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The Current Transcript for June 14, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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Those who invaded our capital and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them that the election was stolen and that he was the rightful president.

MATT GALLOWAY: It was a day that underlined just how divided the United States is right now. On January six, 2021, rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent Joe Biden from being confirmed as president. Now hearings are underway exploring the role of the Republican Party and the former president, Donald Trump, in that insurrection. In 30 minutes, why the shocking details revealed are unlikely to change many minds about who or what was responsible. Also this morning and activists and journalists have gone missing in the Amazon. Friends and colleagues fear they're documenting of illegal fishing and poaching in that region may have put them in harm's way. Coming up, the latest from Brazil and that country's broken relationship with indigenous communities. Meanwhile, here in Canada, it's Kimberly Murray's task to rebuild those relationships.

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Children died in Indian residential schools. Indigenous families have a right to know which children died, how they died and where the children are buried.

MG: The new special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves will be here to talk about what comes next following the discovery of unmarked burials. We start, though, with a story of one teacher's efforts to bring new life to a pair of small Alberta towns. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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How classes in agriculture and baseball aim to rejuvenate two rural schools in Alberta

MG: It is a familiar story across this country, people leaving rural areas for life in Canada's cities. In the last five years, more than 17,000 people have left small town Alberta. But there is a school principal in the east central part of that province who's trying to change the direction of that migration. He's been revitalising two rural, remote schools through agriculture and baseball. The CBC's Brian Labby went to Altario, Alberta, 400 kilometres northeast of Calgary.

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BRIAN LABBY: Well, here I am. Altario, Alberta. There's not much here. It's pretty quiet on Main Street. The first thing you feel is the prairie wind. The first thing you see are a couple of old grain elevators. The taller one is white, with Altario written in blue letters. This community was founded more than 100 years ago. The name is a mash up of Alberta and Ontario. Fewer than 40 people live here on Main Street. The Grey Stucco Hotel has been closed for years. An old payphone is still out front. The gas station and the convenience store are long gone. There is a bank, but it's in a trailer next to the community hall. A bit farther down the road is where you'll find the local school.

VOICE: Good morning, Ontario School. Today is May 18th. And a quick reminder, Pop.

BRIAN LABBY: It's a K-12 school. The building is a light sandy brown with blue trim. The two story gym is on the right side. There's a digital sign reminding students about some upcoming tests and a hot lunch. The Canadian Provincial Treaty Six and Metis flags are flying out front. The school has faced hard times over the years, including the threat of closure. But it's undergoing a resurgence.

MAGGIE: I'm Maggie Beyer. I teach grade 1 to 3 in Altieri Old School.

BRIAN LABBY: Maggie Beyer knows most of the school's history.

MAGGIE: I have been at this school for 38 years.

BRIAN LABBY: The school was floundering for years. Enrolment was falling. Teachers would come and go. Beyer, wearing a soft yellow turtleneck with a black blazer, has short brown hair that is tucked neatly behind her ears.

MAGGIE: As the years went on. It was getting worse and worse.

BRIAN LABBY: But right now, it seems like it's never been better. And part of the reason is what's going on behind the school. In fact, before classes start, about a dozen kids walk from the school to a pen that used to be an outdoor rink. It's now home to chickens, quail, cows, pigs and sheep. The students are part of the school's agriculture academy and every morning starts with chores.

MAGGIE: So right now, I'm going to give them water.

BRIAN LABBY: Tanika Brockman is in grade seven. She's one of the farm leaders.

TANIKA: I am the chicken manager. And so now we're going to collect the eggs.

BRIAN LABBY: It's become a self-sustaining operation. The eggs, along with the animals, are eventually sold. The money goes back into the school. Some of the profits are set aside for scholarships.

KEVIN: The idea of growth, that's what drives me.

BRIAN LABBY: That's Kevin Van Lagon. He's the school's principal.

KEVIN: So I'm always thinking about how can we do that better? How can we do that better? How can we make this bigger or more impactful for the students?

BRIAN LABBY: He came here eight years ago, but he only planned to stay for three. He became the sixth principal in six years. Van Lagon says things might have been different if he really knew what he was getting into.

KEVIN: Because honestly, I don't hide this. I think if we had to, everybody would have said no because we found out, you know, what had happened in the school the previous year. It was really dry that summer. And there's grasshoppers everywhere in his heart. And it was just like, where is everybody, you know? There was hardly any kids. And when you walked in down the streets, it was just like there was nothing.

BRIAN LABBY: On top of all of that. The school was spiralling. Teachers and students were leaving.

KEVIN: You know, as the school was struggling, some students would leave. Some families left. The school got smaller. So when that happens, staffing gets cut. You have less programming. When you have less programming, you lose students and you lose more staff. And it was just that downward trajectory.

BRIAN LABBY: So five years ago, the community came together to come up with a plan to save their school. And in Alberta, it's a real threat. Since 2019, a dozen rural schools have been shut down.

KEVIN: We talked about the future of the school, and instead of talking about sustainability, we want to talk about how can we actually thrive? How can we actually, you know, be amazing and kind of and always that simmering idea of having to close the school down because it wouldn't have enough students.

BRIAN LABBY: The turnaround started with the community garden behind the school and then a couple of cows. The chickens, pigs and sheep followed. People started to donate money. Grants were approved. A barn was built next to the old rink.

ANNA: Without this, basically, we. We're a puppet. We turn into a dust bowl.

BRIAN LABBY: Like that's an Anna Byer. And I should mention you're going to hear quite a few people named Buyer. There's different spelling variations. Some of them are related. Some of them aren't. Anna Byers, family farms in the area. She was part of that meeting in 2017 to save the school.

ANNA: It's our matriarch of our community. Without it, we'd be. We'd be lost. We'd really be lost. Our kids would be lost. Not only we'd be lost, but our children would be lost.

BRIAN LABBY: It means a lot to her. Generations of her family have gone through these classrooms and hallways.

DAN: That'd be me.

BRIAN LABBY: That's her husband, Dan. He's looking at his grad photo on the wall in one of the main hallways. It's from 1979. There were seven people in his graduating class.

DAN: We lost. Lost a few moved away.

BRIAN LABBY: Dan and his daughter is just finishing grade 12. Their son, Morgan, graduated in 2014. He didn't get a chance to experience the AG Academy.

MORGAN: I wish it was a thing when I was in high school because I would have been in there like a dirty shirt doing stuff. And I'm sure.

BRIAN LABBY: He thinks it could actually help save family farms in the area, convince kids to stay in agriculture.

MORGAN: It definitely could sway some people. I think if you're on the fence, I never knew right away if I was going to hang around the farm or not. But the more I did that, I just fell in love with it. So I think it definitely could persuade them to stay around.

BRIAN LABBY: That's what Morgan is doing. He went away for a bit to get a diploma in agriculture management, but he's back and will likely take over the farm. He says that's a big deal because it's always tough when families sell and leave.

MORGAN: Definitely there's multi-generational farms out here, so it's a shame sometimes to see them go like without anybody taking them over. You see, farm sales are always kind of sad when you see them around here. You lose people to the community.

ANNA: All right. So you guys can open up your laptops and go on to classroom.

BRIAN LABBY: Enrolment is now at 67. One of the students was drawn in from Saskatchewan. It's a half hour bus ride away. Others come in from nearby towns and farms. Now there are more students at the school than the entire community. Some of the pigs are scuttling around in the old ring. Their snouts are bumping together as they fight over a rotten banana.

KINLEY: Started out with six big pigs and all of them have wild boar in them. So they're all crosses.

BRIAN LABBY: That's Kinley Byer. She's 17 and in grade 11 last year, she was in charge of the sheep. This year, she's the assistant general manager of the farm. She comes from a farm family. Raising beef cows is their main focus.

KINLEY: And I think it's a really great opportunity because I've never really learnt about anything other than beef. So now learning about pigs and sheep and chickens and quail. Like, who knows anything about quail? Like, there's not a lot of farm quail farmers out there. It changes your perspective on where our food comes from.

BRIAN LABBY: These schools are labelled schools of excellence and the idea is spreading in the Prairie Land School Division. 75 kilometres away in veteran Alberta, members of the Neutral Hills Baseball Academy are raking the red shale in the infield. They're getting ready for practise. The Academy is part of another school of excellence. They practise and play here. But the programme is based out of the school in concert, another small village about 15 minutes away. Drew Boyer is the Academy's programme director and coach.

DREW: I guess kind of right here that works. Just take a knee.

BRIAN LABBY: He's rounding up the players before they start practising beginning tomorrow.

DREW: All right. Last game of the season with the academy. All right. Let's end on a good note. Everything starts in practise. All right, let's apply what we do today into tomorrow's game. All right. What are the two things we can control at all times? Attitude and effort. At all times we can control. All right. Everything else we can control.

BRIAN LABBY: Boyer moved here from another small town two and a half hours away. After talking it over with his girlfriend. It took him a day to accept the job offer from Kevin Van Lagon, who was also the principal of the school in concert.

DREW: I remember it just like it was yesterday. I said to him, This is, this can be something special, and it's everything I ever imagined.

BRIAN LABBY: It has been special for Boyer, his team, and the community. Last year, in their first year, the Neutral Hills Wranglers won a provincial championship. The 16, 17 and 18 year old boys have come from all over the province to join the academy and attend the local school.

LEIF: I'm Leif Wilson. I'm number ten and I play centre field for the Neutral Hills Wranglers.

BRIAN LABBY: Leif Wilson moved here all the way from Virden, Manitoba.

LEIF: I think it's a wonderfully run programme and it's we're all disciplined on the team and it's very well structured.

BRIAN LABBY: The 18 year old says he's learning how to be a better player and a better team-mate. He's about to graduate, but he's not done with baseball. He's been recruited by a U.S. college.

LEIF: I'm going to get the experience playing junior college baseball, and I'd hope to transfer to a four year programme and continue my baseball career and hopefully make it to professional baseball.

DREW: [Speaking to players] Corbin, Listen up. Hit and run round down the first two pitches advanced whatever advances to second. All right.

BRIAN LABBY: The baseball academy boosted enrolment at the school and brought in some extra money. But something else happened.

DREW: [Speaking to players] First went out.

BRIAN LABBY: The game itself is drawing more kids in in concerts. A tiny village known as the place where singer k.d. lang grew up. Minor league baseball registration has reached 160 in a village with 700 people.

TAMMY: I'm Tammy Buyer, and I am the president of our concert Minor Ball Association right here in town. Seeing those big boys in the school, they've been pretty good role models to these kids and the kids over at the other diamonds. And yeah, so I think that everybody just wants to play baseball no matter.

BRIAN LABBY: She sees that role modelling up close. One of the Academy players is staying with her family.

TAMMY: That's been pretty influential for my son as well. I mean, he just loves the game, but he's now surrounded by it, right? Every day in the home and we go watch the Wrangler games and then he can't wait to bring that to the field for himself.

BRIAN LABBY: Tammy says her son calls him his big billet brother.

HOGAN: I'm Hogan Jacobson. I'm from south of Camrose, Alberta.

BRIAN LABBY: Hogan is the big billet brother.

HOGAN: I grew up on a small ranch, middle of nowhere.

BRIAN LABBY: Hogan's 18, and he's finishing up his second year with the academy.

HOGAN: Big change for me, but it was the right decision for me and pretty easy decision for my parents. Do they know this is what I love to do and this is where I need to be to do what I love. So kids seemed to more seem to be more engaged with sports. They're more excited about everything. The principal at our school has been a huge supporter, so he's really helpful in making all these things happen and the kids love it.

BRIAN LABBY: And all these things go beyond baseball. The team took over a neglected curling rink in town and turned it into a practise facility. There is artificial turf, a pitcher's mound, a batting area. On the other side, there's weight machines and stationary bikes. Other teams use it. So do kids in gym classes from nearby schools. Even some local seniors stop in for a workout. Drew Boyer says it's another example of how the programme is bringing people together.

DREW: This programme is it's come such a far away and I'm really proud of everybody that's helped build this programme.

BRIAN LABBY: That takes us back to Kevin Van Lagon. He calls himself the Prairie Principal on social media. Van Lincoln reflects back on the past eight years and how he encountered some pushback people who were against his plans, particularly the AG Academy in Altario.

KEVIN: And I've been told that myself, actually, you're wasting your time because Alberta are rural. Rural communities are just getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and that's just the way it is. And there's nothing you can do about it. And I actually disagree, and I think COVID proved it right now, where you don't have to live in the city for jobs. You don't have to live in the city for shopping. You don't have to live in the city for entertainment.

BRIAN LABBY: It's a turnaround personally for Van Lagon, too. He's originally from southwestern Ontario. He doesn't have a background in farming. He had to convince himself, his wife and his five boys that he was making the right move. He was quickly struck by the community, how much it cared and how much it's changed. His view of small town Alberta.

KEVIN: There's opportunities for schools to drive change in rural Alberta, and I was talking to him about that earlier, how we need to do a better job of promoting raising a family in rural Alberta and how awesome that is and how it's a great place to send your kids to school. And we have opportunities to do really special things in our schools.

BRIAN LABBY: Van Lagon has found that when you're a school principal in a small community, you take on a lot of different roles social worker, counsellor, mentor. He's even presided over someone's funeral.

KEVIN: You know, when there's loss in the community, including including death, you know, the funerals were held at the school because there's nowhere else big enough to hold hold a funeral. And most of the people at this point I know well and the lost their community lost is my loss as well. You know, my my kids are my students. My kids friends are my students. It's all interconnected.

BRIAN LABBY: And he's not done planning and growing, literally growing.

HAYLEY: We have spinach and kale and romaine lettuce. And for this.

BRIAN LABBY: That's Hayley Beier, a grade 12 student who is carefully checking the veggies that are sprouting at a new hydroponic growing operation across the street from the school in Ontario. It looks like a shipping container from the outside. Inside there are racks and racks of small plants that are just a few centimetres tall. They sit on Styrofoam beds that float on water.

HAYLEY: In the seedling tank, I'm going to test the p, h and the nutrients in the water.

BRIAN LABBY: The year round indoor garden will soon produce enough vegetables to feed 150 families. A restaurants wants to buy them too. It's part of an Liggins plan to make sure his schools don't stagnate and that his students have a bright future.

KEVIN: The concept of how a village can raise a child, the closeness with with school and families are all selling points where I can actually see the movement of return to rural, where families want to live in these situations, in these type of communities, and send their kids to these type of schools. So I think we have an opportunity to shift that. I'm a minority voice on that, but I'm kind of proving it here. Right.

BRIAN LABBY: So our interview is interrupted by the final bell.

KEVIN: And I have to see growth. Growth. Growth drives me in some ways.

BRIAN LABBY: The day also ends with a song, of course, a country music song. It seems appropriate for the school. It's about beating the odds and a short.

[Song].

MG: Brian Labby is a reporter at CBC in Calgary.

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MG: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. We have a moment to tell you about something that's coming up later this week on the programme. The gender imbalance in medical schools has slowly been writing itself in recent years. That has not translated, though, to all areas of medicine. Take surgery, for example. It continues to be dominated by men. And the issue isn't just with the raw numbers. It's also about working conditions. Later this week, I'll speak with Dr. Teresa Keiser. She is Alberta's only female cardiac surgeon, and she says her workplace is rife with sexism and misogyny. It got so bad that she filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

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When I would come back from a trip, there be something lying in. Wait for me to address some complaint. I could almost guess what they would be targeting, and I would dictate the reason I did this in my operative note, so that if it did come into question, I could say exactly why I did something. People have told me that they have been seeing this. When one professor calls it Terry bashing, also known as Terry for decades at rounds just belittled, talked to over just subtle barbs. And it got to the point where people this one particular doctor would not go to the rounds because she couldn't stand it. I just ignored it and took the high road. I'm nearing the end of my career and I just thought if I cannot just fade into the sunset, having gone through all this without bringing the light of day onto it and this is the only way change will get effected, is if the light of day is shed on the inequities that women suffer to get to where they are. Yes, it's hard enough to do heart surgery, never mind trying to watch your back and somebody is going to attack what you've done.

MG: What is it like to be a woman in the operating room? My conversation with Dr. Teresa Keiser and two other female surgeons coming up later this week on The Current.

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That's the bottom line. We've had an election Mr. Trump lost, but he refused to accept the results of the democratic process.

MG: Well, that refusal and the attack on democracy that came next or at the heart of hearings being held in Washington, D.C. this week. Coming up after the CBC News, what's at stake for politics in America and perhaps perhaps the country itself? I'm Matt Galloway you're listening to The Current and we're back in 6 minutes. Stay with us.

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Hearings into Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot; Kimberly Murray on helping Indigenous communities heal

Guests: Amber Phillips, John Fund, Molly Jong-Fast

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. Here you're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, Kimberly Murray organised the search of the grounds of the Mohawk Institute in southern Ontario. They were looking for anomalies that could signify unmarked graves. Now she's tasked with helping indigenous groups across this country as Canada's first special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked burials. Kimberly Murray is my guest in just under half an hour. But first, a former president, false claims and the riot that followed.

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What I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I had seen out of the movies. I couldn't believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. You know, they were bleeding. They were throwing up. They were, you know, they had I mean, I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people's blood.

MG: A war scene. That is how Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards described what she saw on January six, 2021. She was testifying at committee hearings, looking into the attack on the U.S. Capitol yesterday. More information came out about the role of former President Donald Trump. Amber Phillips is politics reporter for The Washington Post and the author of the Five Minute Fix newsletter. Amber, good morning.

AMBER PHILLIPS: Good morning, Matt. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for being here. At its heart, what are the questions that the January six committee is trying to answer?

AMBER PHILLIPS: There's a couple of them. The top one is certainly how culpable was President Trump for the violence? That Officer Carolyn Edwards that we heard described the committee is to hearings and in pointing directly at President Trump saying he lit the flames for this riot. And it's very possible by the end of this that they accuse him of a crime. Of course, that doesn't carry any weight because they don't have powers to prosecute the president, but it would be significant nonetheless. Other questions include how the president used levers of power within the government to try to push his false election fraud claims. How so many people believe these ordinary people and thousands came to DC and marched on the Capitol? So how does disinformation like that spread at that magnitude? How is the Capitol so vulnerable to attack? These attackers just broke windows and got into some of the most secure places in Washington, D.C. and police were overwhelmed. And then finally, what can Congress and states here in America do to stop something like this from happening again?

MG: How convincing do you think the case has been made so far that Donald Trump created and spread what's known as the big lie? I mean, again, this is where the laser beam was really focussed yesterday.

AMBER PHILLIPS: Right. That's exactly right. I think it's fairly convincing because the committee has tried not to use their words and that this committee is mostly for the Democrats, who, of course, are the opposite party to President Trump. There are two Republicans on it, but they've been outcast from their party for their involvement. So what they have done instead is try to use the words of President Trump's own allies against him. Yesterday, and the first hearing last week with most of the hearing were videos of President Trump's former campaign manager, his former attorney general, his daughter, his son in law, his top campaign adviser, their lawyers all saying essentially, I told him these false election fraud claims were not true. Bill Barr said he quit over it because he was. That's excuse me, that's President Trump's former attorney general. He said he quit over it a month, a month to go in the administration because he was frustrated the president was listening to him.

MG: He also said that the president seemed to be disconnected from reality.

AMBER PHILLIPS: Yeah, he said there was not an interest at all in the facts on President Trump's part. When he would try to come talk to the president in office, the president would bring up these voting machines, maybe, you know, this kind of crazy theory. Maybe you press a button and it switches from Trump to Biden and the voting machine makers are corrupt. And and Barr actually used profanity to tell them, nope, that's not true, Mr. President. And he just said that kept happening over and over again. And the President wasn't interested in hearing what was true about about the election. He just wanted to believe these fraud claims.

MG: It's hard to be shocked by some of the things you learn over the course of recent U.S. history. But is there anything that has leapt out to you over the course of these hearings that that that is surprising, that that is a big headline for you that you didn't perhaps know.

AMBER PHILLIPS: I think there's been a couple of things. One is, as you and I have been talking about, just how much the president's former aides were there telling him, stop this. This isn't true. Yesterday, we heard Trump's campaign manager at the time on election night say, you know, it didn't look good for Trump, but there were still days left of votes to be counted and tell the president, do not go out there and speak and say, I won the election. Instead, say something like ballots are still being counted. We're optimistic. You know, more traditional politics speak. Trump went out there and said the exact opposite. Ballots are being counted. And then we heard testimony from other Trump campaign advisers who said he listened to advice from an inner inebriated excuse me, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani instead on election night to go out there and say there was election fraud. And so essentially what we're hearing are that Trump campaign aides at this time divided themselves between the normals. This is their term and then the crazies like Rudy Giuliani, these fringe lawyers that were just willing to peddle this stuff. And it was very clear, as the committees illustrating with their evidence that Trump only wanted to listen to the crazies. I mean, that is shocking when you hear it all put together.

MG: As you mentioned, this is a Democrat led committee with a couple of outcasts, including Liz Cheney from the Republicans. How is the right wing media in the United States, FOX News, for example, covering these hearings?

AMBER PHILLIPS: Yeah, Fox News was the only major news organisation to not air these hearings. In fact, the first hearing came in primetime in the committee's hopes there. That's unusual for these congressional hearings here in America that normally during office hours, the hope was that all these news stations, especially Fox News, would cover it because those are the people the committee most wants to talk to. They directed a lot of their opening statements that people who believe election fraud or support President Trump. Fox News did not air the hearings, instead opting to have no commercial breaks and go with their opinion hosts who have effectively tried to to try to downplay the January six attack. And that it actually echoes what a lot of top Republicans here in Washington are doing as well. Vice President Mike Pence, whose own life is in danger that day, has downplayed it. The top House Republican, Kevin McCarthy, has the Republican National Committee. That just that is the talking point right now amongst Republicans to say this attack wasn't worth looking into or investigating.

MG: What about Donald Trump? What has he said?

AMBER PHILLIPS: Donald Trump has tried to deny, discredit almost every single person who has given testimony to the committee that includes a spat between him and his own daughter, Ivanka Trump, the likes of which we've rarely seen. It was just a little back and forth, but it's so we didn't see that during the administration. And so he's just trying to I think he's muzzled a little bit, in part because he doesn't have access to major social media. But but he is trying to to continue to discredit the committee and its work.

MG: Just before I let you go, the ball has just started rolling when it comes to this investigation, what are you going to be watching for as the hearings continue?

AMBER PHILLIPS: Yes. So the committee has talked about how they want to keep underscoring that President Trump knew he was lying about election fraud claims. And then the next step is that he corruptly, in their terms, tried to turn the levers of government in order to stay in power like he you know, they're going to talk about how he tried to replace the top law enforcement official here in America with one who is willing to peddle his election lies. And they're going to talk about how he tried to arm wrestle, essentially state legislatures to flipping the popular vote in their states to him. And so the committee, what they want to do is they want to paint intent, I think, in order to, at the end of the day, accuse him of committing a crime, saying he knowingly tried to stop Congress from counting state's votes that day in order to stay in power.

MG: Amber, thank you very much for this.

AMBER PHILLIPS: Thank you.

MG: Amber Phillips, politics reporter for The Washington Post.

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And I was somewhat demoralised because I said, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has, you know, lost contact with with it. He's become detached from reality. If he really believes this stuff. On the other hand, you know, when I went into this and would, you know, tell him how crazy some of these allegations were. There was never, there was never an indication of interest in what the absolute facts were. In my opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud.

MG: It is testimony like that which is drawing in millions of American viewers to these hearings, sometimes in prime time, as Amber was saying. That was former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr. It's still not clear, though, how many of the people watching will actually be swayed by what they're hearing. And that has implications for America's political landscape. John Fund is a columnist for the National Review. Molly Jong-Fast is a contributor to Atlantic magazine. She writes that magazine's newsletter. Wait, what? Good morning to you both.

MOLLY JONG-FAST: Thanks for having me.

MG: Me. My pleasure. Molly Jong-Fast, before the hearings, you wrote that they could be a real game changer. Have they lived up to your expectations?

MOLLY JONG-FAST: So I thought they were pretty amazing. I was really pleasantly surprised. I feel like the Mueller hearings were just a complete disaster and not for this century. Right. And because the world has changed so much since Watergate or even Iran-Contra. But I thought these hearings were done in a way that was very modern, that was short, that included lots of little snippets and was sort of set up in a kind of more of the century manner. So I thought that they've done an extremely good job in a very difficult situation.

MG: John Fund Is this a game changer or is it a partisan production by the Democrats, as Republicans have said?

JOHN FUND: Well, let me stipulate that I did not vote for Donald Trump. I think his behaviour on January 6th was beyond abominable and I have no interest in having his governing style returned to Washington. However, let's be clear. What Molly wrote in The Atlantic magazine is that this committee hearings goal was to provide a narrative for what happened on that day. That's not what congressional committees are supposed to be about. What they were producing is a TV show, not the conclusions of a credible investigation. And despite the fact that the Mueller probe hearings were a disaster, as Molly says, they at least followed what a congressional hearing is supposed to be. I mean, we let terrorists, we let Mafiosa, we let all kinds of despicable people present evidence. Congressional hearings. There's cross-examination. There's discussion about the relevant responsibility of the government officials who were in charge of the Capitol security. There's all kinds of things that included a congressional hearing. This is not a congressional hearing. This is a TV show. And I think that the credibility of this hearing is diminished by that omission. And the fact of the matter is, there's the one thing that this hearing does not allow the American people to learn is that there is a deep disagreement between this committee that wants to charge Donald Trump with sedition and the Justice Department of the Biden administration, which does not mention Donald Trump in the sedition cases. And it's neither charged him nor named him as unindicted co-conspirator. So the committee wants to find evidence of a crime, but the Justice Department is not interested in that and that is the fundamental contradiction.

MG: I can hear in the background, Molly. Go ahead.

MOLLY JONG-FAST: I mean, I first of all, I want to know what you think was a good committee hearing. I mean, are you saying Benghazi was a good committee hearing? I mean, what like give me a congressional committee hearing that you feel was not a TV show? That would be my first question.

JOHN FUND: The 911 hearings.

MOLLY JONG-FAST: Right. But the 911 hearings was a completely different Republican Party. You would never have that Republican. I mean, right now, you couldn't you don't have a Republican Party like that. I mean...

JOHN FUND: 911 was caused by terrorists. It wasn't caused by one political party or another. It was caused by...

MOLLY JONG-FAST: What do you think January six was caused by?

JOHN FUND: If you want to do using people storming the country, you want to call the Jan six terrorists. That's your business, but that's not...

MOLLY JONG-FAST: Do you think that disrupting the counting of votes is an excuse? What do you think at this point?

JOHN FUND: I will address your points after you address my point.

MG: At the risk of debating what is or is not a television show, let's talk about I mean, aside from how this this looks. What about what you've learnt, Molly? What what stands out in terms of what you've heard so far.

MOLLY JONG-FAST: The other thing that I would just say is we don't really know what the what the Biden Justice Department is going to do yet. I think it's a little early to make a conclusion, which is not to say that he is going to charge or is not going to charge. We just don't know yet. I I thought that there was a lot of information. I thought they were. Look, we are in this very charged partisan world right now where information is not information. And people are very you know, I don't know the kind of hearts and minds you're going to you're going to change. But I do know that I thought there was some very compelling evidence. I thought Jared Kushner really, you know, just in those few words, really kind of gave away the store. And so I think there was a lot of information there.

MG: John, are you surprised that how many people close to the former president? In some ways, it seems, have flipped and said that he was detached from reality, that he was taking advice from, you know, his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, apparently inebriated. Are you surprised by that?

JOHN FUND: Donald Trump has surrounded himself over the course of his career with all kinds of marginal people who do not serve the American people well. I would simply point out, by the way, that, you know, it has been 18 months since January 6th, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has basically had 42 lawyers looking into this sedition case. He is not going to charge Donald Trump after 18 months. Enough evidence could have been gathered. He has also, at the same time not he's refused to answer any questions about whether the FBI had informants or undercover agents, infiltrated the Trump supporters and encouraged them to storm the Capitol. That would be a relevant question for a committee to ask, not asking. May I finish? May I finish, please? That is a relevant question to ask that now in a normal fact finding process, you have the other side get to ask questions, you have the other side get to raise points. They shouldn't be scared of the truth either the fact that Donald Trump acted abominably that day or the fact that there are all kinds of unanswered questions about how the security was so bad at the Capitol. Now, one of the things that we do know this. Bennie Thompson last night said the committee is not going to make a criminal referral. Not at all. So what is the point of this other than to have a TV show if you're not going to have cross-examination, if you're not going to have witnesses being asked questions by people who disagree with them, you're not going to have a normal congressional committee and you're not going to refer anyone for criminal prosecution. It is, by definition a TV show.

MG: Molly Jong-Fast, what is the if the if the hearings don't change minds but also don't lead to that criminal prosecution or the charges that are there? What is is the point of these hearings, do you think?

MOLLY JONG-FAST: I mean, we've gone so far afield from a normal conversation here, I don't even know how to sort of make sense of this. But I would say we don't know. Right. Bennie Thompson said that the other members of the committee who said maybe they would. We don't know. I think the most...

[Cross talking]

MOLLY JONG-FAST: I mean, I. I think that we should you know, for me, as someone who is quite interested in keeping democracy going, I would like as much information as possible. Look, ultimately, I don't know what the American people are going to care about, but no one else does. Like we don't know what will move the needle. I know for myself, as a person who likes to live in a democracy, the idea that there was a, you know, a president of a major party who tried to overturn the election results is quite scary. And so I would like as much information as possible. I think there are a lot of people in this country who, even though America is very hyperpartisan, would like to know as much as possible. And I think that Liz Cheney is no Democrat. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it. While she may be against Trump taking over, she is no Democrat. And certainly, you know, she cares. Not at all what happened to the Democrats in the midterms. She just wants to get to the truth.

MG: Is there the real possibility that that people's minds could be changed, Molly, by this? Again, to your point about just about how divided the country is, but also, you know, major broadcaster and Fox not showing this, which would perhaps lead to the idea that people are already baked in, that there's confirmation bias, that you believe what you believe. Is there the possibility that really possibility the minds could change because of what's really been?

MOLLY JONG-FAST: I don't want to get attacked your. But I would say there are two things that happened this weekend. And again, people have said Rupert Murdoch is on the fence about Trump and has been very sort of back and forth. But, you know, this weekend he ran there was an editorial in The Wall Street Journal and an editorial in The New York Post, both Murdoch papers that said that Americans should move on. Fox aired the hearings on day two, you know, and they aired the hearings on Fox. So, I mean, I do think like, look, I don't know what's going to happen. And in my mind, I'm not convinced that the Republican Party, the Republican Party moving on from Trump means a de Santos or someone who could theoretically be a better candidate than Donald Trump, someone who has moved on. So as a Democrat, as a partisan, you know, I'm very conflicted about the whole thing. But I'm telling you that people don't we just don't know what's going to make people care. And that was true with Watergate and that was true, you know, that's been true throughout history. So I think they have to try and I think that it's a valiant effort. And and I think these are hearings. And look, it's not Benghazi. I mean, there is bipartisanship and there's an agreement that what happened on January six is a terrible thing that should never happen again.

MG: John Fund Is there anything that this committee could reveal that would change how Republicans might vote or might run in the upcoming elections, the midterms that are happening in November?

JOHN FUND: Look, more information is better than no information. And the committee has brought forth some very interesting video depositions. But let me reiterate, this is not a congressional hearing. This is a TV show. The American people right now are sitting on a situation in which the stock market has collapsed 23% since January 3rd. Gasoline prices are the highest they've been in 40 years. Inflation is the highest it's been in 40 years. Donald Trump's popularity at this point in his presidency was 42%. Joe Biden has slipped below 40%, which is ten points below where Obama was. The country is in a meltdown on several fronts. Now, I'm perfectly happy to discuss January 6th, and I'm perfectly happy to have a factual documentary record made of how abominable Donald Trump's behaviour was. But that's not where the American people are right now. It's been 18 months. The Justice Department has not indicted Donald Trump. It is not even named him as an unindicted co-conspirator. The committee is obsessed with this. There is a Trump loathing obsession with this which led to the disastrous Baylor hearings. In the end, the Mueller hearings tended to discredit Trump critics, even though they had some good points to make about Donald Trump's behaviour. This committee, which is not fair, which is not bipartisan, which does not allow people to cross-examine, is a very interesting TV show. But let's not pretend it's anything else. When people watch a TV show, it doesn't change their mind. It means that they watch the TV show.

MG: And so the belief that this is about preserving democracy in the United States, that this is about actually trying to find the answers to what happened on the 6th of January when people stormed the Capitol.

JOHN FUND: That's why you have a congressional committee process that has been violated. You don't you in a normal congressional committee, both sides get to a point. Members, Nancy Pelosi did not allow the Republican leader to appoint the members he wanted. Both sides get to cross-examine. So a factual look at the events and the facts is fine. I support it. But 911 committee did that. This does not do that. Does anyone think I mean, I think a one sided presentation of this is going to move people. No, they're worried about the fact that they're paying $6 for gas and the stock market has collapsed 23%.

MG: Molly, we just have a minute or so left.

MOLLY JONG-FAST: I mean, I think it's obvious how nervous this is making Republicans, because all they can talk about is inflation. This is not about inflation. Inflation is about inflation. You want to talk about inflation? We can have hearings on inflation. This is about January six. But I first of all, that I mean, I could go and talk to you about the bills that Republicans voted against, about gas prices, about I mean, but it's not even about that. The fact that Republicans can't even sit still for a minute. And the other thing is this indictment that it's a TV show. Donald Trump is a reality TV host. You guys should like this. This is what your party is all about.

MOLLY JONG-FAST: I never voted for him, so don't accuse me of that.

MG: I'm just saying that you're getting very hot and heated. It's a TV show. It's a TV show. The host. You know Trump is...

JOHN FUND: Molly? Do you believe there should be cross examination on this hearings? Yes or no? Yes or no?

MOLLY JONG-FAST: Of course there should be cross-examined. but you believe that Liz Cheney is a liberal. I mean, this is we've gotten so far afield from reality.

JOHN FUND: Molly, for 200 years, we've had congressional hearings in which the minority the minority members. For 200 years.

MOLLY JONG-FAST: Do you remember Benghazi?

[Cross talking]

MOLLY JONG-FAST: Were you upset about benghazi? I think we. Did Benghazi break your heart when they ruined secretary Clinton?

MG: For people who are watching this from outside, in many ways, this speaks to. The stakes here, but also the divisions in the United States and how people are viewing or not viewing what is unfolding over the course of this hearing. We'll have to leave this there, but we will come back because this will continue, I'm sure. I'm glad to have you both here. Thank you very much.

JOHN FUND: Thank you.

MOLLY JONG-FAST: Thank you.

MG: John Fund, columnist for The National Review. Molly Jong-Fast, contributor to The Atlantic magazine. They were talking about the ongoing hearings into the storming of the Capitol on the 6th of January 2021. Well, coming up after your regional update.

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We knew it was a dangerous place, but don't really believed it's possible to safeguard the nature and the livelihood of the indigenous people.

MG: The places the Amazon. Dom is a reporter on a research trip with Bruno Pereira when they both went missing in about 15 minutes. A look at that region that is increasingly known for poaching and drug trafficking. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. We're back in 90 seconds.

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Reconciliation work on residential schools must be done without 'any further harm,' says special interlocutor

Guests: Kimberly Murray, Anna Alfinito, Leonardo Barros Soares

MG: Hi. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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We know that the remains are many, many years old. Decades. We want to approach, you know, what we're doing with the next steps in the most respectful and honourable way possible. In the last couple of days, I've had elders, I've had community members reach out and, you know, express the depths of their their sorrow, your sadness and, you know, and how it's triggering them. But at the same token, they're they're they're glad that it's coming forth because it's a reality and it's something that we do not want to have, you know, under the carpet in any shape or form. We want to heal with our people.

MG: This could be seven Rosanne Casimir of the TK'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in British Columbia speaking more than a year ago. And that is when the remains of 215 children were believed to have been found on the site of a former residential school. Since then, hundreds more have been discovered at sites across this country. As Chief Casimir said, communities are grieving and trying to heal, but they're also grappling with what to do next. Last week Kimberly Murray was appointed by the Federal Government to help with that. She is the special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked burials. Kimberly Murray, good morning.

KIMBERLY MURRAY: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Can you just briefly describe, as you understand it, what your role entails?

KIMBERLY MURRAY: Well, I think first and foremost, it's to continue the conversation with survivors and First Nation, Inuit and Metis leaders about the supports that they need to start this work, or continue the work that they may have already started in relation to finding the missing children and unmarked burials. And secondly, I've been asked by the Department of Justice and Minister Lametti to do a review of existing federal-provincial-territorial laws in relation to protecting these sacred grounds. We currently don't have a federal legislation in place to protect these grounds, and so my mandate is to make a recommendation on what that could look like.

MG: Why did you accept the role?

KIMBERLY MURRAY: Well, you know, Matt, I worked at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and was quite involved in the work that was being done by the TRC on finding the missing children. And so I really felt it was a continuation of that work that we started many years ago. And, you know, when survivors come to you and ask you to take on this type of sacred work, it's very difficult to say no. So I think it's really important that the whole truth come out and that we give the voice to communities and survivors, that they want out.

MG: That truth is hard. This is deeply emotional work that has produced generations of trauma, we know over the course of many, many, many years. How is that going to inform how you approach the work that you're doing?

KIMBERLY MURRAY: Well, it's absolutely going to be the basis. Understanding that there is this trauma and having to be mindful of that as I embark on the work and go across the country and speak to communities. As I said Matt, at the press conference last week, I want to ensure that the Office of the Special Interlocutor doesn't do any more harm and that we're here to help. So if people don't want to speak to us, then they don't need to speak to us. We want to open the doors that they need opened, and support them in in whatever actions they need. So it will be very difficult. But I would say this: we don't want to be having this conversation in ten more years, again. Right? So it's really important that we get it right this time. We can't pass this trauma, and this legacy and this work on to another generation, intergenerational survivors. The survivors that are with us today want it done, and we owe it to them to get this work done now in a good way that doesn't do any further harm.

MG: You were most recently the executive lead of the Secretariat of the Six Nations of the Grand River, and were working there looking at unmarked burials at the Mohawk Institute. What did you learn there that is going to help you in the work that you're doing now? Because that was, and it remains, a complicated situation.

KIMBERLY MURRAY: Yes. You know, the Mohawk Institute is the longest operating Indian residential school in Canada, just down here in southern Ontario, in Brantford. You know, I learnt a lot of things. I mean, this is the thing. Someone like me who was working at the treaty and was involved in writing the final report, there's still so much more that we learn as we have these conversations with survivors and really look at the records. One thing we learnt is that there's absolutely, absolutely way more documents that exist, that are out there, that could help communities determine who the children were that were in the schools, and where ... how many may have died. We know that Canada didn't provide all the records to the TRC. We know that the church entities didn't provide the records. But we also learned at the Mohawk Institute, so many other institutions are housing records that can be helpful. The City of Brantford opened up their archives to the Survivors Secretariat. The provincial government has many, many different categories of records that might be helpful. Police services may have records. So it's far more complex than we originally had thought. And then I would also say, when you ask about what we learned, I don't think the community really had a full understanding the extent of the grounds that were involved with the Mohawk Institute.

MG: What do you mean?

KIMBERLY MURRAY: Over 600 acres of land have to be searched. So everyone, you know, when you think about the Indian residential school, you think about the the the land that the actual building is currently standing on. But there were all these farms that the kids were required to farm. And then the connections between other lands, like the Mohawk chapel and then, you know, the old Indian hospital. And we see that same connection across the country with other Indian residential schools. The lands are going to be more than just where the building may have stood. And so that makes it a much bigger problem for communities when they're setting up to do these ground search.

MG: It speaks to the complications of that search, the physical, practical complications of the search.

KIMBERLY MURRAY: Absolutely. Absolutely.

MG: First Nations obviously do not speak in a uniform voice. There are individual communities with individual needs and wishes and wants. What is your sense as to how much variation there is among communities as to how to handle these sites?

KIMBERLY MURRAY: You know, I don't think I can answer that question today on day two of my mandate, Matt. But I do understand and appreciate that, as you said, each community will want to approach things differently. We do know that within Indigenous law and Indigenous customs and cultures, there may also be conflicting protocols that need to be followed. And so it's really important that we go back to our Indigenous ways and bring in the nation-to-nation conversations that need to happen among communities about how to resolve differences in protocols and customs. You know, to give an example, the question of do the children get exhumed and repatriated to their home communities? There's differing views about that among communities and among elders and survivors. And so as we have these big conversations with churches and government over records and support, First Nations, Inuit and Métis people have to have those internal conversations with each other about how to approach this.

MG: I mean, it sounds obvious, but in many ways that speaks to how important it is that these discussions are community led, that it does not come from any top down.

KIMBERLY MURRAY: Absolutely. That's very, very important that it's survivor-led and community-led. Or as I said, we'll be having this conversation all over again in years ahead.

MG: There are issues of trust that are at play here as well. Part of that is about those entities that may hold the records. Part of it is also about working with police and Canadian courts in a process toward legal prosecution and trying to find justice. Again, and I know it's early in your mandate, but how willing do you think communities might be to have police involved in that process?

KIMBERLY MURRAY: Yeah, that's an important question. And I would add to that, it's what police also which police service are they willing to engage with? And, you know, as as Canadians know, we have a we have provincial police services in Quebec and Ontario. We have municipal police services, and we have the National Police Service of the RCMP, all of them, except for First Nation police, were involved in some way with Indian residential schools. And so you can understand why there would not be any trust with those organisations that were called upon to apprehend the children and bring them to the residential schools and who failed to do proper investigations when complaints were brought by parents and communities. You know the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that wrote about the failed police investigations in the nineties, the failed police investigation of E Division by the RCMP. The failed police investigation of the Ontario Provincial Police with the St Anne's Indian Residential School. So we can appreciate that there would be a lack of confidence in those services. But maybe it's time to have a conversation. About what? About First Nations policing? We have first nations policing in Canada completely under, under, financed and not provided with the same level of support that we see municipal and provincial police services have. Maybe they're the bodies that should be doing these investigations for community. They had nothing to do with Indian residential schools. They didn't exist. They came after the kind of Seattle resistance, the Oka crisis. So let's have conversations about that. But again, it'll be the community that will make those decisions about who the right investigators are to do this work.

MG: Just finally, we had a conversation on this programme yesterday about the Rosebud Sioux Indian tribe in South Dakota, which has repatriated the remains of nine children from that community who died in a residential school. Duane Hollow Horned Bears descended through his grandfather from one of the nine children whose remains were repatriated. Here's the advice that he gave to indigenous communities who might be embarking on this process.

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I've learnt patience before this, but it strengthened understanding what those values mean. Well, what? You think there's something I want? It's in a big way. But I've got to be patient. I've got to persevere. I can't give up. We're connected to those relatives spirits that are out there. So keep. Keep calling their spirits and they'll find their way home.

MG: Just in the remaining minute or so that we have. What do you take from that?

KIMBERLY MURRAY: Well, I, I, you know, I think the ceremony is very important and that the patience that he spoke about comes from doing that ceremony with the spirits of the children. Anyone that has gone to the site of a former Indian residential school can feel the spirits of those children. And so I think if we always put the children first in this and think about those children and and respect them and provide the proper dignity to them, you know, we'll be able to do this in a good way, in a good way for the children and the communities.

MG: You're doing vital work, and I hope we have the chance to talk again in the meantime. Thank you very much.

KIMBERLY MURRAY: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Kimberly Murray, the new special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked burials.

[Music]

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway.

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[Protesters chanting]

MG: 'Where are Dom and Bruno?' That was the call from supporters of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips at a protest in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. At that point, the Brazilian indigenous rights expert and British environmental journalist had not been heard from in a week. Then yesterday, word of a grim discovery. Brazilian federal police confirmed they'd found several items belonging to the two men, including Pereira's health care card. But they denied earlier reports that their bodies had been found on. Anna Alfinito is legal adviser with Amazon Watch. She's in Sao Paulo. Leonardo Barros Soares is a political science professor at the University of the Vicosa. Good morning to you both.

LEONARDO BARROS SOARES: Good morning, Matt.

ANNA ALFINITO: Hi, Matt. Good morning. Hi, Leonardo.

LEONARDO BARROS SOARES: Hi, Anna.

MG: And based on what we know, this is a hard question to ask, but how likely do you think it is that these two men, Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, are still alive?

ANNA ALFINITO: So this is indeed a difficult question to answer. They have been missing since Sunday. The fifth local searches began on that day where escalated on Monday. Officials searches were escalated only on Wednesday. So it's been eight, nine days now since they're gone. This over the weekend, several items belonging to the two missing men there were found tied to a submerged forest. All of this indicates that, indeed, it will be difficult for us to to find these two men alive and well. But the searches go on and they need to go out and they need to be escalated.

MG: Leonardo, what do we know about the work that these two men were doing?

LEONARDO BARROS SOARES: Actually, Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereria we're working together in a book, Dom Phillips' book called as far as I know, was called How to Save Amazon. And both men were working on that topic for a long time. And then, as far as we know, is that they were mapping also illegal activities across the Jabari Indigenous land and the area near to the to the Indigenous land. So probably they have been attacked or ambushed because they were doing that work.

MG: And these are men who had worked together for a long time and knew that area very well.

LEONARDO BARROS SOARES: Yeah, exactly. So they knew the dangers of the area, but they took all the measures to avoid this attack. But we are talking about an area which is has been kind of took over by organised crime and narco trafficking activity in Brazil. So nobody's really safe there.

MG: Can you can you describe the area, the Javari Valley? Tell me more about that area.

LEONARDO BARROS SOARES: First of all, we are talking about the Amazon region, which covers about 55% of the whole country. And 98% of indigenous lands in Brazil are located in the Amazon region. And the two largest indigenous lands in Brazil are the Yanomami indigenous land. And the second one is the Javari Valley. The Javari Valley is particularly interesting because it is the home of those things of uncontacted Indigenous people and we are talking to a very complex environment in the border of Colombia and Peru with lots of illegal activity is going on illegal fishing, illegal mining, illegal logging, land grabbing. And what is New Bola would say is that heavy narco trafficking activity that just the scale up in the last three or four years.

MG: And so given that, I don't know, what was it about the work that Dom and Bruno were doing that could have put them at risk?

ANNA ALFINITO: So I think to understand the work that we're doing, it's important to situate their work in the broader context of the general dismantling of indigenous environmental policies in Brazil, especially under the current federal administration. So the government has not only been dismantling our institutional structures that exist to surveil and monitor these lands to combat illegal activities, but has also been incentivising the action of of illegal loggers, of gold miners. So these actors are stronger than ever. So in this context of, you know, general state abandonment and of turning the federal indigenous foundation, which is our indigenous bureaucracy, has a constitutional mandate to protect indigenous people that has been transformed into an anti indigenous machine. So it's in this context that several indigenous groups. Have been organising themselves to monitor and to surveil their territories, as Leonardo mentioned. So the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Valley, Javadi had a team of surveillance. Bruno was there supporting this team, which means that they were registering and sending to government authorities the illegal invasions, that illegal activities. Dom was also reporting on the, on the self surveillance of the territory. And this puts these men as well as the Indigenous people that are involved in the surveillance, into in direct contact with the people who are invading their territories and illegally extracting from their territories, meaning that it's a highly conflict choice and a highly vulnerable situation for them.

MG: Who would be doing that work? Who would be, as you say, invading those territories, poaching? I mean, there are these giant fish in the rivers that run through there, poaching that fish, doing the logging. Who's responsible for that?

ANNA ALFINITO: So as Leonardo mentioned as well, these are not exactly a new activity. So there is ongoing pressure with these indigenous territories. Many of these territories are the last frontier of what are seen as precious resources by people who are interested in extracting and fishing. So yes, there is a period coup in this region, which is a gigantic fish that can weigh up to 300 kilos. And it's in these lands akasha, which is a kind of turtle. So there are communities that try to go into the land and to fish and to extract. But this is becoming highly more organised than it was before. And as as Leonardo also mentioned, what's most dangerous is the intersection between these illegal markets, which are markets for poaching, for fishing, for gold mining and the narco traffic. Right. Another illegal market, the market for drugs, which which are also passing through this region and these networks, they intercept the strengthen each other and they become even more dangerous.

MG: And so these two men, they're reporting on this, documenting this would be a threat to those who are involved in that illegal activity.

ANNA ALFINITO: An enormous threat. We have news that on on Friday, just before they disappeared, they did run into a group of people who were illegally going in to fish in the land. And they confronted these people. They registered. It's also really important to mention that in 2019 Maxi [unintelligible], which is another FUNAI employee, was murdered in the same indigenous land. The FUNAI station, which does surveillance for government, was attacked several times by gunmen since 2019 as well. So there's a long record of violence that's been denounced. It's been registered and denounced by the Indigenous movement, but nothing has been done to investigate this.

MG: Leonardo, the president of Brazil, described what Don Phillips and Bruno Pereira were doing in the region as an adventure that isn't recommended for anyone. What do you make of how Jair Bolsonaro has responded to the disappearance of these two men?

LEONARDO BARROS SOARES: A This is really a shame that this is really a shame in the sense that that's something that we should not be surprised that Bolsonaro said that because as just mentioned, the policy dismantling of indigenous policy in Brazil is a long term trend, but was really intensified under Bolsonaro's government, and Bolsonaro himself is extremely Anti-Indigenous president. So every specialist, every expert in Brazil in Brazilian politics knows that the government actively engaged in dismantling those policies. And it's not surprising that he's just simply not paying attention or not taking care enough of the the response of the Brazilian state in insight. So the fact that he's said that is just a shame to him and the public employees and public servants at FUNAI, they just went out on a strike because they want the presidential FUNAI to declare that both men were doing their work there. They were not just adventurers, man, doing something that was not recommended.

MG: On what responsibility? I mean, you know, not as many words. The president seems to be in some ways blaming these two men for what happened to them. What responsibility does the Brazilian government have, do you think, in the disappearance of these two men?

ANNA ALFINITO: So it is the responsibility of federal government to monitor and to surveil indigenous territories which are federal land. There are land of the union. These men were there monitoring together with indigenous peoples these lands and the attacks upon these lands because government was not doing so and because government was incentivising those who are illegally encroaching these lands. So the government is responsible for the state of abandonment in which protected territories are today. And the way Bolsonaro responded and FUNAI as well officially responded to what happened, saying that it was the fault of these two men, that their adventurers. This is an attack on on all of us and all of those who are human rights and land defenders.

MG: What is it going to mean for the work when it well, what is it going to mean for the work that you do in protecting the Amazon, do you think?

ANNA ALFINITO: Well, you know, quite honestly, we know that the people who live in these territories, the indigenous groups, the fishing communities, the traditional communities, the land reform, settled families, they live in in a state of permanent violence and threats. This is what their life has been like over the past year, and this is getting worse. But we who could come into these lands to support them from outside. So we're legal advisors were journalists. We somehow feel that we're immune to this violence. And this is why we go into these territories and this is how we can do our job. Of course, we're not immune, but we're much less threatened than the local communities are. What? Happened to Don't Want to blow is really a turning point. It's a point in which we start to think that everyone that is going to support mobilisation and work in these lands may be under a threat, under threat of true violence. So it's really very frightening for all of us. And the reaction of government makes it even worse because it signals that nothing will be no one will be held accountable for what's happened.

MG: Leonardo, do you see this just finally as a turning point? This is an international story and the world is paying attention to what has happened to these two men. Is this a turning point?

LEONARDO BARROS SOARES: Yeah, I hope it is. I hope it is a game changer. As I just mentioned, the main victims of the violence in Amazon are the indigenous communities, but also human rights defenders and environmentalists that are living and carrying out their activities in the region. They suffer a lot of death threats. These are rising concern amongst environmentalists and activists and public servants related to environmental policies that they can suffer threats and even be killed now. And I hope it is a game changer. I mean, let's see how the international community will respond to that. I mean, I think that the Brazilian government must be condemned in the strongest terms by the international community. And let's see how it works. I mean, I think maybe Biden lose a very important moment to condemn strongly condemn the Brazilian government at the the meeting in Los Angeles. Yeah. Maybe Biden will lose the opportunity to to strongly condemn the Brazilian government. But anyway, let's see how the whole story unfolds. Unfortunately. Unfortunately, I'm not really hopeful to find both men alive.

MG: We'll be watching. Thank you both for walking us through the story and appreciate speaking with you this morning.

ANNA ALFINITO: Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Leonardo.

LEONARDO BARROS SOARES: Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Anna.

MG: Anna Alfinito. Is the legal adviser with the NGO Amazon Watch, who is in Sao Paulo, and Leonardo Barros Soares is a political science professor at the University of Vicosa. That is the current for this Tuesday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's q. Tom Power speaking with the great photographer Edward Burtynsky. When he was a student, a teacher gave Edward Burtynsky an assignment that he says changed his life. He was sent out to capture photographic evidence of humans. And in many ways, this is defined the work that he has done, taking a look at our impact on the world. He's done that through photos. He's done that through films. His latest project is a massive examination of the impact of humans on our climate. It is called In the Wake of progress it's been showing in Toronto in a public square as part of a festival. You'll hear all about it. And Edward Burtynsky joins Tom Power coming up in just a moment on CBC Radio. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

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Tuesday June 14, 2022 Full Transcript

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