Four Years. Zero Graves. Now What?

Of the 215 “unmarked graves” of Indigenous children that were said to have been “discovered” on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops , British Columbia four years ago , not a single one has been shown to exist.

The original May 2021 announcement was based on a property survey performed using ground-penetrating radar technology.

Law Society of British Columbia's mandatory Indigenous Training course includes the words, “discovery of an unmarked burial site containing the bodies of 215 children on the former Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds.” The Law Society’s contempt for the truth was so galling that two B.C. lawyers proved willing to break taboos surrounding candid discussion of the unmarked-graves issue, and put forward a resolution proposing that the words “the discovery confirms what survivors have been saying all along” James Heller , one of the two lawyers who sought to correct the Law Society for defamation, is suing the body for defamation.

Some lawmakers have even proposed criminalising Canadians who question the officially sanctioned mythology about Kamloops and other residential schools.

It’s a deeply unsettling cult of self-censorship that, to my knowledge, has no precedent in any other liberal democracy during my lifetime.

The desire for a scoop has been suffocated by a collective campaign of reputational ass protection.