Western Standard - Hard hitting panel discussion on Indian Residential Schools

00:00:00.000 Thank you very much for joining me today, guys.

00:00:02.780 You're welcome.

00:00:03.340 Thank you very much for having us.

00:00:05.100 So as I said, I hope Brian should be on to join us pretty soon.

00:00:08.780 And I'll try, you know, we typically have a one-on-one, but I wanted to do a panel today.

00:00:12.600 And it was great that Jaime reached out.

00:00:15.360 Jaime's been on a number of times as well on this issue to get Ms. Whitteson on because 1.00

00:00:20.620 you haven't been on the show before.

00:00:23.260 Rod's been on at times.

00:00:25.540 And you have a lot to add on this.

00:00:27.120 And you, unfortunately, I guess, paid very dearly for daring to speak critically on this

00:00:31.720 issue.

00:00:32.000 Can you kind of expand a bit on your history with this?

00:00:34.880 Yes.

00:00:35.140 So I was fired from Mount Royal University in December 2021.

00:00:42.340 It wasn't directly due to my comments about the residential schools, but it was due to

00:00:47.480 a climate where challenging certain ideas which have come to be known as wokeism, which is

00:00:56.080 identity politics, which becomes totalitarian.

00:01:00.000 It was becoming more and more difficult.

00:01:02.440 And when I tried to talk about the residential schools, I got smeared as being a residential

00:01:07.240 school denialist.

00:01:09.200 And one of my colleagues even said, anyone who says that there has been any benefits of

00:01:13.880 the residential schools should be fired. 1.00

00:01:16.240 There was also a motion in General Faculty's Council, which is the governance body for the

00:01:23.860 university, which passed a motion saying that genocide had been perpetrated against the

00:01:29.180 Indigenous population.

00:01:31.300 And when I objected to this and said, what about people who would question that view and

00:01:35.760 did not accept that view?

00:01:37.380 People said, well, you can dissent.

00:01:39.540 But what happened is that it was increasingly seen as being an unacceptable viewpoint.

00:01:45.700 And a similar thing happened with the residential schools, the ground penetrating radar discovery

00:01:51.860 that happened in 2021 was our president put out an announcement saying that the bodies of

00:01:59.780 215 children had been found and that all professors should aid residential school survivors in their

00:02:07.680 grieving process.

00:02:08.860 So to try to challenge that, to ask questions about it, ask critical questions and demand

00:02:14.520 evidence was basically increasingly seen as being unwelcome at Mount Royal.

00:02:20.580 And Mount Royal is not very different from other universities across Canada.

00:02:25.440 No, we're seeing that problem all over.

00:02:27.240 And I just found it very distressing with what happened with you.

00:02:31.380 And for people who don't understand tenure, I kind of said that at the start of the show.

00:02:34.740 I mean, the whole purpose of that system is to ensure that our professors and other people

00:02:39.480 aren't afraid to delve into and at least critique and question things that may be controversial.

00:02:44.900 And, you know, perhaps they're wrong, but you've got to examine and study these issues to come

00:02:49.340 to a conclusion.

00:02:50.180 And when we will dismiss somebody for examining those issues, the whole point of tenure has

00:02:54.020 been completely lost.

00:02:55.100 Yes.

00:02:56.100 And tenure is under serious threat.

00:03:00.020 And for people who are worried about these issues, they should be very concerned about

00:03:04.440 my case.

00:03:05.120 It's going to arbitration in January of 2023.

00:03:09.720 I'm pressing hard for that arbitration to be made public so that all the documents that

00:03:15.740 have that are available with respect to my case can be examined.

00:03:20.420 And we can begin to understand the problems that are occurring in universities with the

00:03:26.700 clampdown on the discussion of these contentious topics, the unmarked graves, residential schools

00:03:33.340 being, you know, a couple of those issues.

00:03:35.880 But it's not just those issues.

00:03:37.340 It's a whole range of issues, which if you just say the wrong thing, you're going to have

00:03:42.960 all sorts of complaints filed against you.

00:03:45.020 And you're going to be dragged through various inquisitions, which will be intent on finding

00:03:51.240 you to be guilty of breaching various code of conduct policies, harassment policies, and

00:03:57.440 so on.

00:03:57.760 So it's a very, very serious problem in universities today.

00:04:02.180 Yeah.

00:04:02.760 And there's before I'm going to bring Rod on to speak to conditions in the residential schools

00:04:07.140 as he spent some time on them, working in them.

00:04:09.660 And just to point out with things such as Professor Whittleson, I'm looking at a piece

00:04:14.420 right now that has been cited, apparently, this is through Google articles, 72 times.

00:04:20.020 It was written by Pam Palmiter.

00:04:21.820 And she's a very biased activist. 1.00

00:04:26.500 I'll put it in a light way.

00:04:27.860 And she wrote a piece essentially contending that the government was purposely trying to

00:04:32.860 slaughter First Nations people in residential schools. 0.98

00:04:36.280 In fact, by purposely exposing them to tuberculosis and other things such as that, it's unsourced,

00:04:41.860 it's unrealistic, yet it gets taken as fact.

00:04:45.960 And we need to have more academic discussion when stuff like this is going around out there.

00:04:50.920 If this is true, then things are far worse than we ever imagined.

00:04:53.960 But I strongly suspect it isn't.

00:04:56.100 But so if we could bring Rod Clifton on from the panel there and Rod actually, again, as I said,

00:05:02.820 spent time on the residential school west of or east of Calgary.

00:05:07.420 That was the Blackfoot Reserve at that time, Siksika now.

00:05:09.780 And you were up in Inuvik for some time.

00:05:12.260 Yes.

00:05:12.700 Joining us today, Rod, and maybe just kind of for the audience who didn't see the last time you were on.

00:05:16.540 You know, you can say what Ms. Whittelson was punished for, essentially, that it wasn't necessarily all bad on these school sites.

00:05:26.620 That's exactly true.

00:05:28.160 So my parents-in-law, who went to residential school for eight years, and my wife, who was in Old Sun residential school for 10 years,

00:05:36.620 they went to the Apology by the Anglican Church.

00:05:40.860 And in the middle of the week-long session out at Menaki Lodge, which is about 100 kilometers east of Winnipeg here,

00:05:49.100 they phoned and said we had to come and pick them up because the emotions were so high they couldn't even get a reasonable discussion.

00:05:57.200 So on the way back to Winnipeg, I asked my parents-in-law, well, what did you learn in residential school that turns out to be something positive?

00:06:06.700 And my mother-in-law, without skipping a beat, said, I'm talking to you, aren't I?

00:06:10.780 Meaning that they learned how to speak English.

00:06:12.820 And if the Aboriginals didn't learn how to speak English, they couldn't talk to each other across the country. 0.99

00:06:17.340 They need to have a common language in order to speak, and she recognized that.

00:06:22.840 Now we've forgotten all about that.

00:06:24.300 We've forgotten about, you know, the fact that it wasn't until 1947 that tuberculosis was, that a drug, streptomycium,

00:06:35.440 that had a positive effect upon decreasing, helping people get better from tuberculosis was discovered.

00:06:42.520 And we think that no children should have died as a result of any diseases or any difficulties that they had in residential school.

00:06:53.660 So we have to be more realistic about that.

00:06:57.240 That's it.

00:06:57.840 And nobody's denying that, you know, unfortunately, when you have a lot of children in a boarding situation in a number of areas,

00:07:04.520 it's a sad reality of humanity.

00:07:06.340 I mean, there's always nasty predators out there who were drawn to circumstances like that.

00:07:11.400 There were individual cases of abuse.

00:07:13.340 We've seen that in, you know, Indian residential schools and in non-residential, you know, or non-native boarding schools.

00:07:19.320 It's a sick and unfortunate reality in life.

00:07:21.860 And nobody's denying that it ever happened or excusing it.

00:07:25.040 It's just that these stories have snowballed into as if, you know, we label everybody who's attended,

00:07:29.600 even a day school now as a survivor and the hyperbole is sort of getting to be too much.

00:07:35.180 My wife, Elaine, when we were young, used to, when people said, did you go to residential school?

00:07:42.320 Rather than saying, yes, she would say, no, I went to a private Anglican school.

00:07:46.280 And now she doesn't even want to talk about it at all because of the tension and the difficulty of even expressing that concern.

00:07:55.660 So she just keeps her mouth shut. 0.51

00:07:56.980 And that's unfortunate.

00:07:59.440 I mean, it scares people from even just wanting to get into it.

00:08:02.520 And, you know, that's a sort of victimization in itself in reality.

00:08:07.740 Let's bring Brian in.

00:08:09.240 I see he's joined the panel back there.

00:08:11.220 Brian, we've talked about this.

00:08:13.560 And I think I saw something else as I was reading up some stuff prior to this.

00:08:18.080 And I saw another paper claiming that, because I believe you've addressed this when you've been on before,

00:08:22.420 that there was no tuberculosis going around with children in the First Nations reserves.

00:08:27.500 And they've all picked it up while they're at the residential schools.

00:08:30.220 And that's how it got them.

00:08:31.840 But, I mean, health conditions on reserves outside of the residential schools were not typically very good at all.

00:08:38.640 No, they weren't.

00:08:39.480 And the doctor, Peter Bryce, is usually the person quoted on these disease issues.

00:08:46.500 He was very much involved with the residential schools in the early years.

00:08:51.640 And what Bryce says is that the children would arrive at the residential schools infected with tuberculosis.

00:09:01.460 And they would infect others.

00:09:04.300 And that was just a fact of life.

00:09:05.840 In fact, he did studies at eight schools.

00:09:10.120 And he found that every one of the children who was tested had the beginnings of tuberculosis when the child first entered the school.

00:09:21.860 So it just shows how severe the problem was.

00:09:25.280 And there was actually discussion.

00:09:26.780 I've read discussions between officials at the time, school officials and government officials.

00:09:31.520 And they said, well, what can we do about it?

00:09:34.040 It wasn't as if they didn't think, no, there was a problem, but they actually concluded that they would have to close down the schools if they insisted on a clean bill of health for every child.

00:09:45.480 The fact was that the children, particularly the Plains Indian peoples, were very unhealthy at the time. 1.00

00:09:52.700 The buffalo had disappeared.

00:09:55.060 People were literally starving on the reserves.

00:09:57.400 And some of the reserves, it was government rations that actually kept people alive.

00:10:01.920 So health conditions were awful.

00:10:03.340 And we also have to understand that 100-plus years ago, people got sick and died.

00:10:12.500 That was just a fact of life.

00:10:13.940 Now it's quite unusual for a child, for instance, to become infected with the disease and die.

00:10:21.100 Well, that was commonplace at the time.

00:10:24.120 The family that had four or five children with everyone living was the very lucky family.

00:10:29.320 And Indians were particularly hard hit because the infection rate for many diseases, particularly tuberculosis, was very high.

00:10:39.060 So death was just far too common.

00:10:41.860 So I think we always have to factor that in when we're considering these issues, Corey.

00:10:48.080 Yeah, and, you know, again, I like, as I kind of said before the show started, going out myself and looking at things.

00:10:55.180 And when I used to work in the eastern United States, for example, in a lot of rural areas, I've always liked cemeteries, actually.

00:11:00.020 I just find them peaceful spots to wander and look around.

00:11:02.460 But something striking when you go into those family plots and areas and you look between 1919, 1920, and you'll see whole families that were wiped out.

00:11:11.720 This wasn't First Nations people. 0.97

00:11:13.160 This was people with the Spanish flu nailed. 1.00

00:11:15.580 And, you know, their children were very vulnerable to it and were often killed.

00:11:20.200 And it was tragic.

00:11:21.020 And we don't deal with that sort of thing today.

00:11:23.200 But, yes, I mean, due to a residential school, something like that would sweep through rather quickly. 0.96

00:11:28.600 It doesn't mean there was a purposeful genocide.

00:11:30.340 It just means they were in a poor environment at a time when children were a lot more vulnerable.

00:11:35.580 Yes, it does.

00:11:36.640 And I mentioned the actual number of children who died at residential schools was 832.

00:11:44.140 Then there were some other children who died at hospitals later.

00:11:50.040 And then the numbers have been added to that.

00:11:52.960 But the actual numbers aren't out of line with death statistics at the time.

00:11:59.540 They were quite normal and expected.

00:12:03.720 The other thing that's really interesting about the deaths from tuberculosis at residential schools is that, yes, for a time in those early years, they were very bad.

00:12:17.080 And probably residential school death rate was similar to what was going on at the reserve.

00:12:22.140 But over time, the federal government and the churches did work very hard at residential schools to bring those numbers down.

00:12:30.180 So in the 1930s and 40s, for instance, the death rate at residential schools then compared relatively favorably to normal schools or mainstream schools, while the death rate on reserves continued to be very high.

00:12:48.160 And it's a shame that death rates were so high in reserves.

00:12:54.300 But it was a fact of life.

00:12:56.300 And the idea that residential schools were killing the children, no, diseases were killing the children.

00:13:04.040 And those were the normal diseases of the day.

00:13:06.400 Maybe I could jump in and say something.

00:13:09.260 I had tuberculosis meningitis and I was in what was called a preventorium to prevent other people from getting it when I was a kid from 1946 to 1948.

00:13:20.240 And it was pretty awful.

00:13:22.480 I still remember a few of the things, even though I was only two, three years old.

00:13:27.060 And there were it was full, full, full of kids.

00:13:32.360 The sanatorium was full of kids and some of them died.

00:13:38.700 That's just the facts of life.

00:13:40.720 And we forget, you know, that Canadians actually lived through those kinds of situations.

00:13:44.920 So we're thinking now that the conditions of today were identical to the conditions of 55 or 60 years ago.

00:13:52.520 They weren't.

00:13:53.820 They were much different.

00:13:54.660 Yeah, we can't measure against that lens at all.

00:13:57.800 I mean, it wasn't relatively long ago that polio was wiping out children as well.

00:14:02.600 And again, it wasn't exclusive to residential schools.

00:14:04.760 So, you know, speaking with Professor Whittowson, I mean, we're getting a lot of revisionist history going on, which is a dangerous, dangerous trend going.

00:14:14.180 And when we're quelling any discussion to it, I mean, our defenders against this should be in the halls of academia.

00:14:19.900 And we're seeing that that's not working right now.

00:14:22.600 I mean, where how can we solve this?

00:14:24.600 The only people we tend to see speaking out.

00:14:27.240 We know that there's others who are silently thinking it but not saying it tend to be retired professors or unfortunately, in your case, a fired one.

00:14:34.880 Yes, well, we need to restore our universities to their academic character.

00:14:40.420 And this is a big battle that's got to be fought.

00:14:43.340 But the most prominent organization in Canada that is doing that, I should mention, is the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, www.safs.ca.

00:14:55.620 And the president, Mark Mercer, and the board, I'm a board member of that organization.

00:15:00.200 And we are working tirelessly to write to university presidents, to hold events, to discuss these issues.

00:15:07.060 So what is needed now is organization, organization of academics at the local university level, at the national level, through the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, and then internationally.

00:15:20.500 There's many good organizations, such as the Free Speech Union, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education, and the National Association of Scholars.

00:15:30.380 So this is really a work in progress, but many academics are opposed to what is happening.

00:15:38.940 It's just that it's very difficult because if you act as an individual, you will have all sorts of policies directed against you.

00:15:48.400 And the important ones are harassment policies, human rights policies, and code of conduct policies.

00:15:54.740 What's happening is if you ask questions, which a member who identifies as being part of an oppressed group does not like, they will charge you with harassment, and you'll have to go through an investigation on that basis.

00:16:09.680 And that's what happened to me, is that I had to go through many investigations.

00:16:14.200 I did nothing wrong.

00:16:16.000 All I was doing initially was asking questions, and then when people tried to get me fired, I tried to defend myself from getting fired.

00:16:23.500 And basically, I was told that I could not defend myself because I was sort of in opposition to members of groups that the university wanted to protect.

00:16:33.980 So this is a major, major problem in universities, not just in Canada, throughout the Western world.

00:16:41.180 And academics, if you're listening to this, we need to organize and we need to fight back against these constraints on academic freedom and open inquiry in universities.

00:16:54.180 Absolutely.

00:16:54.980 And, you know, Jordan Peterson was mentioned earlier, again, whether people like or don't like.

00:16:58.900 I mean, the way he was attacked for breaking from the orthodoxy.

00:17:03.660 Or God Saw It is another gentleman who has written extensively on what's happening in there and covering it.

00:17:09.220 And we really should be all very, very concerned with that trend.

00:17:13.200 Another thing, I mean, not to sound callous, but, you know, in speaking with Rod and that is a lot of the people who experienced the residential schools and had positive experiences are getting older.

00:17:25.940 And we need to document those experiences from that point of view as well.

00:17:30.320 And as you said, if people don't even want to talk about it anymore, we're going to they're getting shouted down.

00:17:35.200 We're going to lose the ability to document their experiences at these facilities, you know, while we can.

00:17:41.780 For sure.

00:17:42.780 For sure.

00:17:43.100 And there's a lot of positive things that people have said about residential schools, those people that have actually worked in residential schools like I have.

00:17:52.160 But nobody wants to hear their message and they're not being phoned up and asked to do presentations at churches or or at at community clubs or whatever to get the other side of the message out and to have a debate going in on on this issue.

00:18:11.080 In the same sort of way that that Francis is admitting that universities, you can't get a debate going in terms of the way people are being treated because of their ideological position or what they think are facts in a situation in comparison to what other people think are facts in those situations.

00:18:30.680 And we need to have more of a discussion about these sorts of things.

00:18:34.000 We simply can't listen to people say what they think went on and and any contrary evidence can't be can't be brought forward.

00:18:44.080 Well, that's an anecdotal evidence in oral histories.

00:18:47.200 I mean, they're difficult at the best of times.

00:18:49.700 But I mean, the best you can hope to get out of those then is to get as many people offering input from their experiences as possible, because we certainly accept at face value a lot of the anecdotes from some people saying that there were

00:19:01.300 what babies hung up in basements and some some pretty absurd accusations that they get taken as fact.

00:19:08.060 And then when somebody says, Well, hey, you know, I didn't think it was all that bad there, they get shouted down, right?

00:19:14.440 Yeah, I never saw anything like that.

00:19:16.420 My wife never saw anything like that.

00:19:19.880 And her parents in the eight years that they were an old son never saw anything like that.

00:19:24.460 I never heard anything like this.

00:19:26.260 Now, of course, I knew about people being abused by certain people in residential schools because there were legal cases about that.

00:19:35.320 But these other kinds of things are just nothing that I ever heard about.

00:19:39.460 Now, it may be true, but we should have a good inquiry to find out whether it is it is true or not.

00:19:46.020 And if it isn't true, then people shouldn't be spreading these false rumors around and destroying our society.

00:19:53.080 Well, yeah.

00:19:53.400 And I'll go back to Ms. Whittowson with, you know, we want to find the truth.

00:19:57.320 I mean, if indeed there were 215 murdered, buried children in Kamloops, and we just got a recent report that Jaime sent me from another individual that shows records that it's very likely there's a whole lot of septic tiles and things that were buried in that area where they found their anomalies.

00:20:15.120 There's a very high chance there's not any bodies down there.

00:20:18.380 Shouldn't we, though, be digging these holes as soon as possible?

00:20:21.060 Well, because if these crimes happened, the perpetrators might still be alive and we want to get them.

00:20:26.220 Yes.

00:20:26.800 And Nina Green, who is a stone figure, I should mention, has been tirelessly working and, you know, getting research on these matters.

00:20:37.560 And really, there's three things that have to happen now.

00:20:40.940 So the knowledge keepers, that's the only evidence that we have so far is what's been the so-called knowledge keepers and their memories.

00:20:47.460 And it's not like they're lying.

00:20:48.960 Everyone says, oh, you're saying they're lying.

00:20:50.380 We're not saying anyone is lying.

00:20:53.100 It's just that memory, especially after many, many years, becomes, you know, clouded.

00:20:59.840 And as well, you can implant memories in people.

00:21:03.480 So what has to happen is, first of all, there's a report that was done by the ground penetrating radar specialist, Sarah Beaulieu, and that report has been kept secret by the band.

00:21:15.380 That report should be released.

00:21:17.140 There's really no other things that have to happen at this initial stage, but that report has to be released so it can be viewed by outside experts.

00:21:26.140 Then there was an RCMP investigation that was initially started and Marie Sinclair became involved in cautioning Sarah Beaulieu on, you know, to get a lawyer and to be concerned about answering questions in the RCMP.

00:21:42.500 I don't know where that's at, I don't know where that's at, but that should be reopened.

00:21:45.620 And finally, excavations.

00:21:49.760 That's the only way you are going to be able to determine whether there are remains there.

00:21:55.580 And that should have been done a year ago.

00:21:57.500 And we're, for some reason, we cannot seem to get that going.

00:22:02.120 And it really is, I don't understand why, if you think that there are 215 murdered children in an apple orchard, why the RCMP isn't starting this process of excavations.

00:22:16.780 Well, yeah, and I'd heard, again, a lot of emotional discussion from leaders and communities, and they take those quotes in the paper when it ever comes to these days.

00:22:24.520 We want to get those remains and repatriate them and bring them to their families.

00:22:27.880 But nobody follows up with the media to point out, well, where's the families looking for them?

00:22:32.700 Where are they to be repatriated to?

00:22:34.660 We haven't even found any remains yet.

00:22:36.780 But the legacy media leaves that wide open, and again, our academia does.

00:22:42.460 We've got a really travesty happening here right now, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

00:22:48.760 So I think one of the ways people do this is they just declare that both the ground and the report is sacred.

00:22:56.120 And if it's sacred in the eyes of certain people, you can't open it for discussion in a general way, or you can't dig into the ground to find out what's there.

00:23:04.160 This, you know, this would be an easy out for anybody to claim, but certain people have a priority in making that claim and keeping other people from delving into finding out what the actual truth really is.

00:23:17.980 And one of the perpetrators of this, of course, is the TRC Commission itself, who, you know, made certain claims that these areas are sacred and can't be violated.

00:23:29.380 Well, I mean, if somebody's murdered, the police have an official responsibility to violate that principle because there's a higher order principle.

00:23:38.620 That is, we want to find out who was murdered and how they were murdered and who's responsible and hold them up for punishment.

00:23:45.320 So I see Brian's back in. I think perhaps there was a connection challenge or something there.

00:23:50.740 And I'd like to, and Brian's got a, you know, of course, an extensive legal history, because this is outside of my realm of knowledge.

00:23:57.960 We were discussing, though, I mean, if we perhaps have this many bodies or if it is happening, we should be seeing a forensic investigation.

00:24:04.940 The reserves and others are resisting an actual, you know, exhuming of these sites.

00:24:09.180 Is there a way that we could legally force them? I mean, if this is a crime scene, if this is a forensic state, if I had one in my backyard, I couldn't tell the police, yeah, there's a body back there, but I consider it sacred.

00:24:19.260 So I'm not going to let you dig it up. They're not going to take that. They're going to dig it anyways.

00:24:23.560 Is there a way we could compel further investigation on this to get some clarity?

00:24:27.080 Yeah. And I lost my connection. Sorry. So I don't know exactly what has been discussed here.

00:24:34.480 But yeah, this is, this is one of the big areas that Canadians should be discussing.

00:24:42.240 What happened here? Why? We've got one of the biggest murder allegations in the history of Canada.

00:24:50.800 We have the top chief in Canada, Archibald, claimed on BBC that tens of thousands of Indigenous students had been murdered in Canada and buried in spots all over the country.

00:25:08.260 We have another one of our top Indigenous leaders claiming that there might be 25,000, maybe more of these people.

00:25:18.000 And the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation claims that there are thousands of missing children who went to school and never returned.

00:25:27.940 So if true, this would be probably the worst, by far the worst crime in Canadian history.

00:25:33.480 So you'd think that the RCMP would want to get right in there and investigate immediately.

00:25:41.200 Because if in fact it turns out, and I think it will, that Dr. Bolio's report is deeply flawed and that she was not detecting graves at all.

00:25:53.040 Instead, she was detecting what was probably a sewage system built in the 1920s.

00:25:59.980 And if in fact her report was done very incompetently, and as I say, I think that's what we're going to find.

00:26:07.920 And if there are no bodies, if there are no murders, then the Canadian people have been through a heck of a bad year.

00:26:16.880 The reputation of the country has suffered tremendously because we are now known as a spot where genocide occurred, where Indigenous children were murdered.

00:26:29.380 And as I say, the research we've done makes it exceedingly unlikely that anybody, any child, was in fact murdered at a residential school.

00:26:43.280 So other than one historical little footnote I'll tell you about in a minute, if I could.

00:26:50.620 So the RCMP should definitely be, and what they should have done, I think my colleagues would agree with me, is immediately after this allegation was made, they should have taken over the investigation.

00:27:04.580 They should have properly secured the area, and if necessary, they should have begun excavations, which would probably have consisted of, they probably wouldn't even have had to do so because they would have found out after questioning Bolio and realizing that she had not properly prepared a report.

00:27:24.960 They probably would have done the investigation, found that these were not graves in the first place, and they could have laid this to rest probably within a week of investigation, but they didn't do so.

00:27:36.080 So the question that we have to ask is why?

00:27:38.460 Now, what we know for a fact is that Murray Sinclair, who used to be the commissioner, the head commissioner for the TRC, contacted some people and said, lay off this investigation.

00:27:55.220 Now, I'm not accusing Sinclair of doing anything wrong.

00:27:58.000 He was a private citizen.

00:27:59.140 I suppose that's his right to do so.

00:28:00.940 But what happened next, we have to know about that, because it sounds like some important politicians got involved, and I'll see if my colleagues agree with my suspicions here, but it sounds like some important politicians got involved, and then they got on the phone to some very important RCMP people and said, don't do your investigation.

00:28:25.620 Stop, because you might be offending people or whatever the reasons.

00:28:29.200 Now, for a politician to do that is very wrong.

00:28:32.840 That's political interference at a top level.

00:28:35.700 For the RCMP, if this is in fact what occurred, to simply not do their job and say, okay, well, we won't go and investigate, that is also very wrong.

00:28:46.600 So I think what we have here is a political scandal, a very large political scandal that has not yet been fully explained.

00:28:56.980 But yes, of course, the RCMP should have immediately gone involved and begun investigating properly.

00:29:03.360 And this matter would have probably been laid to rest very quickly.

00:29:07.700 And I don't know if my colleagues agree with me on that or not.

00:29:12.200 Well, you certainly have a report.

00:29:13.780 We need to have Bolio's report released.

00:29:16.980 And that makes no sense as to why that that has not been made public.

00:29:20.540 And until we have that report released, no one should have, you know, even proceeded on any of the discussions.

00:29:27.200 But everything all blew up.

00:29:29.900 And so now here we are.

00:29:31.160 But the band must release Bolio's report.

00:29:35.260 Absolutely.

00:29:35.600 And I think, Brian, I would even push a little bit further and said, you know, there's complicity between the government, the churches, the RCMP, and particularly the media on this issue.

00:29:48.380 So it's not simply, you know, one sector of our society that's been bought off, but it's a whole swath of sectors of our society that aren't willing to open this to having a debate and try to find out what the actual truth really is.

00:30:04.920 And deference, I think that's, you know, one doesn't necessarily have to get into the collusion or anything like that, but there is too much deference for anything that a so-called knowledge keeper says when they're just an individual who has a memory, which could be flawed, could have been implanted.

00:30:23.840 We cannot rely upon these memories to proceed in terms of our action.

00:30:30.760 We need actual evidence, not just memories, which could have been implanted with some kind of suggestions, which happens, has happened many times and happened in the 1980s with the satanic panic, which has a lot of similarities to what went on with respect to the Kamloops case.

00:30:47.620 Well, in particular, I mean, I went to a boarding school for a period of my young life.

00:30:54.200 It's certainly not Indian residential or anything like that.

00:30:56.420 But I remember the late night rumor mills between kids as they chatter and myths and things that are going on, particularly in a boarding environment.

00:31:05.680 I mean, and those things, if they aren't corrected, even if it's, you know, not malicious, but inadvertently turned into what you think was a real memory later in life.

00:31:14.440 It's not trying to cause harm, but I mean, we're basing, yes, a lot of settlements, a lot of accusations on oral histories that are completely unproven.

00:31:24.100 Well, I think they're more than, it even goes further than that.

00:31:28.340 I think these are basically, my belief is that these are basically ghost stories originally, these stories about priests throwing babies into furnaces and killing people and secretly burying them with six-year-olds and that sort of thing.

00:31:42.360 These are basically ghost stories that probably frightened little kids in residential school dormitories told each other.

00:31:50.000 And then they have been amplified.

00:31:52.220 And we mentioned Kevin Annet, who is, he's one of the most destructive people in Canadian history.

00:32:01.380 He has taken these stories, these ghost stories that little kids tell, and he has made them more sophisticated and believable, and he's spread them throughout the country.

00:32:14.740 So they have been floating around many indigenous communities now for decades, for a couple of decades, and they've created a type of, and I agree with it with Francis, it's a type of hysteria. 1.00

00:32:26.300 And so you have these stories, and suddenly, for some reason, our own media and our own politicians go along with this nonsense, and that's what this is.

00:32:38.160 Priests throwing babies into furnaces or secretly burying them with the forced help of six-year-olds, those are conspiracy theories, urban legends, whatever you want to call them, ghost stories.

00:32:51.600 They're just not true.

00:32:53.580 But these crazy stories have been conflated with the legitimate desire by some indigenous communities to search for the burial sites, long-lost burial sites, and that's perfectly legitimate. 1.00

00:33:05.840 But to have that conflated with all of these ghost stories has made a pure mess.

00:33:10.920 And then on top of that, you have the media, which has not done its job.

00:33:14.500 You have politicians who are forever, whatever the reasons, are exploiting this.

00:33:19.760 And you've got indigenous leaders like Archibald making absolutely reckless statements, and they're doing great damage to the country, both domestically and internationally. 0.99

00:33:33.300 Yeah.

00:33:33.980 Well, and so, I mean, before I let you guys go, I'll go one more round through, and I'll ask the hardest part, which is how can we deal with this?

00:33:42.980 How can we fix this?

00:33:43.940 How can we correct this?

00:33:44.940 Because it's only going to get worse.

00:33:46.200 I mean, there's currently, as we speak, another GPR survey going on in a site up near Lacklebish, and they said they're going to have results coming out this winter.

00:33:54.340 Well, I can put my fortune teller's hat on already and tell you that they're going to say, we found a bunch of anomalies.

00:33:59.840 Everybody's going to go hog wild.

00:34:01.040 There'll be new settlements.

00:34:02.520 There'll be new orange T-shirts springing up on fences all over the place, and nobody's going to dig up and follow through on whatever they discovered.

00:34:09.300 And this is going to keep happening.

00:34:10.520 So, I mean, I guess I'll start with you, Rod.

00:34:13.220 Like, there are people like yourself who have been there firsthand.

00:34:16.900 Is there any organization or more people coming to speak out and at least try to correct the record right now?

00:34:22.620 Well, we have a group of about 15 people that are looking, trying to look seriously into this issue.

00:34:29.000 And we've got news outlets like yours and Epoch Times and a few others that are concerned about that.

00:34:36.500 So, there's a group of about 15 of us that are trying to get the information out.

00:34:42.740 But we're certainly not getting a sympathetic hearing from the other news outlets and looking at the issues that we're bringing forward.

00:34:54.680 So, until we start talking reasonably and sensibly and fairly to each other, I don't think we can move very much further.

00:35:03.260 Okay.

00:35:03.720 Well, we'll try what we can.

00:35:05.160 And for yourself, Ms. Whitteson, I mean, you've kind of lost a bit of a platform for the time being, but you're still active, of course.

00:35:11.320 So, outspoken, you know, on the academic front, what more?

00:35:16.540 I mean, there's lots that we want to see done, but what's being done or what can be done?

00:35:20.620 Yes.

00:35:20.840 So, I'm very active and I have my own podcast called The Rational Space Disputations, where I invite people like Rod and Brian on to, you know, have different perspectives aired.

00:35:30.880 But really, administration, university administration, what they are doing by making political statements all the time is they are directly acting against the ability of professors to critically examine issues.

00:35:47.360 And this happened with the residential schools.

00:35:50.060 It also happened with Black Lives Matter.

00:35:52.020 And I think that's where administrators and university presidents and so on should stay out of making these political statements, because what it does is it creates a chill for those who might disagree and gives you the impression that this is the official position of the university.

00:36:10.300 And what happens if you question what's being stated is that you will have all sorts of complaints filed against you, that you are a person who is not, you know, aligned with the quote unquote values of what the university is about.

00:36:26.340 The university is about the free and open exchange of ideas.

00:36:30.440 It's not about having a particular political position.

00:36:33.520 And this is a huge problem that exists.

00:36:36.620 And if we can get rid of that problem and restore universities to a place of open inquiry, then we will be able to discuss issues such as the unmarked graves and the residential schools.

00:36:48.520 Great.

00:36:48.920 And finally, Brian, where do we go from here?

00:36:52.980 Well, I think you're doing it, Corey, and I hope you will continue to do it.

00:36:59.640 It's people in the media that we need.

00:37:02.260 And Kerry Glavin's article was very brave, and he's paid a price.

00:37:10.220 And John Kaye at Collette.

00:37:14.160 These are the people we need.

00:37:15.980 Conrad Black, Barbara Kaye.

00:37:17.680 We need brave journalists that are prepared to take an honest look at this issue and not just write what their editors want them to write.

00:37:29.380 And we have to have the editors of the national newspapers like the National Post and the Globe and Mail to get their heads out of their nether regions and start encouraging an honest discussion, not just having the authors like Tanya Kalaga and these emotional appeals not based on facts.

00:37:54.440 What they need is proper reporting.

00:37:57.380 I mentioned Kerry Glavin.

00:37:58.620 There's a perfect example of an honest journalist.

00:38:02.320 That's what we need.

00:38:03.560 And that's what those editors have to do.

00:38:06.740 Well, great.

00:38:07.500 Well, I thank all three of you for coming on to talk to me today, guys.

00:38:11.200 It's such an important issue.

00:38:12.320 I appreciate your being outspoken on it.

00:38:14.360 And, you know, as I said, all we can do is just keep hammering on this until hopefully we get good resolution in the long run.

00:38:20.040 Because if we give up, well, then the misinformation is sure to win.

00:38:23.500 So I appreciate the chance to talk to you all.

00:38:27.280 And I hope I get to speak to you again all soon.

00:38:29.700 Thanks, Corey.

00:38:30.420 And good luck in your new career.

00:38:31.900 Thank you.

00:38:31.960 Thank you.

Western Standard - August 18, 2022

Hard hitting panel discussion on Indian Residential Schools

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