Canadian professor critical of indigenous ‘mass grave’ hoax arrested at university

(LifeSiteNews) — A canceled Canadian professor and free speech advocate who has spoken out against the indigenous “mass grave” hoax, as she puts it, was arrested at a Canadian university over the weekend after trying to give a speech.

Frances Widdowson, a former professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, was arrested on Saturday at the University of Lethbridge cafeteria.

Video of the arrest shared online by Drea Humphrey at Rebel News shows the ordeal. Lethbridge police officers can be seen detaining Widdowson, where she was sitting at a table. Police handcuffed her and took her out of the building to a waiting police van, all while many bystanders could be seen in the background.

BREAKING Frances Widdowson Arrest:

Free speech advocate, Dr. Frances Widdowson, known for challenging the Aboriginal industry, was just arrested at Lethbridge University.https://t.co/Gi9Wj4LxWc pic.twitter.com/40KLUOA55f

— Drea Humphrey (@DreaHumphrey) April 25, 2026

The publicly funded university had issued a “campus alert” message on social media notifying people of her presence.

Widdowson has been holding debates with people regarding unproven claims that there are mass unmarked graves of kids at former indigenous residential schools, which were government-mandated but mostly run by the Catholic and Anglican Churches.

The University of Lethbridge told Widdowson that she is not allowed on any school property, banning her from going on “all land, buildings, parking lots, sidewalks, and other areas used in conjunction with the buildings of the University of Lethbridge.”

The university claims this is due to a February campus visit by Widdowson. It alleges she engaged in “interferenc[ing] [with] or disrupt[ing] of the operation of the University.”

The university claims that Widdowson may be prosecuted or arrested, the latter of which happened on Saturday.

READ: Canadian judge gives man who assaulted child lighter sentence because he’s indigenous

While she has now been released, no charges have been announced as of this time.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) had said days before in a statement that it is assisting Widdowson with help from its lawyers, in multiple “free expression cases at universities across Canada, where she has been issued trespass notices or removed from campus, and has even been subjected to violence.”

“Canadian universities are hostile to any debate about the wholly unsubstantiated claims that 215 children are buried at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. The local Aboriginal Council refuses to conduct an excavation to get at the truth, in spite of receiving $12 million from taxpayers to do so,” it said.

Widdowson has been ticketed before for speaking at universities. She served as a tenured professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, before she was fired over criticism of her views on identity politics and indigenous policy, notes the JCCF. She was vindicated, however, after an arbitrator found that her termination was wrongful.

In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some Canadian residential schools. The reality is, after four years, there have been no mass graves discovered at residential schools.

However, as the claims went unfounded, over 120 churches, most of them Catholic and many of them on indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada since the spring of 2021.

Last year, retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht said Canadians are being “deliberately deceived by their own government” after blasting the former Trudeau government for “actively pursuing” a policy that blames the Catholic Church for the unfounded “deaths and secret burials” of indigenous children.