What ‘Burn It All Down’ Church-Hating Extremists Need To Hear
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Summary
Melissa Embarkey is a policy analyst for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a member of the Treaty 4 Nation in Saskatchewan. In this episode, she shares her thoughts on the current national conversation about Indigenous issues and the residential school system.
Transcript
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Hi, it's Anthony Fury. Thank you so much for joining us here on Full Comet.
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For this episode, we're going to talk about everything to do with Indigenous issues today
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and Canada's First Peoples. It's a deeply emotional topic for many,
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one that's both torn from the current headlines, but also goes back to the founding of our nation
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and before. Residential schools, the poor conditions that too many First Nations endure,
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achieving reconciliation, our new Governor-General, the cancelling of Canada Day,
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the tearing down of statues, the burning of churches. Wow, some of that's pretty divisive
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stuff, but can there be unity? Will the tensions of today bring better results for the future?
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We're joined now by Melissa Embarkey for her reflections on this current national conversation.
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Melissa is a policy analyst for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a member of the
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Treaty 4 Nation in Saskatchewan. Hey, Melissa, thanks for joining us today.
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I mean, so many issues to discuss right now, and this is really where the national conversation
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is at right now in Canada. All aspects of First Nations, of the Indigenous conversation,
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and I know you wrote about this in a guest column in the pages of the National Post recently,
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but how are you feeling right now in terms of optimism, pessimism? I mean,
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how would you describe this moment we're in right now?
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Right now, I think I'm kind of in a holding place where I just don't know how to feel.
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The movement of, you know, getting residential schools awareness and education started off really
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well. You know, we had receptive listeners. We were making way in terms of awareness and what
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these schools were, and it just turned into, you know, violent acts. And, you know, it's really
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disheartening because for most of us who grew up in small towns and in small communities, this wasn't
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what we were taught, you know, like we weren't taught to act out in anger or to destroy somebody's
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place of worship. So I'm, you know, like I, I'm kind of frustrated too at the same time, because
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this isn't what we want for Canada. This isn't, you know, the message that we want to convey to
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our allies. And this isn't, this isn't easy for us as well, because these acts also bring,
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you know, they, they target indigenous people like myself. So, you know, there's,
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there's a lot going on. And I really feel for the survivors that are out there having to experience
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this. And even for me, myself, it's, it's very frustrating to watch. And I hope it gets better
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Okay, you mentioned a receptive audience, I'd like to think I'm a receptive listener to this
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whole conversation about residential schools. What do you want to communicate to Canadians
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about the residential school system? How would you describe it? What part of it? What part of
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I, I grew up in a unique situation in that my grandmother attended a residential school.
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Her experience wasn't great. You know, she can probably relate to a lot of the stories out there
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of abuse and, uh, you know, being taken from her, her home at five years old. Uh, she didn't go back
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to see her parents until she was 17. So if you can kind of imagine your life, she didn't get to see
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them at all through that period, 12 years, no, they, no, they didn't allow visits. Uh, they weren't allowed
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to go home. Parents weren't allowed to come to these schools and, uh, see their children. It was,
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it was prohibited. So I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there that these children
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went to school and then at some point they went home. There's no summer break. Like it's not like
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they were off at boarding school. Like some people send their kids and they come back for four months
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in the summer kind of thing. None of that. No, it was not like that at all. Like when they were at
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these schools, they were there permanently until they were ready to go home. Um, and usually that
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didn't happen until their late teens, like anywhere from 16 to 19. Uh, some of them were kept at the
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school for working purposes, you know, like some of them did, um, maintenance, maintenance work and
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they were kept at these schools for a lot longer. Uh, that was one of the situations with my grandmother.
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Um, she was deemed a good worker. Uh, they sent her to, um, I believe it was New Brunswick to a college
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and she took some courses. When she was done those courses, uh, she went back to the residential school,
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worked for a little bit, and then she went home to her family. So this was after I'm going to say
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13 or so years. And, um, she didn't know who her family was. She didn't recognize her parents. She
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didn't know her brothers and sisters because the last time she seen them was when she was five years
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old. So she had no idea who her family was. And I could see that struggle over the years because she
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wasn't particularly close to her brothers and sisters. And, um, you know, you can kind of see
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that family dynamic play out and it impacted our lives because we didn't really get to know her side
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of the family either. So that's kind of how, when we talk about intergenerational trauma, like that's
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kind of the flow of how our families worked. Um, you know, and she, she was one of the ones that
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believed in education. You know, she didn't really let, um, it, that stop her from becoming a social
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worker and eventually helping her community. So she has one of those success stories where she didn't get
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caught, um, um, in addictions or she didn't get caught, um, in a system that, you know, impacted her life
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in a more negative way, I'm going to say. So she really taught us what hard work in education was, and she
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might be one of the very few success stories out there. And, you know, a lot of families, especially in my
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community, um, you know, they didn't see that. They didn't see the other side. They stayed in their
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addictions and, you know, it, it just kind of repeated from generation to generation. Um, one of
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my, like my community actually has a residential school. And so we seen kids actually filtering
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through these schools throughout the year. Like we went to school with them, we went to elementary
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school with them. So, you know, seeing it firsthand and seeing the devastation firsthand, um, is not
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something that the general public views. Unless you lived or, or were in the vicinity of a residential
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school, you would have, you wouldn't have seen these social issues firsthand the way
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And Melissa, how did word come down to your grandmother's parents, to her family that, okay,
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we're now going to take your daughter or now it's time, you know, for her to leave, for
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her to be taken away. I mean, how, how kind of prevalent was this? Was everybody just kind
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of like waiting for this inevitable thing to happen to their family or was it kind of random
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who ended up going and not? I understand the policy was to try and get, I guess, as many
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Well, with her story, um, they had Indian agents and the RCMP actually patrol their community.
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So whenever the parents were out hunting or whenever the parents were out of the house
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period, they would go looking in these homes to see if children were there and they would
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essentially take them. Um, they knew like the community knew what these agents were capable
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of. So they started teaching their kids to run. Like the second you see, you know, this
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person coming into the community, you run. Um, and at five years old, you know, like my
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grandmother hid under a bed and along with a couple of her cousins and they were pulled
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out from there and they were taken and they didn't care who they took. They didn't care what
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age they were. They just, if they were there, they took them.
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Wow. And is that, I understand, we know, residential schools, uh, lasted for many decades and continued
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until the latter part of the 20th century. Is that always how things were done? I mean,
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It kind of changed. So I'm going to say in my mother's generation, cause my mom's generation
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would be considered the 60 scoop children. Um, what had happened in that generation is that you
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had these parents come out of residential schools who knew nothing about parenting, who, um, you know,
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had addictions, who had started to get their children taken away. So at this point, it became a choice
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for the parents. Like, do you want your children to go into the social service system or do you want
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them to go into the residential school? Cause either way they were getting their kids taken
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away. So that's how it changed during the sixties and seventies. And that's where these sixties scoop
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children come into play because a lot of them went into the child, child and welfare system,
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as opposed to going into the residential schools. Um, so it was just a dysfunctional cycle that continued,
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um, where social services became a part of it. Now, now they're deeming parents unfit to be parents
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and they're taking these children and they're either putting them in the schools or they're
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putting them in the system. And that's how it, it carried on. Melissa, how do you respond to those
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people who say, look, it was really a good intention project here, the residential school system,
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looking back historically, we now know it was wrong, but back then, you know, they were trying to do
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good things. They were trying to, uh, provide opportunities for these kids. But yet, Melissa,
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when you tell me things about how, uh, your grandmother being really pulled out from under
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that couch where she was hiding, pulled against her will, snatched, uh, when the parents were out
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of the house. I mean, that's, that's clearly not, you know, you know, you're doing something that these
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people do not approve of and they do not want to have happen to them. So how do we, how do we talk
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about the origin story of the residential school system? You know, if it was meant, if these schools
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were meant specifically for education, we can compare it to a boarding school because boarding
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schools existed back then, you know, like these children willingly, like their parents wanted a
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better education for them. So they put them in these schools. You know, it was a consensual thing.
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When you look at residential schools, that wasn't the case. You know, these children were forcibly
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moved, removed from their homes. Um, there was no consent, you know, parents didn't know when they
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were going to see their children, if they were ever going to see them. Um, you know, it, it, it was
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meant not for educational purposes, but it was more like it was meant to assimilate us. And that's not
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something that you would consider a school, you know, like it was, it, its origins and what it was
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intended for, um, are very clear, you know, from an indigenous perspective, it was meant to take
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our identity away. It was meant to assimilate us into, um, society. Um, you know, and they went
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about it the wrong way. And these schools did more harm than good to my people.
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Melissa, what do you make of the broader argument about, for lack of a better term for assimilation,
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for the idea that, look, we've got people who are not sort of living together in a cultural sense,
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in an economic sense. So let's bring in policies to have everybody sort of, you know, live together
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under all of the same terms. Is that broad initiative, whether it's concerning indigenous
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persons or, or, you know, any other different groups of people living together in Canada? I mean,
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I mean, it's, I think like we, if we go back to just what these schools, you know, were designed
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to do, you know, it wasn't meant to bring anybody together, you know, like it wasn't, it wasn't meant
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to, um, you know, give us a family oriented world. That wasn't the intention of it. And, you know, it,
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it, I, I don't know how, um, you know, we can look at this without calling it for what it is. And
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it was a genocide of people, like it was a genocide of someone's identity. And it, um, you know,
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it, we're seeing the effects of it today. And, um, you know, it's, I think if it's, I think we need
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to acknowledge, um, its true intention, right from the get go, and work our way forward from there.
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Like if we start acknowledging that, you know, it took someone's identity from them, you know,
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half the people in my community don't speak their indigenous language. Um, you know, a lot of them
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don't follow the traditional ways, which is at no fault at, you know, to them, but it just goes to
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show that, you know, we were stripped of our identities and, you know, we're slowly starting
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to get some of it back today. And, you know, Melissa, you keep using the word family and, and,
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and it really becomes clear telling the stories about your grandmother, that this really was about,
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uh, dismantling the core unit of, of, of first people's society, which is the family. I mean,
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it really was the destruction of the family unit. It really, it really is. I mean, if you look at,
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um, our family structure today, um, a lot of it is very disjointed. Um, we don't have the cohesion
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that we probably had before. We don't even see that cohesion in our communities, you know,
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and that's the sad part of it all. A lot of our communities are very, very divided. And,
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you know, I'm sure back then, you know, at one point we were all one community and one living
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under kind of like the same, um, the same laws, but we're just really different. And that's really
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sad to see, especially in smaller communities like mine.
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Melissa, what was your reaction when the news surfaced that first, the Kamloops BC community
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said, we have found, uh, unmarked graves of the remains of children. And then a couple others
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said the same and we're up to a well over a thousand now identified. This is obviously what
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has spurred this national conversation happening across Canada. What was your reaction when that
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news first broke? I mean, a lot of, uh, people in first nations communities said, well, yeah,
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we've been anticipating a news just like this for some time now.
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I, for me, it wasn't surprising because, um, in the early two thousands, we had found 34 or 35
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unmarked graves in my community. And that was by accident. Uh, they were fixing a water line
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and when they were digging it up, that's when they had found, uh, this unmarked area, like with, uh,
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with remains. So from my, from my part, like I wasn't, I wasn't surprised and reading the truth
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and reconciliation, uh, commissions report, it does reference in there that there are unmarked
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graves at some of these schools. So if we were kind of familiarized with that, you would have had
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an idea that this eventually would have, you know, come into play. Um, but if you had read that report
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or you weren't really in a first nations community to know, uh, the backstory about some of these
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schools, then it would have been shocking. Like it would have came as, as, as a shock that there
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were so many, um, unmarked graves out there. Now, this is definitely a story that is, that has
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been taken by a lot of media, a lot of people on social media, they've taken the ball and they've
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run with it in many directions. There's discussion about, you know, criminal charges now and so forth.
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I think people assume, uh, that, that there's murder in these situations, but also based on the
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way you talk about your grandmother's situation and what things were like, it also seems like we're
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probably dealing with just a lot of deaths of neglect, of despair, of just children not getting
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the, the treatment and, and, and, and care and respect and dignity that one gets when one is cared
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for by your own family, by your own community. What do you believe are the stories behind these
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tragedies, these findings? Um, just coming from my community, a lot of our stories, um, actually
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came from the survivors themselves who attended the school throughout the years. Uh, you know,
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we have some, uh, we have the older generation that are, you know, between 60 and 80 years old that
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have told, um, stories of like, I mean, really tragic stories of, um, newborn babies being thrown into an
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incinerator. Um, you know, and we have other stories of, uh, like a neighboring school where
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there is a tunnel that led from the school to the staff chambers. Uh, so there was like a separate
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housing location for the staff and there was a tunnel that went from the school to this house or to this
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housing unit. So we heard these stories, like we heard the tragic stories, um, just because the
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schools were so close by and you hear stories of some of the younger survivors, like the last one
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in my area closed in 97. So the, the youngest survivors would probably age in range from about
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30 to 40, early forties. So these are people our age. And, you know, we think of this as a situation
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that happened hundreds of years ago. But if you're thinking of the last survivor, like one of the
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youngest ones, you're talking about a 30 year old and, you know, we, we heard their stories of this
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staff members abusing them, you know? And so it was a continual, um, it was just a continuation of
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abuse. You know, the church handed it over in the late seventies to the federal government. And then you
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had federal government employees who abused the kids too. You know, it was just a never ending
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saga of abuse of these children. My God. And Melissa, when you hear the word reconciliation,
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when you use the word reconciliation, what does that mean to you?
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It means, you know, it includes everybody. Um, you know, it includes the indigenous community.
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It includes the non-indigenous community coming together and finding solutions for the survivors
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today. You know, it's, it's not revenge. You know, it's not burning a church. It's not toppling
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statues. It's not vandalism because that's not what you're not respecting the survivors. When you do
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that, you know, if anything, you're, you're causing them more anguish, you know, they're having to relive
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something now in addition to somebody, you know, vandalizing a building on their behalf, you know,
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and that's not what they want, you know, like these, the survivors out there, if you listen to
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them and you listen to their humble, you know, approach to things, all they want to do is help
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their communities. You know, they want to bring services back to their communities. They want to
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be able to give future generations a better future than what they had, you know, and I just feel like
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everything that's going on today, we're, we're going backwards, you know, burning a church is not,
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is not going to bring healing to anybody. If anything, it's going to cause more division and it's going
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to cause a lot more hatred towards us because of that act, you know, so we need to, we need to start
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respecting each other and we need to start having respectful conversations.
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I want to get your thoughts on July 1st on Canada Day. A lot of municipalities across the country,
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various levels of government said they're basically canceling Canada Day. Now it was kind of an easy
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thing to do because pandemic restrictions were in place in large parts of the country. So there
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weren't going to be large gatherings anyway, but there was still the attitude of canceling Canada
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Day. There was a bit of split opinion on that, but a lot of people seem to go along with the idea.
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I didn't support that idea at all. I thought this is the one day of the year where we do
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celebrate our country, our nation, our cohesiveness, our founding as a nation,
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uh, even all of the individuals who are the founders. Um, but I would be happy to celebrate
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our first peoples at the same time and their accomplishments and their stories and their
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successes. I found that unfortunately divisive, the canceling Canada Day. What's your take on that?
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Canceling Canada Day or canceling anything for that matter is the easy way out. You know, like
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you're, you're letting, you know, you're letting cities and, you know, municipalities take the easy
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way out because if they were going to do one thing, well, they're going to do the easy thing
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for you and that's canceling a day. Um, you know, and I think what, what should have happened is that
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they should have reached out to these communities where they did find, um, these unmarked graves and
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they should have asked them, you know, what do you think is the respectful way to go about this? You
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know, let, let me get your feedback. But a lot of them just went ahead and did it anyways. And,
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you know, they're not going to do anything else for the rest of the year. That's the sad thing.
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You know, they, they, they did the easy thing, you know, it's just, let, let's just, you know,
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wash away a day and just call it, call it that. And we did our part, you know, and, and, you know,
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if they really wanted to help, they would look at indigenous issues in their specific area.
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So if it's a city, for example, do you have a high number of homeless indigenous people in your
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city? If you do, can you address that? Can you start looking at this issue? You know,
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like there's other ways they could have approached it that actually would have been
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a little bit more beneficial for us. And, um, that's why I'm not a fan of canceling anything
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because it's, it's, it essentially is the easy way out.
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Melissa, what about people who are appropriating this issue for their own cause, for their own
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agenda, or at least they're taking the ball and running with it in directions that to your point,
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maybe first nations people don't even support. And I'm, I'm reminded of what happened before the
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pandemic. We had the blockades, we had the controversies over the pipelines and it became
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this us versus them thing initially where it was, Oh, well, first nations people don't support
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these pipelines, but we need them for Canada. So us versus them. But then we heard a lot of
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first nations people speak up in places like BC saying, Oh, hold on. Our, our band council actually
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wants this pipeline. And then we have groups that are not predominantly first nations people,
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or some of them have no first nations people at all. Those groups like extinction rebellion,
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and they're doing blockades and they're getting arrested over all of this. And I did see a lot of
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people go, hold on a second here. Let's not do this us versus them thing. Let's maybe we
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actually have a coming together period. And I thought that was kind of potentially going to be
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empowering and unifying. And I guess maybe a little bit, it was right now in this debate,
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I'm, I'm worried. I just don't know where it sits. Where do you see that going?
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I kind of see it going in a similar direction. Um, because you have to, you see different groups
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taking up this issue of, you know, residential schools when it's not their issue to take up
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and they're speaking on behalf of it and they're actually promoting, you know, burning of churches
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and violence. And all I have to say to them is that this is not your place. Like this is not your
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place to speak on behalf of residential school survivors. If you want to have that airtime,
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go and talk to a couple of survivors and ask them what they want, because it's not going to be what
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they're doing. And I just feel like this issue that was, that finally came to the forefront because
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it wasn't something that we had ever talked about prior to this. Like we've never talked about
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residential schools. It was just finally coming, you know, into the forefront and, you know, some of
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the issues were being addressed. And then it's taken the back door now to activists. And that is
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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,
00:26:10.840
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.
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
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
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
00:38:16.800
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
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
00:41:27.900
Thank you for having me. It's definitely been, um, it's definitely been interesting and even
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
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