NOTE: Steven High, as CHA President, submitted this ‘response’ to the National Post after it published

Recognizing Genocide in Canada By Steven High, President of the Canadian Historical Association “Our inability, as a society, to recognize this history for what it is, and the ways that it lives on into the present, has served to perpetuate the violence. [...] … The statement explicitly puts forth the position most historians of Indigenous-settler history have argued for the last 30 years.” (Shekon Neechie Board) The overwhelming response to the Canada Day Statement amongst Canadian historians has been positive. [...] For a telling example of the latest research, I would point you to an August 2021 article in Scientific American by Ian Mosby and Erin Millions that speaks to the horrors of Indian Residential Schools and the extent to which the government knew just how deadly they were: “The goal of Canada’s Indian residential school system, after all, shared that of its U. [...] Our Canada Day Statement acknowledges that historians, in the past, have contributed in “lasting and tangible ways to the Canadian refusal to come to grips with this country’s history of colonization and dispossession.” The National Post coverage in recent days confirms this. [...] If this is a question of “ethics and values” as the open letter purports, we assert that taking up space to challenge the use of the word genocide while Indigenous communities across the country are raw and grieving, is another example of the blind, callous and unethical conduct that has characterized so much of the research ‘on’ Indigenous peoples within Canada.”.