By Sean Carleton, Crystal Gail Fraser, Jackson Pind
As the 2025 federal election campaign intensifies, some pundits are denigrating Robert Carney, father of Prime Minister Mark Carney, for his role in colonial education for Indigenous Peoples and his past comments defending residential schools.
Robert Carney died in 2009, but some writers—who have previously celebrated him for defending the Catholic Church and residential schooling—are now criticizing his prior comments in hopes they can damage Mark Carney’s political campaign.
Outlets involved in the residential school denialist movement—e.g. Western Standard, Rebel News, Woke Watch Canada etc.—have published articles trying to link Mark Carney, by association, to his father’s residential school denialism. Ironically, many of these pundits claim that residential school denialism does not exist. Yet, in the same breath, some are going so far as to speculate whether the Prime Minister himself might be a residential school denialist because he has said little about his father specifically or truth and reconciliation generally.
Many of the articles present facts about Robert Carney’s connections to schooling systems for Indigenous Peoples; however, they do so in misleading and dishonest ways that twists the complex truth about colonialism and schooling in Canada.
Even broken clocks are right twice a day; that’s also a fact, but we don’t set our watches to them to tell the time, lest we be misled.
As historians (two Indigenous, one settler) of schooling and colonialism, we have a responsibility to respond to this issue to guide public dialogue in productive ways.
Truth and Reconciliation Leadership
To be clear, all three of us challenge Robert Carney’s published writings and agree that some of his conclusions align with residential school denialism, understood as the twisting, downplaying, or minimizing of truths related to residential schooling to protect church and state and the colonial status quo. Specifically, Robert Carney’s focus on emphasizing the positives of residential schooling to defend the system as a whole, a form of bias known as false balance, is something Daniel Heath Justice and Sean Carleton have outlined as one of the most common denialist talking points. Moreover, we are concerned with Mark Carney’s apparent refusal to sit down with APTN—Canada’s only Indigenous broadcaster—to make his commitment to truth and reconciliation clear to Canadians.
Overall, we believe that Canadians can, and should, scrutinize Robert Carney’s past views on schooling for Indigenous Peoples, press Mark Carney to clarify his commitment to truth and reconciliation, and challenge the twisting of truth by residential school denialists. Doing all these things can demonstrate truth and reconciliation leadership and help build a more honourable future.
Unlike the denialists, then, our task is to guide public understanding with nuanced, historical work that promotes empathy, understanding, healing, and justice.
In that spirit, here is what we know about Robert Carney’s involvement in colonial education.
Schooling in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories
Like many prominent politicians, from John A. Macdonald to Jean Chrétien, Robert Carney is complicit in the wider web of schooling targeting Indigenous children.
Robert Carney worked in the Northwest Territories, in education, holding several positions at various times between the 1950s and 1970s. Robert Carney held senior roles in northern education across various federal and territorial departments during the mid-to-late 20th century, shaping educational policies and programs.
He served as principal (starting in 1962) of the Joseph Burr Tyrrell School (JBT) in Fort Smith. A Catholic day school was first established there for “Indian and Métis” children, and some settler children as well, in 1915. Given the sparse population in Fort Smith, day and public schooling often overlapped, and Catholic and Anglican missionaries battled over student enrolment.
When the Catholic school closed in the 1950s, JBT opened as a federal “combined” school—Indian day school and public school—and it was at this school, attended by Indigenous and settler students, where Robert Carney worked.
There were also two residential schools in Fort Smith: Breynat Hall (1957–1975) and Grandin College (1960–1985). Breynat Hall, located beside JBT, operated as a hostel where some children were sent to JBT as day scholars. Carney, however, was not the principal of Breynat Hall, Grandin College, or any other residential school in Canada.
Later in his career, he earned a PhD in Educational Foundations from the University of Alberta and wrote many articles about the history of schooling in the Northwest Territories. He even served on the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Native Education. As a professor and department chair, Robert Carney often spoke positively about Indian day and residential schools. He criticized Celia Haig-Brown’s ground-breaking book, Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School, for focusing too much on trauma. He also dismissed the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples’ report as being one-sided. His sentiments were in opposition to what Survivors were telling Canada about their experiences of being institutionalized at residential schools.
As Niigaan Sinclair has recently written, these comments by Robert Carney can be understood as “a man defending his problematic legacy with Canada’s systemic mistreatment of Indigenous peoples.”
Fathers are not sons, of course, and some Fort Smith Elders believe that Mark Carney’s connection to the North and their community could be “what is needed” to move forward with healing and justice.
Creating an Honourable Future
As historians of colonial schooling, we must point out that we still know relatively little about the Joseph Burr Tyrrell School and Robert Carney’s connection. There is a paucity of publicly available documents.
In this context, there is a danger of denialists stringing together fragments of history out of context in dishonest and disingenuous ways that clouds public understanding. For example, Rebel News included a graphic of Robert Carney’s message as principal at JBT—without a date or source—in a section that conflates day and residential schooling, giving the reader the false impression that he was the principal of an Indian residential school. This is false, but it has been shared on social media.
We still do not know enough about the workings and experiences of Indian residential and day schools generally, and in the North specifically. Records have been withheld and those accessed have often been misunderstood.
Denialists are exploiting these gaps in knowledge—and it is Survivors and their families and Indigenous communities that ultimately suffer the most when the truth is twisted to protect the colonial status quo.
We hope that Canada and Canadians’ commitment to truth and reconciliation and combating residential school denialism will continue, courageously, beyond this election cycle. Only by understanding the lessons of the past, rather than defending a distorted version of it, will we create a more honourable and just future.
Sean Carleton is an associate professor of history and Indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba.
Crystal Gail Fraser is an associate professor of history and Indigenous studies at the University of Alberta.
Jackson Pind is an assistant professor of Indigenous methodologies at the Chanie Wenjack School of Indigenous Studies, Trent University.
What exactly is an “apparent refusal” to sit down with APTN? This comment is disingenuous and misleading. Mr. Carney has been Prime Minister for a mere couple of weeks during one of the most geopolitically and financially disruptive times in our history … perhaps a few days grace?
Mister Carney is unelected and therefore deserves Zero days grace in sitting down with APTN. If he knew his dad’s history then APTN was the first place he should have gone to reconcile both his dad’s history and his own problematic record.