Quesnel, Quesnel, Quesnel! My goodness, what in the world are you smoking? I mean, it’s all so great…for so many reasons! And, I fully encourage you to continue on this path. But only because the ongoing grotesque displays of illiberalism, sexism, racism, and general undemocratic buffoonery, coming from the activist class, and more shockingly the Quesnel city councilors themselves, is attracting a ton of attention to many of the things I have a personal interest in seeing attention attracted to. Namely, generally, the clown show that results from Wokeism’s influence on public institutions, including media, and more specifically, the attention indirectly drawn to the new wildly successful best-selling book, of which I am a co-contributor: Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth About Residential Schools).
Grave Error, as many readers of Woke Watch Canada will know, was designed in part to attract attention to the sensational and false claims of a clandestine mass grave of murdered indigenous children at a former Indian Residential School in Kamloops, BC. That false claim, made three years ago this month, led to the sudden agreement to push UNDRIP into law, despite objections from six provinces, the rushed settlement of the Day Scholars Class Action ($2.8 Billion), and it is unlikely the $40 billion child welfare settlement would have happened without the Kamloops story. It also led to the many other “copycat” claims of unmarked graves, which were “discovered” by relying on the highly dubious method of ground penetrating radar, never verified with excavation, at former residential schools.
The false Kamloops claim, and the subsequent copycat claims, all received generous government transfers, for the purpose of conducting further investigation into unmarked graves, totaling in the hundreds of millions ($360 million). In addition, there was a 12.5 million grant awarded for the building of a healing center at Kamloops.
However, two critical things never happen. The first is that no official police agency, like the RCMP, investigated anything. They have handed the “investigation” over to those who are benefiting from the hoax. Benefiting by way of hundreds of millions of dollars, transferred from “guilty” taxpayers to indigenous bands, who for some odd and convenient reason keep finding more sites where potential unmarked graves need millions of dollars to investigate.
The second critical thing that is just not happening, is excavation. Taxpayers should be ashamed, furious, and full of sorrow, at the wasted money, and the lost opportunities this entails when undeserved transfers to indigenous crooks, who have utterly soaked the Canadian public and continue to do so at an alarming and accelerating rate, become a revenue stream of an entrenched bureaucratic indigenous grievance infrastructure. The cost of forensic excavation, the only way to know the truth of the unmarked grave claims, should be in the tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands. Not millions, or hundreds of millions. We are being scammed, but tragically, this unmarked grave scam is but the tip of the “Aboriginal Industry” iceberg.
For Canada, this is an existential issue. In other words, this is nation-destroying stuff. But the majority lets it happen, let’s the activist class, and any grieving indigenous person, even the “pretendians,” tap dance across our faces with poison tipped spiked cleats. “Because of colonialism, we deserve it,” they say. We can do little but concede. We are no good settlers, who must keep quiet unless reciting an indigenous land acknowledgement where we proclaim in group settings at public institutions that we don’t own the land where our ancestors made all the roads and buildings and social infrastructure. This would be news to them. Thankfully they will never hear it.
Concerning the aforementioned perilous tap dancing, how long can our faces hold out? And how long can our spirits stand the abuse of false accusations, false revisionist history, and false blood libels unfairly assigned to generations of ancestors who handed down to us a prosperous and peaceful country, fully intact. Like a father handing the keys to a brand new Land Rover, saying “Here you go, son, it’s yours now. Don’t forget to change the oil every 7000 KM or so.”
But shamefully, we care more that the indigenous honour their ancestors, even if it means dishonouring ours. Our white Christian ancestors, who built the country, who constructed and ran the residential schools, were, I’m sure, as flawed as any previous or subsequent generation. But they were also incredibly courageous, innovative, adventurous, and hard-working. And, most importantly, they were incredibly good. All of this is evident in the country and society they built and left to us. It is not just the buildings and the roads and the power stations, but the laws, the customs, and conventions that we took up after they passed on, that illustrates Canada has been a model civilization since its inception.
The latest development in the Quesnel debacle is that the city council has voted unanimously to have Mayor Paull stripped of his budget and of his ability to participate in city council committees. They do not have the power to remove him from office. Only the voters can do that in a functioning democracy. But this council is acting from moral righteousness and feels the normal conventions of a liberal democracy must be circumvented for the sake of reconciliation.
As I previously wrote , the Quesnel City Council are a bunch of clowns, and their council meetings are clown shows. My colleague, and Grave Error co-contributor, professor Frances Widdowson travelled to Quesnel last month to attend a council meeting and say a few words in defense of our book.
The council, at a previous meeting, voted to denounce Grave Error. But also during that meeting, misinformation concerning the Kamloops clandestine unmarked graves claim, was read into the record. When Frances addressed the hostile council, she asked specifically about the false Kamloops claim read into the record. Frances was treated with a deplorable and highly un-Canadian level of disrespect, but to her question, no answer was given.
Reconciliation, in practice, seems to mean that standards of decency, respect, and democracy, are to be withheld from those who question indigenous people. It is that simple. Reconciliation is surrender. It means you cannot defend the honour or the good name of our ancestors. It means that rent-seeking indigenous grievance hustlers, can make up stories where our white Christian ancestors are accused of monstrosities, and we must accept those stories without substantiation regardless of their implausibility. From physical abuse, including raping and murdering children, to full on genocide.
All of these atrocities live in the stories told by indigenous people. Reconciliation hinges on these stories. It is too simple and reductive to say that all of them are false. I do not believe all stories of abuse of former Indian Residential School students are false. I think it is a terrible tragedy that any of these stories are true. Aside from the many clearly false claims that poison our ability to understand and empathize, the challenges experienced by indigenous people have been great. However, where the narrative breaks down, where the truth gets left behind, is where so much unfair blame is transferred and concentrated on the white Christian ancestors of Canada.
When this blame transference takes place, a negation of the many good acts performed heroically by our ancestors also takes place. We simultaneously allow the wrongs of our ancestors to be grossly exaggerated, while erasing from memory the abundance of positive contributions they made. Why do we let our ancestors’ good legacy be so trampled upon? Could it perhaps have something to do with the poison tipped cleats we allow to tap dance on our own faces? If we won’t stand up for ourselves, why would we stand up for our ancestors? Am I asking too much?
My research into these issues, and into Canadian history, coupled with my direct experience with my ancestors has led me to believe that the tragedy of indigenous integration into modern civilization has three levels. The first level is related to the circumstances. The conditions at the time of contact, and the circumstance indigenous people found themselves in, were the biggest challenge and remain the biggest culprit preventing the development of modern indigenous communities. No other people has ever faced such difficult circumstances, this is the root of the majority of problems with Canadian First Nations.
The second level deals with personal responsibility. Too many indigenous Canadians are being convinced by the activist class that they are not personally responsible for their bad choices. That they have no agency. That they are victims of settler colonialism. This second level, is the second most powerful factor plaguing modern indigenous people.
The third level, in my view, is the factor with the least influence. It refers to the area where Canada’s white Christian ancestors can be blamed for errors they made, or wrongs they committed. Where it is plausible, and where there is evidence other than hearsay. I am fully aware that my ancestors are not blameless. There has never been a blameless person. However, the past citizens of Canada should not be remembered for their unremarkable qualities or their flaws typical of all humanity. Instead they should be honoured for their remarkable qualities and their extraordinary achievements.
If reconciliation can’t reconcile that, and stop insulting and desecrating the honour of our good Canadian ancestors, I don’t want anything to do with it, and don’t be surprised if others feel the same.
By the way, have you read Grave Error?
James Pew is an independent writer and researcher, and the editor of Woke Watch Canada.
