A collection of 53 posts
Almost five years after falsely claiming it had found graves of 215 Indigenous children, the Kamloops First Nation has announced the supposed crime scene may never be excavated—but could instead be preserved as a ‘Sacred Site.’
Why did Britain negotiate a treaty with Māori chiefs in New Zealand but claim Australia as terra nullius—“land belonging to no one”?
In the 28th instalment of ‘Nations of Canada,’ Greg Koabel describes the deadly conflicts that emerged in the late 1630s between the Wendat and Haudenosaunee confederacies.
Philosopher and programmer Sean Welsh talks with Zoe Booth about AI, colonial history, and why scepticism is the best guide through both technology and politics.
In the 27th instalment of ‘Nations of Canada,’ Greg Koabel describes the epidemics that ravaged Wendat communities in the 1630s, sparking suspicions that Jesuit preachers were practising deadly witchcraft.
An exhibit in the museum’s Northwest Coast Hall repeats the false claim that the bodies of ‘215 Indigenous children’ were found at Kamloops, B.C. in ‘unmarked graves.’
The colonisation of Australia was neither a peaceful settlement nor a bloody conquest. It was a Malthusian swamping: the inevitable and tragic result of contact between hunter gatherers and agriculturalists.
In a recent speech delivered at the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law, a Quillette editor describes lessons he learned while investigating the school’s teachers college.
In 2021, Canadians were told that the remains of 215 Indigenous children had been found at a former school. The story turned out to be false—but no one in authority seems to know how to walk it back.
Legions of Canadian university students are now required to mumble fatuous platitudes about decolonisation as a condition of graduation. It’s effectively become Canada’s national liturgy.
In the 24th instalment of ‘Nations of Canada,’ Greg Koabel describes how British adventurers briefly seized Quebec and Acadia following the Anglo-French War of 1627–29.
University of Western Ontario instructors spent months denouncing an outspoken education student who’d asked awkward questions about Indigenous reconciliation—until a UWO tribunal concluded they’d violated her rights.
Lidia Thorpe is not treated more harshly because she’s an Indigenous woman. In fact, if it weren’t for these two immutable characteristics, she wouldn’t be where she is today.
The works of literary critic Adam Kirsch and of novelist and memoirist Joan Didion provide a salutary rebuttal of settler colonialist theory.
The same reporter who helped spark Canada’s 2021 social panic has published a new article walking back his original errors—but those mistakes remain uncorrected on the Times’ website.