Full Comment - Behind Canada’s ‘moral panic’ around suspected graves at residential schools

00:00:00.000 some ideas are dangerous some books are dangerous the book that i'm holding right now grave error

00:00:16.460 written and edited by tom flanagan and chris champion definitely falls into that category

00:00:22.280 grave error how the media misled us and the truth about residential schools it's been out for a few

00:00:28.400 months now and it's creating controversy one mayor in british columbia even facing a censure by his

00:00:34.700 own town council why is this such a dangerous book that's the question that i want to put to tom

00:00:40.280 flanagan he is a longtime political activist a longtime canadian scholar at the university of

00:00:45.580 calgary welcome to the full comment podcast tom it's good to speak to you um tell me about this

00:00:52.340 book grave error and why it's so dangerous well the book is a collection of essays relating in the

00:01:00.600 first instance to the announcement that was made in kamloops in 2021 about the discovery of human

00:01:07.920 remains unmarked graves and so forth um the essays do go off a little more widely to uh deal with some

00:01:17.560 related topics but the bulk of it has to do with the issue of unmarked graves and missing children

00:01:23.540 and um so what we do is challenge the conventional wisdom that uh that there are a lot of missing

00:01:34.260 children who went to indian residential schools that never came back and nobody knows what happened to

00:01:39.800 them but they're buried in unmarked graves near the kamloops school and near other schools as well

00:01:46.860 you don't say that there were no children that died at the residential schools you're not saying

00:01:52.440 that um you know everything was hunky-dory in all the residential schools you're challenging this

00:01:59.020 this facet that said uh you know what are some of the things you talk about claims of babies being

00:02:05.660 thrown in uh furnaces and incinerators uh kids being hung children uh as you know six digging graves

00:02:12.880 that's what you're challenging right of course children died i mean the schools operated for

00:02:17.920 more than a century and uh at a time when there were very few vaccines and before antibiotics had

00:02:25.840 been discovered and children died of tuberculosis and spanish flu and you know other ailments uh sad but

00:02:33.780 that was a fact of life at the time so you know we don't challenge that uh that's that's a fact of

00:02:41.720 history we uh what we challenge is the more recent announcements about um missing children and

00:02:48.300 sinister sinister deaths and and the secret burials and we find that there's no actual evidence for any

00:02:55.520 of these things um the unmarked graves have so-called have been located with ground penetrating radar

00:03:03.180 which is is a legitimate tool it's widely used in archaeology and civil engineering and geology

00:03:10.180 so forth and it tells you if there have been soil disturbances and other anomalies under the

00:03:16.040 surface but it doesn't tell you what's there you have to dig to find out what it really is

00:03:21.040 so what they found at kamloops was soil anomalies they didn't find unmarked graves or human remains

00:03:28.220 and there's been absolutely no digging at all since then and interestingly the kamloops leadership

00:03:34.280 has retracted its original announcement about finding human remains they put out a statement may 23rd of this

00:03:42.040 year in which they use the term anomalies so they walked back from their original position but that

00:03:49.220 that hasn't gotten through

00:03:50.820 to the media and to the politicians yet just just this week the prime minister talked about unmarked graves

00:03:58.020 of kamloops well i remember when the story first broke there was an email that went out to all the

00:04:07.040 editors across post media and and then it was sent to by our respective editors to all the writers and it

00:04:15.040 was a note from our vancouver newsroom because immediately that the morning that that announcement

00:04:20.920 had been made or the day the announcement was made there were headlines about mass graves and the note

00:04:30.300 that we got from our vancouver newsroom was a request from the chiefs at kamloops saying please don't call

00:04:37.600 these mass graves um that you know these are are graves and you know and perhaps they're walking that

00:04:45.540 back now but they they were saying this is not mass graves and yet the media ran with it and and and

00:04:52.340 still many of my colleagues will will use that terminology why was it so badly reported from the

00:05:00.000 beginning well that's interesting this is the first time i've heard about this note um the chief

00:05:08.660 casimir at kamloops you mainly used the phrase unmarked graves but she did go in july to the

00:05:16.760 assembly of first nations and she proposed a motion using the terminology mass graves okay so so at least

00:05:26.240 at times she she used that term herself but more often she spoke of unmarked graves the the big push for

00:05:35.240 the term mass grave came from the new york times which had a story the next day the the bombshell

00:05:41.400 announcement was on the 27th of may 28th the new york times ran a big story front page i think um and

00:05:50.820 they used the term mass grave and of course the new york times is read all over the world and it's

00:05:55.520 probably the most respected newspaper in the world or at least it used to be and so you know all over

00:06:02.860 the world people picked up this terminology of the mass grave um where but but the kamloops leadership

00:06:10.040 did sometimes use that term also the way that my colleagues covered this from the beginning has

00:06:16.980 always left me with a quite a bit of pause for concern uh it seemed like hey we've got our own george

00:06:26.280 floyd moment here hey we've got to jump on this um and in the terminology would often go further than

00:06:34.500 the chiefs had i remember that happening at cowasis and in in saskatchewan there there seemed to be a

00:06:40.200 zeal in the media uh would you agree with that oh yeah absolutely we were originally going to entitle

00:06:47.800 our book uh and use the phrase moral panic but uh that's a bit academic and our publisher came up with

00:06:54.860 the phrase grave error which i think is much better from the point of view of of grabbing people's

00:07:01.260 attention but there was definitely a moral panic that took place and people were reacting without

00:07:07.000 stopping to think and uh asking questions and asking for evidence i mean even without evidence

00:07:13.860 one way or another this is not a plausible story how the kamloops uh indian residential school is right

00:07:20.980 across the river from kamloops it's not out in the bush uh how could 200 or more children have been

00:07:29.200 buried there secretly uh the school had many uh native employees were they just going to stand by while

00:07:36.980 native children died and were buried um they they had native teachers uh there were visitors there all the

00:07:45.060 time plus the fact that the school has to uh in those days they had to submit quarterly reports

00:07:52.020 listing all their children in order to get the subsidies from the government which is the way

00:07:58.280 that they're able to finance their operations so they had no incentive to kill and secretly dispose of

00:08:04.200 children they would lose money by doing it and they needed that money and the government would ask

00:08:09.100 questions if names suddenly disappeared so anybody you know with the uh even a basic knowledge of of

00:08:16.440 history and geography should have asked some of these questions before running with the story

00:08:22.100 but nobody did nobody asked these questions even really good reporters didn't didn't ask these

00:08:27.880 questions so that's the sign of a moral panic when people lose their normal mental faculties and

00:08:33.780 just start responding to to signals that's what happened the truth and reconciliation report

00:08:42.360 had a list of schools where there were graveyards um and that was published in late 2015 early 2016

00:08:52.700 yeah um and so you know people reacted as if there was brand new information that nobody had ever heard

00:09:01.480 that children had died and were buried at schools uh now you do take issue with the way the truth

00:09:08.580 and reconciliation commission uh came up with their numbers and and some of their accounting of this

00:09:16.000 so but walk walk me through it then um were there kids who died and were buried at a number of

00:09:24.600 schools and you know or was the truth and reconciliation commission completely wrong in your view

00:09:30.620 um in their report and in their public statements they conflated conflated different issues one is the

00:09:42.360 issue of unmarked graves secondly is the issue of missing children and they uh they've never had an

00:09:53.880 official list of missing children at all but uh people like um uh the chair of the commission senator

00:10:01.020 uh well he's no longer a senator but but uh was for a while murray sinclair and other commissioners

00:10:07.920 spoke of thousands or even tens of thousands of missing children without having a list of who these

00:10:13.360 children were now in fact okay and then there are there are children who died at the schools and

00:10:22.620 nobody can remember where they're buried see what there are is um what there is was

00:10:28.980 many forgotten children rather than missing children with the passage of time uh people you know let's let's

00:10:39.020 say you know 75 or 100 years ago uh somebody from your family went to school and died of spanish flu or

00:10:46.720 tuberculosis and was buried sometimes it was not possible to send the body back for burial

00:10:52.560 in the home reserve they tried to do that but you know canada is a big country and particularly in the

00:10:57.560 winter sometimes you can't get through so some children would be buried in the cemetery of the local church

00:11:04.280 which happened in kamloops uh for a few in a few cases now with the passage of time you know you go

00:11:11.240 through generations people forget well where where was my aunt buried uh you know maybe maybe the the

00:11:20.480 woman's parents knew at the time but two generations later the grandchildren don't know what happened to

00:11:26.720 uh to this relative so you get these legends then of students going to school and just disappearing

00:11:33.460 and then irresponsible talk of thousands or tens of thousands of missing children

00:11:38.180 so there are there are many forgotten children or forgotten grave probably forgotten grave sites

00:11:43.700 is a better term uh maybe some children completely forgotten too um but that happens it's happened in my

00:11:51.740 own family uh children from long ago died and were buried and forgotten you mentioned something that i

00:11:59.220 think is important to touch on here and that is diseases like tuberculosis influenza spanish flu

00:12:07.440 much of the the coverage perhaps i should call it hysteria around this issue has led with the idea

00:12:18.820 that these these kids didn't just die they were murdered they were murdered by the uh the school system

00:12:28.320 they were murdered by the government they were murdered by the church the fact of the matter is

00:12:33.500 kids used to die a lot more than they did now whether indigenous white whatever race or background 0.81

00:12:40.120 kids died of childhood diseases and we thankfully see less and less of that but that's what was primarily

00:12:48.260 happening in the schools wasn't it was kids getting sick of what were then childhood diseases that would kill

00:12:54.200 people yeah tuberculosis was the biggest killer and we have to remember that there was no cure uh for tuberculosis

00:13:02.960 until streptomycin appeared um in medicine in 1946 and of course it took time for streptomycin to be adopted

00:13:11.720 and and to do its work so you get um that's the largest number of deaths uh but just as many or even more

00:13:21.060 children died of tuberculosis who never went to residential school living on indian reserves and

00:13:27.320 attending day school the fatalities were just as high the kids came to the schools carrying tuberculosis

00:13:34.080 bacilli with them on the you know in their bodies uh and some got very sickened or in some cases went home

00:13:42.380 and spread the disease at at home on the reserve yeah it could have gone back and forth but the disease was

00:13:48.620 out there anyway uh apart from the residential schools at residential schools they all had or

00:13:55.680 well i don't know about all but most of them had infirmaries and if somebody was really sick they

00:14:01.000 would send them to to a hospital so they perhaps had a better shot at at recuperation in a residential 0.97

00:14:08.580 school than they did elsewhere but then there were other diseases as well uh smallpox by that time had

00:14:14.620 been pretty well vanquished so that's not a major factor but you had flu and the terrible outbreak of

00:14:20.520 the influenza flu around world war one and then you had childhood diseases like measles uh diphtheria

00:14:29.820 uh mumps which can be serious now all of us today are vaccinated against them but that wasn't

00:14:37.560 known and it wasn't possible at the time so uh some children died of these things uh and then of course

00:14:44.880 there were accidents kids at school uh active play kids you know falling out of trees that they were

00:14:53.140 climbing and you know some of this happened as well um but we there are death certificates uh

00:15:00.460 for these children uh they had a set of rules they had to follow at the schools and the deaths had to

00:15:07.540 be reported and so the provincial departments of vital statistics have death certificates which show the

00:15:13.240 cause of death you know and and it's not you know strangled by missionaries not a cause of death uh

00:15:20.920 it's mostly mundane stuff like uh tubercular meningitis well i say mundane in a sense that's a terrible killer but

00:15:29.960 it was a common thing at the time you've got one section that deals with the idea and i'm just

00:15:37.320 trying to pull up chapter 16 here um that it was improperly pasteurized milk the tainted milk murder

00:15:46.280 mystery oh yes so tell me about this idea being put forward this uh what would you call it conspiracy

00:15:57.120 theory um you know people making claims that it was uh milk that was killing the children yeah you

00:16:03.760 know a part the the unmarked graves trope is very widespread and you get that coming from

00:16:11.680 literally dozens of communities beyond that there are isolated stories about other atrocities

00:16:20.440 uh throwing babies in the furnace and things like that the unpasteurized milk

00:16:28.400 comes only from blue quills which is a reserve in alberta i haven't heard this from anywhere else

00:16:35.960 so i don't know how the people there got a hold of this the the reality is is that um

00:16:43.400 i can't remember now i'd have to go back and check the article but

00:16:47.080 pasteurization didn't become standardized for milk until uh what i think the 1930s any anyway whatever

00:16:54.680 the date is so you know they're sure there were many many years when kids were drinking

00:16:58.920 unpasteurized milk in the schools just as they were elsewhere in canada but the notion that

00:17:04.840 this was done to deliberately poison um children in the reserves is ludicrous the there's all kinds of

00:17:14.360 documentation about how the you know the reserves they all had many of them had nurses in residence

00:17:19.640 uh they all had doctors on call uh there's there's all kinds of documentation about how these medical

00:17:27.720 people went to great lengths to introduce new uh health practices when they became known

00:17:34.760 so the notion that they would hold back on pasteurization in order to kill

00:17:40.120 as many kids as possible just has has no credibility at all you do write about a man who um

00:17:47.320 has um has spread a lot of this over the years i said dr bryce oh no i mean kevin kevin annette oh

00:17:56.440 yes sorry kevin not not kevin kevin annette i'm not sure where he uses the accent so i mean this is

00:18:03.000 a guy who used to be a united church minister has a bunch of websites and youtube channels and and he has

00:18:09.640 been posting uh these claims that you were just referencing of babies thrown in furnaces and kids digging

00:18:16.920 graves in the middle of the night he's been posting this stuff for years going back well more than a

00:18:22.200 decade oh yeah how how does this guy get picked up and in spread so that people are are believing it

00:18:31.480 yeah uh kevin annette is a um like a toxic carrier of these stories um it's not clear in many cases

00:18:42.680 whether the stories originated with uh members of reserve communities and then annette picked them

00:18:50.120 up and spread them or whether the stories originated with him and then they were spread by the indians

00:18:55.400 that he talked to i mean so it goes back and forth but he had a a much bigger platform i mean it's one

00:19:02.520 thing to have a few people on a reserve telling stories about how uh the priests were impregnating the

00:19:10.040 girls in the dorms and they were bringing in an abortionist and then throwing the fetus into the 1.00

00:19:14.680 furnace it's one thing to have these local stories but it's another thing when somebody has a

00:19:20.360 national and in fact an international platform to retail these stories again um annette

00:19:29.880 he found a few influential uh backers people that were willing to endorse him

00:19:37.240 uh noam chomsky for example um professor hall from the university of lethbridge sites and that

00:19:46.840 one of that's books in one of his his own books treats on it as a legitimate source um for something so

00:19:56.120 and that didn't have a lot of support uh outside the world of the reserves but he had enough to give

00:20:02.920 him a sort of quasi legitimacy and then he would he would write books and produce videos that that sort

00:20:10.680 of seemed like they were scholarly and he would organize phantom trials he would invent uh bodies with

00:20:20.520 with legal sounding names and uh conduct trials of people for their treatment of of the students so

00:20:28.200 he uh let's see he got expelled from the united church in i think it was 1997 they finally brought

00:20:36.760 the hammer down but he had started spreading these stories you know even earlier in the 1990s so you know

00:20:43.560 this goes back um at least three decades of tireless propagandizing in the meantime our federal

00:20:52.360 government was uh looking to um create an offense called residential school denialism but we'll talk

00:20:59.160 about that that's where i want to go next we have to take a quick break tom but when we come back

00:21:03.560 let's talk about how far uh some in our society wanted to go to push this story to push what ended up

00:21:12.200 being false ideas back in a moment i said off the top that grave error is a dangerous book that

00:21:19.080 discusses a dangerous idea it's gotten people in trouble we'll explain that in a moment but uh tom

00:21:27.080 the trudeau government went so all in on this story we had our flag at half mast for uh six months was

00:21:36.520 it on parliament hill um the the prime minister of course went out and there's the famous pictures

00:21:43.160 of him kneeling with teddy bears in graveyards but they also talked about and i i don't think

00:21:50.120 they've gone ahead with it yet but they've talked about the idea of making it a criminal offense

00:21:55.880 to question what happened with residential schools and mass graves yeah that idea was floated

00:22:03.400 um and was endorsed by a couple of key ministers uh mark miller at the time minister of indigenous

00:22:11.480 affairs and um uh former minister of justice i've forgotten his name uh they were going to amend

00:22:19.320 the criminal code to include uh residential school denialism along with holocaust denial as a

00:22:26.760 as a hate crime section 319 of the criminal code i think it is they apparently have dropped that idea

00:22:33.800 but they've come up with something that's probably even more pernicious um and that is bill c63

00:22:41.080 which has a big section that's the online harms act yeah a lot of it deals with things like child

00:22:47.800 pornography uh and that part is uh well i mean i think you could debate the provisions but

00:22:56.200 it's the second part that is uh really problematic this the second part um creates uh civil machinery

00:23:06.440 not criminal but civil machinery which as i say is quite sinister because it allows for anonymous complaints

00:23:15.480 about something that is published uh now or in the past online and then the complaint will be heard by a

00:23:26.040 adjudicator is appointed by human human rights commission the the machinery is a bit a bit

00:23:31.080 unclear at the moment this is the return of uh section 13 of the canadian human rights code that so

00:23:37.720 many of us fought to get rid of because it was being it was being abused yeah that's that's one way of

00:23:42.840 looking at it so uh so this is an invitation to the uh the worst kind of lawfare because

00:23:52.040 anybody can launch a complaint anonymously at no charge and after that point the canadian human

00:24:00.120 rights commission takes over carriage of the complaint and sets up um adjudication machinery to hear it

00:24:06.280 and uh i mean who knows what might happen but uh one thing is clear that somebody who's the target of

00:24:16.440 one of these complaints would have to spend well probably tens of thousands of dollars maybe even

00:24:22.280 more to uh to defend it so it's a harassment uh very costly to people that are targets of complaints

00:24:31.160 and lends itself to organize organization i mean it's not at all beyond the pale to think of some

00:24:38.040 organization getting its members to flood the system with complaints against some target that they didn't like

00:24:45.000 and i believe mark stein um you know this is going back i think he was an article he published around

00:24:52.120 2006 uh in mclean's and i i think in the end he was close to a hundred thousand dollars

00:24:58.360 of legal fees fighting it would be more today everything's more expensive now sure uh yeah if

00:25:06.360 you want to keep fighting it uh you most people would not have the money to do it they would they

00:25:13.000 would have to get help and there might be organizations that are willing to step in and help but you know

00:25:21.240 it is an enormous obstacle to free and open discussion of controversial topics

00:25:26.520 it would be good for sales of the books now i have to say our book has been controversial once or twice

00:25:35.480 in the press and that has driven sales right up to the top of the amazon book list in canada

00:25:42.520 so i i'm hoping for some more outrage somewhere let's drive the sales up again

00:25:48.200 uh the um this dangerous book uh saw the mayor of quesnel bc censured by his own council um

00:26:02.760 they stripped him of his powers this is a gentleman uh ron paul um they've removed him from committees

00:26:10.040 and regional boards took away his travel and lobbyist budget because his wife had shared your book

00:26:16.440 yes this is really incredible his wife read the book liked the book so she bought 10 copies to give to

00:26:25.160 friends and people that she thought might be interested in it and um she gave it to a friend

00:26:34.120 the woman herself is not metis but her her son is metis because she married a metis man i guess

00:26:40.840 and uh her her son got a hold of the book that was given to the mother and then he started making an

00:26:48.120 issue of it um and so local there are three or four little fairly small indian bands that are quite

00:26:56.680 close to the town of quennell and so they flooded a council meeting and put a lot of intimidating

00:27:02.840 pressure on counselors to vote so the council voted uh even the mayor actually voted to condemn the book

00:27:09.720 uh although they admitted that nobody had read it i mean you can't make this stuff up uh this is why

00:27:16.520 sales went our sales went up to number one because it was so crazy um so they uh they voted to condemn

00:27:23.880 the book um the mayor himself had never done anything it was it was his wife um but anyway well the

00:27:31.960 condemnation of the book wasn't enough for these people then they came flooded another council meeting and

00:27:37.880 demanded that the mayor be censored i'm not sure what they expected the mayor to do about what

00:27:44.680 his wife had done uh well i guess you should have just kept a little lady in line well i guess that's 1.00

00:27:50.920 it i mean isn't that the message that's sending yeah maybe a good smack across the jaw i'm not sure what

00:27:56.120 they expected this is these are progressives punishing a man for the actions of his wife

00:28:04.520 yeah his wife is a well-known community member i mean these are these are senior people i'm not

00:28:09.080 sure exactly how old they are but they're they're in their 60s or 70s they've been around a long time

00:28:13.960 his wife is uh has a business career unconnected to her husband's political position but she has worked

00:28:22.120 in political campaigns as well uh so you know these are well-known well-known people you'd think his

00:28:29.400 wife would be expected to have some independence apparently not apparently not yeah one of the 1.00

00:28:36.680 the threads running through the discussion that you and i are having but also what i've been covering

00:28:41.240 lately uh is that we seem to be at a point where we don't like facts um especially when it comes to

00:28:48.680 anything that touches on race racialization to use the term that i really don't like um

00:28:56.360 was covering the executive committee at toronto city hall recently and they were debating

00:29:01.560 removing the name dundas from young dundas square and replacing it with sankofa

00:29:06.440 um and at one point one of the people speaking in defense of henry dundas pointed out that

00:29:13.080 well sankofa is a word from a language the twee language in ghana spoken by the akan people

00:29:22.440 who were on the other side of the slave trade as in they were selling their rivals their neighbors

00:29:31.560 fellow black africans to white europeans she mentioned that and a counselor interrupted and said

00:29:37.640 point of privilege mayor point of privilege i shouldn't have to hear this and the mayor ruled

00:29:42.920 in favor of the counselor oh my god later on they had a presenter from an academic from the university

00:29:51.080 of toronto not to pick on academics tom uh but you got some weird colleagues um academic from the

00:29:57.880 university of toronto said that uh claiming that any african people were involved in the slave trade

00:30:06.680 which is a historical fact is akin to residential school denialism oh yeah so we we've got a a

00:30:14.360 political and an academic class at least in part that don't like facts getting in the way of a good

00:30:21.560 narrative anymore yeah this is probably the most distressing uh part of the whole thing about

00:30:28.600 residential schools and it's the reason why i got involved i mean this is not my uh academic field

00:30:34.920 of inquiry i have written a fair amount about various policies um towards native people may both metis and

00:30:43.800 indians but uh i never did it wrote anything about residential schools previously but i got so upset by the

00:30:52.360 cavalier disregard of facts so you know just just to repeat there are no there are no unmarked graves

00:31:01.240 all there are soil anomalies no body has ever been found there are no missing children in the sense that

00:31:08.520 there's no list of who these children might be um

00:31:15.160 you could go down the list of false statements that are sort of cluster around this this story

00:31:21.000 and as i said earlier even the kamloops chief has now retracted her statement about finding

00:31:25.960 uh um unmarked graves it's it's surrounded with a lot of baffle gab about they they still think that

00:31:34.760 there are you know blah blah blah but she changed the language to say what we found was anomalies but in

00:31:42.280 spite of the retraction the prime minister of the country still talks about unmarked graves so people don't

00:31:48.680 seem to care what the facts are and as you say it's even considered wrong to bring out the facts um

00:31:56.440 well i remember was it 2009 prime minister harper issued the apology 2008 yeah 2008 so i remember

00:32:06.200 being there it was a very uh

00:32:10.280 when you work in center block and you cover parliament hill there's a lot of mundane days

00:32:13.960 this was not one of them there's a lot of pomp circumstance ceremony going on and they brought

00:32:19.000 in people from reserves in communities across the country and i remember interviewing some people who

00:32:27.400 had experienced horrific things at residential schools and then i talked to others and it wasn't

00:32:33.560 just one i remember talking to one chief who said i had an excellent experience at a residential school

00:32:41.400 but i'm here to support those who didn't and i think the apology is important i wish i had the

00:32:46.840 audio of that unfortunately i was working in radio at the time and the way radio works it's gone but you

00:32:53.320 can't even say anymore that some people did not have a bad experience at residential schools

00:33:00.920 residential schools is like a hair shirt that we we have to wear now as a society and we absolutely

00:33:07.960 should be acknowledging the problems the mistakes the horrific experiences of of some but we should

00:33:15.000 also be able to talk about the truth shouldn't we well yeah absolutely and you know the the horrific

00:33:20.920 experiences um i can't say they didn't happen but they are for the most part based on uh uncorroborated

00:33:30.920 memories of uh elderly people who are telling you what happened um 50 or 60 or 70 years ago

00:33:37.960 um there is contemporary documentation of uh excesses in in schools you can find reports of about

00:33:48.120 dorm supervisors who were much too ready to resort to the strap um so yeah the schools had their

00:33:55.480 imperfections uh but i'm not sure that it i mean we have to remember that all of these stories about how

00:34:03.080 much people suffered uh came out at the same time as there was a lot of money on the table

00:34:10.440 the uh as part of the settlement for indian residential schools there was a process

00:34:16.840 uh of compensation and ten thousand basic payment three thousand dollars for each additional year

00:34:22.920 but the big money was for uh telling your story of physical or sexual abuse and that could run up over

00:34:29.320 two hundred thousand dollars so uh there was an incentive there for people to remember uh and perhaps

00:34:39.640 exaggerate the worst aspects of experience and we'll probably never know what might be an objective account

00:34:47.640 um since uh the staff of the schools they were theoretically encouraged to participate but in practice

00:34:56.280 the climate was so negative that most chose not to so um

00:35:05.080 i will i've just been rereading a couple of books that were published in kamloops on the kamloops indian

00:35:09.160 reservation uh about the school that these were published uh one in 1986 and the other in uh 2000 so it was

00:35:18.520 before all the uh big wave of uh condemnation of residential schools and these books um

00:35:29.240 the stories that that the the the people who were interviewed are there's a lot of negative stories

00:35:34.680 but they're again fairly mundane about well you know the food was bad the food was tasteless too much

00:35:39.880 porridge uh the uh supervisors were too too quick with the strap uh we couldn't speak our own language um

00:35:52.120 you know there's nothing about digging graves or children dying uh and there and there's some good

00:35:58.520 reports about how they like the sports program the dance program they went out and they beat the white

00:36:03.480 kids in hockey and so on um they had international travel in some cases for their sports so it's a mix

00:36:12.280 um the books were clearly collected to criticize the school so there's a negative kind of emphasis

00:36:19.960 which i think is part of the whole framework for compiling the book but the evidence in there

00:36:27.000 uh you know as i say it's fair it's it's a lot of it is what people say about boarding schools

00:36:34.440 all over the world you know people talk about george george orwell's depiction of a boarding school for

00:36:41.000 example um so that's not to say that boarding schools were great it's just try and get some sense of of

00:36:49.880 perspective here all right well i want to thank you for your perspective and anyone that wants to read

00:36:56.040 the book tom's already said where you can buy it amazon only amazon i'm going to guess that

00:37:00.920 there are some stores not carrying it no stores are carrying it but that's not the fault of the

00:37:05.400 stores it's the business model the true north publishes through amazon amazon does the selling

00:37:13.480 true north is a relatively small yeah company that doesn't want to deal directly with retailers

00:37:19.160 themselves it is a having published a book that way it's a far easier way for small outfits to

00:37:25.480 do and the sales are great it is working very well and uh but you don't have to worry about

00:37:31.720 being shut out because they do print on demand so it'll be there but rush and rush and get your copy

00:37:38.200 all right thank you tom okay brian bye-bye the full comment is a post media podcast my name is brian

00:37:44.360 lily your host this episode was produced by andre prue with theme music by bryce hall kevin

00:37:49.560 lily is the executive producer you can subscribe to full comment on apple podcast spotify amazon

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00:38:01.480 giving us a rating leaving a review and tell your friends about us thanks for listening until next time

00:38:07.080 i'm brian lily

Full Comment - July 22, 2024

Behind Canada’s ‘moral panic’ around suspected graves at residential schools

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