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The AIH Transcript for June 19, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello. I'm Carol Off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening. I'm Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

CO: New strategy needed. As China charges to Canadians with spying, a former Canadian ambassador says the Trudeau government can no longer take Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor's detention's lying down.

CH: Human rights or most humans, anyway. The former mayor of Winnipeg says he had no choice but to cut ties with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights after a CBC investigation revealed, some tour guides were told to skip and even hide exhibits dealing with LGBTQ rights.

CO: Following the money. A tidal wave of donations has left the Minnesota Freedom Fund is struggling to cope with the influx of cash and scrutiny. A board member tells us what they're planning to do with the sudden windfall.

CH: Assignment incomplete. Ontario sketches out various possibilities for what a return to school might look like in the fall. But one teacher and single mom says what families need is certainty, not scenarios.

CO: Wicked game. British Columbia investigates allegations that hospital health workers played a game to guess the blood alcohol levels of Indigenous patients.

CH: And welcome to the bungle. We revisit Carol's successful interview with the curator of the Museum of Failure, a collection of products that tanked. And find out how he decides what to add to the catas-trophy case. As It Happens. The Friday Edition. Radio that finds a message in debacle.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Ex-ambassador calls for 'more forceful approach' with China after detained Canadians charged

Canadians Charged in China

Guest: Guy Saint-Jacques

CH: China has finally charged Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. Today, more than 550 days after the two Canadians were first detained, Beijing formally charged them with espionage against the Chinese state. This morning in Chelsea, Quebec reporters asked the prime minister for his response.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: We are, of course, disappointed with the decision and the next step taken by the Chinese in the case of the two Michaels. And we offer all our support and sympathies to the families of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who are obviously living a difficult moment today as they have been for well over a year with the arbitrary detention of two Canadian citizens. We have continued to express our disappointment with the Chinese decision, with the Chinese detention of these two Canadians. We will continue to advocate for their release, for their return to Canada.

CH: That was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Chelsea, Quebec today. Guy Saint-Jacques worked with Michael Kovrig when he was Canada's ambassador to China. We reached Mr. Saint-Jacques outside Montreal.

CO: Mr. Saint-Jacques I know that you actually know Michael Kovrig. How concerned are you about China's decision to charge these two men, Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor?

GUY SAINT-JACQUES: Well, I am very concerned because I know that their ordeal will continue for quite some time. The announcement that was made today, in fact, will further complicate things, because I expect the Chinese government to tell us, don't ask us to interfere in a legal process, don't you know that China is a country governed by the rule of law. And if they adhere to their schedule, that is in the criminal procedural law of China, it will take between 12 and 24 months before they are sentenced. And we know already that the sentence could be from 10 years to life in prison. And I think, based on the comments made earlier today by the spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs who said that these are very serious charges -- I wouldn't be surprised if they get a life sentence.

CO: And how likely is it that they will be convicted?

GUY SAINT-JACQUES: Well, in the Chinese system, once you are formally charged, you are found guilty 99.9 percent of the time. And this trial won't be fair at all. Their lawyers won't be able to look at the evidence because China says it's a case that involves national security. So it's very difficult to mount any kind of defense when you don't have access to the evidence. And the contacts between the two Michaels and their lawyers will be very limited. I recall when Kevin Garrett went through a similar process, I think he saw his lawyer maybe three times during his ordeal. So we have to brace ourselves that they will stay in China as long as Mrs. Meng is in Vancouver.

CO: What do you make of the timing right now so close to the time that Meng Wanzhou was in court?

GUY SAINT-JACQUES: Well, I think that they delayed this decision. They wanted to see what would be the decision of Justice Holmes. And this was rendered some time ago. So now they have come to their conclusion that the extradition process will take quite some time. And they wanted to add further pressure on the Canadian government, so they decided to proceed with this formal trial. And there was another shot across the bow earlier this week when they announced that they supposedly found some pest in Canadian wood shipments and last year that represented 900 million dollars. I think it was a reminder to the federal government that if they don't allow Huawei to participate in 5G development in Canada, that there will be a price to pay.

CO: What do you make of how the Canadian government, the Trudeau government, has handled this? We just heard from the prime minister saying that how disappointed he is -- he refers to as a detention. The minister of foreign affairs describes this as an arbitrary detention in a very brief statement. How do you think they've handled this?

GUY SAINT-JACQUES: Well, I would say the only part of this strategy that does work has been asking allies to come to our help and to démarche the Chinese government to request that the two Michaels be freed. But for the rest, I think it's clearly China that comes out as the winner because they have succeeded in getting the federal government to exercise self-censorship on issues like what's happening in Xinjiang or China is doing in Hong Kong or in the South China Sea and the way that they mishandled the pandemic in the early stages. And what have we got in return? Well, the detention conditions of our two Canadians have not improved. We are still waiting also to a hear of what will happen to the appeal lodged by the two Canadians on death row on drug charges: Mr. Fan Wei and Robert Schellenberg. And we have lost 4.5 billion dollars in export last year. For the first three months of this year, it's down 16 percent. So clearly, I think we have to reassess the strategy. And I've always argued for a more forceful approach or one where China would understand that we will not take this lying down. And, for instance, you know, we could announce that we are redeploying trade resources from China to other countries in Asia. Also, we should announce that we will make more inspections of Chinese goods coming in to make sure that they respect our safety and health standards. Plus, we should react very quickly any time we find interference by Chinese official with Canadian universities, for instance, to prevent them from hosting events that will debate the situation in Xinjiang or what's happening in Hong Kong or when there is interference in the Canadian-Chinese community. And we know that this is happening. And similarly, any time we find someone spying, we should lay charges and prosecute these people.

CO: What kinds of conditions do you think the two Micheals are going to find themselves in coming years I guess?

GUY SAINT-JACQUES: So we know that Michael Spavor is detained with 19 other people in the jail near the border with North Korea. Michael Kovrig is with one other person, you know, and the lights are kept down 24 hours a day. They can go outside for a limited time, about 20 minutes every day. The problem is that we have had no consular access to them since January 13 and 14, respectively. And with the new occurrence of COVID cases in Beijing, the Chinese government will resist the contact. And so, you know, their situation will be pretty dire for quite some time. And, you know, it's very sad what's happening to them.

CO: We'll leave it there. Mr. Saint-Jacques I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

GUY SAINT-JACQUES: Thank you very much.

CH: Guy Saint-Jacques is a former Canadian ambassador to China. He spoke to us from outside Montreal.

[Music]

Minnesota Freedom fund

Guest: Jared Mollenkof

CH: Since protests began in Minnesota over the murder of George Floyd, hundreds of people have been arrested. And anyone who wants to help them has been looking to the Minnesota Freedom Fund. The fund helps provide bail money to people in custody who can't afford it. As the protest movement grew, the organization became a go-to for people who wanted to help. It was flooded with donations from across the U.S. and even the world. But the small non-profit wasn't at all prepared for the scale of donations, now into the tens of millions of dollars. The group says that so far it's only spent a fraction of all that money. And a lot of donors have a lot of questions. Jared Mollenkof is a board member of the Minnesota Freedom Fund. We reached him in Minneapolis.

CO: Jared, to date, just how much has the Minnesota Freedom Fund received in donations to bail out the protesters?

JARED MOLLENKOF: Right at thirty three and a half million dollars.

CO: Thirty three and a half million dollars. And how does that compare with how much you received in donations last year?

JM: It is a exponentially larger number. I expect donations around one hundred thousand dollars annually.

CO: So normally you get a hundred thousand dollars. And now you got more than 30 million. And so what are you doing with the money?

JM: Yeah. So we've bailed out every protester that's come our way and we will continue to bail out protesters and then we're going to use the money to bail folks out. So, you know, we've been in operation since 2016, bailing out people that are held pretrial and we'll continue doing that. So we've bailed out about 50 people in the last three weeks, which is significantly faster rate for us than under normal circumstances. And we will continue to increase our capacity and we will bail more people out.

CO: How much have you spent on bail then since this began?

JM: Right at about 250,000 dollars right now.

CO: So it's since George Floyd was killed -- that's the bail money you have been putting out?

JM: That's correct. A lot of the protesters were cited and released and there were not as many people as folks would have expected to need bail. But we have bailed out every single protester and we're going to keep expanding our ability to bail out folks that are held on other charges.

CO: Did your organization -- did the Minnesota Freedom Fund -- solicit funds and donations during this period?

JM: No. So we never asked people for money. The way that it all got started off, we were asking -- we had put out a call for people to let us know if they heard folks that we're getting arrested at the protests so that we would be prepared to get those people out as quickly as possible. And we had set aside about ten thousand dollars of our operating budget, which was all we could afford at the time in order to bail out those protesters. And people took our call for information and decided that they wanted to support. And, you know, the good thing that people did, because the money that we had would not have been enough to bail out the protesters that came through. But we didn't ask for money and we were very surprised when the money started pouring in.

CO: So you wouldn't have had the money to cover 250,000 dollars worth of bail, but now you have more than 30 million dollars. And I guess a lot of those donors are saying what gives here -- I mean, they're looking for some oversight over that. What are you saying to them?

JM: What we're saying to them is that we value accountability, we are going to be held accountable by the communities that we have always been accountable to, and we are going to use that money for the abolition of the cash bail system in Minnesota. We're going to use that to bail people out.

CO: But you got a long way to go if you're going to use up the 30 million. So what are the plans? What is your board discussing as to how you might, I guess, refocus, repurpose some of what your organization is doing?

JM: To bail out the entire of the Hennepin County jail would cost 50 million dollars. There are a lot of people that our government has decided to hold in custody pretrial. And so it would take a lot of resources to bail out everyone in the state. And we want to use that money to bail out as many people as we possibly can.

CO: So people are obviously looking for some place to donate. They want to give and they want to give their money. So what are you saying to people? Are you still encouraging the donations?

JM: No, so we stopped donations for a period of time and we have been encouraging since June 5th for people to donate to other organizations and to other people that are on the ground. And so we want everyone to be aware of the resources that we have. If people are still interested in giving towards the work of ending cash bail then we will accept their donations, but we want everyone to be very aware that, you know, we've brought in an incredible sum of money and that there are a lot of other great organizations like Reclaim the Block and the Black Vision Collective that are doing incredible work here in Minneapolis and they deserve support too.

CO: And so any thoughts of refocusing the Minnesota Freedom Fund to start looking at helping the people who are out on bail to I guess they're going to be in court at some point, is there someone to help them through potential trials?

JM: So we are working with a group that is made up of arrestees. About approximately 150 people were arrested related to the protests. And we are working with them to help them with all sorts of cost. So getting cars out of impound, covering fines and fees, helping with legal costs. And we are going to be working with the arrestees on all sorts of issues like that.

CO: Jared we are going to leave it there. We don't have a great line so I apologize for that. But I think that the listeners heard most what you had to say. And thank you for speaking with us.

JM: Absolutely.

CH: Jared Mollenkof is a board member of the Minnesota Freedom Fund. He's in Minneapolis.

[Music]

Daniel Fontaine

CH: B.C.'s minister of health has ordered an investigation after news of a disturbing game played by hospital staff involving Indigenous patients came to light. Adrian Dix says he was made aware of serious allegations of racist and completely abhorrent practices in an emergency room or emergency rooms in B.C.. At a news conference today, he revealed reports that some emergency room staff would try to guess the blood alcohol level of Indigenous patients. Daniel Fontaine is the CEO of Metis Nation British Columbia. He heard about the so-called game yesterday. He said he's also been told the game is called "The Price is Right" where you win by guessing closest to the blood alcohol level of a patient without going over. Here's Mr. Fontaine speaking to the CBC today.

DANIEL FONTAINE: While I appreciate the appointment of Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond, I have the utmost respect for her and I know she will get to the bottom of this. There are things that can happen immediately and we do not need a review for. And I think that what we've outlined, there's several recommendations in there that I think would be immediately implemented. And one is to ensure that there is a standardized and accepted training program that happens for all health care workers across British Columbia when it comes to Indigenous cultural sensitivity. And right now we don't have that.

KARIN LARSEN: So Mr. Dix didn't give any details on how widespread this is. But you seem to feel that it's quite widespread.

DANIEL FONTAINE: It's our belief that it is widespread and we don't know which hospitals, et cetera. We're obviously very aware that for the past decade that the ministry has been working on an anti-racism awareness and initiative. And there have been many advocates that have been stating that the ministry needs to do more, it needs to do more to address the issues of racism within the systemic issues of racism within the health care system. And then there's these two reports that came out in March of last year. And I'm not aware of any changes in the system. In fact we're still concerned that there is this patchwork of training for workers and it's not universal, it's not standardized, and it's not necessarily endorsed by Metis Nation or other Indigenous groups in the province of British Columbia.

CH: Daniel Fontaine the CEO of Metis Nation British Columbia speaking with the CBC's Karin Larsen. British Columbia's minister of health, has appointed Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond to investigate reports of racist practices in some B.C. emergency departments. She's the province's former representative for children and youth.

[Music]

From our archives: Failure Museum

CH: Like humans, cats and dogs need water to survive. Problem is, water is boring. Plus, if you just get it from the boring faucet, it's even more boring. Enter two products to fill that hole in the market with liquid: thirsty dog and thirsty cat bottled water. Thirsty dog came in crispy beef flavour. Thirsty cat came in tangy fish flavor. Both hit the shelves in 1994. Both left the shelves in 1994. With the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to say that every single thing I just told you about that innovative product is the dumbest, most disgusting thing you ever heard. But Samuel West believes that we like crispy beef flavoured bottled dog water are being too salty. He believes there is nobility in colossal failure and we should celebrate it. Which is why he created the Museum of Failure, a carefully curated collection of failed products and services from around the world. Carol spoke with Samuel West in 2017 while he waited for a flight at the Copenhagen airport.

CAROL OFF: Samuel, can you give us some examples of the kinds of things that I might find in your Museum of Failure?

SAMUEL WEST: Well I've got Kodak's first digital camera for consumers. The actual camera wasn't actually a failure, but the digital camera was Kodak’s fault because they failed to adapt their business model to the changes going on. It's kind of ironic that Kodak went bankrupt the same year that Instagram was sold to Facebook for one billion dollars. So the failure here wasn't the actual technical device. It was a failure to adopt the business model. That’s one example. Another example on another end of the scale, is Bic, pen manufacturer. In 2011, they created a pen just for women. You know that women can use regular pens. They need special pens for their delicate hands.

CO: I've been having that problem all my life, I've been waiting for hand designed for me.

SW: Well lucky you. And they're double the price of regular pens because they are especially for women.

CO: I understand you have a Harley Davidson perfume.

SW: Yeah it's a great one. Yeah I think it was in ’96. Harley Davidson thought that they would sort of get some more money out of their brand and so they launched a series of other products including this perfume called the Hot Rod Collection. And it didn't resonate with Harley-Davidson macho guys. They’re like “What? We don’t want any perfume. What’s this?” There was this huge backlash. An example of maybe not a technical innovation but they were trying to be innovative with heir brand and it backfired.

CO: What did it actually smell like? Did it smell like grease and diesel fumes?

SW: Everybody says that. But my colleague at the office said, I put it on when I finally got a hold of it and then they said “Somebody smells like urine.”

CO: Oh no.

SW: I think that's unfair. I mean it's you know it's been in the bottle for a long time. I think it's unfair but it's not the best perfume.

CO: You have something called the Twitter Peek. What is that?

SW: I love that one. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful little device. Launched 2008. It only tweets. It has no other function right? The only problem is that it doesn't even tweet very well so it was a real pain to tweet because you could only read of the 140 characters, you could only read maybe 25 characters, so a partial tweet on a tweeting device. And there was one reviewer who wrote “The fact that the Twitter Peek even exist so dumb that it makes my brain hurt.”

CO: Samuel, why did you decide to do this? Why? I mean we like to celebrate your successes, the ingenuity of humanity. Why did you decide to go for its failures?

SW: Well I'm an innovation researcher and I got of fed up with everybody worshipping success the entire time. So I know and everybody in the in the business knows that 80 to 90 percent of all innovation projects fail but we never hear anything about them. There are sort of in the margin. Everybody wants to sort of showcase their successes and say we want to learn from best practices. That's fine. But when 90 percent fail there's a lot of things to be learned from the failures as well. So I started collecting a few ideas, I was trying to get my hands on some of the failures that I knew about. And then it turned into an obsession. So now I've got about 50 different innovation failures. There's a saying that you know it's wise to learn from your own mistakes but it's even wiser to learn from the mistakes of others. So one of the purposes of the museum is to encourage people to actually investigate, examine and try to instead of avoiding talking about failures and discussing, and actually examine it and try to learn as much as possible from the failures that have been done.

CO: It's interesting what you're saying, is that I you're not mocking these failures. You're not making fun of them. Derision is not your purpose. It is almost like a celebration of human ingenuity and sometimes it fails and we should we should celebrate, you know, our effort to try and get something.

SW: It's impossible to create any new product or service or have any new thoughts, philosophies, society changes. All of those things are impossible without taking the risk of failure. And I think we speak in disgust. I think failure gets way too little attention. I mean organizations are like us, people in many ways. They avoid the emotional discomfort of dealing with and unfortunately they avoid learning from their failures.

CO: Where did you get the idea?

SW: I got the idea from last summer, I was at a museum in Croatia, the capital of Croatia in Zagreb, the museum the Museum of Broken Relationships. And then the museum contained all kinds of objects, physical objects that were related to or symbolize the relationship that was now broken. I thought this museum was awesome. And after that I was convinced that I have to start the Museum of Failure.

CO: We actually covered that Museum of Failed Relationships on this show. It was really it was very endearing. It was quite warm.

SW: I loved it. And it's not only, I mean it’s easy, the same as the Museum of Failure. It's easy to laugh at it at first. That's a strange idea. But then there's something, there's something deeply human about it as well, there’s not only positive aspects, there’s bad aspects as well. And when it comes to the Museum of Failure, failed innovation. There are some sad things. The fact that 160,000 people lost their jobs when Kodak went bankrupt. That's sad. The fact that some of the medical innovations that I have, people, patients died. So it's not only you know some and ridiculous products. There’s some tragic things.

CO: Well, Samuel, one success I'd like you to have is to get your flight. So I know we're keeping you. And but it's lovely to hear about your museum. Thank you so much.

SW: Thank you very much.

CO: Take care. Bye-bye.

CH: That's a segway. From April 2017, Carol's conversation with Samuel West, curator of the Museum of Failure.

[Music]

Part 2: Canadian Museum of Human Rights

Canadian Museum of Human Rights

Guest: Glen Murray

CH: If you walk around the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, you'll see that LGBTQ rights are not ignored. But it seems the museum was telling its tour guides to quietly skip over those exhibits when it came to certain tour groups. As part of an investigation, the CBC spoke with former employees who were told by management to shield these visitors from LGBTQ content. And in one case, to physically block the view of a gay rights exhibit. Glen Murray is the former mayor of Winnipeg and now a leadership candidate for the Green Party of Canada. Today, he resigned his position as a board member of the Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. We reached him in Winnipeg.

CO: Mr. Murray, what led you to decide you had no choice but to resign from the Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights?

GLEN MURRAY: Well, when the museum started to block out critical exhibits of very marginalized minorities from visitors, and when it became evident that significant numbers of employees were complaining about racism, that was pretty much a straw that broke the camel's back.

CO: I just have want to understand, what were the exhibits and what were they told to do concerning the exhibits dealing with LGBTQ rights?

GM: According to CBC reports, they've been confirmed by the museum, you could go to the museum and say, I don't want to see gay or lesbian or transgender or pick a minority -- and we will exclude that from your tour, we will selectively block out any kind of exhibit that you don't want to see. And then there were complaints about racist treatment of staff by management and stories of early degrading experiences that staff of different minority statuses experienced while in the employ of the museum.

CO: Okay. We're talking about not just any place where people might not want to be confronted with difficult stories, difficult narratives -- we're talking about a museum dedicated to telling people about what the struggle for rights and the struggles to overcome the prejudices and the opposition and the laws and everything else. This is what the museum is supposed to do. So how do you reconcile those two things?

GM: Well, you can't. And that's what's so odd to me. And what was so surprising was that the museum and the government didn't immediately come out and apologize and said, you know, we built this ground-breaking global institution, one of Canada's most significant national cultural institutions dedicated to the celebration of human diversity, to telling the stories, the difficult stories of people who've overcome terrible hate, discrimination and genocide. And we've designed this museum as a total experience to understand the connectivity between discrimination and how hatred and genocide and other terrible human rights violations are developed. And then it's like, well, you know, if you actually agree or disagree with them, that's okay. And the problem was that they were doing this with schools who were coming in and saying that, yes, we'll block out this exhibit but they actually had staff apparently standing in front of some exhibits so people could not go and see them, which is to be extremely bizarre for a human rights museum that's supposed to be transparent. And this went on from 2015 to 2017, apparently. And the museum never disclosed it. Never reported it. It only became public because former employees and now current employees have been telling the story of this erasing or covering up of some of the human rights journeys that are there and interestingly, ones that are sometimes most important to students. We have very high suicide rate among gay and lesbian, non-binary and transgender youth, which was one of the exhibits that was sort of blocked from people seeing and was cut out regularly. And these are young people who are often, you know, teenagers who are struggling with these questions in their life, wh may come from communities, obviously, that were uncomfortable with these discussions.

CO: There has been a statement that's been issued, an apology from the executive team of the museum admitting this was a wrong, it should have ended, it's a betrayal, and it never should have happened at the museum. It's an abject apology signed by the executive team. Does that satisfy you?

GM: That's one of the three things I recommended they do. So I'm glad to hear it. And I congratulate them on that. That's responding to concerns. I do think that there's too few other problems. They've got to start showing some outreach to communities, they've got to listening to these communities more carefully and talk to them about how they are represented in the museum, whether it's aligned with the way they want to be represented in the museum. And some commitment and trust building that they are not going to black out or hide the stories of the people in the museum. And the third thing I think they need to do is look at their hiring policies, government structure, and talk to the government about being more activist, being a bit more autonomous, and actually not just involving professional and territorial staff, but actually bringing people into the museum, into its organization, its program definition that actually are people who are activists.

CO: Just finally, the argument that apparently was given as to why they blocked these exhibits from some of the groups of students is that they felt the parents would not allow their students to go to the museum to, some parents, if they were exposed to these kinds of exhibitions about LGBTQ rights. And then the kids wouldn't see anything else that was in the museum and they wouldn't be exposed to the other range of human rights and violations. What do you say to that?

GM: Kids have rights to knowledge. So a properly curated, intelligently well organized, professionally developed museum is not something that children, especially teenagers, should be denied from. It's their right.

CO: We'll have to leave it there. I appreciate speaking with you about this. It is very very worrisome. And we will be following this story. Thank you so much.

GM: Thank you so much Carol. Take care. Have a good day.

CH: Glen Murray is the former mayor of Winnipeg and a leadership candidate for the Green Party of Canada. He's in Winnipeg.

[Music]

Ontario Schools Return

Guest: Denise Ing

CH: For parents and teachers in Ontario wondering what school will look like in the fall, the government has a message: it depends. Today, the province released three potential classroom scenarios in class, online, or a hybrid. And the government says it should be up to school boards to decide what's best for students and staff. The announcement comes days after Toronto's Sick Kids Hospital released a study calling for kids to head back to classrooms in September with stringent handwashing rules in place. Denise Ing is a grade seven and eight homeroom teacher at Queen Victoria Public School in Toronto. That's where we reached her.

CO: Denise, I know you listened carefully to the Ontario government's back to school plan today. Was it the plan you were hoping to hear?

DENISE ING: I don't think it sounded like a plan at all. It sounded like nothing new. I think Minister Lecce was leaving it up to the boards to make the decisions about reopening in September.

CO: Mr. Lecce being the minister for the provincial government. What he describes are scenarios. One where are the kids and the students go back to school in person. One that you continue online as you have been. And then one is maybe a bit of both. What scenario do you think makes the most sense?

DI: You know what? All the different scenarios have different pros and cons. I think the biggest thing that educators are looking for right now is a decision now so we can plan for September. Being told in August which plan it is, doesn't benefit the children or the families or the educators. Parents need time to secure child care. I think all teachers are desperate to get back into the classroom to see our kids, but not if it's unsafe.

CO: What would be safe for you?

DI: I think because I teach grades seven and eight, I think a combination of in-person and synchronous learning as well. But I think we have to really examine around equity issues. I work in a diverse community where a lot of my 13 or 14 year olds are the primary caregivers of their younger siblings at home. And the expectation for them to do synchronous learning, whether siblings are doing synchronous learning and their parents are out working at the local grocery store or as PSWs -- there's a huge class divide for these children. And I know many friends who will keep their children home. But that's about privilege. And not everyone has that option.

CO: And what you're describing for a lot of people, it's already a juggling act, isn't it? Carefully balanced priorities and trying to make everything work. And this is just blowing everything up.

DI: Absolutely. Absolutely. Even as an educator and a parent to two children, one with special needs, my own children are not getting the education that they need right now being at home because I need to work. And if you have an independent learner, they can do the online stuff. And some kids are thriving in this environment. But I know certainly kids who are English As A Second Language learner or special needs being online and being at home is really really hard for them.

CO: Just to go back to what the Ontario Education Minister, Stephen Lecce, was saying today about the scenarios -- I mean, I guess the thing is that this disease, this coronavirus is full of surprises and we don't understand its personality, except it's nasty. It's difficult to plan, isn't it? So if you say that this definitively is what we need to do, we may be completely wrong come September, right?

DI: Well, if we could -- but we know that there will be a vaccine in September. The numbers are going down, but it's not going to be gone for September. So I do think that they can make a definitive plan at this point, because knowing that there will still be a risk and we know that we're not you even finishing the first wave and we will likely have a second wave. So I do think they can give us a better idea to prepare or for schools to get more human resources in place. They are decreasing the class sizes to fifteen, and I currently have a class of 31. Then they need to have another educator to split these classes off. You know, Lecce also made it very clear that we need to prepare for both in-person and synchronous learning. They are very different modalities.

CO: What does that mean?

DI: I may have a class in front of me, but I will also need to provide synchronous learning to students who are able to stay at home. We need to be given the heads up so we can prepare because the learning curve for some teachers has been immense going onto this platform. And I know myself as a parent, if I'm told in August that my kids will be going to school alternating weeks, let's say, I'll be scrambling for childcare. And in the past, in pre-COVID people would often tap into their extended family to help out. But during COVID, I don't think grandparents or aunts and uncles will be able to help out.

CO: And they're more vulnerable too. Jus talk about your teacher role. You think you can be expected to do both jobs?

DI: Yeah, well, I think in his press conference say he did say we expect to do synchronous and in-person, prepare to do it all. Maybe we could, but we need time to prepare.

CO: Plus, you have your own kids. So how are you going to balance that?

DI: I quite honestly don't know, because I know my own kids have done very little.

CO: I understand they've been playing a lot of video game.

DI: Oh, my goodness, yes. [Chuckles] Yes, they will be doing a detox in end of next week.

CO: [Chuckles] Just finally, I guess what we heard the premier say is that boards will be, quote, "empowered" to make their own decisions. Well, what do you make of that? Some are saying that's passing the buck.

DI: It totally is passing the buck. Absolutely. And I know they can't make one blanket statement for the province. But it's like the whole rollout of the laptops and the Chrome books. That was not from the ministry. Like, I went to my school the other day, all of our laptops are gone. So it's kind of like passing that buck. Absolutely.

CO: Denise, I hope you're able to juggle all of this. [Chuckles] It sounds like a lot.

DI: [Chuckles] It is a lot.

CO: And I think your kids will be joining many others in detox.

DI: Yes, absolutely. Yes. It won't be pretty. [Chuckles]

CO: Take care.

DI: Take care. Bye.

CH: Denise Ing is a teacher in Toronto. That's where we reached her.

[Music]

Thomas Freeman Obit

Guest: Gloria Batiste-Roberts

CH: As the head coach and founder of the debate team at Texas Southern University, Thomas Freeman was less concerned with winning than he was with excellence, which is not to say his teams didn't win. Over seven decades at the historically black university, Mr. Freeman's team racked up hundreds of trophies, routinely making rhetorical mincemeat of competitors from elite Ivy League schools. "Doc" as Thomas Freeman was known, was equally renowned for his influence. Among those under his tutelage were Martin Luther King Junior and U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. Thomas Freeman died recently at the age of 100. Although he made winning look effortless, Mr. Freeman and his teams faced obstacles, especially in the early years. Here he is offering up one example.

THOMAS FREEMAN: Everybody else could go to cafeterias and eat. We had to take food along with us so we could eat. And we were in the south, out of food. Stopped at a restaurant, and I was told when I entered, "We don't serve any blacks here. If you want to go around the back then go around and get something to eat." And what was I to do but to forget who I was, what I was, and humble myself and go to the back!

CH: That's the late Thomas Freeman speaking in 2018. Gloria Batiste-Roberts is his former student and a longtime colleague who took over as the debate team coach of Texas Southern University. We reached her in Houston.

CO: Professor Batiste-Roberts, first of all, I'm so sorry for your loss.

GLORIA BATISTE-ROBERTS: Thank you so much. It is an incredible loss. And it is still so unreal. Dr. Freeman came to the office every day, and when COVID came, it was very heartbreaking for him. And he would ask me almost every day [Imitating voice] "When couldn't we return to the office, Gloria?" [Chuckles] I'm like, "Not yet Doc."

CO: Was he always wearing those dapper suits when he went to work?

GLORIA BATISTE-ROBERTS: [Chuckles] No. Sometimes he had on debate shirts. And oftentimes those debate shirts had his picture on them. So, you know, to issue the debate team. He did a lot of interviews and a lot of speaking engagements, even at his age -- at 100. Last summer, the National Speech and Debate Association, he received their lifetime achievement award. And that speech was so profound and it was so timely. And in that speech, he said to the students that "You are the master of your own destiny. You set your own heights." He mentioned that we are leaving them a legacy where we have not done so well, but that they can do better than we did. And you could see the students just mesmerized by his speech, unbelieving that this man is 100 years old.

CO: It's not just the words that are so powerful in that story that he told about what he had encountered as a younger man, but it's the way he can put drama into words, the cadence, the rise and fall of his speech and the pauses to know how to bring a story in the language alive. Where did he develop that? What do you know of the background of his developing into the public speaker and the teacher that he was?

GLORIA BATISTE-ROBERTS: I think when he was a young boy, he was asked to speak in church. And I think he was afraid and really really afraid. His mother really motivated him and pushed him. And so at nine years old, he overcame that and became a little miniature master preacher. And I think at that point, this foundation was set. And of course, he's continued to master that. But I think it started in childhood in the church.

CO: So he arrives at Texas Southern University and heads up that team and then goes on to just clean everybody's clock. I mean they were an extraordinary team. But then the influence he had on those students, those students ended up being extraordinary people in their own right -- including, of course, Martin Luther King Junior. What do you know about the influence he had on students like Dr. King?

GLORIA BATISTE-ROBERTS: Well, let me tell you that he believed in students. And I always tell my own personal story. When I came back to help him as an assistant coach, there was a student he wanted me to take on a tournament. And that student really barely could say his name. [Chuckles] But he was brilliant. He had a good mind. And so he told me that I had to take him on that tournament because students learn by doing, by having an opportunity to compete. And in competition, they would grow. They would eventually grow. And I wasn't so keen on it. But, you know, I took the student anyway. And two years later, I asked that particular student to demonstrate what impromptu speaking is. I knew he had a great mind and that was no problem. But I had no idea how much he had learned to speak eloquently in two years. And I ran to Dr. Freeman's office and I said, "Doc, you should hear Calvin! He's excellent." And he just looked at me -- that look like "I told you so." But he would never tell you, "I told you so." That was not his character. And so that particular student went on to become the first African-American assistant district attorney in Key West, Florida. And that's because Dr. Freeman believed in him.

CO: Just to acknowledge that by coincidence, we are talking on Juneteenth. And the story we heard at the beginning of this, Dr. Freeman talking about what it was like as a young man and overcoming the racism that he encountered. What did he tell his own students about overcoming racism and the prejudice that they encountered?

GLORIA BATISTE-ROBERTS: He would tell us, because most of the that the tournaments we attended were predominantly white. And so he knew what we would face. Some of the comments on the ballots were so ugly and so hurtful. And many of my colleagues and I would be in tears and he would move beyond that. "You know, you did a good job." And that is what is important that, you know, you did a good job and no one can crush you if you know you did a good job. He did not want us to get stuck in that pain. And let me tell you, it was painful where you know you were the best person in the room, but then you didn't make it out to finals. And then you go to finals and you hear all of these speeches that were not nearly as good as yours. And you knew that. But if you knew that you did your best and that this country is now in a situation where they cannot recognize your greatness, there may be time and that maybe you could make a difference, that you could make a change. You could help laws. And that's why so many of the debaters went to law school and became lawyers and politicians and commissioners in their respective cities or council people in their cities because they were motivated to change that situation so that their children would not feel some of the pain that we experienced on debate trips.

CO: It's clear that you have learned the power of language to articulate what you just did. And I just appreciate it so much Professor Batiste-Roberts. Thank you for telling us about Thomas Freeman.

GLORIA BATISTE-ROBERTS: And thank you for wanting to know about him. He was a legend in his own time.

CO: Thank you. Bye.

GLORIA BATISTE-ROBERTS: Bye bye.

CH: Gloria Batiste-Roberts is the head coach of the debate team at Texas Southern University and a longtime colleague of Thomas Freeman, who died earlier this month at the age of 100. We reached Ms. Batiste-Roberts in Houston.

[Music]

Part 3: Encore: Maria Campbell

Encore: Maria Campbell

CH: Today, members of Rodney Levi's family and the Metepenagiag First Nation gathered in Sunny Corner New Brunswick for his funeral. Mr. Levi was shot and killed by the RCMP last week, just eight days after police in Edmundston, New Brunswick killed a 26 year old Indigenous woman named Chantel Moore. Their deaths prompted RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki to admit there is systemic racism in the force. And they come during Indigenous History Month when the RCMP is past in Canada is also under the microscope. In 1973, Maria Campbell was compelled to write about that past because it's her own. When the celebrated Metis author was in her teens, she was sexually assaulted by an RCMP officer. She wrote about that assault in her seminal memoir, "Halfbreed." But before it hit shelves, its publisher, McClelland and Stewart, removed those pages. Last year, they were restored in a new edition. In November, Maria Campbell sat down with Carol to talk about how that felt in this feature conversation. And a warning: the interview includes a discussion of that sexual assault.

CO: Maria Campbell, welcome to the As It Happens studio.

MARIA CAMPBELL: Thank you.

CO: This new version — complete version now — of your memoir, what is it like for you to see that now restored?

MC: I feel like it's finished now — because it never felt finished for me. I always felt like there was a part, well, there was a part of it that was missing, and that it didn't tell the complete story. And with that piece missing, it was like I just ended up on the street because there was nothing else to do — which is really not the case.

CO: How did those pages — how did that part of the book — get excised, do you know?

MC: Well, Jack promised me…

CO: Jack McClelland of McClelland and Stewart.

MC: Yeah. You know, he came to me and said that they had to take it out. And I said no, if it was coming out, then I wouldn't publish. So he told me that that it would be left there. And I believed that it was there until I got the box of books we get. You know, I got six copies of the book when it was released. And that was the first place I looked, and it was pulled. And I called him, and he said he couldn't do it. That he couldn't, you know, that they would have stopped everything.

CO: Well, we've seen correspondence now that he said he believed that the RCMP would seek an injunction if you described the rape you suffered at the hands of an officer. And then the book will be pulled altogether. And I guess he didn't want to put you through that.

MC: And he also told me that I would probably get hauled through courts, and it would be all over the paper. And I was angry with him at the time, but I understood, you know, later why he did it. But for me, I felt like I had been really betrayed. And that the whole story wasn’t there. Jack was a good teacher. He told me that the book would be a bestseller.

CO: And it was.

MC: And it was. He also told me that it was a way for me to be able to tell the country of Indigenous people. And, you know, because really that was why I was publishing it. And that, you know, anything else I did after that was entirely up to me. That would open the door for me. And it did to that.

CO: But, at the same time, the correspondence suggests that he believes that if you had published this part, or he had put that in, the book never would have made it. Because in those days, you could get an injunction — as he believed the police would.

MC: And he believed that. I know that he believed that.

CO: Because he believed you. He said in the letters, I believe her. I don't have any doubt that she was raped by these police.

MC: I never doubted that he believed me. I just felt that he must have known that he was going to take it out when he told me he was leaving it in. And I trusted him.

CO: The pages were discovered, and we've interviewed Deanna Reder — who is one of the researchers who are trying to dig through the archives, the McClelland and Stewart archives, because they knew these pages had been there. You thought that there's no way that the original manuscript with those pages still existed.

MC: I was really naïve. I didn't understand about hanging onto your paper, or anything else. And so when I finished, Diane Woodman was my was my editor. And when I had all this paper, and I said, what do I do with this now? And she said well, we can just throw it all in the garbage. So we put it in the garbage bin behind her house, so all of my stuff was gone. So then I asked Jack for a copy of the manuscript. So he sent me a copy, but it was the copy without pages. I never saw the red marks or anything until I saw Deanna’s copy.

CO: And Deanna, and her research partner Alex Shield, when they describe how they found them, Alex was in the archives, and she phones Deanna, and she whispers, and says I found them. I found the pages. They're here with a big red X through them. What was that like for you to see those pages?

MC: I felt very relieved. But it was also, you know, kind of like digging up… [breaking down] Excuse me.

CO: No, it's fine.

MC: That happened, you know, a long, long time ago. And after a couple of years after the book was published, I just let it go. And that was what I did. I let it go. So when I saw it again. And it wasn't the rape, and, you know, all of that stuff. It was my kids that went through a lot when the book first came out. And my father didn't know about it until I told him before the book came out — because I wanted him to know. And I brought the manuscript to him. So I didn't, you know, all of that was all opened up again. So it was so hard.

CO: Because we're talking about 45 years after you published those pages. And it's in your voice. The thing that's most striking about this book, Halfbreed, is the youthfulness of your voice, and describing what had happened to you, and your grandmother being with you, and being told it there's no point in pursuing this, they will never believe a halfbreed in court.

MC: And it's not that they wouldn't have believed. It just wasn't important. But that wasn't what was hard for me when I saw it again last year. It was just the memory of telling my father, you know, exposing my family to goodness knows what — because there was a lot of fear back then when the book was published. When we thought that it was going to be left in, you know? But even today, it's, you know, I don't know what can happen. Indigenous people have great fear of the police. It's just scary.

CO: But you wanted this book, you wanted those pages restored. Because without those pages, so much doesn't make sense, what happened to you, it's key.

MC: And it wasn't even just me. I mean, I'm not the only person that's had this happen to. It's happened to lots of women. And, in fact, I think about a week or two after they found those missing pages. I remember turning the national news on, and there was a young girl that had been interrogated by the RCMP, and she had been raped, or she had been sexually molested. That was last fall or last summer. And so it's never stopped. And once this came out, I ended up with, you know, I was contacted by so many women that said well, this happened to us too. It happened to me as well. And all at the same thing. There was this fear of not talking about it. You can't talk about it because the fear is there. It's always been there. There's been a fear of the police.

CO: What does it tell you, having those pages restored, what do you think that explains about what happened to you in your life?

MC: I think what it explains is that maybe life would have been different for me if that hadn't happened. You know, I certainly believe it would have been different. There's always a reason why people end up in in that kind of situation. And I was, you know, I was like any 14-year-old kid. I had lots of dreams, and you know poverty doesn't kill your dreams.

CO: But rape kills your childhood, doesn't it?

MC: It kills your childhood. It kills everything — certainly destroyed mine. And it destroyed my brother’s.

CO: You're one brother saw this happen.

MC: Yeah.

CO: Little kid.

MC: Yeah.

CO: And you couldn't tell your father because…

MC: My father probably would have killed somebody. [Chuckling] That was too scary. That was even more scary to think of that.

CO: You're listening to As It Happens, and I am in studio with Maria Campbell. She is a Metis author, a playwright, an elder. And her book Halfbreed has just had its full text restored — more than four decades after it was published. And, Maria, I just want to say that, I mean, there is a lot of trauma in this what we're talking about. The rape and in the book has been restored. But what strikes me about this book is that there is a lot of joy. When you're a girl, when you're growing up, the descriptions of the parties, and the dances, of your family life, of what it was like with your mom. There are laugh out loud moments. People have to know that this is a complete, rich story that has this turn in it. What do you want people to know about your child hood as a Metis?

MC: Well, that's what I want them to know. And I think that's been the hardest throughout my, you know, since the book was published is that so many people think that I had such a hard life. You know, we were poor, but our people are really strong. They're very joyful people. Well, we laugh through everything. We sing and dance through everything. And, you know, when I look at my own community, there are all of the stuff that happened in that community and to our people, we have some amazing people that have come out of there.

CO: And the strong sense of family and society and just we are here, we are rooted no matter what. And you're dealing with a double whammy of the colonial laws that restricted your lives, plus the fact that as Indigenous people, in the book this is 1970s, you call them “Indians” and “Metis” or “Halfbreeds”. But that the Indigenous people don't regard the Metis as being one of them either. So you're dealing with this double whammy all the time, aren't you?

MC: Yeah. That's always been our story, or part of our history. There's a word in our language which is to do with family and kinship, but it's a much bigger word than that. And that certainly was something that really held us together — and still does. You know, our people still are in contact with each other all the time. We visit people. And our communities are, you know, scattered. But even with all of the, you know, people being displaced so many times, being chased out so many times, it didn't matter where we went, it was like people moved in groups, and then you'd all be together. So while it may be as hard as it was being in that place, it was also our strength.

CO: My favorite character is Cheechum — and your Cheecum. Can you tell us who she is, and why she was so important to you?

MC: She was my great grandmother, and I was her first great grandchild. I'm fluent in my language and in my culture because of her insistence that whatever she could pass on to me, she did. She was very old, but she was also very young. She was very politically astute. She would be, you know, today, we would call her an activist — somebody who really believed in change. No matter what happened, you always work toward change. You don't take this, you know, without fighting back. She was also really independent. And so that's something that's really strong in our family is that independence. As long as we’ve got each other, we don't need anything else.

CO: But she's also this tremendous bridge into history, isn't she? Because you're growing up in the 1940s and ‘50s…

MC: And she was a part of the history.

CO: Of Louis Riel’s era.

MC: Of Louis Riel’s era.

CO: So you start the book describing this is where it comes from, and the spirit of rebellion, the spirit of resistance. And Cheechum is the continuation, so you bring that in, that history into the present day. This is where it comes from, don't you?

MC: And she is also a part of the signing of Treaty Six. that was her family. Her family was the chief that signed the Treaty, so she came from both sides of those places. And she treasured them. She always said we can we can live in both in our Metis place and our Cree place. And that was hard when I was young, but it's not that difficult anymore. I think once you understand about government policies, and how colonisation works to divide people, then, you know, it's not difficult anymore because then you know it's not people just being cruel.

CO: It's policies.

MC: Policies that forces that kind of thing.

CO: Poverty, everything you're describing is rooted in that, I mean, the deck was stacked against you. I mean, whatever you try to do, you always are turning up confronting this. And we cover the story of what's happening with the apprehension of children, of Indigenous children, in Saskatchewan. Well, throughout Canada, but Saskatchewan it's still going on.

MC: And Manitoba.

CO: And the children are still being taken from their families. And what was so striking about reading this book is for you to describe when you, as a teenager who are trying to keep your family together after your mother has died, and they come for your brothers and sisters. You did everything you could to try and keep that from happening. And there is a moment that station wagon, the faces in the window as they drove away, and the trauma of that. What does that tell us about the constant fear that Indigenous people were living under.

MC: Well, it’s the same fear that people live under every day today. We have so many children in care that's frightening. You know, like what's going to happen? At least my generation and my siblings had a memory of a grounded place. But children, you know, there's so much trauma and so much just pain all over. People are really broken. Their souls are hurting. And how do you fix that? And children grow up in that, and there's generations of it. You know, we have lots of amazing, wonderful things that happen, you know? I can't afford to go out and buy all the books that are written by Indigenous people today. You know, where at one time, I could. I can't keep track of all of the young people who are graduating with PhDs, and starting to get places of authority jobs and places of authority. But for every single time that happens, it's like we've lost another hundred kids for that. It’s just huge. And what can we do, you know? How long does that have to happen? How many children do we have to give up? And how many women have to die in order for us to be able to, you know? And now, I'm talking in general about Indigenous people because when they come to pick the children up, they don't ask them for status numbers. You know, they just pick them up.

CO: You were raising children of your own, as a teenager, you were starting to have your babies. And 1950s, and you describe in Halfbreed how you came to hit rock bottom. That everything was up against you. You had you left home, ended up in Vancouver. You ended up dealing with drugs.

MC: Not very nice people [laughing]

CO: Not very nice people, in fact, frightening people. There’s several stories of people you had associated with you later knew they were in prison, or dead. And you were just a young woman, you just started your teens, or into your teens, but trying to raise kids. So what was the help? What did you need? Because obviously, you didn't get anything that you needed in order to get you through that.

MC: Well, there was nothing for women. I mean, it was hard enough for poor, non-Indigenous women. There was absolutely nothing for Indigenous women. You know, there were places for men to stay because they were run by missions, but there was nothing for women. And if you were women on the street, you know, missions were not interested in helping you. You were just a bad person. And there was no place to go.

CO: What brought you out of that?

MC: My great grandmother.

CO: Cheechum.

MC: Yeah, just me laying there one day after I'd tried to commit suicide over and over again. Just me waking up, and she's sitting with me, and she's telling me you don't have to be here. You don’t have to be here. You have choices. You can leave here. And, you know, I didn't know where to go or what to do. But I knew of somebody who had quit, and I went to see her.

CO: Quit drugs. It's heroin we're talking about.

MC: Yeah, and she helped me with it.

CO: You’re listening to As It Happens, and I have author Maria Campbell in the studio with me to talk about the republication of her remarkable book called Halfbreed. And, Maria, I'm just wondering now that this book has been restored with the pages that were missing, the crucial description of what happened to you at the hands of those Mounties, at the same time, it's now out at a time when maybe we have more context, I mean, with the Truth and Reconciliation hearings with the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls testimonies, now, we have — I have — all kinds of knowledge that I wouldn't have had in the ‘70s if I had read this book at that time. Do you feel that that maybe just something happened here that actually worked out? That the fact that this book is now back out at a time when we really need it?

MC: Well, I don't believe that things just happen. It was just like I started writing. I never had any intentions of writing. I didn't know anything about writing. I had an old lady. She was a Quaker lady, who gave me a journal and a pen because I couldn't talk. I just couldn't speak to people about anything. And she gave it to me Monday, and said you’re going to have to get rid of some of this stuff. That's how I ended up with all of the pages. You know, I worked in radio. I did radio stuff. I, you know, produced radio. All of those things are, you know, what works — which is the best way to be able to get this information out if it's stories, or if it's in a song, if it's to get people together to do theatre. I really believe in collectives and people working together because that was how I grew up. You know, we never cut up our meat and dried it all by ourselves. It was a community event. People did it together. And so I believe in collectives, and I like working with people. I've just been in the city, and we've just finished doing a reading of a play that was a big collective. We met with other women who had been, you know, who had gone through very similar kinds of lives then. And we said okay, if we could do our own inquiry, what is the story we would want to tell, you know? I wasn't happy with the story that was going to be told. I mean, inquiries and inquiry, we have so many recommendations. All we need to do is look at those recommendations. We don't need to spend millions of dollars coming up with new ones because they're the same. There's poverty, there's violence, there's, you know, residential school. All of it, it’s the same thing over and over again. So I wasn't happy with where the inquiry was going.

CO: The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

MC: The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, I mean, I appreciate the work they did. I mean, you know, all of that. But it's just recommendations. And, in the end, you know, the word genocide…

CO: When they said that they used the word genocide.

MC: Yeah. And so I was frustrated. I just felt like the women who were being murdered, and the women who were on the street, women who are living in crisis, nobody was talking to them. They're the ones who are who are out there facing that every day. And there's all kinds of creative ways that you can educate people. And when you have that kind of money, you certainly should be able to come up with a few ideas when you have so many creative people around. Give people money and they'll do what they're supposed to do.

CO: So you think it was a lost opportunity to educate people about what was going on?

MC: Yeah, I believe it was. I hate to say that. But for me, changes is through arts, change is through storytelling, it's through singing songs, it's people visiting each other and talking, it's theatre, it's all of those things.

CO: The very end of Halfbreed the book when you published it in 1973, it says I believe that one day very soon people will set aside their differences and come together as one. Maybe not because we love one another, but because we will need each other to survive. And then together, we will fight our common enemies. Change will come because this time we won't give up, and there is growing evidence of that today. This is early 1970s.

MC: Yeah, and there's growing evidence. I mean, there's real visual evidence of that today, when you see all of the kids out protesting the kinds of things that are happening to the earth.

CO: So do you feel more optimistic? I mean, this is very optimistic at a time when we didn't have much reason to be optimistic. [chuckling] Now, do these words really resonate in a way they didn't?

MC: Oh yeah, they resonate. I mean, there's still lots of work to be done. And it's not just us as Indigenous people. It's all of us are going to have to work together. We got to think about our great grandchildren. Like, I never liked the word settler because it’s just so clearly us than them. But I think it's important for settlers to realize that they didn't do this. They weren't the people coming to this country looking for resources. There's always a difference. And as long as we categorize ourselves like that, we can't change — because there's either anger or guilt or whatever. The settler came here carrying the same kind of baggage, the same policies were practiced on them, you know? I always tell people, you know, people don't leave their country because they're happy. You don't leave your homeland because everything is great, and you know, oh gosh, you know 200-thousand of us or whatever are going to immigrate because everything is great at home. People don't do that. You know, I have Scottish ancestors. And when I started reading about the kinds of things that drove them out of their country, and they ended up here, I thought well, what's the difference? It was the same policies that were used on them. The same policies were used on the Irish. They're used in Africa and all of those countries. But somehow, when people end up here, and they’ve found the good life, they end up using same kinds of tools.

CO: So what gives you hope then?

MC: What gives me hope are kids — because they're not thinking like that. They're thinking about what's happening to our earth, what's happening to our land, what's happening to our water? Young people give me hope.

CO: Maria Campbell, It is extraordinary to speak with you, and to read this book. It will mean a lot to many people now that we can see it again in its entirety. And I thank you so much for coming in.

MC: Thank you.

CH: Maria Campbell spoke with Carol in our Toronto studio in November. Ms. Campbell is the author of a number of books, including the memoir "Halfbreed" which just had its full text restored last year right before that conversation. For more, visit our website: cbc.ca/aih.

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June 19, 2020 Episode Transcript

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