Residential school denialism is entering or circulating within school communities across Canada in worrisome ways. Racist graffiti and commentary, denialist classroom materials and assignments and school board advocacy, controversies over school library collections and challenges to truth and reconciliation school initiatives highlight the urgent importance of addressing denialism in classrooms.As critical Indigenous studies professor Daniel Heath Justice and historian Sean Carleton explain, residential school denialism does not involve “the outright denial of the Indian Residential School (IRS) system’s existence.” Instead, denialists use varied arguments, rhetorical strategies and fallacies. With these, they reject, misrepresent or minimize basic facts and evidence about residential schools, undermine truth and reconciliation efforts, protect the status quo and defend guilty parties.We are non-Indigenous educators and researchers committed to truth and reconciliation, and co-investigators in the Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. With Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaborators, we’re researching how history education might better equip young people to understand complex histories, critically evaluate claims about the past, engage with different ways of knowing the past and participate thoughtfully in contemporary society. In our recently published chapter about confronting residential school denialism in Canadian classrooms, we have identified five possible responses labelled the five Ds: detect, debunk, disregard, debate and deconstruct.Historical thinkingHistorical thinking involves disagreement, revision, new evidence and competing interpretations. The challenge posed by denialism is helping students distinguish legitimate historical disagreement from claims that disregard the evidence to give the appearance of controversy or disagreement. If left unaddressed, denialism has important consequences for schools. It can distort students’ understanding of the history of residential schools and Canadian history more broadly. It can also erode trust in survivor testimony, historical evidence and scholarly expertise. The 5 “Ds” we identify can support educators in distinguishing evidence-based historical interpretations from misinformation and pseudohistory — and can contribute to helping educators play a key role in advancing truth and reconciliation.The 5 Ds1. Detect. The first step in confronting residential school denialism is recognizing it. Detection requires teachers to help students understand what residential school denialism is and identify the techniques commonly used. These include:Cherry-picking or suppressing evidence;Minimizing harms;Demanding false balance;Using sanitized language and making comparisons that make harmful practices seem less severe;Displacing responsibility and blaming victims;Dismissing criticism as presentism (judging the past actions and events using contemporary beliefs, values and standards) and deflecting through “whataboutism.” Detection is essential because students cannot effectively respond to denialism if they cannot identify it. However, recognizing denialism doesn’t help teachers and students know what to do about it. Detecting denialism requires another response — such as one of the other “Ds” below.2. Debunk. Debunking involves checking claims and evidence for misinformation, misleading statements and factual inaccuracies. A debunk approach is effective for responding to denialism based on false claims, lies and factual inaccuracies that can be evaluated using reliable historical evidence. Read more: We fact-checked residential school denialists and debunked their ‘mass grave hoax’ theory Its limitation is that, as noted, denialists often cherry-pick accurate facts and ignore contradictory evidence when constructing misleading interpretations that minimize the widespread harms that occurred at residential schools. Fact-checking works for challenging false claims, but is less helpful for confronting misleading interpretations constructed from selectively chosen accurate facts.3. Disregard. Some denialist claims and interpretations don’t deserve attention. Disregard does not mean refusing to acknowledge that denialist claims exist. It means refusing to treat them as credible interpretations requiring teachers or students to consider “both sides.” Presenting thoroughly discredited claims alongside credible interpretations creates false equivalence. This gives denialist claims unwarranted legitimacy and exposes students to harmful misrepresentations and stereotypes of Indigenous people and communities. Disregard involves ignoring and rejecting denialist interpretations — for example, that residential schools were created to provide an education to Indigenous children, not assimilate them — and focusing instead on credible interpretations supported by historical evidence, relevant expertise, peer review and scholarly consensus. This response is useful when denialist claims and interpretations have been thoroughly discredited, fail to meet basic standards of historical scholarship or risk gaining legitimacy when presented alongside credible interpretations. Its limitation is that ignoring denialist claims may leave students unprepared to recognize or respond to them, and can strengthen claims of censorship made by denialists.4. Debate. This approach asks students to discuss, compare and evaluate competing interpretations. It is appropriate for investigating historical questions that are open to legitimate disagreement, not for questions where overwhelming evidence or scholarly consensus has established that a conclusion is not open for debate. Debating competing interpretations is useful for exposing faulty reasoning, unreliable and irrelevant evidence, and for deepening students’ understanding of why some interpretations are more justifiable than others. Some examples could pertain to what established and interrelated purposes best explain why residential schools were created — assimilation, Christianization, labour training, social control, dispossession and settler colonialism — or for deciding who should bear responsibility for addressing the harms and legacies of the residential school system and what that responsibility should now require.This kind of debate, framed thoughtfully, also helps students understand there is still a lot of work to advance truth and reconciliation. The main limitation of “debate” is that debating denialist interpretations can give them unwarranted legitimacy, create false equivalence with evidence-based scholarship. It can expose students to harmful and misinformed interpretations and require them to defend denialist claims.5. Deconstruct invites students to critically analyze how denialist interpretations are constructed to persuade, and how to evaluate their trustworthiness and truthfulness.This involves analyzing what evidence is selected, the author’s purpose and motivations, the rhetorical techniques used and the broader ideological and political context. This is an effective approach when the problem is how facts are selected and assembled into misleading interpretations. Its main limitations are that it is cognitively challenging for students. For teachers, it requires considerable background knowledge, time, support and preparation to do it effectively.No single approachNot all forms of residential school denialism should be addressed in the same way. When deciding whether and how to respond, teachers should consider the type of denialism they are encountering, the students involved and their school and community context. The five Ds offer a variety of possible responses, but no single approach is appropriate in every classroom or situation. If students are expected to respond effectively to residential school denialism, they need to learn the truth about what happened in residential schools, but also how to distinguish legitimate historical disagreement from misleading attempts to deny and distort that history.The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.