The Critical Compass Podcast - March 20, 2026


Independence Offers Indigenous Albertans an Incredible Opportunity ｜ Leighton Grey

Mentioned
Jordan Peterson Sturgeon Lake
Leighton Grey - Alberta Independence Movement Forces us to Define Our Values How Faith & Freedom Will Build a Prosperous Independent Alberta ｜ Leighton Grey

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

160.0

Word count

1,642

Sentence count

29

Harmful content

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we are joined by First Nations activist and author, Bruce Parry. We discuss the current state of relations between First Nations people and the white settler-colonialist establishment in Canada, the role of Indigenous peoples, and the need for Indigenous people to stop being lied to each other about their history.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This idea that Canada is a colonial society, this idea that we are a fundamentally racist society,
00:00:08.900 the importation of critical race theory, which is, as you know, is an American concept that
00:00:14.200 really is specific to the African-American experience there. The liberals wanted to
00:00:20.460 import that to Canada and they've succeeded and they've done it through propaganda and frankly
00:00:25.660 lying. Uh, a lot of the stuff that is said about Indian residential schools in terms of it being
00:00:31.300 a genocide is blatant lies. And the problem is always, uh, in Canada, it seems these days is,
00:00:38.280 you know, how do we live not by lies? You know, how do we become a truthful, because part of being
00:00:43.320 a good society is we have to have a truthful society. And it's very, very difficult with
00:00:47.520 the media and government and all of our institutions propagating, constantly propagating
00:00:53.300 these myths these lies about canada that aren't true and about our people um even about our own
00:00:59.220 people you know the the dirtiest thing and i talk about this in my speech the dirtiest most awful 0.84
00:01:04.380 thing that is done through this this whole uh lie this ideology of critical race theory is it paints
00:01:12.380 the indian as a victim when i say indian i mean you know indigenous people the first nations people
00:01:18.220 of canada uh that is a that is a terrible enslaving thing to do um because it removes agency first of
00:01:28.000 all and it removes responsibility for our own lives and our own people and i can tell you most
00:01:34.140 of the people i know who are first nations people uh that they don't see themselves as victims they
00:01:39.340 don't want to be seen as victims uh you know they they don't want that label whatsoever
00:01:44.660 but um i think the challenge now because of this division the sort of indian white division has
00:01:50.340 been there uh for so long the challenge is you know how do we bridge that and i think the the
00:01:56.340 first step to doing that is we stop lying to each other about our history because the real history
00:02:01.620 of north america uh and which is the whole basis for thanksgiving you know the the holiday that we
00:02:08.180 celebrate is uh really is a is cooperation primarily that's been the history of indian
00:02:15.540 content or indian white contact has been has been cooperation and and collaboration that the european
00:02:23.460 peoples could not have survived here without the assistance and cooperation of the indigenous 0.97
00:02:28.580 peoples of north america and by the same token uh the the net contribution of european contact
00:02:36.580 to indigenous peoples it's astronomical like we're talking about in canada indigenous peoples
00:02:42.660 of canada prior to white conduct didn't even have the wheel we're talking about people who were five
00:02:48.100 and ten thousand years behind you know in terms of civilization and and so what i try to tell
00:02:55.060 people is is look we got to stop lying to each other about the history of this country and we
00:03:01.460 got to get back to telling real stories and the real story of canada and of alberta for that
00:03:05.540 matter is cooperation you know the indian people are not other they're not separate they're human
00:03:11.940 beings uh they they live in families they live in communities they want safe streets and good
00:03:17.220 health care and and all of that they want the same things that other albertans want and uh you know
00:03:22.820 i think um it's the people who are trying to divide and set us against each other that's the
00:03:29.140 real problem but i think to answer your question we've got to stop we're going to start by just
00:03:33.940 you know, do what Jordan Peterson says in his book, 12 rules for life, you know, tell the truth,
00:03:38.840 or at least don't lie. Uh, you know, that's such an important point that you bring up and, and it's,
00:03:44.540 and it's something that, um, you know, we've had Bruce party on this show and, uh, and of course,
00:03:49.800 yeah. And, and one of his fundamental contentions is that he, he fears that, that an independent
00:03:59.160 in Alberta, sort of like you said earlier, would repeat some of the same issues that
00:04:05.480 plague Canada as a whole right now.
00:04:07.380 And one of those issues that he sees is the, um, the continued, uh, enshrinement of these
00:04:15.060 othering laws, um, where that set the indigenous apart from the, from the white man, if you
00:04:21.000 will.
00:04:21.620 Yeah.
00:04:21.820 Um, do you have a firm opinion on that either way?
00:04:25.860 Like when let's, let's put ourselves in, you know, let's say that we have a, we have a successful referendum for independence in October.
00:04:32.900 We're working out the terms of, of the peaceful divorce as it were.
00:04:36.640 Yeah.
00:04:37.320 Yeah.
00:04:37.640 And what do you, what would you ideally like to see happen?
00:04:41.360 Would you like to see the, the treaties essentially switch administration from a, from a federal to a provincial?
00:04:47.900 Would you like to see them abolished entirely?
00:04:50.080 Would you like to see them rewritten?
00:04:51.200 like what in your ideal world what happens with the existing agreements that we have with with
00:04:56.160 the indigenous bands right now well uh firstly i agree with bruce that it would be a horrific mistake 1.00
00:05:02.400 to to bring one of the worst things that the canadian government ever did uh which is to
00:05:09.440 segregate and create essentially a canadian form of apartheid that's what we have in this country 0.85
00:05:14.560 um now this gets sold to indians as some sort of entitlement you know as some sort of special
00:05:21.520 status but if you gentlemen go to most first nations communities in this country it looks like
00:05:28.200 the third world so uh on every metric in terms of education health care longevity strength of
00:05:36.020 families number of alcoholism drug abuse a number of of prostitution child trafficking
00:05:43.180 our prison populations indigenous peoples are losing on every single metric at the very very
00:05:50.360 bottom so this special status of indians is not working out very well for them is it 1.00
00:05:56.400 there seems to be a more subtle agenda in fact that might be the real genocide that's facing
00:06:04.400 indian people i happen to think so and so coming back to your point about bruce party who i respect
00:06:09.280 very much. He's quite right. What an opportunity a renovated Alberta presents. We have this clean
00:06:19.640 slate. We have the ability to refashion a society, to take the best parts of Canada,
00:06:28.180 the best parts of the way Alberta is right now. And we have the opportunity also to delete the
00:06:34.280 parts that we don't like that aren't working very well. And, you know, Alberta is a great example
00:06:40.020 of what I'm talking about, because if you compare the treatment of the Métis peoples of Alberta,
00:06:47.100 okay, versus how First Nations people are treated by Canada, wow, there's a quantum difference
00:06:53.960 there. The Métis peoples of Alberta and Manitoba is another fine example. You know, they're
00:07:01.420 actually exercising uh true self-governance in a cooperative fashion now i'm not saying that
00:07:08.060 everything is shangri-la in metis communities but it's a much better model to work with
00:07:13.160 i think we have to we have to renovate this you know a lot of people don't understand
00:07:17.960 what's going on in first nations communities um these are these are centers for uh for crime 0.99
00:07:25.020 uh for drug production drug trafficking human trafficking and money laundering there's a reason
00:07:33.340 why it's considered racist uh why the auditor general can't audit the way money is spent
00:07:40.140 on an Indian reserve uh it's because Indian reserves have been used for money laundering
00:07:45.780 by the federal government for a very very long time I can tell you that on personal experience
00:07:50.820 because my first law job was in the federal government of of was for the federal department
00:07:56.260 of justice when john kretchen was a newly minted prime minister and it was going on then i could
00:08:02.100 tell you stories uh you would you you would not believe um we have to get rid of this uh reserve 0.99
00:08:08.660 system altogether uh but it has to be done in consultation with indigenous peoples but it's
00:08:13.780 important for people who are listening to this uh or watching this to understand that
00:08:18.660 But the people who are out front, for example, the chief of Sturgeon Lake, who's suing the
00:08:26.960 government of Alberta because we're going to have a referendum, those people don't accurately
00:08:31.680 represent the feelings and the sentiments of Indigenous peoples in Alberta.
00:08:36.360 These people are paid.
00:08:37.700 They're paid well by NGOs.
00:08:41.220 And so they're the spokespeople.
00:08:42.740 They're the people we hear.
00:08:43.640 They're the barking dogs, but they're not really the voice of Indigenous peoples. 1.00
00:08:47.960 but unfortunately they do a pretty good job of giving the false impression to non-indigenous
00:08:53.640 people what indigenous people are already thinking but when you go to communities and you actually
00:08:58.320 talk to first nations peoples uh it becomes clear to you very very quickly that they're just like
00:09:04.840 you and me they just want all they want all the same things everybody else wants and um you know
00:09:09.880 this sort of historical cultural identity uh is something that the importance of it is very much
00:09:15.760 inflated uh it doesn't put food on your table uh it doesn't give you a decent job it doesn't give
00:09:21.200 you a decent education it doesn't really do much to take care of your health these are all things
00:09:26.640 that all everybody in alberta and i believe most people in canada want they're being denied to the
00:09:32.000 indian in this country and have been for a long time but not by the racist white population it's
00:09:37.440 not whitey that's doing it it's that government in ottawa that's been doing it since long before 1867. 0.60
00:09:45.760 Transcription by CastingWords