Nuanced. - 159. Jonathan Kay: The Shocking Evolution of Political Correctness

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

Jonathan Kay and Aaron Pete explore the balance between cultural sensitivity and open dialogue. The two focus on political correctness and Indigenous issues, delving into the history, language, and current debates surrounding these topics.Jonathan Kay is a Toronto-based editor for Quillette, a host of the Quillette podcast, and author of the Deeply Problematic and Let's Get Board substacks. Follow him on X at @jonkay.Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron P. Political correctness and indigenous issues are hot topics within Canadian culture. Today I'm speaking with somebody who understands these issues, talks about them thoughtfully, and we discussed the book, Grave Error. My guest today is Jonathan K. Jonathan, thank you so much for being willing to join us today. Would you mind briefly introducing yourself?

Sure, my name's John Kay. I work for Quillette, and I write books and do a podcast and run substacks, all kinds of media stuff, and I live in Toronto. I'm going to ask to start by taking us back four years ago. You did a TED talk on political correctness. Would you mind defining political correctness from your perspective? political correctness which now seems like kind of an antique term what's kind of interesting actually is just now that you mention it I'm just reading a book by somebody who actually defines the origin of that term and describes how until like I know the late Cold War period politically correct used to be used as a term of praise in socialist or communist circles to indicate that someone's comrade had correct political views, which properly

reflected Marxist-Leninist tenets or whatnot. And as is often the case with some of these things, a positive term within that movement then got co-opted as a negative term by conservative critics who saw a lot of the things that were being praised as correct. as being these rigid, intellectual dogmas that were uncritically accepted by the cadres. And so over time, it became an insult, right? Much in the same way as woke. I mean, woke has followed the same pattern, right? It was, I guess, as recently as the 60s or 70s or 80s, you know, maybe even far more

recently than that, you had people who were proudly saying that they were awoke to the need for more social justice. It was seen as something people bragged about, I guess. And then in the last five years, it's become an insult. The term politically correct has followed the same trajectory, although obviously that was a previous generation before awoke. That was actually going to be my next question, is have your views or perspectives on political correctness or whatever term we're using in today's kind of approach, have they changed it all? Yeah, I mean, like, so when I was in college, so I'm older than you, I went to university in the late 80s and in the 90s, you know, people would use a term politically correct as an

insult to describe ideas that I guess today would seem sort of common sense, like, you know, don't tell sexist jokes at work, don't tell racist jokes, you know, don't wear blackface, even if you're Justin Trudeau. Like, it was what we, what was then denigrated as political correctness, I think in retrospect, it was like people putting some fairly reasonable boundaries around discourse. You know, when I was younger, you know, you could get away with some pretty vulgar and offensive stuff when you were talking to people. I remember, like, it was pretty common at my university guys would, like,

they use the word gay as an, oh, that's so gay, like, it's, you know, which no one would ever do now, right? Like, it's, it's completely insulting. So you, yeah, so you saw the word, the term politically correct, then describing, used as a term of abuse to describe stuff that I think in retrospect is, a lot of it is fairly reasonable, okay? So, yeah, views do change. And, I mean, even like a lot of the stuff we call woke,

probably like 80 or 90% of it is kind of nonsense, but there's always a grain of truth to this stuff. Like, it's always true that, you know, you should be courteous and respectful when you're talking to friends and colleagues and stuff like that. And there are contexts where pronoun checks are, you know, can be useful. Probably not in your email signature and stuff like that. But I try and keep an open mind and say to myself, right or left, there's always a grain of truth to every ideological movement.

You just have to trim away the excesses, right? Interesting. One of my favorite parts of your TED talk was around this idea of using your social capital for good. And so you reference that you're a Jewish person and that you were able to call out certain things and say that's not anti-Semitic in certain circumstances. I feel the same onus as a First Nations person and a council member for my community that I have to be one of the voices to push back on some of the extremes that we see come out of this like land acknowledgments, like land back terminology, to be mindful and cognizant of the fact that if we let this train go too far, people are going to hop off and have a negative reaction to kind of what's taking place. and we have to find some sort of middle ground that advances and makes it a more fair society, but that doesn't go way too off the tracks where people have to say a land acknowledgement every single time they have a 15-minute meeting or where things just go way, like I don't agree with land acknowledgements on their face. And so I have to be willing to say that. And the response I get

from people is like, thank you for doing that. I don't feel like I can say negative things about it. So I appreciate you being willing to do that. No, I think it's unfortunate because it somewhat puts, the onus on the person who's trying to push positive things forward to start calling out negative things. But I really liked that because that's what I feel in my day to day is that I have a responsibility in an onus to do that work. That's a really interesting point. And I think especially in the current political climate, it's a busy job for somebody like you. Because some of the more prominent voices in the indigenous community, and often they're prominent because white politicians make them prominent because they act as convenient props for them when they want to

demonstrate their adherence to reconciliation or something. They're the ones that get fronted by the CDC or stuff like that, and so maybe it's not quite as lucrative or quite as attention getting when you're the person who's maybe a more reasonable voice and say, hey, we don't have to say a land acknowledge in every 15 minutes. Yeah, and as a Jewish person, you know, I mean, I first realized this, like when I was working at the National Post, I remember every year B'nai Brith would put out the survey of anti-Semitism, right? And every year, it was like the same story. Like, anti-Semitism is skyrocketing Canada. Antisemitism is an epidemic. And, you know, I'm a Jew who's grown up in Canada. And obviously anti-Semitism exists.

like, in the same way that anti-indigenous racism exists. Like, it's never possible to completely get rid of bigotry. But, I mean, year after year, I would see these Benebrith annual surveys of anti-Semitism. And I was like, how is it possible that anti-Semitism is like skyrocketing every year when, as a Jew, I feel like fairly safe in Canada, and I feel like anti-Semitism is decreasing? And so I was the one on the editorial board of the national. Post, who was then charged with writing editorials, maybe expressing some skepticism about this benabreth stuff. Whereas I think, like, my non-Jewish colleagues would have felt

less comfortable about that. No, I mean, the problem is you can take this to an extreme, right? Like, in the United States, there's these black public figures who, like, they kind of make a name for themselves as, like, pro-Trump types who, like, go overboard on some of the stuff. Like, racism doesn't exist at all. like they kind of become, to my mind, sort of co-opted by people who have a vested interest in their message. And you see this in all communities, right? But that said, it's really interesting what you said about the indigenous community.

And I think this kind of feeds into what I was saying about how there's always a grain of truth to stuff. Like, again, I'm older than you, and I grew up in Montreal in the... the 70s, not my political conscience has probably started in the 80s. And like, the way people talked about indigenous people in Montreal, like, their only contact with indigenous people was driving out to reserves to buy cheap cigarettes. And so they would, you know, they would talk about them in like in a fairly racist way. And it was a good thing that there was a backlash against that.

And people said, hey, let's learn about history. let's educate ourselves, let's talk respectfully about people, and I think it's a wonderful thing that the kind of discourse that existed about indigenous people and many other communities that was normal back in the 80s is stigmatized now. Like you're not supposed to talk like that, and that's a good thing. But then like all movements, it kind of goes too far, and then the policing of language becomes kind of its own objective, and you get a whole class of people. whose careers and platforms are based essentially on police and speech.

And that's a bad thing. Agreed. And seeing this firsthand, the first time I started to see land acknowledgments become popular was in universities, where I'd see a professor pull out some napkin and say, I'd like to acknowledge that we are on the unseeded ancestral territory of the Coast Salish. And it was just like, you have no idea what you're saying. You don't know why you're saying it. You don't care. Can I just interject there?

Because I don't know if you know this. I don't know if your listeners know this. But I actually, we had a big Quillette event in Toronto. And I wrote my own land acknowledgement, which I was very proud of. Because what I found is at this event that we did, it was like downtown Toronto. And as a lot of, some people may know, downtown Toronto was like the site of a battle in the war of 1812 against the Americans. And what I discovered was like right on the site. basically where we were having our event, the British side or the Canadian side won this battle.

And it was largely thanks to the heroism, the military heroism of the British indigenous allies. And so when I said my land acknowledgement, I said, let us be inspired by the feats of arms of these soldiers who defended us from the Americans, including some of these famed indigenous warriors, and I think I named two of them, who, you know, without what they did, we might be part of the United States now. And so let their example inspire us to build a Canada that is more free and more equal

and more race-blind for generations to come. Because I want, I mean, if you do learn the history, you can draw inspiration from all sorts of people, especially some of the incredible exploits, like military exploits of indigenous auxiliaries that fought defending what's now Canada. And that's the kind of thing I'd like to see people more educated about. Like the problem is a lot of the education that takes place around minority communities tends to be very sentimental.

So people like will educate themselves about the Jewish community, which I appreciate. But like a lot of it is kind of, you know, it's. they're educating yourself about themselves about the Holocaust and about anti-Semitism, which I think is valuable, but it's, it's often very victim-centric. And a lot of the stuff you see about indigenous issues, it's like people say, oh, I've spent years educating myself, but often they're learning like the same three things over and over. They're learning about residential schools. They're learning about anti-indigenous racism, like they're learning about colonialism, but they're not learning about, like, a lot of the fascinating and amazing things that made indigenous communities. viable before European contact, like their methods of warfare, their methods of, you know, food production, their methods of habitation, like, you know, the way they build homes, which, you know, when the Europeans arrived, they died of starvation and they froze to death because they didn't

have these skills that indigenous people have. Like, to me, that's the interesting thing about indigenous history. I like to learn about the bad things, like residential schools and stuff, but you have a whole generation of people who, that's all they're learning about. And often they're learning about it in a very like kind of torched and sentimental way, which they're not really educating themselves. Like they're kind of educating their own moralizing. So like they feel they can adopt the right political posture. But that's not real intellectual education, right? That's that's kind of more like a religious thing.

So yeah, that's one of my pet peeves. Yeah, I've heard that said from elders that like if you're learning about those pieces, you're really learning Canadian history, not indigenous history. which would be for the past 10,000 years, some of our stories, and that's where I've gained a lot of knowledge is just like I've listened to Jordan Peterson, break down the Bible, and then being able to take my own teachings from my community and the stories we have and start to try and pull out the psychological value of them and understand them in a deeper way to how that would have guided generations. And one of the pieces that I find really interesting is that our moral stories about how to live a good life are literally painted onto the landscape in which we live. We have a mountain and it has a name and that name comes from the story and the story teaches us both how to live a good life, but also how to get to that mountain and how to kind of traverse the terrain and it serves dual purposes, which I found really fascinating. So obviously Jordan Peterson is a particular, he's particularly interested in religion and especially Judeo-Christian faiths. One thing I just sound so interesting in regard to spiritualism and the European indigenous divergence, there's this amazing podcast by a guy called Greg Cable, it's called Nations of Canada, and he focuses really heavily on the Europeans, but also on indigenous communities. And he has this amazing part where he talks about the Catholic priests who came to Quebec in the early 17th century.

and they embedded themselves with the Wendat, who the French called the Huron. And it's just so interesting because, unfortunately, we don't have written records from these indigenous communities because these were, I mean, this was, these were preliterate societies, so they didn't leave texts.

But because these Catholics who came from France were so obsessed with, like, converting indigenous people to Christianity, they studied indigenous languages very closely, and they studied indigenous, indigenous spiritualism very closely, I mean, with a very cynical motive, they wanted to convert them to Christianity, but still, they studied them because they, like, they wanted to, how do we, how do we convince these people of, like, how awesome Catholicism is? And it's, there's so many

interesting things, because one super interesting thing was the Catholics, they recorded the fact that the indigenous people they spoke to were, like, very weirded out by the subject of heaven, because, you know, the priest would say, if you act correctly, if you're, you have faith in gone stuff, you'll go to heaven. And, you know, and the, you know, and the, indigenous audience members would say, oh, that's awesome. But like, what about our friends and family? And the priest would say, oh, they're on their own. And the indigenous audience members say, well, wait a sec. Like, how is it heaven if I don't have the people I love with me? Like, they had a very communal-based idea of what's good and what's bad. And I listened to this

podcast last year, and I'm actually serializing it for Quillette. And I was like, there were tons of observations like that where I was like, that's, that's, that's, that's, a really interesting point. And it's true. I don't, I don't want to go to heaven of my friends and family, aren't there? Like, that's not fun. And, and there were a lot of things like that, which made me think about the real, the real cultural differences that did exist and still do exist within these societies. But what I loved about this podcast is it wasn't, it's not like one is better and one is worse and these priests were evil and the indigenous people were like these wonderful flower children who like you know knew the true meaning of goodness like it was done in

this way showing both of these peoples were products of their their geography and their culture you talk about the mountain like a lot of the reasons mountains and streams and rivers and forests were revered as they were like it was a source of food and you know you had communities that were rooted in these areas for for a long time and they didn't have a portable culture because they didn't have the written words. So it wasn't like the Jews where they could, you know, wander around the Middle East and bring their culture with them. Their culture often was rooted in the landscape.

And so they developed this, like these very rich oral histories and modes of spiritualism. And I love studying it when it's not presented in a moralizing political context. Like history is just so fascinating if you strip it of the sermonizing and the hectoring that just so often accompanies a lot of the political dialogue in Canada right now. I couldn't agree more. One of the things I learned in law school was around this idea of oral cultures versus written cultures, and one of the values oral cultures can provide is that you actually learn and absorb the information where you might ask how many people in their 20s understand Shakespeare, not just have read it, but kind of understand what the meaning behind it was.

you start to disconnect from the oral, from the written culture in a way you don't with oral cultures because it's passed on and it's told in a way that resonates. And if you misunderstand, you have somebody there to kind of re-explain it or help you digest the information and make it applicable to you. And I think that that's something that we need to grapple with. And I always am hesitant around the term decolonization. But there are things I think Western culture can learn from indigenous culture and the language and how we approached things, particularly when we were talking about like land acknowledgements, one thing I think would be really valuable for people to do is learn the mountains and streams and things around their region that they live within so that they can better take care of it into the future. If there's an opportunity to put

like a big garbage barge right near their home community, that we maybe say that's not a good idea and start to protect the things we care about within our region, that's different than I think how land acknowledgments are typically done. And yours is also an example of how you can go outside of kind of the status quo and do a better job kind of communicating these key issues. And yeah, I mean, the reason I said that example in Toronto is because it showed like you can, it's possible

depending on the context, to acknowledge the indigenous presence on a particular piece of land, but you don't necessarily have to put it in opposition to the existence of modern society. Because there is a sense that's like

the undertone to many land acknowledgments is this used to be a wonderful, beautiful place. And now, look, it's just like this crap hole that Europeans is ruined. Which, to be fair, in some cases, is the case. Like, I mean, if you had a beautiful valley and someone turned into a strip mind, like, that's kind of fair. But on the other hand, there are plenty of examples of the opposite. That, you know, it's interesting because British Columbia has, I was in British Columbia a couple of days ago, actually, visiting a friend. I was on Victoria, I was on Vancouver Island. I went to Victoria, and then, I'm going to mispronounce it, Tawasun, is that you pronounce it?

And I don't know if you've been to the Tawasin Mall, but it's owned by the local First Nation, right? But it's like, it's an amazing mall. Like, it's a really, have you been there? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so it's like this absolute first rate mall with, like, all the stores you'd expect. And I remember thinking, first of all, I think it's, like, great that they have this, this, what seems to be a flourishing retail enterprise, which presumably, like, helps fund Tuasson. and First Nation, right? But also, like, when I was there, I didn't think, oh, wow, these First Nation people have really decolonized the idea of a mall. I was like,

indigenous people are like anybody else. When they see a good idea, they take it. Like, they don't think, oh, you know, let's, we're going to strip down the idea of a mall. It's just going to be a bunch of people like selling stuff out of huts and like, you know, it's going to be barter and there's going to be no money and no credit cards. Like, you know, so whenever I, I, I, The term decolonization is a problem for a lot of reasons. One of the biggest problems is, like, most people don't want to decolonize stuff. Like, if you're an indigenous person who wants to get the best experience at a university, you know, you want to get the best experience at university.

And if somebody sits down and says, oh, we're going to decolonize the university for you and, like, we're going to spend half our time, you know, learning the sailish words for, like, you know, organic chemistry terms and all of stuff. You're like, well, really? Like, that's why I spend all this money to come to university. is, like, to get lessons I could get from my relatives? Like, that's not why I came to university. I don't necessarily need that from you.

I can, that's something I get from my community members. But, you know, that mall, which I'm just holding out as an example of, like, the successful retail establishment, there's a lot less of that, I would say, that people in Ontario see. Quebec is a little different because Quebec does actually, like, partnerships going back with the Cree and Hydro and like, but like in Ontario, we have fewer examples of that kind of partnership that exists, at least in urban areas. You know, you now have BC First Nations that are, you know, doing real estate developments and are, you know, coming into the 21st century in terms of like resource explorers, like this stuff with these, actually I have a bone to pick

with BC because it's because of that political struggle, and I'm not even going to try and pronounce it. It starts with W, but someone told me how to pronounce it. The, uh, what's when? Yeah. Yeah. Um, where basically, basically it was a political divide between the hereditary chiefs and the elected chiefs. Correct. And that dispute somehow meant people in Eastern Canada couldn't get on a train for three months. Like, because there is, this is back in 2020 when they were setting up all these barricades. And I was like, great, I can't take a train to Belleville because these people are arguing about political decisions

in British Columbia. And of course, you had all these people, all these white people on the streets here in Ontario putting their stakes down with the hereditary leadership in BC because they were the ones who were like anti-LNG or anti-resource extraction. Yeah, stuff like that makes me mad. Because the people who are shutting the train system down in eastern Canada,

They didn't understand what was going on there. They didn't understand the sort of little civil war that was going on within that community. Yeah, I want to jump into other conversations, but just on this note, like, that's a very interesting case. And the first time I saw it pop up was with Evan Solomon, Ellis Ross, and Pam Palmeter, and they did a power play session where they were talking about this issue. And Ellis Ross was breaking down, like, my people are in poverty, and we need to address this. And this is an avenue in which we can raise people out of poverty. address the sexual interference against children in my community,

start to solve some of these very real issues. Pam Palmet are coming from a university, coming from that social class, and saying, like, no, we have to respect their right to say no to this. And there were a few things that came out of that for me. One, it's so clear, if you look at it from at least a Western perspective, that one is a democratic process. Electing your chief in council is a democratic process.

And for the most part, everybody agrees that's the process that we should go. with, the hereditary chiefs are passed on these positions and pay no consequence for holding those positions because they're not elected or held accountable to anybody but themselves. And that's a system for the most part. I think we agree doesn't work over the long term. But I would say that so many chief and councils are still stuck in this family process where you elect your family members and then they go and represent you as a chief and council representative that we haven't fully embraced the democratic process of having all candidates meetings,

having debates, putting forward a formal platform. I was the first in my community to really say, I'm not going to run on my last name. I'm going to run based on a platform. This is what I say I'm going to do, and you can hold me accountable in three years as to whether or not I did it. And then the other piece was around

how we discuss these complex issues because the pipeline can benefit many communities, but how do we kind of understand that? And I was so hesitant during that time where roads were being blocked and stuff to accuse the people who are up. upset and saying terrible things as true, genuine racist. And I do know that those people exist, but somebody driving on their way to work and somebody's

in your way and you say a stupid thing, I don't think we can define those people as long-term, long-standing racist. Honestly, first of all, you get behind the wheel of a car, you lose 40 IQ points. And you see this all the time where, like, I know, I know. I've seen people I know who are like the furthest thing from racist, but as soon as some guy cuts them off in the highway, they like, suddenly they become. Like, you know, if the guy, you know, has like a Greek flag on his car, it's like, you fucking Greek asshole, you know, go back to Athens, or you go fuck a sheep or whatever.

Like, you know, it's like this, you'll probably edit this stuff out. But like, you know, just like the craziest racist stuff comes out of their mouth as soon as they're behind the wheel and someone like cuts them off or tailgates or stuff like that. Like it's just this, this human tribalism, this reptile brain takes over. And yeah, if you're late to work or dropping your kid off in daycare and someone puts a whole bunch of garbage on the street and says, hey, you can't use this road because of something that's happened 3,000 miles away, yeah, I'd be pissed off too. You know, probably watch my mouth because I don't want to, on Twitter what I say, but

and by the way, I'm just going to, I know you, you want to move on to, to other subjects, but this thing about hereditary chiefs, like, it's, it's, the hypocrisy is crazy because progressives rightly, I think there's something I agree with, like, they're always talking about privilege and inherited privilege. And, you know, I acknowledge I grew up in a fairly wealthy Montreal home and I have inherited privilege. You know, I've, my parents had some money and I went to good schools and that's privilege. But then somehow, like, all those lessons about inherited privileges, like get forgotten when it comes to taking the sentimental view to like, oh, you know, the timeless hereditary powers of indigenous people passed on from grandfather to father to son.

isn't it beautiful? It's like, wait a sec. You know, I thought you were against inheriting stuff. Like I thought, you know, you wanted estate taxes to be 90% so that everyone started from like the same baseline and there was no inherited privilege. And I thought you hated the monarchy because, you know, that's like the ultimate manifestation of inherited privilege, right? But somehow when like indigenous people do it, it's like that scene from Moana where it's like the father takes the daughter up to the mountain and says, you know, each of our leaders has put a rock on this hill and you shall be the next leader. And it's like, oh, isn't that beautiful? It's a hereditary kingdom where it's like, wait, but we're supposed to not like that stuff. Like, you know,

it's true. I'm probably a hypocrite too because, you know, I'm interested in British history and I like learning about the kings and the queens and stuff. So human beings are fascinated in this hereditary stuff as a matter of history. Like it feeds into our tribal impulses about how society should be organized. He's like, oh, I knew your father and I knew your grandfather. And so I trust you because you come from this lineage. Like, that's a lot of how we're trained to think. But it's not consistent with democracy, right? And it's not consistent with meritocracy. Agreed. In 2014, you wrote about the former national chief, Sean Atleo, and his comments that his grandmother had a dream that we would not pass this on, this anger and pain, onto future

generations that we would look at the past and understand it and learn from it, but we wouldn't pass on that pain. And now it's referred to as intergenerational trauma. And I'm just wondering if you can share your perspective on learning about Indian residential schools and hearing some of those thoughts. Because to me, what that chief said now would be very unpopular. The culture has somewhat shifted on that note. And I'm just curious as to watching this play out for a long period of time. So as with everything, there's like more than a grain of truth in this. You know, one thing that really resonated with me is I went to, I think I was in Fort Albany. This is like, you know, near James Bay, Cusheshawan and Atalapisgat are the more famous

or well-known communities there because of some of the crises that took place during the Idle No More period. But I remember talking to, I think it was the chief at Fort Albany and I remember he says something really, which I never thought about. He said, we were talking about residential schools, and this is before the current political climate. And he said, look, residential schools were good for a few things. They were good because, like, I learn English, I learn math, and I was able to, you know, do things like interact with government ministers and demand things for my community and write petitions. And now I'm using, like, you know, I have no problem with email and computers and all this stuff. And, you know, not just because of residential schools, but a lot of it was.

He said, on the other hand, I was also separated from my parents and family for long periods of time. And as a result, I and other people in my community, we didn't have the parenting skills. And so he says, like, when you see a lot of this stuff, you know, with alcoholism and drug use and maybe like other problems that affect all societies, but certain First Nations communities, they're tragically more common. A lot of this comes down to, like, we don't realize parenting is a skill. And like all skills, it is, at least in part,

learned from modeling the behavior of the people above you. And if you're not exposed for a long time to your own parents, then you don't necessarily have a model for how to be a good parent. And he says it's, you know, if you have one or two people in the community who have that issue, that's life, that happens in all communities. But if like a community is made up of people who all have that gap in their parenting knowledge through no fault of their own, that has a huge effect. So this is a, God, this is, when did I do that report? I mean, this was more than a decade ago. But I mean,

that really resonated with me because I've heard white people say, you know, I had no father. I grew up in a foster home. Like I said, the reason I was, I had problems as a parent just because I didn't know how to be a parent. Like, I've heard that from people from all backgrounds. And so that really stuck with me. On the other hand, the stuff about intergenerational trauma, you know, I remember Jagmeet singing, of all people,

you know, the guy who got driven in a limousine to a U.S. private school when he was a kid. You know, he talks about the seven generations of intergenerational trauma, which, like, for me, that's like this political thing. it's like, oh, great. So seven generations, what is that? It's like 150 years or 200 years. So that means, like, I as a descendant of Russian Jews should still be boring everybody around me about like the pogroms that took place in late 19th century, Tsarist Russia, because that somehow affects

me. I mean, of course, it affects me in the sense that's part of my history. But there's nothing in my genes that's like, you know, oh, man, you just triggered me because It's like the Cossacks were coming through my village, you know, because that's what happened to my great, great, great, great, great grandfather. Like that, that becomes a fetish. It becomes a fetish that you're holding on to for all these generations. And, you know, I've educated myself a little bit in my history. Like, my grandfather basically was a refugee. And my grandmother, too, was a refugee from Russia because of the horrifying anti-Semitism there, went to China.

their area of China got attacked by the Japanese during the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and there was a ton of violence against everybody including Jews and there's people dying all over the place and then essentially my family became a refugee from violence a second time which is how my father left China

and made it to Canada as part of a big like essentially a prisoner exchange because my grandfather and my aunt got thrown into a Japanese prisoner of war camp like horrifying violence everywhere then my father built a new life in Canada, I don't suffer any intergenerational violence. Like, I think my father does. He's still alive and, you know, he doesn't really like to talk about stuff that went on in China and the

violence that went on there. And, you know, I know it's probably affected to him in ways he doesn't talk about, but I don't, it hasn't affected me. I've lived a great life in Canada, but completely insulated from all this stuff. And that's only one generation. And the idea that, like, there's this sort of congenital intergenerational propagation of trauma, to me is ridiculous. It can happen, but the idea that it's like something we should expect, to me that's a political pose. It's like saying, you know, hasn't happened to me, didn't happen to my father, didn't happen my grandfather, but I'm still going to play this card because, you know, maybe my great, great, great, grandfather, it happened to him. And so it affects me in some way. I don't buy that.

Yeah, and I think you did a very good job in writing about this and talking about this issue because I think from my perspective there's a few issues. One is there's kind of a famous saying, hurt people, hurt people. And it should be noted that a majority of people who get hurt do not go on to abuse other people. It's a very small minority of people who end up repeating those harms onto other people. And so there is, to your point, this opportunity to transcend the issues that you faced in your life and put them in the past and that's not an easy task but it's an important task that people take on the other piece that you described is that like for my community a majority of our members who live on reserve live on social assistance so they

can't go to their neighbor next door and ask how do you become a doctor how do you become a nurse how do you become a lawyer and they can't go to the neighbor on the other side because everybody's in the same boat and the thing that I've watched and tried to understand more of is this hopelessness And I had the benefit. My mother was a part of the 60 scoop, which is a bad thing. My grandmother was a part of St. Mary's Indian residential school. But the value add that my mother got from being a part of the 60 scoop was she lost her culture, which she's still trying to recover it from today. But the nurse who took her in from Kokelita Indian Hospital raised her and raised her with Catholic values and raised her to believe in herself, to work hard, to grow as an individual. And what that resulted in was me growing. up somewhat disconnected from my culture, but understanding the two worlds. One person lived in a very nice home. There was always food in the fridge. There was this high quality of life. And then I'd visit my reserve and see the complete opposite. People just struggling to survive, people miserable, abusing alcohol. And getting that two world view gave me hope that I wanted to go in the direction

of where people were financially successful, comfortable, and lived a good life and were able to give back to their community in a healthy way. And so I'm trying to bring the philosophies and the tenants from this world back to my community so people aspire to be greater than they are and aspire to have good jobs and get a good education and be proud that they've contributed to their community because people I think inherently want to do that but when you're told that the government's held you down that there's nothing that can be done that you're stuck here and people wanted you to be stuck in the situation is incredibly discouraging and that's what that chief was talking about is we have to recognize this but we have to encourage people to

think beyond these constraints and I feel like you just you did a very good job in piece of breaking down that philosophical approach and again things I don't hear about in the mainstream very often well I'm glad you found that article interesting I I mean I confess that probably um like a lot of pundits or opinion writers I I probably like especially earlier in my career I wish I'd spent more time like going out into the world and and witnessing things rather than sitting in a desk and you know I was on the editorial board of the national post so like I was paid to kind of just sit around and give people my opinion. But, like, especially since COVID, I've spent so much time going around Canada and meeting people and talking to people

and, like, seeing the geography of Canada. And, like, one story that really, really hit me hard, it's the Algonquins of Barrier Lake. It's a somewhat obscure community, kind of near the Quebec-Ontarial border, really, like, well, I haven't followed this story for a good decade but like at the time I researched it was like very a lot of challenges and poverty and there was one story from that community where you had somebody who grew up in the community who who left the community and became if I remember correctly like a carpenter and a contractor and an entrepreneur and like learned how to build houses and you know became accredited I think you went to

to trade school I think in Ottawa you know in or around Ottawa if I recall and then went back to his community, and then some people call ABL. I don't know if that term is still in usage. And, you know, this is according to one account, but I, so I, that caveat. And it was kind of like, hey, you know, I've learned how to, I have all these job skills now,

and I notice, like, there's this housing shortage on the community. I'd love to, like, help, you know, build stuff and maybe, like, bring houses up to code. You know, there's all these, often there's these tragic fire. that take place on First Nations communities because there's either no fire code or the fire code isn't

observed, you know, there's a lot of mold in the basements because, you know, ventilation and HVAC systems are not kept to code. People don't have fee simple ownership of their structures, so there isn't the same economic incentive to do preventive maintenance in homes, and so there's a lot of fire hazards. And like a lot of the stuff he wanted

to help, what was interesting, like not everybody was on board with that like there were a lot of people in the community who are like hey wait a sec like we have a system here and the system is when things get shitty we like we ask for more money from for new homes and you know we have to deal with all these bureaucrats but eventually we get more money and we build new homes so like you know a lot of stuff you're talking about we're not like maybe as interested as you and eventually and this is a story like he's kind of run out of the

community like people like what he was advocating was not part of the politics of the community which were based on, like, another pattern, which people were kind of locked into. Yeah. And it wasn't, they weren't locked into that because they were indigenous. They were locked into that because we are all creatures of economic incentives. And, you know, I grew, I'm in a part of Toronto called East York. And if, you know, if somebody put a fence around East York and said, everybody in this community, we're going to, you know, we're going to give you all the social assistance.

And you're not going to go to university because you don't really have to go to university. And as you say, your brothers and sisters don't go, your neighbors don't go to university. Like, your social expectations would be you're going to kind of live the life that you're, I'd end up like that. Like, it's not, it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with the economic incentives you're presented. And this really is people talk about, like, the horrors that were inflicted on indigenous people. This is one of the quiet horrors.

The creation, and it wasn't done deliberately, but basically you take peoples whose economic system was based on like going out into the world and collecting resources and building things and like hunting animals and following the hunt like that and you say no no you're going to be the sedentary community we're going to build the houses and you know your economic way of life is going to be destroyed but don't worry i'm sure you'll find something to do and in the meantime you know we'll give you the bare necessities of life like over the years if that becomes the lifestyle men have no social function like the women have a social function they raise children but the men have no social function and they lack self-esteem as anybody would if you have no economic or social function within your

community and there's no answer to that like the progressive answer to that is oh you know they're just these communities are just going to flourish if we give them enough like positive encouragement they're going to it's like no that's kind of not how human nature works like people need an economic function in life and if they don't it doesn't matter how much like cultural you know how many language programs or you know how many NGOs you send or how many consultants you send you know humans need a sort of the natural tension that comes from producing economic bounty for themselves and their families because without that the societies fall apart and you see that with rich people like you know i i know tons of rich people here in toronto like trust fund kids whose lives

fall apart because they don't like you see it at the high and low ends of the socioeconomic spectrum people who lack the economic tension that comes from having to provide for themselves. They lack dignity. They lack discipline, drugs and alcohol, become a problem in life. Child care suffers. It has nothing to do with race. It has to do with your economic incentives. I couldn't agree more.

I hold the housing portfolio for my community. And when I joined, I basically said the 89 homes that we have on our reserve have severe health and safety issues. And I would not feel comfortable living in. And we heard stories from people saying, that the mold and mildew that their kid inhaled for years caused kidney issues and they had to have one of their kidneys removed in these types of issues. And it's a serious health issue. And easily, you know, it's one of these things like an ounce of prevention or a pound of care. But, you know, I live in the side. If I didn't own my house and pay a mortgage on it and have to

worry about its resale value, I would do any preventive stuff here. Like if, you know, why would I, you know, but because I, I do all this stuff because I have an economic incentive to do so. And God knows what my, my house would be a complete dump if I, if I weren't worried about, you know, not just health and safety inspectors, resale value, you know, and the fact I'm taking my cues for my neighbors. You know, my neighbors have nice houses. So I'm like, oh, I better, better make my house look good. And, oh, shingles are falling off. I better call. Like, it's, you know, I've been to not, I've been to houses on a fair number of First Nations communities. And I'm kind of sometimes just shocked at how little investment in preventive care would have been required to remedy some of the issues that are going on with those houses, especially in regard to ventilation, basement care, you know, and part of it is just a lot of these communities are in heavily flooded areas. So look, these James Bay communities, these First Nations peoples were pushed around by white people and often put on the crappiest land, land that flood seasonally. And when you have seasonally flooded land, guess what?

You know, basements flood. And so these problems are exacerbated by kind of the racist policies that caused a lot of these communities to end up, like a lot of First Nations reserves, they're not on traditional lands. They got kicked off their traditional lands. and they got put on lines that white people didn't want. And so that exacerbates a lot of these housing issues. That's exactly my community. We were moved from our original location, which was out of the floodplain, into a spot that now we've had Northwest Hydraulics

confirmed that we are deep into the floodplain and likely to flood during the 2021 atmospheric river in BC. We were severely impacted. And now we've repaired 22 of those 89 homes and we have a plan to repair the rest. But you see that that's, to me, the first step is supporting people. And to your point, we didn't have the exact same issue, but a lot of members' initial response to repairing homes is, well, do they pay their rent? Because we shouldn't fix homes unless they're paying their rent. And to be clear, within our community, rent is usually $350 a month. It is not a lot of money.

And from my personal perspective, when I joined, I said, I would not feel comfortable living in this home. So we are going to fix it. Then we can address the rent issue. But $350 is not a lot of money overall. and I'd rather see people living in a quality home and we can have that discussion later than focusing on that. But that was so much the dogma and the culture of getting mad at people for not paying their rent rather than kind of saying, well, like, nobody should ever have to live in a circumstance like this. Like this is unacceptable and we should address that and then we can get into the financial issues. One of the interesting things about what you say is I have a theory that even if it was even if it were $50 people wouldn't pay because

I find a lot of human nature is you take your cue from what your neighbor does. So, like, during the Greek financial crisis, there's like 10, 15 years ago, or probably more, the problem was Greeks weren't paying taxes. And when they interviewed people, they say, well, you know, you're a rich guy. Why don't you pay your tax? He says, well, my neighbor doesn't pay his taxes. And what am I a sucker? Like, no one wanted to be a sucker.

Because if you believe the guy next door isn't paying his taxes, we have this, like, instinct that says, I don't want to be the sucker. And so if you're in a community where maybe it's like, you know, you get together with your neighbors and they're all grumbling and say, I've got all these problems, why I'm not going to pay my rent this month or whatever. Like, it discouraged, even if you live in a nice, it discourages you from paying rent and says, well, am I going to be the only guy paying rent? So it kind of creates a social norm. And these things can spread very quickly. Like, social norms can spread like wildfire

for good or for bad. And if a social norm is created that says, like, only suckers pay rent, then, like, we complain here in Ontario, like, landlord has become a dirty word. But the good thing about having a landlord is, like, a real landlord, like a sort of a capitalist, evil landlord,

so to speak, is they will throw you out if you don't pay a rent. So, like, it creates a certain discipline. And you know your neighbor is paying rent, because he hasn't been thrown out of his house. And you know your other neighbor is paying rent. So as much as you don't like paying rent, and as much as you hate your landlord,

at least you know that everybody else in your apartment building is also paying rent. So that when you pay rent, you don't feel like a sucker. So you say, I don't like paying $3,000 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in a marginal area of Toronto. That sucks. But at least I'm not a sucker.

At least everybody's doing it. Like capitalism, love it or hate at capitalism does pay, does create that kind of norm where, you know, it's an arm's length arrangement. Whereas my understanding of a lot of First Nations communities is politically, it's very difficult to throw somebody out of their house, right? Small community where everybody knows each other, it's like, do you really want to be the chief or the council member who's like, sorry, Ms. Smith, you know, go sleep in the woods. Like, you're probably not going to do that, right?

Yeah. Yeah, so. So I find that you have a lot of nuanced perspectives on First Nations and Indigenous issues. So it was interesting to see you involved in the book, Grave Error. And I'm wondering if you could share first, maybe how that opportunity came about. So the book, Grave Error, which has become like this infamous thing. You had some mayor in BC who was like, they told him he has to resign because his wife

recommended the book, right? So someplace in Northern Beas. Which town was it? Quinnell's dealing with it right now. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Like the wife recommended it. for her book club.

And the mayor was told, yes. So that book, I think there's at least one essay that was reprinted from Quillette. Two. Two essays, yeah. And those essays, which originally appeared in Quillette, are about the same subject, which is that, as I'm sure probably everybody listening to this podcast will know, in May of 2021, it's three days from now, actually, the third year anniversary, it was announced that the cam loops, I'm not going to say

their actual name, because again, I'm going to mangle it, but what was formerly known as the Camloops, First Nations, they announced ground penetrating radar survey data that they asserted, indicated the presence of 215, formerly unknown, unmarked, graves of children who they said had attended residential schools. And the implication was that these are students who had either been murdered or dispatched or hastily buried in some way after dying of neglect. And it was treated, as again, everybody listening to this will know, as like the story of the year. In fact, Canadian press actually formally voted it as the story of the year. And then you had other First Nations communities who indicated that they had conducted their own ground-penetrating radar.

GPR survey, surveys as it's known, indicating what they believed were also potential unmarked raise. The story absolutely did serve as a reminder of a lot of the terrible things that happened at residential schools. However, there's no indication as of yet that any of those 215 graves actually exist. Because as has been documented and pointed out, GPR survey data indicates soil anomalies. It does not indicate caskets or graves or human remains or bodies. But in the Canadian media, that point was kind of confused. So, I mean, to this day, people I meet, many of them who aren't. and, you know, don't study this issue closely, they take it for granted that what that

GPR data found back in 2021 was like little X-ray images of indigenous children who had been killed, which actually isn't the case. And to this point, it's been three years, not a single grave, let alone human remains, has been definitively discovered at a point that corresponds to the announced GPR survey results from 2021, not in Kamloops, and as I understand, not in any other First Nation. And to their credit, several First Nations have taken it upon themselves

to actually do forensic examinations. There was one First Nation in Manitoba. They investigated a church that local indigenous lore had had it as being like the repository for all these murdered children and they didn't find anything. Although I've given the chief and counsel

for full credit for, for doing that investigation my understanding is that in Camloops to this day there hasn't been a full investigation of it because it would be politically explosive within the community, within the indigenous community and within the BC media and the national media to say, oops, sorry, we made this announcement.

The New York Times announced there was a mass grave, but it turns out like there's no bodies. And so the articles that I wrote, which were reprinted in that book, talk about the social panic that surrounded that, which I think is not healthy for the debate about what some people call reconciliation, because if you want to have something called reconciliation, it has to be based on facts. And if you're telling people, 215 murdered indigenous children were found in Canloup's BC in May 2021, and in fact, there were no such bodies found like that erodes confidence.

going to think, well, what else are you longing to us about? And many of the horrors from residential schools are the furthest thing from lies. They're all too real. But now people who have discovered the truth about that, it makes them skeptical. Can I ask about, like, the other authors in other sections of the book, I don't think are as thoughtful as you are in your writing and your approach. Were there any qualms you had about being a part of this, or were you able to read the other excerpts? I've read through it, and just some sections are just, to me, somewhat racist, again, and kind of approaching things from, like, well, over the past, like, 150 years,

First Nations have received $3 trillion over the course of that period. And it's like, sure. But, like, if we added up Canadian economy amounts, like, it's probably way more than three. Like, we're just kind of playing with numbers here. You can see the consequences of some of these policies. Did you have any challenges with being a part of the book, or do you think it was just very important to get some of these messages out? I'm going to be completely honest with you.

I haven't read the book. They asked if they could reprint the pieces I'd written, and I said, sure. The person who asked me, there were two people, Tom Flanagan from University of, or formerly of University of Calgary, who I dealt with and published. He wrote a book called, was it, First Nation Second Thoughts? This was like 20 years ago. which was about the ARCAP, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

And the other guy was Chris Champion, who is the editor of something called the Dorchester Review. Both are authors who I've published, and both are people who I trust. So on that basis, I said, yes, I haven't read the book. Like, I haven't read the rest of the book. I know some of the other authors, if you're telling me that there's material in some of the essays that, like, just rubs you the wrong way and is like, I actually, You sound reasonable. I trust your judgment.

Now I don't want to read the book. And I'd have to, like, put up this thing on Twitter saying, like, I distance myself from so and so. What you just said about, like, I can't believe we're spending all this money on this. We're spending on the most like that. Without, like, reviewing the passage in particular, yeah, I don't like, generally don't like going there as just as a rhetorical tool. Although I probably in the past when I was an editorial writer, I did, because the National Post is a fiscally conservative outlet. and so we focus on money. But I always tell people, like, I think I've said this many times,

if, you know, the best problems in life are the ones you could solve with money. And if money were solving the problems that we're talking about, I would have no problem. I pay like 52% marginal tax here in Toronto. Like, I pay a lot of tax. And I don't, if you follow marketing, I never complain about that. Because if that money is going to people, you know, forget indigenous stuff. Like people with mental health issues, a functioning health care system, paved roads, a military that we can be proud of and that we could deploy to, you know, places that need Canadian peacekeeping assistance.

You know, I don't mind paying really high taxes to live in like a Scandinavian style socialist economy. Like I just, I've never been a real huge fiscal conservative. And in terms of, you know, indigenous peoples, even according to the broadest definitions, I think they're like 4% of the Canadian population. The reserve resident population of Canada is probably closer to 400,000. If we're just focusing on the reserve resident population, if we were paying $50,000, $80,000, $100,000 per capita, and that money really was like building the kind of life and opportunities that we want, I'd be the last person's complaint.

So when people talk about the amount of money that I spent, to me, that's not really a good argument, because if you break something, putting it back together is really expensive. And if you have a moral responsibility to help a community that you've stolen their land, you've, in many cases, destroyed their culture, you've taken away their ability to be good parents

by throwing them in residential schools, I don't really want to hear you fetching about how much it costs to fix that. Like, it's your moral responsibility to fix that, right? So that to me is not particularly good arguments, talking about how much money has been spent. What I'm more concerned about is historical accuracy. And I think Progressives should be interested in historical accuracy,

because, like, look, if I can draw a metaphor, look how much the so-called 1619 project in the United States has hurt the cause of social justice for black people. So the 1619, yeah, go ahead. About the 1619 project, it's this editorial slash quasi-academic project, which was spearheaded by the New York Times, and they partnered with this now prominent, I guess she was prominent before,

black historian and educator and writer who wrote about how the true founding of America took place in 1619 with bringing slaves to America and how America was built on slavery. Again, very strong green of truth. But that New York Times editorial project was marred by historical errors that historians actually pointed out as the New York Times was going to press with it, but they ignored it. And that hurt, to my mind, hurt the cause of promoting social justice for black people

because it's you don't have, excuse me, you don't have to resort to historical distortion to make the case that black people in the United States have been victimized by horrible, horrible injustices. In the same way, you don't have to distort the historical record to show that indigenous people in Canada have been targeted with all sorts of horrible injustices. But in people's zeal to make that case,

they, at least in the case of these unmarked graves, as they've been described, have said and argued things that are counterfactual. And it shouldn't be seen as, quote, unquote, denialism to point that out. This is one thing that bothers me is that, you know, you can say everything I've said and say, you know, like there's been all these historical crimes, but they've never actually found these 250 graves that supposedly exist.

And there's like this guy named Sean Metcalf at, I think he's University of Manitoba, he's this white guy who's like, he's always on Twitter calling anybody a denialist if they if they point this out. I'm like, dude, like, you know, if you say that 20 million people died in the Holocaust, that's just wrong. It doesn't make you a denialist,

you know, facts like, hey, sorry, 6 million people died in the Holocaust. It wasn't 20 million. And just because those horrible, horrible things happen doesn't mean any hyperbolic claim made in regard to that historical episode is immorally abhorre abhorrent thing to say. Sometimes you're just stating facts, right?

100%. And you do point out that 3,200 indigenous children have perished as a consequence of going to that school. 3,200 was the figure that was contained in the report. But even in that report, it was pointed out that the real figure is probably like maybe 5,000, 6,000, 7,000. They don't know. But 3,200 is the established baseline of what they know. Yeah. And as the authors of that report pointed out, the likely figure, the figure is likely maybe perhaps several times that. And I acknowledge that whenever I write about the subject. Because if you don't acknowledge it and you just fall back on like, oh, man, here they are complaining again. We give them all this money. That's not a productive way to have the conversation, right? Because it makes it sound like you just want to be done with the issue. But again, it's like if you break something, you have to help fix it. And it's absolutely, like, I don't think anybody can disagree with the idea that when white people came to North America, like, they broke many indigenous societies in a way that they have a moral responsibility to help give them the tools to build themselves back up. Exactly. So I had Candace Malcolm on, and we talked about her career and her background. one of the areas that I focused on with her, because she's the head for True North Center, the one who helped

publish the book, is we get into this topic. And I think we had a very good faith back and forth about the issue, but I could tell that she does lack sympathy for these people. Her focus was very much on, hey, you know what, let's not spend money on actually doing the research and doing further investigations on this land. Let's just put that towards doing some puff pieces on some good indigenous people and kind of making them role models for other indigenous people and focusing on that. And yeah, some people may have had terrible experiences at residential school, but lots of people had good experiences. So let's just like say that it was kind of middle grounded and tough to say and let's move on from that and stop pouring money in. And so we did go back and forth.

And I again, I credit the fact that I agree with you and her and the book that this needs further investigation and that the story I had Michael Moses on, who is a city camp. councillor for Williams Lake. He's now running for provincial politics in BC, and he owns the fact that it's an extraordinary story, and the facts just ain't there yet. And he's First Nations, I'm First Nations, like, we're not on the other side. My big fear is that if we fight this book, if we say you're a denialist, if you even talk about these issues, that we're going to send people over to the other side so far that we can't have the conversation. And so I'm pleased to see Michael Moses saying, hey, this is a complicated story and we need to do further investigations. We both

read the book prior to our discussion where we said yes there were pieces in there that were just kind of rhetoric that's just terrible but there are pieces in here that are true and one of your pieces is in there about these issues and kind of like grappling with them so i'm to be honest i'm glad to see that your writing is in there because i think this book needed factual information and some people are going to jump on the other sections of the book and like that more but i think we do need facts and you provided that. Well, thank you, but you're more educated than I am because you actually read the whole book, which I confess, you know, I have, I don't know if you can see behind me, I have a whole

role of books that I've written or contributed to, but now the gigs up, people know that I haven't even read all. It's like there was a famous basketball player who famously complained that he was misquoted in his own autobiography. because he was like, got a ghostwriter. Charles Barkley, was that name of that guy. So one problem here, like the same thing that I accuse progressives of,

progressives of is conservatives too, which is that, you know, when I say, like, there's obviously this incredibly strong grain of truth to the idea that we need like a more social justice-oriented conversation around indigenous issues. And then progressives extrapolate that and say, like, the whole conversation has to be about, like, resistance and reconciliation. And, like, we don't have time for any of facts that are inconvenient. But you also see that in, like, conservatives who backlash against it and are like, oh, I'm so sick of this, like, victimology.

And so we're going to write a book or we're going to, you know, do a TV show, which is all about, like, the amazing things that happened at residential schools. I'm like, that's not a good idea because it's absolutely true. And I've met people. I've talked about it already. there are indigenous people who went to, there's a famous artist who's written about it, the good things at residential schools. But I tell people, every time you write a book or an article,

there's a political aspect to it, and you have to meet people where they are. And if you're a conservative and you come, and you're writing an article and your first sentence is, let's talk about the amazing things that happen at residential schools. Like, you're not going to convince anybody. Like, you know, it's just people are going to look, including me, are going to look at it.

and say, really? Like, that's, that's your opening bid. So, and then you talk to some of these people, and, like, I don't want to say all these people are racist, but I'm like, I use that line. I say, every time you pick up a pen, it's an act of politics, even if you don't consider yourself a politician. And when you open your essay with just talking about, like, oh, I met this indigenous guy, and he said, like, going to residential school was awesome. How come no one talks about that? Like, I'm not saying, that's not true, but I'm saying if that's the first thing you tell people, they're going to make assumptions about who you are

and what facts you're ignoring. And like, it's just, it's not useful. You have to meet people where they are. And where Canadians are right now is that not just progressives, not just like social justice fans or like the woke, your average Canadian is now educated about a lot of the bad things

that white people have done to indigenous people, including in some cases forcing them to go to residential schools. and if you conduct the conversation in a way that's ignorant of that, no one is going to pay any attention to you. Like, worst case scenario, they're going to call you a bigot, and they're, you know, they're going to make you resign from your mayor's job because your wife said some crap. But, like, the best case scenario is you're just not going to have any influence on the public conversation.

And so thank you for reading my contributions to this book, which, again, we're originally published in Quillette. but like I tried in those pieces to assure people it's like I'm not coming into this conversation as like some guy from a capitalist think tank who like all he wants to do is convince people to stop giving money to indigenous groups it's actually the opposite of what I'm arguing like as I said if to the extent money is useful in solving these issues like let's spend more money I'd rather spend more money and preserve the historical integrity of our conversation

than spend less money and just like give lip service to things that aren't true because they're rhetorically useful. But unfortunately, like, it's the opposite. Rhetoric is free and services and public assistance cost money. So like for a lot of governments, you know, they'd rather, like Justin Trudeau would rather get down on one knee in front of a camera

than maybe make some of the investments and things like drinking water quality, which cost money. Like land acknowledgements don't give people good drinking water, right? One down on one knee doesn't like, so this is the same problem with sue with corporations. Like corporations will pay minimum wage

their employees, but then go on and on Twitter about like how much they love Black Lives Matter and, you know, we made all our people wear pronoun pins. And like we're doing all the stuff which doesn't cost any money. But meanwhile, our employees, you know, can't pay the rent because we pay them garbage wages. Like, that's, this is, this is, and this same pattern is going on with indigenous stuff,

where, like, real problems get ignored, but instead, you know, like, in a couple of days, I guarantee, like, you know, Mark Miller is going to be on Twitter, you know, spent today thinking about the 215 lost children, like, because that doesn't cost anything, right? It burnishes his bona fides without actually, like, costing a cent, you know, tweeting is free. That's the world we live in. I find that you have very thoughtful perspectives that I think are really important. Can you tell people about the Quillette podcast about your channel and how people can follow your work? Okay, first of all, the idea that I'm thoughtful is not a universally held opinion.

And as 30 seconds on social media will indicate. Right, so I work at Quillette. It's sometimes people say, what's Quillette? And I say it's a made-up word that my brilliant boss, Claire Lehman, is really it, I think it actually, there is some obscure French word that that exists. But it's, it's like Gillette, you know, the best a man can get, but with QU instead of Z. So collette.com, that's where I write. That's where I edit. And the Quillette podcast, I share the hosting duties with my colleague, Quillette managing editor. Her name is Iona. And Iona. Italian, and you can find that at at roulette.com, and you can find me on social media being snarky at John K, J-O-N-K-A-Y. I actually, one of the reasons I love doing this is because

having conversations with people like you is because a lot of people, even in my own neighborhood, know me from Twitter, and my Twitter persona is kind of like a cartoon character. It's just like this. He's just like always wisecracking and, you know, provoking and, you know, having a good It's like performance art, right? I'm kind of, but, like, Twitter is not the place for a conversation like the one we're having. Twitter is the place to, like, do sick put-downs of the people I don't like.

So, yeah, if you just know me from Twitter and you're, you know, I'm proud of some of my long-form articles, and thank you for reading the ones in Quillette and in this book. and thank you for reading that book because it sounds like you found the book to be a mixed bag but I still don't think it's worth a mayor

having to resign because his wife likes the book did he ever resign? Like what happened with that story? It's still going on and it's not that it's not just that she recommended it in her book club it's that he was posting

about how there's some very important information in there and that there's a lot to learn And so actually one of the reasons that Michael Moses ran in city politics within the Williams Lake was because they asked for an apology from the mayor in Williams Lake for kind of pushing this book and saying how great it was and how people should read it. And there's lots to learn from it and not consulting First Nations. And so they went in. This person was a longstanding leader. And he said, I'm not going to apologize for this. And so I actually pushed Michael on the idea that are we not allowed to be wrong about things? You have to. you have to hold these these kind of perspectives in order to sit in office like that's a dangerous path like we might not agree on how much we should put into health care we might not agree like and that's just not a politically um charged issue and so when we start to make it i think more books like like grave error will come about because then we're picking sides are you pro-indigenous all the way are you anti-indigenous all the way and then we kind of get stuck in this and then

people get jaded because maybe that mayor was doing a great job in their community maybe they were solving the sewage issues and the water issues. Like that municipal politics doesn't need to be about grand federal issues of the history of Canada and stuff. Like usually for the most part, you're building sidewalks and lights. And like maybe we should just keep that to that kind of world and not judge people based on like maybe we disagree on some of these important topics. I think, I mean, if I were a municipal politician, I wouldn't. The last thing I would be talking about is indigenous stuff and gas. Like, we haven't talked about Gaza, which is probably a good thing about everyone else talking about it.

But, like, you know, all these things, like, my local library putting out a statement about Gaza, like, who cares what you think about Gaza? You know, it's like, who cares what, you know, local comedy troupe thinks about Gaza. I think to a certain extent one problems we have is that local actors within our society all feel like they have to have an opinion about, you know, whether it's indigenous. issues or Gaza or Ukraine or Donald Trump. I don't like Donald Trump, but I don't like being lectured about Donald Trump by like my local politician. Like how, you know, I elected you to pave the roads. Like, focus on that. Don't lecture me about foreign politics, right? So anyway, thanks for educating me about that. My pleasure. I really appreciate this conversation. As I said, I appreciate you as an intellectual because I think you make this digestible and you actually

care about understanding the issue and not just giving the rhetoric. which why I wanted to speak with you to get into some of these topics further. So thank you again. All right. Well, I look forward to seeing you. Hopefully next trip to BC, I'll make it out to Chilliwack. Fantastic. Okay. Take care.