00:02:34.560Today, I will be reintroducing my bill to recognize residential school denialism as a form of inciting hate.
00:02:45.220You know, it's been over a decade since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada.
00:02:52.340And since that time, we have seen, since the discovery of unmarked graves, an increase in denialism about what occurred in the residential schools.
00:03:11.260So in the spirit of civil discussion, I thought I would have on my friend Michelle Sterling, who is a bit of an independent researcher on this topic, to discuss the truth about residential schools in Canada.
00:11:46.160And I want to just read this one passage, if I may.
00:11:49.120You know, because of the confusion in the public now and the polarization on this issue, let's just think about what Yuri Bezmenov, ex-KGB agent, said in 1984 when he defected to the West.
00:12:02.920He said, ideological subversion or psychological warfare changes the perception of reality to such an extent that despite an abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country.
00:12:24.080And I think we see that very clearly right now, where, you know, politicians are afraid to speak up because they might get cancelled culture, like Senator Lynn Bayack did.
00:12:38.040And ordinary people are afraid to speak up.
00:12:40.440They might lose their job, like Dr. Francis Whittowson did at Mount Royal University.
00:12:46.240and many of the former priests and nuns and staff are afraid to speak up because they actually fear
00:12:55.440for their lives. So yeah this is an issue that's tearing Canada apart. It sure is. I mean you can't
00:13:04.180even talk about this on places that are supposed to be places of debate like university campuses.1.00
00:13:10.040Frances Whittowson is routinely assaulted on university campuses. Our Drea Humphrey when she1.00
00:13:15.740went there with tom flanagan to the university of calgary they were assaulted somebody threw
00:13:20.680water on them thank god it was just water but that's still an assault and all they were there
00:13:26.520to say was if this was a genocide tell us how it was a genocide and they weren't even allowed to
00:13:33.960have that discussion and what we were talking before we hit record what a lot of people don't
00:13:40.160know, is many of these claims have been previously investigated by law enforcement, and no criminality
00:13:50.580was found to have taken place. There are no names of anybody murdered. That's right. In an eight-year
00:14:00.140period leading up to about 2003, in British Columbia, the RCMP investigated, and they even
00:14:07.240had Indigenous assistants. So it wasn't just the RCMP, you know, going and making a fake
00:14:13.080investigation. They had Indigenous people working with them. Charlene Bellew was one of them.
00:14:19.720And they investigated claims from 15 different schools across British Columbia. One of them was
00:14:26.040Cooper Island, where they said the knowledge keeper said, oh, they're buried babies here in
00:14:30.740the yard. They went to the yard and wherever the knowledge keeper said to dig, they dug no evidence.
00:14:36.960So there was, I think, one or two claims that came out of it.
00:14:41.260One was related to a fellow named Arthur Plint,
00:14:44.080and he was charged, I believe, with about 31 counts of indecent assault.
00:15:06.420because he went to jail on his own accord. And even in jail, you know, he didn't seem to
00:15:11.600understand the consequences of what was happening to him. He didn't go to the retraining courses.
00:15:17.360And, you know, it's not clear. I'm not excusing what happened if it happened. I'm simply saying
00:15:24.360that we don't have that proof there. But there are some cases that were proven as sexual assault,
00:15:30.600but really proportionately very, very small.
00:15:34.080And although we're often cited as 4,000 deaths and could be more,
00:15:39.080first of all, think we had 139 residential schools over 113 years.
00:15:47.480Even if it was, tragically, 4,000 deaths, this would be a minuscule percentage of attendees.
00:15:55.120Secondly, the actual truth and reconciliation reports say that 423 children died at Indian residential schools over that vast period of time, which it's sad, but it does happen.
00:16:11.980one, for instance, at Kamloops, 51 children died, but only two died at the school. The rest died
00:16:20.220off-site, and this is what people have to understand about how the TRC set up the death
00:16:25.440ratios. They calculated any death related to a child who had died within a year of being discharged
00:16:34.700from the school. So even if you were in a traffic accident, if you were shot, if you died of alcohol
00:16:41.080poisoning, if you were hit by a train, that was counted as an Indian residential school death.
00:16:47.240So and again, we don't have a list of children alleged to be missing. And even in Senate
00:16:53.720testimony, the John K. Eunice, I believe his name is the coroner for the province of Manitoba said
00:17:01.880to them, you know, we can't search the records if we don't have a list of names. So there's no list
00:17:08.120of names um pine creek wasn't the only place where excavation happened and the you know the
00:17:20.020local rumors didn't manifest into any sort of criminal uh charge the same thing happened in
00:17:26.660edmonton a lot of people don't know this it happened in edmonton at the charles council
00:17:30.520hospital it was a tuberculosis hospital by the way where uh indigenous people from the north
00:17:37.020would come for tuberculosis treatment because tuberculosis was a real problem then the developer
00:17:42.540of the property who is turning it into residential homes was approached by people within the
00:17:48.620indigenous community and they said you know we think there are bodies on the property he said
00:17:53.040let's excavate and guess what they found absolutely nothing and i thought the guy's response at the
00:18:00.000end of it all not the developer but the activist his response was well then they moved the bodies
00:18:05.280He just couldn't let go of this tragedy that wasn't.
00:18:10.920Well, that's a known psychological phenomenon that Leo Festinger and others investigated back in, I think it was the 70s.
00:18:23.580And they infiltrated a doomsday cult that believed the world would end in a big flood.
00:18:31.260and people had sold all their stuff and they were just waiting for that day that had been
00:18:35.720predicted by their guru. The day came and went and nothing happened. So you would think at that
00:18:41.440point people would then dissipate and say, oh my gosh, you know, we were misled or I was so swept
00:18:46.560up in the emotion and the fear. I went along with it, but I didn't mean to. No, actually a handful
00:18:52.720of people did step away quietly, embarrassed, but most of the people clung even tighter to their
00:18:59.060goals, to their beliefs. And so when prophecy fails, most people don't give up. And, you know,
00:19:06.360as I read you about the ideological subversion, you know, people are so
00:19:11.740psychologically affected, they really cannot make common sense judgments anymore. Or they can't even
00:19:21.780step back and say, you know what, I'm not sure what's happening here. But I'm not going to jump
00:19:26.920on either side. I'm going to investigate more. So, and it doesn't help that we have highly funded
00:19:33.780people like Sean Carlton and Negan Sinclair and a bevy of people like Andrew Wilkford from the
00:19:41.900University of Manitoba, a federally tax-funded and provincially tax-funded organization pushing
00:19:48.500this genocide narrative. And if you read this new book that's out, it's actually really sickening.
00:19:56.000because there's no mention in here of the 400 churches that have been burned down.
00:20:01.760There's no mention in here that 23 million Christians and Catholics
00:20:05.380are being demeaned and denigrated and living in fear, many of them,
00:20:09.680that their church will be burned down.
00:20:11.500But there's mention that, oh, yes, we have to protect survivors of residential schools.
00:20:16.580So they're talking about the 6,500 or so people who came forward
00:20:22.140to give their statements to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
00:20:25.480but most people don't know that the Truth and Reconciliation intentionally cut the budget of
00:20:33.640the two women who were supposed to do interviews with former clergy and staff priests and nuns
00:20:39.260they cut it from a hundred thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars and told the women that these
00:20:44.880interviews would not be transcribed so that means we're missing more than half the story
00:20:50.640Because most of the children in the later days of the Indian residential school system, most of them were child welfare, meaning, you know, they were children from disrupted families, they were orphans, children at risk of neglect.
00:21:07.480and many of the stories that they tell are likely related to those drastic circumstances having
00:21:15.340witnessed some traumatic event or been part of it being taken from their home in that case to save
00:21:21.340their lives and right you know if if you're an orphan and suddenly the people you love are gone
00:21:28.360and then the only place for you is a residential school of course that would be traumatic
00:21:32.960Of course, you would have visions of graves and dead people, perhaps even murders, depending on what your family was up to when you were taken away.
00:21:42.760But, you know, these things are not taken into account.
00:21:45.400And Thompson Highway, who was a residential school student, he claims that we heard 7,000 sad stories, but we didn't hear 7,000 good ones.
00:21:55.440And for my part, when I was doing documentaries for CTV in Calgary back in the 80s, Dr. Hugh Dempsey was my research supervisor.
00:22:06.600He was the son-in-law of Senator James Gladstone, who was the first Indigenous senator and graduate of an Indian residential school.
00:22:15.700And you know what Senator Gladstone did?
00:22:17.880He sent his daughter, Pauline, to Indian residential school.
00:22:21.980And for the most part, she found it okay.
00:22:24.340You know, she had some complaints. Everybody does if they're in an institution of any kind. But she also went home frequently. And, you know, she became a very capable, wonderful person who was actually married to Hugh Dempsey by the person who was the principal of the school, who was Reverend DeWolf.
00:22:48.440And, you know, it's a very happy story in that case.
00:22:53.340So we can't keep going on about all the horrible things without the historical context.
00:22:58.840And as I showed you one book, I want to show people other books.
00:23:14.220Really, I think as a country, we need to see this as a geopolitical threat. If you go back to 1970s, you know, recently there has been news about the RCMP having surveilled George Manuel back in the day, in the 1970s.
00:23:31.200Well, people don't know that back in that time, Manuel and his secretary, Marie Smallface Marul, met her life partner while stationed in Zambia.
00:23:47.480And this was a very radical group there.
00:23:51.660in in in tanzania tanzania was aligned with china which from 1970 to 1975 financed and helped build
00:24:02.120this railway there well in canada there was a black panther alliance with canada's native
00:24:08.420alliance for red power north yeah and you know what arthur manuel who was in indian residential
00:24:14.840school why because his parents marriage was breaking up and his father was constantly
00:24:20.000traveling the country, handing out this Native Alliance for Red Power material,
00:24:26.380Arthur, as a young man, as a child at school, contacted NARP and said, you know, the food is
00:24:32.500horrible here in this institution, come and save me. And they actually did. So, you know, very early
00:24:37.580on, the Black Panthers in the U.S. were buying copies of Mao's Little Red Book and selling them
00:24:43.560for three times the cost to raise money for weapons.
00:24:47.560So Edgar J. Hoover at that time deemed the Black Panther Party without question
00:24:53.680represented the greatest threat to internal security of the country.
00:24:58.740They are schooled in Marxist-Leninist ideology
00:25:01.140and the teachings of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong.
00:25:04.800And most people don't know that in 1971,
00:25:07.720a contingent of Indigenous people from BC went to China on China's dime.
00:25:16.120People have forgotten it back in 1963 to 1970, during this same time period.
00:25:23.140That was when the FLQ was rampant in Quebec, domestic terrorism.
00:25:28.120So, you know, these are not issues that should be forgotten.
00:25:32.420And they're being sidelined with this whole genocide claim.
00:25:35.640But, you know, really, I see this as a geopolitical war against the West.
00:25:40.980And if you look at the banners that these people put up, you know, from Turtle Island to Palestine, the land will be free, you know, the land back.
00:25:52.800This is a red-green alliance, and it's much larger than the issue of whether or not some individuals at residential schools suffered personally, and many did.
00:26:03.200I don't know if you saw a video from Tristan Hopper from the National Post, and he did a great video trying to explain where the idea of Turtle Island came from.
00:26:16.720And he says it's it's really just a modern activist invention.
00:26:28.100Yeah, Gary Snyder was a beat poet in San Francisco.
00:26:31.140Actually, Terry Glavan also told me that.
00:26:33.700So, yeah, there was a tribe, I think, down east, I don't remember which one, that did have this sort of idea of Turtle Island as part of their creation mythology.
00:26:42.600But Gary Snyder blew it up to, you know, in the New Age era of the 70s as a beat poet.
00:26:49.680It really took off because of his poetry book.
00:26:54.280But, you know, Gary Snyder was a settler, Scottish, English, Welsh background.
00:27:02.020You can read his heritage on Wikipedia.
00:27:16.160He said that he has a lot of people coming to him asking him to unleash their repressed memories of residential school because the only thing they can remember are good things, but they figured that such bad things must have happened that they've been suppressed so much they need special unlocking.
00:27:36.680And he said, you know, the problem with that is that this makes these people very vulnerable to the white psychologists who've been indoctrinated at university about the so-called horrors of Indian residential schools.
00:27:49.780And then these people are easily led into believing, you know, what is it called?
00:27:55.660They're contrived memories, you know, they're made up memories.
00:27:59.280Implanted memories akin to this satanic panic mania.
00:28:02.860um exactly yes and during the satanic panic there was a psychologist from the states who testified
00:28:09.880that uh you know with the right kind of prompting people can be made to remember lots of things that
00:28:16.100never happened that's why eyewitness testimony you know leah gazan is always saying we have to
00:28:22.320believe survivors but sadly even uh legal people and psychologists know that eyewitness testimony
00:28:29.980is one of the worst forms of credible testimony, because your mind is malleable. And so over time,
00:28:38.760you know, your mind can change what happened in the past. And, you know, hundreds of people have
00:28:44.640gone to jail because of eyewitness testimony that was false. And that's effectively what's
00:28:51.260happening to Canada. We're being condemned as genocide heirs, when it's based on statements
00:28:59.000from people who, by the way, many of the people, I believe, who testified, or they didn't testify,
00:29:05.260they offered their recollections to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, many of those people
00:29:10.000had previously been recipients of thousands of dollars from the independent assessment process.
00:29:19.300And if you go back to Maclean's Magazine 2006, you'll find a story about the Tony Merchant firm
00:29:26.420in Saskatchewan, who anticipated making, as a lawyer, $100 million off Indian residential school
00:29:34.300claims. And he and his firm and other firms had sent around all kinds of forms to reserves
00:29:44.700saying, you know, please fill out your name. And then here are some questions, you know,
00:29:49.700were you sexually abused? How many times were you penetrated? What was the damage to you?
00:29:55.120You know, they're basically leading the witness, because if you have more pain and suffering, then you get higher compensation, and so does the lawyer.
00:30:05.640Now, some people may say, oh, Michelle, that's cruel and wrong. You're just making that up.
00:30:10.240There is a decision from the BC Law Society that came out actually on the same day that the Kamloops ban made their claim.
00:30:19.200And you can read it online. CBC even covered it. I'll send you the link.
00:30:22.500they found that one lawyer in DC had hired a convicted paroled killer to help people fill
00:30:30.220out their forms and at some point they started being alarmed because people were phoning saying
00:30:35.800by the way when my money comes in make sure you put this much aside for so-and-so who helped me
00:30:41.500fill out my forms or others were phoning saying hey this guy just took me to the ATM and demanded
00:30:46.980money. So anyway, they found that the lawyer had made a mistake by hiring this convicted paroled
00:30:52.880killer to help people fill out forms. The man was put back in jail with no charges, no trial,
00:30:59.460but he was re-incarcerated when this news surfaced. That lawyer made more than $10 million
00:31:04.980in compensation, and the people who made claims of his 624 clients, their claims were on average
00:31:16.380$21,000 higher than the average claim across Canada. So, you know, that suggests
00:31:23.960that some of these claims were ginned up. And the thing is, all of the IAP process was
00:31:30.160completely confidential. So, if it's so confidential, then, you know, who's going to
00:31:35.840check, right? And it was not, you know, many people think that the independent assessment process was
00:31:41.980done in a court of law. It was not. It was done in sort of private consultation. People who were
00:31:48.640accused were not allowed the right to defend themselves in court. It was a total breach of
00:31:54.540due process of law. There are 5,315 ordinary Canadians in Canada who now stand accused
00:32:01.620because of the IAP process who cannot clear their names. They're stuck in a Kafkaesque kind of limbo
00:32:08.380because the people who made complaints against them the adjudication was on based on probability
00:32:16.360not on evidence okay so on the basis of probability there is one case that Ronald
00:32:22.520Nisen writes about in his book Truth and Indignation and he said that there was a priest
00:32:28.360who was at theological college in Ontario who was accused by someone and I think in Saskatchewan
00:32:34.660of having abused him. Well, the guy wasn't even in Saskatchewan. So on the basis of probability,
00:32:41.980the adjudicator said, well, I don't know, it could have happened. And the fellow went, I think,
00:32:46.700$100,000, something like that. So, you know, this is really a contrived, mixed up, messy process.
00:32:54.720And if anything, we need a national inquiry into all of these omissions and travesties,
00:33:02.660rather than a national inquiry or condemnation over genocide.
00:33:08.020Michelle, I know that you have another interview, so we have to wrap it up.
00:33:12.720But you write extensively on this issue.
00:33:17.780I think it's just because of your personal quest for truth and making sure the truth is out there.
00:33:23.860I think it leads a lot of your career.
00:34:28.200I think it's the many years, decades, of thousands of Indigenous people dying, either of epidemics, being orphaned, the present fentanyl crisis, alcohol poisoning, suicides, unreserved homicides.
00:34:45.380Sexual assault unreserved is astronomical.
00:34:50.320Yeah, these are terrible, terrible situations.
00:34:53.500I think that ambiguous losses, unresolved grief, are a large part of what's driving this community.