Transcript: Aaron Pete

An interview with the host of the Bigger Than Me podcast

One of the bright spots in the Canadian media landscape is the emergence of a new generation of digital creators, who are filling the gaps in coverage in innovative ways. My guest on the program this week is at the forefront of this movement, helming a thoughtful, nuanced current affairs podcast out of British Columbia. He will be guest hosting this podcast next week, and I’m thrilled to get to introduce him to you today.

Aaron Pete is a Councillor for the Chawathil First Nation, and the host of the Bigger Than Me podcast.

This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can listen to the interview for free here.

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TH: It's great to have you on the program. You and I met when you invited me on your podcast some time ago. I've told this story publicly before, but I'll say it again for our listeners. I was so impressed by your talent and intellect and thoughtfulness and curiosity, and so we kept in touch. And then last summer I invited you to work together to guest host an episode of Lean Out, which you're going to be doing again next week. So, I'm really pleased to be able to introduce you more fully to our listeners, ahead of that guest hosting slot. You've accomplished a lot in a short amount of time, and we're going to get into all of that. But first, I'm going to open with your podcast's first question, which is always about your guest's life trajectory. Tell us a bit about your history growing up and how you wound up going to law school.

AP: I have a mother who was a part of the Sixties Scoop, and so that means she was disconnected from her culture. Her mother went to St. Mary's Indian Residential School. And so, we really experienced two of the largest government policies that I think were detrimental to Indigenous people. Through that process, I got to learn and understand some of this history. My mother has been an amazing support to me growing up. She was born with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder. I don't know who my father was. Through that process, I really got to understand some of the social development resources that are available and understand what it means to come from poverty, but to want better for yourself and your family. I remember going to the grocery store and having to put things back and how that made me feel internally. And having my mom say at times, “We don't have enough money in the account,” or “We have 70 cents left to our name.” 

I really understand that starting position. Growing up, a lot of teachers didn't believe in me because I participated in some antisocial behavior. But that was really just me acting out against my circumstances, seeing other people have larger houses, what I thought were better quality lives. Two parent households. I was envious in a lot of ways growing up, and so a lot of people didn't believe I was on the right life trajectory. But I always felt like I had a capacity that people maybe just didn't see. My friend and I would sit in Subway and we'd read the newspaper and we'd talk about current events and politics and where the world is going and what our viewpoints are. I was very engaged in understanding the issues and then that just wouldn't translate into classrooms. So, I didn't really get to show what I thought my potential was.

But I didn't believe those people. I had influences in hip-hop, like Eminem, who talked about the idea that I'm capable of so much more and you're just going to have to see and watch what I end up doing with my life. That put me into going to university. During the first two years, I slacked off and didn't put as much work in as I should have. But during the latter two years, professors really started to treat me like an intellectual equal. They were willing to hear my perspectives — as boneheaded as they might have been at the time — and were willing to reason out with me and go, “Okay, well how do you get there, and what's the evidence for your argument? Explain that to me. You can write your paper on whatever you want; you just have to be able to provide sources, research, evidence, and then we'll go through and see if those stand up to scrutiny.” Those latter two years of university really helped me develop.

It's also when I discovered intellectuals like Jordan Peterson and his ability to articulate himself. He stands out to me as a person who can show what intellectual prowess actually might look like. I didn't see that a lot growing up. As I said, I didn't have a father. I was yearning for people to look up to and admire, and go, “Those people are far smarter than me.” 

I decided while I was a native court worker to consider applying for law school. Again, all of those teachers didn't believe in me and believed I was on the wrong path. The opportunity to put that to rest for myself and actually say, “Okay, I have a law degree. I've done the thing. I've proven that there's something going on in this brain that's of merit and of quality,” really allowed me to shed that weight on myself of looking at other people and feeling less than. During 2020 was when I decided to start the podcast and start to speak to other people and start to get an understanding of what's going on, how we think about issues, and be open-minded. Because a lot of what I've seen throughout my life is political sides. I think the beauty of our system is that there's a time and place for each political party, for a political perspective, and it's more about a time and place when those are appropriate. So, that's a little bit about my background.

TH: It's interesting you bring up Jordan Peterson. He is, in elite media circles and academia, in our country, very much reviled. He can be quite bombastic on social media and in the culture wars. But every young man that I speak to who does not belong to that world, who maybe doesn't have a college degree, finds his advice and his practical suggestions in his books incredibly useful. What is it that elite Canada is not seeing about Jordan Peterson?

AP: I think with a lot of people, including Jordan Peterson, it's very easy to go to where they're wrong, where you disagree, where they look bad on Twitter. I regularly say he should not be on Twitter. I also don't think he's a great interviewer. I think he has a lot of his own thoughts, so it's difficult for him to take in information. It's way better when he's putting out the information. So, I have critiques of how he could perhaps do things better. But what he was doing was showing that there are levels to sophistication, to understanding issues — and the ability to think in three hour blocks — that not everybody has.  A calmness about walking through an issue. Or explaining the biblical series, which was really important to me personally because he did draw on First Nations culture and started to connect the two and provide insights. He talked about people he knows from different First Nation communities, and how he was welcomed in. He's had First Nation guests.

So, I was able to learn more about my culture, but also take religion a little bit more seriously than I had. I was a very proud atheist through my undergraduate degree, and now I just have an appreciation for how religion fits in with our culture and our society and why it's existed for so long. It's because there's values and principles there that you should aspire to, even if you're non-religious or you don't believe that it literally happened. There's still value to those pieces. I think he did the best job of articulating that. 

I also think in circumstances like the Cathy [Newman] interview, you start to see that there are levels and there are abilities to respond to things that are also admirable. I've become a huge fan of debates, for that reason. Because you can take two different positions, two people who disagree, have a discussion, learn a lot from both perspectives and really get something out of that that I think our culture is missing. I think we've reduced debates, to a significant amount, and I think those play a role in us understanding where we stand on issues, far more importantly.

TH: Going back to your description of how you grew up, it is very striking to me. Because it is not the typical background of our media right now. Our media tends to be — in my lifetime, it has moved in this direction — more economically privileged, more culturally elite. The experience that you're describing of jumping from one set of economic and cultural experiences to another totally radically different one, like you would experience and encounter in elite law school, that's a very rare experience. To move worlds like that. It's one that has fascinated me.

I have a very limited, small-scale experience of that. When I was a teenager, I also had a single mom, when my dad left. I lived in nonprofit housing. My mom was a house cleaner, a secretary, a clown in a furniture store. Then she went back and she got a Bachelor's first and then a Master's and a PhD. I went to school and became a journalist and was in worlds that were so unlike what I grew up in. But very few people have that experience of navigating these worlds. And it's always interesting to me speaking to people who have had it. The cultural critic Alex Perez calls that cultural adjacency. I think it's so valuable for journalists to have that. What has it been like for you moving between these different worlds? What are the downsides of that experience? And what is the upside of that experience?

AP: I think the upside is that I'm a very competitive person. I want to grow and I want to develop. But I also took the approach that I want to do this over the long term.  I didn't want to see an end goal with any of this. This was always going to be my passion and something where I get to choose who I want to speak with. I get to choose how long we're going to go for. I get to explore these topics at my own pace, and chase the guests that really excite or interest me — and then develop how I'm going to have those conversations in my own way. 

I think, going back to your original question, I really got to see two worlds growing up. One was my First Nation community. We'd go visit for funerals or weddings or cultural events. I'd see real poverty, at an extreme level — and everything that comes with that, including alcoholism, addiction, homelessness, a disconnection from their culture. It was really tragic to see. When we'd stay out there, we wouldn't feel very comfortable. The blankets wouldn't always be clean. We'd be very uneasy because we knew that this wasn't the circumstance we'd feel comfortable in.

Then I'd go and visit my non-biological grandmother, the person who took in my mom as a child. We got to have cookies in the drawers, lots of food in the fridge, clean linens, and it was such a stark difference. Money was never a conversation, and she was always writing another cheque to a charity, donating to things. She had a peace about her that my First Nation community didn't have. And that gave me a deep appreciation of both worlds. 

There is the lower class, middle class, and upper class. I think that can make people really uncomfortable, because we don't like feeling like we're better than. But that's not the purpose, from my perspective, of what the class system is. I really like Dave Smith's interpretation, which is that the lower class is trying to rise up and we have to make sure there's a clear ladder for those people to rise out of poverty, improve their social conditions, give them economic opportunities to build a business or go up in a company. It's the upper class's responsibility to the middle and lower class to create those opportunities and invest in the community in all sorts of ways. Whether it's providing livable paying jobs, whether it's investing in food banks and making sure people are supported, that's their responsibility. I do think that one of the challenges we're seeing right now is that we're giving government all of the responsibility to sort those issues out, and we're removing that discussion of class structure to make sure that we support people in lower economic positions and help them understand how they can get out.

I can tell you, knowing so many people in poverty, there is just a hopelessness: “I'm going to work at a Subway the rest of my life, or a Tim Hortons, or a McDonald's. And if I don't work here, I'll work down the block at this Quiznos.” There's a sense that you're going to stay there. I think there's a tragedy in that, because we need to always be encouraging those people that you can rise up. If you take the steps in your life that you need to, then you can get into a better position and get to a six-figure job. But I don't hear people talk about that enough. I think we need to have more conversations about class structure and how we make sure the wealthy are held responsible for their investments in people. But I got to see both of those worlds through my experiences growing up.

TH: One of the things my mom used to talk to me a lot about was the power of imagination. When you live in circumstances where you don't have a lot of examples of other ways of living, it's hard to imagine what that life looks like. For me, it took seeing my mom go to university and then understanding that that was something that I could do. Actually my father too, my father went to university as well. But how do we give young people that experience when you're living in a community where you don't have a ton of other examples of how things can go around you, how do we give people that so that they have that imagination of other paths that are possible?

AP: I think we need to stop just focusing on the terrible atrocities of history and start to teach the balanced approach of what took place, what good things happened. When I was in law school, I wrote a very long paper about what Indigenous economies looked like pre-contact. Because my modest understanding was just that we were kind of just in the forest picking up sticks and doing things there. But we had complex economies. You have to learn about that to understand. It would be valuable for people to understand that at one point in time, Indigenous people did own slaves. Then we were introduced to different ways of doing things, and that changed our approach to how we treat our other people. I think those pieces are really important to understand. Because then you start to realize when you look at history that people have accomplished great things — and that we are capable of accomplishing great things.

I do see, in our culture right now, that there is a hopelessness about housing that is just unacceptable. And not because there's a government policy here or there, but because we know this is a solvable issue. This is just about building houses. It's not some complex thing about the environment and about how we move CO2, or things that you and I might not be able to articulate the logic behind, or the systems behind. This is: Could we build more houses so that everybody has an affordable home? Yes, that is a very possible thing to do and we should do that. I just bought my first house. Everyone around me, my whole life, has been like, “I don't think you're going to be able to do it. I couldn't afford it. I don't think you'll be able to.” You're just encouraging hopelessness in a whole generation, and that is going to have repercussions. If you say, “I can't do anything about it,” then my job, my responsibility is to revolt against the system that's disadvantaging me. I think that's a really bad path. 

I think we should tell people we overcame World War II. We have fought and we've preserved good rights. We developed the Constitution in a way that respects people, and we should admire those values and work to preserve them and build upon them and believe in our younger generations again. I think that some of that is getting lost, and I think we can do a better job of encouraging young people to reach their full potential.

TH: Let's talk about housing. Housing is a huge issue in B.C. You have the housing portfolio for Chawathil First Nation. I believe there's 89 houses in that portfolio. What has it been like for you to improve those houses, and bring those houses up to code?

AP: Thank you for asking. This has been one of the most unique experiences of my life. Council really wanted to give me the housing portfolio. It is by far the most difficult portfolio for any First Nation community, because we really do act as the landlords, maintenance people, and make sure that the homes are quality — or, we're supposed to. It's so different than anything else that exists across Canada. Because a municipality would never want these types of responsibilities of maintaining a home, doing the rent collection, monitoring tenant disputes. That's just not something a municipality would want. 

Taking this on, I had to learn about all these processes. So, immediately I sat down with our Indigenous Services Canada representative for housing, CMHC's representative, and started to understand where the funding comes from and how we can approve housing within our community. The first step was repairs. We've already repaired 22 homes. This has been about $160,000 to $180,000 invested in each home that brings them back up to code. That addresses 40 year-long issues, mould, mildew, people having health conditions because their house wasn't properly built to begin with. We're now at about 35 that are being renovated and completed. I'm hoping by the time my term is up in June of next year, that we will see at least half properly repaired and restored. 

We're already seeing such benefits. Some of the ones that I didn't even expect: Electricity bill costs have come down significantly because they have proper windows, doors. They have a heat pump. So we're seeing economic benefits. People are happier in their homes, they're able to focus on other things and live in healthy environments. Being a part of that process has been really rewarding because it's an issue that I've seen as a native court worker, and throughout my life, that I actually got to play a role in addressing. 

Now we've got an application in with BC Housing to build 31 new townhome units and really improve the environment and make sure that we address the affordability crisis in housing within our region. I'm very excited about that, because that whole process was completely based on getting feedback from the members on what they wanted. What their preferences were on colour, style, how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, and then incorporate that and make sure that it's for members by members.

The benefit for me is I don't live on reserve, so I have no stake in the game — on what design they want, how many bedrooms. The freedom that I have is that none of this is for me. Nobody sees it as I'm building these units for my benefit, or my family's benefit. It's purely for the benefit of the community. I never thought housing would have been one of my specialties, but it's something I've become very passionate about.

TH: I want to spend a moment on Indigenous governance. Because you have written a piece for The Hub about this, calling for the media to apply more scrutiny to First Nations governance — as they do, as you point out, with all levels of government. There is a feeling of deference in the media toward First Nations communities. But as we know, any community that does not have media scrutiny will ultimately pay a corruption tax. People are people, human beings are human beings. Talk to me about why you decided to tackle that particular issue.

AP: I took a very different approach when I was running for Council on how I thought about it. I knew that everybody ran on their last name and put that forward as basically why you should vote for me. It's across many different communities. I chose to host all candidates meetings. I didn't grow up on reserve. I didn't grow up connected to the culture the same way. I knew that if I was going to put my name forward, it needed to be based on something. I had the privilege of putting my name forward and laying out a platform explaining why I wanted to run, asking people for feedback on what I could do, or what I should focus on. I ended up getting a huge amount of support. I put my name forward for chief, and I was 18 votes away from winning that seat, and I ended up getting second place.

For Council, I was very honoured to be given the opportunity. But I did see so many flaws in our process. We run on last names, we don't run on who has the best ideas. I wanted to see that addressed. But then at the Council table — I do feel like many Councils across British Columbia that I've met with, there is maybe one person who does a lot on Council. Then there's a bunch of people who just sit back and listen and vote yes, vote no. But they don't actually put forward ideas they might have. I have the portfolios for economic development, finance, and housing. I need to see progress on those. I expect myself to be able to go, “This is where we started and this is where we're at today as a consequence of my leadership.” Other people have portfolios and they don't do anything.

I think that's frustrating from a perspective of wanting to sit around with my peers and go, “We're all doing our best.” I don't feel like that's the case for many First Nation communities. Then you see embezzlement stories — journalists writing about that when it's already happened. A lot of this is preventable.

Then also, First Nations are very good at blaming the federal or provincial government for their problems, but not very good at turning back on themselves and saying, “Are we doing the best we can? Could we be doing better?” Who is holding them accountable? When I started to ask myself these questions, it was like, “Nobody.” The other concern I have — because I do think, in a democracy, it's the people that should hold those individuals accountable — is when you have a community that has very low levels of education, that is struggling to survive, that is in poverty, expecting them to be able to ask the tough questions, and hold leadership accountable is just not fair. 

You see that in the same way with the federal government. You and I might not be able to address the tax reform policies and put forward ideas on that. We need experts to be able to assist with that. That's the same thing with journalists. They need to be able to come into our community and ask specific questions to the leadership about how we solve certain complex issues — and make sure that we move the community forward in a good way that helps people succeed and reach their full potential.

TH: I want to raise another fairly contentious topic that you have tackled, over and over again, on your podcast. That is the controversy surrounding the potential unmarked graves at the Kamloops Residential School, based on the ground penetrating radar. You've had Candice Malcolm from True North on, who published the very controversial book, Grave Error. As well as Jon Kay, who contributed an essay to that book. You have also spoken to chiefs about their perspectives. Can you summarize, for our listeners, what you have encountered in reporting out this issue? What are the main arguments you're hearing on this?