the exact number and identities of lost children in her community were impossible to verify. Too bad, says the Globe, no reconciliation for you then. Your literal inability to offer the truth that has been guarded from you for generations in this case works in your disfavour.

The story of the Kamloops 215 from 2021 to now has importance to moral history equivalent to a footnote, not an editorial. At a time when the Globe could have chosen to defend their histories from conspiracists who want to rewrite it, they say no, let us throw the conspiracists a bone. This will not satisfy them, but will fuel their perception that something shady went on. The Globe itself seems motivated by a sense that they were tricked into feeling really bad about the Kamloops 215 when they shouldn’t have, and now that it’s been five years and no excavation has taken place, someone else has to take responsibility for making the editorial board feel this way. I would invite them to read all the names of the children who were killed, verifiably, at the Kamloops residential school, or maybe all across Canada if they care to, and sit with however that list of names makes them feel. I invite them to wonder where their bodies went, and reflect on how their editorial, and the omission of this list, might fuel public perception. Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation has adjusted the language they use in reference to the 215, so to achieve that adjustment, in the name of truth, cannot be the goal of this editorial. When they say the history they are trying to tell is guided solely by a commitment to truth, they are lying. They are guided by anti-Indigenous ideology. There is no other explanation for this false balance in the face of injustice.