5 ways teachers can respond to residential school denialism in the classroom

Students gather during National Day for Truth and Reconciliation events at City Hall in Toronto on Sept. 30, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn 5 ways teachers can respond to residential school denialism in the classroom Published: September 21, 2026 2.49pm EDT Share article Print article Residential school denialism is entering or circulating within school communities across Canada in worrisome ways. Racist graffiti and commentary, denialist classroom materials and assignments and school board advocacy, controversies over school library collections and challenges to truth and reconciliation school initiatives highlight the urgent importance of addressing denialism in classrooms. As critical Indigenous studies professor Daniel Heath Justice and historian Sean Carleton explain, residential school denialism does not involve “the outright denial of the Indian Residential School (IRS) system’s existence.” Instead, denialists use varied arguments, rhetorical strategies and fallacies. With these, they reject, misrepresent or minimize basic facts and evidence about residential schools, undermine truth and reconciliation efforts, protect the status quo and defend guilty parties. We are non-Indigenous educators and researchers committed to truth and reconciliation, and co-investigators in the Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. With Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaborators, we’re researching how history education might better equip young people to understand complex histories, critically evaluate claims about the past, engage with different ways of knowing the past and participate thoughtfully in contemporary society. In our recently published chapter about confronting residential school denialism in Canadian classrooms, we have identified five possible responses labelled the five Ds: detect, debunk, disregard, debate and deconstruct. Historical thinking Historical thinking involves disagreement, revision, new evidence and competing interpretations. The challenge posed by denialism is helping students distinguish legitimate historical disagreement from claims that disregard the evidence to give the appearance of controversy or disagreement. Orange T-shirt poster from the Delta School District, B.C. (Deltaschools/Flickr) If left unaddressed, denialism has important consequences for schools. It can distort students’ understanding of the history of residential schools and…