Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. Over the summer, mo we're bringing you some of the highlights of our 2025-26 season, which wrapped up in mid-May.
Speaker: We're going to be back with our brand new fall season in September. Our first live radio broadcast will be on September 19th on Vancouver Cooperative Radio CFRO 100.5 FM and streaming live at coopradio.org slash red eye.
Speaker: Podcasts of interviews from that show will be posted the following week. On the podcast today, Sean Carlton of the University of Manitoba on the 1BC documentary, Making a Killing, and the growth of residential school denialism in Canada.
Speaker: On December 2nd, the 1BC party released its documentary, Making a Killing, Reconciliation, Genocide, and Plunder in Canada. Since then, the writer and producer of the film, 1BC Chief of Staff Tim Teelman, has been fired along with two other senior staff. MLA Dallas Brody, who apparently carried out the purge, has herself been removed as interim party leader.
Speaker: But the documentary lives on, with Dallas Brody voicing Thielman's script and interviewing all the guests. Two weeks after it was posted on YouTube, the film had over 360,000 views.
Speaker: Sean Carlton joins me today to talk about the film. He's a professor of history and indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba, and he joins me today from Winnipeg. Hello, Sean. Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker: I'm really happy that we were able to connect. The film incorporates a ah whole mishmash of far-right memes, but what would you say is its central message?
Speaker: Well, I think the best way to understand this particular documentary is that it's really political propaganda at its worst. It's a promotional video for 1BC that openly and proudly engages in anti-Indigenous racism, residential school denialism, and debunked conspiracy theories that kind of builds and pushes the brand of 1BC by really appealing to British Columbians' fear and growing resentment towards Indigenous people.
Speaker: So basically the film uses the distortion of residential school truth as a sort of vehicle to promote anti-indigenous hate and by doing so, 1BC as a party that is going to promote it.
Speaker: What does it want us to believe? It wants us to believe that Canadians have been guilted into caring about Indigenous people and that that guilt is based on a lie. And if that's the case, then you don't need to believe it and you don't need to care about Indigenous people. And Canada can go back to a sort of ruthless dispossession and and feel good about it.
Speaker: And I think that that is what is being manufactured in this documentary, a sort of disbelief in Indigenous people an open embrace of anti-Indigenous politics, and the willingness to profit from mis- and disinformation openly in the form of a political party such as 1BC.
Speaker: It's not just 1BC that's engaging in this kind of politics, but they're trying to use this film as a way of garnering support and growing that resentment politics, that grievance politics, to poison the political relationship between British Columbians and Indigenous nations.
Speaker: What is the solution that Brody and Thielman propose to to this problem, which they say is that reconciliation is based on a lie? What do they say we should do?
Speaker: By the end of the film, the solution that is being provided is to to support 1BC, to support its not only anti-Indigenous policies, but it also dabbles in anti-LGBTQ plus politics, anti-immigration politics.
Speaker: It's using residential school denialism to get to this simple formula. British Columbia needs a far right party that is openly going to stand up for white supremacy, Christian nationalism.
Speaker: These are all the kind of cookies that are being left by the end. And if you support 1BC, That's the party that you're going to get. And I think in this way, it really can be understood not just as a curious documentary trying to get to the truth.
Speaker: It's really trying to appeal to fear and using a whole host of disingenuous tactics that is really meant to foment anti-Indigenous racism and cash in on it politically.
Speaker: What are some of those disingenuous tactics that you saw in the film? Well, I mean, I think the best way to help listeners understand is that there's actually not a lot new in the film, if you watch it. it's It's really just a rehashing and a recycling of a lot of the popular far-right misinformation about Indigenous people generally, about reconciliation generally, but specifically about residential schools.
Speaker: And if you pay attention to some of the sources that are being used, it's like Rebel News, True North News, Western Standard, like all of these far-right extremist internet platforms.
Speaker: And really interviewing the most prominent voices in the residential school denialist movement. There's no effort at unbiased presentation of evidence. And actually, the best way to really understand what's going on is if you skip to the end, you kind of learn everything that you need to know about the reliability of the information being presented in the video. There's a credit at the end, and it says, quote, no guarantee is made regarding the accuracy, completeness, or current viability of the information presented, end quote.
Speaker: None of the information is rigorous, peer-reviewed, nuanced, expert knowledge supported by evidence. They admit that. You know, if you make it all the way to the end, they basically tell you that. Really, what's going on is this sort of deeply unethical, deliberately disingenuous presentation of cherry-picked information meant to promote and foment politically useful hate.
Speaker: They actually have an interview with a former residential school teacher Who they don't identify, who they allow to anonymously say, oh I worked there and everything was fine. And I think it's all made up.
Speaker: That is a deeply unethical way of engaging in dialogue. They're not the first to do this. They're using a lot of the information from other far-right publications, such as the book Grave Error, which is about the same sorts of things, the same sorts of arguments. Like, for example, one of the things that they do, the tricks that they play early in the film is they say, what Canada is being charged with is mass murder of Indigenous children.
Speaker: And so what they're doing is they're making a false equivalent that children dying in residential schools was mass murder. That's actually not what Indigenous nations or even the TRC concluded. And only mass murder can be understood as genocide.
Speaker: And so it's a narrowing of genocide to only mass death events. And if you can't prove that there is mass murder, then it wasn't genocide. And if it wasn't genocide, then everything is great. And you're being guilted into caring about this. That is the kind of twisted, the deliberate twisting, because that's not actually what the TRC and Indigenous Nations, including Kamloops, said in their initial announcement.
Speaker: We know, for example, that there are confirmed deaths at Kamloops, confirmed by church and state records, approximately 50. But like other residential school teams, they're doing additional investigation, including things like ground penetrating radar, but also working with religious groups to gain access to greater records that were not given to the TRC.
Speaker: For example, in in Williams Lake, after the Kamloops announcement, The Oblates and Williams Lake worked together to obtain 50,000 additional records that through that historical work confirmed that the death rate in that school was three times higher than the TRC reported.
Speaker: So what this film is trying to do is shake public confidence in residential school truth, the truth of survivors. but also is trying to shake support, trying to undermine truth and reconciliation to close us off from the work that needs to be done on healing and justice to rebuild this relationship of reconciliation. They don't want to do that.
Speaker: They want to keep us stuck in the colonial cul-de-sac because they benefit from it. And this film is a really good example of how people are disingenuously engaging in debate discussion, dialogue about residential schools as a way of undermining truth and reconciliation and protecting that colonial status quo.
Speaker: Now, you use the term propaganda, and we tend to kind of throw that term around. What does it actually mean? in this sense, it's really biased or misleading communication, often appealing to emotion, used to promote a specific agenda.
Speaker: Its goal is persuasion, not education. And it often used tactics like selective presentation facts and really using emotionally charged language like the blood libel against Canada is that we've caused mass murder when that's not actually what the TRC or in Indigenous Nations are actually saying. That's a twisting appeal to the emotional aspect. and then try and persuade people that 1BC is the answer to stand up against the so-called reconciliation industry. When in reality, 1BC and many of the people interviewed in this film are part of the anti-Indigenous industry in this country that are publishing books and articles and monetizing misinformation.
Speaker: Of course, we also need to talk about the fact that 1BC, which is now you know in turmoil, essentially siphoned off taxpayer money from its caucus funds to make this film. They claim to stand up for democracy and accountability, and here they're using Trix's to essentially create a new party and get all of this money and then use this money to basically make building relationships with indigenous people harder.
Speaker: Regardless of where you stand politically, the damage that is being done by this film makes it harder for anyone to govern with indigenous people. And since they're the original people of these lands, they're not going anywhere. And it's making that relationship much more difficult and risking the future for many British Columbians. If we can't figure this out, this is why reconciliation is a relationship.
Speaker: If we continue to poison that relationship, it's going to make for turbulent times ahead for sure. One BC has now imploded as a party, but Dallas Brody and Tara Armstrong are still MLAs.
Speaker: Are these kinds of views represented by other sitting MLAs? Well, this is a good question. I think there's actually a risk right now in thinking that Dallas Brody is an island or Tara Armstrong is an island, that they're aberrations.
Speaker: There's a risk of thinking of them as exceptional. I think actually what we need to understand is that they're just part of a larger problem. That when we dig a little deeper, and we see many politicians across the country and in British Columbia in particular, who have been engaging in this residential school denialism. Many of them are on the far right.
Speaker: This is where things get really concerning. It's not just 1BC. In fact, British Columbia conservative MLAs like Sheldon Clare, who represents Prince George North Caribou, or Brent Chapman, who represents, I think, Surrey South. Even John Rustad regularly promotes far-right residential school denialist talking points. So this is really a symptom of not just the incursion of far-right American thinking, but we need to see the problem as not just a provincial issue, but also a national one. If we think of people like Aaron Gunn, who is the MP for Powell River, North Island, he's been working with the far right, getting money from people in Alberta, trying to essentially shift the politics in British Columbia.
Speaker: particularly in the rural areas, away from a sort of working class NDP supporting social democratic streak to increasingly a far right fascist, openly supportive of white supremacy and Christian nationalism, and exploitive settler capitalism at every turn.
Speaker: I think we we do ourselves a disservice to think of these people as aberrations, when in reality, there are a lot of people espousing these kinds of beliefs and making it more legitimate.
Speaker: We see in the last couple of weeks the open call to repeal DRIPA, for example. And a year ago, that would have seemed absurd.
Speaker: But because 1BC put it on the table and the BC Conservatives are like, well, you know, maybe we should go down that route too. You can see how an anti-Indigenous politics, when it takes root, and it's being stoked by these disingenuous folks that are not just in 1BC.
Speaker: but are also in the BC Conservative Party. Remember that Aaron Gunn really has his heart set on being the leader of the BC Conservatives. And he's announced that he's thinking about taking a run now that Rustad has left.
Speaker: So we will have to see how this gets mainstreamed. But I think it is important that we realize the rod of residential school denialism is deeper in provincial and national politics than we would want to otherwise acknowledge.
Speaker: There is a growing far-right alliance that in a lot of politics in Canada. And we like to look to the United States and say, wow, that's a dumpster fire. But far-right politicians and strategists and activists want to do the same here.
Speaker: They want to change the conversation. And they're engaging in residential school denialism as the subject du jour right now. but increasingly just anti-Indigenous politics as one plank in a growing far-right strategy that also includes climate denial, anti-trans issues, anti-migration rhetoric.
Speaker: And we need to be vigilant about this so that it does not take root and we can figure out ways to build better relationships and and a stronger future for all British Columbians and Canadians. How can we push back against anti-Indigenous racism, especially now that the courts are recognizing rights that they didn't before? So, for example, just recently there's been a case that the Mining Act in BC has to be reformed. There was a case of the Cowichan Band and the land in Richmond. So how can we push back against this in this kind of climate?
Speaker: As a historian of British Columbia, you know I can tell you that the federal government tried to warn British Columbia against the perils of not signing treaties in the 1870s when British Columbia was admitted to Confederation.
Speaker: And people like Joseph Trutch and other very aggressive, brazen colonizers said, no way. Why would we sign treaties? We're going to take a more aggressive approach. We're going to assert sovereignty.
Speaker: And then we're going to sell the land that we've thieved. And we're going to use that as the economic foundation of building a new province. Well, guess what? That was not a good idea.
Speaker: And now chickens are coming home to roost. And while there are many problems with the treaty process, including where I live here in Manitoba, British Columbia is unique. Indigenous people didn't consent to the assertion of sovereignty.
Speaker: What I think a lot of political voices today are trying to do is capitalize on that fear and propose particular kinds of solutions. Like instead of reconciliation, we should just bully Indigenous people to accept that they have been conquered, which is actually not true. but So how do we fight back against this? Well, I think people need to A, understand the history. The fears of people coming and taking your homes, well, I'm sorry, that's actually how British Columbia was founded.
Speaker: And what indigenous nations are trying to do is build a relationship of respect and reciprocity that was never shown to indigenous people. I think the vast majority of Canadians and British Columbians want to find ways to move forward and build a strong future for their families, for the future generations. And the answer to that, part of the answer to that, is establishing a better relationship with the original peoples.
Speaker: It also means being aware of the kinds of tactics and strategies being used by far-right actors who are trying to sabotage that process. That includes 1BC, but it also includes people like Aaron Gunn and others who want to capitalize on a kind of anti-indigenous politics to undermine truth and reconciliation and keep British Columbia and Canada working for white people, white Christian people.
Speaker: you know It's poisoning the political relationship. And ordinary British Columbians, regardless of their political stripe, I hope can see through some of that disingenuous framing. We might disagree on what building a stronger relationship with Indigenous peoples look like.
Speaker: But what 1BC and these far-right actors are doing is saying, we shouldn't build that relationship at all. And that's just basically going back to the 1870s approach, which created a lot of these contemporary problems in the first place. you know I talk to a lot of people who say, you know I didn't have anything to do with that.
Speaker: I'm not responsible for that. Well, you didn't do it, but you are the continuing beneficiary of that. And hey, you have an opportunity to make sure that we don't double down on those mistakes, that wrong-headed approach. Today, we can demand our politicians do better.
Speaker: And that includes pressure on the and NDP. If we want to have a better relationship with Indigenous people, we can't just say, well, 1BC and the BC Conservatives are the problem. We also need to put pressure on the NDP to make good on their promises, to work and resolve many of these issues quickly in a just and fair way.
Speaker: If they can do that, they will take a lot of steam out of 1BC and the BC conservatives. The longer they kind of dither, the more space they give to these far-right actors to foment the fear and politically capitalize on it.
Speaker: Thanks so much for speaking with me today, Sean. Thanks for having me. I've been speaking with Sean Carlton. He's a professor of history and indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba.
Speaker: You've been listening to the Red Eye podcast produced by an independent media collective based in Vancouver. If you enjoyed this episode, it would be great if you left a review on Apple podcasts. It helps other people to find us.
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Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. Thanks for listening.
