RUBENSTEIN: If it wasn't so sad, you could laugh

The Monty Python writers could never have made up something like this. A bizarre story I reported in the Western Standard on March 28 has taken a new but not unexpected twist, based on the aphorism that when predators smell blood, they go for the kill.The attempted kill are the growing calls for Quesnel, BC, Mayor Ron Paull to be forced out of office following the discovery that his wife, Pat Morton, had been "distributing" copies of Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools.) Grave Error is a best-selling collection of essays edited by C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan. It questions the accuracy of indigenous claims that atrocities, including genocide, were committed against the children attending the indigenous boarding schools.Hear Tom Flanagan discuss the book hereUnsurprisingly, some people didn't like it. “This book makes many harsh comments including, 'truth has been turned into a casualty,' implying that cultural genocide did not occur, and basically questioning the existence of Indian Residential Schools,” said a letter from the tiny Lhtako Dene Indian Band, expressing outrage over 'having to defend' the existence of the Indian Residential Schools or the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.Quesnel, in central BC, is an unremarkable city of some 23,000. But, because it's a story about an indigenous grievance, the legacy media covered the Quesnel story as if they were paid consultants for the city council and its aboriginal activist allies.None reported any proof the book was distributed like some advertising flyer to community members by Morton, an assertion implied in media reports. (In fact, Morton gave or lent a single copy to her acquaintance of some 30 years, the mother of Councillor Tony Goulet, Paull's most likely challenger in the next municipal election. A second copy was allegedly sent to the Quesnel Board of Education.)Nevertheless, Goulet unleashed a wild attack against the mayor and his wife — a woman with no professional ties to the city — about what should have been a private matter of no concern to the city's running at the March 19 city council meeting.In any case, had Morton gone door to door handing out copies of Grave Error, she had a right as a citizen in a free country to do so.It should have never reached the formal attention of city council. But about 300 mainly indigenous people marched on Quesnel's city hall, before surging into a raucous council session. Three city councillors, several indigenous bands, and some locals demanded Mayor Paull resign based on his wife's allegedly hateful "distribution" of a book to one or two people.It was quite a night. But the story was poorly told.The media's most egregious failure was to mention that none of Grave Error's writers or two editors questioned the existence of the Indian Residential Schools — as the mob and some councillors alleged — or that some students reported terrible school experiences.No mention was made either in the many legacy media stories covering this issue, including the latest April 5 CBC one, that the TRC findings have been roundly criticized as biased, skewed, and unverified in scores of carefully researched articles exclusive of the Grave Error ones since its 2015 Final Report was released.Instead, most media houses, such as The Tyee, focused only on the tired and one-sided revelation that: "The horrific experiences of many who attended residential schools became international news in May 2021 after Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc, a First Nation in BC's Interior, announced that ground-penetrating radar had identified what were believed to be more than 200 unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School."Conversely, no one seems to have read the just published views of the respected Catholic News Agency or other reports like in the Western Standard and elsewhere that: "In the years since the purported discovery (on May 27, 202)] however, questions have been raised as to whether there truly is a mass grave at the site. No remains have ever been discovered on the Kamloops school grounds, and there are no apparent efforts underway to excavate the radar-indicated alleged graves."Instead, all the focus has been on undocumented generalizations and emotional outbursts such as those of members of the tiny Lhtako Dene Indian Band and their Quesnel City Council member sycophants.On the other hand, when Morton and Frances Widdowson — who contributed to the book — tried to speak, they were met with taunts, boos, deafening drumming and frequent interruptions by a mob in the gallery calling for Mayor Paull’s resignation.Widdowson is a former professor, fired from Calgary's Mount Royal University over her support for the "educational benefits" of residential schools and her criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement.She was told by Councillor Lauren-Anne Roodenburg: "You really have no place here. We really don't want to hear from you." That's a truly despicable comment from a public servant. Conversely, numerous spokespeople for the anti-book side were given unlimited time to pontificate about anything they wished, while the two lone speakers trying to explain or defend the book were told they could only ask one question.Since few people on the other side appear to have given the book even a cursory glance, Lhtako Dene Chief Clifford Lebrun could easily declare, "We can no longer work with this mayor and we will not work with the City of Quesnel until the issue has been resolved."Translation: Fire the mayor or else face the wrath of our “nation.”"We can't have a community that hands out hate literature and expect people to listen to us and to take it seriously," he also said.Paull strongly denounced the book at the March 19 meeting, the mayor figuratively throwing his wife to the lions, perhaps naively thinking that this would save his political hide, a cowardly conjugal betrayal now backfiring on him big time. How could he have possibly been unaware that the predators would go for the kill after wounding him for his wife's allegedly giving copies of a published book to people of her choosing?Calling the April 2 meeting chaotic, sexist, racist and biased grossly understates its proceedings, as a video of it clearly shows.Robert Roth, a retired newspaper editor, publisher, academic and politician, summarized the events nicely when he wrote, "Every principle of decency, decorum and democracy was ruthlessly eviscerated by mob behaviour abetted by a complicit council."Granted, the anger and despair expressed by those who appeared before the city council were not necessarily contrived, including that of Nazko Band Chief Leah Stump's tearful address to the councillors."We deserve better than having to come here to prove we went to residential school, to prove that we were hurt and broken." Yes, hurt people may have shed many genuine tears at the April 2 council meeting. But heartfelt emotion is not synonymous with solid empirical proof.And that's what's missing from this entire discussion.Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a retired professor of anthropology, the University of Manitoba.

RUBENSTEIN: If it wasn't so sad, you could laugh

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