A BC MLA conservative has rejected the request of its leader to eliminate a position on social networks that critics say it is equivalent to residential school denialism: a position of official accused of the Opposition Attorney General Dallas Brodie Refuta.
Brodie faces a violent reaction for an X publication.
“The number of children confirmed children in the old site of the residential school of India Kamloop is zero. Zero. No one should be afraid of truth. Neither lawyers, their governing bodies or any other person.”
Brodie, a lawyer, would come in defense of another lawyer, James Heller.
Last year, Heller pushed the Law Society of BC to change its training material to say that there were “potentially” burial sites in the old residential school in Kamloops, instead of a more definitive language.
Heller is demanding society for what he calls “false and defamatory” accusations of racism.
Brodie says she is not denying what happened in residential schools.
“The stand that I am taking is based on the need for truth. And I don’t think defending the truth takes anything from the severity of what happened in residential schools,” he told journalists from the legislature on Monday. “I am a lawyer. I believe in evidence, truth and search for truth, and I think that lawyers should be allowed to ask questions.”
However, Brodie’s conservative colleague, A’aliyah Warbus, a member of the Sto: Nation and the leader of the party chamber, on social networks:
“Find out, get the latest facts, investigations and talk to the survivors. Question the narratives of the people who lived and survived these atrocities, is nothing more than harmful and goes back to us in reconciliation.”
Conservative leader John Rustad said he asked Brodie to withdraw the position. He has refused.
“When the tweet was presented for the first time, I worried that it could be misunderstood instead of being about the fact that there have been no tombs … or any body in that particular site exhumed or found, compared to the whole subject From residential schools, “Rustad said. “I asked him to take ([he post] Below for that concern. ”
Rustad says that the horrors of residential schools cannot be denied.
“[Children] He went to school. They were taken from their families, and more than 4,000 children did not return home. Those children died in residential schools. “
The great boss Stewart Phillip, of the BC Chiefs Indian union, says that Brodie’s comments cause pain to the survivors of residential schools and their families.
“I think such comments are absolutely disgusting, disgusting and ugly,” he said.
The BC attorney general, Niki Sharma, says that during her legal career, she worked with survivors of residential schools, who have fought hard for decades to recognize their truth.
“It has been a long and painful trip to those people,” Sharma said. “I am disappointed that his first question for me as a criticism is based on a form of denial of residential schools.
The old residential school of India Kamloops, where, in 2021, TK̓emlúps Te Secwépemc shared that the preliminary findings of a penetrating radar survey in the ground had found about 200 potential tombs unmarked in the bases of the institution, they have been designated as A national historical site. Jennifer Norwell of the CBC took an internal look at the school with the head of the tk’emlúps te secwépemc.
Sean Carleton, a professor of indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba, said that the denial of the residential school not only denies that residential schools exist, but also implies a “strategy to try to shake public confidence in the established truth by minimizing, minimizing and twisting facts … public confidence in the truth. “
Carleton is concerned that some politicians are using such statements as a wedge problem.
“If they can delegitimize Kamloop, then they can delegitimize the entire narrative of the residential school,” he said.
In 2021, the first nation of TK’emlúps said that the penetrating radar of the soil provided “confirmation of the remains of 215 children” on the school site, but last year the writing to 215 anomalies changed. The news has referred to them as “potential burial sites or possible unmarked tombs.”
Kukpi7 Rosanne Casimir, head of the first nation Tk’emlúps Te Secwépemc, was not available to comment on Monday.
The National Center of Truth and Reconciliation has documented that at least 4,118 children died in residential schools.
More than 150,000 indigenous children were forced to attend them in Canada, the last of which closed in 1996.
