Challenging the dominant narratives by eliminating self-defeating behaviors

Thank you for sharing this podcast transcript. It covers a wide range of connected themes, but there are a few strong threads that stand out. Main themes 1. Community development and long-term thinking You describe attending a meeting about economic development in Tsuut'ina and being struck by the contrast between the scale of future opportunities and the ongoing self-defeating attitudes some people still carry. One of your central observations is that many projects are not really for today's elders, but for children and grandchildren who will live with the results 10, 15, or 20 years from now. You repeatedly return to the idea that youth need to be involved, trained, mentored, and trusted to become future leaders. 2. Trust and reconciliation Trust appears throughout the podcast. You discuss the difficulty of building trust between Indigenous communities, governments, developers, and outside institutions after generations of harmful policies and broken promises. Your metaphor of testing bathwater before fully stepping in is an effective way of describing how trust develops gradually rather than instantly. 3. Indigenous women and invisibility A significant section focuses on the experiences of Indigenous women, particularly unmarried women and women who feel excluded from housing, decision-making, and community resources. You argue that there are informal hierarchies within communities and that women, especially single women, can become invisible despite their contributions. Your personal stories about housing and aging give this theme emotional weight. 4. Storytelling as leadership One of the strongest points in the transcript is your reflection that podcasting has helped you become a better public speaker. You describe storytelling not simply as personal expression but as a cultural and political act. The podcast presents storytelling as: a way of preserving experience, a way of teaching, a way of empowering others, a way of challenging dominant narratives. 5. Residential schools and historical accountability A large portion of the episode examines residential school records, funding systems, attendance records, death investigations, Indian Agents, and archival evidence. Your perspective emphasizes that: documentation existed, recordkeeping was often incomplete, families were frequently not informed properly, funding systems treated children as administrative units, understanding history requires following both documents and lived experience. You balance documentary evidence with your own experiences in residential school and in an Indian hospital, showing how policy and personal experience intersect. 6. What "Land Back" means Perhaps the most philosophical part of the podcast is your discussion of Land Back. Rather than framing it only as a legal or political issue, you describe it as something much more personal: Land Back means being able to feel fully human. You compare this to accounts of Black Americans visiting Ghana and feeling, perhaps for the first time, that they are not being defined by race. You suggest that homeland is a place where a person is no longer treated as "the other." Overall tone What struck me most is that this is not primarily a political podcast. Beneath the discussion of development, housing, residential schools, and economic projects is a deeper question: What does it take for Indigenous people, especially Indigenous women, to feel seen, trusted, respected, and fully human? That question seems to tie almost every section together. As a spoken podcast, the unedited and conversational style actually works in your favor. The repetition, personal stories, and shifts between topics create the feeling that listeners are hearing someone think through complicated issues in real time rather than delivering a polished speech. That authenticity appears to be one of the strengths of your format.

Marina Crane (00:01) Good morning. October seventh, Marina Crane. And I just uploaded my previous podcast from a few days ago. I didn't upload it that day because I thought, I'll do some editing, but then again, that sort of defeats the purpose because then I get all messed up and like usually when I do my podcast I just it's spontaneous and I'd sooner just leave it that way. even with all the technical diffic difficulties that go on. yesterday I went to a meeting with some elders and some developers and and I used artificial intelligence to do some research while I was at the meeting, which led a profound effect that I was some sort of genius in asking questions. I didn't have the heart to say that I got all this information from AI. But what a powerful tool. Anyway, a lot of things are happening within Sutina and my community in terms of economic development and a lot of I think re self-reflection in in terms of my community because a lot of our young people have so many opportunities that when I was their age, we could never even f contemplate or phantom just like the the the scale of development or the potential of of human resources. So the irony of it too is like we have elders who are just repeatingly like their self-defeating talk is so intense and and yet they don't they can't self-reflect and look at the projects. Like there's this one project that's gonna take fifteen years to develop and th that's gonna affect my grandchildren, like my my my niece's children who are like five to seven years old. so a lot of a lot of and see see in my niece and her partner they're in their early thirties. So a lot of these things that are happening now for me as an elder seeing it, if I lived so long, I'd see it, but it's okay. when I was a teenager, fourteen, fifteen, my late uncle took us to BAMP and we had this sit down on you know, future development. So a lot of the things that I hope that will happen is that they will incorporate and use a lot of the youth and and and train them as youth elders so they mentor other youth because the information has to come from the youth, not not older people or elders like myself. Just the reality of the whole concept of change is is scary, especially when we've had so much distrust with white people. And and that was part of the key topic too is because most of the projects this developer is working with i it like they'll take because they're in the city may take three to five years, whereas because we we have we're converting Previous co understand this, previous Crown land, this is in Canada, previous Crown land that was converted to provincial status, which is gonna be converted back to Crown land so that it become designated as reserve land under the federal government. All this process takes such a longer time in developing projects. Which again, you know, people say, Well, why haven't First Nations done this and that or or First Nations this and First Nations that? Like I I don't know how much more emphasis I can say that we're in a fourth war world. So we have like again, I d I don't need to explain that, but I do strongly recommend that you listen to my last podcast because it has a lot to do with Indian residential school denialism, white supremacy in in the sense of just the capacity or the lack of understanding of what it is that indigenous people have been fighting for forever, just so our children can thrive. Now As a female, it's totally different. So I'm going to this podcast is gonna be more structured to female identity and and minorities and how as women we think because even yesterday at the meeting, like part of the development has to do with building homes, like we have the Redwood development and then we have Taza development. And and so we're doing another third project that again we'll have to vote on. But why am I bringing this up is one of the ladies, she she's a white woman who married into Sutina and she's got grandchildren here, got up and said, Well, how come we keep on building all these homes? What about our young people? And Lottie Da we're paying off reserve rental. She didn't put it that way. How she put it was we're paying for mortgages for people off reserve and it it just blew my mind. mind and I said, wait, what? 'Cause sh sh she took it out of context or I took it out of context because she didn't say it was to the renters, because we do subsidize people who rent in the city, as opposed to like the population and where we can house our youth. And so that was her statement and I I like I thought she said that the nation was paying for mortgages for people off reserve. Now to me that's a real critical sore spot because I have sisters who've who paid mortgage their entire lives. And I said that. I said y I said, what are we doing? Paying mortgage for what? I said, when I have sisters who paid mortgage their entire lives, I said, I'm seventy four years old and the house that I'm living in i is my mother's house. I said the the caste system with indigenous women i in First Nations I said there's there's a hierarchy and and we're at the bottom we're at the bottom of the of everything. And and and again, this is a a white woman making a statement. Now she kept quiet after because that's my whole point. When a white woman has privilege, just pri white privilege, marries an indigenous man, she is on the top above her husband. Then it's her husband. Okay, then it's men, indigenous men, and again, the men who marry n indigenous women from within our community are at a h like again, we're talking about a caste system. The next are are indigenous men from here who marry women from other communities. Okay, so you've got white women and couples that marry within the same community. Then you have couples where the one partner, female, is married from another community. And then you have the fourth where are women who have partners from other other nations, other indigenous people or non-Indigenous. who choose not to marry. Because if you marry, then you lose your status, you lose any sort of collective holistic approach in policies and community development. And again you get people like myself who've never been married or have a partner which were on the lowest. Understand this, it's not just for females, it also applies for single men too. Because there are single men who've died homeless in my community. I'm just very fortunate that most of my life I've struggled with this because again, I I'm I'm invisible. And I said that yesterday in in the meeting. I said, you know, like I I have issue with with the fact that I'm I'm seventy-four and I still have not ever asked for a house or I mean if I've asked for a house I've never received it. and my sister who's elder now, like she's like my sisters have been paying mortgage their entire lives, and my sister has applied for housing forever and nothing. And yet as opposed to men. So it's th that's the critical question too, is especially when I talk about storytelling, narrative. narratives, healing, like it listening to people and their story and their experience. When that's part of our culture. And and yet as women, as matriarchs and as the way like I use my podcast, it's it's it's actually storytelling and letting people know through narrative how I feel and how I think about things. Now the majority of times since I've been doing my podcast and I've been invited to speak I've realized that doing my podcast has really helped me hone in on certain specific things, especially when I'm talking in public. I have I have this through my education I maybe I think it's called some autism or or or some form of I'm like the way I think. I I have to write things down and I have to be busying myself as I'm listening in order to comprehend the content of what is being said. Which to g to me like I I just automatically do it because I want to feel comfortable in giving a response. And so much is the same when I do my podcast, I I tr I I look through my social media and and things that really trigger me or get get the juices flowing in terms of a topic, I I will I will snatch that up. And yet at the same time I find there are so many indigenous people out there, especially women who It it's like this need for attention and and the tragedy of it is like the women who actually need the attention are are the ones who really have some mental health problems and and it's focusing on them and the issues that they have to face on a daily basis. is is really critical because unless you actually have sw have swum with the sharks, you don't really know how dangerous it is in in that ocean, that water. And for me I'm just very comforted comforted that that I do have other other people who have experience swimming in those sharks that can accompany me. That that being said, like when people say what is it like to live in an indigeno indigenous community Well un unless you actually have lived here and and actually tr try to understand what it is. When we when we have this concept land back, see, understand this like I said, part of the development was to get previous crown land c That was converted to provincial land back to Crown L so it becomes designated reserve land. Now that's a high falluting process, but but the original point is like land back. Originally it was crown land. So so what does that mean? When people say, natural law, I'm going, yes, natural law. What the hell is natural law? My analogy and how I put it in my previous podcast is with when I get triggered with this whole whole white supremacy and truth and reconciliation and September 30th and over thousands and everybody's talking about all the dead children. And then I then I make a you know and then I say, no, this is the reality here. Take a look at this. The reality of it is when you get triggered like that, and I and I again I think I'm on some oasis because I'm living in First Nations. I'm living in a First Nations. I'm not living in a Inuit or Metis community. I'm living in a First Nations community. So and it could be any indigenous community. So I'm I I don't wanna make it sound like I'm s so privileged. but w what I'm trying to say is like as an indigenous human being, it's really difficult to be a human being. Especially when you have society deeming you as being savage or or that you have some sort of mental health issue or la di da like stereotype me. especially as a woman, like there's one thing to be in a caste system, but then to be triggered when when there's issues of of children that have been killed. And like I mentioned about my friend in Hong Kong inviting me to come and visit and all these other eastern countries, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, you name it, like she says she says it and she used the analogy of black Americans going to Ghana, like it took a week or two before because they're wearing their skin in the United States and North America, just like I wear my skin when I leave my community. And she says it takes about a week for them to feel like human beings, like they're in the homeland. So when a police pulls them over, they're just being pulled over because they're police they're human. They're not being pulled over because they're black and and that's that's to me is what un my understanding of land back is the homeland where you don't feel you don't feel like the other. Land back to me personally, my opinion means I'm being treated like a human being. I'm going to come to point to a point in my existence to feel what it's like to be a human being. Understand that. As a Canadian, as a First Nations individual who's lived in another country, the whole concept of what is feels to be human, that I would have to go to another country where my skin color is the majority, so that I feel like a human being. That's the twist. That is the paradoxical twist where I think and I live in this illusion or delusion that being in my community I'm safe. In some s respects I am, but once I leave that border, that invisible wall Or even if I open up my home to a conversation with somebody, then all of a sudden I'm put in that that's that globe, that fishbowl. And and and it's a not a comfortable feeling at all. So when I go to these meetings and there are a bunch there's a whole bunch of elders and you have some elder women who are just self-defeating, we don't trust the white man. We've gotten ourselves into this problem. When are we ever gonna get it out of it? And I it's just like, my goodness. like the the intensity of it it's like where at what point do you sort of understand the whole concept of land back you know to to to like where is it that they don't realize like we're all in this collectively and whole holistically together trying to get a sense of of being human beings like it's like I like I swear If I have anything to say and how I say it yesterday, you I I understand like people come up and you thank me for talking. but but it doesn't come with preparation. I I do have to prepare. I I d and I and again to a lot of the content of my podcast has prepared me for such cases. And at the same time too, it prepares me when I talk to to children and and teenagers and young adults. So part of my skill set and understanding human behavior i is to hear and listen and hopefully empower empower the people who who need to ha feel empowered or who are open to it. And and that's where I think the word trust comes in because unless you trust, that empowerment doesn't really you don't really engage it. You you sort of it's sort of like just putting your foot in the water to see if how your bathtub water to see if it's hot or cold or just right. you know and if it's if it's just right, then you trust and you can fully immerse yourself into the bathtub. And and and enjoy it. Like but but trust is a huge, huge complex complexity. And the majority of times when I say I know over two hundred and thirty elders in my community, we're all bathing in that same water because we throughout all our lifetimes we've known each other through thick and thin. And so in some ways we do have a sense of what land back means. Okay, so let me get to the podcast. I just wanted to make some sort of content about that. there are some things that let's see here I'm not too sure what this is about. We have all seen that. It is the challenge thrown at people asking what happened to children in residential schools. Here is a First Nations response. We have the records. Where did you bury those missing kids? Before anyone argues about the ground, follow what survives on paper. The paper trail begins with admission. Then comes the student register, the attendance record, and the school's quarterly return. Those returns could record a child's name, age, home community, admission date, days in residence, days in class, and reasons for absence. But we must not pretend every child was documented perfectly. Names changed spelling, community information was sometimes missing, forms were sometimes incomplete. That is why tracing a child requires comparing records, not trusting one sheet as the whole story. Here is a specific example from Camloops. The quarterly return ended on September 30, 1947. Its archival identifier is R00002087. Principal F. O. Grady of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate completed the document on October 4th. The Indian agent reviewed it on October 7th. Indian Affairs received it on October 14th. School, Agent, Federal Department. That is a documented reporting chain, not a reconstruction. These returns were financial documents. Schools completed them four times a year. times a year and average attendance helped determine government funding. The instructions on the form, as examined in the archival guide to this return, stated that no grant would be paid until the department received the return. The children's attendance was not simply recorded, it was used in a funding calculation. At Camlo I I just wanted to put put that in there because I used to be Director of Education for Sutina. And and that's how our funding arrangements have been set up. Now this he's talking about like before I was even born, this colonial mindset of of documenting children in terms of funding. Funding even that is calculated to this very day. Okay, so so even that in in terms it's a it's a funding formula. And so for me I had to make sure that all my the children in Soutina where they were, what schools they were gonna be enrolled in, and and then like there was a tripart agreement between the province, the federal government and and Soutina Nation. That's that's three parts. So when he's talking about like the the the Indian agent, like the print like the person who's in charge of Indian residence. Residential school, then the Indian agent, and like like like their annual quarterly report, because that formula determines how much money the program is going to get for this the different budget that is is being placed, how much money the school is gonna get, how much busing is gonna get, how much post-secondary. Now, those are more sophisticated allotments, but but what he's talking about is just the funding for Indian residential schools. Understand this. The system of Indian residential school in a colonial construct still exists. Still exists because of the Indian Act in how how money, a program money, is designated for the care of our children. I wanted to put that in there because I because we we we work with that framework. loops in nineteen forty seven, the annual per capita rate was one hundred and ninety-five dollars. The quarterly rate was forty eight dollars and seventy five cents. On the March 31, 1947 return, identifier R00002084. The school listed 154 boys and 164 girls, 318 students. The calculation depended on average attendance and on the authorized funding limit. Average attendance that quarter was calculated at 304.55, but the grant was capped. The calculated quarterly amount was 14,000. That does not mean a child was sold for $195. It means the institution's operating revenue was tied to the number of eligible children counted in attendance. The return establishes the calculation. A matching payment record would be needed to establish that a particular sum was dispersed. Follow the child into the ledger. Then follow the ledger into the government account. The same paperwork recorded work. Cooking, laundry, cleaning, farming, dairy work, residential schools relied partly on student labor to operate. On that March 1947 Kamloops return, boys who worked 360 hours in a 90 day quarter were working roughly four hours a day. One named example is August Gott, student number 616, recorded at 360 hours in dairy and technical work. The child appears in this system as a name, a registration number, a Attendance and labor. I call that commodity logic, not because children were commodities, because their presence and work were converted into institutional resources. Now follow a child whose death left a surviving record. Her name was Mary Francois. The National Center for Truth and Reconciliation lists her as Mary Francois Sampolio and records her death on May 13, 1937. In May 1937, a measles outbreak. Was moving through Kamloop's residential school. Mary became ill on May 3. A nurse treated her. The next morning, a physician attended. On May 10th, she was taken to Royal Inland Hospital. The record described pneumonia, infections in both ears, and inflamed kidneys. That day, the principal sent a letter to her parents. According to the account, based on the death memorandum, They never received it. There was paperwork, but the existence of paperwork did not mean the family had been reached. The Indian agent phoned Mary's parents on the morning of May 13th. They arrived at the hospital that evening. Mary had already died. The inquiry memorandum recorded the immediate cause as sinus thrombosis. Contributory causes included bronchopneumonia, mastoiditis, and acute nephritis. A published account of the same memorandum describes. the immediate cause as a blood clot in the brain. Her father, chief of the Adams Lake Band, then wrote to the Indian agent. The typewritten letter is signed with an X. His request was painfully basic. In connection with the death of my daughter Mary, while attending Kamloops Indian Residential School, I would request as chief of the Adams Lake Band that in future, when a child of the school is taken sick and requires hospital attention, that the parents or guardian be notified at once. Not after the child dies, not after the Not after the chance to be present has passed, at once. What was supposed to happen after a death, Indian Affairs adopted a formal reporting and investigation policy in nineteen thirty five. The principal was to inform the Indian agent. The agent was to convene a three-person board, the agent, the principal, and the physician who had attended the child. They were to record the cause of death and the treatment provided. Parents were supposed to receive notice of the inquiry and have the opportunity to attend or to speak. But the inquiry was not to be delayed more than 72 hours to accommodate them, and the department would not pay their transportation costs. A procedure existed. Access to that procedure was another matter. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that this policy was not always followed. Sometimes the Indian agent simply completed the form using information supplied by the principal. An inquiry on paper could become a form filled out from the school's own account. The commission also found That parents were often uninformed of their children's sickness and death. Why? There is no single proven explanation for every case. Delayed communication is not automatically evidence of deliberate concealment, but it is a failure with consequences. And the commission identified a larger pattern. Its words: the failure to establish and enforce adequate standards, coupled with the failure to adequately fund the schools, resulted in unnecessarily high death rates at residential schools. The commission did not claim that funding incentives alone explain every illness or every death. I just wanted to put this in there that when I went to Portiche La Prairie Indian Residential School, I was bussed into town and then bussed back to the re residence to sleep and do homework and anyway, that was our living quarters. The documentation of what he's talking about with the principal, at the time we called this person the administrator. Everything was documented. For one thing I was punished one time and I was ac I couldn't go and leave the residence. other than school. So that meant even on the weekend when other classmates in the residence went into the little town of Portage, I wasn't allowed. So I plotted a scheme because th they w they had a volunteer program if you wanted to work as a candy striper at a at a home for slow like slow development children. That that I it was called the Manitoba Manitoba Home. So for the whole year I went every weekend 'cause that was my only escape plan from the incident Institution. Understand the administrator also documented things, and I didn't know this until like after the the school term was over when he said, I applied for the federal government, all of you candy stripers who've gone there, put in your hours, you're gonna get paid. Didn't know that. So the fellow plotted, like the administrator had plotted all the time how to scheme and get money. So again, too, Part of why I'm talking about this is my grandmother went to that residential school when she was a child. And my my grandmother married was married to a very a hereditary chief. And my uncle had been chief, and my father and mother had traveled to India and South America, and my parent my grandparents had traveled all over the world. So when I talk about pol pol political, the administrator and the vice administrator had told me directly, how dare you behave this way when your parents when your when your family is this way? And and so I knew that I was protected. When I look back in reflection, I knew I was protected from any kind of other abuse like physical. or sexual abuse, especially from the vice administrator, because of who I was related to. They didn't want any any you know people to make any problems for them. So they really had, you know, hands-hands off type of approach to me and my brother and sister who were attending. There was always some sort of investigation into who I was related to throughout my life and and in and in the sense that I felt like like I was protected because of who my grandparents were, as well as like even within my community. So even when I when I do talk and and people come up and they're grateful for what I've said, it's it's the narrative, it's the storytelling, it's part of the cultural it's it's it's ingrained in the sense of like you're political because you're telling the story. It's cultural that we're storytellers. And and so so that's why like when it comes to the reporting of of these deaths of children It's it's not what you know, it's who you know. So so like I said, I I felt like in hindsight, when I know what some of those students at Portich Le Prairie went through, unwanted pregnancy, sexual assault. I didn't see that. I was protected because the administrator and vice administrator knew that if anything happened to me or my brother or my sister, the politics the politics and the connections that my indigenous family had with white cohorts would have come down the pipeline. So we're talk when we're talking about the accountability the accountability of death, I I want you to understand that. So It's important that you listen to this and this is called at D-U-N-N-E-N-Z-A. You can find that on TikTok. Sometimes the trail leaves the school. A child was transferred to a hospital. Or a seriously ill child was sent home. The Commission found it doubtful that schools reported the deaths of seriously ill children who had been sent home. It described this as a common practice for at least the first several decades the schools were in operation. In 1907, Dr. Peter Bryce, Chief Medical Officer for Indian Affairs, wrote of tubercular students being sent home to die. That is why a discharge entry cannot automatically be read as a safe return. Where did the child go? What condition were they in? Did they recover? Did they die elsewhere? And did their family know? A discharge is not the end of the trail, and an attendance record does not, by itself, prove a burial. Then the archive itself was reduced. A 1933 policy allowed school returns to be destroyed after five years, and accident reports after ten. Between 1936 and 1944, 200,000 Indian affairs files were destroyed. That figure covers Indian affairs files, not 200,000 death records, and destruction does not, by itself, prove a deliberate cover-up. It proves that the surviving archive is incomplete. Missing records are not proof that nothing happened. They are also not, by themselves, proof of murder. Documented deaths are not erased by gaps elsewhere in the archive. Got bones, got admission records, got funding returns, got death inquiries? The question is not only whether the school counted a child for funding, it is whether the institution accounted for that child to the family. These were children, not commodities. Where did you bury So yeah, where did you where have the where are the records? Where did you bury these missing kids? Follow the paper trail account for the child. These were children, not commodities. And and again they have a crisis line for anybody, 1866-925-4419. And like for me when I was eight years old, I was in an Indian hospital. my parents were in South America. And I was being looked after by a teacher and his wife. They were white. And I really believe that if they were indigenous, I would have been treated totally different in that Indian hospital, much the same way when I went to Indian residential school. The reality of it is like like I I was in isolation. I was I was put b in a private room behind the nurses and doctor's desk on the main floor. The reality of it is they didn't give me nothing, no books to read, nothing nothing to stimulate my brain. I again too, I I r I saw people from my room running, escaping the hospital. The the week before I was released, they put me into the regular dorm with a bunch of other girls my age and I was terrorized. I I was terrorized. I it was because I spoke English. There was no protection from hospital staff on how I was treated by the the general populace. But again too, that's because I was perceived as being privileged. and again too, because I was being perceived as privileged, if anything happened to me, because I almost died. I I was in isolation for three months. so I almost died and it was the the care that I had. Because if I had died, I I'm pretty sure there would have been an investigation. So again, it's not what you know, it's who you know. And and I'm just grateful that I had white people that were cohorts of my parents and my grandparents that protected me. But at the same time too, that doesn't allow people to treat me the way they did the the like I said, the Indian hospitals. Now I I know it it seems like a a really difficult thing to listen to, but but I but I do you know, I do want you to sort of like think about these things that that i like there are cohorts, like I said, there have been cohorts throughout my life that have that have helped and again here here's some other I I like I said, I'm trying to do this as spontaneous as possible. Truth and reconciliation matters. This is the day, September 30th, that us Canadians have to think about this and talk about this and find a way to move forward. Now I think we are as a country starting to move forward. But I reflect back to Jonathan Kay and Jordan Peterson and Tom Flanagan, who I actually had as a professor at university, who try and deny the fact that the Canadian government, through the Catholic Church and the Anglican committed cultural genocide and murdered thousands of Indigenous youth. Now, this is a fact. I am fifth or sixth generation Albertan, about as far back as you can go as a settler, and that means my great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents settled. Land that belonged to other people. I really recommend you read the book Clearing the Plains. You know, we come to terms with this, comes terms with the fact that I grew up with a huge amount of racism towards indigenous people. And we have to own that. We have to own that and we collectively have to move forward together. And it is so exciting to see real indigenous leadership in our country, like Wab Canoe in Manitoba, as opposed to the the the fakeness of, say, Daniel Smith saying she has bloody Cherokee roots. I mean Cherokee are nowhere near Alberta, so you're just making that up as well. And you can do the Indigenous Studies course online for free from the University of Alberta and start to come to terms with the history of this country. So I was just recently up in the Arctic and I can see reconciliation happening. I see it at the school in Dawson City, I see the new hotel in Tuktaiarctu. There is hope, but it's about being honest. about history and modern history. Like I was still in university when the last residential school was still open and operating this country. So we need to honor the survivors. We need to respect and remember those who never came home. And somewhere between four and ten thousand Indigenous youth never came home from those schools and that is a fact. And when you try and deny that this occurred, you just look at the roles of names and numbers. Yeah. Aren't always found because they weren't buried in proper graves. So truth and reconciliation matters. And I'm sorry I'm overseas at the moment. I wish I had my orange shirt on today, but I felt I had to make a post. So let's be honest, let's move forward, and let's learn from Indigenous Canadians because there's so much to learn from those cultures and so much to share. And that's two ME underscore travels. again, like all the development and economic development and especially here on Sutina because we're on a one point five billion dollar economic development plan. And the scale of it in in the sense of we always have to go through orientation workshops and feasibility studies again because the people that are cohorts we have they have to establish trust. And and the thing is like when you have people who are trying to help in in s like to give incentives to to even establish trade trade schools for indigenous youth or or even y you know, colleges or universities for doctors, indigenous doctors. Th like the progress and the the understanding of helping indigenous people in in sense of of trust is is really is not an easy task for for all parties. But but it's something that that like has to be done like pulling teeth. And that's what truth and reconciliation is all about. But until you actually benefit from it, you like again, Sutina benefits from this. And and I I wanted people to to understand that. It's not It's not something impossible to do. It it it does happen. So let's let's do this other this is corresponding to your comment here, but man, your first one, you had a lot to say. Here it is So through your extensive research, you learned that when an indigenous child died at a residential school, the school would contact the band office. In turn, the band office would inform the family. The family would express that they don't have enough money to bring their children home. So they would ask the school to bury their child at the school cemetery. And you say, research. Up until the 1960s, when the federal government was filtering out the Indian agent, most indigenous communities only contact with the outside world was through an Indian agent. It's a historical fact that Indian agents are key individuals that participated with the starvation of Indigenous people. Them, along with the RCMP, participated with the forcible removal of indigenous children to be brought to residential schools. One-third of Indigenous children that passed away at residential schools, it wasn't even documented. And by chance, if a school called anyone, it wouldn't have been a band office. It would have been an Indian agent. And it's also a historical fact that Indian agents withheld information. Of the horrifying treatment these children were dealing with at residential schools. Parents couldn't even leave their homes up until the 19th century. 40s, the past system was in effect, and they needed permission by an Indian agent to be able to go off reserve to visit their children. Most times they never got permission, and if they did, they would have been arrested. Most families learned about their child's death because they didn't come home for summer break. They didn't receive answers when it comes to how they died or where they were laid to rest. And it's been like that for so many years. So when you say research, Maybe you should try it sometime instead of pretending you did. And that his handle is Casper underscore 19692.0. So yes, the Indian agent ex like even when I was a child, I think until the 60s, there were still Indian agents. And some of the older Sutina say like they were they I mean this is their from what I hear is they were we're so stupid. The Indian agent gave us boxes and boxes of papers and we burnt them like like they spent a whole day burning all these documents. Understand too we were I was bussed into the city at I was in grade two and we had an Indian agent who had two sons. One was close to my age and the other one I think was about two or three years older. two sons and they were British. They had this British accent. I won't say their last name. I won't say their last name, but I know their last name. Under understand this. The when when we have people who say, Yes, I grew up with ra you know, I just was so racist against indigenous people. Well, these two young these two boys who would catch the school bus with us to go into the city schools and school in town, They they they used to go we had an old cemetery close to the old in the Indian agent's home. You had to cross a little creek, fish creek and there was this cemetery. The guy the they th these these boys would go and dig up graves and and take the magasins off of the skeletons and and they would they would sell them. Like talk about talk about horrific things that these children who Who were children of the Indian agent, like what what they did. So, you know, and these were kids that we grew up with, white kids, like that we caught a bus on the bus with. And again, too, a lot of times when it came to say white women who had white children, there was always this protection of keeping their children in the front part of the school bus for protection. Again, from from what? you know, they had more privilege if if we so much has looked at them the wrong way. But again, systemic racism and and and what white privilege is, especially if you're a white woman that marries into the community a and you want to protect your children. Which again to me is like who who was getting killed? It was indigenous children who went to residential schools. And again, even even to not have cohorts, white cohorts to help you protect your children, I was very privileged. I know that when I look at the things that could have should have would have could have happened to me and didn't. Okay, so here we go. And this guy, his his name is E P I R E F L I L E S seven eight nine, Empire Files seven eight nine. Population of Native Americans in 1492 was 140 million people. In 1600, it was 15 million people. That's 125 million directly dead. But it's not because it's five generations, it's 108 years. Five generations, that's 20 years for a generation. That means there's all these women making babies during that time period. So to drop the population by 125 million, you'd probably have to kill 175 million people. kill the babies too. That's that's why you know I I try and stress you know people like where we're where are the what did they say? Where are the bodies? Where are the like hello? Hello You know, like the reality of it is like, you know, when when we're when we're trying to do economic development and we have white companies that that know, you know, they became rich because of where they came from and the the accountability of like like come on, denialism and and at who at whose cost? Murdered and missing indigenous women, children, two spirited. Like like at what cost? And again, this is a narrative. It's not like a fairy tale story of once upon a time there were three little pigs or the three little bears or Goldilocks or Sleeping Beauty. Hello. How much more dressed up can we get this horror story? You have all these horr I like there's some reasons why I don't like horror stories. I I really can't handle them. Because because i in my culture when we were raised we were there was always the boogeyman, like the equivalent to the boogeyman was Gigi. Or or or these things that you just have taboos that you just don't touch or deal with. So things like that that are so grave and you know, the reality too of even how we how we honor our dead is is totally different than than like the the reality of what people have to face. And so that's why for for us in our community that respect is important because we we don't know how the individual that we've grown up with who've lost someone in their family at what stage of the grieving process they're in. So so being like when they say, you know, be mindful. And and it's for that reason because we know each other. So again my this podcast is taking a differ has taken a different route than than what I thought it would take. And but again too, hey