00:03:02.340Her voice is incisive, her mind is whip-smart, and she doesn't suffer any bullshit.0.99
00:03:07.280it. And those are just some of the reasons I am so excited to welcome Pam Palmitter on the show0.56
00:03:12.360today. Pam, welcome to Bubble Pop. Oh my gosh. I wore pink just in honor of Bubble Pop. Oh my0.99
00:03:19.940God. It suits you. I love it. Honestly, I love embracing the girliness because I feel like
00:03:27.900there's... I don't know if you've encountered this because you do so much journalism stuff
00:03:31.640and you've been around the industry for so long. I feel like there's a lot of pressure to not be
00:03:37.180overly effeminate and it's just like i find that to be such like both internalized and outright
00:03:42.460misogynistic like you know all of these expectations but you don't have to worry about
00:03:48.380me i'm wearing pink i got my lipstick here in case it wears off we're all good yeah honestly
00:03:54.140as long as you feel good that's what i want for people coming on this show you know
00:03:58.620So Pam, I like obviously this week is one that, you know, a lot of like settlers and0.53
00:04:08.740like white people are just out in the streets, like going nuts.
00:04:11.860And also it's, I think, especially this year, we had a few years where there was a little0.96
00:04:17.880bit of a toned down Canada Day celebration because of the discovery of unmarked graves.
00:04:24.920and um so at least people had this sense like oh maybe we shouldn't cheer as loudly for
00:04:30.320you know the founding of this country amid that those atrocities um this year but because of
00:04:36.840everything happening with the u.s there's been like the surge of nationalism and it it makes
00:04:43.220me feel a little uncomfortable in some ways in other ways like you know i i feel it in the sense
00:04:48.220that i'm like hey it feels like a sibling that it's like i'm gonna you can uh you can't bully
00:04:53.740my sibling, but I'll bully my sibling, you know. But I wanted to ask you, you know, a lot of us
00:05:00.680just kind of mindlessly celebrate it without much thought, like settlers do so anyways. And
00:05:07.580I wanted to know what does this day represent for you and for your Indigenous friends?
00:05:16.160yeah so obviously there are so many different opinions about what to do about all these things
00:05:24.940whether it's holidays canada day statues museums names of schools and all of that and so yeah
00:05:33.020there's lots of different opinions on it i obviously don't speak for everybody however
00:05:37.320i get that canadians especially uneducated canadians are like hey it's a day off it's canada
00:05:45.580um screw trump and so let's celebrate can't like i get that i half of my neighbors have no idea
00:05:53.860what it symbolizes um and there's still a lot of canadians who are like you know what today
00:05:59.940we're going to spend and think about okay what can we do to support native people are there any
00:06:05.260like powwows local powwows cultural fairs how can we support artists and so there's a mix of what's
00:06:13.000going on and I differentiate all of that all of that like even just people celebrating oh I got
00:06:19.700a day off because I work nine to five at Tim Hortons and I am being screwed over versus the
00:06:26.020people who are weaponizing Canada Day you know all the haters and the trolls and the racists
00:06:32.200and and those people who are triggering the algorithm to make money who are like yeah let's0.94
00:06:37.700make Canada Day about making Canada great again and you know kind of that that maggot kind of
00:06:44.580ideology yeah and and so that's what I have a problem with that they use Canada Day to actually
00:06:51.920push back against Indigenous people to say oh no one's going to stop my joy of Canada and Sir John
00:06:58.900A Macdonald and things like that that's where I think Canada Day has a problem I think that
00:07:05.940represents a small number of Canadians. I think the other amount of Canadians who so many joined
00:07:12.240in when we were saying, hey, let's not celebrate Canada Day this year. I never expected that to last
00:07:18.280every year. But there's, I think that small number who are just absolutely hatred, like let's bring
00:07:25.420Canada Day and Canada back again and celebrate our history in complete ignorance of the historic
00:07:34.060and ongoing genocide of the ways in which we have just been demolished in terms of you know killing
00:07:41.660people starving people sterilizing people running roughshod over our rights stealing our lands and
00:07:49.580resources and contaminating everything as they go yeah for for a lot of us that's not really a lot
00:07:56.700to celebrate yeah yeah i did see a lot of people like just the worst people i'm sure you could
00:08:02.940think of them like people who mistake dog shampoo for human shampoo and the likes just you know um
00:08:09.740doing like tweets and stuff just like taking the day as an opportunity to do residential
00:08:14.780school denial and things like that and it's just like it's so foul and i think it makes it that
00:08:22.380it's just like taking something that you know can be a painful day and ensuring that it is
00:08:28.780you know yes it's just like a level of cruelty yeah yeah do you think that there is like do you
00:08:34.620have any and i've i'm probably going to ask you a little more about this later in the show but like
00:08:39.340what is what do you think is a way that like do you have any advice for settlers who do want to
00:08:45.420kind of celebrate canada day but don't want to you know hurt their indigenous neighbors or send
00:08:51.020the wrong signals yeah so like i was saying i get that people sometimes just want to celebrate the
00:08:58.300day off like i've seen native people celebrating canada day just because hey we all have a day off
00:09:04.780we all get to hang out with our family our community have a big barbecue or whatever and
00:09:08.940hang out and chill so i get that concept and that's okay like i'm i'm personally i'm not against that0.96
00:09:17.100and similarly um celebrating the fact that you live in indigenous territory and there is no
00:09:25.100better place on the planet than all of our different territories whether it's you know
00:09:31.420gangahaga territory what's out in territory me ma territory like we love and honor our lands like
00:09:39.020we think every day should be celebrating our territories and the fact that we live here and
00:09:46.780we're always going to live here and want to live here the fact that canadians want to too which
00:09:51.260is part of that treaty relationship like let's live here together in peace and and harmony and
00:09:57.260protect the planet so there's a there's certain things to celebrate about it and the fact that no
00:10:04.540trump you're not going to invade canada or annex what's now known as canada because you're0.61
00:10:09.740effectively annexing our territory and so i'm okay with that i think it's i wouldn't want canadians
00:10:18.700to be so prideful that they overlook um everything that has happened and continues to happen
00:10:28.460like in complete disregard so having celebrations that scare all the wildlife or that you know just
00:10:37.180destroy a lake or a river so always being mindful you can do things that don't hurt that don't
00:10:45.260specifically hurt people and you can also use the day fine have your barbecue with your family like
00:10:51.020i get that but also make sure that you're not out there supporting the racists and using this as a
00:10:57.180day to try to be a right fighter and oh well you know show me the graves and show me this and show
00:11:04.140me that um there's ways of doing it and saying you know hey celebrating canada day however not
00:11:12.860not in a way that doesn't also remember, we've got a lot of work to do. We have a long way to go
00:11:19.100that we as Canadians relatively are pretty privileged when it comes to, you know, Indigenous
00:11:25.620peoples, and we have a lot of work to do. And I've seen a lot of Canadians do that. Like I've seen a
00:11:31.520lot of Canadians do that, that they use Canada Day to have a barbecue with their friends, but they
00:11:36.620still have that every child matters flag in their window, even though it's not truth and
00:11:42.280reconciliation day so Canadians are doing a lot of different things and I think you know pushing
00:11:48.040back against those smaller number of haters is helpful too yeah I remember um like growing up
00:11:56.020my my mom and we had really good family friends in Kahnawake and my mom to this day she'll put up
00:12:02.540the Mohawk warrior flag on the front porch yeah on Canada Day and I'm like hell yeah mom yeah um
00:12:09.540Yeah, I, you know, one thing that I have a hard time reconciling to is the fact that, you know, people are celebrating Canada Day in front of Parliament Hill, which like, I don't necessarily like, I don't want people to come to this podcast and be like, oh, you know, you're just making us all feel guilty for, you know, celebrating Canada.
00:12:33.220Like I just we're just trying to add some nuance, you know, and one thing that I really want to highlight is the discomfort that lies in people celebrating on Parliament Hill or in front of Parliament Hill or just down the street when someone like Aaron Gunn was just elected to serve in that building.
00:12:56.240And for those of you who don't know, this is a conservative MP who, during the election, we learned had tweeted stuff, including that residential schools were, quote, asked for by Indigenous bands and, quote, there was no genocide.
00:13:10.560Stop lying to people and read a book.0.76
00:13:15.020Get off Twitter and learn more about the world.
00:13:17.700And that was in reference to the cultural genocide, the genocide of Indigenous people within Canada.
00:13:24.200He posted these things less than three years ago. Pam, what does the fact that this man can not only be allowed to continue running by his party after these tweets were uncovered, but that he can actually be elected tell you about our country?
00:13:42.260well it it tells me that there is a small segment of the population uh tends to be a certain kind
00:13:53.360of a segment but it there's a lot of angry guys out there a lot of angry white guys who
00:14:00.700who haven't read a book who don't know the law who don't know anything about history who don't
00:14:10.060know anything about international law or genocide law or or any of these things who are just
00:14:16.220projecting antagonizing and trying to get attention right so they're following that ideology that oh
00:14:23.180any exposure is good exposure you know everyone's talking about them so to weaponize
00:14:29.200the the genocide that's happened against us in terms of denial to get people all angry on social
00:14:37.980media so that everyone's engaging and then that triggers the algorithm so he gets more popularity
00:14:43.580and then people are going to say oh they're trying to suppress his right to have free speech and so
00:14:49.260he's going to gender you know so these things are all very strategic they're strategic politically
00:14:55.260they're strategic social media algorithm wise and it's really weaponizing it against indigenous
00:15:02.540people oh oh and by the way incidentally i'm just going to be a denialist and horribly
00:15:07.820horribly racist and actually cause more trauma for people and i'm not saying trauma in a cheesy
00:15:13.580sense that you know some people say if they miss their bus that like so traumatic i'm talking about
00:15:19.180people who were tortured and beaten and raped and barely survived indian residential schools
00:15:28.140to have some white guy come on and say oh by the way there's no such thing and this is you asked0.97
00:15:35.420for it it's kind of that rape mentality you know that if a woman gets raped oh well she asked for0.82
00:15:41.340it she must have been wanting it and and that's immediately what i think about all those people
00:15:47.820who suffered not everyone did but the vast majority and to say they asked for it to me
00:15:55.820that's hateful it's racist and that's the kind of speech that's not in the realm of free speech
00:16:01.900that's hate speech and it's inciting hatred and sometimes that leads people to violence against
00:16:07.980our people so if anyone needs to read a book it's him because then he would know what genocide law
00:16:14.700is all the ways in which genocide can be committed he would have read the national inquiry and a
00:16:19.900murder to missing indigenous women and girls and know that they did a legal assessment and that
00:16:24.300that their legal factual finding was that Canada committed historic and ongoing genocide.
00:16:30.500We're not just throwing that word around loosely and that genocide is not the Holocaust.
00:16:37.180It's one of many genocides that have happened and you can't compare them.
00:16:51.820you can tell. It makes me very angry that someone like him is now governing the country. He is
00:16:57.260representing us. How humiliating to have, I wouldn't even call him a conservative. He's a far
00:17:04.120right racist guy who is part of governing this country. And that's something I certainly don't0.69
00:17:13.780celebrate. Yeah, I think it also is really concerning that Pierre Polyev didn't find that
00:17:21.480to be disqualifying in a candidate. And at the same time, you know, like, while he wasn't posting
00:17:28.120residential school diminishments, Pierre Polyev was repeatedly lionizing Sir John A. Macdonald
00:17:36.480throughout the campaign. And, and stuff like that, it's more subtle, but it's, I think it has
00:17:42.680I mean, I don't want to speak for Indigenous folks, but I'd imagine it's still painful to see effectively a reputation try to be laundered of someone who did what Sir John, like he was, he's widely seen as an architect of residential schools. So I don't know, like, what do you make of all that?
00:18:02.660And think about that. So don't even get me started on Pierre Polyev. He too is a racist and he has said racist and derogatory and horribly hurtful things. I mean, literally on the day of the Indian residential school apology from his government, which was negotiated by the formal liberal government, you have indigenous people in parliament, very historic moment.
00:18:27.060And the same day, he's talking to radio stations saying, oh, you know, we shouldn't be giving them a compensation.
00:18:34.520They need to learn value for money, you know, like as if we were just getting some other kind of handout.
00:18:42.800And so that guy is the guy who is running to run the country.
00:19:11.720And we should all aspire to be him and and celebrate him.1.00
00:19:15.660When he said, like, let's make sure there's no Indians left in Canada.0.96
00:19:20.580when like there's so much historical documentation about what Sir John A. said about wiping Native
00:19:26.540people off the planet. And so he gets to celebrate that guy who was for the genocide of Indigenous
00:19:35.760peoples without him having to say it. You know, so it's like the coward's way of being racist when0.87
00:19:43.040you're running for leader, knowing that these are all kinds of hints to his base. You know how people
00:19:49.220on the far right especially that are running for office they're always throwing hints to their base
00:19:55.780uh like trump when he was first elected the first time around and everything that was happening0.95
00:20:01.760those um horrible white supremacists attacking um black people in um the u.s and he's like oh
00:20:10.460there's good people on both sides so he's doing that same thing he's sending messages to his base0.99
00:20:17.360that oh we don't want to wipe out history because it's going to get them all up in arms
00:20:21.680and be able to like nudge indigenous people at the same time always throwing you know jabs and
00:20:29.280barbs at indigenous people in a cowardly way you know like come up and say what you think
00:20:34.880don't just try to hide behind sir john a totally yeah um i can imagine it must be frustrating in
00:20:44.400terms of like having faith in our politics to see that from the conservatives and then0.93
00:20:51.440you know more recently see something like bill c5 from the liberals um you know lots of indigenous
00:20:57.920leaders have been horrified at the way that that was pushed through it is now law um and indigenous
00:21:05.120leaders were warning that this will lead to i don't know more 2.0 they said that this you know
00:21:10.960Trudeau, they said, had been at least trying to repair, at least this was what some Indigenous leaders said on Parliament Hill, that he had been doing some work to try to repair the relationship between the government and Indigenous peoples.
00:21:24.880But they're like, Mark Carney, what you just did just set us back.
00:21:28.440I just want to start off by saying that how profoundly disappointed we are in this new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, and his government.
00:21:40.960that after so many years of his predecessor's effort
00:22:07.880Like, what do you, how much damage did Mark Carney do to reconciliation when he went ahead and made this bill law despite the protestations of so many Indigenous leaders?
00:22:18.040well so he you couldn't have done anything worse you he targeted first of all our territory
00:22:28.900and the heart like again i don't speak for all first nations people but for first nations in
00:22:34.420particular the heart of our identity our relationships our connection to our ancestors
00:22:39.820like all of life around us it's always in our land in our territory our sovereignty is over
00:22:46.260our territory. So by passing legislation like that, that Justice Canada must know is unconstitutional
00:22:55.300is like throwing the first punch and like a big punch. Like he's going to use nice words and he's
00:23:07.200being really nice about it and don't worry, we're going to have some consultation and really
00:23:12.140misinforming canadians about what the law is in this country so he's basically said who cares
00:23:19.340about the rule of law because here's what happens section 35 uh protects aboriginal treaty and land
00:23:26.460rights and it protects our like a multitude of rights that are connected all of those things
00:23:31.420are connected to our lands and he's basically saying um we have this legislation that now
00:23:39.260we have the power to name one or a hundred projects in the national interest. And what
00:23:46.980does that do? It means we can skip over all of the environmental assessments, the environmental
00:23:53.240legislation, all of the protections that everyone, conservationists, environmentalists, Canadians,
00:23:59.040Indigenous peoples, have worked on for decades to protect species at risk, you know, to protect
00:24:05.300delicate, delicate ecosystems, never mind the contamination for, you know, human beings.
00:24:12.960And to say, we can skip over all of that in the interests of handing out quick permits.
00:24:18.660Oh, and by the way, we get to skip over this constitutional part, which is the duty to consult,
00:24:28.620accommodate, and get consent in many cases. You don't hear them talking about accommodation and
00:24:34.320consent. All you hear is consultation. But the Supreme Court of Canada has set up this standard
00:24:40.580that says not only do you have to be engaged in good faith negotiations, which means there's an
00:24:47.140opportunity for give and take, not just we're going to do this no matter what, but you have a duty to
00:24:53.800consult. You have a duty to accommodate. What about their interests? What if they say, well, this will
00:25:00.740destroy our treaty right to hunt? What if they say you'll contaminate the water that we use
00:25:06.680to drink? You need to build this elsewhere or do some other project or can't go forward at all.
00:25:14.820So this whole process that's constitutional and set by the Supreme Court of Canada is effectively
00:25:22.020now saying, we're just going to skip over all of that. And by skipping over the environmental
00:25:29.680assessment. So this is key. Skipping over the environmental assessments also impacts Indigenous
00:25:36.300peoples in a different way because many times you hear Canada say, well, you know, don't worry if
00:25:42.240there's not fulsome consultations on the Indigenous side, it'll be captured in the environmental
00:25:48.880assessments. Things like gender-based assessments. So things like what is this going to mean for a
00:25:57.140man camp of 5,000 men that's going to be set right beside an Indigenous community? What is going to
00:26:03.420be the impact on Indigenous women and girls in terms of risks of violence, risks of human
00:26:08.920trafficking, disappearances, murders, and all of that? The National Inquiry already spoke to that
00:26:14.220and said, you must guarantee that Indigenous women are included in these assessments about
00:26:21.500those kinds of dangers which have long been ignored. So you get to skip over Section 35,
00:26:29.180you get to skip over these environmental assessments, you're basically just telling
00:26:33.740transnational corporations who ship all of their money and interest out of Canada,
00:26:39.920you're guaranteed a permit, you're guaranteed to go ahead. And what, we're just going to tell
00:26:46.700First Nations about it. It's unconstitutional, it's unlawful, it circumvents the rule of law,
00:26:53.000and unless we're going to go down the road of Donald Trump, who is doing the same thing,
00:26:59.120he's outside of his own rule of law, constitution, he's ignoring the cases of judges, and hello,
00:27:07.660Bill C-15, where the federal government enacted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
00:27:13.320Indigenous peoples that says all federal laws and regulations have to kind of comply with the rights
00:27:20.560that are guaranteed in UNDRIP. What happens to that? And so we have a choice. We're going to
00:27:28.560allow this government to be lawless and act outside of the Constitution and outside of
00:27:34.740Supreme Court of Canada cases, or we're going to say, no, you need to go back to the drawing board
00:27:40.060and have a conversation about this you don't get to just have a list and say yeah yeah these are
00:27:45.500all in the national interest i guarantee you this will trigger lawsuits because you cannot just so
00:27:53.660blatantly violate the constitution like that for any constitutional right any including those of
00:28:01.820canadians absolutely and i i think um you know one thing i've been thinking about a lot i'm actually
00:28:08.860reading uh the shock doctrine by naomi klein right now and i yeah it's such a great book everyone
00:28:14.880should read it but um one thing that she lays out the the overall thesis in this is just that there
00:28:22.080are um there's a tendency from like extremely capitalist laissez-faire like you know friedman
00:28:29.340economists um basically it's the policies that make rich people super rich at the expense of
00:28:37.140average people who lose protections for like minimum wage and labor rights and things like
00:28:43.120that. These are unpopular policies because they impact so many people, but they are often enacted
00:28:49.900in times when we hear about a national crisis or there's some kind of a crisis going on. And
00:28:56.020I find it disconcerting how much Mark Carney is using the language of crisis while moving ahead
00:29:03.000with laws that we are hearing very loudly from communities um are unpopular and i think a lot
00:29:10.440of people actually oppose them and are like hey this isn't what we voted for what are you doing
00:29:16.040um and it's it's i think it is sort of that um disaster capitalism uh you know model um in action
00:29:24.520but i i also sorry not to to rant on too much but one thing i've encountered in issuing criticisms
00:29:32.040of bill c5 as you just so eloquently did um is there's a lot of people right now carney's still
00:29:38.520riding high he's still in the honeymoon phase um and a lot of people when you say these things
00:29:43.160are like but i trust him he says he's going to put indigenous folks at the forefront he says this to
00:29:49.960like i mean you know what i'm just gonna let you dive in what is your response to that
00:29:55.080WTF is my response to that. This is not about trust. Anyone who would try to convince
00:30:06.120any citizen of any country around the world, just trust your government, trust your politicians,
00:30:13.640is not being a critical, analytical, thoughtful citizen. Because citizens can't just have blind
00:30:23.960trust they cannot have trust in their governments like that you have to hold governments to account
00:30:29.320that's the whole purpose of us remember we're the government allegedly democracies are government by
00:30:37.160the people for the people it's not these spokespersons that get elected that are the
00:30:42.180government we're supposed to be so if we just sit back and say oh yeah no they got it we are not
00:30:48.580governing the territory. And so you've got a scenario where, on the one hand, there's nothing
00:30:56.780in the legislation that says, do not worry. We are going to guarantee consultation, accommodation,
00:31:03.020consent. We're going to respect Bill C-15 or C-15 now, free prior and informed consent. We're going
00:31:09.800to respect that you have a right to say yes, no, maybe yes with conditions or talk to me another
00:31:16.780time. That's what consent is. It's not the obligation to say yes. It's the right to say
00:31:24.240yes or no. And it's only indigenous peoples that have this horribly impoverished legal1.00
00:31:30.880interpretation of what consent is. Imagine if we said consent in terms of sexual relations means1.00
00:31:37.240you only get to say yes. You have an obligation to say yes. I'll consult with you. I might even
00:31:43.780hear what your concerns are but we're having sex anyway that's called rape in the law and it applies1.00
00:31:50.420to medical consent consent for parents to have kids go on field trips only indigenous peoples0.99
00:31:56.980have this horribly impoverished version and so when they say trust the government no well when1.00
00:32:03.380has the government ever been trustable because even under uh justin trudeau who like he deserves
00:32:11.460credit for being leading the most progressive government that we've ever had in our history in
00:32:18.180terms of indigenous relations in terms of indigenous rights funding for social programs
00:32:23.540and services like he deserves a lot the national inquiry into murder to missing the fact that we
00:32:28.740have undrip in that's been legislated um however when it comes to the underlying issue of land
00:32:36.020and our right to say no, he was no different than any other government. He bought Trans Mountain
00:32:42.220Pipeline thinking he could make it in the national interest and trump our constitutional rights.
00:32:49.320So Mark Carney's doing this like on steroids. This is literally, oh, guess what? We get to list
00:32:55.920a whole bunch of projects and just deem them in the national interest. So no, of course we can't
00:33:02.000have trust. You can't have a politician say, hey, there's no protections in this legislation.
00:33:07.280It's unconstitutional. But don't worry. We have every intention of consulting, but never saying
00:33:15.660accommodation and consent. Consulting means we'll talk. That's not the same thing. That's not the
00:33:21.460law in this country. And talk about the crisis issue. He has literally used this crisis of
00:33:31.240bad relations with the U.S., Donald Trump tweeting something different every day.
00:33:36.520Oh, tariffs are 50% now. Oh, they're 200%. Okay, they're only 10%. Okay, we'll negotiate. We won't
00:33:43.540negotiate. He's using that to justify circumventing environmental laws, indigenous laws,0.97
00:33:54.500the rights of Canadians, basic democratic principles, and just making national interests
00:34:00.920really mean nothing. Cover whatever works for transnational corporations and governments who
00:34:06.980have been chomping at the bit to like, how do we circumvent indigenous rights? They're well1.00
00:34:11.980ingrained in the constitution now let's declare a crisis well you know short of world war three
00:34:18.060where you have to implement war measures we are not there and we cannot govern our country based
00:34:24.380on trump's latest tweet like who has laws and policies and governing practices that oh well
00:34:32.160today trump says 200 tariff oh no we must do this law oh but tomorrow it's 10 okay well we'll do
00:34:40.340this. Nobody does that. Nobody, nobody governs their countries according to what Donald Trump
00:34:46.960is saying. It was never about that because I challenge any one of them to produce an economic
00:34:54.300analysis that ties the denial of constitutional rights to Indigenous peoples and environmental
00:35:02.200laws to how that's going to specifically offset Donald Trump's tariffs. Like they haven't presented
00:35:11.260that economic analysis, yet they're pairing those two things together. If we do this, if we just
00:35:17.240forego all of that, Aboriginal rights and environmental protections, that's going to0.52
00:35:24.300relieve all Canadians of tariffs. And it's like, that's what you're selling, but that's not actually
00:35:29.560what's going to happen. Because let's say you have a new pipeline and you can pipe oil and gas
00:35:35.860outside of the country. You're still having to pay the tariffs if you produce it to the U.S.
00:35:42.160If you're exporting it to other countries, we're not having domestic independence. So none of the
00:35:49.160things that you have said policy-wise, economically, socially, legally are connected, but they've very
00:35:57.540cleverly put those two things together to try to circumvent the constitution. I don't think
00:36:03.400they're going to be successful, but I think Canadians really need to stand up because
00:36:07.860if they can do that to environmental rights and Aboriginal rights, what are they going to do about
00:36:12.720your right to healthcare, your right to education, your right to all of these? What crisis created by0.76
00:36:19.540another country is going to allow them to say, okay, well, we can't pay for healthcare anymore?0.90
00:36:23.720Yeah. And I also think the other thing that I always remind people of, if they engage in the sort of magical thinking that somehow the guy who implemented a law that allows him to do all these things won't do all these things, is he's not going to be in government forever.
00:36:42.320Someday the conservatives will probably form government again. And if this law is still in place, what does that mean?
00:36:48.900You know, do you trust Pierre Polyev with this power? Do you trust whoever Pierre Polyev's successor could be? You know, like, do you think that spoken promises in press conferences mean anything when it's a law that's going to be in place, you know, until it's repealed?
00:37:07.480so we already know they don't mean anything but that's the thing like what politicians say
00:37:14.100carries no weight in court like oh well you know we said we weren't going to do it but
00:37:20.560we did we made a different decision and like your point is so it's like so literally on point
00:37:29.920because of course you can't even use that as evidence because that's just things politicians
00:37:37.620say and it never results in anything good and I do a lot of work with First Nations and Indigenous
00:37:47.220organizations and sometimes I'm advising or helping draft bylaws under the Indian Act or
00:37:54.520membership codes, election codes, and things like that. And my number one piece of advice
00:37:59.960when we're sitting down at the table and hashing out what should be a rule, what shouldn't be a
00:38:04.760rule is do not create your laws based around who is chief and counsel right now, or that neighbor
00:38:13.800that you don't like, because ultimately all of those things are going to change. And do you want
00:38:20.380to have created a law that will empower a horrible person like Pierre Polyev or someone
00:38:26.680even worse to weaponize that and go even further than the government that you're hoping and
00:38:34.140trusting won't do that. But somehow they enacted a law to allow them to do that. Never, never,
00:38:42.320never ever ever create laws based on who's in power right now yeah exactly um i wanted to uh
00:38:55.360pivot a little bit because you know we've been talking a lot about present day racism and
00:39:02.400present day um you know just disrespect for indigenous rights but um one thing that i think
00:39:10.000is something uh especially settlers miss a lot um is the ways in which things that happened
00:39:19.120in the past or in the not so distant past continue to have very serious and ongoing
00:39:25.360ramifications today um and i think that when we're talking about stuff like our national identity
00:39:32.080it's really important to have that understanding and you know i remember i interviewed you years
00:39:38.400ago for a piece i wrote for global news that i actually went back and looked at again um yesterday
00:39:44.320when i was preparing for this interview and we talked about we were talking about residential
00:39:49.600schools and the discovery of the unmarked graves and you told me about how effectively that system
00:39:59.040of removing kids and enacting you know stripping them of their culture um is present in the modern
00:40:08.320day foster care system where indigenous kids are really overrepresented and i guess i i just wanted
00:40:14.960to give you the opportunity to tell the listeners a little bit about how these things that we think
00:40:22.080are from the past even though the last residential school closed in what like 1996 was it uh it was
00:40:27.600around that yeah um you know so not that distant past but um the way that they still impact
00:40:35.200communities and people and and we're still engaging in these racist practices today could
00:40:40.240you could you tell us a bit about that it's a big question i know yeah well it is but it's an
00:40:47.200important one because it there's a sentiment again in a small number of canadians um but sometimes
00:40:56.400you know canadians who aren't necessarily familiar with all of the history or even what's happening
00:41:01.440right now it's this kind of inclination to say okay that happened in the past and we're really
00:41:08.940sorry and we're so glad the government has taken action made an official apology and has offered
00:41:15.600compensation so let's move forward it's always is let's move forward let's get over it um and
00:41:24.400you know, try to work on something else. And they forget that it's not just that there's
00:41:31.920intergenerational trauma and harms and physical, mental, emotional damage that's been done and
00:41:38.100passed on. But it's that the vast majority of all of those policies from the past are still in place
00:41:47.920today they're just called something different so with with rare exception everything that was done
00:41:56.640before is being done now like think about you go into communities you steal children who literally0.94
00:42:04.400rip them out of the arms of native women and you force them to go to say an indian residential
00:42:11.600school or an Indian day school or an Indian hospital, like whatever was removal of these0.73
00:42:18.160kids, where many of them were starved, mistreated, medically experimented on, tortured, physically
00:42:26.300and sexually abused, emotionally abused, like just all of that, like imagine all of that
00:42:33.240happening. And then to say, oh, that's in the past. Okay, wait a second. Because when Indian
00:42:43.260residential schools were starting now to like close down and taper off, all of a sudden now
00:42:50.860you have provinces who have been empowered through social workers and other, you know,
00:42:57.020provincial ministries and institutions to go into reserves, steal children, rip them right out of
00:43:05.180the arms of native women, usually with a cop there to support them. And that becomes the 50s, 60s,
00:43:13.68070s, what's called the 60s scoop, like forced adoptions. Some of them, like according to
00:43:20.540indigenous testimony, literally social workers going in there with buses and picking up not just
00:43:25.920one or two kids, but lots of kids and putting them into white families, putting them in other
00:43:32.220countries in the United States. Some of them were sold like you see these advertisements.0.61
00:43:38.080So there was a big trafficking of native children. Okay. And then everyone was like outraged about
00:43:45.020that. This, this forced adoption, like permanent loss of children into white families and in other
00:43:51.180country. That's got to stop. So what happens? Well, that just morphs into the foster care system.
00:43:57.600Okay, well, it's not a permanent removal. But now we remove kids, rip them right out of the arms of
00:44:05.080Native women, and of course, you know, families, grandmas, and grandpas, and the whole community1.00
00:44:10.440at higher rates than during Indian residential schools. So when people say, just get over it,
00:44:17.800Or that's in the past. I'm glad we apologize. We need to move on. Yes, there's nothing more that we want to happen than for all of this to stop. But it hasn't stopped. It just it's called something different now.
00:44:32.260And that's the whole sneaky part about law and policy and government practices is that they continue just under a different name. In the past, the federal government used to call it assimilation. But that's a dirty word now. Of course, you can't say assimilation.
00:44:49.980So then it became, you know, inclusion. And it's like, wait a second. All you've done is kind of tried to shine up what you've always done before. Oh, we want willing partners. You know, we want economic reconciliation. So it's called something different, but it's still happening.
00:45:11.820and we know what's happening through the modern foster care system and everything that's led up
00:45:18.480to it. Children lose their culture, they lose access to and connection with their families,
00:45:25.620their communities, their larger nations with other Indigenous people. And we know now statistically
00:45:34.740from all the investigations and reports, they're more likely to commit suicide, run away, live on
00:45:42.100the streets, become victims of human trafficking, exploitation. They go murdered and missing. They
00:45:51.500end up in youth corrections, which is almost a surefire guarantee. You're going to end up in
00:45:57.000adult corrections in prison so we have now created this pipeline from foster care to every single
00:46:07.880thing that's wrong um interactions with police and and we are taking them away from moms and
00:46:15.800families and saying well you're too poor because of our discrimination and land theft and resource
00:46:22.040theft and breach of rights. You're too poor to take care of your kids. We think we can do a
00:46:27.140better job. So we're going to put them in foster care where they end up sometimes deceased. And
00:46:32.760I'm not trying to say that in a disrespectful way, but how on earth are all the horrible ways in
00:46:38.540which these foster care kids are treated and higher rates of physical abuse and sexual abuse
00:46:43.700for many of them, especially young indigenous girls, how on earth is that better from what1.00
00:46:49.100they came from. Yeah. And we know statistically that these kids are taken for acts of what they1.00
00:46:56.020call neglect, not enough food in the cupboards, for example. But what are we putting them into,
00:47:04.000right? And the houses we put them into, some of them are very, very good and so thankful that
00:47:10.380there are people who are saying, well, if this is the situation, we're going to do our best to take
00:47:15.520care of these kids in a good way and make sure they have connections. But that's not for all
00:47:19.660of them. Some of them will have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven kids and getting a lot of
00:47:25.800money to have these kids in foster care. The same kind of money they wouldn't give mom to put some
00:47:32.180food in the cupboards because of the poverty that we've imposed on Indigenous people. So at every
00:47:39.240turn. The racism gets piled, piled up and piled up and piled up. And there's this sentiment in
00:47:45.960society, well, just pick up your socks. My God, you go through that meat grinder and have someone
00:47:53.160turn around and tell them, you know, pull up your socks. Well, you stole our socks a long time ago.
00:47:59.240And in fact, all of our clothing. And now you expect us to say there's no racism in society.
00:48:04.520get over what happened in indian residential schools please stop what you're doing now which
00:48:09.640is just residential schools in a totally different form like name but still happening even worse
00:48:17.320like very frustrating to hear that over and over and over again yeah you know i think that um
00:48:26.280a lot of people listening right now might not have known any of the stuff you just said they
00:48:31.720They might have known some of it, but I'm pretty sure a lot of hopefully everyone listening is horrified.
00:48:37.400And I think a lot of folks want to know what they can do or even just how to be a good ally in all of this.
00:48:50.000Do you have any like basic best practices that people can take away from this conversation and try to implement in their daily lives?
00:48:58.180you know i think that's a really good question and it's probably the number one question i get
00:49:05.300yeah um you know and it's the reason why i do mainstream media indie media it's why i do all
00:49:11.900my content creation and and speak in the public because i know canadians were done a disservice
00:49:18.140by not learning about this in schools there's some change now but i don't know how many times
00:49:23.380I've heard, why on earth did I not hear about this? We thought residential schools was just0.97
00:49:29.480about a little bit of loss of language and culture. It just sounds like we lost it somewhere.
00:49:35.020And they don't know about the scalping bounties. They don't know about the forced sterilizations
00:49:40.520that still happen today. We're literally in the midst of class action for forced sterilizations
00:49:46.280against Native women to stop our population from continuing. And that's one of the elements of0.66
00:49:52.300genocide and you only need be guilty of one element of five and and so that alone is it
00:49:59.100people just don't know so when they're like why didn't we know and you explain you know because
00:50:05.220that wasn't in canada's interest they wanted to focus on this national pride and then they want
00:50:10.160to know what can i do i'm not elected i'm not a billionaire um i don't know anything about the
00:50:18.480history. I couldn't tell you what's an Aboriginal right or treaty right. And so that's very
00:50:24.540overwhelming. And it's very intimidating too, if you match that with social media. So some of them
00:50:30.360are like, okay, I want to help. I want to say things. I want to share things. But if I say or
00:50:37.700do the wrong thing, all hell will break loose. And you know what it's like on social media,
00:50:43.620right? The, the dog pile on people. You can't say anything. I'm sure someone's going to find
00:50:48.860something I said wrong here, or they don't agree with, and then it'll be, you know,
00:50:54.520but it's like to be, it's okay. We'll have your back. You know what it's like to be attacked.
00:50:59.720And so they're, they're worried about that. And it's like, I get that. I get that. We're,
00:51:05.580we're all living in a different world. And so basically what you can do is based on where
00:51:12.400you're at. Do an assessment. If you know nothing, start on the self-education journey because that
00:51:19.260actually is going to make a difference because Canadians have the numbers, the power, the wealth,
00:51:25.500the influence, relatively speaking to Indigenous peoples, that is, because I know all Canadians
00:51:32.280are not in the same spot. So you need to learn that. If you didn't, well, unfortunately that
00:51:38.700burdens on you now so there's lots of resources listen to indigenous podcasts or podcasts like
00:51:44.440this where you're talking to an indigenous person so you can learn no one expects you to know
00:51:49.360everything no one expects you to be able to talk about all of the treaties in Canada I can't name0.98
00:51:56.180off by heart all the treaties in Canada it's not about that it's not even about agreeing with what
00:52:02.260native leaders are saying it's about I have an obligation to know better so I can do better
00:52:07.800and there's lots of people who say here's free ways to help you know a report just came out by
00:52:14.540the auditor general saying that for instance canada hasn't addressed the water crisis on
00:52:19.680reserve well if you're in a position where you can share that if you're a teacher and you can
00:52:24.640teach that in your class if you're a professor and you can and have all of your research assistants
00:52:30.240do a research study that'll help first nations on that um but some people are in precarious
00:52:36.060positions. So let's just say you work at Justice Canada. You can't be doing the exact same things
00:52:42.200that other people can, right? But you can help teach other people. You can help share these
00:52:48.500resources with people in your community. You can help trigger the algorithm by not listening to
00:52:55.640the haters and just watching Indigenous people on YouTube, listening to this podcast. You can't
00:53:03.460get in trouble for that, but you're actually helping to trigger the algorithm in a good way
00:53:08.540for Indigenous peoples so that their word will get to bigger audiences. Like there's literally
00:53:13.940a hundred free things that people can do. And if they, they wanted to start somewhere, you know,
00:53:19.640because the next question I get is, but murdered and missing, but foster care, but over incarceration,
00:53:25.360but land, but water, but, and it's like, it's okay. You know, none of us can deal with all of it all at
00:53:30.240once. Why don't you go to the First Nation Child and Family Caring Society that's headed by Dr.
00:53:36.220Cindy Blackstock, who has championed human rights for First Nations children in foster care and
00:53:43.620their families, forced Canada to the table to negotiate a proper settlement, won every single
00:53:50.200tribunal and court case that she's ever been involved in. Go to her website and look at under
00:53:56.420seven free ways to help start there you know help the kids if you if you're an expert in
00:54:03.300environmental issues okay well why don't you partner up with these indigenous organizations
00:54:08.460that are doing environmental protection issues everybody is somewhere you can't do everything
00:54:14.240we don't want you to and we don't need you to be the spokesperson for us but there's the it's kind
00:54:20.220of like support behind the scenes or beside us. You know, some Canadians come right out on the
00:54:27.100front line, like at Fairy Creek. They came in droves. Idle No More came in droves. And that's
00:54:33.020good. We need a combination of all of it. And some people, they don't know what to do, but they have
00:54:39.580money. And it's like, oh, well, I can donate to this land defenders court case. I can help pay
00:54:45.420their legal fees. Fantastic. Other people have hundreds of acres of land, farmland that they
00:54:54.080don't use anymore and that they leave it in their will. Okay, well, I'm going to leave 100 acres to
00:55:00.020my family and we're going to put this 200 acres and we're going to bequeath it to the local First
00:55:04.920Nation. There's so many things. It just depends on where you're at and what you have to offer.
00:55:12.600instead of asking first nations what can i do it's like okay well what do i have to offer
00:55:17.480yeah i think that um after listening to you here today a lot of people will probably want to hear
00:55:25.780what you have to offer in terms of where they can keep up with you so pam um i i think i've
00:55:32.020you know been greedy enough with your time already but uh before i let you go i want to
00:55:37.300you the chance to tell everyone where they can keep up with you well i make it easy if you go
00:55:44.100to pam palmitter.com literally it's not even a fancy name pam palmitter.com that is the website
00:55:51.380where you can go and find hey what's my interest or what do i need right now if you're into podcasts
00:55:58.500and you want to hear direct from indigenous voices everywhere people like the late murray
00:56:05.060Sinclair, Dr. Cindy Blackstock, land defenders like Molly Wickham from Wet'suwet'en, like
00:56:09.900hundreds of people. You can say, oh, well, look, there's the Warrior Life podcast. I'm going to
00:56:16.340listen to that. You have little kids and you want them to start learning and hearing about
00:56:20.820Indigenous culture in fun ways and hear stories. Oh, there's a Warrior Kids podcast for that.
00:56:26.440Do you want short videos to teach you? Okay, here's a series on what did the National Enquiry
00:56:31.120and murdered and missing women say you can't read the thousand pages okay but you can watch those
00:56:36.000five videos so everything you could possibly need is all kind of housed on that website including i
00:56:43.440have over 200 publications i have written on everything imaginable uh it's not just about
00:56:49.520you know my books there's a whole but academic stuff there if you're an academic legal stuff
00:56:54.320there if you're a legal person like so many op-eds you want to know about what i thought about the
00:57:01.360wet sootin and the law involved in there you're going to be able to find all of that there so
00:57:07.120everything pretty much you can access from that website and i believe on my website i also have
00:57:13.840my link tree so sometimes people are oh i'm into substack and it's like okay well link tree will
00:57:19.920take you there or medium okay link tree will take you there or tick tocks i don't dance but sometimes
00:57:26.560i do tick tock so go there that is the house of everything awesome pam thank you so much for your
00:57:34.560time this is such an awesome conversation i love it i love hanging out with you honestly like come
00:57:40.240back any time okay well i'm gonna hold you to that i'm one of those people that are like oh
00:57:45.920i can come back and talk about these issues great i'm going to be texting you and saying rachel
00:57:50.960please do person said yeah yeah but thank you and for sharing my voice too because sometimes people
00:57:59.520like to talk about these issues and not actually get indigenous perspectives so i respect you a
00:58:05.280great deal especially given the crap you have to take for calling out racism and hatred the feeling0.96