An Open Letter to the Honorable Rebecca Alty, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations
The Truth Matters. All of it.
8 hours ago
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By Michelle Stirling©2026
Minister Alty, in your recent press release about the federal government’s intention to bolster education to combat residential school denialism, you write:
“For generations, Survivors and Indigenous communities have spoken about their experiences in Residential Schools and the impact these institutions had on children, families, and communities. Their truths are not new. Yet, we continue to hear statements denying this truth, circulating disinformation, and attempting to undermine reconciliation.”[1]
“Denying this truth…”
You are not specific in your statement as to “Their truths are not new.”
The truth is that Indigenous ministers and leaders, like yourself, are the product of Canada’s generational efforts to provide education to the original Indigenous people of Canada, who at contact, did not have written languages, had not invented the wheel, had not developed abstract thinking methods like mathematics or the practical application of such math in the sciences and engineering, had not developed complex musical instruments or polyphonic music, nor did they have centuries of accumulated knowledge in books and documents.
The impact of Indian Residential Schools is that people learned to read, write and do math, and the socio-cultural skills essential for the “just transition” from hunter-gatherer to agro-industrial, to today’s hi-tech societies.
Many people enjoyed their time at Indian Residential School. That is the truth.
Were you referring to the truths that Tomson Highway recounted in Dec. 2015, when he wrote:
“All we hear is the negative stuff, nobody’s interested in the positive, the joy in that school. Nine of the happiest years of my life I spent it at that school. I learned your language, for God’s sake. Have you learned my language? No, so who’s the privileged one and who is underprivileged?
“You may have heard stories from 7,000 witnesses in the process that were negative,” he adds. “But what you haven’t heard are the 7,000 reports that were positive stories. There are many very successful people today that went to those schools and have brilliant careers and are very functional people, very happy people like myself. I have a thriving international career, and it wouldn’t have happened without that school. [bold emphasis added]
“You have to remember that I came from so far north and there were no schools up there.”[2] [3]
The whole push to criminalize or censor so-called residential school denialism would deny this internationally renowned Canadian Indigenous artist his truth.
Can only people with unhappy or tragic experiences properly reflect the scope of 113 years of Indian Residential School history over 139 schools?
Here is Senator James Gladstone (r) sitting with his friend, Rev. James Edward (Ted) DeWolf, (l) principal of St. Paul’s Indian Residential School, at the congratulatory dinner upon Gladstone’s appointment to the Senate, as the first Indigenous senator.
These men were good friends, and Senator Gladstone was always very supportive of residential schools. So much so that he sent his daughter Pauline to one. Here is her truth. Do you deny this? Pauline Gladstone’s husband, Dr. Hugh Dempsey, Potai’na, was my research supervisor when he was curator of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary.
Since you mention truth…
Canadians would like the truth about Indian Residential Schools, especially the claim of thousands of children dying there, allegedly due to abuse, assault, neglect or malnutrition, or that these schools, intended to edify students and provide them with skills for the “just transition” of the day, were an act of “genocide.” Not all Indigenous students attended these schools, contrary to many media claims; in fact, two-thirds of Status Indians (for whom education was a Treaty right) did not attend Indian Residential Schools,[4] and none were forced to attend according to historian J.R. Miller.
At no time in the history of residential schooling in Canada were parents “compelled to send their children to residential schools.” J. R. Miller[5]
To this point, since you demand to defend the truth, Canadians would like to see the death certificates for the ~4,000 alleged victims of Indian Residential Schools that the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) and the 3,201 that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) claim to have.
Independent researchers have assessed some 500 death certificates related to the NCTR Memorial Register and found that many of the people named died long after their presence at any Indian Residential School, and from causes like house fires, gunshot wounds, train accidents, alcohol poisoning. One person was a murder victim, Helen Betty Osborne, whose tragic death was entirely unrelated to Indian Residential Schools. Another person on the Indian Residential Schools memorial register was an 89-year-old man, Willard Frank William, who had lived a full life and who died in 2019 at the age of 85.
Not Morbid – A Necessary Clarification
While it may sound morbid on the surface, to have open access to the death certificates of those 3,201 or ~4,000 deceased children, claimed by the TRC or NCTR, in effect it is a simple request for clarification. It is my understanding that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission counted any student who died within a year of being discharged from the Indian Residential School, no matter the cause.
Thus, in the cause of truth, I would like to see these death certificates of the alleged 4,000. I am sure millions of other Canadians would agree with me.
In fact, of the 51 named students who died while ENROLLED at the infamous Kamloops Indian Residential School, only two students died while AT the school. That seems a remarkable record for a school that operated from 1890 to 1978.
Furthermore, some 300 students and former staff, including priests, brothers, nuns, all came together in 1977 for a reunion at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, replete with a salmon bar-be-que, slide show and dance.[6]
Would so many people have returned to a site for a party had it been one of ‘genocide’ for them?
Children are taught to revile Roman Catholics by the tax-subsidized Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Fund when there were NO Roman Catholics on site at Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School. Presbyterians ran Cecilia Jeffrey.
CBC News article
The government of Canada gave $5 million to the Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Fund as an act of alleged reconciliation in 2018.[7] “The Secret Path” animated movie project received funding/support from the Canada Media Fund and the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit. The film and book (published by Simon & Schuster Canada) depict heartless looking nuns and mean looking priests wearing crosses, cutting hair and scrubbing down the naked boys; lurid scenes suggest sexual assault by a priest, as do songs with inappropriate lyrics by Gord Downie.
Unwitting taxpayers funded this multi-media project and the tax-subsidized charity which blood libels 10 million Canadian Roman Catholics who had nothing to do with Cecilia Jeffrey school. Equally appalling is the denigration of another 10 million Canadian Christians, like the Presbyterians who did operate Cecilia Jeffrey by suggesting the school was a cold, mean place.
How is it possible that CBC, with its vast resources, did not fact-check this fundamental item?
Regarding the case of Charlie Wenjack, a government report that came out just after Charlie passed away said that “children admitted to residential schools come from broken homes, are orphans, [like the two brothers that Charlie ran away with] or are from remote areas where there are not enough children to justify the construction of a day school.”
The above passage is from a book by Robert MacBain, investigative reporter, former newsroom director. He is author of “Lonely Death of an Ojibway Boy”[8] exposing the misinformation spread by the Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Fund and “The Secret Path” movie and book.
In his research, he interviewed people who taught Charlie, people who were part of the investigation into his death. Charlie was never called “Chanie” and he did not “escape” because a (non-existent) priest had sexually assaulted him. He and some orphaned friends simply wanted to visit the uncle of the orphans, who had a cabin nearby by. Charlie wandered away with them and stayed with them for four days. He did not take any food or his winter jacket along, as one would if planning to run away and walk home. According to court testimony during the inquest into Charlie’s death, news reports at the time, and interviews by MacBain, Charlie only decided to try and walk home when he began to feel an “outsider” – the stranger – as his orphaned friends were family of the uncle; the family was very short on food. He stayed with them for four days – during that time, the uncle and his wife could have/should have sent all the boys back to school. That negligence led to Charlie’s tragic death. Not a priest. Not mean people at the school.
Schools across North America are valorizing a lie, funded by taxpayers.
In fact, during MacBain’s research, he was given access to some 300 letters that former students at Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School had written to the former principal and his wife, often addressing them as “Dear Mom and Dad…” or “Mom and Pops” …letters of gratitude for all they had learned. The letters were often signed with “love…”
From Robert MacBain’s “Lonely Death of an Ojibway Boy”; with permission.
This is the truth, Minister Alty. Do you deny it?
Honorable Minister – the hateful incitement and indoctrination against Roman Catholics and Christians that underlies “The Secret Path’s” distorted history of Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School (and which has become a negative societal assumption about all residential schools and all Catholics) is now taught in some 65,000 classrooms across North America as “reconciliACTION.” It is not the truth. Major corporations are paying out thousands of tax-deductible dollars to host “Legacy Spaces” in their offices, to honor a lie.[9]
Surely, as an advocate for the truth about Indian Residential Schools, you will want to address this falsehood about Indian Residential Schools and right this wrong immediately! Children have been subjected to a decade of incitement and historical inaccuracy.
Image licensed from Adobe Stock.
Inaccuracies and Inconsistencies in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports and the Independent Assessment Process (IAP)
Minister Alty, as you know the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Independent Assessment Process stemmed from the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) wherein the various schools and denominations, along with the government, agreed to provide financial compensation to former students who had claims of harm, to finally settle the many individual and class action cases launched in the 2000’s.
Of the 38,000 Independent Assessment Process claimants, some 4,400 claims were rejected. Though some people received ~$250,000 for claims of harm, others received much less. Were the ~6,5000 people who provided their recollections to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission people who were dissatisfied with their IAP settlement (and chose to forego confidentiality to tell their story) or whose claims had been declined?
We know that for decades, lawyers and activists had been grooming clients so as to receive the maximum compensation possible, as outlined in this 2006 article in Maclean’s Magazine.[10] The article also suggests that there was an effort at aiding and abetting others, and offering inducements to make a claim as if compensation was guaranteed, whether or not the individual would have claimed anything had they not been encouraged to try.
Excerpt of Maclean’s Magazine article referenced above.
Minister Alty, there is clear evidence from the case concerning a BC lawyer who hired a convicted, paroled murderer to assist some of his 624 IAP clients in filling out their compensation forms that undue influence resulted in claims that were 21% higher than the national average of $119,000, according to a report into the irregularities of these proceedings by the Law Society of BC.[11] [12]
Do you think the cause of truth and justice was served in this case, Minister? Including just settlement on behalf of Canadian taxpayers, who appear to have been milked for much more money than in other parts of the country.
A key point here is that in British Columbia, an 8-year RCMP investigation into 15 Indian Residential School complaints of every nature, was wrapped up in 2003 in a report known as the Final Report of the Native Indian Residential School Task Force. The investigative team included Indigenous representatives, people like Charlene Belleau. After this long and detailed investigation, very few claims were substantiated. For some reason, this report was not made public until recently, when Patrick White of the Globe and Mail obtained a copy through an Access to Information request, and the report was then made public by the Investigative Journalism Foundation.
Were Canadians duped about many of the IAP claims? This is a valid question.
Notwithstanding the fact that some students did suffer at Indian Residential Schools – often from student-on-student abuse, which represented some 38% of all IAP claims according to the final IAP report, when you are speaking of the “truth” and “impacts” of Indian Residential Schools on families, communities and society, surely this must also be taken into account.
Truth and Indignation – Ronald Niezen’s disturbing revelations about the TRC
Ronald Niezen is an anthropologist and law professor with a long-term relationship with Indigenous communities in Canada. During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings across Canada, he and several of his research students documented various activities in a book titled “Truth and Indignation.” It is concerning to learn that the “Missing Children” project began in secret and for the most part, was conducted in secret.
His book is also critical of the IAP process, noting that the “Persons of Interest” were hunted down by a team of 17 private investigators, their names drawn from the thousands of law suits and class actions filed in the 2000’s. Thus, these Persons of Interest were named but had never been charged or convicted of any crime in relation to Indian Residential Schools.
But these Canadians were denied due process of law during the IAP hearings. The Persons of Interest were former priests, nuns, brothers, clergy, administrators, staff and students.
They were contacted by mail to notify them that they had been named as a perpetrator and a copy of the claim made was sent to them. This was often a simple statement like “kicked me in the ass between 1958 and 1964.” The IAP adjudicator met privately with the complainant and their lawyer, comfort and support person. Then later the IAP adjudicator conducted a “hearing” where the Person of Interest was invited to attend. The accuser/complainant was not required to appear, contrary to principles of due process. The Person of Interest was not a “defendant” in this hearing but was rather named a “witness.” They were not allowed to defend themselves and the compensation or “truth” of the claim was decided by the adjudicator on the basis of “probability” …not evidence. The Person of Interest had no right of appeal, nor any right to know what compensation was paid out.
As Niezen reports, people named as a Person of Interest have had their reputations forever blackened, with no recourse. Some fear for their lives.
Understand that the staff at Indian Residential Schools were actually federal employees – thus the government of Canada conducted a witch hunt against its own people, one which continues to this day. People like Raymond Frogner of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, as well as the trio of Connie Walker (former CBC journalist), Kimberly Murray (former Special Interlocutor on Missing Children and past Executive Director of the TRC), and Marie Wilson (former TRC Commissioner) have joined forces to try and scrape the names of Persons of Interest who were named in the individual law suits and class actions of the 2000s, to try and restart criminal trials against them.
This completely contravenes the purpose and intent of the IRSSA. Why did Canadians spend $3 billion on IAP compensation if these individuals who were denied rule of law and normal courtroom proceedings based on evidence, may now be subject to full publication of their names by these activists who are intent on breaching the IRSSA?
The Indian Residential School truth of ALL Canadians should matter to you, Minister Alty. Not just the truths of former students who suffered and were well-compensated, or those who also[13] may have suffered, but their case and claim was not affirmed by the IAP adjudicators.
Robert Carney’s Review of the RCAP shows that perceptions about Indian Residential Schools has become skewed in recent years.
Robert Carney, father of current Prime Minister Mark Carney, was a devout Catholic and a historian, with particular emphasis on Indian Residential Schools. In his critique of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, he noted the many failings at that time to set the issues in the context of the times and societal norms, rather than judging the past with “presentism” (though he did not use that modern term).
This is an on-going problem in the search for truth about the past.
“Sugarcane” blood libels Roman Catholics and Canadian History – yet Minister Miller is a cheerleader for it.
Like “The Secret Path” animated movie and book, the documentary “Sugarcane” distorts Canadian history, too. It purports to tell the story of Ed Archie NoiseCat, a talented Indigenous carver, who allegedly was the only baby to survive the incinerator at St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School near Williams Lake, British Columbia.
Almost without exception, after screening the film (which had limited releases at various film festivals across Canada and the US) the reviewers concluded that Ed was the illicit love-child of a priest, meant to be incinerated to cover up the ‘crime’ of an illicit affair with a female student, and that Ed and his relatives were abused at Indian Residential School.
In fact, Ed was the son of Indigenous rodeo rider and backhoe operator, Ray Peters, who had 17 other children with 5 different women. It was a desperate unwed mother, Antoinette Archie, who told the court that she placed Baby Ed in the incinerator, having given birth to him alone while at the school, reportedly in the infirmary. She was not a student at the time, being 20 years old, and had been living and studying practical nursing in Vancouver. It seems she was on her way home to Canim Lake from Williams Lake and went into labour along the way, pulling in to the school for help. As a former student, she knew there was an infirmary there; as a trained practical nurse, she was able to deliver the baby alone. Perhaps in shock, she believed the baby to be dead and put his body in the incinerator, according to a report in the Williams Lake Tribune. Antoinette Archie went to jail for a year for abandoning her baby. Her appeal was denied. Though this newspaper report is featured in the film “Sugarcane,” the camera quickly pans it, and the filmmakers do not report the truth, that students were only allowed to attend Indian Residential School until age 16. Ed himself attended day school and public school. He was never an Indian Residential School attendee.
Filmmakers Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie thus exploited the tragedy of Julian’s own grandmother – a devout Catholic who did not want to tell her story to the world as we hear at the end of the film – to make an incendiary film that blood libels Roman Catholics and all who worked at St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School, as immoral, baby-killing murderers.
Indeed, Julian Brave NoiseCat also knew the paternity of his father prior to making the film, having written about it and meeting some of his half-siblings in this National Observer article of Aug. 20, 2020.[14]
Minister Miller promoted this film at the time, with no due diligence. The film has won numerous awards, including “Best True Crime Documentary” when it is not true. The film was nominated for an Oscar, was picked up for distribution by National Geographic, and is now streamed on Hulu and Disney+ – blood libelling Canadian history all across America.
Minister Alty, I made a ‘no-budget’ mini-documentary rebuttal to “Sugarcane” called “The Bitter Roots of ‘Sugarcane’”.[15] I named it that because the presence of Charlene Belleau in the film “Sugarcane”, as a prominent member of the investigative duo, appears to be an effort to upend the findings of the 2003 RCMP report. The RCMP did not find substantiation for the most outrageous of claims about 15 Indian Residential Schools in BC during their 8-year investigation.
“Sugarcane” purports to be a more valid investigation, when in fact, the incineration claim seems to find its curiously parallel roots in an video interview posted in February 2022 between Jordan Peterson and his friend Charles Joseph, acclaimed Indigenous carver, recorded in November of 2021 and staged at the Williams Lake Reserve on the property of Darrell Sellars. Darrell is the father of Chief Willie Sellars of the Williams Lake Band. Peterson thanks the AV production assistance of Chris Wycotte, long-time Williams Lake Band Councillor.
Jordan Peterson’s followers were enraged at the story told by Charles Joseph because they believe Joseph when he says atrocities were committed, as can be seen by the comments. Jordan Peterson’s 619,625 viewers to date (of his 8.5 million YouTube subscribers) have no questions in the comments. In terms of marketing, that is quite a successful test market for eyebrow-raising claims, claims equivalent to those made in the film that followed, “Sugarcane.”
I have questions. And so should you, Minister.
“Sugarcane” began production in May of 2021 shortly after the Kamloops Indian Band claimed to have found the human remains of 215 children in mass graves/unmarked graves in the old apple orchard near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
It is notable that the Williams Lake region is where many of the IAP claims made by the lawyer and his form-filling helper, the convicted, paroled murderer, were made. It is surprising that the news release about this lawyer and the disciplinary action came out on the same day, May 27, 2021, that the Kamloops Indian Band made their ghastly, as-yet unproven claim.[16]
Also notable that in interviews, filmmakers Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat claimed that: “The filmmakers said discourse about Indian residential schools has waned over the past three years since the first announcements of unmarked burials found at residential school sites.”
Ironically Emily Kassie said: “Canada is actually ahead of the curve on this conversation and at the same time, people seem very eager to get to the reconciliation part of the conversation, and our documentary insists that we’re not done with the truth,” said Kassie.
We are not done with the truth, Minister Alty.
As you are from the NWT, I ask you to read “4 Years and then some” by Mary Harrington Bryant, a woman who gave her heart and soul to the children she taught in Aklavik. Read her truth.
I ask you to read Ronald Niezen’s book, “Truth and Indignation” and consider how some 5,315 Canadians have been denied due process of law and justice; how flawed the IAP process and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were.
I ask you to read “From Truth Comes Reconciliation (second edition).” [17] As co-editor Rodney Clifton says: “At a time when Canadians are critically examining their past, this book invites readers to reflect on the trauma and the complexities of the residential school system. Reconciliation requires confronting the whole truth – not just one side of the story.”
I ask you to watch this short video from the Indian Residential School Research Group on the question of genocide:
I ask you to watch “The Bitter Roots of ‘Sugarcane’” to see how Canadian history and Roman Catholics in particular have been blood-libelled by National Geographic’s “Sugarcane.”[18]
In Closing
In your press release you state: “Together, we can build a future where the truths of Survivors are respected, where Canadians have access to accurate information, and where reconciliation is strengthened through knowledge, understanding, and dialogue. Truth matters. And preserving it is a responsibility we all share.”
I think the foregoing shows that the truth is out there, but it is unclear whether your department really wants to pursue the truth about Indian Residential Schools, or if you are simply focussed on more defamation, denigration, and one-sided indoctrination against the many loving and dedicated people who devoted most of their lives to the children at Indian Residential Schools[19] – many of whom were Indigenous priests, nuns, teachers, staff or administrators themselves.
Please review the materials suggested in this open letter and open your mind.
Thank you,
Michelle Stirling
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/crown-indigenous-relations-northern-affairs/news/2026/09/statement-by-minister-rebecca-alty-addressing-residential-schools-denialism.html
[3] https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/tomson-highway-has-a-surprisingly-positive-take-on-residential-s_n_8787638
[4] https://www.dorchesterreview.ca/blogs/news/two-thirds-did-not-attend
[5] https://bcstudies.arts.ubc.ca/book_film_review/the-final-report-of-the-truth-and-reconciliation-commission-of-canada-volumes-1-6/
[6] https://indianresidentialschoolrecords.com/reunions/
[7] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/wenjack-fund-2018-budget-1.4554500
[8] https://robertmacbainbooks.ca/the-author/
[9] https://michellestirlingg.substack.com/p/stop-the-walk-for-wenjack-and-remove?r=f96qu&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
[10] https://macleans.ca/news/canada/white-mans-windfall-a-profile-of-tony-merchant/
[11] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/lawyer-residential-parole-penalty-bronstein-1.6044463
[12] https://www.lawsociety.bc.ca/lsbc/apps/hearings/viewreport.cfm?hearing_id=1480
[13] https://michellestirling.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/review-article_-canada_-royal-commission-on-aboriginal-peoples.pdf
[14] https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/08/20/interiority-complex
[15] https://michellestirlingg.substack.com/p/the-bitter-roots-of-sugarcane?r=f96qu&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
[16] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/lawyer-residential-parole-penalty-bronstein-1.6044463
[17] https://irsrg.ca/articles/new-edition-of-the-book-that-first-raised-serious-questions-about-the-trcs-one-sided-summary-report/
[18] https://michellestirlingg.substack.com/p/the-bitter-roots-of-sugarcane?r=f96qu&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
[19] https://www.dorchesterreview.ca/blogs/news/our-dear-children-the-sisters-chronicles-of-indian-residential-school
29 kilograms of methamphetamine
