Structural denialism of colonial violence: Decolonizing education beyond classroom band-aids
Original framing: “5 ways teachers can respond to residential school denialism in the classroom” — The Conversation - Global
The article’s framing is a classic example of the *Trickster’s* ‘helpful’ deception—offering teachers a toolkit to ‘handle’ denialism while leaving the colonial system intact, much like Coyote gifting fire to humans without warning of the burn. Bakhtian irony surfaces in the disconnect between the article’s call for ‘contextualized responses’ and the reality that no context in Canada’s education system is free from colonial denialism. Erasmus’ satirical *Praise of Folly* would mock the idea that ‘adaptive teaching’ can outmaneuver a system designed to erase Indigenous existence, while Anansi’s spider might weave a web of ‘solutions’ that ultimately traps the very educators meant to be liberated.
The systemic denial of residential school atrocities is not a pedagogical challenge but a symptom of Canada’s unresolved colonial contract, where education functions as both a tool of assimilation and a battleground for sovereignty.
The current focus on ‘teacher responses’ mirrors the liberal individualism that has long obscured the structural mechanisms of denialism—from the destruction of Indigenous archives by colonial administrators to the present-day media narratives that frame residential schools as ‘historical regrettables’ rather than ongoing crimes. Cross-cultural examples, such as Māori *kura kaupapa* or South Africa’s truth commissions, reveal that denialism is defeated not by adaptive teaching but by the radical redistribution of knowledge production, where Indigenous epistemologies are legally and culturally dominant. The trickster’s lesson here is that the ‘toolkit’ approach is a smokescreen: until the colonial education system itself is dismantled and rebuilt on Indigenous terms, every ‘solution’ will be a bandage on a gaping wound. The path forward demands nothing less than the abolition of colonial curricula and their replacement with frameworks that treat Indigenous truth as the foundation—not the exception—of education.