29 - Sugarcane by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie

In this episode, we discuss the National Geographic documentary Sugarcane, which investigates the legacy of St. Joseph’s Mission residential school in Canada. Prompted by the discovery of unmarked graves at former school sites, the film follows members of the Williams Lake First Nation, including Julian Brave Noisecat and his father Ed, as they search for truth about what happened to children forced to attend the school. Through survivor testimony, archival material, and difficult conversations within families and communities, the documentary reveals the profound and ongoing consequences of the residential school system, where Indigenous children were separated from their families in an attempt to erase their culture. While Sugarcane does not shy away from the horrors of the system, including abuse, missing children, and institutional cover-ups, it also highlights resilience, cultural reclamation, and the long process of healing and accountability within Indigenous communities. 

Content & Spoiler Warning:

Child sexual abuse, institutional abuse, infanticide, unmarked graves, suicide, cultural erasure, genocide, and systemic racism connected to the residential school system in Canada. We also spoil Sugarcane. 

Palate Cleanser

Need something a little lighter?

• Heated Rivalry – surprisingly moving hockey romance Sugarcane transcript
• The Office - or introduce your favourite old sitcom to your kids.

Recommendations:

Podcasts:

• Surviving St. Michael’s (Connie Walker) – Deep investigation into abuse at another residential school. 
• Finding Cleo (also Connie Walker) -Explores ripple effects of residential schools through the story of one family. 
• Behind the Bastards – Canada’s Darkest Secret: Residential Schools (2020 episode) 
• Historica podcast - Residential Schools

Television & Film

• Reservation Dogs – funny and heartwarming series about Indigenous teenagers 
• The Lost Women of Highway 20 – Explores cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women. 
• The Last Ice – A National Geographic documentary about Inuit communities and environmental change. 
• Newsies for shining a light on people who are being abused
• Rabbit-Proof Fence – about Australia’s Stolen Generations, another example of forced child removal. 
• The Sapphires – A lighter film about an Indigenous singing group touring Vietnam during the war. 
• Spotlight and The Keepers – More investigations into abuse by the Catholic Church. 
• 1923 (Yellowstone spinoff) – Includes a storyline about a young Indigenous woman at a residential school. 

Books

• The Only Good Indians and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter – Horror novels by Stephen Graham Jones 
• The Broken Girls – A paranormal boarding-school mystery by Simone St. James. 
• We Survive the Night by Julian Brave NoiseCat – A blend of memoir, Indigenous history, and storytelling. 

Homework for Next Episode

Watch: West of Memphis

Our next episode will feature our first guest, Gillian Pensavalle from True Crime Obsessed and The Hamilcast to discuss the West Memphis Three, and the ongoing fight for their full exoneration.

Then, back to horror with Sinners, featuring Choctaw vampire hunters and 16 Academy Award nominations!

Special thanks to Nancy Azano for our cover art (Instagram: @nancyazano) and Harry Kidd for our music (Instagram: @harryjkidd, Spotify). 

Transcript

Anne 0:10

Welcome back to Drawn To Darkness, a sometimes weekly, sometimes biweekly podcast where we discuss our favorite horror and true crime. If you are horrified by institutionalized child abuse, we're here for you. My name is Annie and I'll be introducing Caroline to my favorite horror movies, podcasts, TV shows and books.

Caroline 0:25

My name is Caroline and I'll be doing the same from the true crime side of things.

Anne 0:29

So question, have you ever been to Canada?

Caroline 0:31

Yes, a couple times. we went for a French class field trip to Montreal and Quebec when I was in high school. Um,

Anne 0:38

college.

Caroline 0:38

no, our high school did it for some reason. and I remember then like you could have an expired passport to get you there. I had my passport with my picture of myself at like three. Um, but then my family also has, recently taken the camper to Nova Scotia and to Niagara Falls.

Anne 0:53

And were you there in summer or winter?

Caroline 0:55

Summer.

Anne 0:55

So it was beautiful, right?

Caroline 0:56

Yes. Gorgeous. But even then I wasn't out west, which looks just stunning.

Anne 1:02

I've only been to Montreal for a school trip and it is the coldest I've ever been in my life. I think.

Caroline 1:08

Hmm.

Anne 1:08

know, I'm from New England. We get pretty cold, but we were staying in a school like on cots. So we were just like in this classroom when for the night. And I just remember like walking around that city and at night, just not being able to get warm. the reason I bring that up is because we are discussing the documentary sugar cane. and I think weather of Canada definitely comes into some of the horrors of this film. before we get too far into it, spoiler and trigger warning, this film and our discussion will. Involved discussion of child sexual abuse, unmarked graves, infanticide child separation, suicide. It's heavy. We'll be spoiling the film. Sugar cane spoiling history. We'll give you a second to pause if you wanna go watch it first. Uh, it's on Disney for me. I don't

Caroline 1:51

Yeah. Disney plus.

Anne 1:53

Okay. Carolyn, can you tell us what this is about?

Caroline 1:54

this is gonna be so hard. Okay. prompted by the discovery of unmarked Graves at former residential school sites, the 2024 National Geographic documentary, sugarcane takes a hard necessary look at what happened at St. Joseph's Mission, a Catholic run residential school in British Columbia. And fair warning, this one is very heavy. The film follows members of the Williams Lake First Nation as they try to piece together what happened to children who were forced to attend the school, how that trauma is still echoing through families today through personal testimony, archival footage, records, and a lot of very difficult conversations. Community members begin searching for truth and accountability in a system that spent decades avoiding both. We also follow Director Julian Brave, no Kat and his father as they confront their own family history tied to the school, along with other survivors and descendants. Grappling with questions of identity parentage and what reconciliation even looks like in real life. There are moments of investigation, moments of confrontation and moments where you just sit there thinking, how did this happen? And for so long, sugar cane doesn't shy away from the horrors of the residential school system, but it also focuses on resilience, cultural reclamation, and the complicated ongoing work of accountability and healing. It is a really, really difficult watch, but an important one, and it stays with you

Anne 3:13

I agree. would you use to describe it?

Caroline 3:15

wrenching.

Anne 3:16

Gut wrenching. I thought mournful, also hopeful.

Caroline 3:20

Hmm.

Anne 3:20

it was so beautifully empathetic. And I say hopeful because of the return to culture. And you know what you mentioned, reclamation of cultural identity that can bring that sense of belonging and healing. And I think it really takes the time to focus on some of those cultural practices. Like we see ed carving, totems, we see them praying traditional dances, smoking ceremonies, and I think there's healing in those rituals.

Caroline 3:42

Mm-hmm.

Anne 3:42

So I see that sense of hope there. you know, I really appreciated all of the scenes where, Julian is trying to learn vocabulary, in their language. And, I'm doing some of that now, like trying to learn Hungarian on Duolingo, which is really hard. Yeah, I.

Caroline 3:58

very, very hard. But, I did find it, impressive and I guess hopeful that. Some of that culture has been retained and can be reclaimed.

Anne 4:07

So this film has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was nominated for an Oscar, making Julian Brave Nose Kat, the first indigenous filmmaker, not actor, but first filmmaker from North America to be nominated for an Academy Award. won best documentary at the National Board of Review and a US documentary directing award at Sundance Film Festival and the best true crime documentary at the Critics Choice Awards. So even if it didn't get that Academy Award, it still has been recognized, as a culturally significant film. just before we get into the horrors of it, just, it's a beautiful movie,

Caroline 4:38

It really made me like jealous of the landscape.

Anne 4:41

well, not the cold. I keep remembering how cold it was, but,

Caroline 4:44

Mm.

Anne 4:44

yeah, the beautiful, like dark, snowy mountain landscapes and, I think that all those long driving scenes really emphasize how far away these places were, how far from help. It kind of reminded me of Twin Peaks, the opening.

Caroline 4:59

Hmm. And actually yesterday was Twin Peaks Day.

Anne 5:01

Yes. Which will be a month or so

Caroline 5:04

Yeah.

Anne 5:05

by the time we this.

Caroline 5:06

Yeah.

Anne 5:06

yeah, I think it, it's slow, right? But I think that reflects the process of recovery and reconciliation. you know, and it allows silence. Like It's really patient. Somebody will say something and it'll linger you can kind of see the emotion passing over people's faces. Like after Rick says, Rick is the one who travels to the Vatican. I think it's when he is talking to that other priest, the oblate from the. IMM sisters or something. he says, my mother was abused and that's how I was born. And it just lingers.

Caroline 5:35

and I really appreciated that priest sitting with it and not trying to make excuses for it.

Anne 5:42

Yeah.,

Caroline 5:43

I wrote down, the priest says and does everything right. And especially after the Pope ridiculous like Robert Durst esque. Okay, bye-bye. You know, like I just couldn't believe that

Anne 5:55

like the Pope's apology. It was very, I'm sorry

Caroline 5:59

empty.

Anne 5:59

as opposed to, I'm sorry we did this to you,

Caroline 6:01

Yeah.

Anne 6:02

bye-bye. And again, I don't wanna judge him too much because maybe it's just a language thing, but like, it felt, flippant

Caroline 6:08

I.

Anne 6:08

bye-bye.

Caroline 6:08

Well, and he ends it with like, pray for me.'cause I pray for you. it just felt so transactional and performative and just empty.

Anne 6:18

at the end as, Rick is leaving the priest is like, I'll do what I can. But, you know,

Caroline 6:23

mm-hmm.

Anne 6:23

that's kind of how it ends. He's kind of acknowledging you know, there's not much that is gonna happen here, but at least he listened.

Caroline 6:30

I meant to look up is there other news about him or whatever, because I, I just felt like there was a big contrast between, and especially this guy who has retained his faith amazingly. I, I just don't know that I would've been able to, I had been in this, I mean, I didn't retain my faith and I was nowhere near this level of abuse. I wasn't abused at all by my religion. So, it is impressive. And then he, you know, he's all dressed up I feel like he was definitely expecting, I don't know, maybe a handshake, something more than, this canned speech with a Okay, bye-bye at the end of it.

Anne 7:02

Yeah. the way he puts so much care into what he's wearing that

Caroline 7:05

I know.

Anne 7:06

courage stone that he's like arranging just so it's clear how much that moment matters to him. And I wonder, do you think his faith is wavering?

Caroline 7:15

Yes. Cause they spend all that time talking about his DNA and I need more proof, which I also thought was so interesting for someone who has so much faith in something that can't be proven to be denying something that is clearly being proven is an interesting, juxtaposition or whatever, or contradiction. But then, for him to be sitting there and then go ahead and say it like he is admitting that he's digested it and, come to terms with how he came about, you know, and

Anne 7:43

having

Caroline 7:44

voice to it.

Anne 7:44

his wife,

Caroline 7:45

Yeah.

Anne 7:46

I think he has accepted it. And she's funny. She's like, are you serious? Like you don't, you don't

Caroline 7:51

Yeah.

Anne 7:51

like. got a kick out of her the way she's making sure he has the right socks and multiple tubes of toothpaste. Like how many tubes of toothpaste do you need?

Caroline 7:58

It was reminding me of Toy Story to bloopers when she's like, and I'm in your angry eyes, just in case.

Anne 8:04

angry at us. So Father McGrath, interestingly enough, I Googled him because I was like, I wanna see if anything else has come out about this guy. And there are three abusive Father McGraths,, just that came up on the first page, there's a brother in Australia there's another guy quite recently in the Chicago area. So it just goes to show how many abusive priests or so-called pests there were. And I say that pests with sarcastic apostrophe fingers, because I don't like that word.

Caroline 8:31

Yeah, and I know we covered this like exhaustively in spotlight and all that stuff, but. The admission that every principal at this school was aware, involved, and all these people were aware of what was happening, but they had this position of, oh well the church does so much good or whatever. And it just reminded me of the Dow being over 50,000 and whatever, you know, like

Anne 8:52

Yeah.

Caroline 8:52

people who are complicit in, generational trauma and abuse for the sake of what they're perceiving as being worth it

Anne 9:01

So much collateral damage

Caroline 9:02

so much.

Anne 9:03

an outcome that, I don't know if it's worth it. I feel like you can be a good person without, without this,

Caroline 9:09

I don't need the doubt to be where it is.

Anne 9:11

no. Well, that only matters if you have

Caroline 9:14

Right. Like, I don't even know what that means for me. Nothing.

Anne 9:16

Most people don't. Right. I think I said this in our spotlight episode, and you wanna be my latex salesman, like, you wanna

Caroline 9:22

Right.

Anne 9:22

spiritual guide. You wanna tell me how to act when you are a part of this? I, I also feel like we're sort of desensitized to this of church leaders being the abusers, because it's so common. We're like, oh, right. Another, you know, pedophile priest. But like, it's such a violation. It's such a subversion of their mission. And we shouldn't be desensitized. We should be just as appalled every time it happens. I think it was, He talks about being forced to go to confession, and then that same priest dragging you outta bed. then Julian interviews an older woman. At one point, I, I didn't catch her name, but she said, the ones that were telling us it was a sin, they were the ones that did all the action.

Caroline 9:58

And it reminds me of the people in charge right now, pointing their fingers at groomers and stuff like that. Supposedly drag queen story hours being the problem. And it's like, no, you, you're like a documented problem you.

Anne 10:11

Yeah. regarding Rick and his faith, I wondered that when I saw, you know, the kind of emotions on his face, like what percentage of indigenous people in Canada, our Christian, and it has fallen since 2011, from 63% to 47% by 2021. So lots indigenous people are leaving the church. And I know people are leaving churches in general, right? But, this Broadview article said indigenous people are leaving the church at higher rates than the general population,

Caroline 10:39

Okay.

Anne 10:40

that more people are returning to the Red Road, which is a traditional indigenous spiritual path. And Julian references this in one of the articles I read about him. So whether it's because they're maybe becoming disgusted with what Christianity did to them, or because they are finding a better sense of belonging and a more traditional pathway, more indigenous people are leaving Christianity, which I thought was interesting.

Caroline 11:01

I was, observing the reconnection to the roots with a sense of, longing, I guess. I am the daughter of an immigrant who was a refugee. And her parents were Holocaust survivors. So there was a very desperate need to assimilate and, a high sensitivity to any behaviors that my mom would've done or I would've done, that are not assimilation, like, I was just looking, there's a Girl Scout event on Saturday with a cultural thing and event at our school and there was an open invitation, like if you have a cultural something to share, and like, I'm sad, I have no connection to my roots or whatever. And also everyone has now passed, so I couldn't get one if I wanted to, you know? and so I was looking at it with, you know, a real appreciation and, and a wish that, More populations had this ability.'cause, I'm sure so much has been lost,

Anne 11:56

well, with indigenous people, I it was very deliberately severed, particularly in these situations, like there was a

Caroline 12:02

were told to do it.

Anne 12:03

The Indian problem,

Caroline 12:04

Right.

Anne 12:05

the desire to return to that culture is strong because it was forcibly removed. But you see even like, you know, and this is a stupid comparison maybe, but the way with Irish heritage like freak out on St. Patrick's Day,

Caroline 12:17

Yeah.

Anne 12:17

right? Like people wanna feel that sense of belonging to something greater than themselves.

Caroline 12:22

Yeah.

Anne 12:23

I don't know whether it's DNA or just in my head, but I know like when I went and traveled in Scotland and I've got, you know, Scottish roots, it felt right,

Caroline 12:31

Mm.

Anne 12:31

Like it felt right to go to that place, to that land.

Caroline 12:34

you're so right. It is a big distinction between when you, either by necessity or not play an active role in erasure of your culture versus when you're forced to do it.

Anne 12:44

Yeah, I think a lot of people their cultural erasure is just passive. It's just kind of happened

Caroline 12:49

Yeah.

Anne 12:50

know, people moved and people died and yeah. So there's a big difference here. well there is a lot of religious iconography in this, the very opening image is what looks like a bloody Madonna and child, and we see Rick studying art and sculpture at the Vatican where there are unreturned indigenous artifacts. So, yeah, it is an interesting, I guess, contradiction that so many people who were victims of this maintain the religion of their victimizers.

Caroline 13:14

Yeah.

Anne 13:14

come down hard on religion a lot, but and I think as you said, there's definitely an argument to be made that it does more harm than good. but at the same time, I know a lot of people get comfort from their faith. I have people in my life who are very faithful the general principles about being kind and generous and good to neighbors are very valid. So get why Rick would want to stick with it, because he has a sense of community there.

Caroline 13:35

Well, and his wife says the thing about like, people are, are human infallible and it's not Jesus's fault or whatever, which I can appreciate, and I think the position we have taken is that organized religion is a space where people with bad intentions have utilized the situation to exploit and abuse. But it doesn't mean that faith in itself is exploitative and abusive. that's not the problem. the people who abuse it are the problem.

Anne 14:04

Well, let's talk about some of the context and setting here. so there were about 130 residential schools operating Canada between 1874 and 1996,

Caroline 14:14

couldn't believe that date.

Anne 14:15

1996,

Caroline 14:16

I couldn't believe it.

Anne 14:17

Wasn't that like, when Scream came out

Caroline 14:19

Yeah,

Anne 14:20

Yeah.

Caroline 14:21

I think that was when. Sorry, this is so not appropriate for this moment, but I think that was when I first kissed my husband.

Anne 14:28

Aw, check take. Caroline found a way to work her

Caroline 14:33

Uh, yeah.

Anne 14:34

well, the goal as I said earlier, was to deal with the Indian problem. So it's inherent that these people were viewed as a problem. So 150,000 indigenous children attended these schools many times they were forced, the Indian Act. Which I think most countries have a similar act. Australia certainly does. in addition to introducing residential schools, also create reservations and restricted residents from leaving without a pass, denied them the right to vote. So there's all this kind of stuff in the background that is going on that is also horrible. and the goal was to kill the Indian and the child. The goal was assimilation, cultural erasure, and I've got this quote John McDonald. The great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal systems and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the dominion, as speedily as they are fit to change. And then, so that was in 1887, I think. And the Davin report pushed for more aggressive assimilation with boarding school because they used to have like just day schools to do this. And they were like, that's not good enough because, and in quotes, the wigwam influence was stronger. Then the school. to truly sever connection, you had to take them away from their families. If they go home at night, they're still influenced. So they were very there about what the goals were. saying the quiet part out loud.

Caroline 15:48

Mm.

Anne 15:49

So in my quest for knowledge about this issue, I listened to a Behind the Bastards episode on residential schools, and also there's a three part historical, podcast. It's just three episodes and, it goes into several other schools. what I'm getting from, from this, from Connie Walker's podcast, surviving St. Michael's from the Camloops, and I hope I'm pronouncing that right, site it's just like, I think if you look into any one of these schools. you're gonna find horror.

Caroline 16:13

the levels of horror are just, just shock after shock, you know?

Anne 16:18

Yeah. And in behind the bastards, they kind of frame the schools as part of a gradual, multi-pronged strategy to take that land back. move them off the good land, slowly disenfranchise, sever them from their culture. So they assimilate. And then the reservations can be taken back

Caroline 16:32

Mm-hmm.

Anne 16:32

And anyone who has watched her bread, killers of the flower moon know far white people have been to acquire land that they perceive as valuable.

Caroline 16:40

it sort of reminded me of and it was capitalism all along. As you're wrong about

Anne 16:45

of that?

Caroline 16:45

likes to say.

Anne 16:46

Well, let's talk about conditions at these schools. Uh, bad. they had in common with workhouses than boarding schools poorly built for the weather.. high rates of tuberculosis they weren't giving them the best education. It was kind of like a fifth grade level, they were basically preparing them for manual labor and domestic service. They suffered from malnutrition. Feeling hungry was persistent. And survivors tell stories of searching through rubbish bins for food. Did you know about the nutritional experiments performed on malnourished kids?

Caroline 17:14

Do I want to,

Anne 17:15

probably not, but it's very Tuskegee,

Caroline 17:17

Hmm.

Anne 17:17

which is a past episode. So I found this in a pediatric medical journal. Unethical nutritional experiments were performed on a thousand. Canadian Aboriginal children at six residential schools between 1942 and 1952, parents were not informed, no consent was given. So basically these kids were already malnourished. Like they knew that. And so they were like, okay, well let's give half the kids supplements like riboflavin and as soic acid to see if that would offset the malnutrition and not do anything about the other kids. and then they did another type of experiment where they did the same thing with like flour that was, fortified with stuff, but again, they knew the kids were malnourished and instead of just feeding all of them more, they performed an experiment to see, well, what will happen?

Caroline 17:58

But like, but why? For what purpose?

Anne 18:00

I think it was something to do with creating like formula and stuff

Caroline 18:03

so capitalism.

Anne 18:05

capitalism all along.

Caroline 18:06

Okay.

Anne 18:06

Yeah. I think one of the companies that was involved was also making. so experimenting on kids without their consent, who are dying of malnutrition, to see and then use that to make money, capitalism all along.

Caroline 18:18

It's so exhausting.

Anne 18:19

Yeah,

Caroline 18:19

Ugh.

Anne 18:20

it's terrible. Obviously, another factor was the separation. lots of dehumanizing stuff. Everyone was giving a number,

Caroline 18:26

number part, the number part I really fixated on, especially like. cause we've talked about cult stuff and this is a cult tactic as well. it's also, sorry to like lighten it, I guess, but, I always think about that aspect of Star Wars, FN 2, 1, 8, 7, being Finn, the new character Finn all the storm troopers just have numbers and they're called by their numbers, not by their names.

Anne 18:49

you specified because I don't know those new ones

Caroline 18:50

yeah.

Anne 18:51

thinking, Jean 2, 4, 6 0 1,

Caroline 18:53

Yes,

Anne 18:54

well established as a dehumanizing technique, we know this. And I feel like most of my viewing, I was focused on how the kids felt, right? Children. Losing their parents and that, you know, they talk about kids crying at night but then I was also thinking about, this is so sad for the parents too. Your kid would come back, with the language and cultural knowledge, like beaten out of them and maybe not be able to relate in the way they used to. So again, those ripple effects that are touched on on this, like as you said, we see asking his grandma how to say certain words. So all these horrors of this severed attachment. imagine your own kid just being there for like months on end. So sad.

Caroline 19:29

I am a very, cynical and easily exhausted person, I guess, I just was thinking about how exhausting it is to be an, an outsider aware of this systemic abuse and circumstance and feel helpless just imagine being a victim of it. I don't know how they dealt with their level of despair and hopelessness especially when it came to witnessing the erasure of their culture embodied by their children coming home.

Anne 20:00

dealt

Caroline 20:01

Yes. We see it.

Anne 20:02

suicide,

Caroline 20:03

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Anne 20:04

are reactions to this. yeah, and a lot of stories talk about kids being basically dragged off kicking and screaming.

Caroline 20:10

Mm-hmm.

Anne 20:11

uh, podcast. This was An Inuit man, and he talks about. seal fishing and then like this priest showing up and just taking him and no consultation with his parents. describes it as there was a bit of commotion, but like, can just imagine what really happened. and again, not every parent resisted and had their kid dragging off, kicking and screaming. Like some probably thought they were doing the best thing for them in this world that they were living in, but a lot were taken very forcibly and, and put in cattle cars. So when you think about like, imagery that we associate with dehumanization, shipping people off in a cattle car and giving them a number, know this is wrong.

Caroline 20:44

Mm-hmm.

Anne 20:45

oh, and, and another thing like that is the cutting of hair, you know, also has a history of humiliation. Corporal punishment for speaking their language. Lots of kids have stories about getting beaten for that. And for some, it was the first time they would've worn non-traditional clothing, which was insufficient. Right.

Caroline 21:00

so some of these girls, little girls are pregnant so they probably have to pee a lot and they're hungrier, know, then they would, right. And then, they already are abused if they weren't pregnant in those circumstances, like how much more torturous that would be.

Anne 21:15

they probably weren't allowed to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I'm sure they weren't.

Caroline 21:18

No, I'm sure they weren't either. And that always freaks me out. Like, I remember that being upsetting and orange is the new black because I have never in my life not had to pee in the middle of the night, you know? let alone pregnant, my God, I used to have to stop at a rest, stop to pee on my commute to work when I was pregnant.

Anne 21:34

No. we always have to pause this podcast

Caroline 21:36

I know too.

Anne 21:38

I mean, we cut that out so you don't have to hear it, but yeah. remember we talked about perceived notions of superiority and inferiority in Mexican Gothic, and the colonists coming in with the assumption that they're better, right? So that everything we're doing We're helping you because we're better. one of these podcasts I listened to was talking about how, well, no, like Inuit clothing was so much better. Like these people knew this land and how to survive there. And think that guy talked about punishment of taking off, like they took a kid's coat because she'd misbehaved and she had to get through the winter without a coat.

Caroline 22:07

the identification of better is through a white lens, and it's not necessarily correct.

Anne 22:12

No, and that ties into the shame,

Caroline 22:14

Mm-hmm.

Anne 22:15

We're building up to the worst stuff. But, I think it was Julian's aunt said, I felt dirty as an Indian. My all my life from the residential

Caroline 22:22

Mm-hmm.

Anne 22:23

us shame and guilt. So there's a lot of verbal shaming, words like dirty little Indians, savages, and just the mean language is overshadowed by the physical and sexual abuse that we're going on to discuss, but that's also really harmful in producing this legacy of shame that has resulted in the problems that still exist today. Then there was other abuse, that wasn't sexual. Rick talks about holding the Bible over his head kneeling for an hour.

Caroline 22:46

Yeah. I don't know how you would do that.

Anne 22:48

I don't think I could.

Caroline 22:49

Do you remember we had a contest of holding our arms up?

Anne 22:51

Yes.

Caroline 22:52

Yeah. No, I won. I won. Yeah. It's like the only time I've ever beat you in anything.

Anne 22:58

Oh, wow.

Caroline 22:58

That's how I remember.

Anne 23:00

That's how you remember.

Caroline 23:00

Yeah.

Anne 23:02

yeah. We just held our arms out straight, not

Caroline 23:04

Yeah.

Anne 23:04

anything

Caroline 23:05

We had both. We had both gotten married recently, like you had done P 90 X and I had done insanity, so we were like at peak physical ability and adults,

Anne 23:14

anymore.

Caroline 23:15

no.

Anne 23:16

No, but these poor babies holding that Bible, like, brutal. And get things like getting beaten for wedding, the bed, just horrific. Uh, physical abuse. And then that brings me to the sexual abuse. you know, there are stories about St. Joseph's and sugar cane. There's stories coming out of Camloops. There's the sexual abuse in St. Michael's, surviving St. Michael's, the Connie Walker podcast. the first episode of the three Part Residential Schools podcast focuses on Gordon's school. So, yeah, as I said, I feel like every school, if you actually look into it, there's gonna be bad stuff. Maybe not sexual abuse at every school, but even if sexual abuse isn't happening, even if you were lucky enough to attend one where the priests weren't doing that, you know, you look at the cultural ratio, the separation from parents, the shame, it's damaging enough.

Caroline 23:59

I would be willing to bet. That it occurred at every school, but maybe not every generation of student at every school,

Anne 24:05

Yeah. So maybe there was a priest at this one,

Caroline 24:08

Right. At one time or another. Yeah,

Anne 24:10

he got moved somewhere

Caroline 24:11

exactly.

Anne 24:11

decade. cause like if you've got, um, 50 years of being a priest and you're getting moved around, you could do a lot of damage in a lot of different places.

Caroline 24:17

And I've watched a lot of things that shine a light on that tactic of moving the priests around. I have never watched one that explained any sort of, whether it's true or not ethical perspective, I could understand, except for when this priest was like, well, the thought was if we took them away from their temptation or whatever, I absolutely, in every other situation in Spotlight and Keepers was just like, oh, they're sweeping things under the rug. They're trying to protect themselves. But the thought that there might have been some people who thought they were doing the right thing because it would have solved the problem somehow never even occurred to me.

Anne 24:54

I guess it's how cynical are we? How cynical are they? they just sweeping it under the rug or did some of them actually think maybe they were doing the right thing? I don't know.

Caroline 25:03

I bet some did. I don't think all did. And certainly when there's evidence that it doesn't actually to keep doing it is really idiotic, but maybe as a first pass of maybe this will solve the problem. Okay. but when it's clear it didn't work, you

Anne 25:19

it's an inclination and it's not gonna go away.

Caroline 25:22

even before you understand, it's an inclination, you have the evidence of like, I moved him three times and it's still happening. Just fire him. You know,

Anne 25:30

Another, ripple effect of this is there was abuse amongst the children of each other. Right. They learned to abuse each other.

Caroline 25:37

Sure.

Anne 25:38

I'm not saying just sexual abuse, but physically because it was this dog eat dog world to get enough food to survive, and so kids would. Do what they had to, to survive.. And then you have that flow on effect of generational abuse. But you know, if you look at rates of, say, reported sexual abuse or suicide before these things happened, this wasn't a rampant problem. They were and I guess the sexual abuse leads us to potentially infanticide,

Caroline 26:04

Ugh.

Anne 26:05

if girls were getting pregnant because of what the priests were doing, how far did they go to cover that up? certainly when you combine, stories told to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, you look at the numbers of people who are potentially mis missing, you know, obviously not everybody died that way. You know, it could have been malnutrition, it could have been tuberculosis, it could have been, exposure, but I. Were kids murdered to cover up the sexual abuse. Pretty fucking dark.

Caroline 26:28

and the groundskeeper person who is just like, I mean the ripple effect again of the people who are destroyed by their proximity to the situation It's really, shocking. I, I don't even know if there's a word big enough for it. I was also thinking about the adoption element and the spin, speaking of a potentially excusable spin on moving priests around the spin on like, oh, there's a sudden boom of native children who need adoption. these people just be getting pregnant. You know? Like they're not doing, they're not getting pregnant by choice. these are children of children. They're not abandoned children of adults.

Anne 27:08

that's explored in finding Cleo as well.

Caroline 27:10

Ugh.

Anne 27:10

the mother actually sees her kids in the newspaper and she's like trying to get them back and they all end up getting adopted anyway cause she didn't understand the system.

Caroline 27:19

Mm-hmm.

Anne 27:19

a pretty horrifying moment. Well, and then that leads to, you know, one of the reasons for the high number of deaths could also be suicide.

Caroline 27:26

Yeah,

Anne 27:27

movie ends with the texts that indigenous people are still dying from residential schools.

Caroline 27:31

sure.

Anne 27:32

According to the Center for Suicide Prevention, suicide was a very rare occurrence among First Nations and Inuit people until contact with Europeans. Suicide and self-harm is the leading cause of death for First Nations youth and adults up to 44. The suicide rate is three times higher than the national average, and for Inuit people specifically, it's nine times, which

Caroline 27:49

Jesus.

Anne 27:49

that like took my breath away.

Caroline 27:50

Everything here takes my breath away. it's just, ugh. it's so hard to witness and talk about, but I think the alternative is not acceptable, it,

Anne 28:00

think bearing witness

Caroline 28:02

yeah.

Anne 28:02

only you can do.

Caroline 28:04

Right. To your earlier point about silence and the way the documentary lets people sit in silent moments, there is a lot of shining a light on. mean, I couldn't believe the number of people that he was engaged who were like family, either technically or just called auntie. and I wasn't totally clear each time. But that. They were like, do you know the story of my dad? And they were like, no. And it's, you just don't talk about the things, or are they just saying that? Because I know, I also, have come from a circumstance where you don't talk about the things that have happened or you lie. So, that obviously could be the case as well. But certainly nothing gets resolved in silence.

Anne 28:43

Yeah. So there's two of silence here. There's the silence of the film itself as we sit in silence and have to face emotions, these people are going through. But also, yeah, this, familial silence of keeping secrets

Caroline 28:56

Mm-hmm.

Anne 28:57

the, that causes, which I think when we get to Julian and Ed's relationship, we can explore that a little bit

Caroline 29:03

Mm-hmm.

Anne 29:04

Do you remember that scene of Willie, chief Willie telling his kids about a suicide in the family?

Caroline 29:08

Yeah.

Anne 29:08

You see it kind of in their faces, that those kids to face that trauma too, And it's not really explored deeply, but it, I think it's just to point out. And as a reminder of those disproportionately high suicide rates that are affecting the descendants.

Caroline 29:22

Mm-hmm.

Anne 29:22

Also explored in Cleo and also, that layered guy, his mother didn't want him because he was white and that no one accepted them, and he was given away to an

Caroline 29:31

Mm-hmm.

Anne 29:31

abusive family, but like his own dad was raping his own kids, And seven out of 11 kids died by suicide.

Caroline 29:37

Did you notice all the, um,, medication on the top of his fridge?

Anne 29:41

I didn't. No.

Caroline 29:42

It was just lined with medication, which of course, you know.

Anne 29:46

so Julian and his dad, I loved their, I don't know, their journey towards reconciliation,

Caroline 29:52

even just singing old man together in the car, and it. Yeah, swimming, there was a lot of like silent time in the car singing things and I was like, why aren't you on the radio? I mean, I'm a person, I need noise constantly. So like, I was playing, you know, we're on day three of fricking snow days here, following a week off school, and we were playing board games today and I was just like, I can't sit here without background music playing. Um.

Anne 30:17

too long to take their turns. Right. I'm always saying a quick game's a good game. Quick game's a good game. Like come

Caroline 30:21

Mm-hmm.

Anne 30:22

Yeah. Well I think with Julian, he's a part of this,

Caroline 30:26

Mm-hmm.

Anne 30:26

the filmmaker, but he's also deeply connected. it's the story of a son investigating his father's trauma and trying to find that healing. I found this article written by him called How Getting Stoned with my dad Helped us Heal.

Caroline 30:38

Nice.

Anne 30:38

cause they're both alcoholics and he went and lived with his dad for two years during the filming of this.

Caroline 30:45

Wow.

Anne 30:45

you know, his dad had left when he was six, so they didn't really grow up together. Right. I'm not saying the relationship is perfect because there's still a lot of damage there, but like they've grown together and uh, he just talks about being able to have fun and be goofy with him and how that helped them.

Caroline 30:58

Yeah, that was really beautiful. it was so nice to see. in the current environment, et cetera, there's a lot of feelings of anger and betrayal and resentment about, kinda anything where people disagree. it was really nice to see his level of grace. And ability to engage with his father on all these levels and still try to hold him accountable for the ways that he perpetuated his own circumstances. And his father not running away from that. he clearly did not know how to fix it. It's not necessarily fixable. but he wasn't defensive, I didn't think,

Anne 31:36

gets pushback, for dredging it all up again. Like why would you wanna talk about that, from multiple people, not, you know, like the aunties and stuff like that.

Caroline 31:43

he gets pushback, but then when he pushes, they're not like, what did you expect me to do? You know, like, I, I don't know.

Anne 31:50

not defensive.

Caroline 31:51

They're not defensive and ang they're not, I just feel like there's so many people who, like, Davo, they're just like

Anne 31:57

Yeah.

Caroline 31:57

turned it around on the, on the other person so that they can be a victim. And I didn't feel like anyone here was interested in victim hood.

Anne 32:06

Yeah, well, ed is a victim of this, as known survivor of the incinerator. He's Baby X. According to the 1959 issue of the Williams Lake Tribune, states a newborn babe was found abandoned in a garbage burner at the Caribou Residential School, late on the night of August 16th. Mother charged and spent a year in jail. you know, Julian reads this article out to him and we kind of see his expression again as he's having to listen to this history of his own life, right? And so I guess regardless of whether the father is a priest, I don't think the father is a priest here.

Caroline 32:38

it wasn't clear to me who the father was.

Anne 32:40

when Julian is talking to his aunts, she says like, oh, your uncle, or like, my, so like, I think they know who he is

Caroline 32:47

what I thought was that the father was a priest, but that after the fact she married, you know, because she would've been a student in the school and the baby, if she went to jail, then that, that's what I was assuming, that it was like a father who raised him, not a father who birthed him.

Anne 33:05

Okay. One way or the other.

Caroline 33:06

Yeah.

Anne 33:07

she was definitely in a residential

Caroline 33:09

Mm-hmm.

Anne 33:09

She was severed from her family. She probably didn't know how to be a mom. Right. And even if she had wanted this kid, And then she passes that on to her Ed, who doesn't know how to be a dad and leaves Julian's mom at six. And again, it's just the cycle and legacy of trauma. that all stems back to being at those schools.

Caroline 33:26

Mm-hmm.

Anne 33:26

Julian talks about that kind of sweet moment where they both talk about how they would watch the other until they were out of sight

Caroline 33:32

Mm-hmm.

Anne 33:32

and that feeling of abandonment, Ed was abandoned, but he also abandoned, like, how do you be a good parent when your own upbringing is so traumatic and so severed from family. Yeah. So I loved when they went swimming together and

Caroline 33:44

I felt like at the end they came to an answer. That we didn't need to know. We just knew that they knew, the information they were searching for was something they were able to come to together about and have closure on. And that beautiful, him doing his hair at the end,

Anne 34:01

Yeah. And they're holding hands at one

Caroline 34:02

yeah. seemingly a ceremony to, to release, this negativity and burden. So I was sort of like, I don't actually need to know the details of this life. I just wanna know that they know it.

Anne 34:14

He's really sweet with his grandma too, Julian.

Caroline 34:16

Yeah.

Anne 34:17

I'm not k I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right. I looked it up. But it, it means grandma

Caroline 34:21

Mm-hmm.

Anne 34:21

term for elderly women. So that's what he calls her. and you know, I think that's arguably the most impactful scene when they are with the grandma asking her directly about what happened. We don't actually see her. We just hear the audio of her crying. I don't like to talk about it, broke my heart.

Caroline 34:36

Yeah,

Anne 34:37

So what about Chief Willie Sellers? What do you think of him?

Caroline 34:40

he was the young guy who got the abusive email right.

Anne 34:44

Yeah. Those like the mean tweets,

Caroline 34:45

Yeah.

Anne 34:46

rough scene.

Caroline 34:46

I was so mad and again, was very impressed by his ability to be, be better. I thought he was great. I had one question. The scene when, um, he's getting the orange donuts and there's those white guys in the thing are, are they paying dicks when they're like, can I have a donut? Did you catch that?

Anne 35:04

that was because of that like was it reconciliation

Caroline 35:06

Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Anne 35:09

Yeah. I don't know. They could have just been like, no, you keep your donuts. But maybe they were refusing it because

Caroline 35:14

No.

Anne 35:15

symbolic. I

Caroline 35:15

It was I didn't think they were refusing it to be insulting. I think they were, they had said like, can I have one of those, like, to be obnoxious, and that he was just like, yeah, have one. You know, and then they were like, no, no, no. backing down almost.

Anne 35:28

Oh, okay. I don't know, I just, I, I interpreted as just like old guys being goofy outta Dunking Donuts. But yeah, it could be, I mean, they included it for a reason,

Caroline 35:36

Mm-hmm.

Anne 35:37

yeah, the mean tweets, like cheap welfare parasites, Where were you when your children were being abused? There's a lot of parent blaming, terrible use of words savages. This really ties into something, which is one of the deeper horrors I wanted to talk about, which is residential school denialism. When I started Googling this, just to kind of, you know, find out some more information, one of the first things that CO came up was this Medium article poking a lot of holes in it, right? And saying, well, you know, the graves haven't turned up anything. Maybe they're not even there. There's no actual evidence. We don't have names for these so-called missing kids. one article I found said, is a documentary in which facts don't matter. Graves are not evidence of nefarious deeds and neither are garbage burners, nor is one person's eyewitness testimony. know, evidence matters like we're gonna be talking about. We, we documentary next week where it's based on a lot of hearsay and hysteria and evidence does matter. But there is so much testimony about this, and. you know, and I guess like, you know, some of these people commenting on Chief Willie Sellers, emailing him, they could be bots, right? All this asking where the evidence is and everything like this. then I found, okay, I was feeling very Lester Freeman from the Wire. Okay.

Caroline 36:45

Mm-hmm.

Anne 36:46

so I found this website, it looks superficial. I can't remember what it's called. I thought I wrote it down somewhere, but The homepage is like false memory syndrome, mass hysteria, greed, propel, indigenous grievances, and all the testimony, all the articles on the website are like, well, I wasn't abused. or a nice article about something that happened at this school and then this section on misconceptions that are all kind of contradicting what survivors are saying. And I started to look into some of these things and one of them is a Canadian, uh, the Fraser Institute, which is a Canadian right wing, think tank funded by the Koch brothers.

Caroline 37:18

Oh my fucking God. You're kidding me.

Anne 37:20

So why would American billionaires care about discrediting indigenous narratives about residential schools? What do you think?

Caroline 37:27

It was capitalism all along.

Anne 37:29

Yeah, they're like,

Caroline 37:30

Resources.

Anne 37:31

oil barons, right?

Caroline 37:33

Yeah. Yeah.

Anne 37:34

so they're pro oil. It's probably ultimately about access to land and cutting off funding, right?

Caroline 37:38

Absolutely

Anne 37:39

So yes, I felt very like, I was like following the money,

Caroline 37:42

right. I mean, and that's what I don't understand when this happens because any decent person right, would be like, okay, if there are people that feel so strongly the opposite of me in terms of what's a conspiracy and what's accurate, maybe I'm wrong, right? And that comes across my mind all the time. But then I'm like, but I don't understand who benefits in a circumstance where I'm wrong. And I do understand who benefits if they're wrong. You know, like I feel like my perception is based on yes evidence and all that stuff, but also like. who benefits and who pays for the opposite opinion, and knowing that my opinion is not funded by billionaires, you know?

Anne 38:25

Yeah. So whether it's the environmental aspect to try to discredit so that they can have access to oil, or they're just trying to avoid paying for programs that help indigenous people. It could just be as simple as that. Right. and it, it got me thinking back to catch and kill, in terms of media narratives I, I always get suspicious when the narrative suddenly turns for or against a person and Asking who

Caroline 38:46

Right.

Anne 38:47

saying

Caroline 38:47

Mm-hmm.

Anne 38:48

Who benefits from poking holes this story? And the fact that articles I read all kind of stem back to the points raised in this official looking website. And the other thing is like, well, okay, how would this be substantiated? What's good enough evidence? what hard evidence would actually count when something happened this long ago when the perpetrators are dead or senile? The crime site is compromised when all we have really is victim testimony and so much victim testimony.

Caroline 39:16

So much

Anne 39:17

gun? Right.

Caroline 39:18

right.

Anne 39:18

listening to people who were there and, and we're not actually talking about prosecuting anyone at this point. Right. So we don't really need beyond a reasonable doubt, we're just saying like, this history happened. Oh, I also, you know, whenever I'm researching for one of these things, I just put in the podcast search engine, like whatever we're talking about, and I think I put residential schools in came across interview with this guy called David Thrum. Have you heard of him? And as I'm listening to him, I'm going like, fuck this guy. I hate everything he's saying. I'm about five minutes in before I'm like pausing. And turns out he was a neo-conservative former speech writer for George W. Bush. So there's a lot of people out there denying that this happened, implying that it wasn't that bad or that they did it to themselves. So, that has to be fought back against.

Caroline 40:01

it's so exhausting. There's so many bad people.

Anne 40:04

Yeah,

Caroline 40:04

Uh,

Anne 40:04

yeah. Well, let's go back to, was there anything else you wanted to say about the chief?

Caroline 40:09

I thought, the scene with his kids was sweet. I also liked, I saw his reply to one of these emails was like, I was born in 19, whatever. when it said like, where were you when these kids were being ripped away and whatever, and he's like, I, yeah.

Anne 40:22

Yeah. What about Charlene?

Caroline 40:24

one of the things I really appreciated here, both Charlene and, um, Whitney, the archeologist, I was getting very strong, let the women do the work vibes, which is of course Jillian Penn's, side podcast. She had, Jillian from True Crime Obsessed.

Anne 40:41

to one with her interviewing Connie Walker about finding Cleo. It's really good. Can we cover finding Cleo

Caroline 40:45

Sure, yeah.

Anne 40:46

Not now. I feel like we, we need a break from this heaviness, but, you know, maybe

Caroline 40:50

We're. Yes, we are. So we're gonna have a couple weeks of heavy, and we may or may not hear from very important people that we might have just mentioned. But, but yeah, so I was getting very strong, like let the women do the work vibes. And I do have, I did go to Obsessed Fest one year and I do have a hoodie that says, let the women do the work on, the back.

Anne 41:08

Nice. Better than, I don't really care. Do you on the back of your clothes? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Caroline 41:13

I thought I did.

Anne 41:14

a Melania,

Caroline 41:15

Oh, right. Yes, Ugh.

Anne 41:17

Well, yeah. So she's the investigator For William First Lake Nation and her uncle died by suicide at the school. And I thought she was beautiful. She had such dignity and she reminded me two of like the ladies in the keepers,

Caroline 41:27

Yeah.

Anne 41:28

getting older, but they are not giving up. And I love a red string wall.

Caroline 41:31

Yeah.

Anne 41:32

I always love her ing wall. I really felt for her in that scene when she calls up Father Dowdy, who's like the only one

Caroline 41:37

Uhhuh,

Anne 41:38

alive and he just can't get off the phone fast enough and you can just, again, like you see the dismay in her face. The what now?

Caroline 41:44

and he just keeps calling her like, dear or something like that.

Anne 41:47

Yeah. He is like, yes dear. Yes dear.

Caroline 41:48

Ugh.

Anne 41:48

isn't that terrible, dear. I also liked how they showed old footage of her when she

Caroline 41:53

Mm-hmm.

Anne 41:53

dark hair. Like it just shows how long she's been in this fight

Caroline 41:56

I love the montage of her like pushing,

Anne 41:58

yeah. And that scene where she in the attic with, with Julianne

Caroline 42:03

Yeah.

Anne 42:03

She's kind of passing the torch, right? Like she's worked her whole life and now he's going to be the one to continue her fight and stand up. And I found that really inspirational and it reminded me of, and, or like I burned my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see.

Caroline 42:17

Hmm

Anne 42:18

worked her life. She doesn't have much time left, but can continue. Was there anything else you wanna say about Charlene?

Caroline 42:25

was it her who mentioned that, she told her grandmother about the abuse and the grandmother said to tell the nun, and the nun said to tell the priest, and the priest said to tell the RCMB and the RCMB said to tell the Indian agent. And then they said to tell the father, and then the father beat her. I couldn't remember who said it. I wrote it down.

Anne 42:43

It was Rosalyn Sam.

Caroline 42:45

Okay.

Anne 42:45

Yep. So it wasn't Charlene. that was a very impactful moment

Caroline 42:49

Yeah.

Anne 42:49

and definitely one of the, I think most upsetting moments, just the lack of escape.

Caroline 42:53

Yeah.

Anne 42:54

you talked about in Mexican Gothic, how you always have an escape plan

Caroline 42:57

Mm-hmm.

Anne 42:58

danger, and these kids had no escape. They were geographically isolated. There was a power differential and they were little. Right. Now, what do you think was the most upsetting moment for you? If it's something we haven't already talked about?

Caroline 43:11

It's hard to even say, but children, witnessing babies being thrown in the incinerator, I think was the most upsetting for me. what the children witnessed and anyone who witnessed in the potential of this happening, which I do believe happened, they're all too horrified to put words to it, because it's too horrible for words.

Anne 43:33

I think for me, when they brought that woman in the wheelchair out to the field, Cecilia Paul, and she's got memories of a boy being buried in a field and she got the strap and couldn't walk. And I don't know if, has she been in a wheelchair her whole life because of witnessing that and the way she was beaten? Like I, it's not clear,

Caroline 43:50

Right.

Anne 43:50

or if that was a separate condition, but just the way she was kind of shaking was very hard to watch. The attic scene,

Caroline 43:56

Mm-hmm.

Anne 43:57

inscriptions. the attic scene I think was also hopeful because we've got, as I said, Charlene passing on the torch to Julian. But like, 73 more days till home, Lucy's baby crying when she describes kids being strung up and, and lashed. that attic scene is straight out of a horror movie and it's real. Yeah. We've already talked about, Wesley Jackson, who was the janitor, Julian and Ed talking to the grandma and only being able to hear, we talked about Rosalyn Sam's testimony. I think for me this is, you know, just the sorrow of being a parent and looking at your own children, knowing they're safe and knowing that just by chance they are in a safe environment and. By chance so many other children are not. And it's just so sad because those children don't deserve that.

Caroline 44:39

I've always had a real problem with the message of everything will work out in the end, and it is a message that my. Mom definitely tried to get me, you know, she would always quote the, just Deda. And whether or not it's clear to you, no doubt, the universe is unfolding as it should it isn't often comfort people try to give you that things, everything happens for a reason and good always wins out and all that stuff. And, ever since I learned about what happened to Native Americans, I've been like, tell that to them. You know, like, I just don't,

Anne 45:08

yeah.

Caroline 45:09

it's clear that's not true. It's clear.

Anne 45:12

Rampant sexual, physical. Abuse of little kids

Caroline 45:16

well, and Gen Genocide,

Anne 45:18

for a reason.

Caroline 45:18

know, like

Anne 45:19

We haven't even said that word yet.

Caroline 45:20

right. the genocide that has happened to native peoples all over the world, in their own environments. It's just proof that good doesn't win, you know, and everything won't work out necessarily. It might,

Anne 45:33

It works out for some and it definitely doesn't work out for

Caroline 45:35

there is no evidence in my mind that it's anything but random.

Anne 45:39

Yeah. Any other scenes that you think we should talk about?

Caroline 45:42

Well, I really liked, when the churches were being burned, sorry, sorry, I should rephrase that. I didn't mean, sorry. Let me elaborate.

Anne 45:51

Okay.

Caroline 45:52

what I liked about the churches being burned is that, maybe two weeks ago or something on TikTok or maybe it was Instagram, there was a woman burning a potential ice facility in the US and all. you know, all the comments were like, she was with me fake news. Like, this is ai. Or that's clearly water. She's clearly throwing water on a fire. What a good Samaritan. You know, like all the people in the comments just being like, n no, no, no, I got her back. It just, reminded me of that. And that's what I would've said if I saw these churches burning, I would've been like, no way. They were with me all afternoon.

Anne 46:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give a good alibi.

Caroline 46:25

Mm-hmm.

Anne 46:26

one other thing I think was disturbing is all the black and white footage. Of kids praying and singing and the adoption photos as you said. And just that discrepancy between the smiling kids being cute and celebrating Christmas, and then the horror that they were actually experiencing.

Caroline 46:43

And running to hold the hands of the priest who super wasn't abusing them, maybe.

Anne 46:47

I don't know if that is

Caroline 46:49

knows.

Anne 46:49

or that's Father McGrath,

Caroline 46:50

Who knows?

Anne 46:51

Charlene points out at one point, I think it's like the marching band, and it's like half those girls ended up pregnant.

Caroline 46:55

Mm-hmm.

Anne 46:56

and these are the kind of photos that are being touted on that website I mentioned where it's like, no, no, no. Like these people had a good experience. Look, they were in the marching band, they learned an instrument and, yeah. right, well, horror beneath the surface, obviously, that, denialism that we see poking holes most likely for capitalist reasons.

Caroline 47:15

Mm-hmm.

Anne 47:16

what are and some horrors beneath the surface that we haven't discussed.

Caroline 47:19

there were those three people, drunk on the bench. And you just see the, like we said before, the ripple effect of trauma and how far it goes and how many lives are ruined by the actions of a few who, because I don't think that people generally wake up and maybe the Koch brothers, but I don't think most people wake up with selfish hearts. I think there are people who think they're lying for a greater good and for a greater reason. And I wish that they would open their eyes to the extent of this trauma, because I do think that they're just not seeing that, they're thinking, oh, look at all the good the church does, but look at all the harm this has done,

Anne 47:56

think that ripple effect is definitely one of my deeper horrors. Which they touch on the rates of depression, substance

Caroline 48:02

Mm-hmm.

Anne 48:03

suicide, they're including those scenes, Willie telling his kids about the suicide in the family and the alcoholics on the bench like just point out, Hey, look, it's not just about this, this is, has wide reaching consequences.

Caroline 48:16

Mm-hmm.

Anne 48:17

another consequence is foster care. finding LEAs about like the sixties scoop, was kind of a continuation, as more residential schools were being closed, they were scooping up kids and putting them in foster care. I'm not saying there aren't reasons to remove kids from families in some cases, there are disproportionate, again, number of indigenous kids. today it still goes on, right? Like, is this right? 52% of children in foster care are indigenous while only 7% of children in Canada are indigenous. So that's from Indigenous Services Canada 2020.

Caroline 48:47

there are amazing foster parents out there. one of my son's best friends is a foster to adopt. Patrick Hines, the co-host of True Crime obsessed, also foster to adopt. there are great people in the program, but, certainly like any system that has financial aspects to it, there are people explaining that as well.

Anne 49:05

And this has explored a lot in finding Cleo, like a lot of the foster parents are not bad people. Right. But because of the cultural dislocation that these kids are experiencing, of these adoptions and foster relationships break down with time.

Caroline 49:19

I mean obviously if you are trying to raise a child who's been separated from their parents, they're going to be a traumatized child and they're gonna have behavioral issues that you either are equipped or not equipped to deal with. and I'm not in a position to judge that either way, but certainly I think a lot of the people in the system are not equipped, probably.

Anne 49:38

So, yeah, I think a lot of what indigenous leaders are calling for is to try to indigenous kids with indigenous families

Caroline 49:45

Yeah.

Anne 49:45

possible. another harbor beneath the surface is when only women are held accountable.

Caroline 49:50

Right.

Anne 49:51

Ed's mom ended up prison for a year,

Caroline 49:53

I know. I was gonna say that when you mentioned that earlier, like why didn't the hus the father end up in prison,

Anne 49:58

you know, like we see, Maxwell's the only person in prison

Caroline 50:02

Right.

Anne 50:02

Pam Bondi is a CNX Tuesday, but everyone's talking about her and the Dao, right?

Caroline 50:07

Right.

Anne 50:07

where are the men who are actually, doing this thing? Why aren't they being held accountable?

Caroline 50:12

Mm-hmm.

Anne 50:12

We've already talked about institutionalized pedophilia, moving the so-called pest priests around, and then that injustice of it, being too light,

Caroline 50:20

Mm-hmm.

Anne 50:20

many of these perpetrators are dead. So even if we could hold someone, some man accountable, they're probably dead. Anything else?

Caroline 50:27

no.

Anne 50:27

Do you have any questions?

Caroline 50:29

I don't know if I like, had space for questions. I was really, really shaken up after watching this, anyone would be and will be. I am interested to know more details about efforts to have some form of reparation or whatever. I don't know a lot about this other than the very showy apologies and the timing of Trudeau and the Pope visit I didn't look into that further and I probably should have.

Anne 50:54

Apologies but it's only a first step.

Caroline 50:57

Right.

Anne 50:57

One of my questions is, they gonna dig up these graves? I don't know. Is that, is that harmful? Right? Because is that, know, disturbing these bodies in a way that is also upsetting? is there going to be step there? and then just what other stories are out there as we said, like you look into any one of these schools and it seems like there's stories and, Julian points out the importance of collecting them before it's too late. You know, a lot of the people who experience this are getting pretty old. so in this New York Times article I found interviewing him, he said the findings in our film raise a question. such things were covered up at one school, what might be true at the other 138 Indian residential schools across Canada what remains hidden at the hundreds of Native American boarding schools that operated across the unit United States, where unlike in Canada, there has been scant inquiry and even less reckoning with this history. I think there's 408 residential schools in the us. What happened there? I think we can assume it's similar.

Caroline 51:48

I would,

Anne 51:49

do you have any criticism?

Caroline 51:50

no.

Anne 51:50

Yeah, I mean, the criticism I saw is the pointing out that Okay. Yeah. Ed was fathered by Ray Peters rodeo writer, who was with Antoinette and had seven more children with her. So

Caroline 52:01

So was his step. Yeah.

Anne 52:02

imply that Ed's mother was a victim of sexual assault by a priest? Is it true? matter way. She was damaged by the residential school system, Either way, she felt like she was not in a position care for this child and that she had to hide it. And why did that happen? Because of the system,

Caroline 52:18

yeah, I mean, who knows if she would've been taught about sex and safe sex in not a Catholic school environment? I certainly know that no one in Catholic school environment is taught about sex, so getting pregnant accidentally, because you're in an environment where you don't learn how you get pregnant, I would argue that's not really her fault. Also, just because she got pregnant by one person doesn't mean she wasn't abused by another.

Anne 52:39

All right. Survival. What can we learn from this?

Caroline 52:42

oh my God. What I was gonna say is so depressing.

Anne 52:44

Okay.

Caroline 52:44

survival is luck in some situations, but then I didn't know if you'd be luckier. It's like very dark. Maybe we should not post that.

Anne 52:54

Okay. Well, I was gonna say, like as a society, we need to learn from history that snatching people from their parents and putting them into an institution or a camp has not historically worked out well, which makes me think of separation of families that's happening at the border or by ice. makes me wonder what is happening in those ice detention facilities because we cannot trust our organizations who have power over a group of people in captivity to behave well.

Caroline 53:19

I don't know that I am the type of person who would be capable of what it takes, but I was very impressed by the way the people who have maintained culture have done so. So like survival of culture. Being possible. It was impressive. I don't know that I learned how to do it. I don't know if I have it, you know?

Anne 53:39

we talked about this last week with Sylvia Marino, Garcia's, Mexican Gothic, about how she felt as a Mexican migrant, that she was limited to stories about tragedy.

Caroline 53:49

Right.

Anne 53:49

Tragic migration stories, I think more celebration of joy and heritage and the beauty of these cultures needs to be told. you know, when the old people were having like a dance party, and as we said, we see, ed finds, I think, peace in carving, totems and Julian participating in traditional dance. there's so much hope and healing in that. for example, I went to a PD about drumming using drumming in school as a healing technique just as like, okay, well your culture has drumming in it, but even if it doesn't, the rhythm is calming. You know, have you, have you ever heard how, if you like, punch your vagus nerve,

Caroline 54:22

Yeah.

Anne 54:22

calming?

Caroline 54:22

Yes.

Anne 54:23

there's that connection there, right? to, yeah, to healing.

Caroline 54:26

Yeah. So I guess, what I learned about survival would be that, it's possible even under the darkest and most hopeless of circumstances to, maintain and sustain culture and hope and happiness. And some of these things that you just mentioned, these people have done, after such horrific trauma.

Anne 54:44

we study, at my school, this book called Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia. And there's sad stories in there of course, but there's also a lot about pride and family and belonging.

Caroline 54:53

Mm-hmm.

Anne 54:54

usually we have students, we try to have students write something about pride, but then connect it to their own culture.

Caroline 55:00

Mm-hmm.

Anne 55:00

is a moment that made you feel proud connected or a sense of belonging? so bearing witness to this trauma and this horror, but also recognizing there's beauty in the culture that needs to be respected and preserved. I would say also believe survivors, again, I know I, about Epstein too much. I know that.

Caroline 55:17

Somebody should.

Anne 55:19

well, you know, we don't have any proof. And it's like, well, so many people who are saying this happens plus the emails, right? I think have to be careful about prosecuting based on just say one person's eyewitness statement. But if we're just talking about recognizing that something happened, which is the case here, them, right? So many people are saying this. my last survival tip is, I guess, be comfortable to be comfortable with discomfort, it's uncomfortable a white person to face these atrocities and not want to admit that the culture you're from did something bad. But I think we have to accept, reconcile, move forward, and

Caroline 55:57

Yeah, I really don't understand, like I never, I never remember like learning about racism and, and slavery and being like, I feel bad as a white person. Like, I know I wouldn't have done, I wouldn't do that.

Anne 56:08

It's

Caroline 56:08

know what.

Anne 56:09

how can we be better? Right.

Caroline 56:10

Right. Like

Anne 56:11

shit, I feel bad. we should feel bad. Even if you didn't do it specifically, because you have absorbed a lot of that, whether you know it or not.

Caroline 56:18

Right. And you've certainly absorbed the benefits of it, of the disparities. So like, I just don't understand. If you are not the one doing the action, what? It hurts you to acknowledge harm that has happened to a population and wanna make up for that in some way. I just don't understand. I also have a really light horror, is, I, in the beginning they were doing the Lord's Prayer and I was reminded of how in my faith the Lord's Prayer continues longer than it does for Catholics. So, I remember going to my first mass at our college where everyone was Catholic and I was not. I think the Lord's Prayer ends with deliverance from evil for you.

Anne 56:56

From evil. Amen.

Caroline 56:57

Yeah, so we say for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. And I just kept talking and,

Anne 57:03

Because often the priest will say that, but then the people stop.

Caroline 57:06

oh, well, no, no, no, because there's no like hierarchy, everyone is all the same. So like, we all said that and I was like, whoa.

Anne 57:15

Uh,

Caroline 57:15

Aside from not knowing when to stand up, sit down and kneel or whatever, being the only person who spoke in that whole freaking huge

Anne 57:22

Oh no,

Caroline 57:23

echoey church was really embarrassing.

Anne 57:25

I bet. All right, palette cleanser. I have one. And it's just something funny that happened. you know how they had all those rodeo clips just kind of providing local color, like a stampede. as I've mentioned before, I dictate my notes into my phone while I'm watching, and I was going through those notes when I came across this fucking Broncos can't be good for your neck because it it auto dictated as fucking instead of bucking. just like, what was I saying here? I meant to say bucking broncos can't be good for your neck.

Caroline 57:53

I did not like that part either, by the way. Leave the animals alone. They didn't ask to go through all that.

Anne 57:59

So that leads me to my palate cleanser in that I feel like I've been immersed in Canada lately because I watched heated rivalry as

Caroline 58:07

Yay.

Anne 58:08

like four episodes and I definitely felt my heart swell with emotion. And I cried at the end of episode is well worth watching. Thank you for putting me onto it.

Caroline 58:19

Yes. And I wanna thank Kara for putting me onto it. should all be,

Anne 58:22

night with one of my friends who was like, I started watching Hated rivalry. It's

Caroline 58:26

yeah, we should all be spreading it far and wide. Don't, don't be turned off by the fact that it's popular and people are talking about it. It's worth it.

Anne 58:33

Yeah, it's great. It's very sweet. And I'm not a romance person. I'm not drawn to that,

Caroline 58:37

No, me neither.

Anne 58:38

I really enjoyed it. At least it's, and it's got hockey too, in addition to all the sex.

Caroline 58:42

Yeah, I guess it has. I mean, I know nothing, I learned nothing about HI knew nothing about hockey before and I know nothing about hockey but

Anne 58:50

how little I know about hockey? I had to look up the teams they played,

Caroline 58:53

yeah,

Anne 58:53

to be like, are they real teams? I was like, I

Caroline 58:55

no,

Anne 58:56

Boston.

Caroline 58:56

and I will send you a TikTok about their logos if you know, you know, their logos have a deeper meaning.

Anne 59:01

I dunno. Okay, do you have a palate cleanser?

Caroline 59:04

I do, my oldest asked me if I would watch the office with him and, yeah.'cause he,

Anne 59:12

nine nine with mine.

Caroline 59:13

we have a VR that I, my husband got supposedly to walk people through their future homes or whatever as an architect, and we've never used it for that. It's like Beat Saber and other games. don't come at us, IRS, but, um, he's been playing some game where you're in the office and he asked to watch it. So we watched, season one and we just finished the Dundee episode and that was

Anne 59:35

At least at the beginning it isn't great'cause it's

Caroline 59:36

no.

Anne 59:37

A rip off of

Caroline 59:38

Yeah, yeah.

Anne 59:39

But once it finds its way, it's, it's a great show.

Caroline 59:42

I keep having to tell'em it's gonna get funnier. Most comedies, season one, people are getting their rhythm.

Anne 59:47

and Rec,

Caroline 59:48

Yeah.

Anne 59:48

trying to be the office.

Caroline 59:49

Yeah.

Anne 59:50

All right. Homework. because of the Choctaw Vampire hunters that we briefly see in the movie Sinners, I want it to do that next. And we're recording this a few weeks before the Oscars, so by the time this comes out, sinners may have actually won best

Caroline 1:00:02

Mm-hmm.

Anne 1:00:02

as it was nominated for 16 Academy Awards. So record breaking for really any movie, nevermind a horror or vampire movie. So go watch Sinners. But before that, we have a very special episode with our first guest. Caroline, would you like to tell us about that?

Caroline 1:00:17

Ah, I'm so excited. Um, so I might have mentioned the podcast True Crime Obsess once or twice

Anne 1:00:26

Have you, I don't know,

Caroline 1:00:28

per episode. I don't know. yes. So

Anne 1:00:31

this episode,

Caroline 1:00:32

yes. So, so, a while when we did unknown number, Jillian Pennsylvania co-host of True Crime of Test shared our post about it'cause they had, done it and I. Screamed, in excitement and she responded to me right away and she went and listened to our podcast and, offered herself immediately to be on an episode. So, I originally, for people who do love that podcast, I did originally think like we should have her on for the Jinx because her Robert Durst impression is, just unbeatable. but I think it's a little tired.

Anne 1:01:04

be so turned off by talking to us that she'll come back.

Caroline 1:01:07

Yeah. Yes. Maybe. you know, like whatever, he's dead now and Justice sort of was served in that case. But there are, issues that matter a lot more to Jillian that are actively things that we could be supporting. And I think ultimately. We've talked about a, discuss a topic like today's because we wanna make sure that these issues are talked about and remembered, and that's the only way to try and make reparations of any kind, about wrongdoing. So, she is very close with Damien Eckles, one of the West Memphis three. while they are out of prison, they are still not exonerated and we really need that to happen. And so we're gonna have her on to discuss the West Memphis three.

Anne 1:01:47

So watch the documentary West of Memphis and then the episode after that, we'll be doing sinners. I'm very excited. First guest and someone who's so fun and funny. I think it'll be great.

Caroline 1:01:57

Me too, me too.

Anne 1:01:58

Alright. What recommendations do you have to go along with this?

Caroline 1:02:00

actually when they went to visit the grandmother, I think he said, you survived the night. And she said, don't remind me, which I thought was hilarious. and also reminded me of Mark Marin, whose documentary I just watched on the plane coming back from Disney. it's called Are We Good? And I thought it was great. explores grief, et cetera. Also, the whole printing press vibes, reminded me of Newsies, which I think we've recommended before.

Anne 1:02:23

we talked about Newsies for some reason, maybe with journalists. I don't Talking

Caroline 1:02:27

yeah, yeah, yeah. there was video of the printing press and it reminded me of Newsies and also just shining a light on people who are being abused. Also the burning of the churches reminded me of Eight Mile, when they burned down the house where the little girl had been assaulted. obviously, more relevant to, the topic. Reservoir Dogs is a great show. if you haven't seen it, please watch that. It's,

Anne 1:02:47

Wait, reservation.

Caroline 1:02:48

oh no, that's the movie Reservation Dogs. I wrote down Reservoir Dogs, but I absolutely meant Reserv.

Anne 1:02:53

is the Tarantino

Caroline 1:02:55

yeah,

Anne 1:02:56

I was like, wait a minute.

Caroline 1:02:57

No, don't watch that. Watch Reservation dogs.

Anne 1:02:59

I've seen both.

Caroline 1:02:59

Yeah.

Anne 1:03:00

Dogs is.

Caroline 1:03:01

I've seen both. also The Lost Women of Highway 20, is a TV series about missing and murdered indigenous women. there's also a lot of good podcasts and, stuff about that topic. I also wanted to recommend, this is sort of a personal recommendation, but also a great National Geographic documentary. I have a, very dear friend, I grew up with Scott Wrestler. We call him Little Scotty Wrestler, even though he's like. Six feet tall. he's a producer at National Geographic and he did a great documentary called The Last Ice, which is about, these two Inuit communities that, have been sort of grappling with the rep lead declining, ice in the Arctic that had kept them more into one community. And, the environmental effects of, as we've been saying, capitalism all along. That's it.

Anne 1:03:43

Okay. So if it's not clear from the many podcasts I've referenced in this podcast that I like listening to podcasts to learn more, so there is a Behind The Bastards episode, there's the historical podcast just called Residential Schools. There's Connie Walkers Surviving St. Michael's, which is one of the best, deep dive podcasts I've ever listened to. Also finding Clio is thematically similar. Basically Finding Clio is about the ripple effect of residential schools on just one family and happened to them. So highly recommend that. Canada is not the only place that removed children from their families. There's the stolen generation in Australia, so Rabbit Proof Fence is a great movie about that. If you're looking for something a little bit lighter and more fun. The Sapphires is this like, kind of singing comedy about, a real, Band or, or girl group of indigenous women who went and sang for the troops in Vietnam. And it's, it's fun, But it also has this backdrop of the stolen generation for boarding school horror. The novel The Broken Girls by Simone St. James is like a little paranormal, ghostly mystery for more harm done by the Catholic Church, the Keepers and Spotlight, which we cover back in episode five. If you want to try some indigenous horror, I highly, highly recommend The Only Good Indian by Stephen Graham Jones. And he's also recently written a book called The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, which I haven't read yet, but is high on my list and I've heard great things. The Yellowstone Spinoff 1923 has a storyline about a young indigenous woman stolen from her family and forced into a residential school, I think in Montana. I'm not sure. But, it goes into a lot of these issues. And Julian has recently released a book called We Survive the Night, which is part memoir, part indigenous history, and Part Coyote Stories. So that sounds

Caroline 1:05:18

That sounds great.

Anne 1:05:20

Yeah, I think it's quite recent. I feel like the article was either 24 or 25. that's it for me. Anything else you wanna talk about?

Caroline 1:05:26

No,

Anne 1:05:27

Okay. If you have any recommendations for tv, podcasts, books, movies that would go along with this, please contact us. We are available on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads, follow us there and yeah, do all the things podcasters ask you to do, like and subscribe, read, review on iTunes. You can email us at Drawn to Darkness pod@gmail.com. And most importantly, please tell a like-minded friend who is also drawn to darkness. And if like Shirley Jackson, you delight in what you fear. Join us in two weeks here at Drawn To Darkness.

Caroline 1:05:57

with Jillian.

Anne 1:05:58

Yay. Special shout out to Nancy Ano who painted our cover art. You can find her on Instagram at Nancy ano and to Harry Kidd for our intro and outro music. You can find him on Instagram at Harry J. Kidd and on Spotify.