CHRR Research Affiliate Dr. Andrew Woolford published an op-ed in the Winnipeg Free Press (January 23, 2025) challenging residential school minimization and misrepresentation.

Genocide, originally defined near the end of the Second World War in 1944 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin is “a co-ordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.” Woolford, like a number of scholars, contends that Residential Schools meet the criteria for the United Nations Genocide Convention. The Indian Residential School System acted as an effort to “denigrate and remove groups perceived as obstacles to land settlement, resource extraction, and national consolidation.”

Woolford is a genocide scholar and Professor in Sociology and Criminology at the University of Manitoba.

Read Dr. Woolford’s article in the Winnipeg Free Press titled “Column misrepresented Sinclair’s position” at: https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2025/01/22/column-misrepresented-sinclairs-position