00:13:04.680That's when I began to be interested in history.
00:13:07.600Subsequently, I met Claude Fournier and Marie-Josée Raymond at the Banff Film Festival, and we became interested in doing a miniseries about the RCMP Trek West to stop the American whiskey traders who were actually creating an actual genocide against the Blackfoot Nation.0.68
00:13:31.140And so they drove the whiskey traders out, and Chief Curlfoot was very grateful for that.
00:13:37.160And that's in part why he signed Treaty 7, because he saw that they came west with good intentions and that they were beneficial to his people, saved his people, actually.
00:13:49.200So the history of... I'm sorry, go ahead.
00:13:51.120Okay. So, you know, if we skip a few years ahead, you know, this whole idea of genocide, cultural genocide started tumbling out around the time of the Truth and Reconciliation Reports. I wrote a couple of op-eds on that. But, you know, I didn't think it would gain any traction.
00:14:08.220And then after this claim on May 27, 2021, of finding supposedly 215 mass graves or human remains, children as young as three, buried by children as young as six, that didn't sit well with me.
00:14:29.380Within about two months of that, I wrote my first article on this particular topic, and I conceded that perhaps a mass grave had been found, but if so, it was more likely due to some kind of epidemic like the Spanish flu, cholera, typhus, tuberculosis, but then it just completely blew up in the media.
00:14:52.340Yeah. Yeah. So you're steeped in knowledge on this. And Michelle and I were talking before we
00:14:58.080started the show today, you guys, I mean, you know, I'm going to date myself here. You guys
00:15:01.460all know how old I am anyway, so it doesn't matter. But graduating high school in 1982,
00:15:07.220I've always been a history buff. I've always enjoyed reading about certain aspects of history,
00:15:13.560not all of it, obviously, because there is a lot to absorb. But in school, we never learned
00:15:19.560one thing about residential schools at all. And as I look back on it now, it amazes me because0.53
00:15:28.420in Manitoba, this is the bastion or one of the bastions in the entire country of First Nations1.00
00:15:34.180people. We have more First Nations people in this province than any other per capita in the country
00:15:40.100and the home birthplace of Louis Riel, for goodness sakes. I mean, you know, who was a
00:15:45.980villain and then became a hero then was a villain again and then became a hero however you look back
00:15:50.960at the history of Louis Riel and the Northwest Rebellion and all of that you would think
00:15:54.900that there would be some semblance you know going back to the late 70s of residential schools being
00:16:03.240taught in public schools and yet no so when all of this information first came out and started
00:16:10.660coming out in in the left-wing corporate media in the 1990s i was kind of surprised and taken
00:16:17.240aback by going wait residential schools what's that right and so you read about it and it's0.75
00:16:22.100history of brutality and you wonder okay is that absolutely true did and and then of course gordon
00:16:30.800he came out with that piece before he died obviously from the tragically hip about 10
00:16:35.220years ago about one lone indigenous boy's trek to try and find his home i'm not sure if you ever
00:16:40.620watched the CBC series called Anne with an E. It was the story of Anne of Green Gables. And in
00:16:47.880season three, they go on about residential schools. And yeah, it seemed to me that they were trying
00:16:56.880to change history, but I'm not exactly sure of the history of this. So residential schools were
00:17:04.640created by the canadian government to assimilate indigenous children into the european way of life
00:17:13.580correct well i would say it was they were developed in conjunction with the local tribal
00:17:23.940leaders and chiefs as a way to prepare the children for a changing world because um you know if you
00:17:33.860look at the plains people, the Blackfoot Nation, they were kings of the plains as long as they
00:17:40.120were buffalo and they were free to ride. But what people don't realize is that in the United States,
00:17:46.000they were conducting Indian wars from 1644 to 1924. So Native people were no longer just free
00:17:55.140to ride down there and pursue the buffalo because settlers were moving across the United States and
00:18:03.080staking claims on land that had not been ceded they had no treaties happening down there
00:18:08.360so you know someone would stake a claim start putting up their little cabin
00:18:13.860native people would arrive and say hey what are you doing on our land and somebody would shoot
00:18:18.840somebody and terrible things would happen the cavalry would roll in so this was like a repeating
00:18:25.480pattern. So, you know, that wasn't happening in this part of the world, because we didn't have
00:18:33.980that kind of relationship with Native people. Like, Canadians had always had friendly trading
00:18:39.800relationships with very few exceptions, and both parties saw an economic benefit from it. So
00:18:46.600the idea of a residential school came up when, as the buffalo diminished, and there were
00:18:55.460restrictions on travel it was obvious that the people on the plains would have to live a new
00:19:00.940way of life they'd have to learn about farming and agriculture rather than chasing their food
00:19:07.640they'd have to create it and so these schools were set up and there was a successful one already
00:19:13.320running in the east and the Mohawk surveyor who was a graduate of the Mohawk Institute
00:19:20.200wrote to sir john a mcdonald and he said please bring the chiefs east and show them that you know
00:19:28.040what the children will learn where they would be how life is developing and he also said and show
00:19:34.460them that you don't want to exterminate them you know because that's what was happening in the
00:19:39.320united states and that's why the medicine line you know the border between the states and canada
00:19:45.120was known as the medicine line with good medicine to the north and bad medicine to the south
00:19:50.380so that's yeah and that's also why after um custer was massacred at little bighorn
00:19:58.160sitting bull and his people hightailed it for canada across the border and we gave them asylum
00:20:04.660and they were greeted by like two mounties you know and they were pursued by the u.s cavalry so
00:20:10.980you know you can see the trust that the native people had in the mounties because they could
00:20:16.600have just crossed the border and killed the mounties but you know the local chief said no
00:20:21.540anyway chief crowfoot and chief uh red crow and a few others went on this loyalty tour as it was
00:20:29.580called to the east they went by train they saw the mohawk institute they saw the children had
00:20:35.620learned all these different skills. I think it was Chief Red Crow who was given a pair of
00:20:41.460knitted red mittens, and he really liked them. Apparently, he wore them through the whole trip.
00:20:47.520And they both, when they came back, they said, yes, let's build a school like that for our
00:20:54.760children. So people say, oh, you know, the separation of the families was a terrible thing.
00:22:08.620In the early days, you know, first of all, it was very disciplinary
00:22:14.920in terms of spare the rod, spoil the child,
00:22:18.940which was a very different way of raising children.
00:22:22.360than would be in a family context in a tribal setting where, you know, the village also took care of the children and people, you know, kind of lived free and they didn't have this time sequence that Western culture has.
00:22:41.440Now, many of the children, most of the children, in fact, their families had already converted to Christianity, Catholicism, or Anglican, or Methodist, Presbyterian.
00:22:53.200And this is something that activists twist all the time and say, oh, well, they forced religion on them.
00:22:59.540Well, no, it's just like today, if you're a Catholic parent, you would prefer to send your child to a Catholic school.
00:23:08.800And you can see on the admission forms, it asks what kind of religion the family follows, what denomination, and, you know, be marked with RC for Roman Catholic, or C of E, Church of England, Anglican.
00:23:24.720So there were things that happened at many of the schools that were reprehensible, especially in the earliest days.
00:23:35.800but again you have to realize why did these churches inherit this task well the missionaries
00:23:45.360had already gone out into the plains and out into the mountainous areas and established relations
00:23:51.760with local tribes so first of all there was an existing relationship secondly most of the oblate
00:23:58.640fathers knew the languages of the native people many of them actually created diaries or sorry
00:24:06.380dictionaries and syllabic forms of writing to capture these languages so they wouldn't vanish
00:24:14.040so you had this infrastructure that the churches had already set up they knew the people they had
00:24:20.140the trust of the people and so they were entrusted with building schools but they weren't school
00:24:25.500teachers they were priests right and then nuns a lot of nuns yeah and the nuns were brought in
00:24:31.800subsequently because you know men normally would not be teaching young girls at that time there
00:24:37.880would be that separation so the nuns were brought in to teach the girls and to take care of things
00:24:44.720like cooking and teaching sewing and things like that in the schools and when you read the history
00:24:50.700of the nuns coming west and going to the north it's it's unbelievable what these women went
00:24:57.100through i mean yes the men also experienced that but they were you know adventuresome guys
00:25:03.280you know they were physically stronger but when you think of these nuns in their you know long
00:25:09.060habits going through muskeg you know um doing a portage like they went through incredible things
00:25:18.000just to come west and one of the first things he started doing was accepting orphans so you know
00:25:26.200being an orphan in a traditional native context was a very difficult thing because the tribes
00:25:34.040were quite subsistence level um for food and and survival so if you have this extra mouth to feed
00:25:41.320and nobody to go hunting for this extra mouth, that's a problem.
00:25:46.460Were orphans in Native tribes back in the day shunned?
00:26:26.040And you can see pictures of the nuns, you know, with 20, 30 girls that they'd adopted.
00:26:32.800And you can see that some of them are also disabled.
00:26:35.120and you can understand that in um you know in a very early time it would have been difficult for
00:26:41.000a tribe to deal with people who are disabled in any way um let me ask you because you know so far
00:26:49.360in this discussion we were early on in it um it sounds like it wasn't this horrible thing that
00:26:55.840it's been made out to be the residential schools and that most of the students were uh given up to
00:27:02.780the schools voluntarily by their parents you know like they were going on a hunt so when did this
00:27:09.000very negative narrative start to creep in and and we first started hearing about this as you pointed
00:27:17.080out uh with murray sinclair and i think it was phil fontaine back in the 1990s they were talking
00:27:22.000about the abuse they suffered at the hands of uh catholic nuns in the residential schools
00:27:26.900Was it the 60s scoop, or are there smatterings of this throughout the history?
00:27:33.320There are smatterings throughout the history, and there were real incidents that were sometimes, I would say, criminal in nature.
00:27:43.800There were a couple of quite sadistic people where there are records of, you know, very burdensome, bloody whippings, lashings.
00:27:57.520That's usually in the very early days.
00:28:00.620But there are also many records of people who had a wonderful time there.
00:28:05.780thompson highway who went to i think it was guy hill uh indian residential school when the truth
00:28:14.100and reconciliation reports came out he published an article in huff post and he said you've heard
00:28:20.400the 7 000 sad stories but you haven't heard the 7 000 happy ones like mine and he went on to say
00:28:27.840look you know i grew up in the high arctic and there's like it was a fabulous place to be like
00:28:34.380I own this big land you know I was the king of the land but you know there was no piano there1.00
00:28:40.520you know I could never have done all the things that I've done since going to Indian residential
00:28:46.740school and I had a great opportunity and I learned your language but you didn't learn mine you know
00:28:53.340so who really got privileged and so yeah and I think he was also abused at Indian residential
00:29:00.040school. I know I was just reading his book, Permanent Astonishment, and there was a staff
00:29:05.220member there. And this is also key. It was quite often staff members or, say, you know, laborers,
00:29:14.040helpers, who were the predatory people, not the nuns and priests. Anyway, there was a staff member
00:29:21.360there who was from a different tribal background and who despised him because he was somewhat
00:29:27.780effeminate and the part where i'm reading right now this guy just hammered in in the head knocked
00:29:34.040him out unconscious but again that seems to be more like a an individual personal conflict
00:29:43.660a sexuality thing as opposed to a race thing maybe right exactly and again we are going back
00:29:50.400in time 100 years well that wouldn't be 100 but it would be like easily 50 but um 50 still good
00:29:59.120enough for something like that yeah it would be uh sadly it would be consistent with many of the
00:30:05.140views of the time as well so uh you know uh thompson highway identifies as two-spirited
00:30:11.800so uh he's and he's an incredibly artistic person um and he as i said you know he was abused at the
00:30:21.980school um but he still says that it was the best thing that ever happened to him and um pauline
00:30:29.580dempsey gladstone who recently passed away the wife of dr uh hugh dempsey um
00:30:38.200And she wrote a story about her experience at the Anglican school and how, you know, it was hard to watch the fact that her parents were living just across the way and she couldn't just pop over there.
00:30:55.820But at the same time, she really appreciated how some of the teachers, you know, were very interested in the students, really dedicated to them.
00:31:05.820She does describe that she said she had not heard of any sexual abuse at that school, but she did note that the nuns kept the younger boys in the girls' dorm, you know, to keep them from the predatory older boys.
00:31:22.480And I think it's common knowledge that in boarding school situations, whether in Canada or in Britain, you know, this kind of Lord of the Flies bullying often exists.
00:37:18.820Well, you know, I can't say that I know that in depth.
00:37:22.480I think you'd have to talk with someone like Brian Giesbrecht,
00:37:26.420but it's certainly been going on for a long time that there were, you know,
00:37:32.140if you look at the Aboriginal industry,
00:37:35.140disrobing the Aboriginal industry, a book by Francis Whittowson,
00:37:38.920And, you know, she noted when she wrote it, which I think was around 2008, she and Albert Howard wrote it.
00:37:46.860She noted that for about 30 years, there had already been an Aboriginal industry of lawyers and consultants making land claims and all kinds of things from that time forward.
00:37:59.520Then there became additional claims related to things like the 60 scoop, to things like allegations of abuse at Indian residential schools, and some of those were sparked by unrelated things.
00:38:15.120Like, I would say one of the big turning points in Canada was the Mount Cashel orphanage scandal.
00:38:23.020And this was down in the Maritimes where an orphanage had been taking in children and the brothers who ran this facility, who were unrelated to the residential school operators in Canada, they were abusing the children.
00:39:11.700They built an industry on lies, it sounds like.
00:39:15.120Well, see, here's the problem. And I cover this in one of my articles called Canada's Darkest Secret, the myth of missing children.
00:39:28.340What happened is that for several years before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and before the compensation process, what's it called, the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, for several years before that, a group of lawyers had been trying to drum up class action lawsuits.
00:39:53.840So they were sending out questionnaires to people on reserve and they had a lot of leading questions in them, you know, so just sign up and please explain what did what kind of abuse did you suffer?
00:40:08.380You know, were you hit? Were you sexually abused? Did somebody poke their peepee here or there? And quite specific, right?
00:40:17.200So people began to understand, hey, wait a minute, you know, this sounds like if things are worse, we can make more money.
00:40:25.200And if you read, what's his name, Ronald Misen's book, which is called Truth and Indignation.
00:40:36.500He's a lawyer, a law professor, and an anthropologist.
00:40:40.740And he actually followed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission during its process.
00:40:46.480And he commented on how, prior to that, the residential school settlement process had really stimulated all kinds of claims, and then it got to what they called the independent assessment process.
00:41:00.200This was for individuals who had suffered the worst abuse at schools.
00:41:05.680They met privately with people, or they could submit a form.
00:41:09.480Anyway, in that process, he found that a lot of the intention was abused.
00:41:15.880The intention was that a person would not have to appear in court and, you know, feel that shame and embarrassment discussing private details.
00:41:27.260But what happened instead is that there was an adjudicator who decided the fate of the claim based on probability.
00:41:35.980Now, I happen to have a whole box of documents of this IAP process, and I can tell you that some of the claims that were made are absolutely ridiculous.0.98
00:41:45.880like kicked me in the ass when between 1958 and 19640.95
00:41:52.060right okay uh so you know the adjudicator could look at that and say oh well that sounds probable0.99
00:42:02.540you know here's your check uh my dad kicked me in the ass repeatedly when i was growing up i never0.56
00:42:08.900went to a lawyer that's right well and the thing is that the person accused this is called a person0.94
00:42:14.680of interest, the person accused could not defend themselves. They could engage a lawyer. They could
00:42:20.820write a comment about, you know, their rebuttal to whatever claim was against them. They could go
00:42:27.660and sit with the adjudicator in the adjudication process. The accuser did not have to be there,
00:42:36.660you know, which is, that is a fundamental principle of justice that was denied, because
00:42:42.820generally you need to to face your accuser right that's the idea of a court process um so that
00:42:50.420person didn't have to be there and once you were there you were no longer a defendant you could
00:42:55.640not speak up in your defense you were deemed to be a witness it's just the most crazy thing
00:43:03.560so if you read his book you'll find things like there were there were people who made claims that
00:43:09.000certain priests had abused this individual or a certain priest had abused this individual at a
00:43:15.660certain school that claimant was awarded a hundred thousand dollars that priest was still at
00:43:24.320theological college hundreds of miles away never at that school at that time but based on the
00:43:30.800probability it could have happened maybe he came for a visit this sounds like a kangaroo court
00:43:37.160system much like we've seen in the country in the past well yeah and you know the the problem with
00:43:44.720this whole process and not just that so this all preceded the truth and reconciliation commission
00:43:49.980so you can see that in this process people who made the bigger claims made more money literally
00:43:57.000they made more money and the lawyers had an interest in them making more money because they
00:44:02.820helped drive up the claim right so you can imagine that also in the witnessing process
00:44:08.340at the trc people who came and spoke also probably you know based on all this past experience
00:44:17.340told a bigger story um and uh you're gonna get 200 000 i want 500 000 and the bigger the story
00:44:27.480the bigger the the award well the awards topped out around 250 000 but that's a lot of money
00:44:35.060for an individual yeah you know and i wonder if they had to share any of that with the band
00:44:41.660well you know that's a good question i think nizen raises part of that in his book
00:44:48.600he notes that you know the problem also is that the money was paid out in full so you know the
00:44:55.420lawyers took their share and then the rest of the money so somebody who might have been happy
00:45:00.200getting uh you know blasted on fentanyl wow this is great now i can afford cocaine so you know it
00:45:08.100had a very for the most part it had a very detrimental effect on these communities and
00:45:14.640people who were addicted um you know were more addicted money they stayed addicted yeah and
00:45:21.120That's right. And other people, now, you know, here's the other tragedy, people who actually really had suffered, as Nisen points out, he said they were so emotionally overwrought, they couldn't even fill out the form.
00:45:36.820and a lot of them said you know i don't even want to make a claim because i think you know i might
00:45:44.500end up going back drinking or i might end up in a big depression again or suicidal i don't even
00:45:51.020want to so those are the people who should have been compensated and for the most part many were
00:45:56.620not so the liars got the money and the people who actually were abused didn't want to testify so if
00:46:04.520they didn't testify they wouldn't get any awards that's well they didn't have to testify that's
00:46:09.740the whole process was telling their story right yeah but they they would have had to fill out the
00:46:14.900claim form and they you know it was too traumatic for those who had actually suffered and you know
00:46:22.640there yeah go ahead oh uh you know and there are also a number of uh reports that in the schools
00:46:32.160there was often student-on-student sexual abuse.
00:46:37.000And I believe it was in a case up in, I better not say,
00:46:42.400because I can't remember the details per se,
00:46:44.920but the group that was making claims against the church
00:46:49.680did not want the student-on-student abuse to be recognized, right?
00:46:59.300Well, if it's student-on-student abuse, that's different.
00:47:01.440it's not abuse from the school so it's not our fault well you know the problem is also these
00:47:06.520are very small communities for the most part like 500 people and less maybe a thousand some of the
00:47:12.260bigger bands or maybe i think there's 12 000 or something in one of the biggest bands but um you
00:47:19.200know it's a small nepotistic community so if your cousin was abusing you at school whether he was
00:47:24.560smacking you around or sexually abusing you you know do you really want to take him to the law0.98
00:47:30.580uh you don't want people hearing about it too right small communities right you take a poop0.99
00:47:36.860what color it is so yeah um so let's let's jump ahead people are getting impatient here in the
00:47:42.240comments what about kamloops they're saying i say i i i absolutely understand that they want to hear
00:47:49.360uh and based upon you know sugarcane and then the bitter roots of sugarcane your rebuttal to
00:47:54.840that documentary. So when the news broke four years ago about these findings beneath the ground
00:48:02.960near the residential school in Kamloops, knowing what you knew about it, what was your first
00:48:08.460reaction? Knowing what you knew about the history of this, not about that particular instance.
00:48:12.940Well, my first reaction was that they probably had found a mass grave of, you know, a Spanish
00:48:18.860flu epidemic or typhus epidemic. Like mass graves do exist all over the place in Canada,
00:48:26.340not hundreds of them, but probably dozens of them. We know that there are at least three of them
00:48:32.380in the Blue Quills Community Cemetery, the old cemetery. We know that because it's documented
00:48:39.900that there were three typhus epidemics. But the people who died then and are buried there are
00:48:45.260probably pioneers probably my relatives compared to the people on reserve um so that was my first
00:48:53.380thought and in all of the articles that came out at that time as well no one ever mentioned tv not
00:49:00.100even 60 minutes 60 minutes did a whole story on it and you know when i was back in broadcasting
00:49:06.540like 60 minutes was like the gold standard of you know of investigative journalism they did a whole
00:49:12.420story on Indian residential schools didn't even mention TB. So tuberculosis killed lots of people.
00:49:19.560It used to kill one Canadian every hour and two Canadians every hour of the night. So that was
00:49:26.220back in 1908. And that was all kinds of Canadians. It was a mass killer all across the world.
00:49:33.160No, it could have been anything. Swine flu, you know, that pandemic that came through in the late
00:49:38.2801910? Spanish flu, yeah. Sorry, Spanish flu. So, you know, I mean, there have been a lot of
00:49:45.000epidemics that have run through the population in the past 120 years or so that we've been a country,
00:49:51.800140, whatever, 150. I guess it's coming up to 1867. All I got to do is the math. But
00:50:02.400when we get to Kamloops and we hear about, you know, these, this mass grave and they hadn't
00:50:11.860actually dug anything up and they still haven't, by the way, there's been no excavation there.
00:50:15.720The only thing they, the only thing they've used is ground penetrating radar and found anomalies
00:50:22.360buried beneath the ground. Some people have suggested that it was an old sewage system.
00:50:27.420That's great. Yeah, if you look at Nina Green's website, which is Indian Residential Schools, let me just find it, IndianResidentialSchoolRecords.com slash Kamloops.1.00
00:50:45.900so all one word indianresidentialschoolrecords.com slash Kamloops
00:50:52.220then you will find the details about this 2,000 feet of septic trenches
00:51:00.600that were dug in that very same area in 1920 in 1926 I think it is so
00:51:07.740So, you know, the GPR cannot see bodies, it cannot see coffins, it cannot see bones,
00:51:17.740it can only see what's known as disturbances. It's kind of like an ultrasound type of response.
00:51:26.080And so, you know, what the band said was completely false. And this thing went around
00:51:33.060the world the media repeated it with no questions asked and really the first thing to ask is okay
00:51:38.680well where's the list of missing children the list of names there is no list of missing children of
00:51:45.660names there's no families that have come forward and said here's a picture of my child who went to
00:51:52.520this school and never came home and uh you know the first reaction i'm sorry to interrupt you
00:51:58.620Michelle, wouldn't the first reaction be to get the evidence required to make a claim like that
00:52:04.460by doing an excavation? Yeah, you'd think so. And all the people like, you know, Sean Carlton,
00:52:09.880who calls me a residential school denialist, he says they don't owe you their children's bodies.
00:52:15.820Well, I'm sorry, if you're going to accuse me and my ancestors of genocide and mass murder0.60
00:52:21.280and clandestine burials in the middle of the night, you better be able to prove it.0.53
00:52:28.620Like, no one in Canada has ever been charged or convicted of genocide, and it's the most heinous crime.
00:52:36.060So, we don't have any evidence, and yet we're all accused of this crime.
00:55:28.920So within less than a month after the Kamloops claim, UNDRIP was pushed through Parliament.
00:55:35.780And the day after, and this is something that Terry Glavin noticed, he noted that the day after, China accused Canada of genocide on the world stage at the UN, and they cited the Kamloops find as evidence.
00:55:58.700He'd been already kneeling with teddy bears and, you know, putting the flag down.
00:56:05.160You know, there's a lot of people who must you just tuning in now or a lot of people who are just joining the program here and not just tonight's program.
00:56:14.740I mean, the overall program. And they've heard the expression UNDRIP before you gave it its proper name a few minutes ago.
00:56:21.460Can you explain what that is with a brief summary?
00:56:24.200The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People basically suggests that Indigenous people have prior rights to the land and they have a certain sovereignty that's outside the national structure of Canada.
00:56:45.220And the consequence of UNDRIP is that all laws in Canada, supposedly, must be redrafted to align with UNDRIP.
00:56:57.420And we see what's happening in BC with DRIPA, which is the provincial version of UNDRIP, where the Haida Gwaii Islands, formerly Queen Charlotte Islands, were handed over to the Haida Nation.
00:57:12.320uh you know that's actually a security issue because uh during world war ii colonel mitchell
00:57:20.320said he who controls alaska controls the world well that's right in the armpit of alaska and
00:57:27.140the u.s military used to have a huge elephant radar station there it's still there there's a
00:57:32.060golf course around it now but this is a critical strategic uh piece of property and it's now in0.96
00:57:38.840the hands of 2,300 Haida people because the government gave it to them with no consultation
00:57:45.780to the rest of BC. Yeah, that's been going on all over the country as well. The old bay building in1.00
00:57:51.880downtown Winnipeg, which was a staple there, you know, six floors takes up an entire city square
00:57:57.120block. It's huge. And it's been given to the indigenous groups in town just in the past three
00:58:03.360years. And it's sitting there empty. They've done nothing with it. And I don't know if they ever
00:58:06.980will uh what are they going to use it for you know i mean it could have been destroyed and a brand
00:58:12.200new building could have gone up but no instead they've taken old swaths of housing in one part
00:58:19.680of town uh where there used to be a cfb a canadian forces base and wiped that all out and given it to
00:58:26.040the uh first nations and they've done nothing with that either so i i don't know what the whole
00:58:31.580purpose behind this is and i guess this is when the land acknowledgements all started to happen
00:58:35.780as well yeah yeah that's i think that's one of the 94 uh acts of reconciliation recommended by
00:58:44.220the trc the truth and reconciliation commission so you know a lot of it what you say is correct
00:58:50.460that this is principally a land back movement meaning that uh bit by bit the first nations
00:58:58.000of canada intend to take back all the land and maintain sovereignty over canada that's
00:59:04.100the ultimate goal of the most activist people i'd say that there's probably a big sector who
00:59:10.040want to just have friendly relations like we used to have but you know they can't say much because
00:59:16.360all the things that we discussed about nepotism small community and such like
00:59:22.640or you're a denier you get called a denier right and you know people have to realize that there
00:59:29.040are hundreds of billions of dollars flowing to various Aboriginal claims, and it's not being
00:59:37.240contested in any way. When Jodi Wilson-Raybould left office, she gave a practice directive to
00:59:45.020the government. You can read about this in Tom Flanagan's, what is it, Noble Idea from
00:59:52.440Reconciliation to Reparations or something like that. It's on the Fraser Institute's website.
00:59:59.440Just look under Tom Flanagan and you'll find it.
01:00:17.920And I think the most extreme element in the First Nations indigenous movement is to get their pound of flesh.0.97
01:00:26.760You know, even if it goes back generations.1.00
01:00:29.040Yeah, I think that that's true, especially in the Kamloops case.
01:00:32.940And I can give you a specific example to that in a couple of minutes.
01:00:36.840Just with regard to that practice directive, you know, normally such payouts would be contested in court or negotiated in some way or and would have parliamentary oversight.
01:00:51.300but because of that practice directive people are saying you owe us this and the government
01:00:56.900lawyers are saying okay um how much of it can we pay you without you know having to go to court
01:01:05.820because we can't go to court anymore let's just settle here here's your check so of course the0.93
01:01:11.520aboriginal industry is taking full advantage of this so is sort of on the on the climate issue
01:01:17.280You know, you keep hearing about all these Indigenous-led wind and solar projects.
01:01:22.240Well, it's Indigenous-led because the community has maybe 500 people, and there's only two or three people who have the education or business acumen out of that group to lead such a project, right?
01:01:35.660But the government, you, the taxpayer, is funding the whole darn thing.
01:01:39.980And the reason why it's so popular to have it Indigenous-led is they know that this ties into a nonstop stream of Aboriginal funding that will be dedicated for decades.
01:01:53.520As I said yesterday when I was talking with Greg Wycliffe on his show, you know, there's these two parallel tracks that don't meet.
01:02:04.460There's all the things that are happening in the Aboriginal side, all these funding issues, negotiations, land back, settlements, etc.
01:02:13.300And then there's mainstream Canada, where they're going, wow, how come we're so much in debt?
01:02:18.900And I think it was Trevor Toome, who, when the budget was put out, the fall economic statement that came out just before Christmas, when Chrystia Freeland left and everything, and it was such a big blowout.
01:02:30.980But Trevor Toome was an economist at the University of Calgary.
01:02:35.880He tweeted out that part of the debt ratio is related to these ongoing claims.
01:04:23.680Here's another one. The blood band, the Kainai Nation, 12,740 registered members, received a grant of almost $850 million over the period of April 1st, 2024 to March 31st, 2034.
01:07:27.820And if the logistics are properly assessed vis-a-vis the geography there,
01:07:35.560it seems that they might even have built their heritage park parking lot
01:07:40.780on top of where they would claim that there were unmarked graves.
01:07:43.920But anyway, so they had this grant, I think it was for about $40,000.
01:07:49.880Somehow they contracted with Dr. Sarah Beaulieu to come there over the long weekend and do this ground penetrating radar work.
01:08:01.480As far as I understand, Dr. Beaulieu is a conflict anthropologist and not necessarily an expert GPR operator.
01:08:11.080In the documentary, The Reckoning, you see that she explains that, you know, it wasn't just what was seen on the screen of the GPR that she relied on as evidence,
01:08:23.200but also the knowledge keepers who remain anonymous to this day from the band and certain witnesses who claim to have seen people burying children in the middle of the night.
01:08:37.400So you would think with this heinous crime of murders and clandestine...
01:08:42.300Somebody would have seen something somewhere.
01:08:44.680Well, and you would think that the RCMP should have been in there immediately.
01:08:49.180Like this went around the world and Canada's reputation is being destroyed.
01:08:55.360But no, the RCMP appear to have handed the investigation over to the band.
01:09:01.840And the band has said, well, this is sacred ground and we're not going to dig up the little ones.
01:09:06.160it's cruel they should rest where they are meanwhile had dr bull you done any previous
01:09:13.900land reuse research which was pretty much impossible over a long weekend you know if
01:09:19.220you go down to the town or county you can go through historic records and find out hey there
01:09:24.980was a septic trench there 2 000 feet of septic trenches maybe we shouldn't put the announcement
01:09:31.500out yet let's dig a little they knew this whole thing was a scam from the outset it sounds set up
01:09:39.760to me the way you tell this story right like they knew everything they knew that they would never
01:09:45.200ever have to reveal any actual evidence to the public because they'd already started putting
01:09:51.080the word out oh we found something under the ground right well maybe you know i mean i can't
01:09:56.960say that for sure but you know it doesn't sound right right anyway what is interesting when you
01:10:03.020said you know they were trying to get even um there is a uh a letter that the Kamloops banned
01:10:12.380an open letter that they posted or they bought a full page ad in the Globe and Mail on October 18th
01:10:20.0002021 um and I can send that to you so you can post it I have it in two parts and it's from the
01:10:26.88013 grassroots family advisory council they sent it to uh justin trudeau who was prime minister at
01:10:33.980the time and they say petition to prime minister i'm not going to read it all because there's a
01:10:39.240lot of detail but just i'll pick out a couple of points they claim that you know 111 years ago
01:10:45.200prime minister laurier finished visited our territory and that they had some kind of agreement
01:10:51.040with him but things changed the petition that they presented then was rejected and the federal
01:10:59.540government supported the genocide of our people through the creation of residential schools
01:11:04.220in fact Chief Louis of that band requested a residential school and I think it was his wife
01:11:12.360who granted land for it so anyhow they go on to say in 2015 this is to the Prime Minister Trudeau
01:11:21.020at the time before the federal election you visited our community and made promises to support our
01:11:28.700rights title and jurisdictions and if elected to visit our community again we sincerely believed
01:11:37.380your commitments and honored you in a sacred blanketing ceremony signifying our trust in your
01:11:42.680words but apparently nothing happened in that regard for the ensuing what six years
01:11:51.580Then they go on to say, in May of 2021, evidence of a horrific act of genocide was laid bare to the world with the confirmation of at least 250 unmarked graves of little ones who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
01:12:07.040We are aware of the shared culpability of the Catholic Church, the federal government, and we remind you of the words of Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs from 1910.
01:12:21.920They say, it's readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habituating so closely in residential schools that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages, which is not true, actually.
01:29:19.440And, you know, again, it's a half-hour low-budget documentary, no-budget documentary.
01:29:26.800And again, I'm not saying that bad things did not happen at some residential schools to some children.
01:29:34.820But I am saying that this was blown way out of proportion.
01:29:39.180wait who narrated your your documentary oh it was an ai voice actually that's ai yeah oh my god
01:29:47.820usually i can tell when it's ai this does not sound like ai to me well thank you i watched it
01:29:54.360earlier that whoa that must have been a pretty good ai because i hear ai these days and it's like
01:30:01.040you can tell right like the spacing is wrong the but this sounded very good well thank you but
01:30:08.180You know, the thing was, because we didn't really have a budget, AI was useful because we went through a lot of script revisions, trying to make things, you know, flow properly.
01:30:18.260And as you know, then you'd have to be calling the narrator back in the studio over and over again to redo the lines in this way you could feed it through.
01:30:27.780Well, next time you do one of these, you can always ask me, I'd be happy to do a human voice for you and I would not charge you a thing.
01:30:34.480well we prefer a human voice but you know we really and also we did it quite uh secretly
01:30:40.460because we didn't want to be prevented from releasing it um and so we thought you know
01:30:47.760we'll just put it out there and people will find it you know my position on things like this is that
01:30:54.920if there's no uh alternative view expressed then people will assume whatever the mainstream
01:31:02.600narrative is correct but if there is some alternative view presented then people will
01:31:09.040start to think twice and say wait well let me consider this did you put it up on youtube
01:31:13.940no i didn't put it up on youtube simply because i felt that it was quite um it probably would
01:31:21.280get taken down you think yeah interesting maybe i'll cut up maybe i'll cut off my youtube feed
01:31:27.800and then play the thing just to see yeah i prefer that you didn't uh you know i please uh it's up to
01:31:34.960you whatever oh no i mean we're on like six or seven different platforms so we will still be on
01:31:40.720x we'll still be on rumble we'll still be on my website we'll still be on telegram so it's not
01:31:45.720like people aren't going to see it i mean it's just youtube but you're right they are very touchy
01:31:50.560about these these kinds of things um and it does get a little bit graphic but i i didn't think it
01:31:55.820was over the top or anything but youtube's got different ideas so it's more on the censorship
01:32:01.560thing that you know um and i i think i get that a lot on my personal x account that sometimes
01:32:08.740there's no activity and i think it's because you know dozens of people have reported me
01:32:14.920yeah that could be that could be i'll tell you what i'll get i'll give it a shot i'll i'll keep
01:32:21.760put on youtube i'll throw it up and see what happens if they take the video down then they
01:32:26.780take it down yeah but we know that all of the research you've done is based on you know facts
01:32:33.860everything that you refute from sugarcane in this documentary that you wrote is factual that's right
01:32:42.120and i must say it's facts that for the most part nina green ferreted out of the archives she is a
01:32:49.660dedicated researcher. She knows these files very well. And, you know, the thing is with
01:32:56.820Aboriginal families, it's really hard to figure out who's who a lot of the time. That's a problem1.00
01:33:02.560in Sugarcane for the average viewer, because Ed Archie Noiscat, you know, doesn't appear to have
01:33:09.660any relationship to someone. Well, they don't name Antoinette Archie in the film, but it doesn't
01:33:16.260appear that there's any relation and another scene they go and see i think her name is miriam peters
01:33:22.580not sure in the first name anyway she says to him well what's my brother got to do with this
01:33:28.460and he says well he was my father wasn't he well that's ray peters so it turns out that would
01:33:34.780probably be ray peters sister but you know if you don't know that and in the in the film they never
01:33:41.540mentioned that ray peters was actually the father so you would assume oh must have been a priest
01:33:50.000named peters then who was his father all right let's let's run this thing i want to thank you
01:33:54.960michelle for coming on tonight and uh you can you can you're available on x and on rumble if people
01:34:01.960want to watch the documentary if they don't want to watch it here if they want to share it with
01:34:05.940with other people which would be huge but here it is debuting on the shadow of night live stream
01:34:11.060tonight, The Bitter Roots of Sugarcane, written and produced by Michelle Sterling. Thank you,
01:34:16.320Michelle. With research from Nina Green. Thank you.
01:34:20.840There's a new documentary that's getting rave reviews
01:34:40.440from film critics across North America
01:39:52.900Allegedly, the children's bodies abandoned in mass graves who some said had been dug by
01:39:59.540six-year-olds for their classmates, who were children as young as three.
01:40:03.620Canadian taxpayers had just spent $60 million and six years on the Truth and Reconciliation
01:40:14.300Commission. The Commission found that over the 113 years of operation of Indian residential
01:40:21.200schools serving some 150,000 students, only 423 children had actually died at the schools.
01:40:29.120most of the children died of TB tuberculosis was a global plague these
01:40:36.260facts are laid out in the truth and reconciliation reports reporters never
01:40:41.000looked for the facts they looked for atrocity headlines these news stories
01:40:47.300shattered Canada's sense of self Canada's flag flew at half-mast for six
01:40:53.680months, Canada Day celebrations were cancelled. 215 pairs of empty children's shoes started
01:41:01.840popping up at provincial legislatures and city halls across Canada, as if a Holocaust
01:41:08.260had happened. The only thing missing to make the Holocaust genocide analogy complete was
01:41:15.000ashes. And the Williams Lake Band was about to supply those ashes with the stories told
01:41:21.400in sugarcane the most believable lies contain an element of truth there was a father o'connor
01:41:31.640at saint joseph's indian residential school in the 1960s he broke his vows of celibacy
01:41:38.220and fathered a child with phyllis bob a woman who was a 22 year old seamstress at the school
01:41:45.080but not a student the baby was put up for adoption phyllis had been a founding member
01:41:52.680and later pipe major of the caribou indian girls pipe band of which she was extremely proud some
01:42:00.44020 years later in the 1990s a number of former students charged father o'connor with rape and
01:42:08.200molestation during his time at st joseph's in the 1960s the trial dragged on for many years
01:42:16.520until the parties agreed to engage in an aboriginal healing ceremony and a public apology
01:42:22.680by o'connor to the community charlin bellow was one of the tribal leaders at the ceremony
01:42:29.800According to the National Truth and Reconciliation File on Caribou's St. Joseph's Indian Residential School, charges against Bishop O'Connor were ultimately stayed.
01:42:44.800in the documentary sugarcane the story of father o'connor and phyllis bob and their baby gets
01:42:51.720conflated with an entirely different story in order to create the infanticide and genocide
01:42:56.860ashes theme the filmmakers exploit the tragic true story of a key figure of the film
01:43:01.940the 1959 birth of archie noise cat and the actions of his unwed mother there was a famous
01:43:10.520new story in the williams lake tribune august 26 1959 the baby found in the garbage burner
01:43:18.760of saint joseph's indian residential school saint joseph's was near the sugarcane indian reserve
01:43:27.080the baby's mother was from kanim lake reserve rumors proliferated for years in the indigenous
01:43:35.160communities that priests had impregnated girls and then disposed of the unwanted babies in the
01:43:41.480school incinerator residential schools turned into crematoriums babies to ashes the final
01:43:50.200proof of the canadian genocide and that's where the bitter roots of sugarcane begin
01:43:55.800sugarcane is a new independent documentary produced and directed by investigative journalist
01:44:06.440emily cassie and co-directed by julian brave noise cat who is a descendant of people who
01:44:14.120attended saint joseph's indian residential school according to media interviews when emily cassie
01:44:21.160first heard the devastating news of the Kamloops Indian band finding human remains reportedly
01:44:28.600the bodies of 215 missing children in unmarked graves often referred to as mass graves in the
01:44:36.600orchard near the former Kamloops Indian residential school she was gut pulled to the story
01:44:43.720So I was gut pulled when I heard about the 215 potential unmarked graves. I'm an investigative
01:44:55.700journalist and a filmmaker, and I have made docs and multimedia stories in the context of newsrooms
01:45:03.800for the last decade about human rights abuses and genocide all over the world, from Afghanistan to
01:45:10.280Rwanda. But I'd never turned my lens on my own country and the horrors that it perpetrated
01:45:56.580Right after Kamloops made their claim of finding the remains of 215 children, various other
01:46:03.780First Nations began popping up with similar claims of unmarked graves. Numbers quickly rose into the
01:46:11.140thousands. It should be noted that most claims were made about old community graveyards where
01:46:20.100the wooden crosses or headboards had disintegrated over time. Most bodies there would be of European
01:46:28.180pioneer families when children died at indian residential schools or hospitals death certificates
01:46:36.820show that their bodies were sent home for burial on their reserves but no one is looking for their
01:46:43.700graves there where many graves and markers have not been kept up here's an example
01:46:51.620Gladys Chapman of Lytton was a student at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
01:46:57.780Gladys became ill and was treated but died at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, BC.
01:47:05.780Her death certificate shows that her body was returned to her family
01:47:10.500at the Spasm Indian Reserve and she was buried there.
01:47:14.340It should be noted that to this date, no graves have been exhumed in order to confirm these numbers.
01:47:25.620About the time of the Kamloops First Nations claim of unmarked graves, about 300 kilometres north of Kamloops,
01:47:34.900The Williams Lake First Nation was also looking for children they claimed were missing or murdered at the Caribou Indian Residential School, commonly known as St. Joseph's Indian Residential School.
01:47:50.260Emily Cassie, director of Sugarcane, wanted to do a documentary and found this news story about Williams Lake about to engage in a similar search to that of the Kamloops Band.
01:48:04.900It was serendipity. Cassie contacted Julian Brave Noisecat, whom she had worked with at Huffington Post, to tell him about her contact with Chief Sellers and invite Julian to be part of the documentary, presumably as a writer and storyteller.
01:48:25.740To her surprise and his, it turned out that Cassie had fallen upon the one Indian band in Canada whose residential school history was deeply intertwined with the family history of Julian Brave Noise Cat.
01:48:44.920And as you might imagine, I nearly fell out of my chair, and then I said, wow, that's really crazy.
01:48:51.420Did you know that's the school that my family was taken away to and where my father was born?
01:48:56.420So out of 139 Indian residential schools across Canada,
01:49:00.560Em happened to choose the one school, without knowing it, where my father's life began.
01:49:05.320As it turned out, Julian's own father, who'd been found in the garbage burner at St. Joseph's Indian Residential School,
01:49:14.500his father was born there, at the school.
01:49:18.560was he the son of a roman catholic priest the baby in the garbage burner story had been major news
01:49:27.200in the williams lake tribune everyone knew about it then and everyone should know the story to this
01:49:34.240day julian's grandmother spent a year in jail for abandoning his father as a baby in the garbage
01:49:42.240burner at st joseph's indian residential school meanwhile julian's father ed archie noise cat
01:49:51.840the baby was mostly raised by alice archie baby ed's grandmother and grandfather
01:50:01.040sadly they were both alcoholics alice archie died in 1967 when ed was about eight years old
01:50:12.240A turning point in the lives of these young filmmakers was when a woman named Charlene
01:50:19.800Bello had taken Julian to the old barn, which was still standing on the St. Joseph's Indian
01:50:29.000Both Julian and Cassie were at the site, doing research in 2021.
01:50:35.840Charlene asked Emily Cassie to bring her camera and join them.
01:50:40.280There in the dim barn light, Charlene conducted a smudging ceremony for Julian, invoking the spirits of the ancestors and missing children, entrusting Julian with the mission of witnessing the history of his people for the world to see.
01:50:57.800The filmmakers said it was as if the world broke open for their project.
01:51:03.340by happy coincidence williams lake first nation has its own archaeological excavation enterprise
01:51:16.300sugarcane archaeology established in 2016. though it is unclear if sugarcane archaeology
01:51:25.660established the investigative team or whether the filmmakers framed the story this way
01:51:31.500an investigative duo made up of indigenous rights activist
01:51:36.860Charlene Bellow and Whitney Spearing, archaeologists with Sugarcane Archaeology,
01:51:43.820drive the main story narrative in Sugarcane.
01:51:51.820Thus, the documentary Sugarcane follows the work of Charlene and Whitney as they attempt to find
01:51:59.420out the unmarked graves where the missing children lie on the st joseph's indian residential school
01:52:06.380grounds there's only one thing wrong with this picture something that is not revealed in the
01:52:13.340documentary the fact is that investigator charlene below knew from the get-go who the father of the
01:52:23.260baby left in the garbage burner was and she knew the mother and her circumstances as well
01:52:30.700charlene and julian and the woman who had the baby are all related and the father was not a priest
01:52:39.180but an indigenous man named ray peters a man who was 11 years older than the mother
01:52:47.020he had seven other children with ed's mother in fact he fathered 17 children in total with
01:52:54.460five different women why was this fact never brought up in the documentary
01:53:01.260keep in mind that the filmmakers spent a lot of time on the reservation compiling research
01:53:07.740we lived the story we lived in the community for three years we were there for every moment we
01:53:17.360built trust and respect and had you know a reciprocal relationship and we experienced
01:53:30.720some of the most extraordinary moments of our lives.
01:53:34.960Emily Cassie and Julian Brave Noisecat
01:53:58.240Based on film critic reviews, most reviewers believe that Julian's father was the illicit love child of a Roman Catholic priest at the school.
01:54:10.980This would be highly unlikely since students were only allowed to attend Indian residential schools until they were 16 years old.
01:54:20.800Baby Archie Noizcat's mother was 20 years old at the time.
01:54:27.300In fact, Ed's mother had lived away from Canham Lake Reserve and had studied practical nursing in Vancouver.
01:54:35.260It seems that the only reason why baby Ed Archie was born at St. Joseph's School was that she was on her way home from Williams Lake to Canham Lake.
01:54:45.080It is possible that Ed's mother went into labour along the way and she pulled into a familiar place for help.
01:54:51.960But it was night time and summer, with few people on sight.
01:55:00.500These are the facts no one knows but baby Ed's mother, and she did not want to talk