Western Standard - August 03, 2022


Retired justice Brian Giesbrecht on residential school alleged burial sites

Mentioned
Corey Paulette Burghardt Jaime Rubenstein Murray Sinclair Peter Bryce
Will Canadian cities avoid the fate of American ＂progressive＂ cities？ Kelly Malmberg on Ottawa's pressures on agricultural producers

Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

146.81

Word count

2,705

Sentence count

166


Summary

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

In the wake of the recent revelation that the bodies of at least 215 Indigenous children were buried by Catholic priests and nuns at the Kamloops Indian residential school, the CBC and CTV have been quick to point the finger at the Canadian government. What does the TRC have to say about this, and why should the RCMP investigate?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 And speaking of the RCMP, why hasn't there been an investigation or, you know, shouldn't we be demanding an investigation then if indeed that we feel there's bodies that have been buried from murdered children?
00:00:10.900 Well, my understanding is that at Kamloops, the RCMP did in fact begin an investigation.
00:00:21.340 And then, and I don't know all the details of this, Corey, but it's a very serious matter.
00:00:26.180 Apparently, they were personally contacted, I believe, by the former TRC chair, Murray Sinclair, who basically told them to lay off.
00:00:43.820 And amazingly, they did.
00:00:47.460 Now, this is, I don't know all the details of this and I don't want to give any misinformation, but that is my understanding.
00:00:55.140 Now, this, to me, it seems like a very serious business.
00:01:00.320 If the RCMP are contacted by somebody who says, well, please lay off this murder investigation for whatever reason, the RCMP would normally simply say, I'm sorry, we'll just do our job as we see fit.
00:01:16.520 And that didn't happen in this case.
00:01:19.740 Now, there is a call to action in the TRC report that basically says, well, indigenous communities should be able to do their own burial site investigations.
00:01:34.900 Well, that makes a certain amount of a sense if you were looking for ancient relics or something like that.
00:01:39.820 But if we're talking about an allegation of what is really a mass murder here, 215 secret burials by night, where somehow the Catholic clergy, this would be the priests and nuns who were at the Kamloops School, had somehow caused the death of children and then somehow decided they would be secretly buried with the help of six-year-olds.
00:02:06.760 This would be the biggest crime in Canadian history.
00:02:10.260 And, of course, the RCMP should immediately go into the area.
00:02:14.720 They should secure the area and then do their investigation.
00:02:18.340 After all, some of the people, these six-year-olds that apparently were forced to dig graves, well, goodness, they would still be around.
00:02:26.480 I don't know how old they would be, but they would still be around.
00:02:29.440 Obviously, these supposedly occurred in the 1950s and 60s.
00:02:36.460 So some of these people would be alive.
00:02:38.380 Why the RCMP have not actually properly investigated, I do not understand.
00:02:44.380 And I think Canadians should demand that the RCMP do their job, take over the investigation even at this late stage.
00:02:53.740 And that would definitely involve securing the area properly and then excavating if they believed that there was enough evidence.
00:03:02.140 Yeah, and just to clarify a little more, one of our commenters, Paulette Burghardt, saying, what is TRC?
00:03:08.140 And that's the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, right?
00:03:11.520 Yes, that's the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which recorded in 2015.
00:03:19.220 And I can just jump right into the genocide question if you want, Corey, because we've had so much of that now in the news.
00:03:35.000 And I think some simple facts would be useful for your viewers.
00:03:44.000 And I'll try not to give many numbers here, but we have the story that 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools.
00:04:00.780 And that fits into the genocide definition.
00:04:05.360 In other words, if you take 150,000 children and force them into schools and indoctrinate them,
00:04:11.240 yeah, that probably would be called cultural genocide or even genocide.
00:04:16.780 But none of that is true.
00:04:18.960 And the CBC and CTV is just as bad.
00:04:23.320 And even the mainstream newspapers keep repeating this misinformation.
00:04:28.200 So I just thought I'd let you know, I think, where this comes from.
00:04:31.760 The TRC, that is the Truth and Reconciliation Commissioners, made a speech to the United Nations a number of years ago before the TRC hearings even began.
00:04:47.800 And there they said that they said 150,000, for seven generations, 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools.
00:04:59.080 And then they went on to list all the terrible things that had happened.
00:05:02.200 This is in advance of even doing, in advance of even doing the hearings to get the evidence, which is shocking in itself.
00:05:08.520 But every part of that statement is not true in the first place, the idea that every Indigenous children child that went to residential school is just demonstrably false.
00:05:22.140 Here are the figures.
00:05:25.640 Between in the peak years of enrollment, one third of status Indian children went to residential schools.
00:05:36.980 And in some of the years, beginning and later, it was it was a little as one sixth.
00:05:41.920 So you could say between one sixth and one third of the status Indians went to residential schools.
00:05:48.720 But if you're talking about Indigenous children, which includes Métis and non-status and Inuit, the percentage is much lower than that.
00:06:00.820 It's actually between like one twelfth and one sixth.
00:06:04.580 And if you want to get to go further into how many were Catholic, about half of the students were Catholic, you had something like between one twenty-fourth and one twelfth who actually went to residential schools.
00:06:18.160 Now, that's a tiny, tiny number.
00:06:19.980 And you have to ask yourself, well, how could you possibly make a claim that there had been a cultural genocide or genocide when so few of the children actually went to to the schools?
00:06:36.480 But it gets worse because the idea that these children were all forced to attend is nonsense.
00:06:44.620 And I'll not go into too much detail here.
00:06:47.080 But, Corey, before 1920, there was no compulsory attendance at all, mandatory attendance for status Indian children.
00:06:54.640 This means that a parent, an Indigenous parent, was not under any type of legal compulsion to send their children to school.
00:07:05.280 And yet, about at least some of them did.
00:07:08.760 Some of the parents chose to send their children to day schools.
00:07:13.240 Some chose to send their children to residential schools.
00:07:17.460 And many Indigenous children, most at that time, didn't go to any school at all.
00:07:23.320 So that was complete choice.
00:07:25.200 The Catholic parents would choose to send their children to a Catholic residential school.
00:07:30.720 Protestant parents, because most Indians were Christian at that time, Protestant parents would choose a Protestant school.
00:07:39.540 So that was not forced.
00:07:41.420 These parents were under no compulsion at all.
00:07:45.400 Now, after 1920, there was compulsory attendance.
00:07:51.320 By that time, there was compulsory attendance in all parts of Canada.
00:07:55.940 And the law said that an Indigenous parent, or pardon me, a status Indian parent, had to choose either a day school or a residential school and send their children to one of those schools.
00:08:11.040 And the only people that were actually compelled to send their children to a residential school were those that did not live near a day school.
00:08:22.260 So that's where the law stayed.
00:08:24.260 And it is completely false that all of these children were forced to attend.
00:08:30.580 We have applications.
00:08:32.240 My group has many applications which were made by Indigenous parents that were refused.
00:08:39.040 That is, the residential school said, sorry, we're full.
00:08:45.640 We just don't have enough space for you.
00:08:48.520 These are parents that wanted their children to attend.
00:08:51.980 And before you ask another question, let me just give you one example that comes to mind that makes this very clear.
00:08:57.820 In the 1930s, the Cross Lake Residential School was burned to the ground in Manitoba, probably Manitoba's worst crime of all time.
00:09:08.660 Twelve Indian children were killed and one nun was killed.
00:09:13.620 And the federal government, this was the Depression, didn't want to rebuild the school for money reasons.
00:09:20.740 It was going to be expensive.
00:09:22.520 And so the school was not reopened and the parents started sending their children to the day schools.
00:09:29.040 Well, the parents, these are the Indigenous parents, brought together and they signed a petition and presented it to the federal government demanding that the school be rebuilt.
00:09:38.860 And they explained in that petition that day schools were simply inadequate and not providing the quality of education for the children that they felt was necessary.
00:09:48.580 And after receiving that petition, the federal government did go and rebuild that school.
00:09:55.280 So that is absolute proof that the Indigenous parents were very much involved with the education of their children and in some cases, in many cases, preferred residential schools to day schools.
00:10:10.060 And maybe I should just let you ask some questions and jump in here, Corey.
00:10:15.040 Well, that's all right.
00:10:15.780 And there's so many numbers and things going around right now, a lot of exaggerations.
00:10:19.060 And actually, I got a correction sent to me by Jaime Rubenstein, who I had on the other week, because I had my numbers mixed up with how many children, perhaps, you know, because some did pass away while in the care of residential schools.
00:10:29.440 And the number from the Truth and Reconciliation Report, anyways, is 832.
00:10:35.080 Yeah, it was over the course of, you know, the better part of a century and with 150,000 children.
00:10:41.420 So, and in times when mortality was, unfortunately, a lot higher for children than today.
00:10:47.220 So, again, we're not getting into the realm of genocide, even if people like lightly throwing that term out there.
00:10:52.920 No, and the 832 is even very interesting.
00:10:56.620 I know there are a few hundred that died in hospitals afterwards, and there were other numbers that they sort of arbitrarily added to that list.
00:11:07.020 But it's really important to understand that most of those 832 died of tuberculosis, and they had that tuberculosis when they first entered residential schools.
00:11:19.700 That's what, that's the evidence of Dr. Peter Bryce, who is usually quoted on these things.
00:11:25.760 So, the, the important thing there is disease was an unfortunate fact of life in those days, and it was very sad that the disease, disease death rate on reserves was far higher than in the general population.
00:11:41.320 And that naturally follows that it would also be far higher in residential schools.
00:11:48.500 And instead of saying, well, what is the rate of death at residential schools compared to the rate of death on the reserves, which is the proper comparison?
00:12:00.680 And what we all always see in newspapers is, well, the rate of death at residential schools was five times higher than at other schools.
00:12:11.600 Well, that's absolutely true.
00:12:13.200 But those children at the other schools did not come from reserves.
00:12:16.540 It was the reserves that, for many historical reasons, had a very high death rate from, from disease, particularly tuberculosis and influenza in those years.
00:12:28.180 Yeah, so, kind of pivoting back, you know, to the apparent or alleged 215, or I see they've even sort of backed down and said, well, maybe it's 200.
00:12:38.440 But it's the anomalies found with the GPR and in Kamloops, where there, it's felt that there were perhaps that many bodies secretly buried.
00:12:45.280 I mean, that's a significant chunk on top of the 832 known.
00:12:50.940 Again, I mean, truth and reconciliation, I wouldn't realize that commission would have the ability to tell the police what they can or can't investigate.
00:12:58.180 And you would think, I mean, truth is the term in it.
00:13:00.880 If people thought there were murders going on, they should be screaming at the police to get in there and get investigating as soon as possible.
00:13:06.940 It just seems very counterintuitive that we aren't getting in there if we really thought a crime was happening.
00:13:11.820 As you said, it wasn't that relatively long ago.
00:13:13.600 The perpetrators might still be alive.
00:13:15.520 We should be following up on this.
00:13:17.140 And they, so far, there's not a teaspoon of dirt to move.
00:13:19.760 Well, I don't understand this.
00:13:21.980 I don't understand what is happening with the RCMP.
00:13:25.440 It seems that political interference here of some type is warping things at the top.
00:13:37.720 But there's no question in my mind that when somebody makes an allegation of mass murder and secret burial, whether that person is indigenous or anything else, then the RCMP in a rural area have the duty to immediately investigate.
00:13:53.720 Because if they've just let these allegations go, you get what we have today, where these claims are coming in all over the place and people are doing do-it-yourself investigations in their own communities.
00:14:10.840 And this is very wrong.
00:14:12.300 This is Canada.
00:14:13.200 There should be one policing policy that applies to all of Canada.
00:14:19.960 And it's very clear to me that the RCMP should immediately, even at this very late stage, say, no, we don't let people do their own murder investigations.
00:14:30.160 That's our job.
00:14:31.240 And then get in there.
00:14:33.040 Well, and, you know, it makes sense with something as potentially serious as this.
00:14:38.200 But do you think we're ever going to see a forensic investigation?
00:14:41.140 Or are we just going to let those alleged grave sites sit as they stand in speculation?
00:14:46.720 Well, I'll give a prediction here.
00:14:49.640 None of these communities that are alleging that there are these secret burials and with all of these crazy stories about priests secretly burying children and throwing them into furnaces and that sort of thing, I'm predicting that none of them are going to excavate.
00:15:06.440 They will hide behind claims of jurisdiction.
00:15:09.940 They'll hide behind claims that, no, this is sacred land.
00:15:13.360 And we've made these sensational allegations, but we're not going to do anything about them.
00:15:19.320 There will be many other excuses given, but no excavations will take place.
00:15:26.060 Because if they did, what they would find is exactly what they found where the RCMP did do investigations.
00:15:33.780 I mentioned that Shibnickety School in Nova Scotia, for instance, where there were these same crazy claims about priests secretly burying children and that sort of thing.
00:15:45.980 And the RCMP investigated and they found, yes, there were graves, but those were graves of Irish settlers who had died 100 years before the school was even built.
00:15:55.300 And there are three other places where similar things occurred.
00:15:59.840 So there's a type of, and I don't understand this, Corey, but there's a type of hysteria which has taken hold in some of the indigenous communities.
00:16:10.540 And that's why I don't call this whole missing children thing a hoax, because many of these unsophisticated people actually believe what they're talking about.
00:16:21.220 They believe that there are indeed thousands of children that were murdered in horrible ways at residential schools.
00:16:27.520 These are simply conspiracy theories, urban myths, ghost stories, whatever you call them, but they are not true.
00:16:37.280 And they've been stoked by some very unscrupulous people.
00:16:42.220 And now we have people who I call genocide hustlers who are determined to label Canada as a genocidal nation, which it is not and has never been.
00:16:54.360 So there's simply some very bad information out there.
00:17:00.300 And for reasons that are not clear to me, the mainstream media seems to be to feel no obligation to start reporting on these things honestly.
00:17:10.260 Yeah, well, we are seeing at least more reporting coming out and more calls, you know, questioning the official eye.
00:17:15.460 I mean, we heard none of that in the first six months because everybody was horrified and felt that, wow, if this is really happening, we certainly don't want to question it.
00:17:21.720 But it's been 14 months. I mean, we need to see some some resolution here.
00:17:26.100 So I guess we just keep the pressure up and keep bringing it up until hopefully, as you said, you don't sound optimistic, but we can try and force the law to be applied and see what happens.
00:17:36.840 Yeah. Yeah.
00:17:37.420 All right. Well, thanks for coming on again to talk to me today.
00:17:41.340 And I suspect this story will be going on for quite a while.
00:17:43.640 You know, hopefully we can get you on again because I don't plan on letting it go.
00:17:46.620 I'm stubborn to this one because we've got a real travesty hanging out there.
00:17:49.820 And we'll just keep pressuring and examining and reading into this until we get some resolution, I think.
00:17:55.340 Yeah. And thanks for inviting me. And I would just I would just invite watchers or viewers to check out everything I've said, but don't go to sources like Wikipedia and and and many of the other reports.
00:18:12.640 Go to primary sources. Go to the actual government record.
00:18:15.860 So you get the straight information because there's a great deal of misinformation on this field.
00:18:22.660 OK, thanks, Corey. And good to talk to you.