Speaker 1: Hmm. Do you know what is a podcast? This is
Speaker 1: a podcast, a podcast called Behind the Bastards about bad people,
Speaker 1: the worst people in all of history and the worst
Speaker 1: things in all of history, and generally bad stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Evans in case you didn't know, Boy, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Middling introduction. It's no me just shouting the word hitler
Speaker 1: a totally but it's not great. I'm sorry. Look, it's
Speaker 1: hard to introduce a podcast every week and we it's not.
Speaker 1: They're not all gonna be winners. Everyone's not gonna be
Speaker 1: a gonna be a triumph of the human spirit. So
Speaker 1: just deal with it. Just deal with it. I'm sorry. Hi, Hi,
Speaker 1: Sophie UM, and hello to our guest today, Anna Hosnia. Anna.
Speaker 1: How are you doing? Hello? How should people introduce podcasts?
Speaker 1: How has that done? I mean, I don't do any better.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, hi, this is the name of the show, okay,
Speaker 1: and then I get into it. Yeah. I never know
Speaker 1: how and I still don't. Um, because, as as I
Speaker 1: think I've repeated to people, one of the key aspects
Speaker 1: of my job is never learning how to do it properly. An,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about Canada? Um? Canada and I
Speaker 1: have an interesting relationship. I spent the majority of the
Speaker 1: end of last year in the beginning of this year
Speaker 1: making sure I could get into Canada, which was stressful.
Speaker 1: Remember this criminal behavior on my record that Canada probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't appreciate. But I got in no big they didn't
Speaker 1: even care, So I don't know. It's like a nice
Speaker 1: terrain with nice people. It's a nice terrain nice people
Speaker 1: Canada gets. You know, it's nice being next to the
Speaker 1: United States because the US is always fucking up in
Speaker 1: like such extreme and invisible ways that as long as like,
Speaker 1: as long as you're you're just kind quiet, uh, you
Speaker 1: can get away with murder, which Canada has for for
Speaker 1: as long as there's been a Canada. Oh yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I like it's it's a it's a messy country, right
Speaker 1: like it it's it's a messier country than you'd expect
Speaker 1: considering the reputation Canada has for like, oh the nice Canadians,
Speaker 1: everything works, like the government's so functional. Um, like, we
Speaker 1: should all be more like Canada. And I guess if
Speaker 1: you're the United States, we should be more like Canada
Speaker 1: because they are a better country than US. But they're
Speaker 1: still they're still messy as hell. And today we're gonna
Speaker 1: finally come out swinging against Canada. Anna, We're gonna, we're gonna,
Speaker 1: we're gonna knock them down, knock them down. A couple
Speaker 1: of pegs with you. I had no idea. I let
Speaker 1: you have no idea what you're referencing? Like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: they're mess Oh yeah, they are. They are very Have
Speaker 1: you ever heard of residential schools? No? Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: we're talking about today. And this is um upper particularly
Speaker 1: ugly chapter of Canadian history. Um that is now fairly
Speaker 1: well known in Canada, but I don't think most people
Speaker 1: outside of the Great White North have ever heard of them. Um,
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's it's a pretty terrible thing, and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about it, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: eventually whip our listeners up into a frenzy and burned
Speaker 1: down the entire nation of Canada. Probably not that second
Speaker 1: Party because they're still better than the United States, but like,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty messy. Still, do you bring get the
Speaker 1: vibe that like every government is bad? Yes, yes, constantly
Speaker 1: every day. It was just me, but like man everywhere
Speaker 1: is bad. Yeah, they're all it's all bad. It's all bad.
Speaker 1: Some of them are like competent bad and some of
Speaker 1: them are incompetent bad, Like the US is consistently incompetent
Speaker 1: bad and Canada is consistently competent bad um. And that
Speaker 1: is what I would say is the chief difference between
Speaker 1: the badness of them. Anyway, let's start at the beginning.
Speaker 1: So the beginning of Canada, that is our our our
Speaker 1: neighbors to the north, got their start as a semi
Speaker 1: independent political entity in eighteen seventy six, when the British
Speaker 1: North America Act united the three remaining British American colonies
Speaker 1: into the first four provinces of the Dominion of Canada,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty cool name. After you know that act.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy six, Canada got its own government and
Speaker 1: a federal structure for like the first time. This is
Speaker 1: the first time. Eighteen seventy six is when Canada, Canada
Speaker 1: starts being like a big thing as opposed to like
Speaker 1: just a bunch of different British colonies. You know, you
Speaker 1: get your there's this colony that started out as just
Speaker 1: a bunch of fur trappers, and you know, there's the
Speaker 1: place where the people actually live and YadA, YadA, YadA. Um,
Speaker 1: they all get united in eighteen seventy six, and they're
Speaker 1: a they're a polity finally. So uh. This went over
Speaker 1: pretty well with all the white people who inhabited the
Speaker 1: area that we call Canada, because white people everywhere have
Speaker 1: always loved Canada, but it was less celebrated among the
Speaker 1: indigenous people of the region, um, who were super psyched
Speaker 1: about Britain, being like, now you're all Canada, um, because
Speaker 1: they had been other things previously and perhaps preferred that
Speaker 1: to be in Canada. So the governments of the colonies
Speaker 1: of Canada had started setting up reservations for indigenous people
Speaker 1: back in the eighteen thirties, um, and these were kind
Speaker 1: of patterned off of the ones in the United States.
Speaker 1: Canada had kind of a history of looking over to
Speaker 1: how the US dealt with indigenous people and being like,
Speaker 1: what if we did that? But quieter, um, so less
Speaker 1: of the of the genocidal wars. You know, you do
Speaker 1: get you do get some of that. The Canadian Mounties
Speaker 1: are certainly a part of of the history of white
Speaker 1: people with funny hats and guns murdering Native Americans, but
Speaker 1: it is it is generally a bit quieter in Canada. Um,
Speaker 1: but they you know, they operate on some of the
Speaker 1: same premises. And in the eighteen thirties they start setting
Speaker 1: up reservations, and as in the United States, the goal
Speaker 1: of these reservations was to give natives unproductive land so
Speaker 1: that they would stay out of white people's way while
Speaker 1: we looted the rest of the land mass. So you
Speaker 1: would start out as the indigenous people, you know, this
Speaker 1: all being your land that your ancestors have been on
Speaker 1: since forever. And then Canada says we're gonna guarantee you
Speaker 1: that you have land forever. But it's this specific chunk
Speaker 1: of what used to be a much larger piece of land,
Speaker 1: and it's the worst chunk of it. And if you, uh,
Speaker 1: if you leave, you you get in trouble. So the
Speaker 1: Dominion of Canada poured it over several old laws that
Speaker 1: governed how they got to treat members of Native tribes.
Speaker 1: And these had the kind of startlingly racist names you'd expect,
Speaker 1: including the Gradual Civilization Act of eighteen fifty seven, UM,
Speaker 1: which was meant to gradually civilize indigenous people. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a nice way to put it, Like, we're not
Speaker 1: going to be too fast for you were Canada. You know,
Speaker 1: when we when we commit an ethnic cleansing, it's nice
Speaker 1: and slow, real, real, real, even tempered uh genocide. So
Speaker 1: the Gradual Civilization Act gave Natives who had educated themselves
Speaker 1: in white schools the option of being enfranchised as British citizens.
Speaker 1: Doing so meant that they got all of the rights
Speaker 1: of a British you know, a citizen of the crown,
Speaker 1: but they had to give up all legal claim to
Speaker 1: the land of their tribe. They couldn't live on the reservations,
Speaker 1: and they weren't seen as as natives anymore as Indians
Speaker 1: and the legal parlance of the time. So you got
Speaker 1: to vote in all of that stuff if you agreed
Speaker 1: to stop being an indigenous person, like yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was that was the rule. What then, Yeah, The goal
Speaker 1: was basically to get all of the natives in the
Speaker 1: members of native tribes in Canada to like give up
Speaker 1: their rights to their native land and their native hunting
Speaker 1: and stuff that they've been guaranteed by previous treaties, Like
Speaker 1: treaties guaranteed you the right of you're the member of
Speaker 1: you know, certain tribes, you get to hunt in certain
Speaker 1: areas and you know, if you remember, you get to
Speaker 1: you get to hold certain land. And some of that
Speaker 1: land had nice mining on it. Some of that land
Speaker 1: was good for growing, uh, And settlers wanted it, and
Speaker 1: they figured the best way to make sure that they
Speaker 1: could have it was convinced all of these natives to
Speaker 1: give up their claim to the land and exchange for
Speaker 1: the unclear benefits of being a British citizen. So that's
Speaker 1: basically the idea is you all become British citizens and
Speaker 1: we just kind of exterminate your cultures peacefully. So well,
Speaker 1: I mean, is this all because they want control? Like
Speaker 1: they yeah, what who cares if you have a native?
Speaker 1: Like why do you have to like forego everything about
Speaker 1: your life to become a British citizen. Well, because people
Speaker 1: found it very unsettling that despite all of the what
Speaker 1: seemed to be them the self evident benefits of civilization, UM,
Speaker 1: Native Americans pretty consistently in both North you know, the
Speaker 1: United States and in Canada and all the chunks of
Speaker 1: North America that were being taken up by white people, UM,
Speaker 1: were consistently unwilling to give up their cultures. And they're
Speaker 1: they're like the historical way that their families had lived
Speaker 1: in favor of living in cities like white people because
Speaker 1: it sucked um and among other things, that was kind
Speaker 1: of a direct threat to people's white people's attitudes about
Speaker 1: the nature of of the world. Um. But also like
Speaker 1: they wanted their ship right. They kept finding like gold
Speaker 1: mines and silver mines and coal on Native land, and
Speaker 1: they wanted it, and the best way to get it
Speaker 1: was to reduce the number of people who legally counted
Speaker 1: as natives so that eventually there would be none of
Speaker 1: them left. And it was like, again, they weren't out
Speaker 1: their massacre, although that happened to sometimes, they weren't necessarily
Speaker 1: out there massacreing people. The goal was to just gradually
Speaker 1: reduce the number of people who legally counted as native
Speaker 1: to zero so that all of that land would be
Speaker 1: open for settlement. This is the polite Canadian way of
Speaker 1: committing a genocide. Um. Yeah. And so anyone who took
Speaker 1: the state up on the offer of enfranchisement would receive
Speaker 1: a grant of land that was not part of the
Speaker 1: reservation and a one time cash payment, but they would
Speaker 1: lose all of the rights that they had as members
Speaker 1: of their tribe. UM. But people didn't like this offer.
Speaker 1: Only one guy actually took it, and so the government
Speaker 1: of Canada had to keep pushing. They they passed a
Speaker 1: Gradual Enfranchisement Act in eighteen sixty nine UM, which had
Speaker 1: the same basic goal and mandated that enfranchise natives had
Speaker 1: to adopt English names. UM. The Act also attempted to
Speaker 1: lay out how tribes on reservations were supposed to organize
Speaker 1: their societies and care for their land. It determined like
Speaker 1: how many people had to could could be underneath the
Speaker 1: chief and all this stuff. It was just like trying
Speaker 1: taking these societies that we're seeing as kind of like
Speaker 1: inherently disordered and uncivilized and trying to turn them into
Speaker 1: something that British legal codes could understand. God hate that.
Speaker 1: I hate everything about this. Yeah, it's all pretty gross. Um.
Speaker 1: And both of these laws, you know, the ones we've
Speaker 1: discussed so far, we're eventually superseded by the Indian Act
Speaker 1: of eighteen seventy six, which is still in a modified
Speaker 1: form law in Canada today. UM. And as a result
Speaker 1: of all this legislation, it was kind of established to
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds that indigenous peoples existed under federal jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: So the federal government of Canada uh um was sort
Speaker 1: of responsible for dealing with indigenous people. Um. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's all kind of a messy history. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to get too much into the weeds of
Speaker 1: like Canadian uh law here, but I did find an
Speaker 1: interesting booklet called Facing History, which is um published by
Speaker 1: an international organization of educators that focus on teaching like
Speaker 1: the ugly parts of history to two people. Um. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from that, sort of summarizing how Canadian
Speaker 1: law about evolved to treat natives. Um. And they use
Speaker 1: the word Indian a lot. Uh. That's just kind of
Speaker 1: what the legal term was at the time in Canada
Speaker 1: because racism. Um. So we will be using that here
Speaker 1: when we're referring to the actual laws. Quote. The Indian
Speaker 1: Act of eighteen seventy six created the legal category of
Speaker 1: status Indian, a category that had long lasting implications for
Speaker 1: the First Nations of Canada once it entered into law.
Speaker 1: The Act imposed a single common legal definition, lumping together
Speaker 1: different nations and languages into the broad category of First Nations.
Speaker 1: What does it mean to be a stab at us Indian?
Speaker 1: The original document of eighteen seventy six to find someone
Speaker 1: as being legally Indian if that person fit these descriptions. First,
Speaker 1: any male person of Indian blood reputed to belong to
Speaker 1: a particular band. Secondly any child of such person. Thirdly,
Speaker 1: any woman who is or was lawfully married to such person. Now,
Speaker 1: a key element was the law's definition of who was
Speaker 1: Indian and what Indian. This was. The term Indian was
Speaker 1: used several centuries before the laws simply formalized its use.
Speaker 1: It is worth noting, however, that none of the many clans, bands,
Speaker 1: alliances and nations ever called themselves Indian. And it's really
Speaker 1: messy talking about like a lot of people think that
Speaker 1: you just used the term First Nations for like the
Speaker 1: Indigenous peoples of Canada, but that's actually only that was
Speaker 1: a specific legal term for a specific subset of tribes,
Speaker 1: and there were a bunch of other tribes that aren't
Speaker 1: First Nations but are Indigenous peoples in Canada. It's very
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on it by any means, but
Speaker 1: it's like there's a really weird legal history that's basically
Speaker 1: it's focused around the fact that the Canadian government really
Speaker 1: didn't want to recogn as certain tribes as actually being natives,
Speaker 1: because those tribes regularly rosen rebellion against the Canadian government,
Speaker 1: like thematists um, and so they they they defined them
Speaker 1: out of existence. So they made a definition of Indian
Speaker 1: that didn't include the tribes. They had problems with that.
Speaker 1: Those people wouldn't have rights either. Again, it's like the polite, liberal,
Speaker 1: white person way of committing a genocide. Just you erased
Speaker 1: them on paper, so you don't have like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty pretty interesting, pretty Canadian. So this process, yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is how they attempt to do it at first,
Speaker 1: like just kind of slowly write these people out of
Speaker 1: existence and give them an option to like become citizens
Speaker 1: so that they because clearly nobody who could become a
Speaker 1: British citizen would want to still be a member of,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever tribe. But this really didn't work out
Speaker 1: very well, and Indigenous people continued to want to be
Speaker 1: indigenous people, and this was a problem for the new
Speaker 1: government of Canada. Uh Prime Minister John A. McDonald found
Speaker 1: this very frustrating and ticular he was a big believer
Speaker 1: in civilizing the Native and he felt that the government
Speaker 1: had to do whatever it could to sever the connections
Speaker 1: of individuals to their tribes so that they could be Canadians.
Speaker 1: The best way to do this, he felt, was boarding schools. Quote.
Speaker 1: When the school is on the reserve, the child lives
Speaker 1: with his parents, who are savages. He is surrounded by savages,
Speaker 1: and though he may learn to write, read and write,
Speaker 1: his habits and training and motive thought are Indian. He
Speaker 1: is simply a savage who can read and write. Prime
Speaker 1: Minister McDonald decided to commission a study into how Canada
Speaker 1: might most rapidly civilize her indigenous people. He commissioned a
Speaker 1: journalist named Nicholas Davon to travel to the United States,
Speaker 1: since the Good Old USA was clearly the best at
Speaker 1: getting rid of North America's native peoples. Davon traveled to Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. And he met with veterans of US Grant's administration,
Speaker 1: which had enshrined a policy of What's Grant called aggressive civilization,
Speaker 1: which is a polite way of talking about forcing people
Speaker 1: to live like white folks, forcing Indigenous people to live
Speaker 1: like white folks, taking them off their land, taking their
Speaker 1: children from them, throwing their children into these what they
Speaker 1: called industrial boarding schools. Civilization aggressive civilization. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: Grant's term for don't. I don't know, don't a lot
Speaker 1: of these terms like savage and civilization. Uh, and like
Speaker 1: what you just said, is there such I mean to
Speaker 1: refer to anyone as a savage because they come like
Speaker 1: from a Native background. To just be like you're a
Speaker 1: savage because you are a Native American. It's like, fuck
Speaker 1: you culture. You don't know their culture. You don't know shit.
Speaker 1: Because the words savage, I think would be a great
Speaker 1: term to use, like bodacious, Like some kid does like
Speaker 1: a sweet skateboard trick and you're like, bro, that was savage,
Speaker 1: Like that's that would be That's that's so much better.
Speaker 1: But it's been poisoned because of racism. Just just another
Speaker 1: crime of of of colonialism is that we can't the
Speaker 1: word savage to talk about sweet skateboarding tricks. I hate
Speaker 1: it so devastating. Yeah, it's heartbreaking and also heartbreaking is
Speaker 1: um the story of Ulyssie Simpson Grant's kind of relationship
Speaker 1: to the genocide of Native People's. Grant is one of
Speaker 1: those guys who you really want to like because you
Speaker 1: know the Confederacy and stuff, um, and you know the
Speaker 1: destruction of the KKK like he did. He has some
Speaker 1: he has some good moments as a president, as both
Speaker 1: as a president and as a general um. And he'd
Speaker 1: spent most of his career with like a pretty vocally
Speaker 1: uh positive attitude towards Native Americans and against US imperialism. Um.
Speaker 1: As a veteran, he had condemned the US Mexican War
Speaker 1: as quote one of the most unjust ever waged by
Speaker 1: a stronger against a weaker nation. In eighteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: after taking office, he'd promised peace in the American West
Speaker 1: and admitted our dealings with the Indians properly lay us
Speaker 1: open to charges of cruelty and swindling. Um. So Grant
Speaker 1: was guy like when he came to when he came
Speaker 1: into the presidency, you might have felt like, oh, he
Speaker 1: might actually be pretty good president in terms of like
Speaker 1: US Native relations, Like he clearly understands, like, yeah, we've
Speaker 1: been sucking these people over for a while. But shortly
Speaker 1: after he came into power, gold was discovered in the
Speaker 1: Black Hills, which was land guaranteed to the Lakota by
Speaker 1: a very clear treaty. So there's gold in them hills.
Speaker 1: And then Hills is owned by the Lakota um and
Speaker 1: so the only thing to do was to orchestrate a
Speaker 1: war for resources, uh, and lie about the fact that
Speaker 1: the Lakota had started it, even though Grant actually like
Speaker 1: sent in troops and yeah, it was like the Iraq
Speaker 1: War of the day. Actually, if you read, um, there's
Speaker 1: a good Scientific American article will quote, but if you
Speaker 1: read about like what Grant did to the Lakota and
Speaker 1: the Black Hills, it sounds a lot like the the
Speaker 1: Iraq War. So the whole thing snowballed. And I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, like us going for oil, right yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just like you've got the like the basically using a
Speaker 1: mix of lies in provac cation in order to justify
Speaker 1: a war for resource extraction. Now I have a question,
Speaker 1: was there any oil in Canada also on like India
Speaker 1: Native American land that we also tried to do. I
Speaker 1: haven't heard anything about. But people didn't give a shit
Speaker 1: about oil at this point, right, like yeah, baby, we
Speaker 1: were all about golden coal back in them days. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um yeah. So this is like the whole thing, you know,
Speaker 1: the ship in the Black Hills turns into a cluster fuck.
Speaker 1: It includes the massacre of George Custer, and the Seventh Cavalry. Um.
Speaker 1: But despite the fact that it was a huge disaster,
Speaker 1: the policy of aggressive civilization that Grant had initially announced
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty nine was seen by a great idea
Speaker 1: by Nicholas Gavin and eventually by the Canadian government. Um So,
Speaker 1: they they basically decided, like, look over at the United
Speaker 1: States waging a genocidal war in the Black Hills, and
Speaker 1: they're like, it's too loud. But like the fundamental idea
Speaker 1: of forcing these people off of their land and into
Speaker 1: cities and into schools where we teach their kids, that's
Speaker 1: a good idea. Um So, in eighteen seventy nine, Nicholas
Speaker 1: Davin traveled back to Canada after his time in d
Speaker 1: C and he wrote a report called Report on the
Speaker 1: on Industrial Schools for Indians and half Breeds. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, half breed isn't a general term. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: a specific term. That was the official Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: official Canadian government term for the Metiste people. Um was
Speaker 1: half half breed um. And the short version of the
Speaker 1: stories that the Matists had rebelled against the government a
Speaker 1: number of times and the white people in charge didn't
Speaker 1: want to recognize them as real Indians because that would
Speaker 1: entitle them to land and hunting rights and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Um So, while the Matists weren't considered to be an
Speaker 1: Indigenous people under the Indian Act, they were considered to
Speaker 1: be an Indigenous people when it came to um the
Speaker 1: Canadian government's policy of abducting Indigenous children and forcing them
Speaker 1: into these uh what what we're called industrial boarding schools.
Speaker 1: Um So, like they both were and weren't Native people
Speaker 1: under the government side. But yeah, that the Canadian government
Speaker 1: just called the Mattie's half breeds. What the funk? This?
Speaker 1: Almo feels like a j K Rolling book, just like
Speaker 1: so filled with weird terms that you're like, this is
Speaker 1: the kind of like racism in a way. It's very racy,
Speaker 1: super straight up racism in our I mean, I'm just
Speaker 1: referring to like j K Rolling books, but like this
Speaker 1: is just fucked half breeds. Fuck how to hear? That's
Speaker 1: I can never wrap my mind around like caring about
Speaker 1: a person's culture this much. It's like who cares? Who
Speaker 1: cares so much? To be like you are labeled this
Speaker 1: because this happens to be your background, Like leave it
Speaker 1: the fun you know what, I'm just I I hate it,
Speaker 1: you know, I just hate it. It's it's not great,
Speaker 1: and it's a there's a complicated history there that we're
Speaker 1: not gonna get into in tremendous detail. But what's important
Speaker 1: is that, like the the overall policy, while you have
Speaker 1: the Canadian government considers like UM only recognizes some Indigenous
Speaker 1: groups as as actual tribes. Any person who is like
Speaker 1: an Aboriginal person UM in the area that becomes known
Speaker 1: as Canada is kind of covered by the rules that
Speaker 1: the Canadian government puts in place about residential schools. And
Speaker 1: basically what they start to mandate is that Indigenous children
Speaker 1: cannot stay in their homes. They have to be taken
Speaker 1: away and educated at schools that are located away from
Speaker 1: the reservation because like native schools are they teach you
Speaker 1: to be a savage? Like yeah, yeah, yeah, Davin Wright
Speaker 1: wrote wrote in his report quote the day school does
Speaker 1: not work because the influence of the wigwam was stronger
Speaker 1: than the influence of the school. UM. So basically, like
Speaker 1: people like natives, even if you teach them to read
Speaker 1: and write, you know, in English and whatnot, they're going
Speaker 1: to like at their own culture there's something and this
Speaker 1: is this is like a long standing like thing with
Speaker 1: white people in North America in particular. Is this like
Speaker 1: kind of admission that when people have the choice between
Speaker 1: quote unquote civilized life and living the way that like
Speaker 1: native tribes had for generations, they almost always preferred to
Speaker 1: live the way that the tribes had lived. Um, Like
Speaker 1: nobody nobody wanted to live in cities or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so that really bummed out the Canadian government.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, um, and we gotta do something about that.
Speaker 1: So can I just say there's something very interesting about
Speaker 1: how white people are so and especially like white governments
Speaker 1: are so good at creating identity crisis within like people
Speaker 1: of color, like to a point of like almost like
Speaker 1: you don't feel healthy mentally at all because you don't
Speaker 1: know where you stand. And it's because white people are
Speaker 1: constantly trying to be like technically like if you want
Speaker 1: to be this, you have to do that, and it's
Speaker 1: like you fucking suck like a lot of Like I
Speaker 1: feel like I struggle with that same thing because growing
Speaker 1: up I was constantly told I had to be a
Speaker 1: certain way to fit in with like other like white kids.
Speaker 1: I was growing up with and it fucked me up
Speaker 1: for a very long time where I felt like I
Speaker 1: had to go away from my own culture of like
Speaker 1: being Iranian. And then it took me a long time
Speaker 1: of like therapy to come back around and be like,
Speaker 1: why I appreciate where I come from. And I felt
Speaker 1: like I was mine fucked to a point where I
Speaker 1: was my name is Anna, but I was called Anna
Speaker 1: so many times so long by people that I started
Speaker 1: introducing myself as Anna because I was like, well, that's
Speaker 1: what they keep calling like. I was literally mind fucked
Speaker 1: and yeah, oh god, it's this. It's this. The people
Speaker 1: in charge of these these polities of the United States government,
Speaker 1: of the state governments of Canada, UM are kind of
Speaker 1: inherently horrified that there might be other ways to do things.
Speaker 1: And maybe I don't know. I was sure there's a
Speaker 1: number of reasons, including the fact that people who are
Speaker 1: in power feel like their power arrests on everybody believing
Speaker 1: in the system they believe in. But there's a bunch
Speaker 1: going on here. A lot of it's just about resource extraction, right,
Speaker 1: is that if you if you break up the tribes um,
Speaker 1: then they can't hold on to their land. And that's
Speaker 1: I think really at the core of what Canada is
Speaker 1: doing here. So the understanding they have is that like
Speaker 1: if you take away the kids of indigenous people, you
Speaker 1: send them a great distance away to these these schools,
Speaker 1: they will grow up not feeling like a part of
Speaker 1: their tribe. And the thing that they the initial term
Speaker 1: they used for these places was industrial boarding schools, which
Speaker 1: is a horrible name. Um. And they these were what
Speaker 1: they sounded like, massive boarding schools filled with children who
Speaker 1: had been forcibly taken away from parents by the government. Um.
Speaker 1: And these they were kind of based not on like
Speaker 1: the nice English boarding schools of the past, um, but
Speaker 1: on the kind of places that like in England, if
Speaker 1: you're your family was in debt or two poor, your
Speaker 1: kids would be taken from you would put in these workhouses. Um.
Speaker 1: It was. It was based on the workhouses. It was
Speaker 1: ba done these places for the storage of poor children
Speaker 1: whose parents were seen as unfit to take care of them. Um.
Speaker 1: And the hope of the Canadian government was that these
Speaker 1: kids would be educated in such a way that it
Speaker 1: would kill the Indian inside them. Uh. Nicholas Davin wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: if anything is to be done with the Indian, we
Speaker 1: must catch him very young. The children must be kept
Speaker 1: constantly within the circle of civilized conditions. So the Canadian
Speaker 1: government big fans of this idea, and they started building
Speaker 1: a series of industrial boarding schools and these were managed
Speaker 1: by the Anglican and Catholic churches. Um so yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what is there? Something? Is there something you know about
Speaker 1: I don't know, say, the Catholic Church and the raising
Speaker 1: of children that that might be relevant? Here is there
Speaker 1: a history there? Oh? Boy? Everybody loves everybody loves the church?
Speaker 1: Is yeah? I love that sitcom. Everyone loves the Church
Speaker 1: and everybody loves yeah yeah products and we're back. Oh
Speaker 1: my goodness. Those products really washed the taste of a
Speaker 1: slow cultural genocide out of my mouth. How about you
Speaker 1: anna always love products? So yeah, the Canadian government starts
Speaker 1: putting up these industrial schools, these industrial boarding schools, and
Speaker 1: puts the churches in charge of them. And this saves
Speaker 1: the government money and it also helped various Christian denominations
Speaker 1: with their plan to gradually convert all the indigenous peoples
Speaker 1: of Canada. Uh. The idea was that it would be
Speaker 1: easier to get kids to adopt a new religion after
Speaker 1: they were forcibly taken away from their family and everything
Speaker 1: they had ever known. Um, which is a tactic I
Speaker 1: plan to steal when I get my COLT up and running,
Speaker 1: like it does seem to be like credit to the
Speaker 1: Canadian government. The earlier you abduct the kids, the easier
Speaker 1: it is to get them on board with your COLT.
Speaker 1: And then you know, the f d A let you
Speaker 1: on fire. Anyway. The first wave of these boarding schools
Speaker 1: numbered about sixty nine institutions with only students, but the
Speaker 1: program quickly grew and by nineteen thirty one there were
Speaker 1: eighties some residential schools operating in Canada. And that's the
Speaker 1: name that like industrial boarding school is kind of too harsh.
Speaker 1: They transition to calling them residential schools because the kids
Speaker 1: live there. Uh. And I'm gonna quote now from a
Speaker 1: rite up in Indigenous Foundations, which is a a website
Speaker 1: that's kind of a project of the University of British
Speaker 1: Columbia to tell the stories of the kids who wound
Speaker 1: up in these institutions. Quote. Authorities would frequently take children
Speaker 1: to schools far from their home communities, part of a
Speaker 1: strategy to alienate them from their families and familiar surroundings.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty, under the Indian Act, which is like
Speaker 1: the most recent update of the Indian Act, it became
Speaker 1: mandatory for every Indian child to attend a residential school
Speaker 1: and illegal for them to attend any other educational institution.
Speaker 1: The purpose of the residential schools was to eliminate all
Speaker 1: aspects of Aboriginal culture. Students had their hair cut short,
Speaker 1: they were dressed in unif forms, and their days were
Speaker 1: strictly regimented by timetables. Boys and girls were kept separate,
Speaker 1: and even siblings rarely interacted, further weakening family ties. Chief
Speaker 1: Bobby Joseph of the Indian Residential School Survivors Society recalls
Speaker 1: that he had no idea how to interact with girls
Speaker 1: and never even got to know his own sister beyond
Speaker 1: a mere wave in the dining room. In addition, students
Speaker 1: were strictly forbidden to speak their languages, even though many
Speaker 1: children knew no other or to practice Aboriginal customs or traditions.
Speaker 1: Hihilations of these rules were severely punished. Oh boy, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's basically you're you're you're trying not to kill them,
Speaker 1: but you are trying to kill their culture. Right, which
Speaker 1: kind of internally kills them. Yeah. Yeah, definitely destroys people
Speaker 1: on the inside as human beings. Um yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: fun stuff Canada. So punishment for speaking one's native tongue
Speaker 1: is among the most common traumatizing experiences you'll hear from
Speaker 1: the survivors of residential schools. Um. Because spoilers, this ship
Speaker 1: continued up into the present day. There's a ton of
Speaker 1: people who will talk, like a ton of different stories
Speaker 1: out there are people's experiences here because the very last
Speaker 1: residential school didn't close its doors until nineteen nine six. Um,
Speaker 1: so this started in eighteen eighty three and continued into
Speaker 1: the late nineties. Like Bill Clinton was in office when
Speaker 1: they finally closed down the last residential school. So there's
Speaker 1: like there's like fucking people in their twenties who went
Speaker 1: to these places. So uh yeah. One of the survivors
Speaker 1: of the residential schools is an author named Gilbert oscar
Speaker 1: Boos who attended the Guarnier Residential School. Now, his native
Speaker 1: tongue was Ojibway, and the Guarnier School punished all uses
Speaker 1: of Ojibway with physical violence. And I'm gonna quote now
Speaker 1: from a writ up based on Gilbert's experiences titled The Welcome,
Speaker 1: It begins with an encounter between little Wolf based on
Speaker 1: Oscar Boos and Catholic priest the Black Robe quote. Little
Speaker 1: Wolf saw it, but couldn't believe it was actually happening.
Speaker 1: The black robes huge hairy hand flew up, appeared to
Speaker 1: hang in mid air as it drifted through a lazy semicircle,
Speaker 1: and exploded violently in the boys face. The blow blow
Speaker 1: slammed him into the hard stone ends of an iron gate.
Speaker 1: Dazed and shaken, he lay in the dust, dimly aware
Speaker 1: of split ripped lips and warm salty blood making angry
Speaker 1: red patterns on a brand new buckskin shirt. Indian language
Speaker 1: is verboten. You will not speak it again. Far off
Speaker 1: in the swirling mists of pain and confusion, Adore slams
Speaker 1: a lock turns. Empty walls bear mute witness to the
Speaker 1: sounds of muffled, muffled sobs torn from a small, frightened
Speaker 1: boy huddled in a darkened corner, and like locking kids
Speaker 1: in cellars and whatnot, sometimes for days on end was
Speaker 1: a common punishment for them speaking their language, but physical
Speaker 1: punishment in particular um was a really consistent um Uh
Speaker 1: response to kids using their native language. George Gwaren, a
Speaker 1: former chief of the Musquem Nation, later recalled quote Sister
Speaker 1: Mary Baptiste had a supply of sticks as long and
Speaker 1: thick as pool cues. When she heard me speak my language,
Speaker 1: she lift up her hands and bring the stick down
Speaker 1: on me. I've still got bumps and scars on my hands.
Speaker 1: I still have to wear special gloves because the cold
Speaker 1: weather really hurts my hands. I tried very hard not
Speaker 1: to cry when I was being beaten, and I can
Speaker 1: still just turn off my feelings. And I'm lucky. Many
Speaker 1: of them in my age they either didn't make it,
Speaker 1: committed suicide or died violent deaths, or alcohol got them.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just my generation. My grandmother who's in
Speaker 1: her late nineties to this day, it's too painful her
Speaker 1: to her to talk about what happened to her at
Speaker 1: the school. And both of these cases, these stories actually
Speaker 1: kind of weigh in on the more minor end of
Speaker 1: punishments meeted out to Indigenous kids for speaking their native languages.
Speaker 1: It was not uncommon for students guilty of language speaking
Speaker 1: to be beaten and shackled to their beds. Um and
Speaker 1: another common punishment was to have needles shoved into their
Speaker 1: tongues to remind them not to use forbidden words. That's
Speaker 1: some That truly feels like a story from like the
Speaker 1: Dark Ages, not like yea yeah yeah yeah, like was
Speaker 1: going on when a lot of us were in school. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote again from that booklet published by
Speaker 1: Facing History. Quote. Many in the school's administrations believe that
Speaker 1: the student's independent spirit had to be broken in order
Speaker 1: for them to accept a new way of life. Students
Speaker 1: who did not adhere to school schedules and regulations received strappings, whippings,
Speaker 1: and were often humiliated in front of peers. Students who
Speaker 1: tried to escape from the schools had their hair cut
Speaker 1: very short. Indeed, such offenses would earn students long hours
Speaker 1: even days in a dark, secluded closet, often without real food. Uh.
Speaker 1: The cutting of the hair on the first day at
Speaker 1: school or for punishment had a profound meaning. Long hair
Speaker 1: has a deep and spiritual meaning, and indigenous cultures, too
Speaker 1: many it serves as an extension of a person's mind,
Speaker 1: reflective of its strength and beauty. The hair length and
Speaker 1: style also distinguished between different indigenous nations and Symbolically, the
Speaker 1: cutting of a person's hair by an enemy is an
Speaker 1: act of humiliation and forced submission. The staff at the
Speaker 1: Mohawk Institute even built a prison cell for those who
Speaker 1: tried to escape. Indeed, disobedience and escape were two of
Speaker 1: the most common forms of resistance to the harsh foreign discipline,
Speaker 1: and sometimes kids would die trying to escape from these places.
Speaker 1: Are escaping and winding up because they were out in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, winding up in the middle of
Speaker 1: like a desperate Canadian winter, trying to get back home
Speaker 1: wasn't uncommon at all. Yeah, there's sorry, there is no
Speaker 1: like absolutely zero regulation of these schools, and if there is,
Speaker 1: they just don't care. Yeah, they just don't care. Treat it.
Speaker 1: They that's really it. They don't care. The actual education
Speaker 1: at these places is piss poor at best. Residential school
Speaker 1: students did not receive anything close to the same education
Speaker 1: as white Canadians and public schools like The goal here
Speaker 1: was not to give these kids a good education. The
Speaker 1: goal was to break their connection to their culture um
Speaker 1: and in fact, they didn't learn the normal classes that
Speaker 1: other Canadian students were supposed to learn. Indigenous children were
Speaker 1: taught only practical skills. Girls learned how to become domestic maids.
Speaker 1: They learned to do laundry and cook and clean. Boys
Speaker 1: were taught how to do carpentry or farm or other
Speaker 1: manual labor tasks. UM. So again, they're training them to
Speaker 1: be low level, working class people because that's all they
Speaker 1: think they're good for. They don't want them to be
Speaker 1: in natives. They don't want them to live like indigenous
Speaker 1: people had lived for centuries. But they also don't don't
Speaker 1: see them as really really being Canadian. They just want
Speaker 1: to take their land and make them into farm workers
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um and yeah. Residential schools were, of course
Speaker 1: chronically underfunded and often only kept the lights on with
Speaker 1: the help of child labor. Uh. Most of them operated
Speaker 1: under what was known as the half day work day system,
Speaker 1: where they would have half days of classes and the
Speaker 1: students would work unpaid the other half of the time. Um,
Speaker 1: not just cleaning and maintaining the school, but also you know,
Speaker 1: growing food or what not, doing things you know that
Speaker 1: that essentially helped pay the bills and keep the lights on.
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, it was again unpaid labor. And we
Speaker 1: all know what another term for unpaid labor is many
Speaker 1: students spent so little time in class that by age
Speaker 1: eighteen they'd only reached the fifth grade. Um they were,
Speaker 1: as a rule, discouraged from pursuing higher education. So that's good,
Speaker 1: that's good stuff Canada. UM. I didn't know any of
Speaker 1: the US about Canada, and I am deeply disturbed by
Speaker 1: all of it. I don't understand. I'm going to drop
Speaker 1: kick a maple leaf right after this, Yeah, drop kick
Speaker 1: a maple leaf. Yeah, I'm gonna beat the ship at
Speaker 1: us and leaves out of this. I imagine you're trying to,
Speaker 1: but it keeps like, you know, it floats down and
Speaker 1: you're just trying to kick it, but it keeps moving.
Speaker 1: You know. It's troublesome. That's why Canada's never faced justice
Speaker 1: is how difficult it is to drop kick a maple leaf.
Speaker 1: Very hard. One day our scientists will figure it out,
Speaker 1: but until then, you know, we just have to let
Speaker 1: the anger live in our hearts. So to make matters
Speaker 1: more heartbreaking, a significant number of Indigenous parents willingly took
Speaker 1: their children to residential schools. Um it was required, but
Speaker 1: some of the parents saw it as like an opportunity,
Speaker 1: like something. It was not uncommon for parents to try
Speaker 1: to hide their children, but some saw this as an
Speaker 1: opportunity for their kids to actually like have a better
Speaker 1: chance of success in white society. And it was also
Speaker 1: a matter of like the different churches, the Anglican and
Speaker 1: the Catholic churches would compete for students because they kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to beat the other church and saving the
Speaker 1: most souls. UM. So it was not uncommon for like
Speaker 1: churches to come on to different reservations to kind of
Speaker 1: induce parents to pick their specific school to send their
Speaker 1: kids to. UM. One student who later attended a residential
Speaker 1: school and Saskatchewan recalled quote, we had these two competing religions,
Speaker 1: the Anglican and Catholic churches, both competing for our souls.
Speaker 1: It seemed, you know, I remember growing up on the
Speaker 1: reserve here when they were looking for students that were
Speaker 1: competing against each other. We were the prizes, you know,
Speaker 1: that they would gain if they won. I remember they
Speaker 1: the Catholic priests coming out with you know, used hockey
Speaker 1: equipment and telling us, you know, come on, come to
Speaker 1: our school, come play hockey for us, Come and play
Speaker 1: in our band. We've got all kinds of bands here.
Speaker 1: We've got trombones and trumpets and drums and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. They use all this stuff to encourage
Speaker 1: us or entice us to come to the Catholic school.
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, the Anglicans, they would
Speaker 1: come out with what they called bail clothes. They bring
Speaker 1: out a bunch of clothes in a bail, like a
Speaker 1: big bail. It was all used clothing, and they'd give
Speaker 1: it to themen on the reserve here, and the women
Speaker 1: made blankets and stuff out of these old clothes. But
Speaker 1: that's the way they competed for us as people. So
Speaker 1: that's cool, fun stuff. Yeah, good on the churches. So
Speaker 1: most residential schools kept students away for ten months out
Speaker 1: of the year somewhere year round. All correspondents from children
Speaker 1: back home had to be written in English, with most
Speaker 1: which most children's parents could not read. Uh. Families were
Speaker 1: deliberately split up inside, with brothers and sisters kept as
Speaker 1: far apart as possible. And as you might imagine, the
Speaker 1: teachers who would willingly work in such an environment did
Speaker 1: not tend to be the cream of the crop. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna site again from that Indigenous Foundation's website
Speaker 1: by the University of British Columbia quote. Another significant problem
Speaker 1: at residential schools was the quality of the teachers these
Speaker 1: institutions attracted and we're willing to hire. The Anglican run St.
Speaker 1: John's Indian Residential School was the rule rather than the exception,
Speaker 1: when it reported in nineteen forty seven that the teachers
Speaker 1: at both junior and senior levels had some teaching experience
Speaker 1: but no qualifications for their jobs. In nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: federal government survey found that ten people employed as teachers
Speaker 1: claimed no formal education beyond grade eight. Unqualified teachers were
Speaker 1: hired because no one else was willing to brave the
Speaker 1: Canadian wilderness to work for pitifully low rages at cash
Speaker 1: strapped schools. Residential school teachers did not, in general approach
Speaker 1: normal standards. In ninety eight, a departmental study conducted of
Speaker 1: the qualification of the teachers and the residential schools disclosed
Speaker 1: that over of the teaching staff had no professional training. Indeed,
Speaker 1: some had not even graduated from high school. Where do
Speaker 1: they they just pull any like you just show up
Speaker 1: to the interview, You're like, honestly like I don't like
Speaker 1: Native Americans, and they're like, you have a job. Are
Speaker 1: you willing to hit kids who use their native language? Yes?
Speaker 1: All right, you're a history teacher. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty great.
Speaker 1: So if the quality of the education was bad, then
Speaker 1: at least residential schools were also pestilential death chaps that
Speaker 1: murdered thousands of children. I wrote that in a more
Speaker 1: positive way than it than it is. So there were
Speaker 1: there are numbers of kids dying, huge numbers of kids dying.
Speaker 1: Will never know how many, but thousands for sure. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen oh seven, a government medical inspector named P. H.
Speaker 1: Bryce reported that twenty four percent of the time in Canada,
Speaker 1: when a previously healthy Aboriginal child died, they died in
Speaker 1: a residential school. Um. And this number undercuts the amount
Speaker 1: of deaths because one of the few things that would
Speaker 1: actually get you sent home from a residential school was
Speaker 1: being deathly ill. Uh. Students who were sent away from
Speaker 1: the school back home, UM died with their parents and
Speaker 1: stayed out of government statistics and the data suggests that
Speaker 1: between forty seven percent and seventy of all Indigenous students
Speaker 1: discharged from residential schools died immediately after coming home. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these kids just getting tuberculosis, spreading it back to
Speaker 1: the tribe. Will never know how many died. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of kids did die at the schools. The
Speaker 1: minimum you'll hear bandied about is somewhere in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: of thirty two hundred, you know, over this period up
Speaker 1: until the late nineteen nineties, but there are credible estimates
Speaker 1: that placed the death toll at well over six thousand children.
Speaker 1: The reason there's such a discrepancy is that virtually all
Speaker 1: residential schools made use of an age old tool for
Speaker 1: committing genocide without pissing off the neighbors, mass grades. When
Speaker 1: small pox or tuberculosis would sweep through a school, surviving
Speaker 1: students were often enlisted to hide the corpses of their
Speaker 1: classmates from prying eyes. So Vester Green, who was forced
Speaker 1: to bury the corpse of an Inuit boy in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, later recalled we were told never to tell
Speaker 1: anyone by Jim Ludford, the principal, who got me and
Speaker 1: three other boys to bury him. But a lot more
Speaker 1: kids got buried all the time. And that big grave
Speaker 1: next to the school, yeah, so they there. Did your
Speaker 1: school not have a mass grave on a fortunately? Um
Speaker 1: people weren't dying at my school because I guess white
Speaker 1: people ran it and they cared about the other white kids.
Speaker 1: I guess no one died at my school because there
Speaker 1: were white people at it. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I do believe that every school could eventually have mass graves,
Speaker 1: And I think COVID nineteen is going to get us there. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think finally we will achieve, we will defeat racism
Speaker 1: by bringing mass graves to all kinds of schools. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's really that's an improvement to cheer for, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, let's cheer for it. Damn. So at the
Speaker 1: United Church School in Edmonton, dead Indigenous children were buried
Speaker 1: under a hedge. At Blue Quills Catholic School near saddle Lake,
Speaker 1: skeletons and schools were regularly spotted near the basement furnace.
Speaker 1: At the Mohawk Institute, ran by the Anglican Church in Brantford,
Speaker 1: children were buried under the orchard at the side of
Speaker 1: the school building. We'll never have any idea how many
Speaker 1: kids were disposed this way. They're still digging up mass
Speaker 1: graves around residential schools today. Um, like you'll, you'll they're
Speaker 1: regular stories about them finding more and like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's horrible the Canadian government. One of the reasons why
Speaker 1: it's so hard for us to know how many kids
Speaker 1: actually died in residential schools is that the Canadian government
Speaker 1: stopped recording the deaths of Aboriginal students in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: because so many kids were dying and it made them
Speaker 1: look bad. The deadliest years were probably the interwar period,
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, but Indigenous students kept
Speaker 1: right on dying at residential schools up to the modern era.
Speaker 1: Sue Caribou was taken from her parents at age seven
Speaker 1: and forced into a residential school in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: She believes that dozens of other kids died while she
Speaker 1: was in turn there quote, remains were found all over
Speaker 1: the fields, but student numbers do not reflect the reality.
Speaker 1: Many of my friends committed suicide after their release. Which
Speaker 1: is something that all of these kids, these people will
Speaker 1: will point out, is that, like the death toll, One
Speaker 1: of the reasons will never know the death toll is
Speaker 1: that a lot of the people who died, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: killed themselves years later. And so she's just like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: It's just part of the weirdly high suicide rate that
Speaker 1: Natives have in in in Canada. Um anyway, Sue's experiences
Speaker 1: give you an idea of how brutal residential goals remained
Speaker 1: right up into the modern era. From a rite up
Speaker 1: in the Guardian quote, Sue Caribou contracts pneumonia once a year,
Speaker 1: like clockwork. The recurring illness stems from her childhood years
Speaker 1: at one of Canada's horrific residential schools. I was thrown
Speaker 1: into a cold shower every night, sometimes after being raped,
Speaker 1: the frail fifty year old Indigenous mother of six said,
Speaker 1: mother of actly Cariboo was snatched from her parents house
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two by the state funded, church run
Speaker 1: Indian residential school system that brutally attempted to assimilate Native
Speaker 1: children for over a century. She was only seven years old.
Speaker 1: We had to stand like soldiers while singing the national anthem,
Speaker 1: otherwise we would be beaten up, she recalled. Cariboo said.
Speaker 1: Catholic missionaries physically and sexually abused her until nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine at the Guy Hill Institution in the east of
Speaker 1: the province of Manitoba. She said she was called a
Speaker 1: dog and was forced to eat rotten vegetables and forbidden
Speaker 1: to speak her native language of Cree. I vowed myself
Speaker 1: that if I ever get out alive, out of that
Speaker 1: horrible place, I would speak up and fight for our rights.
Speaker 1: She said. Uh. And it's worth noting that the Royal
Speaker 1: Canadian Mounted Police, you know, the is everybody with the
Speaker 1: hats and they read, yeah, they were the ones who
Speaker 1: would drag these kids out of their houses. Oh my
Speaker 1: fu Yeah, proud urcmp history there. So Sue's experiences being
Speaker 1: molested at her residential school were not at all extreme.
Speaker 1: To date, more than two thousand people have sued the
Speaker 1: Canadian government as a result of sexual abuse they endured
Speaker 1: while they were interned at residential schools. This experience was
Speaker 1: remarkably consistent across the different religious denominations. Catholic priest right
Speaker 1: tons of kids, because that's what Catholic priests do. Anglican
Speaker 1: pastors also raped raped tons of kids because the residential
Speaker 1: schools were an almost deliberately perfect environment for child molesters.
Speaker 1: One of the most successful molesters was a man with
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna need you to strap in for this
Speaker 1: name Anna because it's it's he's a child molester. So
Speaker 1: we can't we can't laugh about it too much. But
Speaker 1: his name is William Peniston Starr. What the fuck Peniston? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know Peniston Star Peniston Star. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: two different words. I had to like triple check to
Speaker 1: make sure Peniston wasn't like, how how is that a name? Peniston?
Speaker 1: William Peniston Star. Yeah. Anyway. In nineteen fifty six, this
Speaker 1: guy starts working as a physical training teacher at the
Speaker 1: Glycan School in Alberta, uh, and then he gets promoted
Speaker 1: and transferred to be the principle of an Anglican school
Speaker 1: in Quebec. In nineteen sixty eight, he's appointed the director
Speaker 1: of the Gordon Residence and his evaluations as an employee.
Speaker 1: As an employee were like consistently positive, which is why
Speaker 1: he rose so rapidly through the ranks. You know, there
Speaker 1: weren't a lot of good employees at the residential school,
Speaker 1: so he was kind of seen as a superstar. But
Speaker 1: there were some early signs that there might that everything
Speaker 1: was not all above board with Mr Peniston star Um.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen fifties, he had to suddenly leave
Speaker 1: his job at Glycan after an unidentified conflict came between
Speaker 1: him and a group of senior boys. Indian official Indians
Speaker 1: Official WP identified conflict. Yeah, they never go into detail.
Speaker 1: The Indian Affairs Department published a report on the matter
Speaker 1: and said that there were issues with the within the
Speaker 1: Gymnastics Gymnasium tumbling team that Star trained, but didn't say
Speaker 1: what those issues were. He conflict. I'm just like that.
Speaker 1: That phrasing is truly trash. Well, do you know what
Speaker 1: it sounds like to me? Like maybe they he tried
Speaker 1: to pull some ship and they confronted him. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what it sounds like happened. Is he was trying
Speaker 1: he wound up molesting or attempting to molest some of
Speaker 1: the kids on his wrestling team, and they complained and
Speaker 1: the Anglican churchs transferred him and promoted him. God, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cool. But you know what doesn't abused children on
Speaker 1: a wrestling team. Are you doing a horrible transition to
Speaker 1: an adverct? I don't know. I don't know what else
Speaker 1: to do in times like this, Sophie. I have no
Speaker 1: other comforts but botching an ad transition. That's my whole
Speaker 1: that's my whole world. You can don't find our faces comforting.
Speaker 1: I I have lost all ability to take comfort in
Speaker 1: the human form. The only thing that comforts me now
Speaker 1: is transitioning to ads awkwardly products. Okay, so we're back
Speaker 1: and we're talking about William Peniston star Um. I can't
Speaker 1: get over that. That makes me think of like I
Speaker 1: remember in history class growing up, they'd always be like,
Speaker 1: so many American names are just made up because you
Speaker 1: know that. But to me to think that someone years
Speaker 1: on years, you know, hundreds of years ago, was like, okay, now,
Speaker 1: what can we name this family? Maybe Peniston and it's
Speaker 1: what you just named it after an anatomy. Maybe their
Speaker 1: family was a bunch of dicks sore, because you know
Speaker 1: how they always say like, well, your family owns land,
Speaker 1: so you guys are the lanterns or whatever the fun
Speaker 1: but this maybe it's like the whole family was a
Speaker 1: bunch of fucking dicks. So they were like, and these
Speaker 1: guys will be the Penistons. I like, I like that version,
Speaker 1: Yeah so do I. So yeah, So this guy Um
Speaker 1: gets in trouble for molesting his wrestling students, and they
Speaker 1: promote him Um. He continues to teach wrestling. He leads
Speaker 1: a lot of trips overseas for like hold On Fallout
Speaker 1: Junior just took an indefinite leave of absence from Liberty University.
Speaker 1: Oh that's that's unfortunate, poor Jerry. You know what, I
Speaker 1: bet Jerry Fallwell has never done molested wrestling students at
Speaker 1: his school. I'm kidding, he's he's almost certainly done that.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I don't know, I'll be shocked
Speaker 1: if Jerry was Liberty University president after posting a product
Speaker 1: of provocative photo on social media. He was. What's best
Speaker 1: about that is how he initially tried to argue that
Speaker 1: he wasn't drunk in the photo when he was so
Speaker 1: visibly drunk that he couldn't even cover his stomach. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: I do think the like Righteous Gemstones the TV show, truly.
Speaker 1: I think it's such a like outing of what it
Speaker 1: is to be that type of like television pastor of
Speaker 1: Like it's like you, what do you even try? Like
Speaker 1: don't even pretend anymore? Like everyone knows you guys are
Speaker 1: not these like righteous like god fearing people, like come on,
Speaker 1: give me, it's good break. You know who is a righteous,
Speaker 1: god fearing person, Anglican educator Peniston Star. Um, yeah, rapist.
Speaker 1: So this guy's this guy's career continues like a rocket
Speaker 1: for years and years in years, um and while he's
Speaker 1: teaching kids and you know, leading overseas trips for you know,
Speaker 1: the school dance troupe and stuff, he is just molesting
Speaker 1: the ship out of a bunch of children. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote now from the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission's
Speaker 1: report on Residential Schools. Quote. Throughout his time at the school,
Speaker 1: Starr had been using his position to sexually exploit students.
Speaker 1: He instituted a system of bribery and intimidation to establish
Speaker 1: a regime under which he could sexually assault students. Those
Speaker 1: who refused to participate were punished through the denial of privileges.
Speaker 1: He was arrested on March fifth, nineteen nine, on twelve
Speaker 1: charges relating to sexual and child abuse, all arising from
Speaker 1: the years that he worked at the Gordon Residence. According
Speaker 1: to an internal government document, at the time, the department
Speaker 1: had not received any complaints related to sexual or other
Speaker 1: abuse during the time that Star was employed at the residence.
Speaker 1: On February second, nineteen ninety three, Star Wars pleaded guilty
Speaker 1: to ten counts of sexually assaulting ten boys between the
Speaker 1: ages of seven and fourteen while he was the administrator
Speaker 1: of the Gordon Residence. He was sentenced to four and
Speaker 1: a half years in jail, and it's since come out
Speaker 1: that it's it's likely that he's he has victims in
Speaker 1: the hundreds. Um, yeah, four years, you said four four
Speaker 1: and a half years. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty good. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sexual assault by students against other students was also unfortunately
Speaker 1: very common, and this was the natural result of several
Speaker 1: terrible things. For one thing, huge numbers of residential school
Speaker 1: teachers sexually assaulted their students. Again, thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: kids were victimized by their teachers, and this normalized a
Speaker 1: lot of aggressively sexual behavior to the kids, and some
Speaker 1: of them went on to copy it. For another thing,
Speaker 1: all these kids had been pulled out of their families
Speaker 1: and communities, so they've been like ripped out of the
Speaker 1: moral universe they had inhabited as children, uh, and stuck
Speaker 1: in a completely new one. Their parents were replaced by
Speaker 1: nuns and priests and teachers who I'm sure sometimes cared
Speaker 1: about them, but just as often beat them or molested them,
Speaker 1: or helped them had them help dispose the corpses of
Speaker 1: their peers. So just a bad place to be a kid. Uh.
Speaker 1: Students were often victims, but they were not necessarily passive ones.
Speaker 1: The book Survivors Speak notes to the extent that they could,
Speaker 1: many students try to protect themselves and others from abuse.
Speaker 1: At the Gordon School in Saskatchewan, the older children tried
Speaker 1: to protect the younger ones from abuse at the hands
Speaker 1: of the dormitory staff. Hazel Mary Anderson recalled, sometimes you'd
Speaker 1: get sometimes you'd get too tired to stay up at
Speaker 1: night to watch over them, so nobody bothers them because
Speaker 1: those workers would, especially night workers, would bother the younger kids.
Speaker 1: The younger kids dorms were next to the older girls dorms.
Speaker 1: It's like the older girls would stay up and not
Speaker 1: sleep at night to protect the little kids from being
Speaker 1: molested by night workers. Yeah. By the nineteen fifties, it
Speaker 1: had become clear to even the most idiotic of soulless
Speaker 1: bureaucrats that the residential schools were not working as intended.
Speaker 1: Indigenous children were meant to assimilate to lives as lowly
Speaker 1: paid laborers. Aboriginal cultures were meant to be wiped out,
Speaker 1: but it became clear that things were not working as intended,
Speaker 1: and so the government pulled back. In nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: the Indian Act was amended and the half day work
Speaker 1: school system was ended. Next, the government decided children could
Speaker 1: live with their parents whenever possible. In nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: the Department of Indian Affairs took control of the system
Speaker 1: and pushed the churches out. All of this sounds good
Speaker 1: on paper, but abuses continued. Schools were still underfunded, and
Speaker 1: teachers were still underqualified, many of them had not even
Speaker 1: graduated high school, and fits and starts. The Canadian government
Speaker 1: tried to close the residential school system, but this often
Speaker 1: just meant changing the words they used for doing the
Speaker 1: same thing. In the nineteen sixties, thousands of Aboriginal children
Speaker 1: were apprehended by social services and taken away from their families.
Speaker 1: The sixties scoop, as it came to be known, kept
Speaker 1: the last few residential schools full up through the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties and into the mid nineteen nineties, when the vast
Speaker 1: majority were finally shuttered. The last residential school closed in
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties six, by which point indigenous groups around Canada
Speaker 1: were already organizing to sue their government over what they
Speaker 1: considered to have been an act of genocide. By mid
Speaker 1: April two thousand, Canada was being sued by an estimated
Speaker 1: seven thousand survivors of the roughly hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: children who had been interned in residential schools since eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty three. The Anglican Church was named as a codefendant,
Speaker 1: and three hundred and fifty nine cases of abuse involving
Speaker 1: sixteen hundred plaintiffs. It was enough that there were fears
Speaker 1: that the national sign out of Canada might go bankrupt.
Speaker 1: Over All the lawsuits, which eventually totaled more than two
Speaker 1: billion dollars, lawsuits continued to stack up, and calls for
Speaker 1: a government investigation and apology were repeatedly denied by the
Speaker 1: Conservative administration of Stephen Harper. Finally, in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: Canada launched its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which spent seven
Speaker 1: long years compiling an exhaustive report on the residential schools.
Speaker 1: The head of the commission, Justice Murray Sinclair, is the
Speaker 1: second Aboriginal judge in Canadian history. His conclusion was stark
Speaker 1: and he did not mince words, declaring Canada clearly participated
Speaker 1: in a period of cultural genocide. So the Canadian government
Speaker 1: has at least been like, yeah, we um, we did
Speaker 1: us a genocide. Yeah that's good. Yeah, yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: least you can do. Uh. Stephen Harper himself apologized on
Speaker 1: behalf of the government UM in two thousand eight, although
Speaker 1: he and his government refused to agree that Canada had
Speaker 1: committed genocide. Uh. The Anglican and Catholic churches apologized to
Speaker 1: although the Pope's representatives noted that his apology was a
Speaker 1: personal one and not an official apology by the Catholic Church. Um,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to do that. More than one point
Speaker 1: six billion dollars has been awarded and handed out to
Speaker 1: the survivors of residential schools so forth. Yeah. UM. This
Speaker 1: is also very fresh, and there's new stories dropping regularly about,
Speaker 1: for example, the scope of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's
Speaker 1: involvement in this new mass graves that have been found
Speaker 1: in different locations. In two thousand thirteen, the news broke
Speaker 1: that in the forties and fifties, nutritional experiments had been
Speaker 1: carried out on malnourished Aboriginal children at these schools with
Speaker 1: the federal government's knowledge. Yeah, it's really fucked up. Um. Basically,
Speaker 1: they found out that all these kids were malnourished, and
Speaker 1: instead of giving them all vitamin supplements, they only gave
Speaker 1: some of them vitamin supplements so they could watch how
Speaker 1: different only the two groups reacted. UM, just used them
Speaker 1: as tests something. They're like, on top of um, putting
Speaker 1: you through the most truly traumatizing experience of your probably
Speaker 1: your whole life, that could potentially ruin you as a being. Um,
Speaker 1: let's see, let's just try and use you as science
Speaker 1: experiments as well. Well. They wanted to know the effectiveness
Speaker 1: of vitamins supplements for white people, and they had all
Speaker 1: these kids that were not white that they could test
Speaker 1: it on. So about kids were used as test subjects. Uh.
Speaker 1: Subjects were kept on starvation level diets, they were given
Speaker 1: or denied vitamins, minerals in certain foods, and dental services
Speaker 1: were withheld from some students because researchers thought better teeth
Speaker 1: and gums with skew results. So that's all fun. Fuck,
Speaker 1: that's the fun story of the Canadian residential school system
Speaker 1: that is wow, fuck you Canada, I know, what the
Speaker 1: what the funk Canada? I mean, I'm glad they gave
Speaker 1: some me back, but that doesn't that does not change
Speaker 1: a fucking thing. I would not say they've made it
Speaker 1: right now, No they haven't. You know what I don't
Speaker 1: go ahead is that I don't like that. Oh you
Speaker 1: know they're gonna be like is that and then go on?
Speaker 1: But is that now? I also don't like that. And
Speaker 1: I think there's this I don't understand it, but I
Speaker 1: feel like it's just like the human being was like
Speaker 1: and if this happens in all, like most countries, just
Speaker 1: like if you find someone less than kill them off,
Speaker 1: and it's like it's so devastating to be like why
Speaker 1: has it take? Like even now it's still happening, but
Speaker 1: like at least some people are coming around to be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we shouldn't just kill people. And it's like barely
Speaker 1: are we coming around and we are barely kind of
Speaker 1: turning a corner of like, yeah, maybe we shouldn't just
Speaker 1: kill people because we think they're less than And there
Speaker 1: is I don't understand, like what world was I raised
Speaker 1: like I have very strict Iranian parents like, how was
Speaker 1: I able to get to the point where I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what, that's really evil, funked up and not
Speaker 1: a thing we should do. But then yet so many
Speaker 1: people are so far behind. It doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: to me. It doesn't I don't Yep, it's bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: shake the country of Canada. Yeah, let's just let's just
Speaker 1: kick the ship at us some maple leads and not
Speaker 1: look too closely at our own history because everything candidate
Speaker 1: was kind of based on the actions of the US
Speaker 1: government earlier. And there's if you by the way you
Speaker 1: go to Australia, very similar things were done. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the schools and stuff, like Canada's program was really particularly
Speaker 1: extensive and lasted shockingly long period of time, Like they
Speaker 1: kept it going a hell of a lot longer than
Speaker 1: the US government kept their kind of residential schools agoing um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, pretty much the same story. It does feel
Speaker 1: like the more remote you are, the easier it is
Speaker 1: to kind of like get away with here genocides. People
Speaker 1: don't know how much Canada gets away with right, Like
Speaker 1: when when we were in when I was in Guatemala,
Speaker 1: I talk about that time a lot. Uh, my Canadian
Speaker 1: friends like I was hanging out with a bunch of Canadians,
Speaker 1: um and as an American, despite all the ship that
Speaker 1: I Americans had done to Guatemala, we actually got like
Speaker 1: less negative responses than the Canadians did because a number
Speaker 1: of Canadian mining companies had been guilty of like horrific
Speaker 1: behavior and like we're at that point doing horrible, horrible
Speaker 1: things in Guatemala. Um. Which is a thing about Canada.
Speaker 1: You could actually, if you wanna really look into Canadian history,
Speaker 1: a lot of very specifically fucked up things around mining
Speaker 1: that happens constantly, both within the country itself and with
Speaker 1: companies that are headquartered in Canada but are mining concerns. UM.
Speaker 1: And we talk a lot about all the wonderful social
Speaker 1: programs Canada has a lot of that is funded by
Speaker 1: resource extraction on a globe scale that generally ignores the
Speaker 1: rights of a lot of people in the areas where
Speaker 1: the extraction is occurring. It's good stuff. So it's almost
Speaker 1: as if we shouldn't exist, it would maybe just countries.
Speaker 1: Maybe just countries, because like I always do feel shitty,
Speaker 1: like there's so many things to criticize Canada for. But
Speaker 1: also I'm like, but I'm an American, like like like
Speaker 1: it does. Like the reality is that they're all bad there.
Speaker 1: They all do terrible things to people. Um, if you
Speaker 1: want to look at any country that's considered to be
Speaker 1: one of the good countries and you scratch it a
Speaker 1: little bit, you'll find that they're operating horrific rare earth
Speaker 1: earth mineral minds that rely on the mass, you know,
Speaker 1: enslavement of children or something. It's just one of the
Speaker 1: fun realities of the cool world we live in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can someone if there is any country I don't know,
Speaker 1: like like Norway, Like I don't even know what's good.
Speaker 1: Maybe I mean your best bets Uruguay, but like still
Speaker 1: probably a bunch of fucked up ship you can find. Um.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, can someone tweet at us if there's
Speaker 1: any single good governmental run country please? Yeah? Maybe I see.
Speaker 1: I think they're doing better. And I'm concerned a little
Speaker 1: about ice and like what goes up what goes on
Speaker 1: up there? You know. Yeah, they might not be a
Speaker 1: real country. It might just be a Canadian mining front,
Speaker 1: Like that would be a Canada thing to do, fake
Speaker 1: in Iceland on us, fake and tricky ass Canadians. Okay, God,
Speaker 1: damn it. Yeah, I am dying to know what's a
Speaker 1: good place yep um if it exists, because a part
Speaker 1: of me feels like it just doesn't exist. Yeah, let
Speaker 1: us know if a single good place exists in the world.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I will continue with my plans to hold up
Speaker 1: with a bunch of children in a compound until the
Speaker 1: f d A burns us alive. Oh that'll happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a good time. Oh man, looking forward
Speaker 1: to it. Really just watched that Waco TV show and
Speaker 1: I was don't bring up Waco. I rewatch it every
Speaker 1: single night on a yeah, eleven or twelve hours a
Speaker 1: night of just pure Waco. I just can't get enough
Speaker 1: of that David Koresh you know. And it's such a
Speaker 1: funny thing in like popular culture because these like home
Speaker 1: flippers from like h G TV like built their like
Speaker 1: silo weird, Like I don't even know home Goods company
Speaker 1: out in Waco, and I'm like, stop trying to rebrand Waco,
Speaker 1: Like we shouldn't just know, we shouldn't forget what happened here,
Speaker 1: Like this was such a fucking bullshit operation done by
Speaker 1: our own government. Yeah, it was, don't forget. It was
Speaker 1: horrible that they burnt that compound to the ground, and
Speaker 1: the only way to make it right is to burn
Speaker 1: the rest of Waco to the ground and finally free
Speaker 1: the world from Waco. Yeah, just get rid of Waco.
Speaker 1: But just we don't need a Waco I have. I've
Speaker 1: spent many months there and it's a bad place. I
Speaker 1: would apologize to Waco, but Waco knows that I'm right fascinating.
Speaker 1: I would like to go see it, but no, you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't need to see Waco, Okay, finn, I won't go.
Speaker 1: I'll go to the silos. Image of a big truck stop.
Speaker 1: That's what it is. That's the whole city of Waco,
Speaker 1: big truck parking lot. It does feel like like when
Speaker 1: I look at the photos of this, these these people
Speaker 1: um chipping go go Anna Joanna Gaines who created this,
Speaker 1: like Magnolia Market. At the silos, there's something so dark
Speaker 1: about it, like it's just in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: and there's like these giant silos that are all like
Speaker 1: aged and ship and I can't help but think, like, boy,
Speaker 1: I can't believe somehow this is turned into Waco. But
Speaker 1: I can't every everything turns out goes back to Waco.
Speaker 1: That's the magic of Waco. Always if you're not Waco
Speaker 1: a b w baby. Yeah, if you're not wacoing, you're
Speaker 1: asleep and that's a problem. Yeah, be a Waco, not
Speaker 1: a Sleepoh well, new shirt, be Awaco not asleep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can have like a really nice, a really nice
Speaker 1: depiction of of David Koresh's just just ripped cum gutters.
Speaker 1: I mean just just cum gutters, cum gutters. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what you call abs. That's the medical term. Yes, I've
Speaker 1: heard someone recently call them a penis ravine. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: another medical term for abdominals. Yeah, both of those are
Speaker 1: proper in doctor speak. Ask your doctor about penis ravines
Speaker 1: and cume gutters today and David Koresh. Always be asking
Speaker 1: your doctor about David kor or you could invest your
Speaker 1: time into something else, like listening to some of the podcasts,
Speaker 1: and it does on this very network. And it's like
Speaker 1: to plug your plug double so that I don't have
Speaker 1: to hear about Waco anymore. Yes, that's true. I begged
Speaker 1: Sophia to book me so I could plug these goddamn shows.
Speaker 1: So I have to do it. I I yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: speaking of um penis ravines UM. I actually heard this
Speaker 1: on the Penis Ravenus Penis peniston ravenus. Um. I do
Speaker 1: a show right now. Well, I do ethnically ambiguos, as
Speaker 1: you guys know, with my co host Green Units, who
Speaker 1: has been on the show many times. Um, it's called
Speaker 1: ethnically ambiguous, which saw about being a person of color
Speaker 1: in America. Uh, and we that's you know, we're really
Speaker 1: that's what we do. We talked about being a person
Speaker 1: of color, child of immigrants, or even an immigrant in
Speaker 1: this country. And actually I would recommend our episode with
Speaker 1: um Joey Cliffs, who is a Native American man, who
Speaker 1: is uh he. I honestly didn't know a lot about
Speaker 1: um Native American culture because even though I live in
Speaker 1: this country, you're taught nothing in history classes or your
Speaker 1: schools because they just try and disregard the fact that
Speaker 1: we live on Native land. All we learn is the
Speaker 1: thing about the corn that you bury with the fish, right, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and then they ignore the fact that we also like
Speaker 1: killed a bunch of Native people to be on this
Speaker 1: land in you know, the United States. You're like Mayflower,
Speaker 1: You're like yeah, murder Boat. Uh. But also yeah, we
Speaker 1: do that show. I recommend the Joy Clift episode because
Speaker 1: he is a native American man. He actually I learned
Speaker 1: a lot from him, So check that out if you
Speaker 1: guys want to. But also my other show, which is
Speaker 1: less about anything. Uh, it's called Deckheads and I host
Speaker 1: it with Nick Turner. Uh, and it's all about the
Speaker 1: TV show below deck on Bravo. UM, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people like, why do you watch these shows? Honestly
Speaker 1: because it's the only thing that lets me turn my
Speaker 1: mind off. And I nothing makes me more calm than
Speaker 1: pure nonsense. Uh. And that's why I love reality TV.
Speaker 1: It makes you feel alive in a way I haven't
Speaker 1: felt in years. Um. And you know, me and Nick Turner,
Speaker 1: comedian Nick Turner hosts the show, and I personally enjoy
Speaker 1: it because it's about super yachts that really really rich,
Speaker 1: horrible people, uh, rent for tens and thousands of dollars,
Speaker 1: just so much money for like three days. It's absolute
Speaker 1: nonsense and why would you ever spend your money like that?
Speaker 1: And super yacht didn't cost that much money. But uh,
Speaker 1: we just basically, uh, we're going over every single episode
Speaker 1: of the show to ever exist, and we just fucking
Speaker 1: rip these people a new asshole about their behavior. And
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to see how white America works. It's fascinating
Speaker 1: to see how rich people just sexually harass whoever they
Speaker 1: want and get away with it, and how they just
Speaker 1: treat everyone like fucking dirt. So if you want to
Speaker 1: hear us really break down these these truly lovely times, uh,
Speaker 1: because we we have been recording them all in quarantine.
Speaker 1: So it's a great juxtaposition of what we understand as reality.
Speaker 1: While like the Black Lives Matter movement is going on
Speaker 1: like as we speak and continuing will hopefully continue to
Speaker 1: go on until we have full justice. Um. But then
Speaker 1: you just said and then you cut to us being like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck are these people doing? And it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: I truly enjoy it because these people have no shame,
Speaker 1: and I think more people need to see how the
Speaker 1: one percent live so you can understand like being rich
Speaker 1: and owning all the fucking money in this country, Um,
Speaker 1: it's bad and why would you ever want to be
Speaker 1: a person like this? So if you guys like a
Speaker 1: really interestingly dark social justice angle of us watching reality TV,
Speaker 1: check it out. Because Jesus fucking Christ, these people have
Speaker 1: no shame. I don't get it. I just don't get it.
Speaker 1: And it's fascinating to observe. So yeah, check out Deckheads
Speaker 1: also on iHeart Radio. Okay, yeah, alrighty, And that is
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say. And you can follow me
Speaker 1: at Anna, host me on Twitter if you would like
Speaker 1: to see me, you know, tweet, find Anna on Twitter,
Speaker 1: check out her shows and you can find us here
Speaker 1: every Tuesday and Thursday talking about real sad ship that
Speaker 1: bumps you out. That's the episode you need to know
Speaker 1: it