Indigenous elder tells UBC event she wishes to see academic Frances Widdowson raped
The University of British Columbia said it “does not condone” recent comments by a First Nations leader but did not indicate if it would take any action after the guest speaker at one of its events expressed her desire to see her political opponent get beaten and raped.
UBC’s response comes after Charlene Belleau, an elder in the Esk’etemc First Nation in B.C., appeared at a virtual event earlier this week hosted by Derek Thompson, the university’s Indigenous initiatives advisor. During the virtual talk, Belleau recalled comments she made toward Frances Widdowson, an academic focused on economics and Indigenous policy, when she had approached Widdowson in person at a campus event in late 2025.
“I told her: ‘I wish our people could grab you, drag you over to the Kamloops residential school, put you into the basement, speak our language to you — nothing but Secwepemctsín — beat you, rape you, hurt you,’” she recalled at the UBC event. “‘And maybe you’d understand what our people went through.’”
Chief Charlene Belleau speaks about her interaction with me (and to some extent @Dallas_Brodie) @thompsonriversu: "I wish that our people could grab you [Frances Widdowson], drag you over to the Kamloops Residential School, put you into the basement, speak our language to you,… pic.twitter.com/Bc1sHBrqGc
— Frances Widdowson (@FrancesWiddows1) April 14, 2026
Belleau is a long-time activist focused on Canada’s former Indian Residential Schools and what she views as the generational harms that the schools inflicted on Indigenous peoples. In particular, she has advocated for claims made by the former Kamloops Indian Band, now the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc, which has alleged that 215 “missing children” are buried in unmarked graves on the site of a former residential school there.
Widdowson, a former Mount Royal University professor, has for years questioned the validity of those claims, and has pointed out that the First Nation’s ground-penetrating radar surveys have not yet confirmed the remains of missing children.
“The UBC faculty of medicine does not condone any speech that endorses or promotes harassment or violence of any kind,” said Mieke Koehoorn, vice dean of academic affairs for UBC’s Faculty of Medicine. “An invitation for a community member to participate in an event does not constitute endorsement of their specific remarks or views.”
However, the university did not respond to the National Post’s questions about whether Belleau would be asked to apologize, or whether non-Indigenous speakers at UBC events would ever be permitted to make similar statements.
Belleau and Thompson could not be reached for comment through their publicly available email addresses.
The UBC event was hosted by the “Office of Respectful Environments, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion” under UBC’s medicine faculty. The event was called “My name is Charlene: Perseverance and poise in an era of truth, reconciliation, anger and rage.”
“I think they’re deplorable comments, and it reflects the fact that Aboriginal leaders are pandered to constantly and never challenged, so they become more and more unhinged as time goes on,” Widdowson said in an interview with the National Post.
Even so, Widdowson said Belleau’s comments still fall within the limits of free expression, and therefore don’t rise to the threshold of hate speech.
“I don’t think they’re a threat,” Widdowson said. “I think there’s a lot of comments about how she should be charged and punished in various ways, and I’m opposed to that, because I think people should be able to speak freely about everything, as long as they don’t incite violence or engage in threats.”
Widdowson said UBC, however, is an “absolute disgrace” that has failed to uphold any commitment to open academic debate on the topic of Indigenous unmarked graves in Canada. Widdowson said she and Chawathil First Nation Chief Aaron Pete have offered to have an open debate on the topic at UBC and other universities, but have thus far been rejected.
“UBC has an obligation to open up discussion on the unmarked graves question after all they’ve done to promote misinformation and stand behind violent activities and wishes for violence,” she said. “They really are not an academic institution anymore.”
In 2021, the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc first claimed that 215 children — “some as young as three years old” — were buried in unmarked graves at the Kamloops site. Months later, Saskatchewan’s Cowessess First Nation said it had found 751 potential unmarked graves.
The claims were based on the results of radar scans that detect underground disturbances. While the remains of hundreds of bodies have not yet been confirmed or exhumed, many First Nations and the Canadian government have adopted the claims as evidence of the country’s alleged genocide against Indigenous peoples. The 2021 allegations set off a wave of reproachment across the country, with some major cities cancelling or paring back their Canada Day celebrations that year.
On Friday, B.C. Indigenous Relations Minister Spencer Chandra Herbert declined to answer a question in the legislature about Belleau’s comments. The minister instead accused the member who asked the question, independent MLA Tara Armstrong, of “trying to further divide us over an issue that is very emotional, troubling and challenging.”
“I’m not sure what the member is referring to, but I do know what she’s tried to do in the past, insisting that the bodies of children who died at residential schools should be dug up. Something that you would never insist at any other place in the world where holocausts or genocides occurred. That’s not how we do these things.”
In 2021, the B.C. government allocated $12 million toward helping First Nations to investigate potential unmarked grave sites. Belleau was quoted in a B.C. government press release announcing the funding, saying it was an “important first step in supporting the resiliency and healing of B.C. First Nations people.”
Widdowson, who made a YouTube documentary in 2025 questioning the Kamloops claim, has repeatedly clashed with First Nations for her research on the topic of unmarked graves and doubts about their validity.
Last week, Widdowson attended hearings in the Court of King’s Bench as part of her legal challenge against the University of Lethbridge, who cancelled her planned talk at the university in 2023 following pressure from First Nations groups. She has had similar clashes at the University of Winnipeg and the University of Victoria, where she said she received a $115 trespassing ticket in 2025.
In 2021, the Canadian government awarded Belleau the British Columbia Reconciliation Award for her work in “supporting residential school survivors” and for her role as a “vital bridge between governments and First Nations.”
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