Introduction
For a period of more than 150 years, nearly 140 government-funded and church-operated Indian Residential Schools (hereafter, “residential schools”) operated across Canada (Miller, Reference Miller2024; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). During this time, approximately 150,000 Indigenous children attended residential schools. Conditions at the schools were poor and many children died from disease, neglect, or abuse (MacDonald, Reference MacDonald2019; Woolford, Reference Woolford2015). Canada’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) have officially documented more than 4,100 deaths of Indigenous children at residential schools (Deer, Reference Deer2021), but the true figure is likely higher (Puxley, Reference Puxley2015).
Since its inception, the government and churches framed the residential school system in benevolent terms, concealing the genocidal and assimilative goals of the policy by using the language of “saving” Indigenous children (Mosby, Reference Mosby2013; Titley, Reference Titley1986; Woolford, Reference Woolford2015). Information about death and abuse was deliberately withheld from the public and generations of Canadian students were either never taught about this history or were taught a sanitized account (Bennett, Reference Bennett2021; Betke, Reference Betke2023; Hay, Blackstock and Kirlew, Reference Hay, Blackstock and Kirlew2020; Research Co., 2020). On occasions when the harms of residential schools were made abundantly clear to Canadian officials and citizens, they were often dismissed (Jewell and Mosby, Reference Jewell and Mosby2023; McKenzie and Carleton, Reference McKenzie and Carleton2021; Milloy, Reference Milloy1999; Peace, Reference Peace2020). More recently, in 2021, hundreds of suspected unmarked graves were identified on the grounds of former residential schools using ground-penetrating radar technology (Deer, Reference Deer2021). While these events initially led to an outpouring of grief, they also triggered a renewed rhetoric of denial and misinformation regarding the schools’ history in online circles, the media, and among political and academic elites (Cyca, Reference Cyca2023; Justice and Carleton, Reference Justice and Carleton2021b).
This “residential school denialism” directly contradicts the findings of the TRC and statements from experts by casting doubt on the number of deaths at the schools, questioning the existence of unmarked graves at former school sites, and denying that the schools were designed to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian, Christian society. Denialism is a distinctive case of political misinformation. Denialists are not merely uninformed about the residential school history, but actively endorse claims that are at odds with the historical record (Kuklinski et al., Reference Kuklinski, Quirk, Jerit, Schwieder and Rich2000). Similar to other conspiracy theories, denialism has in recent years spread via online channels and employed the rhetoric of “fake news.” However, compared with other cases in the literature, it is also more deeply rooted in longstanding national mythologies that deny the country’s past wrongdoing.
Concerns about denialism have sparked recent policy debates. For instance, New Democratic Party (NDP) Member of Parliament Leah Gazan has called on the federal government to criminalize residential school denialism as hate speech (Stefanovich, Reference Stefanovich2023). Kimberly Murray, the Special Interlocutor appointed to investigate unmarked graves at former residential schools, has similarly advocated for legal mechanisms to counter residential school denialism (Office of the Special Interlocutor, 2023). However, others question the effectiveness of criminalizing speech that promotes residential school denialism. Historian Sean Carleton, for example, has argued that criminalization could backfire (quoted in Stefanovich, Reference Stefanovich2023), advocating instead for countering misinformation and ignorance about residential schools through effective information dissemination and education (see also Dufour, Reference Dufour2023). Unfortunately, this debate is hindered by a lack of data on the determinants and extent of residential school denialism among the Canadian public and by limited evidence of the effectiveness of interventions to address this misinformation.
Building on prior research into the causes, consequences and features of denialism (Carleton, Reference Carleton2021; Gerbrandt and Carleton, Reference Gerbrandt and Carleton2023; Justice and Carleton, Reference Justice and Carleton2021b; MacDonald, Reference MacDonald2019; Regan, Reference Regan2010; Starblanket, Reference Starblanket2020; Warry, Reference Warry2008), we offer the first investigation into denialist beliefs using the tools of public opinion research. Using an original survey of nearly 2,000 non-Indigenous Canadians, we develop a nine-item scale of residential school denialism, which measures attitudes toward the searches for unmarked graves, deaths at the schools, and the purpose of the residential school system.Footnote 1 We find that on average, just under one in five Canadians are willing to endorse denialist claims outright, while another one in five indicate that they do not know enough to express an opinion on these issues. Endorsement of denialist claims is far higher than other forms of denialism (only 3% of our respondents were willing to deny the Holocaust), and ignorance on the topic of residential schools is widespread.
In line with prior research on misinformation and intergroup attitudes, we find that denialist beliefs are more common among men, conservatives, those with negative attitudes toward Indigenous peoples, those with a tendency toward believing in conspiracy theories, and white Canadians who identify strongly with their racial in-group (Beauvais, Reference Beauvais2022; Douglas et al., Reference Douglas, Uscinski, Sutton, Cichocka, Nefes, Ang and Deravi2019; Mills, Reference Mills, Sullivan and Tuana2007; Smith, Kreitzer and Suo, Reference Smith, Kreitzer and Suo2020; Starzyk et al., Reference Starzyk, Neufeld, El-Gabalawy and Boese2019; Uscinski and Parent, Reference Uscinski and Parent2014). Prior knowledge about the residential school history is also a significant predictor of whether respondents are willing to express an opinion about denialist claims.
We also conducted a pre-registered experiment to test whether an educational intervention can counter denialism.Footnote 2 We randomly assigned half of our survey respondents to read a short text describing the history and harms of the residential school system, as well as details about the searches for unmarked graves, before asking them about their attitudes toward denialist claims. Respondents who read the text reported nearly 15 per cent of a standard deviation greater disagreement with denialist claims and were also over 6 percentage points less likely to indicate that they do not know enough to express an opinion. Subgroup analyses reveal no evidence of backlash after exposure to the educational intervention among those who might be expected to be more resistant to anti-denialist information; in fact, our treatment was slightly more effective among those who reported worse attitudes toward Indigenous peoples before the intervention. These results suggest that denialism is not driven solely by animus toward Indigenous peoples, but also by a widespread lack of awareness, and that efforts to educate the public can potentially counter both ignorance and denialist attitudes.
Political science as a field has generally paid little attention to colonialism and issues involving Indigenous peoples (Ferguson, Reference Ferguson2016; Ladner, Reference Ladner2017), and the scholarship that does engage with these topics often positions Indigenous peoples and their politics as undifferentiated from other nondominant groups (Bruyneel, Reference Bruyneel, Lucero, Turner and VanCott2014). At the same time, there is a considerable literature, largely by Indigenous authors, that highlights how denial, obfuscation, and justification of past and ongoing injustices against Indigenous peoples function to legitimate and sustain settler colonialism (Allard-Tremblay and Coburn, Reference Allard-Tremblay and Coburn2023; Corntassel and Bird, Reference Corntassel, Bird, Ladner and Myra2017; Furniss, Reference Furniss1999; James, Reference James2018; Logan, Reference Logan, Hinton, Woolford and Benvenuto2014; MacDonald, Reference MacDonald, Ladner and Myra2017; Mackey, Reference Mackey2016; Maracle, Reference Maracle2017; Nagy, Reference Nagy2012; Regan, Reference Regan2010; Starblanket and Hunt, Reference Starblanket and Hunt2020; Starblanket, Reference Starblanket2020; Tuck and Yang, Reference Tuck and Wayne Yang2012). This study is informed by these insights and applies them to the problem of residential school denialism through survey research. Our results speak to ongoing debates about “reconciliation” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada and recent efforts to measure Canadians’ attitudes toward this idea (Alcantara et al., Reference Alcantara, Harell, Stephenson and Payler2025; Asch, Borrows and Tully, Reference Asch, Borrows and Tully2018; Coulthard, Reference Coulthard2014; Craft and Regan, Reference Craft and Regan2020; George, Reference George, Kiera, Myra, Winnipeg and Books2017; Green, Reference Green, Starblanket and Long2025; Ladner, Reference Ladner, Asch, Borrows and Tully2018; Manuel and Derrickson, Reference Manuel and Derrickson2017; Starzyk et al., Reference Starzyk, Neufeld, Efimoff, Fontaine, White, Moran, Peachey, Fontaine and Welch2024). In doing so, we also contribute to recent policy deliberations over how to address the spread of denialism, adding to a large applied literature on misinformation that has not tended to investigate cases related to historical events or racial, ethnic, and Indigenous issues (Chan et al., Reference Chan, Jones, Hall Jamieson and Albarracin2017; Guess et al., Reference Guess, Lerner, Lyons, Montgomery, Nyhan, Reifler and Sircar2020; Lewandowsky and Van Der Linden, Reference Lewandowsky and Van Der Linden2021; Pennycook and Rand, Reference Pennycook and Rand2022; Sanderson et al., Reference Sanderson, Brown, Bonneau, Nagler and Tucker2021).
Background and Theory
Canada’s residential schools
The residential school system in Canada involved the removal of Indigenous children from their families to live in boarding schools, where many were subject to abuse, poor living conditions, and a programme of forced assimilation (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). Approximately 150,000 Indigenous children attended one of the more than 130 residential schools that operated between the 1800s and 1990s (Miller, Reference Miller2024). While the objectives of the schools were framed in terms of helping language, the goal was explicitly to assimilate Indigenous children, which is internationally recognized as a violation of basic rights (see United Nations, 2007). Indigenous children who were forced to attend residential schools were forbidden from speaking their Indigenous languages, given European names, and proselytized into Christian beliefs (Miller, Reference Miller1996; Milloy, Reference Milloy1999; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015).
For most of this history, the institutions were funded by the federal government and run by missionary churches. The schools were perpetually under-funded and under-supervised, and as a result, death, disease, and abuse by staff were commonplace (MacDonald, Reference MacDonald2019). The NCTR has confirmed the deaths of 4,117 children at residential schools on the basis of existing records, although poor recordkeeping meant that many deaths went unreported and these numbers do not include many severely ill children who were sent home or to sanatoriums where they subsequently died (NCTR 2021). Experts therefore suspect the true number is likely higher (Puxley, Reference Puxley2015).
Efforts to conceal or deny the abuse and high mortality rates at the schools are as old as the residential school system itself (Peace, Reference Peace2020; Milloy, Reference Milloy1999; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). For instance, Dr. Peter Bryce, the Department of the Interior and Department of Indian Affairs’ Chief Medical Officer, published a 1907 report outlining the shocking number of deaths among children at the schools and recommended that the schools be closed immediately (Bryce, Reference Bryce1907). However, Bryce’s report was shelved by policy-makers and his recommendations were ignored. Refusing to be silenced, Dr. Bryce published a whistle-blowing pamphlet entitled “The Story of a National Crime” (Bryce, Reference Bryce1922), which garnered some attention in the media and popular discourse. However, policy-makers did not take action to close the schools or address the inordinately high mortality rates. Officials’ rejection of Dr. Bryce’s report is not the only example of efforts to deny the system’s harms: there is ample evidence that church officials regularly ignored or concealed cases of abuse by staff members, while government officials rejected recommendations to properly care for cemeteries on school grounds (for example, Betke, Reference Betke2023; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015).
In the early 2000s, thousands of survivors launched civil litigation cases against the Canadian government for abuse they suffered at the schools (Miller, Reference Miller2017). After these cases were eventually combined into a class action lawsuit, the federal government agreed to a settlement in 2006, which required the government to pay compensation to survivors, formally apologize for the schools, and establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to gather testimony from survivors and document the relevant history. The TRC began its work in 2008 and released a final report in 2016 along with 94 “calls to action” for governments, churches, and other institutions.
While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015) and Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996), as well as public comments from survivors such as Phil Fontaine raised the profile of the residential school history, most non-Indigenous Canadians remain unaware of the depth of this issue (for example, Boese, Neufeld and Starzyk, Reference Boese, Neufeld and Starzyk2017). This is likely in part because non-Indigenous educational curricula did not acknowledge the harms of the residential school system until recently (Bennett, Reference Bennett2021). A 2020 survey found that nearly half of all non-Indigenous Canadians who attended school in Canada were never taught about residential schools, and a third of those who did learn about residential schools described their teachers’ descriptions of the programme as positive (Research Co., 2020).
Over the course of 6 weeks in the summer of 2021, several First Nations across the country separately announced what are suspected to be hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential school sites (Deer, Reference Deer2021). The TRC’s final report from years earlier noted that, in most cases, the bodies of children who died at residential schools were not returned to their families (TRC, 2015). Instead, children’s remains were typically buried at the schools, sometimes without the knowledge of their parents (Office of the Special Interlocutor, 2024). The burial grounds at the schools were often neglected once the schools were closed (Hamilton, Reference Hamilton2021). For example, in 2001 water erosion near the High River Residential School—which closed in 1922—exposed the remains of children who had been buried at the school. The announcements in 2021 were based on results from ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys of the land where the schools were situated, which revealed disturbances in the soil consistent with unmarked burials. This technology, in combination with archival research of former residential schools’ official records, has corroborated testimony from survivors whose oral history first drew attention to the possibility of graves at the former school sites (Canadian Archaeological Association, 2021; Dawson, Reference Dawson2021; Fraser, Reference Fraser, Starblanket and Long2025; Office of the Special Interlocutor, 2024). In the years since the initial announcements, suspected unmarked graves have been identified at more than 15 other former schools (Williamson, Reference Williamson2024).
Denialist arguments and recent developments
Residential school denialism is a type of political misinformation that, as Justice and Carleton (Reference Justice and Carleton2021b) note, does not involve the outright denial of the residential school system’s existence, but “rather the rejection or misrepresentation of basic facts about residential schooling to undermine truth and reconciliation efforts.” Justice and Carleton (Reference Justice and Carleton2021b) highlight a number of rhetorical techniques used by residential school denialists to cast doubt on the harms of residential schools and the need for redress. One of the most common counterarguments is that the schools provided a rewarding education for Indigenous children. For instance, Frances Widdowson, a former political science professor at Mount Royal University, has repeatedly claimed that the residential schools had educational benefits (CBC News, 2022). This claim flies in the face of the schools’ explicit assimilationist goals as well as the extensive evidence that the schools offered little real academic or vocational training (Milloy, Reference Milloy1999; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015).
Denialism also surfaces in arguments that church officials and staff at the schools had good intentions and that any harm was incidental. For example, just minutes after he was sworn in as Manitoba’s minister of Indigenous reconciliation in 2021, Progressive Conservative Member of the Legislative Assembly Alan Lagimodiere argued that “in retrospect, it’s easy to judge in the past, [b]ut at the time, they really thought that they were doing the right thing … the residential school system was designed to take Indigenous children and give them the skills and abilities they would need to fit into society as it moved forward” (quoted in Petz, Reference Petz2021). Comments to a university conservative club in 2020 by then federal Conservative leader Erin O’Toole made a similar argument (Zimonjic and Cullen, Reference Zimonjic and Cullen2020). In another high profile case, Senator Lynn Beyak was removed from the Conservative caucus in 2018 after giving a speech in the Senate defending the “abundance of good” that had come out of residential schools (quoted in Brake, Reference Brake2018). Her comments emboldened anti-Indigenous sentiment, as her office received numerous letters of support that were published to her website and posters appeared on university campuses calling on Canadians to “reject the anti-white narrative being pushed in media and academia” (Carleton, Reference Carleton2021).
Residential school denialist arguments also routinely seek to “balance” the few positive experiences reported by some survivors against the more extensive evidence of trauma suffered at the schools. For example, residential school denialists often point to how Cree writer Tomson Highway has credited his time at residential school for his career success, while ignoring the passages in his memoir describing the sexual abuse he and hundreds of other boys experienced while at Guy Hill Residential School (Cyca, Reference Cyca2023; Highway, Reference Highway2021). This selective choice of evidence ignores many other survivors’ first-hand accounts of negative experiences at the schools and the intergenerational trauma they endured as a result (for example, Fontaine, Reference Fontaine2010; Knockwood and Thomas, Reference Knockwood and Thomas1992; Sellars, Reference Sellars2013).
Since the announcements of suspected unmarked graves, denialist rhetoric has increasingly focused on questioning the credibility of the searches and the existence or extent of the unmarked graves. In 2022, on the 1-year anniversary of the first announcement of suspected unmarked graves near Kamloops, British Columbia, the New York Post ran a headline quoting political scientist Tom Flanagan, who called the unmarked graves “the biggest fake news story in Canadian history” (Kennedy, Reference Kennedy2022). In the same year, a group of academics and journalists created the Indian Residential Schools Research Group to ostensibly address “misconceptions” about residential schools; in reality, the group’s aims are to cast doubt on the residential schools’ harmful legacy. Maxime Bernier, the leader of the right-wing, populist People’s Party of Canada, tweeted his support for the endeavour, arguing it was “time to stop vilifying Canadian history and society” (Bernier, Reference Bernier2023). Soon after, Danielle Smith, Alberta Premier and leader of the United Conservative Party, decried the “fake news” of the unmarked graves on her social media (Carleton, Reference Carleton2023).
These arguments are based in part on the claim that radar technology is unreliable in identifying human burial sites, and that even if there are in fact remains at these sites, we cannot be sure they are Indigenous children, because the grave markers are missing. Statements from professional archaeology associations have pointed out the flawed logic in these claims (Canadian Archaeological Association, Society for American Archaeology, Canadian Association for Biological Anthropology and Canadian Permafrost Association, 2022). However, denialists continue to demand excavations of burial sites as proof the cemeteries at former school sites contain the bodies of Indigenous children, often against the wishes of Indigenous communities. At the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, denialists trespassed on the grounds of the school site at night and attempted to dig up suspected unmarked graves (Office of the Special Interlocutor, 2023, p. 98).
Denialism has existed alongside residential schools since their inception, but in recent years, as Canada began taking official steps to address the harmful legacy of residential schools, this rhetoric has come especially from right-wing academics, media and political actors. In 2013, a former speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney wrote an article rejecting the “unchallenged narrative” and “bogus genocide story” of residential schools (von Scheel, Reference von Scheel2020). In 2018, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a right-wing think tank, aired a 2-minute advertisement on private radio stations in Saskatchewan claiming to debunk the “myths” of residential schools (Meloney, Reference Meloney2018). Of course, this rhetoric is not exclusive to conservative actors; in 2021, former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien denied being aware of abuse at residential schools during his time as Minister of Indian Affairs, despite archival evidence to the contrary (Barrera, Reference Barrera2021).
Members of Canada’s political and academic elite are not the only actors engaging in denialism. Debates over the existence and legacy of residential schools are, as with many other cases of misinformation, increasingly taking place among members of the public in online fora. To illustrate the rise in online denialism-related conversations, we collected nearly 40,000 comments posted to more than 600 residential-school-related threads on major Canadian politics Reddit communities between 2021 and 2024. We then identified comments that included words commonly appearing in denialist rhetoric, such as “cover up” and “hoax,” and calculated the proportion of all comments that included these words in each month (see the Supplementary Materials (SM) Section SM1 for details). As Figure 1 shows, the prevalence of denialism-related terms has increased more than fourfold during this time, from just over 3 per cent in the period immediately after suspected unmarked graves first became a national news story in May 2021 to more than 12 per cent at the end of 2023. While not all of these comments are endorsing denialism—in fact, many are accusing other users of denialism—these data demonstrate that online debates about the veracity of the unmarked graves and the history of residential schools have become increasingly common in the last 3 years.
Prevalence of Denialism-Related Terms in Reddit Comments, 2021–2024.
Note: This figure reports the percentage of comments including denialism-related words on Reddit posts related to residential schools that appeared on eight Canadian general and political subreddits for each month between 2021 and 2023 (see SM1 for details). Points are scaled by the total number of comments appearing each month. Note that the first suspected unmarked graves were announced in May 2021. The line of best fit is estimated from a generalized additive model weighted by the number of comments in each month.
The former chair of the TRC, Murray Sinclair, argues that misinformation represents one of the greatest obstacles to confronting the residential school history (Forester, Reference Forester2021). Accordingly, concerns about residential school denialism have triggered discussions about possible policy reforms. In response to the TRC’s Calls to Action related to updating educational curricula across Canada, most provinces have begun integrating the residential school history into elementary and high school education, which may serve as a bulwark against misinformation later in life. There have also been calls to criminalize residential school denialism as hate speech (Dufour, Reference Dufour2023; Stefanovich, Reference Stefanovich2023). What we aim to contribute to the debates over these proposals is empirical evidence regarding the nature and extent of residential school denialism among the Canadian public, as well as evidence assessing the effectiveness of interventions to counter denialist claims.
Theoretical Expectations
In this study, we conceptualize residential school denialism as a type of belief in political misinformation (Jerit and Zhao, Reference Jerit and Zhao2020).Footnote 3 The existing literature on this topic has generally not studied cases of misinformation linked to history, intergroup relations, and racism.Footnote 4 However, as discussed above, denialism shares commonalities with other forms of misinformation, namely in the language it uses to question evidence and its spread via online channels.
Kuklinski et al. (Reference Kuklinski, Quirk, Jerit, Schwieder and Rich2000) argue that believers of misinformation do not simply lack information, but rather “firmly hold the wrong information” (p. 792).Footnote 5 In our analysis, we consider not only whether people are misinformed, but also the very likely possibility that many Canadians lack information on the topic of residential schools. In Canada, public school curricula have historically either failed to teach students about residential schools or taught a sanitized account of this history (Bennett, Reference Bennett2021). While today 90 per cent of non-Indigenous Canadians say they have heard of residential schools and 63 per cent believe they are very or somewhat familiar with this history (Canadian Reconciliation Barometer, 2023; Environics, 2023), other research has shown that these self-reported indicators tend to overstate what respondents actually know (Boese, Neufeld and Starzyk, Reference Boese, Neufeld and Starzyk2017). We anticipate that many Canadians are uninformed about the issues underlying denialist claims and many others have been exposed to inaccurate information, which increases their propensity to endorse denialist misinformation. By extension, we expect that educating people about the true, factual history can reduce both ignorance and denialism. This expectation is in line with recent evidence showing that informational interventions can positively change attitudes toward Indigenous peoples in Canada (for example, Efimoff and Starzyk, Reference Efimoff and Starzyk2023; Neufeld et al., Reference Neufeld, Starzyk, Boese, Efimoff and Wright2022; Siemens and Neufeld, Reference Siemens and Neufeld2022).
Besides a lack of exposure to education about the relevant history, there are other reasons why individuals may adopt and retain denialist beliefs. A large literature in political science demonstrates that voters tend to adopt the policy positions espoused by politicians from their preferred party (for example, Broockman and Butler, Reference Broockman and Butler2017; Zaller, Reference Zaller1992), with some evidence that a similar dynamic may apply to belief in misinformation (Berinsky, Reference Berinsky2023; Van Duyn and Collier, Reference Van Duyn and Collier2019). Because denialist claims have been articulated more frequently by right-wing groups and opinion leaders in recent years in Canada, we expect that denialist beliefs will correlate with Conservative partisanship.
There are also reasons to suspect that denialism correlates with individuals’ predispositions toward beliefs in conspiracy theories. Much of the language appearing in denialist claims is suggestive of secretive and malevolent motives for presenting the public with allegedly fraudulent information about the searches for unmarked graves at former residential schools (for example, “hoax,” “scam”). Denialists also regularly accuse the mainstream media of intentionally misrepresenting the truth behind residential schools and the unmarked graves (Gerbrandt and Carleton, Reference Gerbrandt and Carleton2023). Social scientists have shown that some people are more prone to believe in conspiracy theories. “Conspiracy thinking” refers to the predisposition toward seeing events and circumstances in terms of conspiracies (Uscinski and Parent, Reference Uscinski and Parent2014; Uscinski et al., Reference Uscinski, Enders, Diekman, Funchion, Klofstad, Kuebler, Murthi, Premaratne, Seelig and Verdear2022). Those who have a tendency toward conspiracy thinking are more likely to endorse specific conspiracies, such as those related to 9/11, the moon landing, or U.S. President Barack Obama’s place of birth (Berinsky, Reference Berinsky2023; Brotherton, French and Pickering, Reference Brotherton, French and Pickering2013; Bruder et al., Reference Bruder, Haffke, Neave, Nouripanah and Imhoff2013; Uscinski and Parent, Reference Uscinski and Parent2014; Enders et al., Reference Enders, Uscinski, Seelig, Klofstad, Wuchty, Funchion, Murthi, Premaratne and Stoler2021). While not all residential school denialists are conspiracy theorists (and vice versa), we expect that a predisposition toward conspiracy thinking will correlate positively with beliefs in denialist misinformation.
Denialism may also be distinct from beliefs in other forms of misinformation because of its close association with individuals’ intergroup attitudes and identity attachments within the settler colonial system. In particular, one’s prior views toward Indigenous peoples may shape how non-Indigenous Canadians interpret the facts around Canada’s residential school history. Those who express greater Indigenous resentment may be more willing to endorse denialist claims, because this attitude is a strong predictor of opposition to policies that benefit Indigenous peoples (Beauvais, Reference Beauvais2022; Beauvais and Stolle, Reference Beauvais and Stolle2022). Residential school denialism, by minimizing the harms of residential schools, is tied to efforts to undermine reconciliation and weaken support for policies that would redress this history (Green, Reference Green, Starblanket and Long2025; Justice and Carleton, Reference Justice and Carleton2021a; Logan, Reference Logan, Hinton, Woolford and Benvenuto2014; Regan, Reference Regan2010).Footnote 6
Previous research has shown that one’s attachment to their racial/ethnic in-group is distinct from their attitudes toward a racial/ethnic out-group, with in-group identification exerting its own independent influence on political views (Beauvais and Stolle, Reference Beauvais and Stolle2022; Jardina, Reference Jardina2019). Among members of perpetrator or dominant groups, the invocation of historical injustices can create a significant threat to the esteem of one’s identity group (Branscombe et al., Reference Branscombe, Ellemers, Spears and Doosje1999; Doosje et al., Reference Doosje, Branscombe, Spears and Manstead1998; Tajfel and Turner, Reference Tajfel, Turner, Worchel and Austin1986). Due to their historical connection to Canadian identity and the settler colonial project, white Canadians offer a relevant subgroup that might experience a heightened sense of threat in response to evidence of past wrongdoing.Footnote 7 For this group, denying historical injustices can assuage uncomfortable emotions such as guilt or shame or fear that the settler status quo is insecure (Iyer, Leach and Pedersen, Reference Iyer, Leach and Pedersen2004; Knowles et al., Reference Knowles, Lowery, Chow and Unzueta2014; Maracle, Reference Maracle2017; Rotella and Richeson, Reference Rotella and Richeson2013; Tuck and Wayne Yang, Reference Tuck and Wayne Yang2012; Wohl, Branscombe and Klar, Reference Wohl, Branscombe and Klar2006). This psychological motivation to minimize harms against Indigenous peoples may help explain the persistence of “white ignorance” about past wrongdoing (Mills, Reference Mills, Sullivan and Tuana2007). To the extent that residential school denialism allows white Canadians to dismiss uncomfortable truths about their group’s historical treatment of Indigenous peoples, we should expect to see a greater endorsement of denialist claims among those that hold strong attachments to their white identity.
People of color (POC) also differ in the strength of their identity attachments. In our present work, we define POC as non-Indigenous members of non-European ancestry population groups (for a longer discussion of terminology, see SM2). Research shows that, among POC, attachment to a racial/ethnic identity (such as Asian or Black) is a strong predictor for whether an individual also identifies in solidarity with other non-white populations (Sanchez, Reference Sanchez2008; Pérez, Reference Pérez2021). A sense of commonality or “linked fate” among POC is in turn associated with political attitudes and behaviours in support of other marginalized groups (Chan and Jasso, Reference Chan and Jasso2023; Gershon et al., Reference Gershon, Montoya, Bejarano and Brown2019; Merseth, Reference Merseth, Aoki and Lien2020; Pérez, Reference Pérez2021). Many POC communities have themselves been displaced or otherwise negatively affected by European colonialism, which may inform opposition to colonial injustices in Canada (see Byrd, Reference Byrd2011; Lawrence and Dua, Reference Lawrence and Dua2005; Snelgrove, Dhamoon and Corntassel, Reference Snelgrove, Dhamoon and Corntassel2014). Recent evidence shows that, compared with white Canadians, POC perceive a higher degree of commonality with Indigenous people, which is in turn associated with their greater support for redressing historical injustices (Starzyk et al., Reference Starzyk, Neufeld, El-Gabalawy and Boese2019). We therefore expect that a strong attachment to one’s own racial/ethnic identity among POC can motivate solidarity with other marginalized communities, leading to lower endorsement of denialist claims.
Methods
Recent research on residential school denialism in the Canadian context has focused on identifying common denialist arguments and articulating the consequences of this misinformation (for example, Carleton, Reference Carleton2021; Green, Reference Green, Starblanket and Long2025; George, Reference George, Kiera, Myra, Winnipeg and Books2017; Gerbrandt and Carleton, Reference Gerbrandt and Carleton2023; MacDonald, Reference MacDonald2019; Wadsworth, Halmhofer and Supernant, Reference Wadsworth, Halmhofer and Supernant2023; Warry, Reference Warry2008). Building on this scholarship, our methodology introduces two innovations: (i) the measurement of denialist beliefs using a survey instrument and (ii) the testing of an intervention to counter denialism. This approach offers quantifiable evidence on the nature and extent of denialism as well as the effectiveness of educational information for countering it. Our methodology also draws on an empirical literature on misinformation, which has similarly relied on surveys and survey experiments to measure and manipulate factual beliefs (for example, Chan et al., Reference Chan, Jones, Hall Jamieson and Albarracin2017; Lewandowsky and Van Der Linden, Reference Lewandowsky and Van Der Linden2021; Pennycook and Rand, Reference Pennycook and Rand2022).
Measuring Residential School Denialism
To develop our measures of residential school denialism, we drew on arguments appearing in online communities and media articles, and consulted secondary material describing common denialist claims (for example, Carleton, Reference Carleton2021). We also consulted with two representatives from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR). On the basis of the NCTR staff’s recommendations, Dr. Beauvais met with an Indigenous Elder and survivor of the residential school system to listen to his experiences at residential school and with denialists (see SM3.6).
We sought to tap into two common types of denialism: (1) claims that the deaths or number of unmarked graves at former residential schools are false or exaggerated and (2) claims that the schools were well intentioned and had broadly positive impacts on Indigenous peoples’ lives. While claims in the former category are more amenable to empirical verification, the latter set of items related to the programme’s intentions and legacies are also based on extensive evidence. Experts have not only assembled documentation on the deaths and unmarked burials of children at the schools, but also on statements outlining the forced assimilation objectives of the program and on the government and churches’ efforts to conceal their failings (Carleton, Reference Carleton2021; McKenzie and Carleton, Reference McKenzie and Carleton2021; Milloy, Reference Milloy1999; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015; Turnbull, Reference Turnbull2021).
We aimed to present a single denialist claim per item and to make the statements as simple as possible. Our nine items contain an average of 12.5 words per statement, and according to Flesch–Kincaid metrics, are readable at the 8th–10th grade level. All items are measured using a five-point Likert scale (strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat agree, strongly agree) and are (reverse) coded so that higher values indicate greater residential school denialism. We include positively and negatively worded items to guard against acquiescence bias (see SM5.1 for a discussion and tests for such bias).
For each item, respondents were able to respond with “don’t know” or “I haven’t thought too much about this.” Including this option increases the risk of satisficing, in which respondents offer a non-opinion to avoid expending the cognitive effort needed to form an opinion (Krosnick, Reference Krosnick1991). However, it is necessary in a survey on this topic because we ask about specific details related to the searches for unmarked graves and the residential school history, of which many non-Indigenous people have only a superficial knowledge. In this context, “don’t know” is an accurate reflection of many people’s position. In a pilot study, we did not include this option and found that it impacted the distribution of attitudes: for two out of the three items that appeared in both the pilot and full surveys, the proportion of respondents agreeing with denialist claims is notably higher when “don’t know” was not an option (see SM3.5). We recommend future users of this scale include a non-response option to ensure their estimates of denialism are not inflated.
The nine items in the residential school denialism scale are as follows:
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1. “The residential schools did more harm than good.” (reversed)
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2. “The people running Canada’s residential schools had good intentions.”
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3. “Indigenous children attending residential schools died at higher rates than other children because the conditions at residential schools were worse.” (reversed)
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4. “The purpose of residential schools was to help Indigenous people.”
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5. “Indigenous children died as a result of attending residential schools.” (reversed)
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6. “The suspected graves at former residential schools are probably tree roots or other debris, not graves.”
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7. “Radar technology can reliably locate Indigenous children’s graves at former residential schools.” (reversed)
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8. “The unmarked graves at former residential schools may not even contain Indigenous people.”
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9. “People saying that there are hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential schools are exaggerating.”
We construct a summated rating scale of residential school denialism by taking the average non-missing score for each respondent across our nine items tapping into this concept (Spector, Reference Spector1992). The items comprise a highly reliable scale (Cronbach’s α = 0.89) and a reliability analysis reveals that dropping any of the items would lower the overall reliability of the scale (see Table S5 for full results).
Plotting a scree plot using the reduced matrix eigenvalues (as recommended by Fabrigar and Wegener Reference Fabrigar and Wegener2012, p. 57) suggests that a single factor should be retained (Figure 2), and thus the scale items can be summarized using a single latent construct. For a longer discussion of dimensionality, see SM4.3.
Scree Plot of Residential School Denialism Items using Reduced Matrix Eigenvalues.
Note: A scree plot plotting the reduced matrix eigenvalues from largest to smallest to visually identify the number of eigenvalues to the left of the point where the eigenvalues level off (the “scree” of the graph). There is one point to the left of the scree for the observed data, suggesting a single factor best captures variation in the items.
Finally, we recognize that in larger surveys, future researchers may not always be able to include all nine items presented above. While a larger number of items generally helps to reduce measurement error, we recommend, in cases where the full scale is not feasible, using a four-item scale comprised of the following statements:
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1. “The residential schools did more harm than good.” (reversed)
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2. “The people running Canada’s residential schools had good intentions.”
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3. “Indigenous children attending residential schools died at higher rates than other children because the conditions at residential schools were worse.” (reversed)
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4. “The purpose of residential schools was to help Indigenous people.”
These items tap into the main aspects of denialism, but do not directly reference the unmarked graves. In SM4.5, we demonstrate that this shorter scale is also statistically reliable and shares many of the same measurement properties as the full scale. In the remainder of this study, we analyze the full nine-item scale.
Sample, Experimental Design, and Estimation
We contracted with Leger Opinion to recruit a sample of non-Indigenous adult Canadian citizens and permanent residents to complete an online survey in November 2023. The survey was available in both English and French. Leger uses quota-based sampling to generate samples that are reflective of the population in terms of gender, age, educational attainment, language and racial and ethnic population groups. Our final sample (n = 1,915) is broadly representative of the adult Canadian population, although our respondents skew slightly older on average (see SM3.1). We report results weighted by age, gender and region in SM3.2, finding that these estimates are nearly identical to those presented in the main text below. In addition to Leger’s internal efforts to ensure data quality, we excluded duplicate survey takers and likely bots. We also conducted data quality checks on less attentive respondents and find that our descriptive results are not sensitive to their inclusion in the sample and our experimental findings would in fact be stronger if we were to exclude these respondents (see SM3.3).
To assess the effect of an educational intervention on residential school denialism, we randomly assigned equal proportions of respondents to either receive factual information about the residential school history (the treatment group) or not (the control group), before subsequently asking about their attitudes toward denialist arguments. Randomization allows us to establish the causal effect of the educational treatment on attitudes by ensuring that information exposure is orthogonal to prior determinants of denialist beliefs.
In our study, respondents assigned to the treatment condition were tasked with reading a 250-word text describing the goals of the residential school system, conditions at the schools, facts about Indigenous children’s deaths, and details about the ongoing searches for unmarked graves (see SM6.2 for the full text). This information was accompanied by photos of a residential school and Indigenous children in a classroom, as well as a link to the Canadian Encyclopedia page on residential schools, from which much of the language for the intervention was borrowed.
The median respondent spent 42 seconds engaging with the content. We hypothesize that the educational treatment will reduce both “don’t know” responses and expressions of residential school denialism. Balance tests reveal that the treatment and control groups resemble one another on average across all pre-treatment covariates (see SM6.3).
The first portion of our analysis, which considers the prevalence and correlates of residential school denialism, is conducted strictly on the portion of the sample in the control group (n = 960). Responses in this condition capture the baseline attitudes of the Canadian public. At the end of the survey, we debriefed all respondents on the purpose of the study. To address ethical concerns, participants in the control group were given the same factual information as the treatment group as part of their debrief (that is, after they had responded to the denialism items).
The second portion of the analysis, which identifies the effect of education about residential schools on denialist attitudes, uses the full sample. We estimate average treatment effects (ATEs) using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, which allows us to increase the precision of our estimates by controlling for covariates as well as to conduct subgroup analyses.
Our analyses rely on a number of pre-treatment sociodemographic and attitudinal variables, including age, gender, region, income, religion, partisanship, language, education, political knowledge, trust in media, racial/ethnic in-group identification (Jardina, Reference Jardina2019), Indigenous resentment (Beauvais, Reference Beauvais2021), conspiracy thinking (Uscinski and Parent, Reference Uscinski and Parent2014; Enders and Smallpage, Reference Enders and Smallpage2019), and factual knowledge about the residential school system (Boese, Neufeld and Starzyk, Reference Boese, Neufeld and Starzyk2017). Full coding rules for these variables can be found in SM3.4. To improve statistical efficiency in the estimation of treatment effects, we impute missing covariate values, first using the sample mode for categorical variables and then using multiple imputation by chained equations for continuous variables (King et al., Reference King, Honaker, Joseph and Scheve2001).Footnote 8 Approximately 31 per cent of our respondents had one covariate value imputed; covariate missingness is most significant for the religion variable, which appeared toward the end of the survey.Footnote 9 Imputed values are not used in the analysis of correlates.
Results
The prevalence of residential school denialism
Figure 3 reports the proportion of respondents agreeing and disagreeing with each of the nine denialism items. A large proportion of respondents stated that they do not know enough to provide a judgment on the denialism claims by selecting “don’t know/I haven’t thought too much about this.” Across all items, 19 per cent of the sample provided this response. By comparison, survey questions asking about denial of the Holocaust typically find that the proportion that is unsure about this issue is around 5 per cent (e.g. Smith, Reference Smith1995). As we show in our analysis below, this pattern is driven in part by the Canadian public’s lack of prior knowledge regarding the residential school history (see also Boese, Neufeld and Starzyk, Reference Boese, Neufeld and Starzyk2017; Schaefli et al., Reference Schaefli, Godlewska, Korteweg, Coombs, Morcom and Rose2018).
Prevalence of Residential School Denialism in Canada.
Note: This figure reports the proportion of respondents in the control group providing each response level for the nine denialism items. (n = 960).
Despite the large number of non-opinions, a sizeable percentage of non-Indigenous Canadians are willing to endorse claims that deny the residential school system’s legacy. On average, across the nine items, 17 per cent of respondents either somewhat or strongly agree with residential school denialist arguments. By comparison, only 3 per cent of our survey respondents endorsed Holocaust denialism. Similarly, at the height of its popularity, just 5–10 per cent of Americans expressed a belief in the QAnon conspiracy (Rogers, Reference Rogers2021). The prevalence of residential school denialism is thus more comparable to beliefs in misinformation related to climate change and vaccine skepticism (Gravelle et al., Reference Gravelle, Phillips, Reifler and Scotto2022; Monopoli, Reference Monopoli2022; Pew Research Center, 2016; Schwartzberg, Stevens and Acton, Reference Schwartzberg, Stevens and Acton2022).Footnote 10
Beliefs in certain types of denialist claims are more common than others. Only 6 and 10 per cent of our sample deny that residential schools “did more harm than good” and that “Indigenous children died as a result of attending residential schools,” respectively. By contrast, items related to the goals of the residential school system were more likely to be endorsed: 28 per cent of Canadians believe that the purpose of the schools was to help Indigenous people, while 23 per cent agreed that those running the schools had good intentions. Statements questioning the accuracy of identifying unmarked graves at former school sites or the number of graves were endorsed by between 10 and 19 per cent of respondents, respectively; these items also saw notably higher rates of non-opinions.
The Correlates of Residential School Denialism
To investigate which Canadians are more likely to endorse denialism, the left panel of Figure 4 plots average scores on our denialism scale across a range of pre-treatment covariates. The right panel reports the percentage of “don’t know” responses to each of the denialism items for different covariate values.
Correlates of Residential School Denialism.
Note: This figure shows the distribution of denialism and “don’t know” responses among respondents in the control group (n = 960). In the left panel, the shading shows the distribution of denialism and the points indicate the mean denialism score (with 95% confidence intervals) among non-missing responses for each covariate. The right panel reports the percentage of “don’t know” responses. For continuous variables, respondents are grouped into “low,” “medium” and “high” categories on the basis of tercile. For the racial/ethnic identity variable, strong and weak identification with one’s racial/ethnic group is measured on the basis of whether a respondent’s racial/ethnic attachment score is above or below the median in their respective racial/ethnic category (that is, white or POC). See SM3.4 for additional details on covariate measurement.
The plots reveal that men are significantly more likely to agree with denialist claims, and less likely to indicate that they “don’t know.” This finding is consistent with research in other domains on a gender gap in both racial attitudes and propensity to select “don’t know” on political knowledge questions (e.g Miller, Reference Miller2019; Pratto, Stallworth and Sidanius, Reference Pratto, Stallworth and Sidanius1997).
Second, partisanship is an important correlate of denialist beliefs. Supporters of conservative parties are significantly more willing to endorse denialist claims compared with partisans of all other parties, especially those on the left. The average difference in scores on the denialism scale between Conservative Party and NDP supporters, for example, is around 0.9 standard deviations (or, equivalently, 0.8 points on the five-point scale in Figure 4). Those who do not consider themselves supporters of any of the major parties report denialist beliefs similar to Liberal partisans, but are significantly less likely to provide an opinion on these issues.
Denialism is linked to racial identity and prior attitudes toward Indigenous peoples. We find that those with the highest levels of Indigenous resentment express 1.3 standard deviations more denialism on average than those that score the lowest on this variable. Identification with one’s racial/ethnic in-group is also a significant predictor of denialism, but in a nuanced way. On average, white Canadians are no more receptive to denialist arguments than POC, but white Canadians who strongly identify with their racial in-group score much higher on the denialism scale (0.7 standard deviations) than those without a strong attachment to their white identity. For POC, the relationship is reversed: those that identify strongly with their racial/ethnic in-group are much less willing to endorse denialism.
We find that prior knowledge—measured using a series of factual questions—is also related to expressions of denialism. While general political knowledge does not covary with respondents’ opinions on the denialism items, scores on a three-item quiz about residential schools weakly predict denialist attitudes. Respondents who did not answer a single question correctly on this quiz (54% of the sample) reported roughly 0.3 standard deviations more denialism on average than those who scored better on the quiz.Footnote 11 At the same time, both of these measures have a strong negative relationship with whether respondents answered with “don’t know”: non-opinions were about 20 percentage points more likely among those who failed to provide a single correct answer on the residential schools quiz.Footnote 12
Finally, denialist beliefs are weakly associated with conspiracy thinking. Those who express medium and high levels of agreement with statements in this scale, such as “much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places,” tend to agree around 0.45 standard deviations more with the denialism items. Similarly, in supplementary analyses, we find that those who least trust the mainstream media and those who deny that the Holocaust occurred are both more likely to endorse denialism. In this sense, residential school denialism is similar to other types of misinformation in its positive relationship with individuals’ predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories, but these associations are smaller in magnitude than those related to partisanship or racial attitudes.
We also conduct a multivariate regression analysis of denialist beliefs (see SM5.2). Many of the bivariate correlations summarized in Figure 4 remain statistically significant after controlling for other demographic and attitudinal covariates, with the exception of the residential schools knowledge quiz scores and the conspiracy thinking scale. We also find that the ostensibly strong relationship between Indigenous resentment and non-response rates is attenuated after controlling for these other variables, suggesting that the expressive use of the “don’t know” option among those with greater anti-Indigenous attitudes is minimal. The “don’t know” response category appears to be primarily related to a genuine lack of exposure to the relevant information, and to a much lesser extent, negative views of Indigenous peoples. Finally, these supplementary models do not reveal any notable associations between denialism and age, region, or language, although religious adherents of all denominations do agree more with denialist claims than atheists and agnostics.
Educational Intervention
In Table 1, we present OLS estimates of the average treatment effect (ATE) of the educational intervention on residential school denialism and the proportion of responses indicating a non-opinion. For the expressed denialism outcome, we take the average of all responses to the denialism items (excluding “don’t know” responses), focusing only on respondents who offered an opinion on at least one of the items. We present estimates both with and without controlling for pre-treatment variables.
Average Treatment Effects of Educational Intervention
Note: Table reports estimates from OLS models with HC2 standard errors. The outcome in the first two models is the average expressed denialism score (scaled by control group standard deviations) among respondents who expressed an opinion on at least one of the denialism items. The outcome for the third and fourth models is the proportion of a respondent’s denialism items that were responded to with a “don’t know” response. In models two and four, the following covariates are included in the model specification but not reported here: age, gender, party ID, region, language, visible minority status (and its interaction with racial/ethnic identity attachment), Bachelor’s degree, religion, household income, Indigenous resentment, conspiracy thinking, political knowledge, residential school factual knowledge, trust in media, and whether the respondent knows an Indigenous person). * p < .05
Our estimates suggest that the intervention reduces agreement with residential school denialism by just over 13 per cent of a standard deviation. The treatment also reduces the probability of non-opinions by nearly 7 percentage points, which is a large effect given the baseline rate of non-opinion is almost 20 per cent. These effects are both statistically significant at conventional confidence levels, regardless of whether we control for pre-treatment covariates. The estimates are also substantively meaningful: studies that focus on the persuasive effects of historical information on intergroup attitudes typically report effects of a similar magnitude (for example, Efimoff and Starzyk, Reference Efimoff and Starzyk2023; Fang and White, Reference Fang and White2022; Nyhan and Zeitzoff, Reference Nyhan and Zeitzoff2018b; Williamson, Reference Williamson2024).Footnote 13 , Footnote 14
The results in Table 1 are encouraging, but given the interdependence between non-opinions and endorsements of residential school denialism, it is also informative to examine these two outcomes simultaneously. In Figure 5, we plot the average prevalence of each response category across all nine denialism items separately for treated and control respondents (all items have been reversed as necessary so that greater agreement indicates greater endorsement of denialism). Figure 5 clarifies the relationship between the two sets of effects in Table 1: the intervention reduced the proportion of non-opinions and increased the number of respondents who strongly rejected residential school denialist statements. The increase in the percentage of respondents strongly disagreeing with residential school denialism (6–7 percentage points) was matched by an almost equal decline in non-opinions.Footnote 15 Of course, because respondents cannot be observed under both treatment and control conditions, we cannot say with certainty that the intervention caused those who otherwise would have said “don’t know” to shift directly to “strongly disagree.” The treatment may have, for example, also induced movement from those in the middle of the scale toward strong disagreement. Nonetheless, among those who are willing to offer an opinion on these issues, the proportion disagreeing with denialist claims is significantly greater in treatment condition.
Responses to Denialist Claims by Treatment Condition.
Note: Plot presents the average proportion of respondents, by treatment condition, providing each response type across all nine denialism items. (n = 1,915).
That being said, in the aggregate, roughly equal proportions of respondents in the treated and control conditions agreed with residential school denialist claims. Our experimental results therefore offer suggestive evidence that the beneficial effects of information largely function by reducing non-opinions, rather than persuading those who have already formed an opinion. The fact that the treatment does not reduce the overall percentage of respondents agreeing with denialism also suggests that our baseline estimates of the prevalence of denialism in the control group are fairly accurate. As discussed earlier, Kuklinski et al. (Reference Kuklinski, Quirk, Jerit, Schwieder and Rich2000) note that misinformation believers “firmly hold the wrong information.” In our study, 18 per cent of treated respondents read the factually correct information and still endorsed denialism, indicating that they are indeed willing to stand firm in their commitment to this misinformation.
To further investigate the patterns driving our main effects, we also consider conditional average treatment effects (CATEs). We focus on those who were more likely to endorse residential school denialism at baseline, including those who report greater Indigenous resentment and who identify as Conservatives and People’s Party (PPC) supporters. We re-estimate our models with an interaction between the treatment indicator and each of these moderators.Footnote 16 The CATEs are summarized in Figure 6 for both residential school denialism and the likelihood of offering a non-opinion.
Conditional Average Treatment Effects by Indigenous Resentment and Partisanship.
Note: These plots summarize four OLS models (two for each moderator) in which the treatment indicator is interacted with the Indigenous resentment indicator (binned by tercile) and the Party ID variable. Effect estimates for the denialism outcome (n = 1,822) are scaled in terms of control group standard deviations. The “don’t know” outcome (n = 1,915) is measured as the probability of giving that response type to a given denialist item. The models control for all covariates listed in the notes to Table 1.
We find that the CATEs on denialism scores are larger for those who expressed medium and high levels of Indigenous resentment (a difference of roughly 0.15 standard deviations versus those with low resentment). Effects are also substantively larger among Conservative and PPC identifiers than among non-partisans and supporters of more left-leaning parties. These plots demonstrate that the treatment does not induce backlash: even among those who might be most likely to redouble their endorsement of denialism after reading the treatment text, there is no evidence of effects in a counter-informational direction. However, the treatment had no conditional effect on non-opinions: information reduced the probability of offering a non-opinion by around 7 percentage points across all levels of Indigenous resentment and for all partisan types (for additional tests see SM6.7).
Discussion and Conclusions
Denialism has been a persistent feature in Canadian society since the inception of the residential school system, which represents a significant barrier to truth-telling and improved relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples (Betke, Reference Betke2023; Bruyneel, Reference Bruyneel2024; Fraser, Reference Fraser, Starblanket and Long2025; McKenzie and Carleton, Reference McKenzie and Carleton2021; Peace, Reference Peace2020; Regan, Reference Regan2010; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). This study complements prior scholarship on the nature and consequences of denialism (Carleton, Reference Carleton2021; Gerbrandt and Carleton, Reference Gerbrandt and Carleton2023; Justice and Carleton, Reference Justice and Carleton2021b; MacDonald, Reference MacDonald2019; Regan, Reference Regan2010; Starblanket, Reference Starblanket2020; Warry, Reference Warry2008) by developing a new survey instrument for measuring residential school denialism that future scholars and practitioners can use to monitor this phenomenon over time.Footnote 17 Using this scale, we estimated the prevalence of denialism in Canada, identified who is most susceptible to believing this misinformation, and demonstrated that providing relevant, educational information can reduce the appeal of these claims.
A significant percentage of non-Indigenous Canadians are willing to endorse denialist arguments: on average, 17 per cent either somewhat or strongly agree with the statements in our scale. By contrast, we found that only 3 per cent of our respondents were willing to deny the Holocaust, a number that is congruent with previous research and far lower than the percentage endorsing residential school denialism (Smith, Reference Smith1995; Schoen Consulting, 2019). Denialism in Canada is also equally or more prevalent than beliefs in many other conspiracy theories, including QAnon, climate change denialism and Covid-19-vaccine-related conspiracies (Gravelle et al., Reference Gravelle, Phillips, Reifler and Scotto2022; Monopoli, Reference Monopoli2022; Pew Research Center, 2016; Rogers, Reference Rogers2021; Schwartzberg, Stevens and Acton, Reference Schwartzberg, Stevens and Acton2022).
While residential school denialism and these other conspiracy theories are increasingly spreading via social media, there are also important differences. In particular, our analysis reveals that residential school denialism is only weakly correlated with conspiracy thinking, a psychological predisposition that explains variation in beliefs about a range of other types of misinformation and conspiracy theories (Uscinski and Parent, Reference Uscinski and Parent2014). Partisanship and racial attitudes are much more important predictors of denialist beliefs.
We also tested an experimental intervention designed to combat residential school denialism. We found that a short educational treatment containing factual information about the history and legacy of residential schools reduces residential school denialism by nearly 15 percent of a standard deviation and lowers the probability of expressing a non-opinion (“don’t know/haven’t thought too much about this”) by just under 7 percentage points. The intervention appears to work by simultaneously decreasing non-opinions and increasing the number of respondents who strongly reject residential school denialist statements.
Unfortunately, there appears to be a core group of residential school denialists with firmly held beliefs who are not swayed by our intervention. Nonetheless, we view our study as a minimum viable demonstration of the principle that education can counter residential school denialism, at least among those who have not formed strong opinions. The results, of course, come from a carefully controlled online experiment. It is imperative that future research build on our findings by testing other interventions in real-world settings, where treatments involving more than a 250-word text could produce stronger effects, or where competing information may dampen the positive effects of education (Chong and Druckman, Reference Chong and Druckman2010; Williamson, Reference Williamson2024).
That being said, to identify the potential for backlash, we also analyzed the conditional effect of the treatment among political partisans and across a range of anti-Indigenous attitudes. The informational treatment does not have a significant effect on residential school denialist attitudes among those who express the lowest levels of Indigenous resentment, but it does meaningfully reduce residential school denialism among those expressing medium or high levels of resentment. Similarly, the informational treatment does not have a significant effect in terms of shifting residential school denialist attitudes among NDP and Green Party identifiers, but it reduces residential school denialism among Liberal, Conservative and PPC identifiers. These results are notable because they indicate that the intervention was effective among exactly those respondents who were most likely to endorse denialist claims at baseline. The treatment did not trigger a backlash among those harboring anti-Indigenous attitudes or supporters of centrist and right-of-centre parties.
There are two potential sources of bias worth noting in our research design: acquiescence and social desirability. We address the potential problem of acquiescence bias by explicitly encouraging respondents to use the “don’t know/ haven’t thought too much about this” response options and by using alternate wording for the items measuring residential school denialism. Our analysis of response patterns shows that respondents do tend to express marginally higher levels of denialism when the items are worded such that greater agreement indicates stronger endorsement of residential school denialism (SM5.1). This pattern may be because the arguments behind these items were inherently more plausible, or it may suggest that these estimates are upwardly biased due to acquiescence. The only technique that could fully dispel any concerns about acquiescence bias involves having positively and negatively worded versions of each item and randomly assigning respondents to receive one item or the other (Hill and Roberts, Reference Hill and Roberts2023). While holding some appeal, this approach requires assumptions about the logic underlying each statement and would make it more difficult for future researchers to use the scale in their work.
The second potential source of bias related to social desirability could arise if respondents feel uncomfortable revealing socially undesirable beliefs, leading to underestimates of prevalence. We find this type of bias less plausible in our case. The survey was administered online and anonymously, which, as we reminded respondents, gave them the freedom to express controversial opinions. In fact, up to 40 per cent of respondents were comfortable expressing anti-Indigenous attitudes on the Indigenous resentment scale items. If respondents felt a need to conceal their true opinions about Indigenous peoples, we likely would not observe such a high proportion offering socially undesirable opinions on these measures. There is also little evidence that respondents with stronger anti-Indigenous attitudes were more likely to indicate “neither agree nor disagree” or “don’t know” to the questions gauging residential school denialism.Footnote 18 Given that these are the responses that would mostly likely be used to hide one’s true positions, it seems improbable that social desirability bias is undermining our estimates. In SM5.1 we provide additional checks for this type of bias, showing that it is also unlikely to be an explanation for the positive treatment effects we identify in the experiment.
With respect to limitations of the present study, there is a more insidious type of denial that we do not address. In Canada, popular discourses around reconciliation can tend to focus almost exclusively on residential schools, ignoring that this policy was just one part of a broader—and ongoing—colonial project aimed at dispossessing and destroying Indigenous nations (George, Reference George, Kiera, Myra, Winnipeg and Books2017; Green, Reference Green, Starblanket and Long2025; Henderson, Reference Henderson2015). Future work could investigate how attention to the residential school history allows settlers to ignore other colonial injustices and deny more transformative visions of decolonization (Alfred, Reference Alfred2005; Simpson, Reference Simpson2017, Reference Simpson2014). Another limitation of the present work stems from the fact that the nature of residential school denialism changes over time. New misinformation about this history is likely to emerge in the coming years and future researchers may need to adapt our scale to account for these changing dynamics. In SM4.5 we highlight the four items that we believe may be best able to capture the more persistent features of denialist arguments. Additionally, we consulted with three individuals who have had experience with the residential school system while developing our proposed scale (two NCTR employees and one Indigenous Elder and residential school survivor; see SM3.6). Future research could benefit from engaging with a greater number of Indigenous people who have been impacted by residential schools and residential school denialism, thereby strengthening the research findings and ensuring that survivor voices are more fully represented.
Finally, we recognize a unique ethical concern inherent in our research. We exposed respondents to statements related to residential school denialism that they may not have otherwise encountered in their everyday lives. To address this concern, we debriefed all respondents at the end of the survey on the purposes of the study and presented respondents in the control group with the same text that the respondents in the treatment group received. Because we know that the intervention successfully reduced residential school denialism, we expect that sharing this information should have had the same effect among respondents in the control group. We recommend future researchers using our scale adopt a similar practice of providing respondents with corrective information about the denialist items after measuring these beliefs; research published after our data collection offers guidance on how best to approach this (Clayton et al., Reference Clayton, Porter, Velez and Wood2024). We have made the language of our educational intervention available in SM6.2 for this purpose.
If left unchecked, residential school denialism undermines efforts to improve relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada (George, Reference George, Kiera, Myra, Winnipeg and Books2017; Green, Reference Green, Starblanket and Long2025; Justice and Carleton, Reference Justice and Carleton2021b). The former chair of the TRC, Murray Sinclair, argues that counternarratives and misinformation represent one of the greatest obstacles to confronting the residential school history (quoted in Forester, Reference Forester2021). Overcoming these barriers begins with an honest appraisal of the attitudes of Canadians toward historical injustices in their country. In her 2023 report, Kimberly Murray, the Special Interlocutor assigned to investigate unmarked graves at former residential schools, wrote that “denialism is a uniquely non-Indigenous problem; it therefore requires non-Indigenous people to actively work to counter denialism and to create and implement strategies to do so” (Office of the Special Interlocutor, 2023, p. 106). Our work provides a tool for addressing the threat of residential school denialism, which we hope future research will build upon to advance reconciliation.
Supplementary material
To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423925100899.
Data availability statement
The experimental design was pre-registered at https://aspredicted.org/htgn-vy4p.pdf (ID #148781) and the data and code to reproduce the results are available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YBLLKI.
Acknowledgements
For helpful comments at various stages of the research, we thank Karen Bird, Sean Carleton, Antje Ellermann, Adam Enders, Gwyneth McClendon, staff at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and participants in the CPSA Conference, C-Dem Junior Scholars Workshop and MapleMeth. We also thank the CJPS editors and three anonymous reviewers. This study was approved by the Behavioural Research Ethics Board at Simon Fraser University prior to the collection of data (reference: 30001663).
Competing interests
The authors declare none.
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