Benjamin Kucher

Confronting residential schools denialism is an ethical and shared Canadian responsibility Residential schools denialism is harmful on many levels, and jeopardizes Canada’s ability to work with Indigenous Peoples to create a stronger future.

"Denialism is not an Indigenous problem; confronting it is a Canadian responsibility...Truth & reconciliation cannot survive if the truth is minimized, downplayed or disavowed."

Critically important piece by @seancarleton.bsky.social & @truthinthesoil.bsky.social theconversation.com/confronting-...

Earlier this week I joined @aptnnews.bsky.social to discuss residential school denialism and the need for legislative action

Listen here: open.spotify.com/episode/07MQ...

Also, what kind of journalist would not disclose that the person he is talking about in this tweet (below)....IS HIS WIFE? Oh, right, the same kind of activist who is promoting a far-right Christian nationalist, IRS denialist conspiracy theory. You goofs are cooked.

Confronting residential schools denialism is an ethical and shared Canadian responsibility Residential schools denialism is harmful on many levels, and jeopardizes Canada’s ability to work with Indigenous Peoples to create a stronger future.

As @truthinthesoil.bsky.social have argued, confronting this residential school denialism - ways that do not give these people the attention they are hoping to manufacture through free speech stunts like this - is an ethical and shared responsibility: theconversation.com/confronting-...

For context, the BC Conservative staffer fired for spreading residential school denialism on Orange Shirt Day has a long and clear history of promoting anti-Indigenous, denialist content. It's no accident; they are following the far-right playbook: provoke, platform, profit🧵

Wearing orange on September 30th is important. But the work doesn’t end when the shirt comes off. Indigenous Peoples live with the intergenerational impacts of residential schools every single day.

Remembrance without action is just performance. Carry the truth with you beyond today.

On #TruthAndReconciliationDay, we call on Canada to confront Residential School denialism.

We believe Survivors.

We honour their truth.

We will never stop fighting for those who never made it home.

Read our letter:

"Residential school denialism is not simply an alternate perspective. It is a form of harm that retraumatizes Survivors, undermines truth and perpetuates colonial ideas that jeopardize Canada’s ability to work with Indigenous Peoples..." –
@seancarleton.bsky.social @truthinthesoil.bsky.social

The cover is done. The manuscript is almost there. One step closer to publishing The Death of A Curious Mind: A Manifesto for Surviving the Violence of the Academy.

This one’s for every voice that’s been silenced in the name of rigor.

#AcademicTwitter #AmWriting #DecolonizeAcademia

I was one of many Native people who showed up in 1990 to support the heroic Mohawk resistance in Kahnawake & Kanehsatake.
While some have walked on to the spirit world, many of us continue to be committed to defending the Land, the People and the Law. The defense of Native sovereignty cannot rest.

8/ Let this anniversary be more than a memory.

Let it be a commitment: To listen. To act. To fight for justice, not just when it’s trending, but every damn day.

#Kanehsatake #Kahnawake #35YearsLater #NeverForget #LandBack

7/ 35 years later, the barricades may be gone, but the struggle for land and sovereignty remains.

From Wet’suwet’en to Land Back Lane to Kanehsatake itself, the fight continues.

We remember July 11. We honour the defenders.
#LandBack #OkaCrisis #IndigenousResistance

6/ This was not a crisis for us. It was a revelation for Canada.

The Oka Crisis laid bare the lengths this country will go to protect settler interests. But it also showed the power of Indigenous resistance. Of unity. Of remembering who we are.

5/ At Kahnawà:ke, Mohawk warriors stood in solidarity, erecting their own barricades. When a mob attacked Indigenous women and children fleeing the area, it revealed what this was really about: racism, land theft, and control.

4/ The standoff lasted 78 days.

Armored vehicles. Riot squads. Snipers. Eventually, the Canadian army was deployed. Tanks on Turtle Island. Against people whose only “crime” was refusing to watch their ancestors’ resting place become a golf course.

3/ The Quebec police responded with tear gas and bullets.

In the chaos, Corporal Marcel Lemay was shot and killed. The state framed this as justification for escalation. But let’s be clear: this was Indigenous resistance to colonial violence, not aggression.

2/ On July 11, 1990, Mohawk land defenders set up a barricade to stop the expansion of a golf course over a sacred burial ground in Kanehsatake.

The land had never been ceded, surrendered, or sold. It was their responsibility to protect it.

1/ Today marks 35 years since the start of the siege at Kanehsatake and Kahnawà:ke. what the world came to know as the Oka Crisis.

A thread on what happened, why it matters, and why we must never forget.
#OkaCrisis #Kanehsatake #Kahnawake #LandBack

8/ More soon. And thank you, truly, to everyone who has made it possible for me to still believe in my voice.

7/ This book won’t teach you how to succeed in the system.
But maybe, just maybe, it’ll help you remember who you were before it asked you to disappear.

6/ I’m writing this for the ones who were told their questions were too much.
For the students, artists, professors, and thinkers who had to shrink to survive.

5/ Each chapter traces a different fracture:
– Peer review as quiet censorship
– The crisis of voice
– Burnout as the norm
– Creativity as resistance
– Exploitation as structure
– And the question: who is knowledge really for?

4/ For those who still believe that knowledge can be beautiful. Embodied. Messy. Free.

3/ This won’t be a traditional academic text. It’s not for tenure. Not for peer review. Not to impress the “right” people.

It’s a refusal. A love letter. A survival guide.

2/ It’s tentatively called The Death of a Curious Mind, a deeply personal reckoning with how academia kills wonder, rewards performance, and punishes those of us who refuse to sever thinking from feeling.

1/ I’ve been quietly working on something that feels like both a rupture and a homecoming. Another book!

Screenshot of Ann Coulter replying to a tweet with "We didn't kill enough Indians"

A little history lesson, in 1924 (the year we were granted US citizenship), there were roughly only 250K-300K Natives left in the US out of millions. Not surprising the US gov. and a lot of White folks don't believe they killed enough cuz WE ARE STILL HERE.

Our survival is their greatest failure.

9/ We are not going anywhere.
We are the descendants of survivors and we continue to resist, speak up, and fight back.

8/ To everyone else: If you see this post and stay silent, you’re part of the problem. This isn’t just “free speech”, it’s an open celebration of genocide. And it must be called out, loudly and publicly.

7/ To my fellow Indigenous people:
You are not expendable.
You are not a relic of the past.
You are sacred. You are powerful. You are still here.