History of residential school denialism

The TVOntario blog TVO Today, which carries historical essays from time to time, has a recent post by broadcaster Steve Paikin on a Toronto event of the newish culture-wars organization CIHE. 

It featured American political commentator David Frum discussing settler colonialism, defined as a term "often used as an accusation against Canada." 

According to Paikin, Frum drew attention to doubts about alleged deaths at residential schools:

“The allegation that hundreds and thousands were done to death has been accepted as a fact,” Frum said, adding that the House of Commons unanimously passed a resolution equating the residential-school system with genocide.

... To be clear, Frum isn’t justifying “the horrifying numbers” in which Indigenous people died after first contact with “European colonial settlers.” He pointed out that, throughout history, different groups have conquered lands, then redrawn borders and redistributed the wealth, as they felt entitled to do.

Paikin reports that Frum called for "a battlefield of ideas." However, no indigenous spokespeople seem to have been invited to join in this discussion, nor anyone familiar with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report or its statistics on death rates at residential schools.

American residential school children

Update, December 22:  Meanwhile more material to rationalize away somehow: the Washington Post conducted its own count of indigenous burials at residential schools in the United States: 3100 and counting. 

I don't have a Post subscription, so I'm linking to a summary and long quotation at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Canadian Historical Review: An article to read

Birtle Residential School

Article of the week -- my week at least, as I may have been slow coming to it -- has to be “'Not a Shred of Evidence': Settler Colonial Networks of Concealment and the Birtle Indian Residential School" by Tyle Betke. It is in the most recent issue of the Canadian Historical Review (and likely available only to subscribers). It's about sex slavery, and death, and coverup, at a residential school in the early to mid twentieth century.  

It ought to put an end to the "until you prove every case and exhume every body, it's okay to assume it never happened" approach to the whole issue of abuse at residential schools.  Probably it will not.  

Since the link may not make the full text available, I'm copying part of one representative paragraph, concerning the experience of one family: 

Lazenby’s superiors within the DIA also helped cover up the truth by discrediting the girls and their family members. The father of the girls was known to the DIA. He was one of many Indigenous parents across Canada who advocated for the proper education and treatment of their children. He had sent multiple petitions and letters of complaints to the DIA Upon hearing the news of Currie’s charges, Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs Duncan Campbell Scott characterized the girl’s father as “a trouble maker.” Scott surmised that the father was causing trouble because of having “become embittered recently” when his other daughter died while running away from the school.