“Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s” with Connie Walker

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

NBCNews

News, Nbcnews, Why Is This Happening?, The Chris Hayes Podcast, Chris Hayes, Politics, Government, Society & Culture, Msnbc, Withpod

4.6 • 8.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 June 2022

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Trigger warning: This episode contains mentions of sexual and physical abuse. For nearly the past year, Canadian journalist Connie Walker has been working on an investigation into her father's experience at St. Michael's Indian Residential School in Canada. The story is told as part of “Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s,” a series available exclusively on Spotify. Her investigation began when she heard a story about her late father who was a police officer in the 70s. He pulled over a car that was swerving, and when he got to the window, he recognized the driver as a priest who he believed had abused him at residential school. He pulled the priest out of the car and beat him up on the side of the road. Over the years, thousands of students have come forward about their experiences at residential schools. Walker joins WITHpod to discuss the process of telling this deeply personal story of intergenerational trauma, her motivation for bringing issues affecting indigenous people to light and how this dark part of Canada’s past hasn’t been completely reconciled. The Canadian government has apologized and set aside millions in reparations, along with a new child education and welfare system in response to abuse.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	generations and generations of Indigenous kids went through these schools.
0:04.0	And along with the cultural genocide that was deliberate and a goal of these schools,
0:10.4	there was often horrific physical and sexual abuse. And so children, you know, for up until
0:17.2	the 1940s, 1950s, it was actually, you know, law that children, Indigenous children,
0:22.6	attend these schools and families were forced to give their children over to the Indian agent
0:28.6	and the RCMP and the priest who came to the door, or they could be put in jail.
0:36.7	Hello and welcome to Why is this happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.
0:45.9	You know, a few years ago, the political satirist and comedian filmmaker, activist Michael
0:52.5	Moore, I don't know how you best characterize the many things he does, he had a one-person show
0:57.6	on Broadway that I went to that was very entertaining. And one of the bits he would do in the show was
1:02.8	about the difference between Canada and the US. And the point of the bit was that everyone in
1:07.2	Canada knows everything about the US, but no one in the US knows anything about Canada.
1:11.2	And to illustrate this, he would randomly pick two people from the audience, one person from the US
1:15.6	and one person from Canada. He would also make sure that the person from the US was like,
1:20.0	like from like Harvard or something like from some fancy school. And the person from Canada was
1:24.3	usually just from a random place, he didn't go to school in the US. I mean, a random place to
1:27.6	Americans. Then they would go up on stage and he would have a live quiz show for each of them
1:32.5	with details about each country, like how many provinces are there in Canada and the Canadian would
1:36.5	know the answer and the American wouldn't. How many states in America, the Canadian would know the
1:40.5	answer, the American would know the answer. And we'll go on like this, like what's the name of the,
1:45.0	you know, the Prime Minister and what are the two major parties and blah blah.
1:48.6	It is a very funny bit because he could be, he was convinced, he was sure, like the whole set up
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NBCNews, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NBCNews and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.