206. Frances Widdowson: The Unmarked Graves Story—Denial or Debate?

Frances Widdowson joins to discuss her wrongful termination, residential schools, genocide definitions, free speech, media failures, and why universities must return to honest debate with host Chief Aaron Pete.

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Episode Transcript

Aaron Pete (00:32):
Francis, thank you so much for joining the show
today.
It's a privilege to speak withyou.
Would you mind first brieflyintroducing yourself?

Frances Widdowson (00:42):
My name is Francis Whittleson.
I'm very honoured to be on thispodcast.
I was a tenured professor atMount Royal University until
December 2021, when I waswrongfully terminated, and I've
been studying Aboriginal policyfor about 30 years and started
to take an in-depth interest inthe residential schools in 2016.

Aaron Pete (01:08):
Why was it a wrongful termination from your
perspective?

Frances Widdowson (01:12):
Well, the arbitrator, arbitrator Jones,
did say that I was wrongfullyterminated, but we're still
hashing out the actual context.
But I think that David PhilipJones, the arbitrator, did not
go far enough in terms ofexoneration, because I argued

(01:33):
that I did not engage inharassment at all.
I was just responding to what'scalled an academic mobbing,
where a group of professors wentafter me because they disliked
me disagreeing with theirpositions.

Aaron Pete (01:50):
Would you mind sharing kind of what happened
there and your understanding ofwhat took place.

Frances Widdowson (01:55):
Sure, I'd love to, and for people who want
to find out more, I don't wantto go into too many details just
because it's a very long andcomplicated ordeal, but I have
documented my entire case on thewebsite, wwwwokeacademyinfo, so
that contains all the documents.
But basically what happened isthere was an indigenous scholar

(02:20):
activist who was upset at measking questions about
indigenization In 2020, shedecided to go after me on social
media, and it was generallyknown at Mount Royal University
that personal social mediaaccounts were not a matter of
the university's concerns.

(02:41):
But because they wanted toprotect this prized asset
indigenization asset of theuniversity, they specifically
changed their policies to goafter me, and so that resulted
in me having this long kind oftwitter exchange with about 40

(03:01):
faculty members and I was foundto have engaged in harassment
and creating a toxic workenvironment.
And then, because I found thatsocial media was now covered,
this resulted in me filing 18complaints against my colleagues
for what I considered to be farworse harassment.

(03:22):
Six of those colleagues werefound to have harassed me, and
then one of the complaints Imade was found to be frivolous
and vexatious, and so I gotfound to have done that, and
that was the accumulated kind ofprocess which resulted in me
being terminated.
And then 12 additional itemswere added after the fact that

(03:45):
were pretty much made up by thepresident of the university, and
all of them were found to beunsubstantiated, except the
harassment allegation.
And as well, I would not acceptresponsibility or show remorse.
And that is completely true.
I will never acceptresponsibility or show remorse

(04:09):
for what happened, because I wasjust trying to defend myself
from a long, many, many years ofpeople going after me at mount
royal university when you hear40 professors come after you, I
think in any other circumstanceyou would think wow, 40 people
against one.

Aaron Pete (04:29):
That person is being the one being harassed, not the
one going against 40.
So that's surprising to hear.
Would you mind sharing whatyour position is on
indigenization?

Frances Widdowson (04:43):
I think that it is destructive to so.
Indigenization, in mydefinition, which is somewhat
different from decolonization,the two often appear together.
But my definition ofindigenization is bringing all
aspects of indigenous cultureinto the university and
decolonization is taking outthose aspects of the university

(05:08):
which are perceived to beoppressive.
So they're sort of two sides ofthe same coin.
But the indigenization processhas a number of very innocuous
aspects that no one coulddisagree with, such as, you know
, bringing in various Aboriginalcultural features.
Such as you know, bringing invarious Aboriginal cultural
features such as Aboriginalartwork into the university,

(05:31):
certain removal of barrierswhich make it difficult for
Aboriginal people to participate, renaming buildings after
notable Aboriginal figures,those sorts of things.
But the biggest uh issue that Itook is the incorporation of
aboriginal ways of knowing,what's called aboriginal ways of
knowing, into the curriculum,which I saw many uh what I

(05:55):
considered unscientific elementsbeing brought in, and that's
really what I was taking issuewith okay, I do.

Aaron Pete (06:04):
I.
I wanted to understand thatcontext, just to understand how
you've gotten to where you are.
Is there anything else youthink, before we kind of dive
into the more complicated topics, people should know about you
or about your history.

Frances Widdowson (06:17):
Yeah, so I should mention it was not just
indigenization which was one ofthe big problems that I had at
mount royal.
It was also the issue of transactivism, and so I was
criticizing I was actually Iwasn't.
Initially, I wasn't even takinga position on it.
I just invited megan murphy tocome and speak at an event in

(06:41):
2019, which resulted in a numberof trans activists getting
upset, but it was stated in thearbitration hearing that I
should not be reinstated atmount royal because I believe
that there's only two sexes andthis um is something that says

(07:01):
that trans people don't existand that it denies their
humanity.

Aaron Pete (07:05):
So that's another major issue which I am also
heavily involved in at theuniversity may I ask I I we
obviously have a lot to discusshere today, but I just I do want
to understand you a bit more,and so my I guess my last
question on that is what wasthat experience like to have the
university come at you in sucha way?

(07:27):
Did you ever expect that thiswould be a chapter of your life?

Frances Widdowson (07:32):
I had a feeling it would be I.
I actually had been recordingall my meetings since 2019
because a colleague had said tome that it was likely I was
going to have people come afterme.
So I've been involved incontroversial kinds of
discussions around, especiallyAboriginal traditional knowledge

(07:54):
, since 1996.
So I was really prepared forthe kind of you know criticisms
that I would be getting, youknow criticisms that I would be
getting.
The difficulty became in 2014when the university began to
take political positions onthings which gradually resulted
in it becoming more and moredifficult for me to make

(08:16):
critical arguments about whatthe university had taken a
position on.
So for about I guess, six years, it was becoming worse and
worse to be able to statepositions without getting
attacked in the university.
And then in 2020, after theGeorge Floyd, the death of

(08:37):
George Floyd that's when theuniversities sort of fell apart
in terms of their academicmission.
So I was prepared um, I guess Iwasn't really prepared for the
grueling nature of thearbitration process.
That's something I didn't haveany knowledge of and that was
very abusive, that process,unbelievably abusive, which I'm

(08:59):
still, you know, kind of tryingto get my head around.
I'm still going through itbecause my case was being
appealed to the Alberta LabourRelations Board in December of
this year, 2025.

Aaron Pete (09:11):
Well, thank you for sharing all of that.
I did have the opportunity towatch your interview with a
journalist from the CBC, basedin Kamloops, and I found that
rather interesting, to say theleast.
But I did want to give kind ofthe fundamental principles of
this conversation from theoutset, because I do think you

(09:32):
invited the lady you werespeaking with to participate in
a good faith conversation andshe didn't respond well.
So I'd like us to agree thatthe search for truth is
paramount in our conversationtoday, that free speech is
critical to this conversation,and I also want us to embrace

(09:52):
that this issue is somewhatcomplicated.
Do you feel comfortable withthat?

Frances Widdowson (09:56):
I definitely do.
I completely agree.

Aaron Pete (09:59):
Okay.
Is there any other principleswe should be keeping in mind as
we dive into this complicatedconversation?

Frances Widdowson (10:05):
I don't think so.
I think it is important tofocus on the ideas as opposed to
the individual, which and Iknow that I do fail in my own
life from time to time in thisregard, but I'm usually provoked
.
That's my excuse.
But some people tell me Ishould take the high road.
But I've watched you, Aaron,and I find you to be a very

(10:29):
congenial person who never takescheap shots at people, so I
think that kind of goes withoutsaying in terms of the way you
approach things.

Aaron Pete (10:40):
I greatly appreciate that.
So my first question issomewhat controversial Are you
an Indian residential schooldenier?

Frances Widdowson (10:49):
It depends on how you define an Indian
residential school denier, and Ithink it's intentionally
distorting how this term is used.
My understanding of what it isis you deny that the Indian
residential schools weregenocidal.
That seems to me to be actuallywhat the correct definition is,

(11:11):
that people really mean whenthey're talking about it.
And yes, I am an Indianresidential school denier if the
charge is that I do not believethat the residential schools
are genocide.

Aaron Pete (11:27):
Okay, let's explore that a little bit more because,
as I think you did see my videoon this kind of laying out from
the very early stages 1907,forward report after report
showed that children were dyingat an increased rate because of
the sanitation, because of thelack of air movement within the

(11:47):
buildings.
They didn't have a lot ofairflow, so you have people with
tuberculosis in these buildings.
They're not having healthymeals, they're not properly
cleaned, and then people aredying as a consequence of those
factors all coming together.
And the government knew thatfrom 1907.
A report comes out saying thatthe author thinks that this is

(12:09):
criminal negligence and thatcontinues on and on and on for
dozens of years, tens of dozensof years.
What is your response to that?
You're saying that doesn't leadinto genocide.
But they did know that thesituation was bad and they did
nothing about it and they let itcontinue.
So how do you grapple with that?

Frances Widdowson (12:31):
so uh, and again this comes down to
definitions of things, which Iknow is rather annoying, might
be somewhat annoying, uh, foryour audience, because this, of
course, is the academic way ofdoing things.
So the, the definition ofgenocide, is intent to destroy,
so that that's really whatyou're dealing with.

(12:52):
And then, of course, there'sthe five criteria that the, the
UN convention, puts out.
So the there was certainlyneglect and terrible abuse that
took place in certain contexts,but that does not mean there's
an intent to destroy the group.

(13:14):
And it's interesting that youbring up Bryce, because that was
one of the things that I didtake a little bit of issue with
in your previous video, a littlebit of issue with in your, your
previous part, your previousvideo price, and and there's a,
there's a, an article writtenabout this, which people and and
that doesn't mean that it'scompletely correct, there might
be some problems with thisarticle.

(13:35):
I'm just saying it's a bit of acounterpoint to this these
claims that are made about rice,and it's by g Greg Piazzetski
in the C2C Journal, which iskind of going through Bryce's
actions, and Bryce's report wasnot buried by the government,

(13:55):
according to him.
And I haven't studied this inany detail myself so I'd have to
look in more detail about thisto figure this out.
But he claims that thegovernment did discuss the
report in the in parliament andthe government did decide to try
to rectify some of these itemsthat Bryce had identified.

(14:17):
But Bryce and the government atthe time had quite a a kind of
cantankerous relationship.
He did not think he was beinglistened to enough by the
government and so on.
So it's something which I thinkis a bit more complex the
relationship between Bryce andthe government and the response
to Bryce's report than I thinkmany people have kind of

(14:41):
discussed in their coverage ofthat.
Many people have kind ofdiscussed in their coverage of
that.
So the fact that the governmentwould try to do some remedial
things about that, now we cansay, definitely the government
didn't do enough these kinds ofquestions.
But we're not dealing with thesame threshold that we would if

(15:02):
we were talking about what wouldactually be considered to be a
genocidal action, which isreally the attempt to get rid of
this group out of the politicallandscape which we saw in the
holocaust, rwanda, all the, allthese kinds of cases.
So it's certainly there was.
There were serious problemswith the residential schools.

(15:24):
There were things that thegovernment should have done
differently, but I don't thinkthat genocide is the right
description.
I think this also.

Aaron Pete (15:35):
This also leads into the term cultural genocide,
which multiple reports haveconcluded it was in fact a
cultural genocide, haveconcluded it was in fact a
cultural genocide.
And I'd be interested tounderstand how we, from your
perspective, square these twopieces.
Because overwhelmingly you hearfrom government officials
saying we need to remove thesavage from the indian and we
need to civilize the indian, andso that position, if you're

(16:00):
saying that to all of the indagents, that gives them a
certain confidence in whatthey're doing, and so the
government in Ottawa might besaying that and saying we should
do a little bit more to yourpoint and grappling a little bit
more with Bryce's report.
But when you hear comments fromSir John A MacDonald and others

(16:22):
saying this is kind of ourgeneral intent, we want to get
rid of the Indian, we want tocivilize them, that does, some
may hear that and go okay, wellthen, I need to do a little more
, I need to push these people, Ineed to get them approaching
things differently, which couldlead into a feeling that they
have carte blanche to do morethan what perhaps is being

(16:44):
discussed in Ottawa.
Is that a fair assessment fromyour perspective?

Frances Widdowson (16:49):
Well, I would take much more issue with the
terminology, so I never acceptedthe words cultural genocide.
If we're going to be a sticklerabout it, we could discuss the
word culture side.
So using the words culturalgenocide doesn't make a lot of

(17:10):
sense because genocide istalking about destroying a
genetic group, so it's anextermination of a group based
upon ancestry, not about culture.
So when we're talking aboutculture side, which is just
eradicating the culture whichthe language that is used at

(17:33):
times, one can see, that was avery harsh assimilationist kind
of approach which you know, wecertainly can argue against
today, kind of approach whichyou know we certainly can argue
against today.
Those statements, of course,are picked out of a whole bunch

(17:55):
of other types of remarks thatwould have been made.
So they're the kind of mostextreme kind of statements that
you would see, which you wouldnot see.
You know like all the time oreven most of the time.
You know like all the time oreven most of the time.
But I think that saying tryingto deal with cultural problems
is much, much different thangoing after groups on the basis

(18:17):
of ancestry, because we all, wewe often do have that problem
when we have cultures, very,very different cultures coming
together and you have to sort ofmake decisions about how to
live together with one another.
And sometimes the argument ismade that this particular
cultural feature is not veryconducive to the whole society.

(18:43):
Thrive those kinds of arguments.
And you know there's manyinstances of this across the
country, where, for example andI'll just bring up an example
the potlatch in British Columbia.
So it was argued this is kindof cultural genocide to ban the

(19:04):
potlatch.
But there was lots of problemswith the potlatch in be banned
because they were poor, theywere a poor Aboriginal group, so

(19:28):
they were put at a disadvantagewhen they were expected to give
back as much or more than theother group that was providing
these gifts.
So now, maybe that was.
It was way too harsh to do that.
There should have been anotherapproach.
But it wouldn't have been donewith an intent to destroy the

(19:48):
entire culture.
It was more.
We've got some problems here.
We're trying to figure out howto create a better society.
Now there could be, you know,more draconian things going on
too, but I think these thingshave to look you looked at a lot
more um on a, you know, interms of the various
complexities to them, and notjust.

(20:11):
You know the government bannedthe pot latch and therefore that
was cultural genocide or orwhat kind of argument that you
or culture side I guess.
I don't like the words culturalcultural genocide at all and I
think that actually using thosewords has resulted in problems,
because we were asked to goalong with the words cultural
genocide, which peopleunderstood was not the same as

(20:31):
genocide, and now we have peoplesaying that cultural genocide
is genocide.
So I and I think a lot ofpeople don't think that cultural
genocide is genocide.
So it's a bit of a confusingkind of tactic that was used
with those words.

Aaron Pete (20:48):
And in all fairness, I do think terminology we can
get lost in a terminology debate.
I think we're seeing that withIsrael and Hamas right now.
There's much debate aboutwhether or not this is a
genocide or if it's ethniccleansing like is that word
appropriate?
Is it fair?
And then that becomes its owndebate on what the definition is

(21:09):
and whether or not it fits thedefinition, rather than looking
at the lived experience andwhat's actually happening on the
ground.
The other piece maybe as aprinciple I'd be interested in
is, to me it matters less toyour point what people said, but
the result is that FirstNations cultures have been in

(21:30):
large part absolutely destroyedand so whether or not some
chiefs or some leaders supportedthat or some didn't, they
didn't have votes in the Houseof Commons to decide whether or
not they supported that.
We don't have those type ofvotes.
But then too, when I referenceSiam Utiliot as the last fluent
Halclam Elam speaker in theStolo territory, that to me

(21:52):
demonstrates that the cultureswere destroyed, whether or not
we want to call it a culturalgenocide or not, and that it
wasn't an open-minded discussionlike you and I are having about
the common good and aboutwhat's reasonable when you put
something into law, it's nolonger up for discussion on what
a middle ground might look likeand how to advance cultures.

(22:13):
It's removing that from anyability to debate.
Which is why I'm against makingthe term Indian residential
school denier into law isbecause it removes all space for
complex discussion.
Is that a fair assessment fromyour perspective?

Frances Widdowson (22:32):
I would tend to agree.
First of all, there would besome discussion about whether
that was true.
You know, is it true thatAboriginal culture was
completely destroyed?
And, you know, was thedestruction due to the
government's efforts or was itjust due to the fact that, you

(22:55):
know, you're dealing with a verydominant economic system coming
in which has certainrequirements that results in
some features just not no longerbeing being viable in in that
context.
So the aboriginal languages is avery interesting one because,

(23:18):
as you are probably, I'm sureyou're aware, aboriginal
languages did not have a writtenform before contact and all the
writing that's been developedwas actually developed initially
by missionaries.
So many of the actualpreservation of some of the
aspects of the language havebeen due to the writing down of

(23:41):
those languages.
And we can continue to see thishappening with all these
various orthographies and so on.
So that is kind of a bit of acomplexity that's added into it.
So, you know, in terms of theculture being completely
destroyed, one, is that the caseand two, was the kind of the
fact that some aspects are nolonger being practiced.

(24:03):
Was that just due to the factthat they didn't really, they
weren't really picked up upon inthe capitalistic processes, the
liberal democratic types ofregimes, you know what.
All sorts of things are goingon here and I and I'm a bit
hesitant to see it as as justthat kind of one-way process,

(24:28):
which was definitely was part ofthe story, but I think there's
a lot of other elementshappening at the same time.

Aaron Pete (24:37):
That's fair.
I guess my pushback would beone.
When the French came, there wasmore of an ebb and flow, as I
describe, and a willingness toparticipate in the culture and
take the best of both andpotentially build upon those.

(24:57):
And the British did not bringthat mentality of maybe we can
intertwine it was much just morecapitalistic and disconnected
and looking down upon ratherthan hey, we rely on these
individuals and we need to, weneed to collaborate with them.
There were agreements that thegovernment had made at the time
that they didn't end up honoring.
That would have made a moremiddle grounded system, and the

(25:20):
Indian residential schools goingback to that topic have
resulted in those things notbeing picked up anyways because
they were being put through asystem that discouraged any form
of their culture beingpracticed in comparison, if they
were to stay in theircommunities and continue to
practice what they were doing.
We know that oral cultures canlast much longer and have a more

(25:44):
consistent passing on ofinformation in comparison to
written cultures.
I often use Shakespeare as anexample.
Many people know Shakespeare isimportant.
Many people can't tell you whyhis writing is important or what
about his writing is sofascinating, and yet we take a
lot away from Shakespeare in theculture, but within oral
traditions you can share thatinformation and it's in a story

(26:07):
form which is much moreconsumable by our minds.
That's why poetry is also verysuccessful is because it's a way
of encouraging the mind toremember things and hold on to
them, and so taking that away,putting people into schools
would have, by proxy, taken awaya lot of that cultural
connection.
So it's not that it was themarketplace didn't need it.

(26:28):
It was that they were removedfrom the opportunity to have
internal community marketplacesto continue to practice that.

Frances Widdowson (26:44):
Well, these are very obviously very complex
arguments.
I think that what's called theoral cultures, or cultures that
have not yet developed writing.
This is a very contentious areain anthropology as to how much
is actually retained and howmuch changes with the times, and
I think it's witto mark wittobasically says that it doesn't

(27:06):
really last.
The actual item that is beingpreserved does not really last
more than two generations.
That's his position.
Now whether that's true or not,that would require um more
in-depth analysis.
But I think, with the schoolinglike and this is a big,
probably a big point ofcontention that you and I might

(27:26):
have is that in, in, in writtencultures like, the kind of
schooling you have is much moreregimented than in oral cultures
, cultures that have notdeveloped writing.
The kinds of disciplines thatyou're trying to develop in
societies is quite different,and so you kind of need to have

(27:48):
more organizational processes inplace, which doesn't really
work very well with the localnomadic kinds of habits.
Now, this has not been dealtwith the same way with all
cultures, and my colleaguesDennis and Alice Bartels studied

(28:10):
Aboriginal people in the SovietUnion and there was a different
approach that was used by theSoviet Union, which would be an
interesting one to study, whichwas the Soviet Union sent
community educators intoAboriginal communities to travel
with the reindeer herders, andthat seems to not have had as

(28:33):
much dislocating effects as theresidential schools did.
So perhaps that kind oforganizational form of the
residential school had somenegative effects that could have
been avoided if anotherapproach had been taken.
But you know, you're sort ofdealing with the things that you

(28:53):
have at that time and itprobably just would never have
occurred to all these priestsand nuns to do things any
differently.
Um, I and I and you might bewanting to know that, uh, that
I'm an atheist myself and, um,and I'm not right-leaning, I'm
actually a socialist.

(29:13):
So I don't really have any skinin the game for these churches
or anything like that.
And I think perhaps it was aserious problem to have the
churches controlling theeducational system.
I don't know what else wouldhave been possible within the
context of Canada, context ofCanada, and you mentioned the

(29:37):
case of Quebec, which I think isa very interesting comparison.
But you had sort of more of apeasant society in the case of
Quebec, new France whereas, asyou correctly point out, the
British system was in a muchmore capitalistic kind of
orientation.
So, because I'm a socialist, Ithink capitalism has many
serious problems, one of thembeing that it doesn't fully

(30:01):
appreciate the humanity ofpeople, and so that's likely
that the humanity of Aboriginalpeople was not considered and
appreciated as much as it shouldhave been in that interactive
process.

Aaron Pete (30:19):
I may then owe you an apology.
I do recall saying conservativevoices like and I may have
listed you amongst those voices.
I apologize for assuming thatthat is actually a very
interesting point.
That, I think, makes theconversation more complicated
and that complexity should beembraced.

(30:41):
Returning, perhaps, to thediscussion on denier, as you
know, I have a huge concern withwhat Sean Carlton and his
colleague Mr Justice had putforward as a fundamental
position on the term denier,because it doesn't actually mean
that you're denying anything.
It's raising questions, it'sbeing critical and again, when

(31:04):
we're having these complicatedconversations, that is a natural
part of it.
People who ask questions abouthow the holocaust happened or
the complexity of, or say thismight be contested or this is
more complicated, those are notdeniers.
Those are people who areseeking to understand more and
at times I do think those voicescan move towards denying

(31:28):
certain aspects and then thatcan complicate the conversation
further and to me it's arejection of nuance, it's a
rejection of the complexity ofthe situation and when we say we
want truth and reconciliation,we have to have people who are
willing to go.
We might have this piece wrong,or there might not be as much

(31:50):
evidence here as this otherclaim and we all have to be
willing to participate in thatdiscussion if we're going to do
that, if we're going to havethese conversations, and so I.
I disagree with theirdefinition of denier.
I think it's really escalatedthe temperature of the
conversation and is leading to agreater political divide than

(32:13):
is necessary on this topic.
Is that landing?

Frances Widdowson (32:19):
I think so.
I do think that what is mannedis residential school genocide
denial, which would make sensebecause that's what the
Holocaust denier label is aboutis if you deny the Holocaust as
a genocide.
But I agree that I don't thinkthat the word denier is because
there's going to be people likeNorman Finkelstein, just to

(32:41):
bring in the Holocaust example,who has been called a Holocaust
denier himself because he'staken issue with some of the
tactics that have been used by,you know, the Holocaust
remembrance types of activismand so on to use against the
Palestinians and his familyalmost his entire family was

(33:05):
wiped out by the Holocaust.
So he can't obviously be denyingthat there were terrible things
that occurred and there was adestructive element that
occurred and there was adestructive element.
So saying denier is a is apejorative, that is, is really
feeding into attempts to silencepeople and prevent um sort of

(33:28):
disagreement from occurring andand that is a my view like I
don't think that there should be.
Although I think that obviouslythe holocaust was a terrible
destructive act and I think itdoes meet the bar for genocide,
I wouldn't argue that people whosaid it's not a genocide should
be put in jail or suffer finesor anything like that, because I

(33:49):
think it just creates asituation where people will be
very afraid to providecriticisms of different
arguments.
It just seems to me to be ananti-intellectual move intent on
creating fear and make peoplethink twice about raising a
criticism of what's being argued.

Aaron Pete (34:11):
And I suppose that this is the original intent from
my perspective of universities,and I suppose that this is the
original intent from myperspective of universities that
in the universities we shouldbe able to have these types of
debates, these intellectualdebates, where we both look at
the definition and we go backand forth on whether or not
something meets the definition.
And I do think to a certainextent that does need to be not

(34:35):
in the public square,potentially, that these types of
intellectual debates are notalways meant for common people
who aren't interested in thetechnical pieces, because
they're not going to have thetechnical definitions, they're
not going to understand thenuances of the, the points that
are being raised.
And that's not to say thatthey're not worthy of coming in

(34:58):
and learning those things, butthat we will be in our ivory
tower having more complexphilosophical discussions on
these things.
That's what the universitiesare predicated on that you can
go somewhere and have debatesand discussions, and not meant
to deny people's reality ortheir experience.

(35:20):
Because, like I, don't thinkyou or I would feel comfortable
having this debate surrounded bypeople who were sexually abused
in the Indian residentialschool system.
That wouldn't be a reasonableask for them or for us, because
that's not the kind ofconversation we're seeking to
have or the conversation theyare seeking to participate in.

(35:40):
Does that?
Does that land as well?

Frances Widdowson (35:44):
Well, I think it's up to people themselves,
you know, to decide whether theywant to participate or not.
You know, if I were engaged ina conversation with someone who
was was asserting they'd beensexually abused, um, you know, I
I definitely would need to besensitive to that circumstance.

(36:07):
But it becomes very difficultwhen we're engaged in an
intellectual process like aperson who's been sexually
abused.
It really has no bearing onwhether the, the residential
schools were genocidal or not,like like this is.
It's a it's kind of a separateissue.
Now, if I were to question themon their memory and so on, um,

(36:31):
I, I probably would not do thatunless there was some wider
implication that would have tobe examined.
But you know that that's kind ofa difficulty for pursuing the
truth.
You're going to generally enterinto terrain that is going to
make some people feeluncomfortable and not like what

(36:56):
is being said, uh, so, so that's, I try not to concern my,
obviously I don't want to beneedlessly inflammatory, but
sometimes you just can't avoidit, because this discussion is
going to go into areas thatpeople are not going to like and

(37:16):
are going to be opposed to ifthey disagree with it, and, uh,
I don't quite know how to dealwith that situation other than
to say it's not my intention tocause offense here, but you know
, if we're going to seek thetruth, we have to be pretty
hard-nosed about, you know,going into areas that are not
going to be appreciated by someI?

Aaron Pete (37:39):
yeah, I guess that's .
My point is that you wouldassume that universities are the
place to seek truth and that ifyou're interested in that
approach, that is where youwould be heading, and it
wouldn't be into a past indianresidential school to seek the
truth, like the place we allagree should be the place for

(38:01):
these types of debate should bein a healthy society, should be
universities.
We should be having a bunch ofstudents sit there.
You and I can go back and forth, we can hash these things out
and have a legitimateconversation based on the
evidence, based on the arguments, and everybody is there
agreeing to participate to that.
But from my perspective and Iimagine you agree based on your

(38:23):
experience the universities arenot living up to their
obligations, and so theseconversations are having to
happen in a public forum wheretruth isn't always everybody's
intent, where, like, like, whenI post that video on YouTube,
lots of people are telling methat I am denying the truth or
ignoring reality, or or, and sothe agreement isn't.

(38:44):
We're all kind of going into agood faith debate on what the
facts are, and so to me, theseconversations are being
shouldered by people who arewilling to make YouTube videos
and comment online becausethere's a rejection of
responsibility within manyuniversities to want to touch
some of the most complicatedconversations, which means they
have to happen in a much morepublic forum than would

(39:06):
otherwise happen in a healthysociety.

Frances Widdowson (39:10):
Yes, and this is one of my major projects is
how to restore the universitiesto the academic spaces that they
have not been entirely.
There's never been a golden ageof perfection, but I've been in
this the university system nowfor over 30 years, and the way

(39:33):
universities were, you know, 30,40 years ago is very, very
different than they are now, andwe need to bring in methods to
be able to reintroduce this.
Now you have a claim, such asthe remains of 215 children have

(39:56):
been found at the canada seniorresidential school, and you get
people to state their degree ofcertainty about that and then
figure out what evidence thatthey would need to become more
certain or less certain.
That seems to me to be one ofthe best methods, because it
takes it away from the highlypolarized you're wrong, you're

(40:19):
right.
Like that kind of that doesn'twork very well in the university
.
What we have to be focusing onis the evidence.
What evidence are you using tomake the claim that you are and
what is the quality of thatevidence?
And that's what I'm trying todo in all universities across
the country is bring in thismethod, and it's been

(40:40):
interesting, it's been aninteresting project doing that,
but I think it has greatpossibilities for restoring the
universities to what they usedto be.

Aaron Pete (40:47):
Then let's give that a try.
I will lay out, as I did inthat video, my understanding of
the claim.
The claim starts with theseschools were set up with the
understanding of removing theindian from the child.
They were specifically set upto be um residential, meaning
that they were not day schools.
They were residential toseparate children from parents

(41:11):
and with the intent ofcivilizing them, teaching them
to read and write.
And that, over time, throughdifferent reports not just the
Bryce one, but throughout manyreports showed that they were
unclean, unhealthy and resultedin greater rates of death due to
tuberculosis.

(41:33):
The TRC concluded in 2015 thatthere were about 3200 children
who died and that the numberthat number was verified, but
that the number was likely muchhigher, with some estimates
going as high as, I believe,6500 potential uh dead children
as a consequence.

(41:54):
And so, with survivor'stestimony which, if I understand
correctly, you'll challenge hiseyewitness testimony, which I
don't think anybody disagrees isoften unreliable put forward
that there's a location thatthey recall these children
potentially being buried at, andthen the 215 story comes out

(42:15):
and it says there are unmarkedgraves in this location and so,
using ground penetrating radar,which does not detect bones, it
detects anomalies in the ground,and so that is, from my
understanding, the basis of theclaim.
You have a document statingthat the number is likely far
higher of a document statingthat the number is likely far

(42:35):
higher.
You have survivor testimony andyou have ground penetrating
radar saying that that is thepotential location.
Is there any flaws in the claimso far as I've made it out?

Frances Widdowson (42:46):
So, first of all, you have the claim, which
is the remains of 215 childrenhave been found at the Camus
Indian Residential School.
You have seven mats stronglyagree, agree, slightly agree,
neutral, and then the disagreeside.
So where would you stand onthem?

(43:07):
What mat would you stand on inresponse to that claim?
Would you strongly agree withthat claim?
Would you slightly agree withit?
Would it be neutral?
What mat would you stand on?
I would be somewhere in betweenslightly agree and agree, okay

(43:32):
so, and I would be on thestrongly disagree mat in this
case.
So, and from what I understandyour argument and this is what
you do in street epistemology aswell as you try, you don't want
to straw man, and this is oneof the big problems with sean
carlton is he is constantlystraw manning arguments like I
love a steel man so the steelman, you've got a steel man.
Your argument, which is one ofthe arguments, seems to be that

(43:55):
because the truth andreconciliation has found
thousands, argues that there'sthousands of deaths that have
happened, that it's likely someof those deaths will be in that
apple orchard in camels, justbecause of the large number of
deaths and, if I'm not mistaken,50 have been found historically

(44:17):
but 49, sorry, but so therehave been discoveries, like
findings made, but that thenumber could be higher.
Yes, but is it your positionthat the 40, so 49, documented
deaths at camels not to saythat's an accurate number,
that's just what we have as thedocumented deaths at Kamloops
Not to say that's an accuratenumber, that's just what we have
as the documented deaths atwhich, according to Nina Green

(44:41):
and Jacques Riard, who are thetwo researchers who studied this
, 25 did not happen at theschool itself.
They happened in homecommunities, in hospitals and so
on.
But because there are thesenumbers of deaths, you expect to
find some of those deaths wouldbe in the, in the apple orchard

(45:03):
and in camps I think it wouldbe a tremendous place to start.
Yes, okay, and so then it wouldbe um.
So if you were to find thatthose deaths were accounted in
other reserve cemeteries, wouldthat make you less certain of

(45:50):
your claim?

Aaron Pete (45:53):
I think no, because if we find that the report said
that the documents were notproperly filed, that the Indian
death registrar was not wellmaintained and that a lot of
some documents were destroyed,that that would still leave me
open to the idea that there arealso burials there.

(46:14):
And if we found burialssomewhere else, it would make me
not more confident, but I wouldremain the same because then it
would tell me that there arethere are more spots throughout.

Frances Widdowson (46:36):
Does that make sense?
Yes, death that has happened inthe residential schools.
We don't exactly know whathappened to every single death
that was claimed to beassociated with the residential
school school.
That makes you believe that itthere's some likelihood that

(46:58):
those missing records mean thatthere's going to be children, um
, in the app buried in theappalachia yes, based on the
other pieces of evidence we'vealready discussed okay, and in
terms of the, the uh.
So, with respect, just to giveyou some facts about so, and
this is what nina green and jockreyard do um, that's, the

(47:22):
important thing about theseconversations is that we need to
figure out what the facts arewith respect to this.
So, and as you see, thesurvivors testimonies, some of
that could be factual, but someof that that might not be
factual.
So, and we have a number ofinstances of this well, it

(47:45):
depends on how far you want togo into whether you're going to
believe the records of deathcertificates and so on.
But in the case of Kamloops the49, I believe Jacques Riard and
Nina Green found 38 of the deathcertificates.
So 38 of the death certificatesshow the burial place.

(48:06):
It's various cemeteries.
So there's about, I think, 12or maybe at most 15 where we
don't have the deathcertificates yet for those names
.
But if we went to VitalStatistics and got the family
members to go to the VitalStatistics Division, we could

(48:27):
probably get that.
So anyway, that's the kind ofwork, but in terms of that, this
is the kind of process thatgoes on with street epistemology
.
I'm not sure how much longeryou want to go on this, but what
I find with street epistemologyis that it's great because you
get the people to state theirposition.
So you know kind of how certainthey are, you know what the

(48:50):
claim is, you know a certainamount of evidence that they're
requiring, you know a certainamount of evidence that they're
requiring.
But you kind of reach a pointwhere you have to be incredibly
skilled to figure out how tomove the conversation further
into greater understand, and andI'm I'm still working on it.
So I reach a point doing thiswhere I'm kind of I don't know

(49:14):
where what to what to ask younext to to to what to ask you
next to get it, and what I'mjust trying to do is just
understand why you believe thethings that you do.
I'm not trying to change yourmind.
I'm just trying to help us bothunderstand why you believe the
things that you do.

Aaron Pete (49:33):
I like that approach .
I, I guess my.
My question back to you wouldbe if they do excavate and they
do find 215 uh sets of of bonesI think I saw one video, uh,
that said you're likely notgoing to find bones, depending
on the years, because they maydisintegrate, um and be so like

(49:57):
soil samples of potential bones.
Would that convince you thatthere are likely more to be
found across canada?
Or what would you take away ifthey do find and excavate and
find bones?

Frances Widdowson (50:14):
then we're moving into.
Well, first of all, I'm not.
I'm at the stage now andlooking at this, where I'm
seeing in terms of parentssaying that their child never
came home from theCamelot-Sinian Residential
School, we don't have one reportof that happening.

(50:35):
So that's the first thing.
So, so not even.
We're not even at the statewhere.
So I'm skeptic.
I'm being skeptical right offthe bat.
I think that excavations are theonly way that you can make a
determination as to whetherthere are remains there, because

(50:55):
you can't do it throughground-penetrating radar.
That just shows disturbances.
You can't do it through stories, because the stories we have
many cases where people claimone thing and then the records
show something else.
And just in terms of myresponse to your kinds of
arguments is just because, evenif we have gaps in the record,

(51:18):
that doesn't mean that thosechildren would be buried in the
in the camus apple orchard,which is a clandestine burial.
They could be buried in allsorts of cemeteries all across
the country.
It could be completely notclandestine, it could be.
It could be, um, it could becompletely just graves that were

(51:39):
once marked which are no longermarked, which seems to be the
case when people are talkingabout missing children.
What they mean is that the, therelatives, don't know which
area of the cemetery they'reburied in.
So in the case of tanya talagafor, for example, she says her
and this is an asylum, not aresidential school, but it's the

(52:00):
same argument, I think it's hergreat-grandmother, annie, was
missing and it was because theydidn't know what cemetery Annie
was buried in.
And it turned out she wasburied in a cemetery that's now
a grassy patch next to theGardiner Expressway.
So that's not what we typicallymean we mean by missing

(52:20):
children.
Missing children are when peopledon't know what, like a child
was at school and then thatchild never came home and no one
know knows what happened.
You know that sort of thing.
And in the case of Kamloops wedon't have anything.
That's not happened and in fact, it's my understanding, we
don't have one name of one childwho went missing in the way

(52:43):
that people think children aremissing.
So there's a kind of aconfusion that's going on with
respect to that.
And that doesn't mean that therewere no clandestine burials or
that there's been no foul play,it's just we're not.
It seems to me we're not reallystarting at the right point.
We have ground penetratingradar that found actually 200,

(53:07):
it wasn't 215, because there wasa mistake made by Sarah Bollier
, because she didn't do hergroundwork to find out that the
archaeology department at SFUhad excavated already excavated
an area of that site, so 200, weget that GPR finding and

(53:28):
everyone automatically went tothere's 200 children buried in
that apple orchard, which weshouldn't have started at that
point we should have agreed weshould have.
We should have had more of abasis for what we were talking
about, I guess.
So I think.
But I certainly think if weexcavated and we found remains,
now we need to start doing theforensics on it to see what

(53:52):
what's what, because you knowyou could have, like there could
be a variety of explanationsfor why there's burials there.
But still, it would certainlymove me away from the strongly
disagree, Matt.
I would move to the slightlydisagree, or maybe I would even
go to the neutral, because Iwould now say I have no idea

(54:13):
what that's about.
Like I'll just have to start,you know, and let people make
the arguments for me to beconvinced one way or the other
about things.

Aaron Pete (54:21):
I would like to explore the story itself,
because the media's approach onthis, I think, is a key
conversation that we shouldexplore.
But just you made the commentand I heard this in your other
interview with the CBC of notone parent has come forward, and
so I guess my retorts to thatwould be trc, volume one shows
parents resisted indian agents,um, and they had, in the 1920

(54:44):
amendments to the indian act,they made it compulsory to
attend um, and so this wholesystem is set up to force
children to go to these schools.
And so who would they speak to?
And in speaking with candacemalcolm, oh well, why wouldn't
they go to their chief andcouncil?
Well, in speaking with chiefand councils even from the 1980s

(55:06):
, uh, chief stephen point, who'sa past guest, he said we had no
money, we had no funding.
The indian agent didn't reallycare what we had to say.
Like, we had no authority backin the 1980s, let alone from
1907 to the 1980s the terms ofauthority.
We had to make our owndecisions about what we wanted
to do.
And if people like Bryce's Iknow you uh, there's some

(55:27):
questions about his report ifhe's speaking up in Ottawa and
saying, hey, this is a problemlike we've got to do something.
And even if there are littlemovements they're making, it
certainly wasn't widespreadreform.
So it's not like they werehearing children were dying and
going.
You know, we got to shut thisdown.
This isn't working.
We don't want any kids dying onour watch.
We're not about that Like we'vegot to stop this immediately.

(55:48):
Let's shut it down.
When they closed down there, hey, we're stopping this process in
1996.
It was just, let's move on.
So the idea that parents wouldfeel comfortable going forward
to me and I think this is meantto be a bit controversial to
illustrate the point no enslavedperson committed workplace

(56:10):
grievances with their boss,right.
And so for these families, whoare they supposed to go speak to
?
What would be the course ofremediation if their child did
die?
Who's really worrying aboutthat when we have evidence,
specifically at Kamloops, thatone of the people was sexually
abusing the children at thatschool?
Like, is a parent going to comeforward to that guy and expect

(56:31):
that he's going to go try andget to the bottom of that and
change that system?

Frances Widdowson (56:35):
So I'd be interested in how you grapple
with kind of those positions soif I were doing street
epistemology right now, I wouldsay so, let me, let me make.
I just want to make sure that II understand your argument,
which is because parents weresort of intimidated at that time
and felt that they would not belistened to.

(56:57):
They just didn't say anythingabout the child that never came
home from the school, they justkept silent about it.
Is that correct?

Aaron Pete (57:07):
Well, I guess I would say, looking at my own
community, I would say theydidn't just do that.
They went to the liquor store,they started drinking which is
what my grandmother did and they, they numbed their feelings,
they committed suicide, which weknow happens on reserve a lot.
Um, they committed crimes andtheir life just fell apart

(57:29):
because their child died.
Like that would be the courseof action If I were to lose a
child and think that nobodycares.
That would be the path I wouldgo down.
It's not like they're a fullyfledged person going to their
nine to five, being like whocares, whatever it's that they.
The suicide rates are extremelyhigh on reserve, the addiction

(57:50):
rates are extremely high onreserve and these pieces are
part of how a person would havecoped if and I see that is
extremely reasonable workingwithin First Nation communities
and seeing how people cope withthe trauma they've been through,
even from going to theseschools, let alone potentially
having to watch their child betaken away, attend these schools

(58:11):
, even come back and have themnot be able to speak the same
language, like that relationshipgap between your children would
be traumatizing, let aloneknowing that your kid didn't
come home and it's thegovernment and it's the police
that don't care about you oryour position and and want you
to, to change into somethingelse that seems plausible, uh,
from my perspective so uh, andthis again is a 6th Street

(58:33):
epistemology method so parents,hypothetically parents whose
children didn't come home, thereason why we don't have the
names of those children and anykind of scenarios that are
concrete, like we hear Lenora Josay things like elders have

(58:55):
been saying for years that theirpeers, their siblings and so on
never came home.

Frances Widdowson (59:03):
That's kind of the claim, but we don't know
who those children were, likethe names of them or anything.
It's just kind of this vaguestatement about it.
But if there had been thishappen, the parents might have
committed suicide and thereforethat's why we don't know the
names of the children.

(59:23):
It's because the parents diedand they're no longer alive to
state what the names of theirchildren were.

Aaron Pete (59:30):
Correct, and this happened over a long period of
time where, to your point,nobody was keeping records of
these things inside the FirstNation community themselves.
Yes, process to document thisif you go to your chief and
council, even if they did in,say, the 1930s and went to their

(59:50):
chief and council and said, hey, my child was just taken from
me.
The documented record keepingduring that period was nothing
in most first nation communitiesyes, um.

Frances Widdowson (01:00:00):
So I think, uh, in terms of this situation,
I think that uh, um, in terms ofparents, first of all, it seems
to me that there's a bit ofthese kinds of leaps of evidence
, like we're kind of breakingthe chain of evidence because

(01:00:22):
we're seeing and again I thinkit was because of the GPR having
these number of hits and thenpeople tried to fill in to
explain why there would bechildren buried there, instead
of starting with trying to dosome investigations in the
communities to get some morethings on the ground about who

(01:00:46):
these children were on theground, about who these children
were.
Another interesting thing thathas just come up recently is
that there was I'm not sure ifyou've heard of it, but there
was a task force in the 1990s,starting in around I think 1994,
because of the Arthur Plintsexual abuse case, and the RCMP
was concerned about the factthat, um, there could be other

(01:01:10):
he plinth was in other schoolsand there could be other victims
.
So they started this task force, which went on for about five
years, and what happened is isthat they interviewed all sorts
of people, uh, who had been hadcomplaints of sexual abuse, and
charlene Bellow, who I'm notsure if you're familiar with her
, she was the liaison betweenthe communities and the RCMP, so

(01:01:33):
she was assisting people comeforward and tell their stories.
In that in that time frame, noone said anything about missing
children or unmarked graves andonly three suspicious deaths
were reported.
During that entireinvestigation, um, and it turned

(01:01:55):
out, the three suspiciousdeaths, uh, it turned out some
were about diseases and one wasabout a suicide and one couldn't
be.
They couldn't find out.
The person who was said to havebeen, um, murdered by another
student actually it wasn't astudent claimed that he'd
murdered another student, butthey were never able to verify
that.
So does that, does that?
Does that?

(01:02:15):
Does information like that makeyou less certain about the
clandestine burials and theapple orchard?
The fact that no one fromKamloops mentioned anything
about unmarked graves, or whenwe hear now that it's kind of
been constantly talked about inthe communities would that be

(01:02:36):
the same situation that they'rejust they don't I.
What would be your response tothat sort of information?

Aaron Pete (01:02:44):
I think this leads perfectly into the challenge
with the story itself, because Iagree with you, I feel put in
the position of trying did isjust go take a look like, just
do one like, and then that wecan have a better understanding
of this conversation.
But it's like we were bothstuck in this position of

(01:03:17):
there's this giant question markand you think that there's
potentially nothing behind thedoor, and I think that there may
be something behind the door,but we're we're almost just
trying to work backwards from areally bad position of a
conversation, because thestory's already happened and to
so many people's points, theresponse has already been made.

(01:03:38):
The funding has been provided,the national truth and
reconciliation day has takenplace, the pope has apologized
um, I know stephen harperapologized in like 2008, but
apologies have been made.
Justin trudeau has apologized.
The response has already takenplace and so in some ways, the
reaction is fed a complete thatnow it's almost undoing.

(01:04:01):
Like is the story untrue now,rather than what it should have
been, which is the cbc shouldhave done way better reporting
on this than they did.
Yeah, I'll say that a lot ofstories came out between 2020
and like 2024 that are worthinvestigating further, not just
this story, um, and the media'squality of reporting on things

(01:04:25):
has been terrible from myperspective from 2020 to
basically now, as you reportthat there are more anomalies
being found without and soundslike leading questions are
taking place, and so, to me,this story is more, um, we can,
we can continue to debate thispiece, but, to me, we're

(01:04:48):
watching the failure of ourinstitutions to properly inform
us, and so we are trying to pickup the pieces of a broken
system to figure out what'sgoing on.
And, as I mentioned, my fear isthat we are now having to carry
the story on our backs as if theother rest of the truths aren't
the case, and we have peoplewho are very unsympathetic to

(01:05:15):
Indigenous people because ofthis story, and so we're
carrying a lot of baggage inregards to our history, which is
traumatizing, which is horrible, which I don't think you and I
disagree, that the results ofthese institutions were not good
for indigenous people overall,and we're working back from that
position now, and I I wouldjust be interested in and how

(01:05:36):
you grapple with this story asmade.
You've kind of made referenceto the fact we're starting from
a very bizarre position, um, butwhat are your reflections on on
the story yeah.

Frances Widdowson (01:05:47):
So, um, like, I think the residential schools
are a very complicated picturewith which, which had different
times in different places interms of you know, and obviously
the schools themselves and thepeople who work there would have
had a massive impact on whetherit was a positive or a negative
experience.
I I totally agree with youabout the institutional failure

(01:06:10):
which I've seen myself in theuniverse.
I think that the media is ahuge part of the problem and
it's largely kind of advocacy,journalism instead of the way
journalism used to be, whereyou're supposed to, you know,
kind of believe people who are,uh, making these claims and if

(01:06:30):
you don't, it shows that you'reinsensitive or you're you're not
properly appreciating the, thecolonial context.
But in the universities therethere's been a terrible
corrosion of the universities tothe point where, well, I was
pushed out largely because ofthis problem and hopefully will

(01:06:51):
be reinstated if there's anyjustice.
But I've still got to, even ifI do get reinstated, I've got
the problem of dealing with auniversity that is not
fulfilling its academic mission,which we should have been able
to have conversations andevidence-based discussions about

(01:07:12):
, the residential schools andthe Kamloops case in particular,
and I think that kind of hasfed into the failure on all
sorts of other levels, so wedon't have the critical thinking
going on which is required.
But one of the big things nowwhich I think is very important

(01:07:35):
I'd be interested in yourthoughts on this is the problem
of the excavations at Kamloopsis that $12.1 million has been
made available to do theexcavations.
The band has not done theexcavations and they were
supposed to have been donebetween 2021 and 2023, and we

(01:07:58):
had manny jules and tedgodforson jr saying that the 13
families had agreed to do whatthey called the exhumations,
which, of course, in order tothat's jumping the gun on this
again, because in order toexhume, you have to have bodies,
and we have quite a convincingargument about the septic tiles

(01:08:21):
that were laid on that site inthe 1920s, which are in the same
configuration that sar Bollierfound the east-west
configuration that she thoughtgave signs of burials.
So I'm just kind of curiousabout what do you think should
happen with respect to theexcavations on that site at this

(01:08:42):
point.

Aaron Pete (01:08:43):
At this point, it's government funding.
When we apply for governmentfunding, you have to complete
the expectations of the funderslike purpose.
So we apply for a sewage system, we have to install a sewage
system and so, in this regard,if they made an application, we
can read what they said theywere going to do in their

(01:09:04):
application and they they needto fulfill that or they need to
have the money withdrawn fromthem.

Frances Widdowson (01:09:10):
Okay.
So I think that's kind of thefirst step in this and that's
not the whole story.
I know it's just like becauseKamloops was the first kind of
moment when all of this startedto happen and because Kamloops,
if there were burials in theapple orchard, they'd have to be
clandestine burials, becausethere's a cemetery that does

(01:09:32):
exist on the reserve across fromthe Catholic Church.
So the burials that are in theapple orchard, if there are
burials, would have definitelybe suspicious circumstances
which would then require acriminal investigation and
forensic analysis.
So if we could just start withcam loops, getting people to

(01:09:55):
agree that, that would be a goodway to at least move in a
direction of of sort of morerational discussion.
What's going to happen afterthat is unknown because, as you
say, there's other issues beside.
There's the clandestine burialissue, which I think there's not
really been any evidenceprovided for.

(01:10:16):
That that doesn't mean thatthere it isn't the case.
It's just we don't have anyconcrete information which says,
okay, now we're going to goforward with some criminal
investigation, but right nowthat's not before us.
We have a whole bunch ofproblems of people not knowing
where their relatives are buriedum, which I think is kimberly
murray's.

(01:10:36):
That's what her thing was allabout.
But of course, the slippageinto clandestine burials tended
to happen all the time.
So it's like people think thatwhen we say there's, you know, 3
000 missing children thathaven't been really identified
in terms of where they're buried, that means that there's clan,
there's some kind of foul playthat's taken place.

(01:10:58):
So I think, in my own view, Ithink the media, this, this
should, if we're going to bewanting to improve society,
first of all we have to thinkabout Aboriginal people and
marginalized Aboriginal people,how to address the suffering and
the terrible circumstances.

(01:11:29):
Children in a Kamloops appleorchard which it's claimed, has
traumatized a whole bunch ofmembers of the Aboriginal
community.
That's not assisting anyone intrying to come to terms with how
to improve various conditions.
So I think that there's, youknow, serious problems that have
been made for Aboriginal peopleand then you know a lot of
concerns that people have whoyou know don't want Canada to be

(01:11:52):
seen in a bad light or thesesorts of things which, okay, I
do accept that.
But I think the focus should beon.
We have serious grievances,legitimate grievances that
Aboriginal people have, thoseneed to be addressed, but having
stories being told which arenot based on evidence.
That's not going to enable thatto occur in any meaningful way,

(01:12:16):
and it's going to cause moreand more kinds of conflicts,
both within Aboriginalcommunities and between
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginalpopulations an aboriginal and
non-aboriginal population.

Aaron Pete (01:12:31):
I tend to agree with you.
When I look at this story, Isee a failure of the media to
report accurately, and theyreleased that press release, but
I don't think they could have.
I don't think cam loops or uhchief casimir ever suspected it
was going to reach this level orhave the response that it did,
and a good media would havepushed back or asked more

(01:12:54):
probing questions, and so to me,that interaction has resulted
in a lot of funding that manypoint out as an example.
But when they submitted that, Iguarantee you they didn't think
that it was going to makeworldwide headlines and change
the zeitgeist understanding ofwhere Canadians are in terms of

(01:13:16):
their relationship with theirown country.
I don't think they knew that itwas going to result in greater
246 million funding or more interms of more research.
I don't think they expected itwas going to result in National
Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
I don't think they saw all ofthat coming.
And this is where I thinklisteners will call me a grifter

(01:13:36):
.
I will say I think some of thatrelationship and some of that
change was long overdue becausebefore 2021, I had heard people
I had no idea this happened.
I had no idea, I didn't know, Ididn't realize, I didn't know
that it was this bad.
I didn't learn that in school.
I had no experience.
Now everybody knows.

(01:13:56):
But there's this chink in thearmor, there's this problem with
the story that is harmingCanadians' ability to fully
grapple with the real history.
That is not disputed by you orI in terms of what happened,
because this, this issue, istaking up all the oxygen in the
room.
It's taking up our fullinterview, where I would love to

(01:14:16):
be able to chat about whathappened at the university, the
importance of intellectualintegrity within universities,
and and have more fulsomeconversations about where we
could go.
It's it's taking up so muchenergy and I think there are a
lot of parties participating inthat, but I feel like it's it
did bring on a national shameand I think that a lot of that

(01:14:39):
national shame was deserved notall of it but that canadians
really didn't understand whathappened and they didn't
understand all of the sexualabuse, and I would have hoped
that this would have opened aconversation to what you
mentioned earlier.
How do we get Indigenous peopleout of poverty?
How do we make the reservesystem fair so everybody has an

(01:15:00):
equal opportunity to succeed.
How do we make sure that theeducation rates and the crime
rates on reserves are not as badas they are today?
I would have hoped that when wewere ready, when Canadians were
ready, for this conversation,it would have resulted in a much
more progressive, usefulconversation than do we dig or
do we not dig, and that feelslike the circumstance that we're

(01:15:23):
stuck in right now and all ofthe discussion around the real
circumstances of first nationsreserves is completely being
ignored and there's bad faithactors, from my perspective on
both sides and it's making it avery unproductive process in
terms of the reconciliationproject yeah, well, I'm gonna
have to push back against you alittle bit, aaron.

Frances Widdowson (01:15:46):
Um, I I think the band, uh well, first of all
, manny jules, who was the chiefbefore, uh, a long time chief.
He, he was well aware, or saidhe was well aware, of the, the
kind of implications that thiswas going to have.
I think the band and and thisis the roles of the lawyers,

(01:16:06):
that there's a lot of lawyers inthis whole thing who understand
the consequences of these kindsof claims in terms of
facilitating more legal disputesand so on, which is kind of the
nature of a great deal of theseAboriginal policy regimes.
But the band has not beeninnocent.

(01:16:29):
Innocent in this what'shappened, because and sarah
boley is another person whoshould take some responsibility
for what's happened, because Ido see a number of
archaeologists andrew martindale, terence clark or two, keisha
supernance, another one whoreally mislead aboriginal

(01:16:52):
communities with what gpr meansand and they know better than
this but because of whathappened with sarah bollier and
the band, the actions of somemembers of the leadership, that
press release got written theway that it was and the ban
quite a few months after it wasknown in the July 15th

(01:17:16):
presentation by Sarah Bollierthat excavations would be needed
to confirm the ban kept onmaking claims again and again
that the remains of children hadbeen found at Kamloops, and
they were doing that as recentlyas September 2024 in a
conversation that Ted GodfreysonJr and Dede DeRose, who's the

(01:17:38):
chancellor of Thompson RiversUniversity, were having about
this.
So and I don't know that Idon't want to say that it's
intentional deception know thatI don't want to say that it's
intentional deception becausethere could just be aboriginal
leaders are having a hard timekind of understanding the

(01:17:59):
difference between a belief thatsomething is true and something
that is actually true.
So it could be very well bethat that ted govritson j
believes that there's childrenburied in the apple orchard.
It's entirely possible.
But it's very irresponsible forthe academic establishment not

(01:18:20):
to be having this kind ofconversation where we say just
because you believe something istrue, it doesn't mean it's true
.
You need to have corroboratingevidence to support your belief
in order to get other people toaccept that it's true.
That doesn't mean that youshouldn't be able to believe
whatever beliefs you have.

(01:18:41):
But if you're expecting otherpeople to act upon that,
especially if you're expectingpublic policy to be developed on
the basis of this belief, thenthat's when our institutions
should be operating.
But I I think the band actedmany, many actors not the entire
band, like this, is just a fewpeople they acted in in a very,

(01:19:04):
very irresponsible fashion andthey've never really owned up to
this what they did, and maybeit was accidental and they just
got drawn into it, and I knowit's always hard for people to
admit that they made a mistakeLike that's possible too, like

(01:19:25):
you're just swept up ineverything.
But you know we've gone way toofar now.
You know we we have all thesethings that have happened.
We need to have a reckoning onit and you know.
But there's kind of resistancebecause of all the institutions
and not wanting to be seen likeyou're being heavy handed about

(01:19:45):
all these things.
You know all these kinds ofproblems.
But I don't think that's goingto work and it's just going to
make a whole bunch of peoplemore and more angry that we're
not getting to the truth of thismatter and and we need to also
avoid some kind ofovercorrection.
What's called an overcorrectionis that just because there was
some problematic behavior thathappened at Kamloops, that

(01:20:10):
doesn't mean that everythingthat was claimed about the
residential schools now also istotally invalid or anything.
We have to develop anevidence-based approach to try
to understand what's going on.
Going on and there's areluctance to do that amongst

(01:20:32):
many people because you don'twant to seem like you're.
You're being a insensitiveperson with a colonial mindset
who's just trying to put peoplein their place and not address
you know some real problems thatthat do exist, so you know.
I think the band should be heldto account for what it's done,
but I also think that it's inthe context of a much wider

(01:20:56):
institutional failure thatthat's got to be recognized too.
And the universities whatthey've done is just terrible.
And this is my own university.
I know exactly what happened atmy own university and it has
behaved absolutely terribly.
And the administration has gotto take responsibility for what

(01:21:20):
it's done, and hopefully it willat some point in time.
And a bunch of otheruniversities did this too.

Aaron Pete (01:21:26):
I agree with you.
I think the universities needto reflect on what their role in
a healthy society is and zoomback out, because even in my own
experience, I had a tremendousexperience at the University of
the Fraser Valley, where SarahBoulot works, where I was taught
how to debate, how to defend aposition, how to steel man

(01:21:49):
arguments, how to understandpositions and do my best to
carry that forward.
And then, unfortunately, atPeter A Allard School of Law at
UBC, we did not debate that much.
It was during the period ofCOVID, where almost all of the
students agreed with theapproach being taken by
government.
There wasn't a sense of whenthe government says something,

(01:22:12):
you should question it for good,for bad, on day one and on day
365.
Not because there isn't goodintentions, but because even
with best intentions, the worstcan happen, and that needs to
always, be ever present in ourmind when we're considering
these issues.
And I have seen manyuniversities fall away from that

(01:22:33):
and I've, to your point, seenFirst Nations not want to
participate in this conversation.
And if we don't show up in thisconversation, if we look
avoidant to it, then the termgrifters, the comment section,
will continue to be true,because I've asked many First
Nations chiefs what are yourperspectives on this, and either

(01:22:54):
they don't know or they don'twant to know, or they're not
that interested in the topic.
But the claim is extraordinaryand it has extraordinary
ramifications, and somebody hasto be willing to have the
conversation, and I'd reallyrather it not be me.
This is not my area ofexpertise.
I'm not an archaeologist it'snot what I want to be focused on
, but I can see it starting tohave implications with the

(01:23:17):
provincial government and withthe federal government.
I can see that this is theydon't want to continue to like,
as I said, reconciliation wasnot a topic in the last election
, partly because the economy wasso terrible, but also because
this is a part of the story.
And if you focus onreconciliation and what's been
done, then you also have to bewilling to answer questions from

(01:23:37):
reporters on these other pieces, and nobody wants to do that.
And in speaking with MinisterGary Anand Sangare, it's clear
that they do not think aboutthese issues as deeply as
individuals like yourself do,and so they have no interest in
getting into a discussion or acomplex, nuanced debate on these
issues, and so I really hope wecan have institutions come back

(01:24:00):
to the table in a good way.
I will honestly say I wasembarrassed with how you were
interviewed by the CBC, becausethose are First Nation
communities that are beingrepresented with that
perspective.
And when you see that there'snothing to the argument, that
there's no analysis, that shehadn't read the National Truth

(01:24:20):
and Reconciliation Commission,she hadn't read any of the
volumes and yet she was supposedto be reporting on our history,
on where we are, on what ourperspectives are, that makes me
extremely uncomfortable and whyit was such a privilege to have
you on today.
I really appreciate thediscussion.
There were no bad faith anticson either end.
I think these conversations areincredibly important because

(01:24:42):
they remind universities and themedia that we can have complex
discussions and that nobodyneeds to shy away from that,
that in fact, we learn a lotfrom each other when we do such
things and we don't have to walkaway with malice or frustration
or a sense of bad faith on theother side.
So, francis, I'm grateful thatyou were willing to come on.
I imagine that, as Nigel Begarhad said, a little nervous about

(01:25:06):
how this was going to beapproached, but I hope you know
that I meant all good faiththroughout the conversation.

Frances Widdowson (01:25:11):
I wasn't nervous at all because I seen
you in your other podcasts andit was a pleasure to have this
conversation with you.

Aaron Pete (01:25:18):
Fantastic.
How can people follow your workmoving forward?

Frances Widdowson (01:25:22):
So I'm on Twitter, so I'm doing a lot on
and, as I think it's FrancisWidows, one I'm doing a lot on
and I think it's FrancisWiddows1.
I've got a YouTube channel,FrancisWiddowsin1600, which I'm
posting a lot of videos on.
I'm on Facebook, which I dopost regularly there, and then
there's my case, which is at thewwwwokeacademyinfo, if people

(01:25:46):
are interested in what happenedat Mount Royal University.

Aaron Pete (01:25:50):
Thank you, Frances, so much for being willing to
have this conversation.

Frances Widdowson (01:25:57):
Thanks for having me on.