Last year, Canada began an orgy of self-recrimination when researchers claimed to have found a mass grave at a residential school in British Columbia with the remains of more than 200 indigenous children.  The problem is that the ground-penetrating radar used to make this "find" yielded highly suspect results, and not a single grave has been confirmed through an archaeological dig.  Now a group of dissident scholars is calling foul on this entire narrative.

The whole thing began in May 2021, when members of the Tk'emlúps te Secwe虛pemc band of "First Nation" people (as the current descendants of Canada's indigenous people are known) hired Sarah Beaulieu, an anthropologist, to scan the ground at the site of what was once the Kamloops Indian Residential School.  The Roman Catholic Church ran the school on behalf of the government for over a hundred years, beginning in the 1880s.  Around 150,000 children passed through several similar schools, although it's a matter of some debate whether they were forcibly or voluntarily admitted to the schools.

Beaulieu promptly announced that anomalies in the ground were obviously dumped children's bodies, and all of Canada, from Trudeau's leftist government on down, went mad with despair:

Last May's news sent shockwaves through Canada and across the globe. Within days, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decreed, partly at the request of tribal leaders, that all flags on federal buildings fly at half-mast. The Canadian government and provincial authorities pledged about $320 million to fund more research and in December pledged another $40 billion involving First Nations child-welfare claim settlements that partially compensate some residential school attendees. Pope Francis issued a formal apology on behalf of the Catholic church, which ran many of the residential school facilities and asked for God's forgiveness. He said he planned to visit Canada later this year to further assist in healing and reconciliation.

Other investigators, using the same techniques, claim to have found another 800 or so children's bodies.

Image: Alleged mass graves.  YouTube screen grab.

Now, though, some academics are calling foul on the whole thing.  One of the leaders of the movement is Jacques Rouillard, a professor in Montreal:

"Not one body has been found," Jacques Rouillard, who is a professor emeritus in the Department of History at the Université de Montréal, told The Post. "After ... months of recrimination and denunciation, where are the remains of the children buried at the Kamloops Indian Residential School?"

What an excellent question, and one that the man for the indigenous tribe is quite squirrely about answering:

Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc spokesman Larry Read confirmed to The Post this week that no bodies have yet been exhumed from the Kamloops school and no dates have been set to start excavations. He added that the report showing the results of the ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has not been released by the band but may be at some point in the future.

I read that as saying there's a great and profitable story in the air, so there's no way that the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemcs are going to allow facts to interfere.  However, even Eldon Yellowhorn, an academic descended from indigenous people, is suspicious about the radar research and says the only way to address the claim of mass graves is to do excavations.

Beaulieu, when challenged, was defensive:

Beaulieu said that remote sensors picked up "anomalies" and what are called "reflections" that indicate the remains of children may be buried at the site. Beaulieu did not respond to emails sent by The Post.

"My findings confirmed what Elders had shared," Beaulieu said after she presented a report about her work in July 2021 that did not include specific evidence. "It's an example of science playing an affirming role of what the Knowledge Keepers already recognized."

In other words, Beaulieu theorized ahead of her data and then forced her data to align with her theories.  That's the shoddiest of all pretenses at scientific analysis.

Leftists bend history to their will, knowing that, by controlling the past, they can control both the present and the future.  We may be seeing precisely that happening in Canada.  And in the present emotional environment, it's exceptionally brave of those professors to demand proof.