Western Standard - Tom Flanagan： The truth starting to emerge with the residential school graves.

00:00:00.000 You know, it took some pushing, it took some prodding on your part, on the part of Professor Rubenstein and the other one, Rulliard, getting out there and saying, look, you know, this whole thing that's been going on, there's a lot of pieces that don't fit or there's a lot of discussion that's not happening or a lot of assumptions are being made about what happened that aren't accurate.

00:00:18.820 And finally, it seems to hit a tipping point, though, where we're having a public discussion on what actually happened with these residential schools and these burial sites.

00:00:26.020 Yeah, it's interesting how, what we've been doing, a group of us have been digging into the issue and publishing our findings.

00:00:36.600 At the beginning, we were pretty much frozen out of what you might call the legacy media or corporate media.

00:00:43.440 We published in, let's call it alternative media, like Western Standard, True North, Dorchester Reviews, it's a small historical journal.

00:00:53.560 And we published quite a bit of stuff, putting forth a different interpretation about the unmarked graves.

00:01:00.040 Finally, last week, we had a bit of a breakthrough into the legacy media.

00:01:04.000 There was a big spread in National Post.

00:01:06.700 I expect many of your viewers have seen that by Terry Glavin.

00:01:13.320 There was one front page, and not only front page, but several internal pages, I mean, much larger than any newspaper normally grants space to an author.

00:01:24.780 So it was really quite a landmark.

00:01:26.660 And in addition to that, there was coverage in the New York Post, which is the oldest newspaper in the United States, and in several Quebec newspapers.

00:01:35.340 So it's a bit of a landmark for us in trying to broaden the discussion, and we hope there will be lots more.

00:01:41.940 Yeah, and I don't like driving too many of our viewers to other outlets, but that's okay.

00:01:46.020 I mean, Glavin's piece was outstanding.

00:01:47.520 And as you said, it's rare when you get such a long one, particularly in a print medium.

00:01:52.760 I mean, that takes – I would imagine there was a lot of discussion before going into something that controversial and going that deep between the editors, like, do we want to go there?

00:01:59.760 Do we want to give him this much ink on this issue?

00:02:02.540 And it's happy to see that they did.

00:02:04.100 Yeah, I'm sure there was – I'm sure it was discussed.

00:02:06.860 It's also interesting that about a year ago, Mr. Glavin published a much shorter column about the findings in Kamloops, which took a sort of a conventional point of view that, yes, these were unmarked graves and wasn't terrible and on and on and on.

00:02:22.860 So he's really reversed himself over the course of the year.

00:02:26.200 He doesn't say why.

00:02:28.700 Perhaps the publications of our group have had something to do with that.

00:02:34.020 I don't care where it comes from, but the point is that now a different view of this is getting a wider audience, and I think that's terrific.

00:02:44.160 Yeah, absolutely.

00:02:45.160 And, I mean, we don't ever want to punish people for just admitting – even if he didn't go into the admitting he was wrong, but just changing the view.

00:02:50.420 Hey, if he's changing correctly, then good on him.

00:02:53.160 And as you said, maybe it was because of reading – and there was some stuff in the Dorchester Times as well that really dug into that a fair amount, too.

00:03:00.220 Well, that's right.

00:03:00.960 Professor Riyard's article was a bit of a bombshell.

00:03:04.320 I mean, it got – well, I haven't looked at the number recently, but at one time it was way over 100,000 hits for something published on – put up on the website of a fairly small circulation historical – it's absolutely unprecedented.

00:03:20.820 And that showed that there was a hunger for getting the truth about these so-called unmarked graves.

00:03:27.860 So we've been working on it ever since, and, you know, we're making a little progress.

00:03:31.980 But the politicians are deeply invested in the story.

00:03:35.260 I mean, the prime minister with his half-masked flags, and now he's got the governor general talking about it as well.

00:03:44.860 It's going to be hard for them to climb down because they have made such an ostentatious display of allegiance to a story for which there are, in fact, no supporting facts.

00:03:54.980 I repeat, absolutely no facts.

00:03:57.940 Not one burial has been found.

00:04:01.380 With all the hype and publicity, ground-penetrating radar has found some soil disturbances, which could conceivably be burials, particularly when they go looking in cemeteries.

00:04:14.460 It's not surprising that they might come up with a burial.

00:04:16.880 But absolutely no evidence that any of these are burials of so-called missing children.

00:04:24.140 So it's – I repeat, it's the biggest fake news story in my lifetime, you know, perhaps since the New York Times cover-up of the Holocaust in the Ukraine and this mass starvation in the Ukraine, I guess, was a bigger fake news story.

00:04:42.560 But this is a big one.

00:04:44.640 Well, and a very socially damaging one.

00:04:47.900 A lot of people took that to heart.

00:04:49.580 And, I mean, a lot of people were horrified.

00:04:51.360 If you read it on the surface when it initially was breaking, and if you believe that that's what was happening, that they were really abusing these children en masse and hiding the burials, I mean, it's mortifying.

00:05:02.140 And, you know, you're correcting the record later, but a lot of the damage and trust and emotion and things has happened.

00:05:08.040 Like, where do you go to start recovering from this?

00:05:10.680 No, I know what you mean, Corey.

00:05:12.940 Tremendous damage has been done.

00:05:14.260 First, we had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission accusing Canada of cultural genocide.

00:05:19.400 And now, with the claims about unmarked graves, it sort of moves into a literal, physical genocide.

00:05:27.480 And, you know, unless you read these stories very carefully, they are horrified.

00:05:32.600 Now, if you read carefully, you start to see details that don't add up, like claims that six-year-olds were rousted out of bed in the middle of the night to go dig graves and that babies were thrown into furnaces and bodies were seen hanging on meat hooks in the barn.

00:05:51.740 And, you know, a lot of these details, you know, they go beyond the unlikely into the realm of the virtually impossible.

00:06:02.020 But not everybody researches stories that carefully, you know, and how can they?

00:06:06.360 People have busy lives and they look at the headlines.

00:06:08.360 So, yeah, tremendous, tremendous harm has been done already.

00:06:13.420 Yeah, and anecdotal evidence, you know, I mean, it really has to be examined, particularly when it's verbal and such emotional matter.

00:06:21.580 I mean, the people saying some of those stories might have heard them from somewhere and a friend of a friend.

00:06:25.040 But that shouldn't be making newsprint unless you can verify things like that, something that horrific.

00:06:30.720 This, for people with long memories, and maybe you have to be a little bit gray-haired for this, but remember the moral panic about daycare centers.

00:06:41.420 And there was all kinds of testimony about awful sexual assaults taking place in daycare centers and people went to jail for it.

00:06:49.980 Fortunately, nobody was executed.

00:06:51.480 You know, and it all turned out to be complete nonsense, overheated imaginations of children being asked leading questions.

00:07:00.640 A lot of the details in these stories are actually reminiscent of the daycare center moral panic.

00:07:07.580 And there are some, we haven't got time to explore it today, but there are some actual historical linkages between those stories and the ones that we hear now.

00:07:16.720 Well, and I think perhaps a little bit of both is what more emotional area can you get than the care and safety of your children in both cases?

00:07:24.080 It's something that really gets people fearful and empathizing.

00:07:26.960 I mean, you can imagine if somebody else's child is abused, you're horrified as well on their behalf.

00:07:31.980 Yeah, absolutely.

00:07:32.900 And you understand why people react to it.

00:07:34.960 But when you look analytically at it, what's happening here is, well, so-called oral tradition, it's always, you know, not somebody who saw these things, but somebody who talked to somebody who saw these things.

00:07:50.960 It's that kind of, that's that kind of testimony, which gets passed down and gets exaggerated.

00:07:56.140 It's like the game of telephone where you whisper around a circle and the story keeps changing as it gets carried on.

00:08:03.260 So, but to come back to the starting point here, I think what's really important is the complete irresponsibility of the corporate or legacy media who picked up these stories as soon as they came out and started to run with them.

00:08:17.400 And did not ask elementary questions that any good researcher would ask, like, what is the factual evidence for these claims?

00:08:26.800 The New York Times, for heaven's sake, supposed to be the leading newspaper in the world, published a story about mass graves in Kamloops.

00:08:35.900 You know, exaggeration upon exaggeration.

00:08:38.160 And these are supposed to be the leading parts of our news media.

00:08:44.180 I mean, I say thank God for outlets like the Western Standard, which are not part of this.

00:08:51.640 No, that's really the, I think the story for today is the complete irresponsibility of the legacy media on this story.

00:09:00.800 Now, will they correct themselves?

00:09:03.800 Self-correction is not a common feature of human beings, Corey.

00:09:07.620 So, none of us like to admit what we've been wrong, but they were absolutely wrong.

00:09:13.300 Professor Rubenstein, you know, asking this, this was a few months ago, why can't we find Canada's missing residential school students?

00:09:19.500 And we published that, and it was well-written and well-sourced, and it did okay, you know, but we also got some pushback, some negative emails saying, oh, you guys, you know, you're trying to deny a tragedy.

00:09:30.140 And otherwise, it just didn't boom.

00:09:31.500 I mean, some of the incentive for even smaller media outlets or bigger is the sensational, the horror is going to grab you the clicks.

00:09:37.600 And it's so measurable now with digital that I think they feel inclined to just, they want to sensationalize the horror of this, unfortunately.

00:09:46.620 Yeah, well, the pushback is starting now in the legacy media.

00:09:50.800 There was an editorial today in the Winnipeg Free Press, or not an editorial, but a guest column by Negan Sinclair, who's the son of Murray Sinclair.

00:09:58.840 He's the younger Sinclair as a professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba.

00:10:04.960 But he embarrassed himself by going on a long rant, which has no factual content at all.

00:10:11.740 It's political rather than professorial.

00:10:14.060 He doesn't deal in logic and fact.

00:10:16.420 He just, it's a long exercise in name calling, you know, that I'm too old, I'm too white, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

00:10:25.480 It's really an embarrassment for somebody who was employed by the public as a professor to be putting out that kind of argument.

00:10:32.660 But that kind of abuse is going to come.

00:10:34.600 I think there will be a lot of pushback of that type.

00:10:37.240 But we're going to keep plugging away and presenting fact and try and make yard by yard a little progress.

00:10:43.980 Well, and the facts are there.

00:10:45.200 I mean, there was somewhere when I had Professor Rubenstein on this show before, and I had stated actually in a question saying, well, it must be hard.

00:10:52.880 You know, there couldn't be many records from the schools from back then and things like that.

00:10:55.660 And he said, no, no, no.

00:10:56.920 It's very well documented where the children were, where they were transferred.

00:11:00.580 And in fact, these schools, that's the way they got paid.

00:11:03.560 If you didn't document who you had and where they were, you know, even if you're just looking on the self-interest level, they had every interest in documenting it.

00:11:09.800 And those documents still exist.

00:11:11.000 We can find out who passed away where and where they were buried or who went home.

00:11:14.400 There's no missing children.

00:11:16.040 Well, absolutely.

00:11:16.620 I mean, you know, to take one example, the claim is that possibly 200 or 215 unmarked graves were discovered at Kamloops.

00:11:23.900 Well, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission itself compiled a list of 51 children who died while attending the school at Kamloops.

00:11:34.200 Well, that's over a period of more than 100 years for the largest residential school in Canada.

00:11:39.080 I mean, that's not a lot of fatalities.

00:11:41.780 All deaths are sad.

00:11:43.060 But in 100 years and at a time when there were no antibiotics and tuberculosis and other diseases were killers of children, it's not a huge total.

00:11:53.260 Anyway, 51, not 200, 51 deaths were documented at the school.

00:11:59.080 And death certificates are available for these children in the archives of the province of British Columbia.

00:12:05.660 But the TRC didn't look there.

00:12:09.380 So you get the implication that there's something wrong with these deaths.

00:12:13.360 Well, the death certificate showed that what did they die of?

00:12:17.880 Well, tuberculosis, tragically, sometimes runaways, got accidents.

00:12:23.240 Most of them were sent back for burial to their home reserves.

00:12:29.240 Again, contrary to what is often said.

00:12:32.540 There are no missing children.

00:12:34.300 You know, they're all accounted for.

00:12:35.660 The whole missing children thing is a fable based upon misuse or overlooking historical sources that are there.

00:12:48.100 You know, it's really a disgrace that the TRC spent so much public money and ended up generating so many legends without making proper use of sources that would have been readily available to it.

00:13:00.680 Yeah.

00:13:01.220 And, I mean, you know, the investigation even at the time, it was surprising out of journalism.

00:13:04.860 Because, I mean, you still, to a degree, you want to get those scoops and things like that.

00:13:08.880 Like the famous, or you can almost call it infamous, picture of Trudeau kneeling with the teddy bear at a cemetery and his head down, the photo opportunity.

00:13:16.840 That one was covered in Glavin's story as well.

00:13:19.580 It was countered immediately.

00:13:20.840 They're saying, this is a known cemetery.

00:13:22.320 There's nothing discovered here.

00:13:23.920 This was all documented.

00:13:25.120 Why didn't they counter Trudeau at the time?

00:13:27.760 Say, dude, you're...

00:13:29.060 Well, you know, yeah, that's right.

00:13:32.520 Many of the more responsible indigenous leaders got out right away and said, look, these are cemeteries.

00:13:40.200 Of course, you're going to find burials there.

00:13:42.080 But they're not necessarily from a residential school.

00:13:46.860 But, you know, Mr. Trudeau, unfortunately, is impervious to facts.

00:13:50.780 And he sees an opportunity to display emotion, and he takes advantage of it.

00:13:57.480 So, you know, you can't blame citizens when they see their prime minister and the governor general pushing this story.

00:14:06.080 And all the legacy media are pushing it, and indigenous leaders are pushing it.

00:14:10.360 You can't blame ordinary people for believing it.

00:14:13.860 So we've got an uphill struggle here to get the facts out.

00:14:17.620 But as I say, we do think we're making a little progress.

00:14:19.700 Yeah, well, people, you know, themselves, your average people are busy.

00:14:22.940 They're only going to research so far.

00:14:24.160 They read the media so that, theoretically, they're getting information without having to do all that.

00:14:28.440 That's supposed to be our job to get out there.

00:14:31.180 So you're still working on this with some other individuals and digging into this?

00:14:35.160 Yes, we are.

00:14:36.200 We're publishing wherever we can, sometimes in the alternative media.

00:14:41.220 You know, we'd love to break into the legacy media on this issue.

00:14:44.400 We're still, I think, shut out.

00:14:46.240 But Terry Glavin got in there.

00:14:48.120 Now, Glavin has an advantage.

00:14:50.360 He doesn't have the reputation of being a conservative.

00:14:54.140 I don't know what his politics are.

00:14:55.760 They're hard to pin down.

00:14:57.540 But he certainly is kind of an independent.

00:15:00.100 So I guess that gave him an advantage in telling the story.

00:15:03.080 And I think that's great.

00:15:05.160 That shows that this goes beyond.

00:15:08.020 It's got nothing to do with ideology, really.

00:15:10.380 It's not whether you're conservative or liberal.

00:15:12.860 It's whether you are able to establish historical fact.

00:15:16.120 Yeah, Glavin has no political agenda.

00:15:18.660 And that always does help in that case.

00:15:20.460 And not to say that you do or Mr.

00:15:24.300 Rulliard or anybody else.

00:15:25.360 But yourself, you've been very politically involved in the past.

00:15:27.660 And people could use that to claim that this has got some sort of political motivation.

00:15:31.740 So, again, the more voices getting it out there and basing it on facts, the better.

00:15:36.420 So good to see you guys are still at it.

00:15:38.460 And the cracks are showing in the legacy media.

00:15:40.120 They're starting to accept this now.

00:15:41.600 Yeah, I think so.

00:15:43.880 We'll see how it goes.

00:15:45.160 It's not going to be easy.

00:15:46.120 It never is.

00:15:47.440 And there will be a lot of abuse showered down on us along the way.

00:15:51.820 But as I say, this is not really a political issue.

00:15:55.620 It's a factual historical issue.

00:15:57.800 And I would hope that all people of intelligence and goodwill can agree upon historical evidence and historical fact and can recognize fake news when they see it.

00:16:12.020 Well, I appreciate the work you've been doing and the work you're going to carry on doing.

00:16:16.460 I hope we can talk again soon.

00:16:18.160 As more information surfaces, it's going to take a while, but we can correct this wrong and maybe set an example so we don't see something like this happen again.

00:16:25.040 Okay, well, thanks for looking into the story, Corey.

00:16:27.540 We appreciate it.

00:16:28.580 Great, thank you.

Western Standard - June 01, 2022

Tom Flanagan： The truth starting to emerge with the residential school graves.

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