Indigenous people's history only one at threat of erasure

In the face of the dark discovery that ground-penetrating radar revealed a mass grave of unceremonially and secretly buried children at a B.C. residential school, Alberta's premier has seen fit to revive the fabricated narrative that malevolent leftist forces seek to erase history.

Jason Kenney, in predictable reactionary outrage rhetoric in response to people who reasonably argue the architects of genocide should perhaps not be glorified with public monuments, whined about cancel culture and unironically lectured about learning from history.

Or at least, his version of it.

The palatable and borderline romantic fairy tale where benevolent settlers had to tame wild lands and nomadic inhabitants whose ways were primitive. The European arrivals were actually doing the local inhabitants, who had developed their own sacred and deeply held beliefs over the ages, a big favour by taking just about everything away from them and reducing their once-proud cultures to subjugated shadows of their former selves, all in exchange for the enlightened guidance of a superior, deity-sanctioned hand that claimed a pre-ordained destiny to rewrite their entire stories and set them on the "righteous" path.

Revelations that ground-penetrating radar identified what appears to be a mass grave containing the remains of more than 200 Indigenous children at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. have sent shockwaves through the collective Canadian conscience, prompting a growing chorus of calls to stop glorifying the architects of the deliberate and systemic attempt to erase the cultures of people who long pre-dated the arrival of European colonizers. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney's uninspiring and reactionary response, however, was to — perhaps predictably — instead bemoan so-called cancel culture.

Kenney once even happily employed and dubiously defended an outspoken and unrepentant denier of Canada's sordid history in the treatment of those who lived on these lands millennia before European colonizers ever set foot on the eastern shores barely a few centuries ago.

Eventually, Paul Bunner, who prior to working for Kenney had also served former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, finally became too hot of political liability to defend, regardless of the usual attempts at apologist spin and doublespeak. So, the speechwriter fell on his own sword, going into "retirement."

All of this background taken into context, Kenney's words ring rather hollow.

He presents a completely fallacious depiction of a fabricated scapegoat nemesis to fire up what remaining supporters he still has, indignantly decrying cancel culture as a rallying call, while himself clearly having no problem associating so closely with someone who unapologetically denigrated the traumatic experiences endured by the survivors of the residential school system.

(Side note: I was going to provide a link to one of Bunner's offending pieces, titled "The 'genocide' that failed"; however, my anti-virus intercepted a threat.)

But let's not kid ourselves. These schools — where deplorable conditions had long since been identified and ignored, allowing diseases to spread and lives to be needlessly lost — weren't about a well-meaning hand up. They were about reprogramming and indoctrination. In some cases, experimentation.

The stated objective of figures like Bishop Vital-Justin Grandin was to shame these children into a deep-seated sense of perverse self-loathing that would lead them to seek to dissociate from and forget their origins.

And while Kenney hammers away on cultural wedge issues, an Albertan Conservative Member of Parliament says Ottawa needs to help.

Earl Dreeshen, MP for Red Deer-Mountain View, is of course shamelessly politicking, speaking with no moral high ground to stand on as he expects voters to forget the time in 2009 when his own Harper-led Conservative government promptly proceeded to ignore the recommendation from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report to fund such searches on the grounds of former residential schools.

The unflinching audacity of men like Dreeshen is brazen and breathtakingly astounding. They grandstand as the opposition from atop their self-righteous soapboxes until they turn blue in the face preaching what the government must do, but once in power do absolutely nothing to address the issues they had previously feigned such indignation about.

Especially deficits and debt, which only ever seem to matter when Liberal or provincial NPD governments are at the helm.

Just ignore the astronomical growth in both deficits and debt when Conservatives are busy giving profitable billion-dollar corporations and the super rich endless tax breaks that never create jobs while public institutions, social services and infrastructure fall into neglect.

But I digress.

Kenney's attempt to posture against cancel culture is profoundly embarrassing.

No one wants to erase history.

Repeatedly debunking this manufactured talking point that no one it is levelled against actually proposes, is becoming tiresome. Exhausting, actually. It's just another distraction to mislead and divide while the much larger issues remain unaddressed.

Greed.

Inequality.

Corruption.

And recognizing and atoning for past policies that caused harmful intergenerational trauma that reverberates to this day.

Some people foresee some kind of Armageddon or doomsday as described by the prophecies outlined in their beliefs or faiths.

But as far as those whose cultures were torn asunder and all but edited out from the historical narrative, the end of the world has been slowly unfolding before their very eyes in real-time for centuries.

The world their ancestors knew is long since gone, obliterated by modernity, as they nevertheless continue undaunted to adapt to and navigate their own post-apocalypse.

So, quite arguably the people who actually are attempting to erase history, are those who refuse to hear, or fail to listen and meaningfully act, in response to such revelations.

Kenney's tone-deaf rhetoric even prompted the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations to dissolve its agreement with the Alberta government.

The point — perhaps the premier hasn't considered as he gambles on a desperate game of political chess to manoeuvre himself out of a checkmate — is not to erase history.

Conversely, the intent is rather to shine a bright light on the cruel portions that for so long were shamefully swept under the rug and not only ignored, but even more egregiously were insensitively whitewashed and depicted as acts of generosity.

Instead of railing against the outcry of pent up pain built up over generations, perhaps the premier could try acknowledging their hurt and outline plans to search the grounds of Alberta's residential schools while advocating a country-wide campaign to determine how many more there may be.

He could even pat himself on the back as he strikes up another panel to get the job done.