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CALGARY—On Sept. 27, a group of masked men gathered at the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc reserve just outside of Kamloops, B.C., to intimidate First Nations people three days before the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. They held up a banner above the Trans-Canada highway that read, “Got bones?”—a reference to the California Milk Processor Board’s famous “Got Milk?” campaign and the ongoing investigation into unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site. Make no mistake, this was a highly organized and co-ordinated test run. The violence comes later.
Note that the Ku Klux Klan promoted Adopt-A-Highway litter-control cleanup program to gain roadside recognition of their hate group. This tactic is not new.
There have been numerous instances of protests and demonstrations of white nationalism popping up across the country, particularly in the last year. This past August, in Millarville, Alta., Second Sons Canada “held its second annual national meeting where masked group members participated in military-style drills,” as reported by CBC News. In June, Second Sons staged a demonstration in Halifax where they installed a large white cross (reminds me of the movie Mississippi Burning) used in a promotional video. All they needed was a match.
Dominion Society also exists, which is another white supremacist network formed by founded by Daniel Tyrie, a “former executive director of the People’s Party of Canada,” the CBC reported. And there’s Nationalist-13, who demonstrated in front of the Hamilton, Ont., city hall back in February.
The boldness of these groups within the last few years is a foreseeable outcome of Canada’s march to the right in the wake of a whitelash against marginalized communities fighting for equal rights. I wrote about this in 2021 in this paper: “The same white grievance industrial complex that was erected in America to advance white supremacy is the same one that Conservative MPs have used to build their electoral base of support.” In 2022, the Ottawa occupation happened.
Conservatives have built party real estate around disdain for Indigenous Peoples, both nationally and provincially, especially in British Columbia where the B.C. Conservatives had been haemorrhaging caucus members like a fetid wound prior to Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s resignation as leader and last week’s snap election call. At the time of this writing, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has yet to publicly acknowledge the incident in Kamloops more than 24 hours later, which gives the impression of his tacit approval. Poilievre previously defended now-MP Aaron Gunn, whom Indigenous leaders had called on to resign as a candidate last year for his past “reprehensible” comments denying that a genocide took place at what he called the “much-maligned” residential schools. Poilievre called those accusations “misinformation.” In 2023, Poilievre spoke at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a group known to run radio ads of denialism, as well as publishing blog posts promoting eugenics.
It’s not just the Conservatives; the Liberals have perpetuated the marginalization of Indigenous Peoples. Even now, the Carney government is steadfast in denying treating residential school denialism as a hate crime. The Canadian Press reported: “Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty was noncommittal when asked about criminalizing residential school denialism after a group linked with white nationalism reportedly staged a demonstration in the B.C. interior.”
From sidestepping the duty to consult on major projects to trying to rewrite the history of John A. Macdonald, Prime Minister Mark Carney is also is streamlining anti-Indigenous sentiments into this government’s modus operandi. As I wrote on Twitter: “There is a straight line between fed govt’s rewriting of SJAM history that purposefully ignores systemic Indigenous racism and ignoring residential school denialism (wasn’t included in the anti-hate bill) and anti-Indigenous hate. This is how the state tacitly weaponizes hate.”
Political institutions have effectively played their part in minimizing the horrors of residential schools. The Senate denied Nunavut Senator Nancy Karetak-Lindell’s amendments to the anti-hate bill, C-9, the Assembly of First Nations highlighted, including those “that would criminalize Indian Residential School denialism. The amendment passed the Senate Human Rights Committee with broad support, but the amendment was rejected by the Senate as a whole in a vote of 32-41.”
One of the NDP’s few sitting MPs, Leah Gazan, has been pushing to criminalize residential school denialism, but her Bill C-254 has been stuck at first reading for nearly a year. She continues her tireless fight for the government to fulfil its responsibilities on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls file. The 231 Calls for Justice have regressed, according to a June report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives: “Importantly, this pattern reflects what many Indigenous governance scholars describe as ‘austerity through expiration’—where commitments are not explicitly withdrawn but are, instead, allowed to lapse, producing structural instability while preserving the appearance of ongoing reconciliation investment.” The same is happening with the 94 Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission where Indigenous Watchdog calculatesthat 41 per cent have stalled or haven’t been started after 11 years.
As expected, the condemnations came fast and furious after this past weekend’s events. But they ring hollow when all areas of government, the public, and media have ignored the Calls to Action and Calls for Justice, and perpetuated the residential school denialism lie. Anti-woke is pro-hate.
Erica Ifill is host of the Bad+Bitchy podcast.
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