A critical analysis of the TRC report presents a challenge to mainstream indigenous beliefs about residential schools

The week following the 2015 release of the summary final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on Aboriginal residential schools saw no fewer than six newspaper reports, editorials, and letters by academics and educators in Winnipeg. Additionally, a strident petition on the University of Manitoba’s website rebuked me for daring to question any of its findings.

I was vilified as promoting “colonial nostalgia,” using “racial platitudes,” being “offensively ill-informed,” peddling “bad history,” being “insensitive and insulting,” “indifferent” and “hostile” to indigenous peoples, and acting as a willing “catalyst for racist [Internet] commentary.”

Such vilification of anyone challenging mainstream indigenous views continues to this day.

In one commentary, University of Manitoba historian Adele Perry claimed that her academic discipline, history, “is a tricky business and often a harrowing one.” Still, she and her acolytes wanted all........

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