Jenn Allan Riley, Sixties Scoop survivor, addresses BC Civil Liberties Tweet ＂burn them all down＂
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
206.34267
Summary
In this episode, we discuss the controversial words of Harsha Wally, a leader of the Indigenous Human Rights Campaign. She said that Indigenous people should not burn down places of worship because they don't condone the destruction of Indigenous worship places.
Transcript
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This morning I had a conversation with Harsha Wally about what she had said and she claimed
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that she'd been misquoted and it was a right-wing newspaper said that. I accepted whether it's an
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excuse or not, I accepted what she had to say. We had a conversation about it and I explained to
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her that not all the churches, not all the denominations were involved in residential
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school. So when she says burn them all down, that means the Pentecostal Church, that means the
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Salvation Army Church was doing amazing work in Canada and had nothing to do with residential
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school. So we had to talk about how this was actually going to affect the relations between
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Indigenous people and Canadians and how as Indigenous people we don't recommend people
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to destroy places of worship. And so she said she thanked me for that teaching and then that was it.
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Yeah, she claimed, Harsha Wally claimed to me she was misquoted and that it was taken out of context.
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Okay, because in terms of the misquote, it was a truth.
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Yes, I know. Yes, I know. We, I basically, like I said, I've accepted what she has to offer. I'm like, okay,
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you know, okay, well, we'll take that face value, whatever, right? But she says that she was,
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it was taken out of context. So I'll, okay, I'll just accept her apology wherever she's at with it.
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No, no, no, we don't, and I said that to her, I said we do not, and actually I said to her,
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as a Native way, we do not condone destruction of worship places. As Indigenous people, we do not spread
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hate. How we got here was a result of hate. Someone hated us Indigenous people and felt the need to
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destroy us and our culture. And so 150 years later, we're still at this place where we're having
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religious wars with each other. Well, we hate you because you hate this, you hate that. And so
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people are burning down people's places of worship as a result of this hate. And I explained to
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Harshawali how her behavior is keeping that spirit of hate going. And as I explained earlier, I said
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to her, if you keep this up, this is going to cause a very evil spirit to come to life and spread
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Yeah. So it sounds like you, I understand you're accepting her explanation, actually.
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Yes. That's why I very strongly said to her what I said. And I said, okay, I'll forgive you for what
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you've said. And I, um, okay, whatever, like, you know, whatever your excuse is, whatever. But I'm
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going to explain to you why what you said is so damaging and dangerous in this country,
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especially a person who's a leader of a human rights organization.