In January 2025, documents released to Blacklock’s Reporter, indicated that $12.1 million had been sent to the Kamloops Indian Band for excavations between 2021 and 2023.
In 2023, $12.5 million in additional funding was provided to the Kamloops Indian Band for a “Healing Centre”, to deal with the trauma that had been caused by the false claim made in May 2021 about the “remains of 215 children” being “confirmed”.
When Blacklock’s tried to obtain the “progress activity reports” about the excavations, the federal government tried to seal the records. The Information Commissioner, Caroline Maynard, however, ordered in January 2026 that 576 pages of documents pertaining to these reports be released. The documents were due to be released on January 19.
On February 23, as a precursor to the release of these documents, Blacklock’s Reporter wrote a story about a memo written by the federal government about outlawing “obstruction” of aboriginal “sacred sites” claimed to be unmarked graveyards or clandestine burials.
The memo links this to the federal government’s “strong interest in potential criminal law measures to address Indian residential school denialism”.
The reference to a “sacred site” appeared in a press release sent out by the Kamloops Indian Band.
This, again, raises the question of whether demanding evidence for the claim that the “remains of 215 children” have been “confirmed” constitutes “residential school denialism”. Should matters of historical debate be criminalized? Should one be put in jail for flunking a history test?
The Blacklock’s article is also disturbing because it often has been assumed that pressure to criminalize “residential school denialism” has largely come from Leah Gazan, an NDP MP from Winnipeg Centre. It was not clear whether any other politician outside the echo chamber of Gazan’s party took this totalitarian initiative seriously.
