Kuper Island: The Metaphorical and Literal Haunting of Indigenous and Canadian Communities

A 2022 cbc podcast gives non-Indigenous Canadians a chance to consider the continuing spiritual repercussions of the residential school system in a new way. Playing with ideas of metaphorical and fictional horror films and hauntings, the journalists creating Kuper Island insist that the ongoing presence of the dead be taken at face value and that their Indigenous informants choose the way in which their predecessors are described and addressed. Using David Chidester’s triad of imperial/colonial/indigenous mediation as it existed in sub-Saharan Africa during the period of European colonization, this paper suggests that current Indigenous journalists may be playing an important role in evolving the understanding of non-Indigenous Canadians with respect to the ongoing trauma of the residential school system. By reporting “the good way,” spiritual and religious ideas in general may have a renewed presence in public discourse.