False memory syndrome, mass hysteria, and greed propel indigenous grievances – Indian Residential School Research Group
January 5, 2026
This article was originally published on the Juno News website. It has been republished with author Hymie Rubenstein’s permission.
Authors: Hymie Rubenstein and Brian Talarico
In August 2024, one of us — retired psychiatrist Dr. Brian Talarico — visited the long shuttered Indian Residential School on British Columbia’s Kamloops Indian Reserve.
Two young men were hanging about offering to show visitors around. They told factually unsupported stories about the school designed to elicit sympathy and money from visitors. They matter-of-factly told Talarico that the school’s Catholic priests pushed a child off the third-floor fire escape to the ground below, that the priests routinely impregnated aboriginal girls followed by the incineration of their babies in the school boiler or drowned them in the adjoining Thompson River.
