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Sheila Gunn Reid, Lise Merle, former Libertarian Party of Canada leader Tim Moen and former Alberta MLA Drew Barnes are pushing back on Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew's National Day for Truth and Reconciliation video, arguing it undercuts the very narrative it was meant to defend.

In the video, Kinew visits the cemetery at the former Brandon Indian Residential School, saying "some bad people" demand to be shown the graves and that "we shouldn't have to prove the truth over and over again." He then points to headstones and period newspaper clippings recording the deaths of children in 1896, 1897 and 1901.

Here are the graves.

This Orange Shirt Day we are returning the Brandon Indian Residential School cemetery grounds to the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation on behalf of many First Nations whose children are buried here.

This is one of the most well documented burial grounds at a… pic.twitter.com/sWJ2vf0Lyg

— Wab Kinew (@WabKinew) September 30, 2026

Sheila slowed the footage down and took a closer look. The clippings, she noted, describe children dying of tuberculosis and other illnesses common at the time, and one child struck by lightning. The graves themselves are marked and sit in a church cemetery. "Where else are you going to find graves?" she asked, adding that many Canadians want the truth before the reconciliation, and "I don't think we're quite there yet."

Moen said land acknowledgements strike him as performative and even insulting, and argued the reconciliation industry exists to perpetuate a "victim industrial complex" that enriches band leadership while ordinary First Nations members go without. He pointed to his own time on a reserve fire department, where federally funded equipment turned up on band leaders' property.

Barnes said the real lesson of residential schools is the damage done by breaking up families, and called for property rights, free enterprise and financial transparency on reserves. Sheila noted she can look up her mayor's expenses while band members cannot do the same with their chiefs.