They tried to cancel Elizabeth Weiss for believing Native superstitions shouldn't trump academic inquiry. They failed

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Of all the sins white Europeans are charged with by progressives, colonialism ranks highest. Expiation for their forebears’ crimes, through the process known as “decolonization,” has consequently emerged as a reigning passion in knowledge-producing institutions like universities and museums.

The word itself doesn’t convey its revolutionary essence: a pivot from an objective, evidence-based model of academic inquiry to one based in subjectivity and social justice. In the new paradigm, acceptance of theses and conclusions rests on their usefulness in advancing the interests of “oppressed” groups or, conversely, in further incriminating “oppressor” groups.

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Decolonization’s calamitous effects in Canada were demonstrated in the moral panic sparked by allegations of “unmarked graves” in Kamloops, B.C., which is, after three years of divisive contention, only now winding down. Honest researchers who disputed some of the claims being made endured an unrelenting campaign of vilification, including the charge of genocide “denialism.”

During this turbulent saga, Canadians were made aware of decolonization’s rules of discourse. Commentators were to assume that Indigenous people had inhabited their lands since time immemorial (i.e., they did not arrive here via a land bridge). Indigenous culture endowed their elders with unique “ways of knowing” that were the equal of, or better than, Eurocentric knowledge.

Forbidden assertions, amongst others, included reference to pre-contact inter-tribal warfare and slavery, or any positive........

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