In November 2024, UBC’s First Nations House of learning hosted the event with Sean Carleton, Michelle Good and Andrew Martindale entitled “Confronting Indian Residential School Denialism”. The participants were introduced by Joely Viveiros, the Acting Director of the First Nations House of Learning.
The event is available at the link – https://fnhl.ubc.ca/2024/12/16/confronting-indian-residential-school-denialism/#video.
On August 20, 2025, Frances Widdowson posted a clip from Sarah Beaulieu’s presentation on July 15, 2021, which asserted that the apple orchard had been surveyed because “‘Knowledge Keepers’ said ‘children as young as six years old [were] woken in the night to dig holes for burials’ there”.
This led Joely Viveiros, the Acting Director, to post two replies on Widdowson’s Twitter account.
This led Widdowson to reply with the following posts:
Viveiros then replied with the following:
To this, Widdowson posted the following reply:
Viveiros then blocked Widdowson because of these posts.
Viveiros then proceeded to have a meltdown on Twitter, which included an extended exchange with Jonathan Kay:
This led Kay to do an examination of the First Nations House of Learning where he found that many of the employees, including an aboriginal person, were referring to themselves as “uninvited guests…on unceded territory”.
Widdowson also posted a clip of Viveiros saying that aboriginal peoples have an “inherent right to be comfortable in Canada”.
All of these instances raise the question of the function that UBC’s First Nations House of Learning plays in an academic institution. If aboriginal students have a “right” to be comfortable, what happens when they are exposed to uncomfortable truths? Will this result in these truths being suppressed? Perhaps this partially explains why the mass grave deception is being perpetuated by this once great academic institution…
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