Juno News - Former residential schools worker criticizes far-left ＂denier＂ narrative

00:00:00.000 In 2021, news broke that children's bodies had been found in mass graves at the sites

00:00:08.960 of former Indian residential schools across Canada. What followed was weeks of protest,

00:00:14.480 months of mourning, and a string of violent assaults on Canadian history. And then 100

00:00:20.860 churches in Canada were attacked, vandalized, or burned to the ground following those claims.

00:00:26.780 But today, no bodies have actually been found in these supposed mass graves. In fact,

00:00:32.660 the language has changed from mass graves to anomalies in the ground. But that has not stopped

00:00:38.920 federal officials and activists from calling on the federal government to criminalize so-called

00:00:44.720 residential school denialism, to make it a crime to state the truth. That being that no bodies have

00:00:52.880 actually been found in mass graves at residential schools. And also to state that, in fact, there

00:00:58.360 were some good things that came from the residential school system. These federal officials and activists

00:01:04.620 want to make these statements a crime, criminalizing the truth and promoting a lie. Now, if that just

00:01:10.780 isn't symbolic of the direction this country is headed in. Well, our next guest on The Faulkner Show knows

00:01:16.300 quite a bit about residential schools. In fact, he lived in and worked for a residential school in

00:01:20.520 the 60s. To these activists, he is a denier. Well, joining us now on The Faulkner Show is Rodney Clifton,

00:01:28.640 professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba, author and senior fellow at the Frontier Center.

00:01:34.860 And between 1967 and 1966, Rodney Clifton lived in and worked for an Indian residential school. Professor

00:01:43.840 Clifton, thank you so much for joining us. You're welcome.

00:01:46.380 In an article published in C2C Journal, you take aim at the recent efforts to criminalize so-called

00:01:54.620 residential school denialism. The title of your essay on the C2C Journal is,

00:02:00.040 They Would Call Me a Denier? Let me explain what I believe about residential schools in Canada.

00:02:05.940 So to summarize for us, professor, what do you believe about residential schools?

00:02:09.960 And why does that make you a denier in the eyes of some?

00:02:14.620 That's a very interesting question. First of all, I believe that there were good and bad things that

00:02:21.280 happened in residential school, and that the good has been outshadowed by the claims of bad. And

00:02:27.820 people were getting money for saying bad things. And so we're getting a lot of people saying that

00:02:38.360 they were victims of all kinds of abuse in the schools. Now, there's some abuse went on, obviously.

00:02:46.500 And I think some people have been charged with that abuse. But not every child and not every school

00:02:52.740 was full of people who abused other, abused the children.

00:02:58.980 I'm surprised that the churches haven't stood up and defended their innocent missionaries that they

00:03:06.440 send out to work in these places. And I'm trying to correct that, both for Aboriginal people as well

00:03:13.720 as for other Canadians that are paying a tremendous amount of money for the compensation for supposedly

00:03:22.280 murdering children in residential schools.

00:03:24.840 I don't think there's any children that have been murdered and buried in schoolyards.

00:03:32.640 And the reason for that, there are many reasons for that. But one of the main reasons for that

00:03:37.380 is that Indian Affairs, in all its variations, asked for quarterly reports every year.

00:03:44.800 And they listed the names of the children and how the children were doing in the residence

00:03:52.960 as well as in the school. And they got paid on the basis of the number of children.

00:03:57.140 So why would they murder children to get rid of them if, in fact, they're getting a payment

00:04:04.320 for each of the child that's being there? And if a child has to go to a hospital or go to sanitarium

00:04:08.980 or something like that, then the payment was decreased on these records. That's only one

00:04:15.600 of the reasons. But there's many other reasons as well. Many people were coming and going out of the

00:04:20.180 schools, including parents, including medical doctors, including optometrists, including dentists

00:04:25.480 that come in and help fix children's teeth. And they would have obviously reported that children

00:04:32.560 were being mistreated if they saw that kind of evidence. So we haven't got any records of this.

00:04:41.640 Now, I'm not saying that no children were abused or murdered in the school. I'm just saying

00:04:47.480 that the records don't support the claim.

00:04:52.120 And, you know, this push to criminalize what is being described as residential school

00:04:58.820 denialism seems extremely dangerous, at least in my eyes, and I think to many Canadians,

00:05:04.320 especially given what we have seen recently over the past few years and the claims that have since

00:05:09.340 been debunked about the residential school system. But in more detail, what exactly constitutes

00:05:15.700 residential school denialism? Is it simply denying that residential schools existed? Or is it,

00:05:22.020 for example, saying that, as you just said, there are some good things that happened at these schools?

00:05:26.520 I think it's both of those things. And they're lumping them together the other side and saying

00:05:32.820 that if you if you say that there's some good things that went on in these schools, that you're in fact

00:05:40.680 denying that the schools actually existed, which is an extension that is unwarranted.

00:05:48.960 You've worked in these residential schools. So I think you, unlike most people who talk about this issue

00:05:54.320 today, actually have an experience that that that is required to really address this, what are some

00:06:01.200 of the good things that did happen in these schools? Because that side, of course, never really gets

00:06:05.820 told in the media.

00:06:06.820 Yeah, my wife went to residential school, old son on the Blackfoot Reserve, where she grew up

00:06:13.700 for 10 years. And when we were young, she used to call people would ask her if she went to

00:06:20.420 residential school. And she said, No, she went to a private Anglican school. And so many of the teachers

00:06:27.300 that she had were lifelong friends of hers and thought of her and all the other young people that

00:06:33.780 were in the schools as being their children in the same sort of way that teachers in other schools

00:06:38.820 thought about their the children that they were teaching, that that they were that they were

00:06:45.940 part of their extended family and they were treated as such. And I've heard many stories from both my

00:06:52.500 wife as well as from her parents about the positive things that went on in these schools and the jokes

00:07:00.100 that were being played between the supervisors and the and and the students. And the same thing happened

00:07:07.780 when I worked in Stringer Hall, which is in Inuvik, the Anglican residents there for a year, I looked

00:07:15.540 after 85 kids, 22 hours a day, six days a week. Now, during some of that time, the kids were in school,

00:07:23.780 of course, but if they were sick, they would be often be in the residence unless they were so sick that

00:07:28.820 they were in the infirmary or sent to the hospital. So I got to know kids very well. I was 21 years

00:07:37.620 of age. I was interested in these children and we had very positive relationships. Now, of course,

00:07:44.260 we tried to get them to speak English, but in Inuvik, there were two young women that helped

00:07:51.060 supervise the junior boys and the junior girls, and they spoke Inuktituk to those children all the time.

00:07:57.540 When they when the children were coming down the hall and speaking Inuktituk, the little kids, I would

00:08:02.660 wave my finger at them and they would put their hands over their mouth and turn around and go the

00:08:08.020 other way speaking Inuktituk and then look back. It was kind of a cat and mouse game in which we wanted 0.96

00:08:12.980 them to speak English. But if they had to speak to somebody, they would they would speak Inuktituk

00:08:18.820 and they would be able to communicate with each other. Pretty soon they learned English and could

00:08:24.500 speak in English. But at the very beginning, when the six year olds come in, they only spoke Inuktituk,

00:08:30.260 the kids from the high Arctic. The Indian kids from along the the river, Mackenzie River,

00:08:36.260 spoke English when they came in, but the Inuit children didn't. Well, it seems that if these calls

00:08:43.540 to criminalize residential school denialism are realized, what you have just said, and maybe this

00:08:50.340 show itself would be criminal as it is engaging in an act of residential school denialism. How real of a

00:08:57.700 possibility is this? Is this is this really something that can happen in Canada that just saying what

00:09:03.220 you've just said could be a crime? I didn't think so until I've seen what happened with the truckers

00:09:13.700 convoy and what happened in Canada with the COVID pandemic and the way that medical doctors were treated,

00:09:22.900 the way that common citizens were treated. I'm starting to believe that, yes, it is possible

00:09:28.340 that people who deny something, even if it happens to be a lie, as we found out with the COVID,

00:09:37.300 could be could be criminized.

00:09:38.980 So even just saying, for example, that there have been no human remains excavated out of the out of

00:09:47.860 the from the grounds of former residential school sites, like we were like were claimed in 2021,

00:09:54.020 even just saying that would be a crime under the under the push to, you know, make denialism

00:10:00.580 a criminal? Yes, it seems that's that's the truth. We haven't seen any remains that we've we've given

00:10:08.740 the Kamloops brand $7.9 million to excavate. And we haven't seen any evidence of that. We haven't even

00:10:16.660 got the report of the of the anthropologists that did the ground penetrating radar on that. And I've seen

00:10:24.580 results of ground penetrating radar. It's not looking at it's not like looking at an x-ray of a person where

00:10:30.020 you can determine bones and things like that. All you see is squiggle squiggly lines. So you don't see

00:10:35.780 graves. And they're claiming that these are that these are graves. Now they switch back and forth.

00:10:42.260 Sometimes she said they are graves. And other times she said that they're just anomalies. And she's back

00:10:47.940 to saying that they're graves again. So until we actually see the evidence, they're trying to stop

00:10:53.460 any kind of debate going on on this issue. The Aboriginal people are not the only ones,

00:11:02.340 but the journalists are, as you know, and and academics are doing the same sort of thing,

00:11:08.340 trying to shut down any sort of discussion of this issue. So so we're entering a territory in which

00:11:15.060 saying the true saying the truth could be a crime and pushing a falsehood would be protected. What does this

00:11:22.260 mean for the history and the in academia and studying history if there are strict guidelines on what can

00:11:30.900 be said and what can't be said, especially when the truth can't even be said? You're a professor.

00:11:36.820 What does this mean for the study of history? It means that there should be certain political

00:11:44.180 overtones in history that have to be abided by and people can't engage in contrary arguments in which

00:11:50.660 they question that. So if politicians and and reporters don't tell us the truth, how are Canadians

00:11:57.060 supposed to make valid decisions in elections and understanding of what should be taught in schools

00:12:04.820 and in universities and colleges and that sort of thing if we've got a stranglehold on the positions

00:12:14.020 that can be offered? It's very similar to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer experienced in in in in Germany

00:12:21.300 when you know it was it was proclaimed that people of Jewish extraction were were enemies of the state

00:12:28.900 right and should be eliminated. Of course nobody's saying that people should be eliminated now but

00:12:35.540 they're talking about putting people in jail. Right and what does this what does this mean for

00:12:43.460 Indigenous Canadians? I can't imagine that pushing something like this with the with the specific

00:12:48.980 parameters around residential school denialism not just denialism but specifically denialism on this

00:12:55.700 subject. I can't imagine that this is positive for Indigenous Canadians. What do you make of this?

00:13:01.620 Oh absolutely not I think they need to have experience the truth as well as everybody else and I think

00:13:10.420 there's a quite a few people probably that are living on the reserves who have questions in their own

00:13:15.300 minds and they know what went on in the schools but they're afraid to speak up because they will be

00:13:22.100 treated even worse than people that are living off the reserves are treated. So I think we're trying to

00:13:29.060 help all of Canada rather than uh just the non-Indigenous population and I think in the whole thing yeah

00:13:37.940 sorry go ahead well I was just going to say that if this doesn't help Indigenous Canadians

00:13:42.580 then why do you think this is being pushed in the first place? Um I think that's a very good question

00:13:50.020 I'm not exactly sure but I think that because there's a lot of money tied up in this and making these kinds of

00:13:56.660 claims can result in a lot of uh money flowing from non-Aboriginal Canadians through the government

00:14:03.540 uh to uh to reserves so uh the federal government has set aside 320 million dollars for excavations

00:14:12.420 and increasingly more people more more brands are applying for this kind of money and they make the

00:14:18.420 claim that they're sure that there are bodies of children in the in the ground but so far we haven't had any

00:14:25.620 excavations that have discovered anything we've all the escape excavations that have been done at

00:14:31.460 capsule hospital at Pine Creek have discovered that there were rocks and tree roots and other things

00:14:39.540 that were buried in the ground that they had seen through the through the uh through the ground

00:14:45.860 penetrating radar. You would think that not being able to discover human remains at the grounds of

00:14:53.460 former residential schools would be a good result would be a good thing for Canadians to say well 1.00

00:14:58.340 thankfully we haven't discovered a mass grave but do you feel like that for some do you feel that for

00:15:04.340 some of these activists who have been pushing this narrative that actually not finding any graves at all was

00:15:10.660 a defeat to them and that they're disappointed in not being able to find hundreds of dead bodies?

00:15:15.860 I think that's absolutely true and if you listen to some of the interviews that some of the chiefs have

00:15:22.100 had after uh the ground penetrating uh radar uh and and excavations were uh conducted uh they their tone

00:15:31.860 of their voice seems that they were disappointed that they never found and I was elated because I don't

00:15:38.100 think I don't think there's children buried and I don't think that Canadians should believe in something that may

00:15:44.420 strongly not be possible not be true.

00:15:50.340 Do you think that some of this and and some of the things that we saw during 2021 I'm thinking in

00:15:55.860 particular of the federal government's decision to lower Canadian flags across the world for six months

00:16:02.020 um and to topple down our statues to uh to attack historical figures who frankly had nothing to do with the

00:16:08.420 residential school system do you think that a lot of this has to do with a deep-seated hatred for Canada itself?

00:16:19.140 It certainly seems that to me and I think that we can't manage a country if we've got a substantial

00:16:26.500 number of people who actually uh do not appreciate the good things that have happened in Canada even the

00:16:32.580 good things that have happened to Aboriginal people who use cell phones and use uh internet and use 1.00

00:16:38.980 all kinds of modern technology uh in the same sort of way that that the rest of us when the government

00:16:44.820 gets tied into uh these kinds of conspiracies then I think there's a real problem with our country and I

00:16:53.460 wish the conservatives uh the people's party and the other parties would would stand up and and and

00:17:01.220 would not have voted uh that that that residential schools was it was a genocide as as yeah was said

00:17:08.340 in parliament a few months ago. And and why do you why do you think it is that we have political leaders

00:17:16.180 who are not actually willing to fight this topic stand and fight for the truth it's not about

00:17:22.420 one side or the other it's not about picking one ethnic group of Canadians to support it's about

00:17:28.180 the truth versus uh versus versus falsehoods why do you think it is that we don't have a loud

00:17:35.540 conservative opposition standing up and defending the truth on this issue? That is a very good question

00:17:42.260 and it seems to me that when politicians do not uh fight for the truth that we're in the process of

00:17:48.980 losing our country we're losing our freedom we're losing our freedom of speech we're losing uh the

00:17:54.420 sense of what uh true journalism is as as you're engaging in now and uh it it simply becomes a clash

00:18:02.500 of ideologies I believe this and you believe that and these things clash and I'm right and you're wrong

00:18:08.580 and no matter and there's no evidence no evidence is required how can you run a university on the basis of

00:18:15.140 you know saying that the earth is flat or all kinds of things without uh people actually saying okay

00:18:21.540 demonstrate to me uh why that claim is true here all we're asking is for demonstration of the truth

00:18:29.300 of that claim now on the positive side I think increasingly we've got a group of about 20 people

00:18:36.260 that are working on this issue and increasingly it seems to me that um more people are actually uh

00:18:44.820 scratching their head and beginning to ask questions uh the sales of um of the book um

00:18:52.100 grave error that Tom Flanagan and and Chris Champion uh through the support of uh True North

00:19:00.420 published is uh evidence I think that increasingly Canadians are becoming uh concerned about this issue

00:19:06.900 and want to know what the other side of the argument is I think that's a good thing but I wish we could

00:19:12.420 persuade some of the politicians to at least scratch their head and to get off the bandwagon uh that

00:19:20.020 is going in in probably the wrong direction we're not exactly sure that it's the wrong direction but we

00:19:25.780 need to debate it in order to figure out what is in fact true you know there are issues facing every type

00:19:32.820 of group in this country just as there are issues facing indigenous Canadians I don't believe that

00:19:38.500 residential school denialism is one of those issues and what would be a better source of time and effort

00:19:44.900 from the government uh in order to try to address indigenous issues than pursuing criminalizing speech

00:19:51.300 regarding residential schools what are some of the issues that are facing indigenous Canadians that the

00:19:56.340 government should prioritize well I think uh uh doing a really good assessment of uh the economic

00:20:04.180 prospects and uh and the behavior of Aboriginal people and helping them uh get out of in many cases uh 1.00

00:20:12.020 really desperate uh situations on really very small reserves with very a few jobs and very uh little

00:20:19.220 opportunities and getting uh children increasingly more children are going to school but getting uh children

00:20:25.940 through into school and through school without using affirmative action that uh stigmatizes that can

00:20:33.060 stigmatize uh those children I think that would be a much more profitable way and I wish the chiefs and 0.98

00:20:39.940 and and uh newspaper reporters and and the government would certainly uh turn their attention to that kind of

00:20:46.180 an issue when you go downtown in Winnipeg and you see you know Aboriginal people on the street corner and

00:20:53.220 children um that are not going to school they're not you know doing the things that they should be doing

00:20:59.300 but taking drugs and things like that it's it's very depressing and and that should be that should be

00:21:05.620 fixed rather than you know going after people who question residential school but there's a whole industry now

00:21:11.940 with I'll cut 320 million dollars tied up that that can be accessed by making these kinds of claims and

00:21:19.140 saying that that there are children buried outside of various residential school properties in in our

00:21:26.420 country and you know to think about that that the the think that there are 300 million there's 300

00:21:32.740 million dollars of taxpayer money going to this when it could be going to people who genuinely need

00:21:38.260 the help and the assistance on an actual day-to-day basis is is actually quite disgusting uh uh professor I

00:21:44.580 know you are working on a book right now about residential schools can you tell our audience a

00:21:49.620 little more about that and uh where they can pre-order that book yeah the the book is called uh from

00:21:56.180 truth comes reconciliation an assessment and uh the first edition was published by frontier second and

00:22:03.460 the second edition is going to be published uh by um uh summer oh my gosh summerland house press

00:22:14.180 and um it can be or ordered uh through contacting uh the frontier center uh for public policy uh at uh in

00:22:24.660 winnipeg uh fcpp.org so people can get it there and also grave errors the one that uh uh true north was

00:22:36.980 involved in with uh dorchester review true north is our uh that book has been unbelievably positive so

00:22:45.460 what we do in in our book is we summarize at the very beginning the history uh coming up to the truth

00:22:51.220 and reconciliation commission and then we do a nice summary of uh what the results were and then we got

00:22:57.700 uh a section on uh critics uh criticisms of the of the report and then we got personal reflections in

00:23:07.060 which by my reflection and some other people uh reflections of being working in in these schools

00:23:12.500 uh are reported and then we've got a conclusion on what we suggest should be done in the future instead

00:23:19.460 of uh digging this pit and and hoping uh more people fall into it absolutely well professor that

00:23:28.820 is all the time we have for today if you enjoyed that interview and want to read more about this

00:23:33.860 subject you can find a professor clifton's essay in c2c journal a link to the article you can also find in

00:23:40.420 in the description of this video professor clifton thank you so much for joining us thank you

Juno News - September 02, 2024

Former residential schools worker criticizes far-left ＂denier＂ narrative

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript