Full Comment - What ‘Burn It All Down’ Church-Hating Extremists Need To Hear

00:00:00.000 Hi, it's Anthony Fury. Thank you so much for joining us here on Full Comet.

00:00:14.000 For this episode, we're going to talk about everything to do with Indigenous issues today

00:00:17.980 and Canada's First Peoples. It's a deeply emotional topic for many,

00:00:21.920 one that's both torn from the current headlines, but also goes back to the founding of our nation

00:00:26.100 and before. Residential schools, the poor conditions that too many First Nations endure,

00:00:31.520 achieving reconciliation, our new Governor-General, the cancelling of Canada Day,

00:00:36.200 the tearing down of statues, the burning of churches. Wow, some of that's pretty divisive

00:00:41.240 stuff, but can there be unity? Will the tensions of today bring better results for the future?

00:00:47.640 We're joined now by Melissa Embarkey for her reflections on this current national conversation.

00:00:52.120 Melissa is a policy analyst for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a member of the

00:00:55.920 Treaty 4 Nation in Saskatchewan. Hey, Melissa, thanks for joining us today.

00:01:00.720 Yeah, thanks for bringing me on your show.

00:01:02.740 I mean, so many issues to discuss right now, and this is really where the national conversation

00:01:07.580 is at right now in Canada. All aspects of First Nations, of the Indigenous conversation,

00:01:14.020 and I know you wrote about this in a guest column in the pages of the National Post recently,

00:01:18.080 but how are you feeling right now in terms of optimism, pessimism? I mean,

00:01:22.460 how would you describe this moment we're in right now?

00:01:26.400 Right now, I think I'm kind of in a holding place where I just don't know how to feel.

00:01:34.820 The movement of, you know, getting residential schools awareness and education started off really

00:01:41.840 well. You know, we had receptive listeners. We were making way in terms of awareness and what

00:01:49.820 these schools were, and it just turned into, you know, violent acts. And, you know, it's really

00:02:00.280 disheartening because for most of us who grew up in small towns and in small communities, this wasn't

00:02:07.120 what we were taught, you know, like we weren't taught to act out in anger or to destroy somebody's

00:02:13.000 place of worship. So I'm, you know, like I, I'm kind of frustrated too at the same time, because

00:02:20.160 this isn't what we want for Canada. This isn't, you know, the message that we want to convey to

00:02:25.920 our allies. And this isn't, this isn't easy for us as well, because these acts also bring,

00:02:34.080 you know, they, they target indigenous people like myself. So, you know, there's,

00:02:41.360 there's a lot going on. And I really feel for the survivors that are out there having to experience

00:02:47.720 this. And even for me, myself, it's, it's very frustrating to watch. And I hope it gets better

00:02:55.460 before it gets worse.

00:02:57.360 Okay, you mentioned a receptive audience, I'd like to think I'm a receptive listener to this

00:03:01.200 whole conversation about residential schools. What do you want to communicate to Canadians

00:03:05.680 about the residential school system? How would you describe it? What part of it? What part of

00:03:10.860 the conversation do we need to be having now?

00:03:13.960 I, I grew up in a unique situation in that my grandmother attended a residential school.

00:03:20.480 Her experience wasn't great. You know, she can probably relate to a lot of the stories out there

00:03:26.300 of abuse and, uh, you know, being taken from her, her home at five years old. Uh, she didn't go back

00:03:32.540 to see her parents until she was 17. So if you can kind of imagine your life, she didn't get to see

00:03:38.700 them at all through that period, 12 years, no, they, no, they didn't allow visits. Uh, they weren't allowed

00:03:44.520 to go home. Parents weren't allowed to come to these schools and, uh, see their children. It was,

00:03:50.640 it was prohibited. So I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there that these children

00:03:55.880 went to school and then at some point they went home. There's no summer break. Like it's not like

00:04:01.340 they were off at boarding school. Like some people send their kids and they come back for four months

00:04:04.780 in the summer kind of thing. None of that. No, it was not like that at all. Like when they were at

00:04:10.200 these schools, they were there permanently until they were ready to go home. Um, and usually that

00:04:16.400 didn't happen until their late teens, like anywhere from 16 to 19. Uh, some of them were kept at the

00:04:22.720 school for working purposes, you know, like some of them did, um, maintenance, maintenance work and

00:04:29.540 they were kept at these schools for a lot longer. Uh, that was one of the situations with my grandmother.

00:04:35.540 Um, she was deemed a good worker. Uh, they sent her to, um, I believe it was New Brunswick to a college

00:04:43.060 and she took some courses. When she was done those courses, uh, she went back to the residential school,

00:04:48.840 worked for a little bit, and then she went home to her family. So this was after I'm going to say

00:04:54.960 13 or so years. And, um, she didn't know who her family was. She didn't recognize her parents. She

00:05:02.300 didn't know her brothers and sisters because the last time she seen them was when she was five years

00:05:06.860 old. So she had no idea who her family was. And I could see that struggle over the years because she

00:05:15.560 wasn't particularly close to her brothers and sisters. And, um, you know, you can kind of see

00:05:21.480 that family dynamic play out and it impacted our lives because we didn't really get to know her side

00:05:28.040 of the family either. So that's kind of how, when we talk about intergenerational trauma, like that's

00:05:34.740 kind of the flow of how our families worked. Um, you know, and she, she was one of the ones that

00:05:42.980 believed in education. You know, she didn't really let, um, it, that stop her from becoming a social

00:05:49.460 worker and eventually helping her community. So she has one of those success stories where she didn't get

00:05:55.900 caught, um, um, in addictions or she didn't get caught, um, in a system that, you know, impacted her life

00:06:05.980 in a more negative way, I'm going to say. So she really taught us what hard work in education was, and she

00:06:12.000 might be one of the very few success stories out there. And, you know, a lot of families, especially in my

00:06:19.000 community, um, you know, they didn't see that. They didn't see the other side. They stayed in their

00:06:24.420 addictions and, you know, it, it just kind of repeated from generation to generation. Um, one of

00:06:30.760 my, like my community actually has a residential school. And so we seen kids actually filtering

00:06:36.460 through these schools throughout the year. Like we went to school with them, we went to elementary

00:06:40.840 school with them. So, you know, seeing it firsthand and seeing the devastation firsthand, um, is not

00:06:46.740 something that the general public views. Unless you lived or, or were in the vicinity of a residential

00:06:53.660 school, you would have, you wouldn't have seen these social issues firsthand the way

00:06:58.520 we had.

00:06:59.740 And Melissa, how did word come down to your grandmother's parents, to her family that, okay,

00:07:04.360 we're now going to take your daughter or now it's time, you know, for her to leave, for

00:07:08.560 her to be taken away. I mean, how, how kind of prevalent was this? Was everybody just kind

00:07:13.100 of like waiting for this inevitable thing to happen to their family or was it kind of random

00:07:17.540 who ended up going and not? I understand the policy was to try and get, I guess, as many

00:07:21.720 kids as possible involved in this.

00:07:24.240 Well, with her story, um, they had Indian agents and the RCMP actually patrol their community.

00:07:31.820 So whenever the parents were out hunting or whenever the parents were out of the house

00:07:36.540 period, they would go looking in these homes to see if children were there and they would

00:07:42.880 essentially take them. Um, they knew like the community knew what these agents were capable

00:07:49.020 of. So they started teaching their kids to run. Like the second you see, you know, this

00:07:55.080 person coming into the community, you run. Um, and at five years old, you know, like my

00:08:01.120 grandmother hid under a bed and along with a couple of her cousins and they were pulled 1.00

00:08:05.900 out from there and they were taken and they didn't care who they took. They didn't care what

00:08:11.080 age they were. They just, if they were there, they took them.

00:08:14.100 Wow. And is that, I understand, we know, residential schools, uh, lasted for many decades and continued

00:08:22.520 until the latter part of the 20th century. Is that always how things were done? I mean,

00:08:27.540 to what degree has it changed over the years?

00:08:30.940 It kind of changed. So I'm going to say in my mother's generation, cause my mom's generation 0.97

00:08:38.080 would be considered the 60 scoop children. Um, what had happened in that generation is that you

00:08:45.120 had these parents come out of residential schools who knew nothing about parenting, who, um, you know,

00:08:51.560 had addictions, who had started to get their children taken away. So at this point, it became a choice

00:08:59.600 for the parents. Like, do you want your children to go into the social service system or do you want

00:09:05.320 them to go into the residential school? Cause either way they were getting their kids taken

00:09:09.000 away. So that's how it changed during the sixties and seventies. And that's where these sixties scoop

00:09:16.440 children come into play because a lot of them went into the child, child and welfare system,

00:09:21.380 as opposed to going into the residential schools. Um, so it was just a dysfunctional cycle that continued,

00:09:29.760 um, where social services became a part of it. Now, now they're deeming parents unfit to be parents

00:09:37.120 and they're taking these children and they're either putting them in the schools or they're

00:09:40.520 putting them in the system. And that's how it, it carried on. Melissa, how do you respond to those

00:09:46.340 people who say, look, it was really a good intention project here, the residential school system,

00:09:51.820 looking back historically, we now know it was wrong, but back then, you know, they were trying to do

00:09:55.760 good things. They were trying to, uh, provide opportunities for these kids. But yet, Melissa,

00:09:59.740 when you tell me things about how, uh, your grandmother being really pulled out from under

00:10:03.660 that couch where she was hiding, pulled against her will, snatched, uh, when the parents were out

00:10:08.160 of the house. I mean, that's, that's clearly not, you know, you know, you're doing something that these

00:10:13.000 people do not approve of and they do not want to have happen to them. So how do we, how do we talk

00:10:18.300 about the origin story of the residential school system? You know, if it was meant, if these schools

00:10:25.340 were meant specifically for education, we can compare it to a boarding school because boarding

00:10:32.040 schools existed back then, you know, like these children willingly, like their parents wanted a

00:10:37.240 better education for them. So they put them in these schools. You know, it was a consensual thing.

00:10:42.540 When you look at residential schools, that wasn't the case. You know, these children were forcibly

00:10:48.400 moved, removed from their homes. Um, there was no consent, you know, parents didn't know when they

00:10:54.660 were going to see their children, if they were ever going to see them. Um, you know, it, it, it was

00:11:00.040 meant not for educational purposes, but it was more like it was meant to assimilate us. And that's not

00:11:07.160 something that you would consider a school, you know, like it was, it, its origins and what it was

00:11:14.100 intended for, um, are very clear, you know, from an indigenous perspective, it was meant to take

00:11:19.900 our identity away. It was meant to assimilate us into, um, society. Um, you know, and they went

00:11:27.980 about it the wrong way. And these schools did more harm than good to my people.

00:11:34.640 Melissa, what do you make of the broader argument about, for lack of a better term for assimilation,

00:11:39.620 for the idea that, look, we've got people who are not sort of living together in a cultural sense,

00:11:46.240 in an economic sense. So let's bring in policies to have everybody sort of, you know, live together

00:11:50.840 under all of the same terms. Is that broad initiative, whether it's concerning indigenous

00:11:55.020 persons or, or, you know, any other different groups of people living together in Canada? I mean,

00:11:59.500 is that something worth pursuing?

00:12:03.600 I mean, it's, I think like we, if we go back to just what these schools, you know, were designed

00:12:11.860 to do, you know, it wasn't meant to bring anybody together, you know, like it wasn't, it wasn't meant

00:12:19.160 to, um, you know, give us a family oriented world. That wasn't the intention of it. And, you know, it,

00:12:28.580 it, I, I don't know how, um, you know, we can look at this without calling it for what it is. And

00:12:36.840 it was a genocide of people, like it was a genocide of someone's identity. And it, um, you know,

00:12:43.720 it, we're seeing the effects of it today. And, um, you know, it's, I think if it's, I think we need

00:12:51.280 to acknowledge, um, its true intention, right from the get go, and work our way forward from there.

00:12:59.060 Like if we start acknowledging that, you know, it took someone's identity from them, you know,

00:13:05.300 half the people in my community don't speak their indigenous language. Um, you know, a lot of them 0.99

00:13:11.720 don't follow the traditional ways, which is at no fault at, you know, to them, but it just goes to

00:13:17.700 show that, you know, we were stripped of our identities and, you know, we're slowly starting

00:13:23.160 to get some of it back today. And, you know, Melissa, you keep using the word family and, and,

00:13:27.780 and it really becomes clear telling the stories about your grandmother, that this really was about,

00:13:31.620 uh, dismantling the core unit of, of, of first people's society, which is the family. I mean,

00:13:38.100 it really was the destruction of the family unit. It really, it really is. I mean, if you look at,

00:13:44.600 um, our family structure today, um, a lot of it is very disjointed. Um, we don't have the cohesion

00:13:53.080 that we probably had before. We don't even see that cohesion in our communities, you know,

00:13:58.860 and that's the sad part of it all. A lot of our communities are very, very divided. And,

00:14:04.780 you know, I'm sure back then, you know, at one point we were all one community and one living

00:14:12.620 under kind of like the same, um, the same laws, but we're just really different. And that's really

00:14:20.100 sad to see, especially in smaller communities like mine.

00:14:23.400 Melissa, what was your reaction when the news surfaced that first, the Kamloops BC community

00:14:28.680 said, we have found, uh, unmarked graves of the remains of children. And then a couple others

00:14:34.440 said the same and we're up to a well over a thousand now identified. This is obviously what

00:14:38.820 has spurred this national conversation happening across Canada. What was your reaction when that

00:14:43.780 news first broke? I mean, a lot of, uh, people in first nations communities said, well, yeah,

00:14:48.140 we've been anticipating a news just like this for some time now.

00:14:52.360 I, for me, it wasn't surprising because, um, in the early two thousands, we had found 34 or 35

00:14:59.840 unmarked graves in my community. And that was by accident. Uh, they were fixing a water line

00:15:05.860 and when they were digging it up, that's when they had found, uh, this unmarked area, like with, uh,

00:15:12.700 with remains. So from my, from my part, like I wasn't, I wasn't surprised and reading the truth

00:15:20.900 and reconciliation, uh, commissions report, it does reference in there that there are unmarked

00:15:26.960 graves at some of these schools. So if we were kind of familiarized with that, you would have had

00:15:31.860 an idea that this eventually would have, you know, come into play. Um, but if you had read that report

00:15:39.700 or you weren't really in a first nations community to know, uh, the backstory about some of these

00:15:45.300 schools, then it would have been shocking. Like it would have came as, as, as a shock that there

00:15:51.160 were so many, um, unmarked graves out there. Now, this is definitely a story that is, that has

00:15:56.720 been taken by a lot of media, a lot of people on social media, they've taken the ball and they've

00:16:01.140 run with it in many directions. There's discussion about, you know, criminal charges now and so forth.

00:16:05.760 I think people assume, uh, that, that there's murder in these situations, but also based on the

00:16:10.820 way you talk about your grandmother's situation and what things were like, it also seems like we're

00:16:15.040 probably dealing with just a lot of deaths of neglect, of despair, of just children not getting

00:16:20.100 the, the treatment and, and, and, and care and respect and dignity that one gets when one is cared

00:16:26.980 for by your own family, by your own community. What do you believe are the stories behind these

00:16:33.480 tragedies, these findings? Um, just coming from my community, a lot of our stories, um, actually

00:16:41.420 came from the survivors themselves who attended the school throughout the years. Uh, you know,

00:16:46.160 we have some, uh, we have the older generation that are, you know, between 60 and 80 years old that

00:16:52.780 have told, um, stories of like, I mean, really tragic stories of, um, newborn babies being thrown into an

00:17:02.020 incinerator. Um, you know, and we have other stories of, uh, like a neighboring school where

00:17:08.920 there is a tunnel that led from the school to the staff chambers. Uh, so there was like a separate

00:17:15.000 housing location for the staff and there was a tunnel that went from the school to this house or to this

00:17:21.540 housing unit. So we heard these stories, like we heard the tragic stories, um, just because the

00:17:29.020 schools were so close by and you hear stories of some of the younger survivors, like the last one

00:17:35.140 in my area closed in 97. So the, the youngest survivors would probably age in range from about

00:17:41.860 30 to 40, early forties. So these are people our age. And, you know, we think of this as a situation

00:17:50.640 that happened hundreds of years ago. But if you're thinking of the last survivor, like one of the

00:17:55.500 youngest ones, you're talking about a 30 year old and, you know, we, we heard their stories of this

00:18:02.440 staff members abusing them, you know? And so it was a continual, um, it was just a continuation of

00:18:10.760 abuse. You know, the church handed it over in the late seventies to the federal government. And then you

00:18:16.460 had federal government employees who abused the kids too. You know, it was just a never ending

00:18:22.520 saga of abuse of these children. My God. And Melissa, when you hear the word reconciliation,

00:18:31.740 when you use the word reconciliation, what does that mean to you?

00:18:37.000 It means, you know, it includes everybody. Um, you know, it includes the indigenous community.

00:18:42.160 It includes the non-indigenous community coming together and finding solutions for the survivors

00:18:48.400 today. You know, it's, it's not revenge. You know, it's not burning a church. It's not toppling

00:18:55.180 statues. It's not vandalism because that's not what you're not respecting the survivors. When you do

00:19:02.500 that, you know, if anything, you're, you're causing them more anguish, you know, they're having to relive

00:19:08.740 something now in addition to somebody, you know, vandalizing a building on their behalf, you know,

00:19:15.460 and that's not what they want, you know, like these, the survivors out there, if you listen to

00:19:21.840 them and you listen to their humble, you know, approach to things, all they want to do is help

00:19:27.540 their communities. You know, they want to bring services back to their communities. They want to

00:19:31.600 be able to give future generations a better future than what they had, you know, and I just feel like

00:19:39.780 everything that's going on today, we're, we're going backwards, you know, burning a church is not,

00:19:45.900 is not going to bring healing to anybody. If anything, it's going to cause more division and it's going

00:19:52.300 to cause a lot more hatred towards us because of that act, you know, so we need to, we need to start

00:19:59.260 respecting each other and we need to start having respectful conversations.

00:20:03.220 I want to get your thoughts on July 1st on Canada Day. A lot of municipalities across the country,

00:20:08.060 various levels of government said they're basically canceling Canada Day. Now it was kind of an easy

00:20:12.140 thing to do because pandemic restrictions were in place in large parts of the country. So there

00:20:16.180 weren't going to be large gatherings anyway, but there was still the attitude of canceling Canada

00:20:20.280 Day. There was a bit of split opinion on that, but a lot of people seem to go along with the idea.

00:20:26.060 I didn't support that idea at all. I thought this is the one day of the year where we do

00:20:29.180 celebrate our country, our nation, our cohesiveness, our founding as a nation,

00:20:33.580 uh, even all of the individuals who are the founders. Um, but I would be happy to celebrate

00:20:39.580 our first peoples at the same time and their accomplishments and their stories and their

00:20:43.560 successes. I found that unfortunately divisive, the canceling Canada Day. What's your take on that?

00:20:50.660 Canceling Canada Day or canceling anything for that matter is the easy way out. You know, like

00:20:57.460 you're, you're letting, you know, you're letting cities and, you know, municipalities take the easy

00:21:03.760 way out because if they were going to do one thing, well, they're going to do the easy thing

00:21:08.020 for you and that's canceling a day. Um, you know, and I think what, what should have happened is that

00:21:14.460 they should have reached out to these communities where they did find, um, these unmarked graves and

00:21:20.780 they should have asked them, you know, what do you think is the respectful way to go about this? You

00:21:25.380 know, let, let me get your feedback. But a lot of them just went ahead and did it anyways. And,

00:21:31.700 you know, they're not going to do anything else for the rest of the year. That's the sad thing.

00:21:37.220 You know, they, they, they did the easy thing, you know, it's just, let, let's just, you know,

00:21:41.480 wash away a day and just call it, call it that. And we did our part, you know, and, and, you know,

00:21:48.460 if they really wanted to help, they would look at indigenous issues in their specific area.

00:21:53.640 So if it's a city, for example, do you have a high number of homeless indigenous people in your

00:21:59.980 city? If you do, can you address that? Can you start looking at this issue? You know,

00:22:04.740 like there's other ways they could have approached it that actually would have been

00:22:07.900 a little bit more beneficial for us. And, um, that's why I'm not a fan of canceling anything

00:22:14.820 because it's, it's, it essentially is the easy way out.

00:22:19.900 Melissa, what about people who are appropriating this issue for their own cause, for their own

00:22:24.440 agenda, or at least they're taking the ball and running with it in directions that to your point,

00:22:28.340 maybe first nations people don't even support. And I'm, I'm reminded of what happened before the

00:22:32.300 pandemic. We had the blockades, we had the controversies over the pipelines and it became

00:22:37.100 this us versus them thing initially where it was, Oh, well, first nations people don't support

00:22:41.180 these pipelines, but we need them for Canada. So us versus them. But then we heard a lot of

00:22:45.040 first nations people speak up in places like BC saying, Oh, hold on. Our, our band council actually

00:22:49.520 wants this pipeline. And then we have groups that are not predominantly first nations people,

00:22:54.340 or some of them have no first nations people at all. Those groups like extinction rebellion,

00:22:58.040 and they're doing blockades and they're getting arrested over all of this. And I did see a lot of

00:23:02.000 people go, hold on a second here. Let's not do this us versus them thing. Let's maybe we

00:23:06.800 actually have a coming together period. And I thought that was kind of potentially going to be

00:23:11.120 empowering and unifying. And I guess maybe a little bit, it was right now in this debate,

00:23:15.920 I'm, I'm worried. I just don't know where it sits. Where do you see that going?

00:23:21.040 I kind of see it going in a similar direction. Um, because you have to, you see different groups

00:23:26.660 taking up this issue of, you know, residential schools when it's not their issue to take up

00:23:32.500 and they're speaking on behalf of it and they're actually promoting, you know, burning of churches

00:23:38.660 and violence. And all I have to say to them is that this is not your place. Like this is not your

00:23:46.480 place to speak on behalf of residential school survivors. If you want to have that airtime,

00:23:52.680 go and talk to a couple of survivors and ask them what they want, because it's not going to be what

00:23:57.960 they're doing. And I just feel like this issue that was, that finally came to the forefront because

00:24:05.500 it wasn't something that we had ever talked about prior to this. Like we've never talked about

00:24:10.160 residential schools. It was just finally coming, you know, into the forefront and, you know, some of

00:24:16.000 the issues were being addressed. And then it's taken the back door now to activists. And that is

00:24:22.740 absolutely not fair to indigenous communities. And if you're a non-indigenous ally, you know, just,

00:24:30.140 just be respectful on how you're going to, you know, talk about this issue. And if it's not something

00:24:36.560 that's going to bring reconciliation for either side, then maybe hold off on, on speaking on, on it,

00:24:43.520 you know, and I think we need time right now just to kind of regroup because there's just been a lot

00:24:49.860 that's been happening in the last week and it's a lot to take in for anyone. And I think if we just

00:24:56.240 have this downtime and think about it, because we have a lot more schools to go, you know, there were

00:25:02.820 139 in Canada, we've only gotten through two, you know, so we need to figure out how this is going to

00:25:10.820 look going forward. Like, is there going to be more violence or can we start having respectful

00:25:15.540 conversations with each other? And, you know, to your point, you've got First Nations leaders such as

00:25:19.640 Maurice Sinclair, who's pretty widely respected across the board saying he does not approve of

00:25:23.560 this violence and he wants to see more productive paths forward. And then you've got controversially

00:25:28.120 people who are not First Nations who are basically saying, oh, well, yeah, it's understandable. Or even

00:25:33.140 one person was, was in trouble for saying, burn it all down, a prominent individual. I know Jerry

00:25:38.600 Butts, a former principal secretary to Justin Trudeau, basically kind of excusing, apologizing the

00:25:44.200 violence and so forth. So we're already kind of seeing that duality play out. Do you think as

00:25:49.000 to your point in the months ahead, we learn more stories about this, we will be able to kind of,

00:25:55.240 I don't know if temper our response is the right way to put it, because, you know, to your point,

00:25:59.720 the way you describe it, this, this should be an emotional response that that, you know, people do

00:26:04.200 not take this news lightly, but at the same time to not turn to the things that you're talking about,

00:26:09.360 the violence, the church burnings.

00:26:10.840 We have to, you know, like, I think what we have to do going forward is, you know, we have to be

00:26:19.320 prepared for anything. You know, we could have a school that has way more than 751 unmarked graves,

00:26:27.480 you know, so we need to start thinking ahead and, you know, start coming up with solutions on how we're

00:26:34.520 going to deal with this. And when you have, you know, prominent people out there, who are saying,

00:26:41.160 burn it all down, or who are saying, you know, it's understandable. None of these actions are

00:26:47.240 understandable. You know, you, we don't go and burn down someone's place of worship. That's just

00:26:53.640 not acceptable in any form or fashion. You know, we don't go burn down someone's house and say it's

00:26:59.880 justifiable. Like, we just, we need to start having different conversations. And we need to start,

00:27:05.480 you know, putting more, more productive conversations out there. You know, like,

00:27:12.360 we need to start saying, okay, like, how are we going to move past, like, how are we going to move

00:27:17.320 past this, this trauma? Like, how are we going to work together and start, you know, building a better

00:27:23.240 future for these communities? What do these communities need? You know, that might be a question

00:27:27.800 that we can start asking. As we're starting to hear of more unmarked graves being found, maybe we

00:27:33.800 can start asking in that specific community, what do you need? You know, like, what, how do you want

00:27:39.160 us to help you? And maybe that will direct the attention from the anger that flares up to actually

00:27:46.280 being productive. Melissa, what do you make of the news of the appointment of Mary Simon

00:27:51.080 as the new governor general, the first indigenous woman to hold this position, a career diplomat,

00:27:56.440 really experienced individual? Is her appointment to this role going to play, going to play some role

00:28:04.280 in reconciliation or in how we have these conversations? I really hope it does. I hope

00:28:11.320 it opens the door to, to more, to more cohesive conversations. I hope it, you know, I hope it brings

00:28:21.240 the indigenous and non-indigenous communities together. I hope it, you know, we have, we have

00:28:28.680 these high hopes when an indigenous person, especially a woman going into the, into this kind of role,

00:28:35.880 we have high hopes for them, you know, and, you know, what we can do right now is support them

00:28:41.560 and just kind of see where it goes. Because, you know, we've had other governor generals that we thought

00:28:46.760 were going to work out really well and they didn't. So I think initially, you know,

00:28:51.880 let's give her the support and let's, let's just see where it takes us as a country. 0.56

00:28:57.480 Yeah. I mean, I see two things playing out simultaneously here. One, that she seems like

00:29:01.240 a pretty good choice for this. And I understand she was on the shortlist back in 2010 when David

00:29:05.240 Johnston was originally appointed. So this is not a person whose resume, whose name is just cropped up

00:29:09.880 out of nowhere. So there's a lot of optimism. At the same time, one wonders to what degree is

00:29:14.520 politics, you know, playing out here. I mean, it was believed that, uh, the prime minister picked

00:29:18.440 the former governor general, Julie Payette, for reasons, you know, I guess maybe some political

00:29:22.840 reasons as well. Mary Simon here appointed for similar reasons. So almost, you know, two things

00:29:27.800 are simultaneously true happening here. Are you concerned about the, the politicization of these

00:29:33.560 conversations? Considering that it's happening now and today, um, you know, like I'm gonna have to go

00:29:44.280 towards it being a political decision. Um, you know, and as an indigenous person, you know, like I,

00:29:54.120 I know how hard it is going into a role like that. And we see, we're seeing different things happening

00:30:01.560 right now in terms of the language. Um, you know, and, and we're starting to see, um, kind of criticism

00:30:08.920 right from the get go. Hmm. So it can't be hard, like, you know, it can't be easy on her, you know,

00:30:15.400 so, you know, let's give her a chance. Let's see what she has to offer. And, um, you know,

00:30:22.440 let's support her as much as we can, because we don't know where this is all going to go.

00:30:27.400 Yeah. I mean, is it even fair of me then to really ask, Oh, is Mary Simon going to play a role in the

00:30:31.720 pathway to reconciliation and so forth just because that's, that that's putting so much on one person

00:30:37.460 kind of randomly throwing it all on her plate like that? I mean, is it, is it unfair to even frame it

00:30:41.660 that way? The way I have, I think, I think she going into this role, I think she knew what she was

00:30:48.520 getting into, you know, like, I don't think there was any surprises that this heavy weight is put on

00:30:55.020 her. Um, and that's no different from Marie Sinclair, you know, like he's, uh, he's probably

00:31:01.780 one of the biggest voices out there on reconciliation. And, you know, like he knows the

00:31:07.040 amount of weight that's on him when it comes to certain issues. So, and I, and I also think this

00:31:12.300 is why we need more indigenous representation out there in, in the government so that all of this

00:31:19.140 weight is not put on one or two people. You know, we have multiple voices out there speaking

00:31:24.340 on our behalf and advocating for us and it should be like a shared responsibility, you know, but

00:31:31.880 that's, you know, that's another conversation about how that could happen. Do First Nations people

00:31:39.240 in Canada or do enough of them see themselves in the Canadian apparatus and see a future for them

00:31:46.220 in the Canadian government? Because I know there are a lot of debates among First Nations

00:31:51.020 communities and, and, and different leaders about whether or not, well, whether or not they even

00:31:55.760 really think of Canada as an, as a singular cohesive nation in the same way that a lot of

00:32:02.360 non-First Nations people sort of automatically do. A lot of people do not particularly care for the

00:32:07.020 crown, which is, uh, sort of core to the Canadian identity, at least its structural identity, the way

00:32:12.300 it's all set up and so forth. I mean, there are some very, I think, existential questions really that,

00:32:17.120 uh, uh, that are present in the way First Nations people talk about politics in Canada. Is that fair

00:32:22.420 to say? It's fair. Um, and, and I also think we're doing ourselves a really big disadvantage,

00:32:31.800 um, by thinking we don't have a role in the current political system. Um, you know, like I think,

00:32:39.180 I think our voices are needed, you know, and, and a lot of the time our voices are more grassroots,

00:32:45.400 you know, and if you took some of those grassroots voices and put them in the Senate or you put them,

00:32:52.160 you know, you set aside a certain number of seats, you know, those voices would actually change the way

00:32:57.080 decisions are being made. And, um, I think there's a place for us, you know, but we just need to figure

00:33:04.680 out how that's going to look. I mean, even when I look at some remote reserves and, and, and some

00:33:10.000 reserves across Canada kind of really have to remake the wheel in terms of having their own health

00:33:14.280 services and other services that for a small town that is not a First Nations community, that isn't a

00:33:19.480 reserve would just tap into the provincial system. And I look at a lot of this and I go, well, you know,

00:33:24.800 I kind of wish they'd make use of the provincial system because they got economies of scale, they got

00:33:28.460 best practices and so forth. But also I know me proposing that very idea, a lot of people in those

00:33:33.660 communities would say, no, we don't want that. We want to do it, uh, our own way and so forth.

00:33:39.300 And I, I, that's fine. I respect that, but I still wonder, could you not get better services the other

00:33:44.340 way? But I know that whole opening, that whole conversation itself is, is probably a pretty

00:33:49.080 controversial one. Well, there's, um, actually in my community, there's a First Nation hospital

00:33:56.300 that's about 45, uh, minutes from where I'm from. And, um, you know, it's, it's, it's a hospital,

00:34:04.240 like it's what you would see, um, in any other non-Indigenous community. The only thing is, is 0.81

00:34:10.000 that they kind of incorporated, uh, more of a traditional space within it. And so it's not

00:34:16.820 necessarily us wanting it to look the way we want it to look. It's more of utilizing what we have. So

00:34:23.620 if the provincial system is working and the way hospitals are designed and laid out, you know,

00:34:29.480 we will go with it. We just need to see, um, you know, we just need to see a, uh, uh, like a

00:34:35.760 traditional component within it. You know, we do need to have, like, we want to see a prayer room or

00:34:40.440 we want to, whatever it is, whatever the community ask is, uh, you know, cause we do understand the

00:34:45.980 importance of healthcare and what's currently out there. You know, there's some traditional uses out

00:34:52.320 there, you know, like there's traditional teas, for example, you know, stuff like this could be a

00:34:57.980 supplement to your health. And we realize that, but at the same time, we rely on the healthcare

00:35:03.880 system, like, like everyone else. Right. Now, Melissa, there's a big divergence, I guess, between

00:35:10.080 first nations communities, reserve land that are, are close to economic activity, close to urban areas.

00:35:17.720 And they're really able to, you know, to benefit from the commingling of all those relationships.

00:35:22.520 And then there's the remote reserves, which, which tragically, a number of them make up the dominant

00:35:27.480 negative news headlines about tragedies, sad things currently happening at a Wapaskat, for example, is

00:35:32.300 one of the main, main examples that Canadians would be familiar with here. How do we contend with the

00:35:37.900 challenges that are faced by remote reserves right now?

00:35:41.020 I think the first thing that we need to do, and I think the misconception that's out there,

00:35:47.560 is that we're a monolith. And that, you know, everything that happens on one community happens

00:35:53.640 on all of them. That's, that's not the case. And like you said, there's some that are situated

00:35:58.540 near cities, you know, so they have the economic opportunity to open a casino or hotel or, you know,

00:36:05.380 something that's going to bring revenue to their communities. And then you have the remote ones,

00:36:09.820 where there's nothing there, you know, like there's, there's no chance that they would have

00:36:16.540 anything other than the basic services they need, such as a store. And this is where I struggle,

00:36:24.440 because each community is different. And, you know, they need to look at what they need and what

00:36:31.720 they can offer. And they need to look at how they can bring different forms of revenue to their

00:36:38.460 communities. And, you know, a lot of them, like mine, you know, like, we're really small. And we do

00:36:46.980 have some smaller, some smaller things like a, like a store, you know, like we do have some, we have a

00:36:55.520 bingo hall, you know, this is very small in comparison to what you would see from a reserve close to a 0.99

00:37:01.900 city. So we have to, I think we have to figure it out. I think we have to figure out what, what can we use to our

00:37:08.620 advantage? You know, one of the things that I, that we have in our community that might be unique is that we have a

00:37:13.880 railway that runs right through it. You know, was there anything that we can, can, is there an industry that we can

00:37:21.420 come up with that would utilize this rail system? You know, it's, it's questions like that, that we need to start

00:37:27.060 asking ourselves. And this is the only way that I think economically, we're going to move forward.

00:37:33.380 Melissa, we've been speaking about a lot of the challenges, the struggles, certainly very negative,

00:37:37.960 harrowing stories, like the residential schools, the histories there. But I often think about a line

00:37:43.260 that it was written by the scholar Ken Coates. And he said, when it comes to First Nations issues in

00:37:47.680 Canada, the tragedies are very loud, but the successes are quiet, being that, you know, we don't

00:37:54.460 acknowledge the successes enough, we don't talk about them enough. And can I get your thoughts

00:37:58.320 just on how I, if I'm correct in the numbers, education statistics, approving entrepreneurship,

00:38:03.980 small business, innovation, I mean, there's, there's a lot of great stuff happening among

00:38:08.680 Indigenous Canadians, a lot of successes, a lot of stuff that we should be talking about more and

00:38:13.960 celebrating more. Am I right?

00:38:16.800 Yeah, there's definitely a lot more out there. You know, there's artists that have yet to be found,

00:38:23.480 like, there's so much talent in our communities that are unknown, you know, and actually through

00:38:30.860 TikTok, a lot of like our creators are, you know, starting to be known internationally. So I think

00:38:40.580 if we start focusing on, on some of the youth that have, you know, accomplished things that,

00:38:47.440 you know, another community was working towards, you know, we need to look at and start

00:38:53.300 celebrating our, our people, you know, we need to start getting success stories out there. Because

00:38:58.760 like Ken said, there really, there really isn't a place that you can look and say, Oh,

00:39:04.000 here are like the top, you know, there's always a top 40 under 40, or there's always some list out

00:39:09.880 there. You know, we don't have that. And I think if we start celebrating, like our people,

00:39:16.480 we'll start being role models, for others to, to strive to get there, you know, and unfortunately,

00:39:23.760 now, like the only people that are really in the limelight are politicians, you know, people who've

00:39:29.360 gotten roles as an MP or MLA. These are the only people that we're seeing. But you know, we have a lot

00:39:35.320 of creative artists out there that are relatively unknown that, you know, can blow up the art world

00:39:41.860 one day. And I think we need to start really focusing on the positives, like Ken had said,

00:39:47.900 because there are a lot of successful people out there. Yeah, absolutely. And I know we began this

00:39:52.400 conversation talking about how you want to see unity, and you want to see progress and so forth.

00:39:56.660 We've covered a lot of terrain in this conversation. I know there's a lot of people out there in Canada

00:40:00.760 who are just watching the news headlines, and they're watching those tensions. And they're just

00:40:05.640 saying, Look, I just want what's best for everybody here. I may not be, you know, perfectly well versed in

00:40:10.200 the history of the issues, or even what's currently going on. But, you know, I want these bad things

00:40:14.220 to stop. And I want good outcomes for people. What would be your main message that you'd leave

00:40:19.120 people with who just say, Look, I want success for everybody. I want success for Indigenous Canadians.

00:40:25.180 What should they be thinking about moving forward?

00:40:28.720 I think, you know, one of the things and this is a question that I've been asked numerous times,

00:40:34.160 you know, how do we help? If you're in an area where, you know, a First Nations doesn't have clean 1.00

00:40:41.280 drinking water, you know, continue to, you know, write to your MPs or your MLAs to try get a resolution

00:40:49.020 for them. Or if you're like, water is a big issue. Like if you're, you know, worked in a water treatment

00:40:56.280 plant, and you're kind of familiar with the workings within, you know, maybe approach an Indigenous

00:41:01.940 community and say, Hey, is there something I can help you with? You know, there's different ways

00:41:06.260 that we can definitely reach out to the communities and help them. And I think one of the things that

00:41:12.580 we can definitely do is ask, you know, ask your neighbor, and just see where that conversation

00:41:19.080 goes, because you never know where it will lead.

00:41:22.680 Melissa, this has been a very informative and important discussion. I thank you very much for

00:41:26.460 your insights today and for joining us.

00:41:27.900 Thank you for having me. It's definitely been, um, it's definitely been interesting and even

00:41:34.420 eye-opening for me.

00:41:36.900 Full Comment is a post-media podcast. I'm Anthony Fury. This episode was produced by Andre Pru with

00:41:42.060 theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer. You can subscribe to Full

00:41:46.820 Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can help us by giving us

00:41:52.260 a rating or a review and by telling your friends about us. Thanks for listening.

00:41:57.900 Thank you.

Full Comment - July 12, 2021

What ‘Burn It All Down’ Church-Hating Extremists Need To Hear

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript