Dr. Frances Widdowson on Kamloops, Evidence, and Truth in Residential Schools

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The New Enlightenment Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/17

What evidence threshold should resolve the Kamloops residential school claims?

Frances Widdowson is a Canadian political scientist, author, and commentator known for critical analyses of Indigenous policy, higher education, and academic governance. A former associate professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, she co-authored the book Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry and has written widely on evidence standards, public funding accountability, and the effects of ideology on institutions. Widdowson has served on the board of the New Enlightenment Project and participates in public debates about residential schools, academic freedom, and policy formation. Her work, often controversial, emphasizes universal truth claims, methodological rigour, and open inquiry. She produces research, commentary, and talks. 

In this interview with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Frances Widdowson argues that debates around residential schools hinge on claims of genocide, the nature of truth, and funding accountability. She maintains that Kamloops relied on ground-penetrating radar showing 215 anomalies, not confirmed graves, and notes that no excavations have verified remains there. Citing Pine Creek excavations that uncovered rocks, she criticizes the conflations between “unmarked” and “clandestine” graves and urges the use of transparent methods and excavation. Widdowson says media practices amplify premature conclusions, while dissenters face professional penalties. She frames the dispute as one between Enlightenment standards and relativism, calling for evidence-based policy and proportional public discourse. 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: All right, today we’re here for the New Enlightenment Project with the wonderful Frances Widdowson, who has served on the board of the New Enlightenment Project. Thank you very much for your service. Today, we’re going to talk about a significant error and the contexts that developed from that point. It’s a big topic, and we’ll see how far we can go before we’re out of steam. Big picture: What is the linchpin of the controversy? If you were to pull that out, there would be no controversy. 

Dr. Frances Widdowson: That is a difficult question. I do not know if there is a single linchpin, but one is the claim of genocide—whether the residential school system constituted genocide. Another is the nature of truth—whether truth is objective or subjective. A third major factor—though I am not sure it is accurate to call it a linchpin—is whether Indigenous groups should determine how they spend funds, with one view holding that non-Indigenous people should have no say. Together, these have created conditions for an ongoing dispute that Canada has not fully reckoned with. In my view, the Kamloops case is especially significant; once it is resolved, we can better address other claims. 

In Kamloops, to frame the general picture: investigators did not use LiDAR; they used ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to survey parts of the former school site. Early communications spoke of “the remains of 215 children” being “confirmed” but there has been no excavation. The community said that it would excavate in 2021 and 2022, but not one shovel has been put in the ground. 

Jacobsen: The public discourse seemed to jump from “anomalies detected” to stronger claims. People sometimes do this with UFOs: they start with “unidentified” and leap to “aliens.” With GPR, there were anomalies; some observers inferred specific conclusions. What claims did you make, how were they misinterpreted, and how did that add fuel to the controversy? 

Widdowson: Are you asking about the claims made by Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, or about my claims?

Jacobsen: Your claims—specifically, your claims about the Indian Band, and also about the broader Canadian commentariat, which have had many opinions on this as well. 

Widdowson: My claims include: first, that the residential schools were not genocidal; second, that there is no confirmed evidence of clandestine burials at Kamloops based on what is public; third, that truth is universal—there is no such thing as “my truth” and “your truth,” only belief and reality. Finally, because the Band received federal funding in the wake of the 2021 announcement—reporting has tallied this at roughly $12.1 million across related supports—accountability requires completing proper archaeological work. As of recent public reporting, no human remains have been exhumed and confirmed at Kamloops, and technical decisions about excavation have been a matter of community process. 

So, those are what have been contested. There’s also the broader area of residential schools, which got me into trouble as well, because I argued about the educational benefits they provided. Indigenous communities—the Bands—did not have formalized educational systems. What they had was often described as “looking, listening, and learning.” 

For children to be taught to read and write, and to gain the skills needed to participate in a modern economy, some form of structured system had to be created. Indigenous adults could not provide it at the time because they had not been taught literacy themselves. Given the logistical circumstances in Canada in the late 1800s, the residential school boarding model was seen as the approach that would provide the most consistent benefits. Studies from that period suggested that schools based in communities often struggled with attendance, as children would leave for hunting trips and return having forgotten much of what they had learned. 

So there was a rationale, at that time, for creating residential schools as boarding schools. Of course, they also caused immense problems. The separation of children from their families led to cultural disconnection, and the fact that churches operated the schools created additional issues. I am not a fan of religious education for anyone, but that was the way things were structured at the time. 

Still, when I said the residential schools provided an educational benefit that would not otherwise have been available, it was considered unacceptable. That statement was cited in the petition to have me fired. 

Jacobsen: Have there been further excavations? I recall you had a contentious interview—sometimes personal and adversarial—about potential excavations. You inquired about whether further investigation would be conducted, and the interviewer, a person working for CBC at the time, essentially stated, “I just think we should believe them and leave it at that.” That seemed to elevate opinion over evidence. What are your issues with that framing? Also, have there been further archaeological investigations so we can check the claims? If there are 200-plus anomalies and there is concern, surely more can be done. 

Widdowson: The only excavation conducted in the residential school context since the Kamloops announcement was at Pine Creek in Manitoba. A Knowledge Keeper had said they believed children were buried in the basement of the church. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) identified 14 anomalies that seemed to present like burials. When the site was excavated, however, they found only rocks and no human remains. That is the one significant case so far where excavation has been carried out.

At Kamloops, nothing further has been done beyond the GPR survey. In 2021, the study identified about 215 “targets of interest,” often described publicly as unmarked graves. In January 2022, community leaders—including Manny Jules and Ted Gottfriedson Jr.—stated that a decision had been made by the 13 family heads to proceed with exhumations and to return the children to their home communities. However, exhumation presupposes the existence of remains, and excavation has not yet occurred. As of the most recent public reporting, no remains have been confirmed through excavation at Kamloops. 

And then in May 2022, Rosanne Casimir—when interviewed by Rebel News journalist Drea Humphrey—said they hadn’t decided whether to excavate or not. That was a change from earlier statements. 

Jacobsen: We should not speculate, but we can at least note there was a shift. 

Widdowson: Yes. We have a series of people saying different things at different times. I became interested in whether this could amount to fraud. I asked an AI system—Grok—to analyze it under the legal definition of fraud. The answer was nuanced: it could be fraud, but it depends on the circumstances. 

If they took money while intending never to excavate, that could constitute fraud. If they initially planned to excavate but later changed course due to community concerns, then it would not meet the legal threshold of fraud. According to public comments from Manny Jules and Ted Gottfriedson Jr., the 13 family heads had agreed to excavation. But if some community members later opposed it, the leadership might have shifted direction. In that case, the money technically should have been returned, since it was not spent as initially specified. 

Instead, funds have been redirected into related initiatives—such as memorials, ceremonies, and grief counselling. The official line now is that the Band is still “investigating,” but there is no publicly available formal documentation clarifying what that process means. Blacklock’s Reporter obtained documents indicating the original application included plans for excavation and DNA forensic analysis. So there was a concrete plan at one point. 

From 2021 to 2023, money was allocated for excavation, forensic work, and related supports such as grief counselling. The most frustrating part, in my view, is that despite no excavation being done, the federal government recently provided an additional $12.5 million. That brings the total to around $25 million. 

Jacobsen: And what was that additional $12.5 million earmarked for? 

Widdowson: It is for a healing center to support people dealing with trauma. 

Jacobsen: But that raises questions: will it use best-practice, evidence-based treatments, or will it rely on other, less rigorous approaches under the banner of “healing”? 

Widdowson: Some of these approaches may have some efficacy, but broadly, they do not. The difficulty is that in Indigenous policy, there is often an emphasis on “other ways of knowing,” which are contrasted against so-called colonial mindsets. This is the larger problem with the indigenization agenda: it resists the concept of universal truth. 

Instead, truth is treated as relative—whatever the knowledge keepers say is true becomes accepted as accurate. But that does not work in a modern society. To develop policy, leaders must be accountable for their decisions. The ideal is that you propose a course of action and justify

why it is preferable to another. That requires systematic analysis. It presupposes the existence of some universal standard of truth. Indigenous leaders have often resisted that framework. 

Jacobsen: That touches on more profound philosophical questions—concepts like intersubjectivity and intersubjective agreement. We don’t need to plunge into ontology and epistemology 101 here. However, this raises an essential definitional issue. 

In coverage—including in outlets like The New York Times—terms such as “mass grave,” “unmarked grave,” “missing child,” and “genocide” have been used, sometimes loosely and prematurely. I am not saying these terms all appeared in one article, but in the broader commentary, they are being conflated. Especially on sensitive issues, precision is essential. So, let’s clarify: how should we define “mass grave,” “unmarked grave,” “missing child,” and “genocide” in this context? 

Widdowson: “Mass grave” is usually defined as more than three people buried together. I have also heard it described simply as more than one. The distinction matters because the point is to determine whether a large number of people were buried together, as opposed to a few individuals. The term generally implies foul play, but that is not always the case. Epidemics—like the Spanish flu—sometimes required communal burials because there was no time or resources for individual coffins. Canada has several examples of that. 

“Unmarked grave” is also complicated. It is often assumed to mean clandestine burial. But traditions vary. Many Indigenous cultures historically did not use permanent markers, so unmarked graves are common in pre-contact contexts. The more pressing issue today is that cemeteries that once had markers—typically wooden crosses—lost them over time. As the wood decayed, graves became “unmarked” even though they were initially identified. 

If the grave markers were not maintained, they would deteriorate and disappear. That is why today there are so many “unmarked graves” that were once marked. In the Indigenous context, especially with residential school cemeteries, this is often what “unmarked graves” refers to. 

Then, of course, there are clandestine burials, which by definition are unmarked. Those are graves created to hide a death under suspicious or criminal circumstances. The assumption of something nefarious is inherent in the word “clandestine.” The confusion arises because the “Indigenous industry”—by which I mean lawyers, consultants, and activists who benefit from transfer payments and funding initiatives—leans into this conflation. They rely on the public not distinguishing between cemeteries where markers decayed naturally and genuinely clandestine burials. 

The same problem exists with the term “missing children.” People hear “missing” and assume the Latin American sense of “the disappeared”—people abducted, murdered, and hidden in secret graves. That is not what is generally meant in the Canadian residential school context. Here, “missing” usually refers to children who died at the schools, were buried in cemeteries near the institutions, but whose resting places are unknown because of poor record keeping and deteriorated markers. These were not disappearances in the criminal sense. 

For example, former MP Romeo Saganash has spoken about his brother, who died at the residential school in Moose Factory before Romeo was born. His brother is buried in the cemetery there. Later, a CBC journalist in the family located the grave and showed it to his mother. The mother chose not to have the remains returned to Quebec. That is a tragic family story, but it is not the same thing as a child being abducted and disappearing.

Another example often cited is journalist Tanya Talaga, whose great-grandmother Annie died in an asylum, not a residential school. The burial site, near Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway, had been abandoned and was now just a grassy lot. The family held a tobacco ceremony there. That situation may be sad, but again, it is not equivalent to saying Annie “disappeared” in the sense used in Latin America. The body was buried, the records were poor, and the cemetery had been neglected. Conflating those categories creates misunderstanding. 

Jacobsen: How do you distinguish media error from institutional error? 

Widdowson: Well, media errors can overlap with institutional mistakes. An institutional error is a more systemic problem. Many of today’s media errors are institutional because outlets often fail to critically examine specific claims. A media error, narrowly, might be The New York Times calling Kamloops a “mass grave.” That was a journalistic mistake. However, the fact that the paper has never corrected or removed the article is an institutional failure, as it reveals a lack of systemic checks. 

So, a media error can be a simple reporting mistake. But when those errors persist uncorrected, or are reinforced by editorial policy, they become institutional. 

Jacobsen: And you are making scientific claims too. Under a correspondence theory of truth, the standard is simple: if excavation at Kamloops uncovered at least three bodies in one place, that would verify the claim of a mass grave. If not, then the claim is falsified. At present, the standard has not been met; therefore, the original claims should not stand. Correct? 

Widdowson: Exactly. 

Jacobsen: Let’s move to one of the more difficult areas. Do you accept the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) death counts and methodology in principle? 

Widdowson: That’s controversial. Many numbers get thrown around. For example, Sean Carleton, an Indigenous Studies professor at the University of Manitoba, has claimed the TRC found 4,000 children died in residential schools. As far as I know, that is not accurate. 

I haven’t done a full investigation myself, but researchers like Nina Green and Michelle Stirling have. There is a page in one TRC volume that records the names of 423 children who actually died at the schools. That number refers to documented deaths occurring at residential schools. 

Beyond that, other children died while enrolled but not at the schools themselves—some in their home communities, others in hospitals. Take Kamloops as an example: there are 49 recorded names of deceased children associated with the school. Of those, 25 did not die at the school; they died in their communities or in accidents elsewhere. 

So, 423 is the confirmed number of in-school deaths. That figure is probably low, but it is a grounded figure. There is another number, about 800, which has come from double-counting across reports. Then there’s 3,000, another figure that has been circulated, partly due to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) at the University of Manitoba. The NCTR is the official archive of records, and at one point, it produced a memorial banner listing the names of the deceased; however, the methodology has not always been consistent. 

The 4,000 figure that Carleton cites likely comes from the NCTR memorial banner. But that banner includes many names of people who never attended residential schools. For example, Helen Betty Osborne—an Indigenous woman murdered in The Pas, Manitoba, in 1971—is listed. Her tragic death had nothing to do with residential schools, yet her name is included. The

banner was intended as a broad memorial, not a precise research record. So to cite it as evidence of residential school deaths is misleading. 

What we can say with certainty is that 423 names are documented as deaths occurring at the schools themselves. Beyond that, the numbers require careful, systematic analysis rather than being repeated as slogans. 

Jacobsen: Is there a better methodology than ground-penetrating radar (GPR)—something more cost-efficient, higher resolution, and with a greater degree of certainty? 

Widdowson: I asked a GPR expert about this while working on a documentary about Kamloops. The expert—who was so cautious about anonymity that we were not even allowed to film their shoes—brought a GPR unit out to Kananaskis. We tested it on a grassy patch, and it identified an anomaly almost identical to the one reported at Kamloops. When we excavated, we found a cement block. So, the anomaly was artificial, but not a burial site. 

That illustrates the limitations of GPR: it detects soil disturbances, but many things can cause disturbances. The expert mentioned that there are other technologies Sarah Beaulieu could have used in Kamloops. Some involve chemical analysis of soils, which can sometimes differentiate human decomposition from other disturbances. 

Jacobsen: LIDAR has been mentioned—what does it do in this context? 

Widdowson: LIDAR—light detection and ranging—is a remote sensing technology that uses lasers to create detailed three-dimensional maps of surfaces. Aircraft emit laser pulses and measure the time it takes for them to bounce back. The data produces a “point cloud,” which can be used to generate accurate digital elevation models. LIDAR is excellent for mapping landscapes, but it does not detect burials. 

The expert I spoke with mentioned two other geophysical methods that could have complemented GPR, but I do not recall the exact names. The key point is that relying solely on GPR, without corroborating technologies or excavation, produces ambiguous results. 

The worst part of all this is that Sarah Beaulieu gave the Tk’emlúps Band the impression—or perhaps they read it into her words—that her GPR survey was a confirmation. It was interpreted as validating what the knowledge keepers had said. Band members believed this was proof. I think that was, at least in part, because of Beaulieu’s irresponsibility. 

We saw a similar case captured on film in the documentary What Remains, which Simon Hergott and I produced—the New York Times had released footage of a ground-penetrating radar survey where Dr. Terence Clark of the University of Saskatchewan was instructing graduate students. Kisha Supernant from the University of Alberta was also present. At one point, Clark told the students, “You can imagine a child lying on its side in a pit.” The students began crying. 

That was incredibly irresponsible. My GPR expert explained that anomalies could be caused by any number of things: cobbles, changes in soil density, rocks, cement blocks, and animal burrows. To suggest to students that they should visualize a child’s body was wildly inappropriate. It bordered on an ethical breach. Archaeologists are supposed to uphold professional standards of impartiality and objectivity. What happened there was the opposite. 

Jacobsen: That reminds me of the debate around “decolonization therapy.” I looked at the codes of conduct from the British Psychological Society, the Canadian Psychological Association, the American Psychological Association, and international guidelines. All of them stress

impartiality, maximizing objectivity, and minimizing bias in therapeutic practice. Yet decolonization therapy explicitly politicizes the therapeutic space. The whole point of treatment is to create an apolitical space for client well-being and mental health. Turning it into a political battleground undermines that. 

Widdowson: Exactly. And this connects to Beaulieu’s announcement in May 2021. At that time, it was stated that “the remains of 215 children” had been found at Kamloops. But by July 15, 2021, that number was revised to “200 targets of interest.” Why? Because Beaulieu had not done adequate preparatory work. She failed to check which parts of the site had already been excavated. 

It turned out that Simon Fraser University’s Archaeology Department had excavated part of the same ground years earlier and found no human remains. So Beaulieu had to walk back the number, from 215 to 200. But this raises an obvious question: if she was wrong about those 15, why assume she was right about the remaining 200? Those anomalies could also be false positives. 

Beaulieu didn’t seem to recognize the problem when anomalies from already-excavated areas were counted the same way as untouched areas. That should have raised alarm bells immediately. Another issue is transparency: her full report has never been released to the public. In fact, none of the archaeological reports from these cases have been made public. That’s a serious problem. 

Simon Fraser University was apparently involved in reviewing Beaulieu’s report. But when researcher Nina Green tried to obtain more information from SFU, she was told that the lawyer for the Kamloops Indian Band had advised the university not to speak about the case publicly. 

Jacobsen: What do you think you and those who disagree with you—on key points about this case—actually share as common ground? A Venn diagram overlap where you might disagree, but at least enough to say, “We both accept this much.” 

Widdowson: Honestly, we don’t have any real common ground if the other side insists on a different conception of truth. That’s the core problem: it’s an epistemological and ontological divide. Some argue that because Indigenous peoples have a history of oppression, whatever they say should be accepted as accurate. Others—myself included—say you can recognize their different perspectives without abandoning universal standards of evidence. 

I believe many believe what they are saying, but I also think many of the claims are highly improbable. For example, if parents did not report that their children had disappeared, then who are the supposed 200 bodies in the apple orchard at Kamloops? That’s an extraordinary claim. Kamloops is not a remote wilderness—it’s near a populated area where people would have noticed clandestine mass burials. It doesn’t make sense. 

This is fundamentally anti-Enlightenment. The Enlightenment idea is that evidence should be universally testable, independent of ancestry or identity. Indigenization frameworks, by contrast, often deny universal truth standards. That is incompatible with science. 

And there’s another difficulty: the arguments made by people like Sean Carleton are inconsistent. They play language games. For example, in early June 2021, Carleton publicly declared that a “mass grave” had been found at Kamloops. Later, when criticized, he backtracked but dismissed objections as nitpicking—as if accuracy were an indulgence rather than the foundation of serious inquiry.

Carleton and others will say things like, “Fifty-one children died at Kamloops, we know that, so what’s your problem?” But that’s misleading. The actual number is 49, because two children were double-counted. Everyone acknowledges that children died at Kamloops. That is not the dispute. The real issue is whether children were buried clandestinely in the apple orchard. That’s not a cemetery. There is a cemetery on the Kamloops Reserve where many graves, once marked and now unmarked, are located. Children from the school who died of disease or other natural causes would have been buried there in the ordinary course of events. 

Carleton shifts the ground of the argument. He doesn’t openly say, “Evidence doesn’t matter; only knowledge keepers matter.” Instead, he frames critics like me as nitpickers—pedantic troublemakers obsessed with irrelevant details, supposedly obstructing “truth and reconciliation.” 

Jacobsen: Yet one could argue the opposite. If truth and reconciliation are to mean anything, they require accuracy. With accurate facts, responses can be proportional and respectful to all parties. Without accuracy, reconciliation is built on distortion. 

Widdowson: Truth demands universal standards, not shifting definitions. What we’re dealing with here is a postmodernist tactic. Philosophers sometimes refer to it as the “Motte-and-Bailey fallacy.” Others call it the “radical-truistic shuffle” or the bait-and-switch. The pattern is always the same: present a banal claim everyone agrees with, then use it as cover to advance a radical claim that lacks evidence. 

Take Kamloops as an example. The truism is that children died at residential schools. Everyone knows that; no one disputes it. But then that truism is used to smuggle in a radical claim: that 200 children were secretly buried in the apple orchard. When you point out there’s no evidence for clandestine mass burials, they retreat to the truism: “Well, children died, don’t you know that?” Then critics get smeared with epithets like “denialist.” In this case, “residential school denialist.” 

Because I deny the claim that the schools were genocidal, that is the basis of the label. But the bait-and-switch never stops. At Kamloops, we know that 49 children died, though 25 of those deaths did not occur at the school. They died in hospitals or in accidents. Yet the numbers are 

constantly misrepresented, and the dispute about clandestine burials gets blurred into the accepted fact that children died. 

When their clandestine-burial claim is challenged, they revert to “children died.” And of course, no one disputes that children died. 

Jacobsen: Professionally, what have you lost in these disputes? And what have others who have disagreed also lost? I aim to provide readers with context on how claims are currently approached in academia and the broader public sphere. 

Widdowson: I lost my job. There were other factors, but the unmarked graves controversy was undoubtedly used to portray me as incompetent and as someone who hated Aboriginal people. Since then, I’ve been excluded from mainstream media. Aside from one interview with Jordan Tucker in 2024 and a 2023 one with Olivia Stefanovich, I haven’t had any mainstream coverage. Meanwhile, people like Sean Carleton have become the dominant spokespersons. My credibility and reputation have been attacked simply for insisting on evidence. 

I’m not the only one. Jim McMurtry, a teacher in Abbotsford, lost his job for stating that many children in residential schools died of disease and that the murder claims were not convincing. He was accused of “traumatizing children.” It was an absurd case.

The research group I’m associated with has been smeared as cranks and conspiracy theorists. And then there’s James Heller, a criminal lawyer in Victoria. He’s actually a friend of mine. He came out of a cult background. 

Heller noticed that in mandatory legal training materials, the Kamloops claim was described as “215 unmarked graves.” Because he’d been following the case, he requested the wording be changed to “potential graves,” which was consistent with a B.C. court decision. It was not controversial, just precise. 

The Law Society ignored him, so he and his colleague, Mark Berry, brought a resolution to address the issue. Then all hell broke loose. Members of the “Aboriginal industry” circulated defamatory statements implying that Heller and Berry were racists. Shockingly, the Law Society issued a press release that effectively legitimized those attacks. As a result, Heller is now suing the Law Society of British Columbia. That case is ongoing. 

Meanwhile, Dallas Brodie, the Justice and Attorney General critic, was alarmed at the Law Society’s refusal to defend factual accuracy. She posted three tweets on X expressing concern. She had approval from her party—it wasn’t a renegade act. But the Conservative party leadership worried about backlash and demanded she delete them. Brodie refused. 

That triggered outrage from Aboriginal activists in the party, and the controversy escalated further after Brodie appeared at an event I had organized. 

At the event, Dallas Brodie commented on the James Heller case. She said, “It’s not your truth or my truth or your grandmother’s truth. It’s the truth. “She was clearly addressing the problem of epistemological relativism—the idea that truth is subjective—which prevents us from establishing facts. That clip was circulated, and suddenly she was accused of mocking survivors of sexual abuse. 

The result? She was either forced out or resigned from her party. In any case, it was a fiasco. Now she has started her own political party in British Columbia. This shows the long tentacles of these issues. And we still have not had a reckoning. People thought the “potato” was hot—well, the “cheese” on top of the potato was hotter, and it melted in strange directions. 

Personally, I understand the animosity that I have received from a take-no-prisoners approach and with my satire of these claims. But look at someone like James Heller. He was as cautious and non-controversial as possible. And yet, he faced severe consequences too. So it’s clear—it doesn’t matter about tone, or how careful you are. If you don’t accept the claims, you’ll be 

targeted. That’s the reality. 

Jacobsen: Has anyone else lost their job because of counterclaims that, by all accounts, are not proportionate to the evidence? The original Kamloops claim was “remains of 215 children.” After revision, it became “200 anomalies.” Yet the “unmarked mass graves” narrative continues. Have those who promoted the misleading claim faced professional consequences? 

Widdowson: No one, as far as I know, has suffered consequences for making misleading claims. In fact, they’ve been celebrated. Look at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Meanwhile, I’m going to the University of Manitoba on September 25–26—into the belly of the beast.

I’ll be doing street epistemology on the claim that the “grave error at Kamloops” was a hoax. It won’t be livestreamed, but footage will be collected. I’m hoping that someone will stream it on Twitter. I’ve got a videographer to cover the events. 

Jacobsen: Are you going to have security? 

Widdowson: No, I’m just going in. Some people are worried—especially after what happened with Charlie Kirk—but I’ve done this at universities before. Even at Lethbridge, which was the worst situation, it was never threatening. 

It was just theatrics. I’m anticipating theatrics now. Maybe I’m naive. I’m sure the University of Manitoba is considering this. I tried to book rooms through a professor there, but the university refused to host the event in September. They said they wanted time to plan and hold the event later in the year, but clearly it’s because that week is the National Week of Truth and Reconciliation. 

Of course, that’s why I want to be there on those days—because I want to bring some truth to the University of Manitoba. They told the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship they’d be billed between $2,000 and $5,000 toward an estimated $20,000 in security costs. I told them, “Piss off, University of Manitoba. I’m coming in with street epistemology.” So, I don’t know what they’re going to do. 

Jacobsen: It’s going to be in the winter? 

Widdowson: No, it’s September 25th. 

Jacobsen: Okay, well, that’s pretty cool. If it’s cold enough in Manitoba, then no one will want to protest anyway. 

Widdowson: Too cold. I’m doing it to make a point. We’ll see what happens. Their warnings may be nonsense. They did the same thing at Laurier in 2018—they charged us $5,000, set up fencing that looked like Fort Knox, and had security everywhere. It was ridiculous. And in the end, it was just a bunch of clowns—never threatening in any way—pure security cosplay. 

I find it really stupid. Whatever, I’m just going in there. They can do whatever they want, but I’m exercising my right to free expression. If they want to arrest me, then arrest me—we’ll see how that plays out. I’m not leaving. I did the same at Thompson Rivers. They wanted us gone, said we shouldn’t discuss this on the lands of the Tk’emlúps (the Kamloops Indian Band). I told them, “No, we’re here to uphold the academic mission of the university.” They huddled, deliberated, and then left us alone. The event went ahead fine. It’s all just intimidation tactics. 

There’s also a turtle statue in front of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, with a “sacred fire” at its center. We’re considering holding the event there. We’ll see. 

Jacobsen: The three big points I want to emphasize are: 

1. Pine Creek (Manitoba): There were double-digit anomalies identified. Excavation revealed they were rocks, not graves. 

2. Kananaskis: The excavation merely revealed a concrete block. 

3. Kamloops: Simon Fraser University had previously excavated part of the site (early 2000s) and did not find remains. There has been no further excavation, digging, or scanning.

To clarify, you’re saying things have been conflated? 

Widdowson: They did the excavations back in the 2000s. 

Jacobsen: That’s ancient history at this point. 

Widdowson: But that’s the reason the Kamloops number was downgraded from 215 to 200. Those 15 “targets of interest”were identified as not as remains. They were simply the result of shovel test pits done earlier by the Simon Fraser University archaeology department. They knew those anomalies were caused by prior excavations, which, of course, found no remains. 

But no new excavations have been done at Kamloops—none at all. That prior work wasn’t done by the Band or by Sarah Beaulieu. They’re just hoping people will forget that distinction. And many have. Many people believe excavations have already been conducted. 

When I was at Thompson Rivers doing street epistemology, I confronted the claim that “the remains of 215 children have been found.” A staff member there, Jenna, said she believed that because she thought excavations had already been carried out. There you go. That’s the perception. 

Jacobsen: So, it’s not primarily about the evidence—that’s secondary. What matters is the claim in the public sphere. Social media is worse, of course, but even in official journalistic reports—not investigative pieces, just regular coverage—they don’t hedge. They don’t scale claims to the evidence. They state “215 remains” as if confirmed. 

Look at comparable cases: 

● Kananaskis: the anomaly turned out to be a concrete block. 

● Pine Creek: 14 anomalies were excavated, and all turned out to be rocks. 

So probabilistically, the track record is poor. These anomalies should not be referred to as graves. They are only GPR anomalies. To confirm anything, you need excavation. Unless they develop a better kind of imaging or fund proper excavations, we do not know. Therefore, we cannot claim. 

Widdowson: None of these techniques is evidence of remains. You must dig. Excavation has to be done. Now, the Kamloops Band argues they don’t want to “disturb the dead.” But we don’t need to exhume anything. We need a preliminary investigation to determine whether there’s anything there at all. 

But people like Sean Carleton and Niigaan Sinclair—the two worst actors on this—oppose even that. They held an event at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in June 2025. Sinclair said, “How macabre can you be to want these families to produce the bones of their loved ones?” That was the rhetoric. 

Jacobsen: Which assumes the conclusion—that there are bodies there—to denounce and defame you. That is extraordinarily inappropriate. 

Widdowson: Exactly. They want people to believe it without evidence, so they can keep extracting more and more funding for all this nonsense. 

Jacobsen: So, because of that again, it is not primarily about the evidence. But that does not follow from the media, where speed or haste can be an imperilling flaw. This is coming from an academician, right, where they typically have the comfort of time and money. In that sense, it is more egregious than if it were people on a tighter timeline.

Now, institutional failure—that seems clear. And the other thing I wanted to reemphasize was this: very little consequence for those making the mainline claim, but targeted consequences—like losing your job—for those who try to stick as close as they can to the evidence and ask others to do the same. That seems to be the history of it. 

Widdowson: Yes, that is a problem. But at the bottom of all of this is truth. If we cannot agree that there is such a thing as a universal truth, then what can we do? Nothing. How am I supposed to evaluate what I consider to be highly improbable claims when I am operating within a universal truth paradigm, and that paradigm is not accepted by the people I am arguing against? 

But they are not consistent. That is the thing. They expect everyone else to believe their views, and they present them as more than mere opinion. It is not “your opinion versus my opinion”—they are arguing as if their perspective is capital-T Truth. 

Jacobsen: Academics whistling in the wind. 

Widdowson: They say I must accept their view because it is obviously true in the capital-T sense. 

Jacobsen: It is like what they used to say about writing essays—never start a sentence with “obviously,” because you are hoping not everyone sees it that way. There is only science. 

Widdowson: That is the sign I use for my street epistemology sessions. It inflames people. But the big thing is this: science is whatever works. Medicine is whatever works. There is redundancy built into the methodologies so you can arrive at what is most likely to be true, based on the evidence. That is science. If it does not meet that test, then—welcome to pseudoscience. 

Jacobsen: Categorically black and white, empirically probabilistic. Thanks a lot. That was great. 

Widdowson: You are welcome.

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