Nuanced.
Where real conversations happen — with host Aaron Pete.
Nuanced.
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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Francis, thank you so much for joining the show today. It's a privilege to speak with you. Would you mind first briefly introducing yourself?
Frances Widdowson:My name is Francis Whittleson. I'm very honoured to be on this podcast. I was a tenured professor at Mount Royal University until December 2021, when I was wrongfully terminated, and I've been studying Aboriginal policy for about 30 years and started to take an in-depth interest in the residential schools in 2016.
Aaron Pete:Why was it a wrongful termination from your perspective?
Frances Widdowson:Well, the arbitrator, arbitrator Jones, did say that I was wrongfully terminated, but we're still hashing out the actual context. But I think that David Philip Jones, the arbitrator, did not go far enough in terms of exoneration, because I argued that I did not engage in harassment at all. I was just responding to what's called an academic mobbing, where a group of professors went after me because they disliked me disagreeing with their positions.
Aaron Pete:Would you mind sharing kind of what happened there and your understanding of what took place.
Frances Widdowson:Sure, I'd love to, and for people who want to find out more, I don't want to go into too many details just because it's a very long and complicated ordeal, but I have documented my entire case on the website, wwwwokeacademyinfo, so that contains all the documents. But basically what happened is there was an indigenous scholar activist who was upset at me asking questions about indigenization In 2020, she decided to go after me on social media, and it was generally known at Mount Royal University that personal social media accounts were not a matter of the university's concerns. But because they wanted to protect this prized asset indigenization asset of the university, they specifically changed their policies to go after me, and so that resulted in me having this long kind of twitter exchange with about 40 faculty members and I was found to have engaged in harassment and creating a toxic work environment. And then, because I found that social media was now covered, this resulted in me filing 18 complaints against my colleagues for what I considered to be far worse harassment. Six of those colleagues were found to have harassed me, and then one of the complaints I made was found to be frivolous and vexatious, and so I got found to have done that, and that was the accumulated kind of process which resulted in me being terminated.
Frances Widdowson:And then 12 additional items were added after the fact that were pretty much made up by the president of the university, and all of them were found to be unsubstantiated, except the harassment allegation. And as well, I would not accept responsibility or show remorse. And that is completely true. I will never accept responsibility or show remorse for what happened, because I was just trying to defend myself from a long, many, many years of people going after me at mount royal university when you hear 40 professors come after you, I think in any other circumstance you would think wow, 40 people against one.
Aaron Pete:That person is being the one being harassed, not the one going against 40. So that's surprising to hear. Would you mind sharing what your position is on indigenization?
Frances Widdowson:I think that it is destructive to so. Indigenization, in my definition, which is somewhat different from decolonization, the two often appear together. But my definition of indigenization is bringing all aspects of indigenous culture into the university and decolonization is taking out those aspects of the university which are perceived to be oppressive. So they're sort of two sides of the same coin. But the indigenization process has a number of very innocuous aspects that no one could disagree with, such as, you know, bringing in various Aboriginal cultural features. Such as you know, bringing in various Aboriginal cultural features such as Aboriginal artwork into the university, certain removal of barriers which make it difficult for Aboriginal people to participate, renaming buildings after notable Aboriginal figures, those sorts of things. But the biggest uh issue that I took 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 considered unscientific elements being brought in, and that's really what I was taking issue with okay, I do.
Aaron Pete:I. I wanted to understand that context, just to understand how you've gotten to where you are. Is there anything else you think, before we kind of dive into the more complicated topics, people should know about you or about your history.
Frances Widdowson:Yeah, so I should mention it was not just indigenization which was one of the big problems that I had at mount royal. It was also the issue of trans activism, and so I was criticizing I was actually I wasn't. Initially, I wasn't even taking a position on it. I just invited megan murphy to come and speak at an event in 2019, which resulted in a number of trans activists getting upset, but it was stated in the arbitration hearing that I should not be reinstated at mount royal because I believe that there's only two sexes and this um is something that says that trans people don't exist and that it denies their humanity.
Aaron Pete:So that's another major issue which I am also heavily involved in at the university may I ask I I we obviously have a lot to discuss here 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 was that experience like to have the university come at you in such a way? Did you ever expect that this would be a chapter of your life?
Frances Widdowson:I had a feeling it would be I. I actually had been recording all my meetings since 2019 because a colleague had said to me that it was likely I was going to have people come after me. So I've been involved in controversial kinds of discussions around, especially Aboriginal traditional knowledge, since 1996. So I was really prepared for the kind of you know criticisms that I would be getting, you know criticisms that I would be getting.
Frances Widdowson:The difficulty became in 2014 when the university began to take political positions on things which gradually resulted in it becoming more and more difficult for me to make critical arguments about what the university had taken a position on. So for about I guess, six years, it was becoming worse and worse to be able to state positions without getting attacked in the university. And then in 2020, after the George Floyd, the death of George Floyd that's when the universities sort of fell apart in terms of their academic mission. So I was prepared um, I guess I wasn't really prepared for the grueling nature of the arbitration process. That's something I didn't have any knowledge of and that was very abusive, that process, unbelievably abusive, which I'm still, you know, kind of trying to get my head around. I'm still going through it because my case was being appealed to the Alberta Labour Relations Board in December of this year, 2025.
Aaron Pete:Well, thank you for sharing all of that. I did have the opportunity to watch your interview with a journalist from the CBC, based in Kamloops, and I found that rather interesting, to say the least. But I did want to give kind of the fundamental principles of this conversation from the outset, because I do think you invited the lady you were speaking with to participate in a good faith conversation and she didn't respond well. So I'd like us to agree that the search for truth is paramount in our conversation today, that free speech is critical to this conversation, and I also want us to embrace that this issue is somewhat complicated. Do you feel comfortable with that?
Frances Widdowson:I definitely do. I completely agree.
Aaron Pete:Okay. Is there any other principles we should be keeping in mind as we dive into this complicated conversation?
Frances Widdowson:I don't think so. I think it is important to focus on the ideas as opposed to the individual, which and I know that I do fail in my own life from time to time in this regard, but I'm usually provoked. That's my excuse. But some people tell me I should take the high road. But I've watched you, Aaron, and I find you to be a very congenial person who never takes cheap shots at people, so I think that kind of goes without saying in terms of the way you approach things.
Aaron Pete:I greatly appreciate that. So my first question is somewhat controversial Are you an Indian residential school denier?
Frances Widdowson:It depends on how you define an Indian residential school denier, and I think it's intentionally distorting how this term is used. My understanding of what it is is you deny that the Indian residential schools were genocidal. That seems to me to be actually what the correct definition is, that people really mean when they're talking about it. And yes, I am an Indian residential school denier if the charge is that I do not believe that the residential schools are genocide.
Aaron Pete:Okay, let's explore that a little bit more because, as I think you did see my video on this kind of laying out from the very early stages 1907, forward report after report showed that children were dying at an increased rate because of the sanitation, because of the lack of air movement within the buildings. They didn't have a lot of airflow, so you have people with tuberculosis in these buildings. They're not having healthy meals, they're not properly cleaned, and then people are dying as a consequence of those factors all coming together. And the government knew that from 1907. A report comes out saying that the author thinks that this is criminal negligence and that continues on and on and on for dozens of years, tens of dozens of years. What is your response to that? You're saying that doesn't lead into genocide. But they did know that the situation was bad and they did nothing about it and they let it continue. So how do you grapple with that?
Frances Widdowson:so uh, and again this comes down to definitions of things, which I know is rather annoying, might be somewhat annoying, uh, for your audience, because this, of course, is the academic way of doing things. So the, the definition of genocide, is intent to destroy, so that that's really what you're dealing with. And then, of course, there's the five criteria that the, the UN convention, puts out. So the there was certainly neglect and terrible abuse that took place in certain contexts, but that does not mean there's an intent to destroy the group. And it's interesting that you bring up Bryce, because that was one of the things that I did take a little bit of issue with in your previous video, a little bit of issue with in your, your previous part, your previous video price, and and there's a, there's a, an article written about this, which people and and that doesn't mean that it's completely correct, there might be some problems with this article. I'm just saying it's a bit of a counterpoint to this these claims that are made about rice, and it's by g Greg Piazzetski in the C2C Journal, which is kind of going through Bryce's actions, and Bryce's report was not buried by the government, according to him. And I haven't studied this in any detail myself so I'd have to look in more detail about this to figure this out. But he claims that the government did discuss the report in the in parliament and the government did decide to try to rectify some of these items that Bryce had identified.
Frances Widdowson:But Bryce and the government at the time had quite a a kind of cantankerous relationship. He did not think he was being listened to enough by the government and so on. So it's something which I think is a bit more complex the relationship between Bryce and the government and the response to Bryce's report than I think many people have kind of discussed in their coverage of that. Many people have kind of discussed in their coverage of that. So the fact that the government would try to do some remedial things about that, now we can say, definitely the government didn't do enough these kinds of questions.
Frances Widdowson:But we're not dealing with the same threshold that we would if we were talking about what would actually be considered to be a genocidal action, which is really the attempt to get rid of this group out of the political landscape which we saw in the holocaust, rwanda, all the, all these kinds of cases. So it's certainly there was. There were serious problems with the residential schools. There were things that the government should have done differently, but I don't think that genocide is the right description. I think this also.
Aaron Pete:This also leads into the term cultural genocide, which multiple reports have concluded it was in fact a cultural genocide, have concluded it was in fact a cultural genocide.
Aaron Pete:And I'd be interested to understand how we, from your perspective, square these two pieces. Because overwhelmingly you hear from government officials saying we need to remove the savage from the indian and we need to civilize the indian, and so that position, if you're saying that to all of the ind agents, that gives them a certain confidence in what they're doing, and so the government in Ottawa might be saying that and saying we should do a little bit more to your point and grappling a little bit more with Bryce's report. But when you hear comments from Sir John A MacDonald and others saying this is kind of our general intent, we want to get rid of the Indian, we want to civilize them, that does, some may hear that and go okay, well then, I need to do a little more, I need to push these people, I need to get them approaching things differently, which could lead into a feeling that they have carte blanche to do more than what perhaps is being discussed in Ottawa. Is that a fair assessment from your perspective?
Frances Widdowson:Well, I would take much more issue with the terminology, so I never accepted the words cultural genocide. If we're going to be a stickler about it, we could discuss the word culture side. So using the words cultural genocide doesn't make a lot of sense because genocide is talking about destroying a genetic group, so it's an extermination of a group based upon ancestry, not about culture. So when we're talking about culture side, which is just eradicating the culture which the language that is used at times, one can see, that was a very harsh assimilationist kind of approach which you know, we certainly can argue against today, kind of approach which you know we certainly can argue against today. Those statements, of course, are picked out of a whole bunch of other types of remarks that would have been made. So they're the kind of most extreme kind of statements that you would see, which you would not see. You know like all the time or even most of the time. You know like all the time or even most of the time. But I think that saying trying to deal with cultural problems is much, much different than going after groups on the basis of ancestry, because we all, we we often do have that problem when we have cultures, very, very different cultures coming together and you have to sort of make decisions about how to live together with one another. And sometimes the argument is made that this particular cultural feature is not very conducive to the whole society. Thrive those kinds of arguments.
Frances Widdowson:And you know there's many instances of this across the country, where, for example and I'll just bring up an example the potlatch in British Columbia. So it was argued this is kind of cultural genocide to ban the potlatch. But there was lots of problems with the potlatch in be banned because they were poor, they were a poor Aboriginal group, so they were put at a disadvantage when they were expected to give back as much or more than the other group that was providing these gifts. So now, maybe that was. It was way too harsh to do that. There should have been another approach. But it wouldn't have been done with an intent to destroy the entire culture. It was more. We've got some problems here. We're trying to figure out how to create a better society.
Frances Widdowson:Now there could be, you know, more draconian things going on too, but I think these things have to look you looked at a lot more um on a, you know, in terms of the various complexities to them, and not just. You know the government banned the pot latch and therefore that was cultural genocide or or what kind of argument that you or culture side I guess. I don't like the words cultural cultural genocide at all and I think that actually using those words has resulted in problems, because we were asked to go along with the words cultural genocide, which people understood was not the same as genocide, and now we have people saying that cultural genocide is genocide. So I and I think a lot of people don't think that cultural genocide is genocide. So it's a bit of a confusing kind of tactic that was used with those words.
Aaron Pete:And in all fairness, I do think terminology we can get lost in a terminology debate. I think we're seeing that with Israel and Hamas right now. There's much debate about whether or not this is a genocide or if it's ethnic cleansing like is that word appropriate? Is it fair? And then that becomes its own debate on what the definition is and whether or not it fits the definition, rather than looking at the lived experience and what's actually happening on the ground.
Aaron Pete:The other piece maybe as a principle I'd be interested in is, to me it matters less to your point what people said, but the result is that First Nations cultures have been in large part absolutely destroyed and so whether or not some chiefs or some leaders supported that or some didn't, they didn't have votes in the House of Commons to decide whether or not they supported that.
Aaron Pete:We don't have those type of votes. But then too, when I reference Siam Utiliot as the last fluent Halclam Elam speaker in the Stolo territory, that to me demonstrates that the cultures were destroyed, whether or not we want to call it a cultural genocide or not, and that it wasn't an open-minded discussion like you and I are having about the common good and about what's reasonable when you put something into law, it's no longer up for discussion on what a middle ground might look like and how to advance cultures. It's removing that from any ability to debate. Which is why I'm against making the term Indian residential school denier into law is because it removes all space for complex discussion. Is that a fair assessment from your perspective?
Frances Widdowson:I would tend to agree. First of all, there would be some discussion about whether that was true. You know, is it true that Aboriginal culture was completely destroyed? And, you know, was the destruction due to the government's efforts or was it just due to the fact that, you know, you're dealing with a very dominant economic system coming in which has certain requirements that results in some features just not no longer being being viable in in that context.
Frances Widdowson:So the aboriginal languages is a very interesting one because, as you are probably, I'm sure you're aware, aboriginal languages did not have a written form before contact and all the writing that's been developed was actually developed initially by missionaries.
Frances Widdowson:So many of the actual preservation of some of the aspects of the language have been due to the writing down of those languages. And we can continue to see this happening with all these various orthographies and so on. So that is kind of a bit of a complexity that's added into it. So, you know, in terms of the culture being completely destroyed, one, is that the case and two, was the kind of the fact that some aspects are no longer being practiced. Was that just due to the fact that they didn't really, they weren't really picked up upon in the capitalistic processes, the liberal democratic types of regimes, you know what. All sorts of things are going on here and I and I'm a bit hesitant to see it as as just that kind of one-way process, which was definitely was part of the story, but I think there's a lot of other elements happening at the same time.
Aaron Pete:That's fair. I guess my pushback would be one. When the French came, there was more of an ebb and flow, as I describe, and a willingness to participate in the culture and take the best of both and potentially build upon those. And the British did not bring that mentality of maybe we can intertwine it was much just more capitalistic and disconnected and looking down upon rather than hey, we rely on these individuals and we need to, we need to collaborate with them. There were agreements that the government had made at the time that they didn't end up honoring. That would have made a more middle grounded system, and the Indian residential schools going back to that topic have resulted in those things not being picked up anyways because they were being put through a system that discouraged any form of their culture being practiced in comparison, if they were to stay in their communities and continue to practice what they were doing.
Aaron Pete:We know that oral cultures can last much longer and have a more consistent passing on of information in comparison to written cultures. I often use Shakespeare as an example. Many people know Shakespeare is important. Many people can't tell you why his writing is important or what about his writing is so fascinating, and yet we take a lot away from Shakespeare in the culture, but within oral traditions you can share that information and it's in a story form which is much more consumable by our minds. That's why poetry is also very successful is because it's a way of encouraging the mind to remember things and hold on to them, and so taking that away, putting people into schools would have, by proxy, taken away a lot of that cultural connection. So it's not that it was the marketplace didn't need it. It was that they were removed from the opportunity to have internal community marketplaces to continue to practice that.
Frances Widdowson:Well, these are very obviously very complex arguments. I think that what's called the oral cultures, or cultures that have not yet developed writing. This is a very contentious area in anthropology as to how much is actually retained and how much changes with the times, and I think it's witto mark witto basically says that it doesn't really last. The actual item that is being preserved 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 schooling like and this is a big, probably a big point of contention that you and I might have is that in, in, in written cultures like, the kind of schooling you have is much more regimented than in oral cultures, cultures that have not developed writing. The kinds of disciplines that you're trying to develop in societies is quite different, and so you kind of need to have more organizational processes in place, which doesn't really work very well with the local nomadic kinds of habits. Now, this has not been dealt with the same way with all cultures, and my colleagues Dennis and Alice Bartels studied Aboriginal people in the Soviet Union and there was a different approach that was used by the Soviet Union, which would be an interesting one to study, which was the Soviet Union sent community educators into Aboriginal communities to travel with the reindeer herders, and that seems to not have had as much dislocating effects as the residential schools did. So perhaps that kind of organizational form of the residential school had some negative effects that could have been avoided if another approach had been taken. But you know, you're sort of dealing with the things that you have at that time and it probably just would never have occurred to all these priests and nuns to do things any differently.
Frances Widdowson:Um, I and I and you might be wanting to know that, uh, that I'm an atheist myself and, um, and I'm not right-leaning, I'm actually a socialist. So I don't really have any skin in the game for these churches or anything like that. And I think perhaps it was a serious problem to have the churches controlling the educational system. I don't know what else would have been possible within the context of Canada, context of Canada, and you mentioned the case of Quebec, which I think is a very interesting comparison. But you had sort of more of a peasant society in the case of Quebec, new France whereas, as you correctly point out, the British system was in a much more capitalistic kind of orientation. So, because I'm a socialist, I think capitalism has many serious problems, one of them being that it doesn't fully appreciate the humanity of people, and so that's likely that the humanity of Aboriginal people was not considered and appreciated as much as it should have been in that interactive process.
Aaron Pete:I may then owe you an apology. I do recall saying conservative voices like and I may have listed you amongst those voices. I apologize for assuming that that is actually a very interesting point. That, I think, makes the conversation more complicated and that complexity should be embraced. Returning, perhaps, to the discussion on denier, as you know, I have a huge concern with what Sean Carlton and his colleague Mr Justice had put forward as a fundamental position on the term denier, because it doesn't actually mean that you're denying anything. It's raising questions, it's being critical and again, when we're having these complicated conversations, that is a natural part of it.
Aaron Pete:People who ask questions about how the holocaust happened or the complexity of, or say this might be contested or this is more complicated, those are not deniers. Those are people who are seeking to understand more and at times I do think those voices can move towards denying certain aspects and then that can complicate the conversation further and to me it's a rejection of nuance, it's a rejection of the complexity of the 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 evidence here as this other claim and we all have to be willing to participate in that discussion if we're going to do that, if we're going to have these conversations, and so I. I disagree with their definition of denier. I think it's really escalated the temperature of the conversation and is leading to a greater political divide than is necessary on this topic. Is that landing?
Frances Widdowson:I think so.
Frances Widdowson:I do think that what is manned is residential school genocide denial, which would make sense because that's what the Holocaust denier label is about is if you deny the Holocaust as a genocide.
Frances Widdowson:But I agree that I don't think that the word denier is because there's going to be people like Norman Finkelstein, just to bring in the Holocaust example, who has been called a Holocaust denier himself because he's taken issue with some of the tactics that have been used by, you know, the Holocaust remembrance types of activism and so on to use against the Palestinians and his family almost his entire family was wiped out by the Holocaust.
Frances Widdowson:So he can't obviously be denying that there were terrible things that occurred and there was a destructive element that occurred and there was a destructive element. So saying denier is a is a pejorative, that is, is really feeding into attempts to silence people and prevent um sort of disagreement from occurring and and that is a my view like I don't think that there should be. Although I think that obviously the holocaust was a terrible destructive act and I think it does meet the bar for genocide, I wouldn't argue that people who said it's not a genocide should be put in jail or suffer fines or anything like that, because I think it just creates a situation where people will be very afraid to provide criticisms of different arguments. It just seems to me to be an anti-intellectual move intent on creating fear and make people think twice about raising a criticism of what's being argued.
Aaron Pete:And I suppose that this is the original intent from my perspective of universities, and I suppose that this is the original intent from my perspective of universities that in the universities we should be able to have these types of debates, these intellectual debates, where we both look at the definition and we go back and forth on whether or not something meets the definition.
Aaron Pete:And I do think to a certain extent that does need to be not in the public square, potentially, that these types of intellectual debates are not always meant for common people who aren't interested in the technical pieces, because they're not going to have the technical definitions, they're not going to understand the nuances of the, the points that are being raised. And that's not to say that they're not worthy of coming in and learning those things, but that we will be in our ivory tower having more complex philosophical discussions on these things. That's what the universities are predicated on that you can go somewhere and have debates and discussions, and not meant to deny people's reality or their experience. Because, like I, don't think you or I would feel comfortable having this debate surrounded by people who were sexually abused in the Indian residential school system. That wouldn't be a reasonable ask for them or for us, because that's not the kind of conversation we're seeking to have or the conversation they are seeking to participate in. Does that? Does that land as well?
Frances Widdowson:Well, I think it's up to people themselves, you know, to decide whether they want to participate or not. You know, if I were engaged in a conversation with someone who was was asserting they'd been sexually abused, um, you know, I I definitely would need to be sensitive to that circumstance. But it becomes very difficult when we're engaged in an intellectual process like a person who's been sexually abused. It really has no bearing on whether the, the residential schools were genocidal or not, like like this is. It's a it's kind of a separate issue. Now, if I were to question them on their memory and so on, um, I, I probably would not do that unless there was some wider implication that would have to be examined.
Frances Widdowson:But you know that that's kind of a difficulty for pursuing the truth. You're going to generally enter into terrain that is going to make some people feel uncomfortable and not like what is being said, uh, so, so that's, I try not to concern my, obviously I don't want to be needlessly inflammatory, but sometimes you just can't avoid it, because this discussion is going to go into areas that people are not going to like and are going to be opposed to if they disagree with it, and, uh, I don't quite know how to deal with that situation other than to say it's not my intention to cause offense here, but you know, if we're going to seek the truth, we have to be pretty hard-nosed about, you know, going into areas that are not going to be appreciated by some I?
Aaron Pete:yeah, I guess that's.
Aaron Pete:My point is that you would assume that universities are the place to seek truth and that if you're interested in that approach, that is where you would be heading, and it wouldn't be into a past indian residential school to seek the truth, like the place we all agree should be the place for these types of debate should be in a healthy society, should be universities.
Aaron Pete:We should be having a bunch of students sit there. You and I can go back and forth, we can hash these things out and have a legitimate conversation based on the evidence, based on the arguments, and everybody is there agreeing to participate to that. But from my perspective and I imagine you agree based on your experience the universities are not living up to their obligations, and so these conversations are having to happen in a public forum where truth isn't always everybody's intent, where, like, like, when I post that video on YouTube, lots of people are telling me that I am denying the truth or ignoring reality, or or, and so the agreement isn't. We're all kind of going into a good faith debate on what the facts are, and so to me, these conversations are being shouldered by people who are willing to make YouTube videos and comment online because there's a rejection of responsibility within many universities to want to touch some of the most complicated conversations, which means they have to happen in a much more public forum than would otherwise happen in a healthy society.
Frances Widdowson:Yes, and this is one of my major projects is how to restore the universities to the academic spaces that they have not been entirely.
Frances Widdowson:There's never been a golden age of perfection, but I've been in this the university system now for over 30 years, and the way universities were, you know, 30, 40 years ago is very, very different than they are now, and we need to bring in methods to be able to reintroduce this.
Frances Widdowson:Now you have a claim, such as the remains of 215 children have been found at the canada senior residential school, and you get people to state their degree of certainty about that and then figure out what evidence that they would need to become more certain or less certain. That seems to me to be one of the best methods, because it takes it away from the highly polarized you're wrong, you're right. Like that kind of that doesn't work very well in the university. What we have to be focusing on is the evidence. What evidence are you using to make the claim that you are and what is the quality of that evidence? And that's what I'm trying to do in all universities across the country is bring in this method, and it's been interesting, it's been an interesting project doing that, but I think it has great possibilities for restoring the universities to what they used to be.
Aaron Pete:Then let's give that a try. I will lay out, as I did in that video, my understanding of the claim. The claim starts with these schools were set up with the understanding of removing the indian from the child. They were specifically set up to be um residential, meaning that they were not day schools. They were residential to separate children from parents and with the intent of civilizing them, teaching them to read and write. And that, over time, through different reports not just the Bryce one, but throughout many reports showed that they were unclean, unhealthy and resulted in greater rates of death due to tuberculosis.
Aaron Pete:The TRC concluded in 2015 that there were about 3200 children who died and that the number that number was verified, but that the number was likely much higher, with some estimates going as high as, I believe, 6500 potential uh dead children as a consequence. And so, with survivor's testimony which, if I understand correctly, you'll challenge his eyewitness testimony, which I don't think anybody disagrees is often unreliable put forward that there's a location that they recall these children potentially being buried at, and then the 215 story comes out and it says there are unmarked graves 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 the claim. You have a document stating that the number is likely far higher of a document stating that the number is likely far higher. You have survivor testimony and you have ground penetrating radar saying that that is the potential location. Is there any flaws in the claim so far as I've made it out?
Frances Widdowson:So, first of all, you have the claim, which is the remains of 215 children have been found at the Camus Indian Residential School. You have seven mats strongly agree, agree, slightly agree, neutral, and then the disagree side. So where would you stand on them? What mat would you stand on in response to that claim? Would you strongly agree with that claim? Would you slightly agree with it? Would it be neutral? What mat would you stand on? I would be somewhere in between slightly agree and agree, okay so, and I would be on the strongly disagree mat in this case. So, and from what I understand your argument and this is what you do in street epistemology as well as you try, you don't want to straw man, and this is one of the big problems with sean carlton is he is constantly straw manning arguments like I love a steel man so the steel man, you've got a steel man.
Frances Widdowson:Your argument, which is one of the arguments, seems to be that because the truth and reconciliation has found thousands, argues that there's thousands of deaths that have happened, that it's likely some of those deaths will be in that apple orchard in camels, just because of the large number of deaths and, if I'm not mistaken, 50 have been found historically but 49, sorry, but so there have been discoveries, like findings made, but that the number could be higher.
Frances Widdowson:Yes, but is it your position that the 40, so 49, documented deaths at camels not to say that's an accurate number, that's just what we have as the documented deaths at Kamloops Not to say that's an accurate number, that's just what we have as the documented deaths at which, according to Nina Green and Jacques Riard, who are the two researchers who studied this, 25 did not happen at the school itself. They happened in home communities, in hospitals and so on. But because there are these numbers of deaths, you expect to find some of those deaths would be in the, in the apple orchard and in camps I think it would be a tremendous place to start.
Frances Widdowson:Yes, okay, and so then it would be um. So if you were to find that those deaths were accounted in other reserve cemeteries, would that make you less certain of your claim?
Aaron Pete:I think no, because if we find that the report said that the documents were not properly filed, that the Indian death registrar was not well maintained and that a lot of some documents were destroyed, that that would still leave me open to the idea that there are also burials there. And if we found burials somewhere else, it would make me not more confident, but I would remain the same because then it would tell me that there are there are more spots throughout.
Frances Widdowson:Does that make sense? Yes, death that has happened in the residential schools. We don't exactly know what happened to every single death that was claimed to be associated with the residential school school. That makes you believe that it there's some likelihood that those missing records mean that there's going to be children, um, in the app buried in the appalachia yes, based on the other pieces of evidence we've already discussed okay, and in terms of the, the uh.
Frances Widdowson:So, with respect, just to give you some facts about so, and this is what nina green and jock reyard do um, that's, the important thing about these conversations is that we need to figure out what the facts are with respect to this. So, and as you see, the survivors testimonies, some of that could be factual, but some of that that might not be factual. So, and we have a number of instances of this well, it depends on how far you want to go into whether you're going to believe the records of death certificates and so on.
Frances Widdowson:But in the case of Kamloops the 49, I believe Jacques Riard and Nina Green found 38 of the death certificates. So 38 of the death certificates show the burial place. It's various cemeteries. So there's about, I think, 12 or maybe at most 15 where we don't have the death certificates yet for those names. But if we went to Vital Statistics and got the family members to go to the Vital Statistics Division, we could probably get that.
Frances Widdowson:So anyway, that's the kind of work, but in terms of that, this is the kind of process that goes on with street epistemology. I'm not sure how much longer you want to go on this, but what I find with street epistemology is that it's great because you get the people to state their position. So you know kind of how certain they are, you know what the claim is, you know a certain amount of evidence that they're requiring, you know a certain amount of evidence that they're requiring. But you kind of reach a point where you have to be incredibly skilled to figure out how to move the conversation further into greater understand, and and I'm I'm still working on it. So I reach a point doing this where I'm kind of I don't know where what to what to ask you next to to to what to ask you next to get it, and what I'm just trying to do is just understand why you believe the things that you do. I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm just trying to help us both understand why you believe the things that you do.
Aaron Pete:I like that approach. I, I guess my. My question back to you would be if they do excavate and they do find 215 uh sets of of bones I think I saw one video, uh, that said you're likely not going to find bones, depending on the years, because they may disintegrate, um and be so like soil samples of potential bones. Would that convince you that there are likely more to be found across canada? Or what would you take away if they do find and excavate and find bones?
Frances Widdowson:then we're moving into. Well, first of all, I'm not. I'm at the stage now and looking at this, where I'm seeing in terms of parents saying that their child never came home from the Camelot-Sinian Residential School, we don't have one report of that happening. So that's the first thing. So, so not even. We're not even at the state where. So I'm skeptic. I'm being skeptical right off the bat.
Frances Widdowson:I think that excavations are the only way that you can make a determination as to whether there are remains there, because you can't do it through ground-penetrating radar. That just shows disturbances. You can't do it through stories, because the stories we have many cases where people claim one thing and then the records show something else. And just in terms of my response to your kinds of arguments is just because, even if we have gaps in the record, that doesn't mean that those children would be buried in the in the camus apple orchard, which is a clandestine burial. They could be buried in all sorts of cemeteries all across the country. It could be completely not clandestine, it could be. It could be, um, it could be completely just graves that were once marked which are no longer marked, which seems to be the case when people are talking about missing children. What they mean is that the, the relatives, don't know which area of the cemetery they're buried in. So in the case of tanya talaga for, for example, she says her and this is an asylum, not a residential school, but it's the same argument, I think it's her great-grandmother, annie, was missing and it was because they didn't know what cemetery Annie was buried in. And it turned out she was buried in a cemetery that's now a grassy patch next to the Gardiner Expressway. So that's not what we typically mean we mean by missing children.
Frances Widdowson:Missing children are when people don't know what, like a child was at school and then that child never came home and no one know knows what happened. You know that sort of thing. And in the case of Kamloops we don't have anything. That's not happened and in fact, it's my understanding, we don't have one name of one child who went missing in the way that people think children are missing. So there's a kind of a confusion that's going on with respect to that.
Frances Widdowson:And that doesn't mean that there were no clandestine burials or that there's been no foul play, it's just we're not. It seems to me we're not really starting at the right point. We have ground penetrating radar that found actually 200, it wasn't 215, because there was a mistake made by Sarah Bollier, because she didn't do her groundwork to find out that the archaeology department at SFU had excavated already excavated an area of that site, so 200, we get that GPR finding and everyone automatically went to there's 200 children buried in that apple orchard, which we shouldn't have started at that point we should have agreed we should have.
Frances Widdowson:We should have had more of a basis for what we were talking about, I guess. So I think. But I certainly think if we excavated and we found remains, now we need to start doing the forensics on it to see what what's what, because you know you could have, like there could be a variety of explanations for why there's burials there. But still, it would certainly move me away from the strongly disagree, Matt. I would move to the slightly disagree, or maybe I would even go to the neutral, because I would now say I have no idea what that's about. Like I'll just have to start, you know, and let people make the arguments for me to be convinced one way or the other about things.
Aaron Pete:I would like to explore the story itself, because the media's approach on this, I think, is a key conversation that we should explore. But just you made the comment and I heard this in your other interview with the CBC of not one parent has come forward, and so I guess my retorts to that would be trc, volume one shows parents resisted indian agents, um, and they had, in the 1920 amendments to the indian act, they made it compulsory to attend um, and so this whole system is set up to force children to go to these schools. And so who would they speak to? And in speaking with candace malcolm, oh well, why wouldn't they go to their chief and council? Well, in speaking with chief and councils even from the 1980s, uh, chief stephen point, who's a past guest, he said we had no money, we had no funding. The indian agent didn't really care what we had to say. Like, we had no authority back in the 1980s, let alone from 1907 to the 1980s the terms of authority. We had to make our own decisions about what we wanted to do.
Aaron Pete:And if people like Bryce's I know you uh, there's some questions about his report if he's speaking up in Ottawa and saying, hey, this is a problem like we've got to do something. And even if there are little movements they're making, it certainly wasn't widespread reform. So it's not like they were hearing children were dying and going. You know, we got to shut this down. This isn't working. We don't want any kids dying on our watch. We're not about that Like we've got to stop this immediately. Let's shut it down.
Aaron Pete: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 would feel comfortable going forward to me and I think this is meant to be a bit controversial to illustrate the point no enslaved person committed workplace grievances with their boss, right. And so for these families, who are they supposed to go speak to? What would be the course of remediation if their child did die? Who's really worrying about that when we have evidence, specifically at Kamloops, that one of the people was sexually abusing the children at that school? Like, is a parent going to come forward to that guy and expect that he's going to go try and get to the bottom of that and change that system?
Frances Widdowson:So I'd be interested in how you grapple with kind of those positions so if I were doing street epistemology right now, I would say so, let me, let me make. I just want to make sure that I I understand your argument, which is because parents were sort of intimidated at that time and felt that they would not be listened to. They just didn't say anything about the child that never came home from the school, they just kept silent about it. Is that correct?
Aaron Pete:Well, I guess I would say, looking at my own community, I would say they didn'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 we know happens on reserve a lot. Um, they committed crimes and their life just fell apart because their child died. Like that would be the course of action If I were to lose a child and think that nobody cares. That would be the path I would go down. It's not like they're a fully fledged person going to their nine to five, being like who cares, whatever it's that they.
Aaron Pete:The suicide rates are extremely high on reserve, the addiction rates are extremely high on reserve and these pieces are part of how a person would have coped if and I see that is extremely reasonable working within First Nation communities and seeing how people cope with the trauma they've been through, even from going to these schools, let alone potentially having to watch their child be taken away, attend these schools, even come back and have them not be able to speak the same language, like that relationship gap between your children would be traumatizing, let alone knowing that your kid didn't come home and it's the government and it's the police that don't care about you or your position and and want you to, to change into something else that seems plausible, uh, from my perspective so uh, and this again is a 6th Street epistemology method so parents, hypothetically parents whose children didn't come home, the reason why we don't have the names of those children and any kind of scenarios that are concrete, like we hear Lenora Jo say things like elders have been saying for years that their peers, their siblings and so on never came home.
Frances Widdowson:That's kind of the claim, but we don't know who those children were, like the names of them or anything. It's just kind of this vague statement about it. But if there had been this happen, the parents might have committed suicide and therefore that's why we don't know the names of the children. It's because the parents died and they're no longer alive to state what the names of their children were.
Aaron Pete:Correct, and this happened over a long period of time where, to your point, nobody was keeping records of these things inside the First Nation community themselves. Yes, process to document this if you go to your chief and council, even if they did in, say, the 1930s and went to their chief and council and said, hey, my child was just taken from me. The documented record keeping during that period was nothing in most first nation communities yes, um.
Frances Widdowson:So I think, uh, in terms of this situation, I think that uh, um, in terms of parents, first of all, it seems to me that there's a bit of these kinds of leaps of evidence, like we're kind of breaking the chain of evidence because we're seeing and again I think it was because of the GPR having these number of hits and then people tried to fill in to explain why there would be children buried there, instead of starting with trying to do some investigations in the communities to get some more things on the ground about who these children were on the ground, about who these children were. Another interesting thing that has just come up recently is that there was I'm not sure if you've heard of it, but there was a task force in the 1990s, starting in around I think 1994, because of the Arthur Plint sexual abuse case, and the RCMP was concerned about the fact that, um, there could be other he plinth was in other schools and there could be other victims. So they started this task force, which went on for about five years, and what happened is is that they interviewed all sorts of people, uh, who had been had complaints of sexual abuse, and charlene Bellow, who I'm not sure if you're familiar with her, she was the liaison between the communities and the RCMP, so she was assisting people come forward and tell their stories. In that in that time frame, no one said anything about missing children or unmarked graves and only three suspicious deaths were reported. During that entire investigation, um, and it turned out, the three suspicious deaths, uh, it turned out some were about diseases and one was about a suicide and one couldn't be. They couldn't find out.
Frances Widdowson:The person who was said to have been, um, murdered by another student actually it wasn't a student claimed that he'd murdered another student, but they were never able to verify that. So does that, does that? Does that? Does information like that make you less certain about the clandestine burials and the apple orchard? The fact that no one from Kamloops mentioned anything about unmarked graves, or when we hear now that it's kind of been constantly talked about in the communities would that be the same situation that they're just they don't I. What would be your response to that sort of information?
Aaron Pete:I think this leads perfectly into the challenge with the story itself, because I agree with you, I feel put in the position of trying did is just go take a look like, just do one like, and then that we can have a better understanding of this conversation. But it's like we were both stuck in this position of there's this giant question mark and you think that there's potentially nothing behind the door, and I think that there may be something behind the door, but we're we're almost just trying to work backwards from a really bad position of a conversation, because the story's already happened and to so many people's points, the response has already been made. The funding has been provided, the national truth and reconciliation day has taken place, the pope has apologized um, I know stephen harper apologized in like 2008, but apologies have been made. Justin trudeau has apologized. The response has already taken place and so in some ways, the reaction is fed a complete that now it's almost undoing. Like is the story untrue now, rather than what it should have been, which is the cbc should have done way better reporting on this than they did.
Aaron Pete:Yeah, I'll say that a lot of stories came out between 2020 and like 2024 that are worth investigating further, not just this story, um, and the media's quality of reporting on things has been terrible from my perspective from 2020 to basically now, as you report that there are more anomalies being found without and sounds like leading questions are taking place, and so, to me, this story is more, um, we can, we can continue to debate this piece, but, to me, we're watching the failure of our institutions to properly inform us, and so we are trying to pick up the pieces of a broken system to figure out what's going on.
Aaron Pete:And, as I mentioned, my fear is that we are now having to carry the story on our backs as if the other rest of the truths aren't the case, and we have people who are very unsympathetic to Indigenous people because of this story, and so we're carrying a lot of baggage in regards to our history, which is traumatizing, which is horrible, which I don't think you and I disagree, that the results of these institutions were not good for indigenous people overall, and we're working back from that position now, and I I would just be interested in and how you grapple with this story as made. You've kind of made reference to the fact we're starting from a very bizarre position, um, but what are your reflections on on the story yeah.
Frances Widdowson:So, um, like, I think the residential schools are a very complicated picture with which, which had different times in different places in terms of you know, and obviously the schools themselves and the people who work there would have had a massive impact on whether it was a positive or a negative experience. I I totally agree with you about the institutional failure which I've seen myself in the universe. I think that the media is a huge part of the problem and it's largely kind of advocacy, journalism instead of the way journalism used to be, where you're supposed to, you know, kind of believe people who are, uh, making these claims and if you don't, it shows that you're insensitive or you're you're not properly appreciating the, the colonial context. But in the universities there there's been a terrible corrosion of the universities to the point where, well, I was pushed out largely because of this problem and hopefully will be reinstated if there's any justice. But I've still got to, even if I do get reinstated, I've got the problem of dealing with a university that is not fulfilling its academic mission, which we should have been able to have conversations and evidence-based discussions about, the residential schools and the Kamloops case in particular, and I think that kind of has fed into the failure on all sorts of other levels, so we don't have the critical thinking going on which is required.
Frances Widdowson:But one of the big things now which I think is very important I'd be interested in your thoughts on this is the problem of the excavations at Kamloops is that $12.1 million has been made available to do the excavations. The band has not done the excavations and they were supposed to have been done between 2021 and 2023, and we had manny jules and ted godforson jr saying that the 13 families had agreed to do what they called the exhumations, which, of course, in order to that's jumping the gun on this again, because in order to exhume, you have to have bodies, and we have quite a convincing argument about the septic tiles that were laid on that site in the 1920s, which are in the same configuration that sar Bollier found the east-west configuration that she thought gave signs of burials. So I'm just kind of curious about what do you think should happen with respect to the excavations on that site at this point.
Aaron Pete:At this point, it's government funding. When we apply for government funding, you have to complete the expectations of the funders like 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 they were going to do in their application and they they need to fulfill that or they need to have the money withdrawn from them.
Frances Widdowson:Okay. So I think that's kind of the first step in this and that's not the whole story. I know it's just like because Kamloops was the first kind of moment when all of this started to happen and because Kamloops, if there were burials in the apple orchard, they'd have to be clandestine burials, because there's a cemetery that does exist on the reserve across from the Catholic Church. So the burials that are in the apple orchard, if there are burials, would have definitely be suspicious circumstances which would then require a criminal investigation and forensic analysis. So if we could just start with cam loops, getting people to agree that, that would be a good way to at least move in a direction of of sort of more rational discussion.
Frances Widdowson:What's going to happen after that is unknown because, as you say, there's other issues beside. There's the clandestine burial issue, which I think there's not really been any evidence provided for. That that doesn't mean that there it isn't the case. It's just we don't have any concrete information which says, okay, now we're going to go forward with some criminal investigation, but right now that's not before us. We have a whole bunch of problems of people not knowing where their relatives are buried um, which I think is kimberly murray's. That's what her thing was all about. But of course, the slippage into clandestine burials tended to happen all the time. So it's like people think that when we say there's, you know, 3 000 missing children that haven't been really identified in terms of where they're buried, that means that there's clan, there's some kind of foul play that's taken place.
Frances Widdowson:So I think, in my own view, I think the media, this, this should, if we're going to be wanting to improve society, first of all we have to think about Aboriginal people and marginalized Aboriginal people, how to address the suffering and the terrible circumstances.
Frances Widdowson:Children in a Kamloops apple orchard which it's claimed, has traumatized a whole bunch of members of the Aboriginal community. That's not assisting anyone in trying to come to terms with how to improve various conditions. So I think that there's, you know, serious problems that have been made for Aboriginal people and then you know a lot of concerns that people have who you know don't want Canada to be seen in a bad light or these sorts of things which, okay, I do accept that. But I think the focus should be on. We have serious grievances, legitimate grievances that Aboriginal people have, those need to be addressed, but having stories being told which are not based on evidence. That's not going to enable that to occur in any meaningful way, and it's going to cause more and more kinds of conflicts, both within Aboriginal communities and between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations an aboriginal and non-aboriginal population.
Aaron Pete:I tend to agree with you. When I look at this story, I see a failure of the media to report accurately, and they released that press release, but I don't think they could have. I don't think cam loops or uh chief casimir ever suspected it was going to reach this level or have the response that it did, and a good media would have pushed back or asked more probing questions, and so to me, that interaction has resulted in a lot of funding that many point out as an example. But when they submitted that, I guarantee you they didn't think that it was going to make worldwide headlines and change the zeitgeist understanding of where Canadians are in terms of their relationship with their own country. I don't think they knew that it was going to result in greater 246 million funding or more in terms of more research. I don't think they expected it was going to result in National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. I don't think they saw all of that coming. And this is where I think listeners will call me a grifter. I will say I think some of that relationship and some of that change was long overdue because before 2021, I had heard people I had no idea this happened.
Aaron Pete:I had no idea, I didn't know, I didn'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. But there's this chink in the armor, there's this problem with the story that is harming Canadians' ability to fully grapple with the real history. That is not disputed by you or I in terms of what happened, because this, this issue, is taking up all the oxygen in the room. It's taking up our full interview, where I would love to be able to chat about what happened at the university, the importance of intellectual integrity within universities, and and have more fulsome conversations about where we could go.
Aaron Pete:It's it's taking up so much energy and I think there are a lot of parties participating in that, but I feel like it's it did bring on a national shame and I think that a lot of that national shame was deserved not all of it but that canadians really didn't understand what happened and they didn't understand all of the sexual abuse, and I would have hoped that this would have opened a conversation to what you mentioned earlier.
Aaron Pete:How do we get Indigenous people out of poverty? How do we make the reserve system fair so everybody has an equal opportunity to succeed. How do we make sure that the education rates and the crime rates on reserves are not as bad as they are today? I would have hoped that when we were ready, when Canadians were ready, for this conversation, it would have resulted in a much more progressive, useful conversation than do we dig or do we not dig, and that feels like the circumstance that we're stuck in right now and all of the discussion around the real circumstances of first nations reserves is completely being ignored and there's bad faith actors, from my perspective on both sides and it's making it a very unproductive process in terms of the reconciliation project yeah, well, I'm gonna have to push back against you a little bit, aaron.
Frances Widdowson:Um, I I think the band, uh well, first of all, manny jules, who was the chief before, uh, a long time chief. He, he was well aware, or said he was well aware, of the, the kind of implications that this was going to have. I think the band and and this is the roles of the lawyers, that there's a lot of lawyers in this whole thing who understand the consequences of these kinds of claims in terms of facilitating more legal disputes and so on, which is kind of the nature of a great deal of these Aboriginal policy regimes. But the band has not been innocent. Innocent in this what's happened, because and sarah boley is another person who should take some responsibility for what's happened, because I do see a number of archaeologists andrew martindale, terence clark or two, keisha supernance, another one who really mislead aboriginal communities with what gpr means and and they know better than this but because of what happened with sarah bollier and the band, the actions of some members of the leadership, that press release got written the way that it was and the ban quite a few months after it was known in the July 15th presentation by Sarah Bollier that excavations would be needed to confirm the ban kept on making claims again and again that the remains of children had been found at Kamloops, and they were doing that as recently as September 2024 in a conversation that Ted Godfreyson Jr and Dede DeRose, who's the chancellor of Thompson Rivers University, were having about this. So and I don't know that I don't want to say that it's intentional deception know that I don't want to say that it's intentional deception because there could just be aboriginal leaders are having a hard time kind of understanding the difference between a belief that something is true and something that is actually true. So it could be very well be that that ted govritson j believes that there's children buried in the apple orchard. It's entirely possible.
Frances Widdowson:But it's very irresponsible for the academic establishment not to be having this kind of conversation where we say just because you believe something is true, it doesn't mean it's true. You need to have corroborating evidence to support your belief in order to get other people to accept that it's true. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to believe whatever beliefs you have. But if you're expecting other people to act upon that, especially if you're expecting public policy to be developed on the basis of this belief, then that's when our institutions should be operating. But I I think the band acted many, many actors not the entire band, like this, is just a few people they acted in in a very, very irresponsible fashion and they've never really owned up to this what they did, and maybe it was accidental and they just got drawn into it, and I know it's always hard for people to admit that they made a mistake Like that's possible too, like you're just swept up in everything.
Frances Widdowson:But you know we've gone way too far now. You know we we have all these things that have happened. We need to have a reckoning on it and you know. But there's kind of resistance because of all the institutions and not wanting to be seen like you're being heavy handed about all these things. You know all these kinds of problems.
Frances Widdowson:But I don't think that's going to work and it's just going to make a whole bunch of people more and more angry that we're not getting to the truth of this matter and and we need to also avoid some kind of overcorrection. What's called an overcorrection is that just because there was some problematic behavior that happened at Kamloops, that doesn't mean that everything that was claimed about the residential schools now also is totally invalid or anything. We have to develop an evidence-based approach to try to understand what's going on. Going on and there's a reluctance to do that amongst many people because you don't want to seem like you're. You're being a insensitive person with a colonial mindset who's just trying to put people in their place and not address you know some real problems that that do exist, so you know.
Frances Widdowson:I think the band should be held to account for what it's done, but I also think that it's in the context of a much wider institutional failure that that's got to be recognized too. And the universities what they've done is just terrible. And this is my own university. I know exactly what happened at my own university and it has behaved absolutely terribly. And the administration has got to take responsibility for what it's done, and hopefully it will at some point in time. And a bunch of other universities did this too.
Aaron Pete:I agree with you. I think the universities need to reflect on what their role in a healthy society is and zoom back out, because even in my own experience, I had a tremendous experience at the University of the Fraser Valley, where Sarah Boulot works, where I was taught how to debate, how to defend a position, how to steel man arguments, how to understand positions and do my best to carry that forward. And then, unfortunately, at Peter A Allard School of Law at UBC, we did not debate that much. It was during the period of COVID, where almost all of the students agreed with the approach being taken by government. There wasn't a sense of when the government says something, you should question it for good, for bad, on day one and on day 365. Not because there isn't good intentions, but because even with best intentions, the worst can happen, and that needs to always, be ever present in our mind when we're considering these issues.
Aaron Pete:And I have seen many universities fall away from that and I've, to your point, seen First Nations not want to participate in this conversation. And if we don't show up in this conversation, if we look avoidant to it, then the term grifters, the comment section, will continue to be true, because I've asked many First Nations chiefs what are your perspectives on this, and either they don't know or they don't want to know, or they're not that interested in the topic. But the claim is extraordinary and it has extraordinary ramifications, and somebody has to be willing to have the conversation, and I'd really rather it not be me. This is not my area of expertise. I'm not an archaeologist it's not what I want to be focused on, but I can see it starting to have implications with the provincial government and with the federal government. I can see that this is they don't want to continue to like, as I said, reconciliation was not a topic in the last election, partly because the economy was so terrible, but also because this is a part of the story. And if you focus on reconciliation and what's been done, then you also have to be willing to answer questions from reporters on these other pieces, and nobody wants to do that. And in speaking with Minister Gary Anand Sangare, it's clear that they do not think about these issues as deeply as individuals like yourself do, and so they have no interest in getting into a discussion or a complex, nuanced debate on these issues, and so I really hope we can have institutions come back to the table in a good way.
Aaron Pete:I will honestly say I was embarrassed with how you were interviewed by the CBC, because those are First Nation communities that are being represented with that perspective. And when you see that there's nothing to the argument, that there's no analysis, that she hadn't read the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, she hadn't read any of the volumes and yet she was supposed to be reporting on our history, on where we are, on what our perspectives are, that makes me extremely uncomfortable and why it was such a privilege to have you on today. I really appreciate the discussion. There were no bad faith antics on either end.
Aaron Pete:I think these conversations are incredibly important because they remind universities and the media that we can have complex discussions and that nobody needs to shy away from that, that in fact, we learn a lot from each other when we do such things and we don't have to walk away with malice or frustration or a sense of bad faith on the other side. So, francis, I'm grateful that you were willing to come on. I imagine that, as Nigel Begar had said, a little nervous about how this was going to be approached, but I hope you know that I meant all good faith throughout the conversation.
Frances Widdowson:I wasn't nervous at all because I seen you in your other podcasts and it was a pleasure to have this conversation with you.
Aaron Pete:Fantastic. How can people follow your work moving forward?
Frances Widdowson:So I'm on Twitter, so I'm doing a lot on and, as I think it's Francis Widows, 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 do post regularly there, and then there's my case, which is at the wwwwokeacademyinfo, if people are interested in what happened at Mount Royal University.
Aaron Pete:Thank you, Frances, so much for being willing to have this conversation.
Frances Widdowson:Thanks for having me on.
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