Former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Photo by Bumble Dee/Shutterstock.

Sean Carleton and Niigaan Sinclair, Indigenous studies professors and editors of the new book, Truth Before Reconciliation: Confronting Residential School Denialism, respond to the slow creep of harmful and disrespectful residential school denialist rhetoric into mainstream media discourse. This article was originally pitched to the Globe and Mail, but it was declined.

Two things can be true at the same time. The Globe and Mail, as one of Canada’s newspapers of record, can unequivocally support truth and reconciliation and denounce residential school denialism—the wilful denying, downplaying, or distorting of the history and harm of residential schooling—as “morally repugnant.”

Yet the Globe can also publish content that serves to undermine reconciliation and create space for residential school denialism to spread. Its May 30, 2026 editorial, marking the fifth anniversary of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépmec Nation’s preliminary announcement about the location of potential unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, is an unfortunate example.

The editorial, titled “There is no reconciliation without truth,” starts by acknowledging the thousands of confirmed deaths of Indigenous children at residential schools, as well as the serious crimes committed by church and school employees. But its main argument is that no “mass grave” was discovered at Kamloops and no bodies have been exhumed. This, to be clear, is not what the Nation announced in May 2021. Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc shared preliminary findings from a ground-penetrating radar survey identifying approximately 200 targets of interest consistent with possible burials, while stressing that its investigation was ongoing. The Nation did not announce the discovery of a “mass grave.”

Nevertheless, the Globe felt the need to offer a mea culpa in its recent editorial: “The media, including the Globe and Mail, did not initially scrutinize, much less challenge, that [mass grave] assertion.” It goes on to conclude: “Perhaps it will be proven, some day, that there are hundreds of unmarked graves at Kamloops. But it was not proven to be true in May, 2021… It is not proven to be true today… Reconciliation must be founded on the truth, wherever it leads.”

The problem with the Globe’s editorial is that it will contribute to the further normalization of harmful and disrespectful residential school denialism currently being used to foment anti-Indigenous racism, derail reconciliation, and protect Canada’s colonial status........

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