Listen to Episode

Read Episode Transcript

Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. If you could completely remove one phrase from your vocabulary, which phrase would you choose? I don't know. Correct answer. No, I meant I don't know which phrase, and the best way to banish I don't know from your life is by cramming your brain full of stuff you should know. Join your host, Josh and Chuck on the Super Popular podcast packed with fascinating discussions on science, history, pop culture and more episodes that ask, was the lost city of Atlantis Real? I don't know. Is birth order important? I don't know. How does pizza work? Well, I do know. Bit about that. See? You can know even more, because stuff you should know has over 1500 immensely interesting episodes for your brain to feast on. So what do you say? I don't want to miss the stuff you should know. Podcast you're learning already. Listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode we're speaking. With Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioral discoveries on chimpanzees, it wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. You know what is a podcast? This is a podcast. A podcast called Behind the ******** about bad people, the worst people in all of history and the worst things in all of history. And generally bad stuff. I'm Robert Evans. In case you didn't know. Boy, I don't know. Middling introduction. It's no me just shouting the word Hitler atonally. But it's not great. I'm sorry. Look, it's hard to introduce a podcast every week, and we it's not. They're not all going to be winners. Everyone's not gonna be a going to be a triumph of the human spirit. So just deal with it. Just deal with it. I'm sorry. Hi. Hi, Sophie. And hello to our guests today, Anna Posniak. Anna, how are you doing? Hello? How should people introduce podcasts? How is that done? I mean, I don't do any better. I'm just like, hi, this is the name of the show. OK. And then I get into it. Yeah, I never know how and I still don't. Because as, as I think I've repeated to people, one of the key aspects of my job is never learning how to do it properly. Anna, how do you feel about Canada? Canada and I have an interesting relationship. I spent the majority of like end of last year, in the beginning of this year, making sure I could get into Canada, which was stressful because I remember this criminal behavior on my record that candidate probably wouldn't appreciate, but I got in no big. They didn't even care. So I don't know, it's like a nice terrain with nice people. It's a nice terrain, nice people Canada gets. You know, it's nice being next to the United States because the US is always ******* up and like such extreme and invisible ways that as long as like as long as you're you're just kind of quiet, you can get away with murder, which Canada has for for as long as there's been a Canada. Oh yeah. You know, I like it's it's a it's a messy country, right. Like it it's it's a messier country than you'd expect considering the reputation Canada has. They're like all the nice Canadians. Everything works like the government, so functional. Like, we should all be more like Canada. And I guess if you're the United States, we should be more like Canada, because they are a better country than us, but they are still. They're still messy as hell. And today we're going to finally come out swinging against Canada. Anna, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to knock him down. Knock them down a couple of pegs. Real with you. I had no idea. Yeah, I legit have no idea what you're referencing. Like, yeah, they're messy. Yeah, they are. They are. Very. Have you ever heard of residential schools? No, yeah, that's what we're talking about today. And this is a particularly ugly chapter of Canadian history that is now fairly well known in Canada. But I don't think most people outside of the great White N have ever heard of them. So it's yeah, it's it's a pretty terrible thing and we're going to talk about it and, you know, eventually whip our listeners up into a frenzy and burn down the entire nation of Canada. Probably not that second part, yeah. Because they're still better than the United States, but like, you know, pretty messy. Still. Do you ever get the vibe that, like, every government is bad? Yes, yes. Constantly. Every day. All of that was just me, but like. Man, everywhere is bad. Yeah, they're all, it's all bad. It's all bad. Some of them are like competent bad and some of them are incompetent bad. Like the US is consistently incompetent bad and Canada is consistently competent bad. And that is what I would say is the chief difference between the baldness of them. Anyway, let's start at the beginning. So the beginning of Canada, that is our our neighbors to the north got their start as a semi independent political entity in 1876 when the British. North America act united the three remaining British American colonies into the first four provinces of the Dominion of Canada, which is a pretty cool name after, you know, that act. In 1876, Canada got its own government and a federal structure for like, the first time. This is the first time. 1876 is when Canada, Canada starts being like a a big thing, as opposed to, like just a bunch of different British colonies. You know, you got your there's this colony that started out as just a bunch of fur trappers and, you know, there's the place where the people actually live and yadda yadda yadda. They all get united in 1876 and they're they're a polity, finally. So this went over pretty well with all of the white people who inhabited the area that we call Canada, because white people everywhere have always loved Canada. But it was less celebrated among the indigenous people of the region who were not super psyched about Britain being like now you're all Canada because they had been other things previously and perhaps preferred that to be in Canada, so the governments of the colonies of Canada. That started setting up reservations for indigenous people back in the 1830s, and these were kind of patterned off of the ones in the United States. Canada had kind of a history of looking over to how the US dealt with indigenous people and being like, what if we did that but quieter. So less of the of the genocidal wars, you know, you do get, you do get some of that. The Canadian Mounties are certainly a part of of the history of white people with funny hats and guns murdering Native Americans. But it is, it is generally a bit quieter in Canada, but they, you know, they they operate on some of the same premises. And in the 1830s, they start setting up reservations. And as in the United States, the goal of these reservations was to give natives unproductive land so that they would stay out of white people's way while we looted the rest of the landmass. So you would start out as the indigenous people you know, this all being your land that your ancestors have been on since forever. And then Canada says, we're going to guarantee you that you have land forever. But it's this specific chunk of what used to be a much larger piece of land, and it's the worst chunk of it. And if you if you leave you, you get in trouble. So the Dominion of Canada ported over several old laws that govern how they got to treat members of native tribes, and these had the kind of startlingly racist names you'd expect, including the Gradual Civilization Act of 1857, which was meant to gradually civilize indigenous people. Yeah, that's a nice way to put it. Like, we're not gonna be too fast for you. We're Canada, you know, when we when we commit an ethnic cleansing. It's nice and slow. Real, real, real, even tempered genocide. So the Gradual Civilization Act gave natives who had educated themselves in white schools the option of being enfranchised as British citizens. Doing so meant that they got all of the rights of a British, you know, a citizen of the crown. But they had to give up all legal claim to the land of their tribe. They couldn't live on the reservations, and they weren't seen as as natives anymore, as Indians and the the legal parlance of the time. So you got to vote in all of that stuff if you agreed to stop being. An indigenous person. Like, yeah, yeah, that was that was the rule. What the ****? Yeah. The goal was basically to get all of the natives in the members of native tribes in Canada to like give up their rights to their native land and their native hunting and stuff that they've been guaranteed by previous treaties, like treaties guaranteed you the right of you're the member of, you know, certain tribes, you get to hunt in certain areas and you know, if you're a member, you get to, you get to hold certain land and some of that land had nice mining on it. Some of that land was good for growing. And settlers wanted it, and they figured the best way to make sure that they could have it was convince all of these natives to give up their claim to the land and exchange for the unclear benefits of being a British citizen. So that's basically the idea, is you all become British citizens and we just kind of exterminate your cultures peacefully. So I mean, is this all because they want control like they? Yeah, what? Who cares if you have a native like, why do you have to like forgo everything about your life to become a British citizen? Well, because people found it very unsettling that despite all of the what seemed to be them, the self-evident benefits of civilization, Native Americans pretty consistently in both N, you know, the United States and in Canada, in all the chunks of North America that were being taken over by white people, we're consistently unwilling to give up their cultures and their their. Like the the historical way that their families had lived in favor of living in cities. Like white people because it sucked. And among other things that was kind of a direct threat to peoples white peoples attitudes about the nature of of the world. But also like they wanted their **** right? They kept finding like gold mines and silver mines and coal on native land and they wanted it. And the best way to get it was to reduce the number of people who legally. Counted as natives so that eventually there would be none of them left. And it was like, again, they weren't out there. Massacre. Although that happened sometimes, they weren't necessarily out there massacring people. The goal was to just gradually reduce the number of people who legally counted as native to 0 so that all of that land would be open for settlement. This is the polite Canadian way of committing a genocide. Yeah, and so anyone who took the state up on the offer of enfranchisement would receive a grant of land that was not part of the. The reservation and a one time cash payment, but they would lose all of the rights that they had as members of their tribe. But people didn't like this offer. Only one guy actually took it, and so the Government of Canada had to keep pushing they they passed a gradual enfranchisement act in 1869 which had the same basic goal and mandated that enfranchised natives had to adopt English names. The Act also attempted to lay out how tribes on reservations were supposed to organize their societies and care for their land. Determined like how many people had to, could, could be underneath the chief and all this stuff. It was just like trying, taking these societies that were seen as kind of like inherently disordered and uncivilized and trying to turn them into something that British legal codes could understand. God, I hate that. I hate everything about this. Yeah, it's all pretty gross. And both of these laws, you know, the ones we've discussed so far, were eventually superseded by the Indian Act of 1876, which is still in a modified form law in Canada today. And as a result of all this legislation, it was kind of established in the late 1800s that indigenous peoples existed under federal jurisdiction. So the federal Government of Canada was sort of responsible for dealing with indigenous people. Yeah, it's it's it's all kind of a messy history and I don't want to get too much into the weeds of like Canadian law here. But I did find an interesting booklet called Facing History, which is published by an international organization of educators that focus on teaching like the ugly parts of history to to people. And I'm going to quote from that sort of summarizing how Canadian law about evolved to treat natives and they use the word Indian a lot. That's just kind of what the legal term was at the time in Canada. Because racism. So we will be using that here when we're referring to the actual laws. Quote. The Indian Act of 1876 created the legal category of status Indian, a category that had long lasting implications for the First Nations of Canada. Once it entered into law. The Act imposed a single common legal definition, lumping together different nations and languages into the broad category of First Nations. What does it mean to be a status Indian? The original document of 1876? To find someone as being legally Indian if that person fit these descriptions? First, any male person of Indian blood reputed to belong to a particular band. Secondly, any child of such person. Thirdly, any woman who is or was lawfully married to such person. Now, a key element was the law's definition of who was Indian and what Indian. This was the term Indian was used several centuries before the law simply formalized its use. It is worth noting, however, that none of the many clans, bands, alliances and nations ever called themselves Indian. And it's really messy talking about, like, a lot of people think that you just used the term First Nations for, like, the indigenous peoples of Canada, but that's actually only, that was a specific legal term for a specific subset of tribes. And there were a bunch of other tribes that aren't First Nations but are indigenous peoples in Canada. It's very, I'm not an expert on it by any means, but it's like there's a really weird legal history that's basically it's focused around the fact that the Canadian government really didn't want to recognize certain tribes as actually being natives because those tribes. Regularly rose in rebellion against the Canadian government, like the Matisse. And so they they they defined them out of existence. So they made a definition of Indian that didn't include the tribes they had problems with so that those people wouldn't have rights either. Again, it's like the polite liberal white person way of committing a genocide. You just you erased them on paper so you don't have like, yeah, it's it's it's pretty pretty interesting, pretty Canadian. So this process, yeah. So this is how they attempt to do it at first, like just kind of slowly write these people out of existence and give them an option to, like, become citizens so that they. Because clearly nobody who could become a British citizen would want to still be a member of, you know, whatever tribe. But this really didn't work out very well. And Indigenous people continued to want to be indigenous people. And this was a problem for the new Government of Canada. Prime Minister John A MacDonald found this very frustrating. In particular, he was a big believer in civilizing the native and he felt. That the government had to do whatever it could to sever the connections of individuals to their tribes so that they could be Canadians. The best way to do this, he felt, was boarding schools. Quote When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with his parents, who are savages. He is surrounded by savages and though he may learn to write, read and write, his habits and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. Prime Minister McDonald decided to Commission a study into how Canada might most rapidly civilize her indigenous people. He commissioned a journalist named Nicholas Davin to travel to the United States, since the good old USA was clearly the best at getting rid of North America's native peoples. Davin traveled to Washington DC, and he met with veterans of US Grants Administration, which had enshrined a policy of what's grant called aggressive civilization, which is a polite way of talking about forcing people to live like white folks forcing indigenous people. To live like white folks taking them off their land, taking their children from them, throwing their children into these what they called industrial boarding schools. Did you say to teach their kids civilization? Aggressive civilization? Yeah, that was Grant's term for it. Don't. I don't know. Don't like a lot of these terms like savage and civilization and like yeah, you just said is there such, yeah. I mean to refer to anyone as a savage because they come like from a native background to just be like, you're a savage because you are a Native American. It's like, **** you. You don't know my culture. You don't know their culture, you don't know ****. Because the word savage, I think would be a great term to use like bodacious. Like. Kid does like a sweet skateboard trick and you're like, bro, that was savage. Like, yeah, that would be that's so much better. But it's been poisoned because of racism. Just just another crime of of of colonialism is that we can't use the word savage to talk about sweet skateboarding tricks. I hate it so devastating. Yeah, it's heartbreaking. And also heartbreaking is the story of Ulysses Simpson Grant's kind of relationship to the. Genocide of native peoples. Grant is one of those guys who you really want to like because you know, the Confederacy and stuff and you know the the destruction of the KKK like he did. He has some he has some good moments as a president, as both as a president and as a general, and he'd spent most of his career with like a pretty vocally positive attitude towards Native Americans and against US imperialism. As a veteran, he'd condemned the US Mexican War as quote, one of the most unjust. Ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. In 1869, after taking office, he'd promised peace in the American West and admitted our dealings with the Indians properly lay U.S. Open to charges of cruelty and swindling. So Grant was a guy who, like, when he came to, when he came into the presidency, you might have felt like he might actually be pretty good president in terms of like, US native relations, like he clearly understands, like, yeah, we've been ******* these people over for a while, but shortly after, he came into power. Gold was discovered in the Black Hills, which was land guaranteed to the Lakota by a very clear treaty. So there's gold in them hills, and then the hills is owned by the Lakota. And so the only thing to do was to orchestrate a war for resources and lie about the fact that the Lakota had started it even though Grant actually, like, sent in troops. And yeah, it was like the Iraq War of the day, actually. If you read, there's a good Scientific American article we'll quote. But if you read about like, what? Grant did to the Lakota in the Black Hills. It sounds a lot like the the Iraq war. So the whole thing snowballed and I was going to say, like, us going for oil, right. I mean, yeah, yeah. Just like you've got like the basically using a mix of lies and provocation in order to justify a war for resource extraction. Now I have a question. Was there any oil in Canada also on like Indian Native American land that we also tried to. I don't. I I haven't heard anything about. But people didn't give a **** about oil at this point, right? Like, yeah, babe, we were all about gold and coal back in them days, yeah. Yeah, so this is like the whole thing, you know, the, the **** in the the Black Hills turns into a cluster ****. It includes the the massacre of George Custer and the 7th Cavalry. But despite the fact that it was a huge disaster, the policy of aggressive civilization that Grant had initially announced in 1869 was seen by a great idea by Nicholas Gavin and eventually by the Canadian government. So they they basically decide, like, look over at the United States waging a genocidal war in the Black Hills and they're like. It's too loud. But like the fundamental idea of forcing these people off of their land and into cities and into schools where we teach their kids, that's a good idea. So in 1879, uh Nicholas Davin traveled back to Canada after his time in DC, and he wrote a report called Report on the on industrial schools for Indians and **** ****** now. Oh God, yeah. Interestingly enough, **** ***** isn't a general term. That's a specific term. That was the official. Yeah, that's the official Canadian government term for the Metisse people was half, **** *****. And the short version of the story is that the Matisse had rebelled against the government a number of times. And the white people in charge didn't want to recognize them as real Indians because that would entitle them to land and hunting rights and all that stuff. So while the Matisse weren't considered to be an indigenous people under the Indian Act, they were considered to be an indigenous people when it came to the Canadian government's policy of abducting indigenous children and forcing them into these what were called industrial boarding schools. So, like, they both were and weren't native people under the government side. But yeah, the Canadian government just called the Matisse halfbreeds. What the ****? This all feels like a JK Rowling book, just like so filled with weird terms that you're like, this is kind of like racism in a way. It's very racist. Oh, this super straight up racism in our I mean I'm just referring to like JK Rowling books, but like this is just ******. **** ****** **** outta here. Yeah, that's I can never wrap my mind around like. Caring about a person's culture this much, it's like, who cares? Who cares so much to be like, you are labeled this because this happens to be your background. Like, leave it the **** you know what? I'm just, I I hate it, you know, I just hate it. It it's it's not great and it's a there's a complicated history there that we're not going to get into in tremendous detail. But what's important is that like the the overall policy while you have the Canadian Government considers like. Only recognizes some indigenous groups as as actual tribes. Any person who is like an Aboriginal person in the area that becomes known as Canada is kind of covered by the rules that the Canadian government puts in place about residential schools. And basically what they start to mandate is that indigenous children cannot stay in their homes. They have to be taken away and educated at schools that are located away from the reservation because like. Native schools are they teach you to be a savage, like, yeah, **** yeah, yeah, David Wright wrote wrote in his report quote the day school does not work because the influence of the wigwam was stronger than the influence of the school. So basically like people like natives, even if you teach them to read and write, you know, in English and whatnot, they're going to like at their own culture. There's something and this is, this is like a long standing like thing with white people in North America in particular. Is this it like kind of admission that when people have the choice between, quote UN quote, civilized life and living the way that like Native tribes had for generations, they almost always preferred to live the way that the tribes had lived? Like nobody, nobody wanted to live in cities or whatever. But yeah. So that really bummed out the Canadian government. Yeah. And they said, sorry, we got to do something about that. So can I just say there's something very interesting? How white people are so? And like, especially like, white governments are so good at creating identity crisis within, like people of color like to a point of like, almost like you don't feel healthy mentally at all because you don't know where you stand. And it's because white people are constantly trying to be like, technically, like, if you want to be this, you have to do that. And it's like, you ******* suck. Like a lot of like, I feel like I struggle with that same thing because growing up I was constantly told I had to be a certain way to fit in with like. Other like white kids I was growing up with. And it ****** me up for a very long time where I felt like I had to go away from my own culture of like being Iranian. And then it took me a long time of like therapy to come back around and be like, why I appreciate where I come from. And I felt like I was **** ****** to a point where I was, my name is Anna, but I was called Anna so many times, so long by people that I started introducing myself as Anna because I was like, well that's what they keep calling like I was literally **** ******. And yeah, don't God it it's this, it's this the people in charge of these these policies of the United States government, of the state governments of of Canada. Are kind of inherently horrified that there might be other ways to do things and maybe, I don't know. I'm sure there's a number of reasons, including the fact that people who are in power feel like their power rests on everybody believing in the system they believe in. Yeah, but there's a bunch going on here. A lot of it's just about resource extraction, right, is that if you if you break up the tribes, then they can't hold on to their land. And that's, I think, really at the core of what Canada is doing here. So the understanding they have is that, like if you take away the kids of indigenous people, you send them a great distance away to these, these schools, they will grow up not feeling like a part of their tribe. And the the thing that they the initial term they used for these places was industrial boarding schools, which is a horrible name. And they these were what they sounded like, massive boarding schools filled with children who'd been forcibly taken away from parents by the government. And these, they were kind of based, not unlike the Nice English boarding schools of the past. But on the kind of places that like in England, if you were your family was in debt or too poor, your kids would be taken from, you would put in these workhouses it was it was based on the workhouses it was based on these places for the storage of poor children whose parents were seen as unfit to take care of them. And the hope of the Canadian government was that these kids would be educated in such a way that it would kill the Indian inside them, Nicholas Davin wrote. Quote If anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young. The children must be kept constantly within the circle of civilized conditions. So the Canadian government's big fans of this idea, and they started building a series of industrial boarding schools and these were managed by the Anglican and Catholic Churches. So both churches. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why? Is there something, is there something you know about, I don't know, say the Catholic Church and the raising of children that that might be relevant here? Is there a history there? Ohboy. Everybody loves. Everybody loves the church is they don't. Yeah, I love that sitcom. Everyone loves the church. And you know what else everybody loves? Robert. Yeah. Yeah. Products. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family. And it meant. Family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint Mobile. Com slash behind now a word from our sponsor better help. If you're having trouble stuck in your own head, focusing on problems dealing with depression, or just you know can't seem to get yourself out of a rut, you may want to try therapy, and better help makes it very easy to get therapy that works with your lifestyle and your schedule. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals, no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy a try, better help is a great. Option it's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at any time. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com/behind betterhelp.com/behind. My name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world and if you can give a voice to them, you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with speaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always felt like an ambassador for speaker, but that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with speaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker from iheart. And we're back. Oh my goodness. Those products really washed the taste of a slow cultural genocide out of my mouth. How about you, Anna? Always love products. So yeah, the the Canadian government starts putting up these industrial schools, these industrial boarding schools, and puts the churches in charge of them. And this saves the government money. And it also helped various Christian denominations with their plan to gradually convert all the indigenous peoples of Canada. The idea was that it would be easier to get kids to adopt A new religion after they were forcibly taken away from their family and everything they'd ever known. Which is a tactic I plan to steal when I get my colt up and running. Like it does seem to be like credit to the Canadian government. The earlier you abduct the kids, the easier it is to get them on board with your cult, and then you know the FDA lights you on fire anyway. The first wave of these boarding schools numbered about 69 institutions with only 1100 students, but the program quickly grew and by 1931 there were 80 some residential schools operating in Canada, and that's the name that like industrial boarding school. It's kind of too harsh. They they transitioned to calling them residential schools because the kids live there and I'm going to quote now from a write up in indigenous foundations, which is a a website that's kind of a project of the University of British Columbia to tell the stories of the kids who wound up in these institutions. Quote authorities would frequently take children to schools far from their home communities, part of a strategy to alienate them from their families in familiar surroundings. In 1920, under the Indian Act, which is like the most recent update of the Indian Act, it became mandatory. For every Indian child to attend a residential school in a legal for them to attend any other educational institution. The purpose of the residential schools was to eliminate all aspects of Aboriginal culture. Students had their hair cut short, they were dressed in uniforms, and their days were strictly regimented by timetables. Boys and girls were kept separate, and even siblings rarely interacted, further weakening family ties. Chief Bobby Joseph of the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, recalls that he had no idea how to interact with girls and never even got to know his own sister beyond the mere. Dave in the dining room, in addition, students were strictly forbidden to speak their languages, even though many children knew no other or to practice Aboriginal customs or traditions. Violations of these rules were severely punished. Oh boy. Yeah, so it's basically. You're you're you're trying not to kill them, but you were trying to kill their culture. Right. Which kind of internally kills them? Yeah, yeah, definitely destroys people on the inside as human beings. Yeah, it's it's fun stuff, Canada. So punishment for speaking one's native tongue is among the most common, traumatizing experiences you'll hear from the survivors of residential schools. Because spoilers this **** continued up into the present day. There's a ton of people who will talk, like a ton of different stories out there of people's experiences here, because the very last residential school didn't close its doors until 1996. So this started in 1883 and continued into the late 90s like Bill Clinton was in office. When they finally closed down the last residential school. So there's like, there's like ******* people in their 20s who went to these places. So yeah, one of the survivors of the residential schools is an author named Gilbert Ascobolus, who attended the Garnier Residential School. Now, his native tongue was Ojibwe, and the Garnier school punished all uses of Ojibwe with physical violence. And I'm going to quote now from a write up based on Gilbert's experiences titled The Welcome. It begins with an encounter between Little Wolf based on Oscar. And Catholic priest. The Black Robe quote Little Wolf saw it but couldn't believe it was actually happening. The black robes, huge hairy hand flew up, appeared to hang in midair as it drifted through a lazy semi circle and exploded violently in the boy's face. The blow blow slammed him into the hard stone ends of an iron gate. Dazed and shaken, he lay in the dust, dimly aware of split ripped lips and warm salty blood, making angry red patterns on a brand new buckskin shirt. Indian language is verboten. You will not speak it again. Far off in the swirling mists of pain. And. Confusion. A door slams, a lock turns. Empty. Walls bear mute. Witness to the sounds of muffled, muffled sobs, torn from a small, frightened boy huddled in a darkened corner. And like locking kids in Cellars and whatnot, sometimes for days on end, was a common punishment for them speaking their language. But physical punishment in particular was a really consistent. Response to kids using their native language George Guerin, a former chief of the Musqueam Nation, later recalled quote Sister Mary Baptiste had a supply of sticks as long and thick as pool cues. When she heard me speak my language, she'd lift up her hands and bring the stick down on me. I've still got bumps and scars on my hands. I still have to wear special gloves because the cold weather really hurts my hands. I tried very hard not to cry when I was being beaten and I can still just turn off my feelings and I'm lucky. Many of them in my age, they either didn't make it, committed suicide or died violent deaths. Or alcohol got them. And it wasn't just my generation, my grandmother, who's in her late 90s. To this day, it's too painful her to her to talk about what happened to her at the school. And both of these cases, these stories actually kind of weigh in on the more minor end of punishments meted out to indigenous kids for speaking their native languages. It was not uncommon for students guilty of language speaking to be beaten and shackled to their beds, and another common punishment was to have needles shoved into their tongues to remind them not to use forbidden words. That's some that truly feels like a story from, like, the Dark Ages, not like the 80s. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, like was going on when a lot of us were in school, yeah, I'm going to quote again from that booklet published by facing history, quote many in the schools. Administrations believe that the students independent spirit had to be broken in order for them to accept a new way of life. Students who did not adhere to school schedules and regulations received strappings whippings and were often humiliated in front of peers. Students who tried to escape from the schools had their hair cut very short. Indeed, such offenses would earn students long hours even days in a dark secluded. Closet often without real food, the cutting of the hair on the first day at school or for punishment had a profound meaning. Long hair has a deep and spiritual meaning in indigenous cultures. To many, it serves as an extension of a person's mind, reflective of its strength and beauty. The hair length and style also distinguished between different indigenous nations, and symbolically, the cutting of a person's hair by an enemy is an act of humiliation and forced submission. The staff at the Mohawk Institute even built a prison cell for those who tried to escape. Indeed, disobedience and escape were two of the most common. Forms of resistance to the harsh foreign discipline. And sometimes kids would die trying to escape from these places, or escaping and winding up because they were out in the middle of nowhere, winding up in the middle of like a desperate Canadian winter trying to get back home. It wasn't uncommon at all. Yeah. So the errors, sorry, there is no like absolutely 0 regulation of these schools. And if there is, they just don't care. Yeah, they just don't care. They're treated. They. That's really it. They don't care. The actual education at these places is **** **** at best. Residential school students did not receive anything close to the same education as white Canadians and public schools. Like the goal here was not to give these kids a good education, the goal was to break their connection to their culture and in fact they didn't learn the normal. Classes that other Canadian students were supposed to learn. Indigenous children were taught only practical skills. Girls learned how to become domestic maids. They learn how to do laundry and cook and clean. Boys were taught how to do carpentry or farm or other manual labor tasks. So again, they're training them to be low level working class people because that's all they think they're good for. They don't want them to be natives. They don't want them to live like indigenous people had lived for centuries. But they also don't don't see them as real, really, being Canadian. They just want to take their land and make them into farm workers or whatever. And yeah, uh, residential schools were, of course, chronically underfunded and often only kept the lights on with the help of child labor. Most of them operated under what was known as the Half Day Work Day System, where they would have half days of classes and the students would work unpaid the other half of the time, not just cleaning and maintaining the school, but also, you know, growing food or whatnot, doing things, you know, that that essentially helped pay the bills and keep the lights on. And yeah, it was again, unpaid labor. And we all know what another term for unpaid labor is. Many students spent so little time in class that by age 18, they'd only reached the 5th grade. They were, as a rule, discouraged from pursuing higher education. So that's good. That's good stuff. Canada. I didn't know any of this about Canada, and I am deeply disturbed by all of it. I don't understand. I'm gonna drop kick a Maple Leaf right after this. Yeah. Just say dropkick a Maple Leaf. Yeah, I'm gonna beat the **** out of some leaves out of this. I imagine you trying to, but it keeps like, you know how it floats down and you're just trying to like, kick it, but it like keeps moving. You know? It's troublesome. That's why Canada has never faced justice as how difficult it is to drop kick a Maple Leaf. Very hard. Yeah, one day our scientists will figure it out. But until then, you know, we we just have to let the anger live in our hearts. So to make matters more heartbreaking, a significant number of indigenous parents willingly took their children to residential schools. It was required, but some of the parents saw it as like an opportunity. Like it was not uncommon for parents to try to hide their children, but some saw this as an opportunity for. Their kids to actually like have a better chance of success and white society. And it was also a matter of like the the different churches, the Anglican and the Catholic Churches would compete for students because they kind of wanted to beat the other church in saving the most souls. So it was not uncommon for like churches to come on to different reservations to kind of induce parents to pick their specific school, to send their kids to one student who later attended a residential school in Saskatchewan recalled quote, we had these two competing. Religions, the Anglican and Catholic churches, both competing for our souls, it seem, you know, I remember growing up on the reserve here when they were looking for students. They were competing against each other. We were the prizes, you know, they that they would gain if they won. I remember they the Catholic priests coming out with, you know, used hockey equipment and telling us, you know, come on, come to our school, come play hockey for us, come and play in our band. We've got all kinds of bands here. We've got trombones and trumpets and drums and all that kind of stuff. They use all this stuff to encourage us or entice us to come to the Catholic school. And then on the other hand, the Anglicans, they would come out with what they called. Male clothes. They bring out a bunch of clothes and a bail. Like a big bail. It was all used clothing. And they give it to the women on the reserve here. And the women made blankets and stuff out of these old clothes. But that's the way they they competed for us as people. So that's cool, fun stuff. Yeah, good on the churches. So most residential schools kept students away for 10 months out of the year. Somewhere year round. All correspondence from children back home had to be written in English, with which most children's parents could not read. Families were deliberately split up inside with brothers and sisters. Kept as far apart as possible, and as you might imagine, the teachers who would willingly work in such an environment did not tend to be the cream of the crop. Yeah, and I'm gonna cite again from that Indigenous Foundation's website by the University of British Columbia quote. Another significant problem at residential schools was the quality of the teachers these institutions attracted and were willing to hire. The Anglican run St. John's Indian Residential School was the rule rather than the exception when it reported in 1947 that the teachers at both junior and senior levels had some teaching experience but no qualifications for their jobs. In 1952, federal government survey found that 10 people employed as teachers claimed no formal education. Beyond Grade 8, unqualified teachers were hired because no one else was willing to brave the Canadian wilderness to work for pitifully low wages at cash strapped schools. Residential school teachers did not, in general, approach normal standards. In 1948, a departmental study conducted of the qualification of the teachers in the residential schools disclosed that over 40% of the teaching staff had no professional training. Indeed, some had not even graduated from high school. Dude, they they just pull any. Like, you just show up to the interview. You're like, honestly, like, I don't like Native Americans and they're like, you have a job. Yeah. Are you willing to hit kids who use their native language? Yes. Alright. You're a history teacher. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty great. So if the quality of the education was bad, then at least residential schools were also pestilential death traps that murdered thousands of children. I wrote that in a more positive way than it went than it is. So there were, there are numbers of kids dying in huge numbers of kids dying. We'll never know how many, but thousands for sure. Yeah. In 1907, a government medical inspector named pH Bryce reported that 24% of the time in Canada when a. Previously healthy Aboriginal child died. They died in a residential school, and this number undercuts the amount of deaths, because one of the few things that would actually get you sent home from a residential school was being deathly ill students who were sent away from the school back home died with their parents and stayed out of government statistics. And the data suggests that between 47% and 75% of all indigenous students discharged from residential schools died immediately after coming home. Wow. Yeah. And these kids just getting tuberculosis, spreading it back to the tribe. We'll never know how many died. Now, a lot of kids did die at the schools. The minimum you'll hear bandied about is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3200, you know, over this period up until the late 1990s. But there are credible estimates that place the death toll at well over 6000 children. The reason there's such a discrepancy is that virtually all residential schools made use of an age-old tool for committing genocide without ******* off the neighbors mass graves. When smallpox or tuberculosis would sweep through a school, surviving students were often enlisted to hide the corpses of their classmates from prying eyes. Sylvester Green, who was forced to bury the corpse of an Inuit boy in 1953, later recalled. We were told never to tell anyone by Jim Ludford, the principal, who got me and three other boys to bury him. But a lot more kids got buried all the time. And that big grave next to the school? No. Yeah, so they they did your school not have a mass grave, Elena. Fortunately, people weren't dying. At my school because. I guess white people ran it and they cared about the other white kid. I guess no one died at my school because there were white people at it. Yeah, I mean, you know, I I do believe that every school could eventually have mass graves. And I think COVID-19 is going to get us there, actually. Oh yeah. I think finally we will achieve, we will defeat racism by bringing mass graves to all kinds of schools. And that's really, that's an improvement to cheer for, right? Yeah. I mean, let's cheer for it. *** ****. At the United Church School in Edmonton, dead indigenous children were buried under a hedge at Blue Quills Catholic School near Saddle Lake. Skeletons and skulls were regularly spotted near the basement furnace at the Mohawk Institute, rammed by the Anglican Church in Brantford. Children were buried under the orchard at the site of the school building. We'll never have any idea how many kids were disposed this way. They're still digging up mass graves around residential schools today, like you'll you'll there are regular stories about them finding more and like, yeah, it's. It's horrible, the Canadian government one of the reasons why it's so hard for us to know how many kids actually died in residential schools is that the Canadian government stopped recording the deaths of Aboriginal students in 1920 because so many kids were dying and it made them look bad. The deadliest years were probably the interwar. The 1920s and 1930s, but indigenous students kept right on dying at residential schools up to the modern era. Sue Caribou was taken from her parents at age 7 and forced into a residential school in the 1970s. She believes that dozens of other kids. Died while she was interned there. Quote remains were found all over the fields, but student numbers do not reflect the reality. Many of my friends committed suicide after their release, which is something that all of these kids, these people will will point out. Is that like the death toll? One of the reasons we'll never know the death toll is that a lot of the people who died. You know, killed themselves years later. And so just like, Oh no, it's just part of the weirdly high suicide rate that natives have in in in Canada. Anyway. Suze experiences give you an idea of how brutal residential schools remained right up into the modern era. From a right up in the Guardian quote, Sue Caribou contracts pneumonia once a year like clockwork. The recurring illness stems from her childhood years at one of Canada's horrific residential schools. I was thrown into a cold shower every night, sometimes after being raped, the frail 50 year old indigenous mother of six said matter of Factly. Caribou was snatched from her parents house in 1972 by the state funded church run Indian residential school system that brutally attempted to assimilate. Native children for over a century, she was only seven years old. We had to stand like soldiers while singing the national anthem, otherwise we would be beaten up, she recalled. Caribou said Catholic missionaries physically and sexually abused her until 1979 at the Guy Hill Institution in the east of the province of Manitoba. She said she was called a dog and was forced to eat rotten vegetables and forbidden to speak her native language of Cree. I vowed myself that if I ever get out alive, out of that horrible place, I would speak up and fight for our rights, she said. And it's worth noting that the Royal Canadian. Mounted police. You know, the guys, everybody with the hats and they they the red. They're so funny. Yeah, they were the ones who would drag these kids out of their houses. Oh my ******* God. Yeah. Proud RCMP history there. So Sue's experiences being molested at her residential school were not at all extreme. To date, more than 2000 people have sued the Canadian government as a result of sexual abuse they endured while they were interned at residential schools. This experience was remarkably consistent across the different religious denominations. Catholic priest rate tons of kids because that's what Catholic priests do. Anglican pastors also raced raped tons of kids because the residential schools were in almost deliberately perfect environment. Child molesters. One of the most successful molesters was a man with. And I'm going to need you to strap in for this name, Anna, because it's it's he's a child molester, so we can't we can't laugh about it too much, but his name is William Peniston Starr. What the ****? Peniston. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. Peniston star. Peniston star. No, no, no. Two different words, OK? I had to like triple check to make sure penisten wasn't like how. How is that a name? Peniston William Peniston star. Yeah. Anyway, in 1956 this guy starts working as a physical training teacher at the glycan school in Alberta, and then he gets promoted and transferred to be the principal of an Anglican school in Quebec. And a 1968 he's appointed the director of the Gordon Residence and his evaluations. As an employee, as an employee, we're like consistently positive, which is why he rose so rapidly through the ranks. You know, there weren't a lot of good employees at the residential school, so he was kind of seen as a superstar. But there were some early signs that there might, that everything was not all above board. With Mr Peniston star in the late 1950s, he had to suddenly leave his job at Glycon after an unidentified conflict came between him and a group of senior boys. Indian official Indian Affairs official WP. Identified conflict. Yeah. They never go into detail. The Indian Affairs Department published a report on the matter and said that there were issues with the within the gymnastic gymnasium tumbling team that star trained, but didn't say what those issues were. He was teaching conflict. I'm just like that. That phrasing is truly trash. Well, do you know what it sounds like to me? Like maybe they he tried to pull some **** and they confronted him. Yeah, that's exactly what it sounds like happened is he was trying. He he wound up molesting or attempting to molest some of the kids on his wrestling team and they complained and the Anglican church transferred him and promoted him. But yeah. Yeah, uh, it's cool. But you know what? Doesn't. Abused children. On a wrestling team, are you doing a horrible transition to an ad brick? I don't know. I don't know what else to do in times like this, Sophie. I have no other comforts but botching an ad transition. That's my whole that's my whole world. You don't find out. You do what you can. Don't find our faces comforting. I I have lost all ability to take comfort in the human form. The only thing that comforts me now is transitioning to adds awkwardly products. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one meant mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. Family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twist at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint Mobile. Com slash behind now a word from our sponsor better help. If you're having trouble stuck in your own head, focusing on problems dealing with depression, or just you know can't seem to get yourself out of a rut, you may want to try therapy, and better help makes it very easy to get therapy that works with your lifestyle and your schedule. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals, no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy a try, better help is a great. Option it's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at any time. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com/behind betterhelp.com/behind. My name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world and if you can give a voice to them, you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with speaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always felt like an ambassador for speaker, but that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with speaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker from iheart. OK, so we're back and we're talking about William Peniston star. I can't get over that name. That makes me think of, like, I remember in history class growing up, they'd always be like, so many American names are just made-up because, you know, they that is a fake *** man. And but to me, to think that someone years on years, you know, hundreds of years ago was like, OK, Now what could we name this family? Maybe peniston? And it's like what you just named after in anatomy. Maybe their family was a bunch of *****. So they're, you know how they always say like. Well, your family owns land, so you guys are the lanterns or whatever the ****. But this maybe it's like the whole family was a bunch of ******* ***** so they were like, and these guys will be the penis stins I like. I like that version. Yeah, so do I. So. Yeah, so this guy gets in trouble for molesting his wrestling students and they promote him. He continues to teach wrestling. He leads a lot of trips overseas for like, the whole stuff. Yeah, on Falwell, Junior just took an indefinite leave of absence from Liberty University. Ah, that's unfortunate. Poor Jerry. You know what I bet Jerry Falwell has never done? Molested wrestling students at his school? I'm kidding. He's all. He's almost certainly done that. No. Was going to say I don't know. I'll be shocked if Jerry followed junior has told you to leave his Liberty University president after posting a productive, provocative photo on social media. He was. What's best about that is how he initially tried to argue that he wasn't drunk in the photo, when he was so visibly drunk that he couldn't even cover his stomach. That's amazing. I do think the like righteous gemstones. The TV show truly I think was such a like outing of what it is to be that type of like television pastor of like I it's like you what do you even try like don't even pretend anymore like everyone knows you guys are not these like righteous like God fearing people. Like come on give me a break. You know who is a righteous God fearing person? Anglican educator, penisten star. Yeah cool. ******. So this guy's this guy's career continues like a rocket for years and years and years and while he's teaching kids and you know leading overseas trips for you know the school dance troop and stuff, he is just molesting the **** out of a bunch of children. And I'm going to quote now from the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commissions report on residential schools. Quote throughout his time at the school star had been using his position to sexually exploit students he instituted a system of. Bribery and intimidation to establish a regime under which he could sexually assault students. Those who refuse to participate were punished through the denial of privileges. He was arrested on March 5th, 1992 on 12 charges relating to sexual and child abuse. All are rising from the years that he worked at the Gordon residence. According to an internal government document at the time, the department had not received any complaints related to sexual or other abuse during the time that star was employed at the residence. On February 2nd, 1993, Star pleaded guilty to 10 counts of sexually assaulting 10 boys. Between the ages of seven and 14, well, he was the administrator of the Gordon Residence. He was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in jail and it's since come out that it's it's likely that he's he has victims in the hundreds. Yeah, four years. You said four years, 4 1/2 years. Yeah, well. Yeah, it's pretty good. Sexual assault by students against other students was also unfortunately very common, and this was the natural result of several terrible things. For one thing, huge numbers of residential school teachers sexually assaulted their students again. A thousands and thousands of kids were victimized by their teachers, and this normalized a lot of aggressively sexual behavior to the kids and some of them went on to copy it. For another thing, all these kids had been pulled out of their families and communities, so they've been like ripped out of the moral universe they didn't inhabited as children and stuck in a completely new one, their parents. Replaced by nuns and priests and teachers who I'm sure sometimes cared about them, but just as often beat them or molested them or help them had them help dispose the corpses of their peers. So, Oh my, just a bad place to be a kid. Students were often victims, but they were not necessarily passive ones. The book survivors speak notes to the extent that they could. Many students try to protect themselves and others from abuse. At the Gordon School in Saskatchewan, the older children tried to protect the younger ones from abuse at the hands of the dormitory staff. Hazel Mary Anderson. Called sometimes you'd get sometimes you'd get too tired to stay up at night to watch over them, so nobody bothers them because those workers would. Especially night workers would bother the younger kids. The younger kids dorms were next to the older girls dorms. So like the older girls would stay up and not sleep at night to protect the little kids from being molested by night workers. Yeah. By the 1950s, it had become clear to even the most idiotic of soulless bureaucrats that the residential schools were not working as intended. Indigenous children were meant to assimilate to lives as lowly paid laborers. Aboriginal cultures were meant to be wiped out, but it became clear that things were not working as intended, and so the government pulled back. In 1951, the Indian Act was amended and the half day work school system was ended. Next, the government decided children could live with their parents whenever possible. In 1969, the Department of Indian Affairs. The control of the system and pushed the churches out. All of this sounds good on paper, but abuses continued. Schools were still underfunded and teachers were still under qualified. Many of them had not even graduated high school. In fits and starts, the Canadian government tried to close the residential school system, but this often just meant changing the words they used for doing the same thing. In the 1960s, thousands of Aboriginal children were apprehended by social services and taken away from their families. The 60s scoop, as it came to be known, kept the last few. Residential schools full up through the 1980s and into the mid 1990s, when the vast majority were finally shuttered. The last residential school closed in 1996, by which point indigenous groups around Canada were already organizing to sue their government over what they considered to have been an act of genocide. By mid-april 2000, Canada was being sued by an estimated 7000 survivors of the roughly 150,000 children who'd been interned in residential schools since 1883. The Anglican church was named as a Co defendant. And 359 cases of abuse involving 1600 plaintiffs. It was enough that there were fears that the National Synod of Canada might go bankrupt over all the lawsuits, which eventually totaled more than $2 billion. Lawsuits continue to stack up, and calls for a government investigation and apology were repeatedly denied by the Conservative administration of Stephen Harper. Finally, in 2008, Canada launched its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which spent 7 long years compiling an exhaustive report on the residential schools, the head of the Commission. Justice Murray Sinclair is the 2nd Aboriginal judge in Canadian history. His conclusion was stark and he did not mince words, declaring Canada clearly participated in a period of cultural genocide. Yes. So the Canadian government has at least been like, yeah, we we did us a genocide. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Yeah, it's the least you can do. Stephen Harper himself apologized on behalf of the government in 2008, although he and his government refused to agree that. Canada had committed genocide. The Anglican and Catholic churches apologized to, although the Pope's representatives noted that his apology was a personal one and not an official apology by the Catholic Church. You wouldn't want to do that. More than $1.6 billion has been awarded and handed out to the survivors of residential schools so far. Yeah, this is also very fresh and there's new stories dropping regularly about, for example, the scope of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's involvement in this new mass. Graves that have been found in different locations. In 2013, the news broke that in the 40s and 50s, nutritional experiments have been carried out on malnourished Aboriginal children at these schools. With the federal government's knowledge, yeah, it's really ****** **. Basically, they found out that all these kids were malnourished and instead of giving them all vitamin supplements, they only gave us some of them vitamin supplements so they could watch how differently the two groups reacted. Yeah, just use them as tests, they're like. Top of putting you through the most truly traumatizing experience of your yeah, probably your whole life. That could potentially ruin you as a being. Yeah. Let's see, let's just try and use you as science experiments as well. They wanted to know the effectiveness of vitamin supplements for white people, and they had all these kids that were not white that they could test it on. So about 1300 kids were used as test subjects. Subjects were kept on starvation level diets. They were given or denied vitamins, minerals, and certain foods and dental services were withheld from some students because researchers thought better teeth and gums would skew results. So that's all fun. Look, that's the. Fun story of the Canadian residential school system. Is. Wow. **** you, Canada. I know what the what the **** Canada? I mean, I'm glad they gave some money back, but that doesn't. That was not change. A ******* thing. I would not say they've made it right now. No, they haven't. You know what I don't like? Go ahead. Is that I don't like that. Oh, you don't say you're gonna be like, is that? And then go on. But is that. No, I also don't like that and I think. There's this. I don't understand it, but I feel like it's just like the human being was. Like, and it this happens in all like most countries, just like, if you find someone less than kill them off. And it's like, it's so devastating to be like, why has it take, like, even now it's still happening? But like, at least some people are coming around to be like, Oh yeah, maybe we shouldn't just kill people. And it's like. Barely. Are we coming around 2020? And we are barely kind of turning a corner of, like, yeah, maybe we shouldn't just kill people because we think they're less than. And there is, I don't understand. Like, what world was I raised? Like, I have very strict Iranian parents. Like, how was I able to get to the point where I'm like, you know what? That's really evil, ****** ** and not a thing we should do. But then yet so many people are so far behind. It doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't. I don't. Yep, it's bad. Yeah. You wanna, like, shake the country of Canada? Yeah, let's just, let's just kick the **** out of some Maple leaves and not look too closely at our own history, because everything Canada did was kind of based on the actions of the US government. Earlier I was gonna say, like, and there's if you by the way, if you go to Australia, very similar things were done. Yeah, the schools and stuff like Canada's program was really particularly extensive and lasted shockingly long period of time. Like, they kept it going a hell of a lot longer than the US government. Kept their kind of residential schools are going. But yeah, pretty much the same story. Does feel like the more remote you are, the the easier it is to kind of like get away with here genocides. People don't know how much Canada gets away with, right? Like when when we were in when I was in Guatemala I talked about that time a lot. My Canadian friends like I was hanging out with a bunch of Canadians. And as an American despite all the **** that I Americans had done to Guatemala, we actually got like less negative responses than the Canadians did because a number of Canadian. Mining companies have been guilty of like horrific behavior and like we're at that point doing horrible, horrible things in Guatemala, which is a thing about Canada. You could actually, if you want to really look into Canadian history, a lot of very specifically ****** ** things around mining that happens constantly both within the country itself and with companies that are headquartered in Canada but are mining concerns and we talk a lot about all the wonderful social programs Canada has. A lot of that is funded by resource. Extraction on a global scale that generally ignores the rights of a lot of people in the areas where the extraction is occurring. It's good stuff. Wow. So it's almost as if we shouldn't exist. It's maybe just countries, maybe just countries because, like, I always do feel ****** like, there's so many things to criticize Canada for. But also, I'm like, but I'm an American. Like, like it does. Like, the reality is that they're all bad. They're they all do terrible things to people. If you wanna look at any country that's considered to be one of the good countries, and you scratch it a little bit, you'll find that they're operating horrific, rare earth, earth mineral mines that rely on the the mass, you know, enslavement of children or something. It's just one of the fun realities of the cool world we live in. Yeah. Can someone, if there is any country, I don't know, like, like Norway? Like, I don't even know what's good. Maybe. I mean your best bets, Uruguay, but like, still. Probably a bunch of ****** ** **** you can find. All right, well, can someone tweet at us if there's any single good governmental run country, please? Yeah, maybe I sleep these days. I think they're doing better. Even I'm concerned a little about ice and like what goes up, what good, what goes on up there, you know? Yeah, they might not be a real country and might just be a Canadian mining front. Like, can't that that would be a Canada thing to do, fake and Iceland on us. Fake ice. Tricky *** Canadians. Yeah, OK, *** **** it. Yeah, I am dying to know what's a good place. Yep. If it exists because a part of me feels like it just doesn't exist. Yeah. Let us know if a single good place exists in the world. Otherwise, I will continue with my plans to hole up with a bunch of children in a compound until the FDA burns us alive. Oh, that'll happen. Yeah, it's going to be a good time. Oh, man, looking forward to it. Really. Just watched that Waco TV show, and I was. No, don't bring up Waco. I rewatch it every single night. You know. Yeah, 11 or 12 hours a night of just pure Waco. I just can't get enough of that. David Koresh. Ohh, you know, and it's such a funny thing and, like, popular culture because these, like, home flippers from, like, HGTV, like, built their, like, silo, weird. Like, I don't even know HomeGoods company out in Waco and I'm like, stop trying to rebrand Waco. Like, we shouldn't just know we shouldn't forget what happened here. Like, this was such a *******. ******** operation done by our own government. Yeah, it was. Don't forget, it was horrible that they burnt that compound to the ground. And the only way to make it right is to burn the rest of Waco to the ground and finally free the world from Waco. Yeah, just get rid of Waco. But yeah, just never been to India. We don't need to Waco. I have. I've spent many months there and it's a bad place. I would apologize to Waco, but Waco knows that I'm right. Fascinating. I would like to go see it, but no, you don't. You don't need to see Waco. OK, fine. I won't go. I'll go to the silos. You know, if you imagine the parking chip and Joanna Gaines of a big truck stop. It is. That's the whole city of Waco. It big truck stop parking lot. It does feel like like when I look at the photos of this these these people chipping going goanna, Joanna Gaines who created this like Magnolia market at the silos. There's something so dark about it, like it's just in the middle of nowhere and there's like these giant silos that are all like aged and **** and I can't help but think like. Oh, boy. Like, I can't believe somehow this is turned into Waco, but I can't, right? Every, every everything turns, it always goes back to Waco. That's the magic of Waco. Always be. Wait, if you're not Waco going, baby. Yeah, if you're not going, you're asleep. And that's a problem. Yeah, be a Waco, not a sleepo new shirt. Be awake. Not asleep, though. Yeah, we can have, like, a really nice. A really nice depiction of of David Koresh's. Just no, just absolutely no ripped come gutters. I mean, just just come gutters. So you cut them *** gutters? Yeah. That's what you call abs. That's the medical term. Yes. I've heard someone recently called them a penis ravine. Yeah, that's another medical term for abdominal muscles. Yeah, both of those are proper in Doctor speak. This is horrible. Ask your doctor about penis, ravines and *** gutters today and David Koresh. Always be asking your doctor about David Koresh. Or you could or you could invest your time into something else, like listening to some of the podcasts, and it does on this very network. Anna would like to plug your pluggable so that I don't have to hear about Waco anymore. Yes, that's true. I I begged Sophie to book me so I could plug these *** **** shows. So I have to do it. I I I yeah. You know, Speaking of penis, ravines, I actually heard this on the penis revenus penis. Penis din revenus. I I do a show right now why I do ethnically ambiguous as you guys know with my co-host shrine units, who has been on the show many times. It's called ethnically ambiguous, which is all about being a person of color in America. And we that's, you know, we're really. That's what we do. We talk about being a person of color, a child of immigrants or even an immigrant in this country. And actually, I would recommend our episode with Joey Cliffs, who is a Native American man. Who is he? I honestly didn't know a lot about Native American culture because even though I live in this country, you're taught nothing in history classes or your schools because they just try and disregard the fact that we live on native land. Here is the thing about the corn that you bury with the fish, right. Yeah, exactly. You learn about Thanksgiving. Yeah. And then they ignore the fact that we also, like, killed a bunch of native people to be on this land and, you know, the United States. You're like, Mayflower, you're like, yeah, murder boat. But also, yeah, we do that show. I recommend that Joey Clift episode because he is a Native American man. He actually. I learned a lot from him. So check that out if you guys want to. Learn as well, but also my other show, which is less about anything. It's called deck heads, and I host it with Nick Turner, and it's all about the TV show below deck on Bravo. And a lot of you be like, why do you watch these shows? Honestly? Because it's the only thing that lets me turn my mind off. And and I I nothing makes me more calm than pure nonsense. And that's why I love reality TV. It makes me feel alive. In a way I haven't felt in years. And you know, me and Nick Turner, comedian Nick Turner host the show and I personally enjoy it because it's about super yachts that really, really rich, horrible people rent for 10s and thousands of dollars just so much money for like 3 days. It's absolute nonsense and why would you ever spend your money like that? And super Yacht shouldn't cost that much money, but we just basically, we're going over every single episode. Love the show to ever exist and we just ******* rip these people a new ******* about their behavior and it's fascinating to see how White America works. It's fascinating to see how rich people just sexually harass whoever they want and get away with it, and how they just treat everyone like ******* dirt. So if you want to hear us really break down these these truly lovely times because we we have been recording them all in quarantine. So it's a great juxtaposition of what we understand as reality while like the black. Lives Matter, movement is going on like as we speak and continuing. We'll hopefully continue to go on. Until we have full justice. Umm. But then you just said and then you cut to us being like, what the **** are these people doing? And it's fascinating. I I truly enjoy it because these people have no shame and I think more people need to see how the 1% live so you can understand like being rich and owning all the ******* money in this country. It's bad. And why would you ever want to be a person like this? So if you guys like a really interestingly. Dark social justice angle of us watching reality TV. Check it out, because Jesus ******* Christ, these people have no shame. I don't get it. I just don't get it. And it's fascinating to observe. So yeah, check out *********. Also on iHeartRadio. Right, yeah, alrighty. And that is. I'm just saying. You can follow me at Anna. Host me on Twitter if you would like to see me. You know, tweet. About every so find Anna on Twitter, check out her shows, and you can find us here every Tuesday and Thursday talking about real sad **** that bums you out. That's the episode. You need to know it. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Thespreaker.com, that's spreaker.com. If you could completely remove one phrase from your vocabulary, which phrase would you choose? I don't know. Correct answer. No, I meant I don't know which phrase, and the best way to banish I don't know from your life is by cramming your brain full of stuff you should know. Join your host, Josh and Chuck on the Super Popular podcast packed with fascinating discussions on science, history, pop culture and more episodes that ask, was the lost city of Atlantis Real? I don't know. Is birth order important? I don't know. How does pizza work? Well, I do know. Bit about that. See? You can know even more, because stuff you should know has over 1500 immensely interesting episodes for your brain to feast on. So what do you say? I don't want to miss the stuff you should know. Podcast you're learning already. Listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode we're speaking. With Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioral discoveries on chimpanzees, it wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.