[HN Gopher] A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
        
       Author : dearwell
       Score  : 99 points
       Date   : 2022-07-29 19:59 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (quillette.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (quillette.com)
        
       | pyuser583 wrote:
       | It's funny because the narrative works just fine without the mass
       | graves.
       | 
       | A local paper (in the US) interviewed survivors/graduates on
       | "Indian" schools. The administrators sent kids home as soon as
       | they were sick.
       | 
       | So there were no graveyards, even when lots of student were dying
       | (Spanish flu).
        
         | cm2187 wrote:
         | Wait, the article is silent on the cause of death. Are you
         | saying these deaths were just the result of some disease?
         | Everything in the media treatment of these deaths implies
         | mistreatment of the kids. If it was just a virus, particularly
         | in the early days of medicine, this would be a scandal created
         | out of thin air.
        
           | pseudo0 wrote:
           | Yes, the vast majority of residential school deaths were due
           | to endemic diseases. The primary accusation regarding deaths
           | is that the residential schools had a higher death rate than
           | comparable populations, and the state should have provided
           | more resources and better medical care.
        
             | cm2187 wrote:
             | It's hard to tell without knowing what disease we are
             | talking about. If it was the spanish flu there isn't much
             | medicine could do then.
        
               | munk-a wrote:
               | The deaths at residential schools were higher than
               | similar institutions - I don't understand what's hard to
               | comprehend here when we're comparing a basket of 8 apples
               | to a basket of 10 apples - 10 apples is more apples.
        
               | defen wrote:
               | I'm not an epidemiologist, so file this under "baseless
               | speculation by an armchair non-expert", but influenza is
               | an Old World disease - is it possible that First Nations
               | people are more vulnerable to it? Ten seconds of Googling
               | provided this link
               | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22032099/
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | jollybean wrote:
           | That's exactly the 'lie' being presented.
           | 
           | In the late 19th century up to about 1910, there were much
           | higher rates of Aboriginal kids dying than normal, and it was
           | mostly due to tuberculosis. It would 'set loose' at a
           | residential school and mortality rates were high.
           | 
           | There were investigations and it was a 'big social issue'
           | even 100 years ago.
           | 
           | Since about WW2, the rates of death at res schools have been
           | fairly consistent with those in the general population.
           | 
           | The term 'genocide' may apply in the context of the
           | government wishing to 'educate' Aboriginals purely in the
           | Western sense and to suppress their culture, but the world
           | folds all to nicely into 'killing' the children etc which is
           | how the word is used in popular imagination.
           | 
           | The 'narrative managers' in the press are keenly aware of the
           | power of their words, and that they will be misinterpreted,
           | to great effect.
           | 
           | The factual reality of Residential Schools is absolutely
           | worth of consideration, it's a serious issue, but it's also
           | deeply misrepresented in the press.
           | 
           | "If it was just a virus, particularly in the early days of
           | medicine, this would be a scandal created out of thin air."
           | 
           | I wouldn't entirely want to make the claim that 'because it's
           | tuberculosis' fully exonerates the schools, but I'll bet $100
           | that tuberculosis at other remote boarding schools (non-
           | aboriginal kids) would have somewhere near the same effect in
           | most places during that era, where as you hint 'medicine was
           | a mess'.
           | 
           | But either way, you're hinting at 'the distortion of
           | information' begin presented by the narrative driven press,
           | which is sad, because it's a serious issue.
        
           | pyuser583 wrote:
           | I'm saying that a child with either Spanish flu or a severe
           | concussion would be sent home on a train, and be buried far
           | from the school.
        
       | thepasswordis wrote:
       | It's crazy how when a lie takes hold, it just stays forever.
       | 
       | Another is relayed to January 6th protests. A friend today, a
       | conservative DeSantis supporter, told me that he knew that on
       | January 6th, the protestors killed several police officers.
       | 
       | This is, as we know now, absolutely false. It was based on a
       | rumor, and once the reporting caught up, it turned out to be
       | false.
       | 
       | Similarly I'm sure there will be Canadians who _know_ that there
       | were these mass unmarked child graves at schools. But again:
       | totally false.
        
         | Comevius wrote:
         | To be fair 5 officers died not long after the attack. Brian
         | Sidnick was pepper sprayed twice and died a day later suffering
         | two strokes. Howard Liebengood and Jeffrey Smith died by
         | suicide a few days after the attack, and Kyle DeFreytag and
         | Gunther Hashida died by suicide a few months later.
         | 
         | A popular Facebook post claimed that Joe Biden said that
         | several police officers died during the attack, which could be
         | the source of the lie.
         | 
         | https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/19/facebook-p...
        
         | commandlinefan wrote:
         | My teenage son was _shocked_ when I told him that none of the
         | three people Kyle Rittenhouse shot were black, and didn 't
         | believe me at first until he googled it (and even google
         | showed, on every link, that both of the people he killed and
         | the one he wounded were white). He told his friends, and _they_
         | didn 't believe him until they googled it.
        
           | sethjr5rtfgh wrote:
        
         | munk-a wrote:
         | Be careful with your wording here - the suicide of Officer
         | Smith, at least, has been pretty unambiguously tied directly
         | back to trauma suffered on Jan 6th. So while a police officer
         | wasn't directly killed through physical violence on Jan 6th the
         | actions of protestors can be fairly said to have instigated the
         | death of a police officer.
         | 
         | I think the big misstatement of the media here was the
         | unrelated natural causes death of an officer (from essentially
         | a stroke) on January 7th - but law enforcement lives were lost
         | due to January 6th.
        
           | baryphonic wrote:
           | This seems like total post-hoc reasoning like the debunked
           | "violent video games cause real-life violence."
           | 
           | Ultimately Officer Smith chose to take his own life; no one
           | made that choice for him. He may have been appalled or
           | traumatized or whatever, but ultimately he's the one who did
           | it. Doesn't make it any less tragic, but it's extremely
           | tenuous absent additional evidence to lay blame at anyone but
           | he himself.
           | 
           | If there was some evidence that he was subject to unique
           | abuse and was personally targeted on that day, then maybe
           | there might be some merit. But of the officers who were
           | there, he experienced roughly what the other officers did,
           | and he was the only one to commit suicide.
        
             | munk-a wrote:
             | Sorry, I had omitted sourcing in my original comment but
             | here:
             | 
             | > Dr. Jonathan Arden, the former Chief Medical Examiner of
             | the District of Columbia was hired by Smith's widow as part
             | of her lawsuit to have her husband's suicide ruled "in the
             | line of duty". His report stated that the "acute,
             | precipitating event that caused the death of Officer Smith
             | was his occupational exposure to the traumatic events he
             | suffered on January 6, 2021".[1]
             | 
             | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeffrey_L._Smith
        
               | vuln wrote:
               | She hired an expert to get the ruling "line of duty"
               | because it changes and increases his life insurance
               | payouts. It also gives her access to survivors benefits
               | and a slew of other things like part of his pension.
        
               | munk-a wrote:
               | Yes, it was a precedent breaking ruling - which tend not
               | to be given out lightly. That is a strong indicator that
               | during this motion all of the evidence was under even
               | higher scrutiny.
        
               | jtbayly wrote:
               | I'm sorry, but seriously? If we can hire an expert to
               | tell us why a dead man did something and appeal to that
               | as an authoritative "source," then we can hire experts to
               | tell us what thought crimes you've committed today.
        
               | weakfish wrote:
               | Er... that's quite a large jump in reasoning
        
               | happytoexplain wrote:
               | What is outrageous about investigating a person's
               | motivations/psychology, and why does it become more
               | outrageous if that person is deceased at the time of the
               | investigation? You may disagree with the conclusion for
               | some reason, but it seems like standard practice.
        
         | hbn wrote:
         | Ask around and be horrified as to how many people confidently
         | think Kyle Rittenhouse shot one or more people who were
         | 
         | 1. unarmed 2. black
         | 
         | (edit: I see now someone made the above point a few minutes
         | before i finished typing my message, but I suppose that goes to
         | show how widespread this myth is)
         | 
         | Conservatives get the brunt of blame for "conspiracy theories"
         | and "disinformation" these days, and while I won't deny it
         | doesn't happen (like it has for years), the left has just as
         | much, if not more that I hear every day, but they never realize
         | or take accountability for it because they have the popular
         | narrative that runs all major corporations and the greater
         | internet.
        
           | vkou wrote:
           | What's really horrifying is how many people seem unaware that
           | the people he shot were under the impression that they were
           | trying to stop an active shooter. You know, do that good-guy-
           | with-a-gun thing, while acting on initially (but not
           | eventually) incorrect information.
           | 
           | It's quite likely that if he were the one gunned down, and
           | not the other way around, the people who did so would have
           | walked, too.
        
             | hbn wrote:
             | I've seen the video, there was an angry mob of like 20 guys
             | chasing him down and assaulting him
        
               | seoaeu wrote:
               | That's what you're _supposed_ to do when a gunman is
               | trying to kill you
        
             | pessimizer wrote:
             | > the people he shot were under the impression that they
             | were trying to stop an active shooter.
             | 
             | I'm still unaware of that. Do you have a reference?
        
               | vkou wrote:
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenosha_unrest_shooting#Sec
               | ond...
               | 
               | At this point in time, shots had been fired, Rittenhouse
               | shot and killed a man, and was identified by the crowd as
               | an active shooter. Huber was trying to disarm
               | Rittenhouse, when he was shot and killed. This happened
               | in front of Grosskreutz, who at this point had every
               | reason to believe that Rittenhouse was an active shooter
               | (And was then shot and injured by Rittenhouse).
               | 
               | Since in an active shooter situation, both the 'good guy
               | with a gun' and 'the good guy without a gun' can't sit
               | around and wait for eight months for a jury trial to find
               | the active shooter to actually be innocent, both Huber
               | and Grosskreutz reacted rather reasonably.
               | 
               | It seems to me that legally, nobody, except maybe
               | Rosenbaum (Who was dead by the time of the events of the
               | second confrontation) was in the wrong in that whole
               | situation. It's all 'good guys with a gun' shooting at
               | eachother because sweet fuckin' Jesus, nobody ever has
               | all the facts about who was justified about killing whom
               | when there's a public gunfight happening.
        
               | pessimizer wrote:
               | I thought you were saying that he was initially chased
               | and attacked because the (first) person he shot thought
               | he was an active shooter.
               | 
               | You're saying that after he _was_ an active shooter,
               | people were chasing him because they thought he was an
               | active shooter? If so, I don 't think that no one knows
               | this, I think no one cares.
        
         | tootallgavin wrote:
         | Not to mention the Great Lie of brown is black
        
         | sethjr5rtfgh wrote:
        
         | bloaf wrote:
         | Quillette is cynically using the exact same "social-panic"
         | tactics they're criticizing to create exactly your conclusion.
         | 
         | The Q article has exactly two complaints about the facts
         | reported by the media:
         | 
         | 1. The media claimed bodies were unearthed, when in fact only
         | scans were taken.
         | 
         | 2. The media claimed there were mass graves, when in fact scans
         | only detected masses of individual graves.
         | 
         | However, in "social-panic" style, conservatives are taking
         | these two quibbles over terminology and turning them into an
         | Alex Jones-esque conspiracy to deny the graves existence
         | altogether.
         | 
         | Note also the subtle racism in the article, where they compare
         | a hypothetical instant-response to the murder of white children
         | to the "very odd" response of the first nation people. The
         | implication being that first nations people are incompetent,
         | uncaring, or untrustworthy by not immediately doing a certain
         | kind of investigation.
        
           | AinderS wrote:
           | > scans only detected masses of individual graves.
           | 
           |  _Possible_ graves. How many were unambiguously confirmed?
           | And how many would we expect from normal high-at-the-time
           | child mortality?
        
           | Cupertino95014 wrote:
           | > The media claimed bodies were unearthed
           | 
           | This is not a "quibble." It's a major falsehood.
        
             | bloaf wrote:
             | Unearth can be used in a literal sense, which in this case
             | is false.
             | 
             | It can also be used in a figurative sense, which in this
             | case is almost certainly true.
        
               | prvc wrote:
               | What kind of journalist uses "unearthed" metaphorically
               | in a story about purported graves?
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | UIUC_06 wrote:
               | Don't get too dizzy from all that spinning around.
               | 
               | So do you really believe everyone in Canada read that and
               | thought "Oh, they're using the word in a _figurative_
               | sense! Never mind. "
               | 
               | If something is, by definition, _in the earth_ and a
               | story says it was  "unearthed" it's sorta reasonable to
               | believe it was dug up.
        
               | munk-a wrote:
               | I actually think "unearthed" as in "discovered" is the
               | more reasonable read - along with someone thinking
               | they're clever in making a pun. When history is
               | "unearthed" with radar, we generally assume some folks
               | took a big expensive machine aimed it at the ground and
               | walked away with a strong indication that something
               | exists down there - when it comes to delicate items
               | (like, for instance a decaying longboat that exists in
               | the earth merely as concentrations of plant fiber in a
               | suspicious shape) and especially when it comes to human
               | remains (that people are often very reluctant to move due
               | for cultural reasons) that's especially the case.
        
           | smeej wrote:
           | The implication seemed (to me at least) to be that first
           | nations people were not being afforded the same respect as
           | their white counterparts would have been.
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | _Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper.
       | 
       | Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story
       | might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out.
       | 
       | Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad
       | as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a
       | determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure
       | of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible?
       | 
       | If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a
       | process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils.
       | You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little
       | blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to
       | see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally
       | we shall insist on seeing everything -- God and our friends and
       | ourselves included -- as bad, and not be able to stop doing it:
       | we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred._
       | 
       | (C.S. Lewis)
        
         | tptacek wrote:
        
           | hprotagonist wrote:
           | personalism shot/chaser: bonhoeffer's "on folly".
        
             | tptacek wrote:
             | I said downthread that it might be hard to come up with a
             | more inapposite quote for a story about skepticism of
             | wrongdoing, and you'd've one-upped me here. :)
        
               | renewiltord wrote:
               | I believe the quote, with context excised and transported
               | here, has value without its original subject. i.e. if
               | someone had written it without being C.S.Lewis talking
               | about Nazis, I would have upvoted them.
               | 
               | And there's lots of stuff like that. I suppose we have
               | implied meaning to appending the original source we got
               | it from: meaning transported from context of source,
               | meaning transported from author, and meaning solely from
               | text.
        
               | tptacek wrote:
               | If the quote hadn't been italicized and followed with
               | "(C.S. Lewis)" I wouldn't have responded. And, if I'm
               | misreading the intent of the quote --- that it isn't
               | being used as a sort of generic "be skeptical of claims
               | of wrongdoing and generous with mitigating claims", well,
               | then, I'm just wrong. But if the quote was intended the
               | way I think it was (see previous sentence): it's being
               | used to say almost literally the opposite of what Lewis
               | was saying.
               | 
               | More generally, on any thread owing to a Quillette
               | article, I think we can do much worse than to have a
               | curious conversation about C.S. Lewis (and, for that
               | matter, Dietrich Bonhoeffer).
        
           | Ajedi32 wrote:
           | 1. How is that quote at all relevant to what's being
           | discussed?
           | 
           | 2. What does any of that have to do with Nazis? Your comment
           | seems to be a complete non-sequitur.
        
             | tptacek wrote:
             | The C.S. Lewis quote above (the one I replied to) is from
             | _Mere Christianity_. As to whether the original quote is
             | relevant to this Quillette story, your guess is as good as
             | mine.
             | 
             |  _Later_
             | 
             | I'm being coy, because I don't believe most people who
             | deploy this quote have read _Mere Christianity_ , which is
             | ungracious of me (and technically a violation of our
             | guidelines). So: to put it more directly:
             | 
             | Lewis isn't asking people to be skeptical of wrongdoing.
             | The quote is from an essay on forgiveness. That chapter
             | explicitly references the harm Germans inflicted on Poles
             | and Jewish people. Lewis isn't skeptical of that harm (to
             | say the least), and he's not exhorting people towards
             | skepticism of wrongdoing in general.
             | 
             | What he's saying is that you should be careful not to
             | attribute to random people, by dint of their belonging to
             | some specific group, the worst possible harms you can come
             | up with. And he's saying that you shouldn't because it's an
             | impediment to the Christian virtue of forgiveness; to love
             | your neighbor as yourself, you need to love your imputed
             | enemies as yourself, and to do that you have to find a way
             | to forgive them their transgressions against you, and, more
             | immediately, the transgressions of their groups.
             | 
             | I quoted the paragraph immediately following the quote
             | offered (in implicit support of skepticism, as that quote
             | is almost always used). I could just as easily have quoted
             | the paragraph that immediately precedes it:
             | 
             |  _Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by
             | one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We
             | ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about
             | them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them
             | in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being
             | sorry that the man should have done such things, and
             | hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime,
             | somewhere, he can be cured and made human again._
        
               | prvc wrote:
               | Even after all that exegesis, your presumptive point
               | remains obscure. The top-level comment is relevant
               | because it happens to describe the malicious credulity of
               | the journalism consumers who chose to believe the mass
               | graves narrative.
        
               | tptacek wrote:
               | I don't think my point is obscure at all. It is, simply,
               | that C.S. Lewis didn't write that quote to exhort people
               | to skepticism of all wrongdoing; he was instead reminding
               | people not to invent wrongdoing to impute to strangers by
               | dint of them being "enemies". The quote, here, was ill
               | used, as it so often is.
               | 
               | Again: when Lewis wrote this, _he was talking about the
               | Nazis_ , the authors of many of the worst crimes in
               | history. Lewis was no Holocaust denier: he was acutely
               | aware of --- and reminds his reader throughout _Christian
               | Behavior_ of --- the wrongdoings he 's alluding to. It
               | might be hard to find a more inapposite quote for this
               | story.
               | 
               | I have no idea what happened in the residential schools
               | in Canada, and no opinion about this particular article.
               | But I do have an opinion about the abuse of C.S. Lewis on
               | message boards.
        
               | hprotagonist wrote:
               | > The quote, here, was ill used, as it so often is.
               | 
               | You've misread me/my intent, i'm afraid.
        
               | tptacek wrote:
               | Certainly more than just possible. Could you say how?
        
         | pyuser583 wrote:
         | Reminds me of the story of the 11 year old who was raped and
         | had to cross state lines for an abortion.
         | 
         | Too many people treated it like a political point tally. Nobody
         | really cares about the 11 year old girl (or the person on trial
         | who gets a presumption of innocence).
        
           | renewiltord wrote:
           | Does anyone care about an arbitrary other person? Sounds
           | unlikely. Even at the 99th percentile of people, I think the
           | most effort I'd expend to make their life better is zero.
           | And, to be honest, I think most people would spend less than
           | $1k to _save_ an arbitrary life. Given that, it sounds rather
           | trite.
           | 
           | Even if they _did_ care (unlikely as that is), there is no
           | way to intervene in an arbitrary 11-year-old 's healthcare.
           | 
           | The scope of action is in the design of the society that
           | permits harm as defined in one way or the other. And that's
           | politics. So people are acting in the only way that makes
           | sense.
        
           | stefan_ wrote:
           | Well certainly not you, you can't even remember the age. But
           | all too happy to repeat the ole "don't politicize it" talking
           | point. It's a political point _because it is the 100%
           | predictable outcome of these abortion policies_.
        
           | mikotodomo wrote:
           | WTF..... if a politician uses that to get votes he should
           | literally go to jail.
        
           | dragonwriter wrote:
           | > Reminds me of the story of the 11 year old who was raped
           | and had to cross state lines for an abortion.
           | 
           | Unless it happened _again_ already, it was a 9-10 year old,
           | depending on whether you are referring to when she was raped
           | or when she had left the state to get an abortion.
           | 
           | > Too many people treated it like a political point tally.
           | 
           | Side1: If your political position is enacted, Bad Thing will
           | happen, hurting people.
           | 
           | Side2: You are inventing unlikely scenarios for political
           | points, you aren't really concerned about the people that you
           | pretend Bad Thing will happen to.
           | 
           | ...Side2 policy adopted...
           | 
           | ...Bad Thing immediately happens as predicted...
           | 
           | Side1: Look, Bad Thing _just happened_.
           | 
           | Side2: You don't care about the person Bad Thing happened to,
           | you are just scoring political points.
        
             | bigbillheck wrote:
             | > Unless it happened again already
             | 
             | Odds are it has.
        
             | pyuser583 wrote:
             | More like Side3: Bad Things will happen sooner or later. So
             | the report of a Bad Thing at a politically useful time is
             | helpful even if it's loosely supported. Because Bad Thing
             | will happen eventually regardless.
             | 
             | Edit: I don't think the time of the reports was
             | particularly helpful. The day before the story was
             | verified, someone had published an op-Ed in NYTimes titles
             | "Laugh at my abortion with me." Nobody's laughing about a
             | preteen being raped.
        
           | idiotsecant wrote:
           | So when a child is raped (which definitely happened, by
           | definition) we should avoid talking about it because it might
           | hurt the case of the person accused of the crime? The justice
           | system assumes innocence until proven guilty. The court of
           | public opinion need hold no such lofty ideal. Nor should it.
        
             | pyuser583 wrote:
             | Sorry I had the age wrong.
             | 
             | There should be a presumption of innocence in the sense
             | that the public should assume the accused is innocent until
             | evidence is publicly shared that suggests their guilt.
             | 
             | So far the only evidence shared with the public is a
             | confession. Confessions are notoriously unreliability.
             | 
             | There will be more evidence. DNA tests are being done as we
             | speak.
        
               | munk-a wrote:
               | They were 10, if the other party was the suspected 27
               | year old adult then...
               | 
               | That is rape.
               | 
               | If the other party was some other person - then that 27
               | year old shouldn't be wrongly convicted, but someone
               | raped that 10 year old. I, btw, haven't seen anyone
               | chomping at the bit at the specific suspected other party
               | - the discussion I've seen has been focused on the health
               | care and trauma treatment for the 10 year old.
        
               | stefan_ wrote:
               | When the suspect is acquitted, does that mean the girl is
               | no longer pregnant? This is an even more absurd point.
        
             | kradeelav wrote:
             | There's a difference between talking thoughtfully about a
             | child's lived experience/trauma and "using" it shamelessly
             | as political points to own [the other side].
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | anon291 wrote:
       | Another thing I didn't realize about the residential school
       | system was that the tribes actually requested this as part of
       | their treaties with Canada. Many wanted their children educated
       | according to European custom. Maybe the children didn't want it,
       | but the tribes certainly did. This doesn't excuse the various
       | atrocities attributed to the schools (like sexual abuse cover
       | ups), but it does make me question the charge of Canada and the
       | churches 'forcing' European ways upon the tribes. The tribal
       | governments seemed to want it (read the numbered treaties signed
       | between HM government and the tribes... the establishment of
       | schools is in all of them). Contemporaneous oral accounts clearly
       | show the notion that these schools would teach european values
       | (granted, oral accounts are often wrong / corrupted).
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | There are dangerous precedents that some groups, like
         | procrastinators, learn about but other people seem to have to
         | learn much more slowly.
         | 
         | If you insist on treating every interaction as if it happens in
         | a vacuum and for both parties to see the events as isolated,
         | you're gonna have a bad time. If you are chronically late for
         | work nobody cares if your transmission exploded on the way into
         | work and that's why you were legitimately an hour late. You've
         | already played that card on previous encounters and you've used
         | up all of your credits.
         | 
         | If two groups have a history of horrible interactions with each
         | other, people are going to assume the latest incident is just
         | true to form, even if it really was just a misunderstanding and
         | a bad game of telephone. Because of course Group B pulled some
         | shit again. They 'always' do. Trying to find someone's
         | boundaries and living your life right on the edge of them is
         | just a slower version of "fuck around and find out."
         | 
         | I learned recently that there are actually businesses that
         | cater to the demographic of boomers whose children won't speak
         | to them anymore. Like entrepreneurs are making business plans
         | and incorporating to take money from these people. The stories
         | I know are all about how they realized that their parents
         | weren't even going to meet some fairly low bar set by the kids,
         | and they thought their children were bluffing. You push and
         | push and you'll be making your own retirement home
         | arrangements, all the while repeating some narrative about how
         | it was about pronouns or people of color.
        
         | seoaeu wrote:
         | I'm going to call bullshit that the tribes knew what was going
         | on at those schools and weren't at all coerced into agreeing
        
           | anon291 wrote:
           | Based on what facts? The tribes negotiated the treaties and
           | negotiated fairly large changes from the governments initial
           | proposals (mainly to do with more monetary funding). Yet,
           | they said little about schooling.
           | 
           | Perhaps they didn't know what was going on (and I agree that
           | abuses took place), but the desire for their children to be
           | more European was absolutely there. It is very clearly
           | documented. This is in stark contrast to the claim that such
           | things were forced upon the tribes. It seemed that a shared
           | goal of the Canadian government and tribes was the
           | integration of the natives with the Canadian nation. I don't
           | see how this is deniable. The claim that the government
           | committed 'cultural genocide' honestly falls flat for me.
        
             | seoaeu wrote:
             | " _Perhaps_ they didn 't know"?! You think the tribes knew
             | about the atrocities and were ok with them?
        
               | anon291 wrote:
               | I have no idea what the tribes knew or did not know. Do
               | you? I am amazed at some people's abilities to read
               | other's minds.
               | 
               | As to the tribal leaders signing the documents. I can
               | understand how the monetary promises given to them by the
               | Canadian government would make them overlook the
               | potential for atrocities yes; such things are well
               | attested to in the history of humanity. But again, I have
               | no idea. You asked me to speculate, so I did.
               | 
               | I don't understand why there is so much outrage today
               | when one expresses that they do not know an unknowable
               | fact.
        
               | seoaeu wrote:
               | The outrage is over the atrocities, and the people
               | insinuating that those atrocities were somehow ok because
               | some papers were signed beforehand
               | 
               | Asking questions like "did they know why they were
               | signing?" or "was there going to be a war if they refused
               | to sign?" seem entirely reasonable to me
        
               | jtbayly wrote:
               | What atrocities, exactly? You're begging the question.
               | One of the main atrocities we are talking about is
               | forcing the children to adopt European culture.
               | 
               | If you're simply saying that _some_ bad things happened
               | at these boarding schools... we'll, yeah. That's a known
               | reality in all boarding schools. Doesn't make it ok. But
               | many many people knew about those sorts of things and
               | cared and also didn't think the solution was to ban
               | boarding schools. (Others, of course, as in all ages,
               | didn't care.)
        
               | seoaeu wrote:
               | Stories recounting cruel physical and sexual abuse are
               | only a google search away. Of thousands of children being
               | disappeared. Of being woken in the middle of the night to
               | dig graves.
        
         | munk-a wrote:
         | This is a dangerous path to go down without a really full
         | understanding of the situation and the acknowledgement that
         | your statement is covering hundreds of thousands of individual
         | compacts between specific tribal leaders and specific
         | administrators. _Additionally_ "tribes wanted" is a really
         | dangerous statement on its own since "tribes" can be hard to
         | define fairly - if you've been following the news about
         | pipelines you may have heard specific tribes both assent and
         | dissenting to access through their lands. A lot of tribes have
         | a pretty loose organization of leadership consisting of both
         | Hereditary and Elected chiefs - and, when it's convenient,
         | governments will occasionally just recognize any old rando they
         | can find that agrees with them as a representative of the
         | tribe.
         | 
         | This is a really hairy topic to begin with and it gets a lot
         | more hairy when you also take into consideration that tribes
         | were frequently being lied to. Canada doesn't have a great
         | record of being either upfront nor fidelitous when it comes to
         | compacts with native americans and if we only have primary
         | contemporary accounts from the "winning side" you need to be
         | highly skeptical of how biased those accounts are.
         | 
         | We absolutely have accounts of children being forceably
         | abducted from parents and abuses happening at these schools -
         | whether tribes were initially lied to and sold a rosy picture
         | or whether that force was used initially is an interesting
         | topic, but it's one that we will probably only have clarity on
         | for a handful of tribes and it might take quite a while to
         | settle on a narrative of that topic that can be well supported
         | by evidence.
         | 
         | It's really complicated.
        
           | anon291 wrote:
           | First, we need to dispense with rhetoric like 'this is a
           | dangerous path'. I fully understand that tribes are different
           | and people disagree and in particular, that 'tribes' are
           | ruled by people who may not actually be in charge, may not
           | reflect their tribe's real viewpoint, or may have ulterior
           | motives.
           | 
           | However, it is equally dangerous to go down the path of
           | 'Canada did this to massacre the tribes and eradicate their
           | culture while no tribe wanted this'. This is also not the
           | case. In certain cases, the tribes did have well defined
           | boundaries, and leadership, and the leadership negotiated for
           | many other concessions successfully, but didn't so much as
           | put up a fuss about the schools.
           | 
           | > We absolutely have accounts of children being forceably
           | abducted from parents and abuses happening at these schools
           | 
           | I believe I literally acknowledged such atrocities in my post
           | above. Moreover, as I again stated, I understand that a
           | tribe's leaders may not have the tribe's best interests at
           | heart. It is actually possible, and still a regular
           | occurrence today, for one's government to make decisions that
           | are incredibly hurtful to individual citizens.
           | 
           | Other allegations against the government are also overstated.
           | I didn't mention them above. One obvious example is the claim
           | siblings were separated. This is actually unevidenced. The
           | most evidence the TRC could produce was that brothers and
           | sisters were sent to sex segregated schools or dorms. Uh...
           | this is a good thing. If sexual abuse is what you're trying
           | to prevent having girls in the same housing with boys, etc,
           | is going to be extremely toxic.
           | 
           | I am in no way excusing Canada's actions. I am merely putting
           | them into context. These are salient facts ignored from the
           | debate for fear they may not make the tribes as sympathetic a
           | target. Why? If the case is so strong for the abuses taking
           | place (and I believe there was certainly abuse taking place
           | that ought to be investigated), what is the point of ignoring
           | salient information?
           | 
           | EDIT: Oh also I'm not referring to hundreds of thousands of
           | compacts. I am referring to the numbered treaties, which
           | refer to 11 treaties signed between Canada and the native
           | tribes of various regions.
        
       | StanislavPetrov wrote:
       | The herd mentality and evidence-free nature of this "scandal" is
       | a microcosm of 90% of the beliefs of US citizens and corporate
       | "news" in general.
        
         | munk-a wrote:
         | This is a story about Canada - please familiarize yourself with
         | the topic before repeating your talking point.
        
       | Jonovono wrote:
       | Balajis new book "Network State" has an entire chapter on stuff
       | like this: https://thenetworkstate.com/if-the-news-is-fake-
       | imagine-hist...
       | 
       | List of stuff he points out: https://thenetworkstate.com/if-the-
       | news-is-fake-imagine-hist...
        
       | beached_whale wrote:
        
         | scarmig wrote:
         | Funnily enough, the "media bias fact checker" lists the NY
         | Times as "High Credibility"[0] despite its
         | sensationalized/false reporting about a "Mass Grave of
         | Indigenous Children Reported in Canada."[1]
         | 
         | [0] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/
         | 
         | [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/world/canada/kamloops-
         | mas...
        
           | muglug wrote:
           | There's not a huge gap between a mass grave and a mass of
           | unmarked graves. Both show a disregard for human life.
           | 
           | Quillette writers love to get on a high-horse about such
           | discrepancies, while ignoring everything wrong with the
           | right-wing media in America.
        
             | int_19h wrote:
             | I'd say that there's a fairly huge gap between a mass
             | grave, and a bunch of distortions in the soil that are
             | detected by the radar that _may_ (or may not) actually be
             | graves.
        
             | scarmig wrote:
             | As far as this particular story goes, a population that
             | read this Quillette article would have a better recall of
             | verifiable, agreed upon facts than a paired population
             | exposed just to the NYT article talking about mass graves
             | being unearthed.
             | 
             | Disbelieving the NYT doesn't mean taking everything
             | Quillette says at face value; it only means noting that the
             | NYT has a history of fabrication and bias, and that
             | anything sensationalistic reported in it should not be
             | given the presumption of truth.
        
       | dinkblam wrote:
       | same as with covid, which is dangerous but not anymore so than
       | many other preventable causes of death that are completely
       | ignored instead of hyped as the end-of-the-world.
       | 
       | we are truly in an age of perpetual unfounded social panic.
       | thanks twitter.
       | 
       | as with most other problems, more educated people, especially
       | regarding science, math and specifically statistics could help
       | prevent these foolishnesses.
        
         | jjoonathan wrote:
         | > dangerous but not anymore so
         | 
         | We can all tell you weren't actually listening to the experts
         | you so detest because that wasn't their stated rationale. The
         | rationale was "flatten the curve" -- some hospitals were two
         | doubling periods away from having parking lots full of people
         | slowly dying for want of ventilators. That's what the lockdowns
         | were about. Making sure we never overwhelmed the medical
         | infrastructure.
         | 
         | Subsequent R-control measures were about making sure it stayed
         | that way. As better options for keeping the hospitals safely
         | under-capacity appeared -- first vaccines, and then simply the
         | fact that subsequent variants sent a smaller fraction of the
         | infected to ventilators -- the measures were relaxed. As was
         | appropriate.
         | 
         | What's amazing are the number people who continue to stick to
         | Trump's initial February 2020 "ignore it and it will go away
         | like magic" alternate reality, even though the man himself
         | abandoned it in March 2020.
        
           | jtbayly wrote:
           | Then why were doctors offices and hospitals _closed_ if the
           | goal was to keep them open and operating?
        
           | adamrezich wrote:
           | I ignored it and it went away. I worked as a cashier at
           | Walmart during most of the pandemic lockdown times and came
           | down with multiple bacterial illnesses as a direct result of
           | having a piece of cloth over my face for eight hours a day,
           | yet somehow never caught covid, despite remaining
           | unvaccinated while working at a Walmart in a tourist town
           | during tourist season. my local civic center set up an
           | emergency clinic that remained 100% unused for the entire
           | time it was active. the Sturgis Rally being nearby was
           | supposed to make us (Rapid City, SD) a superspreader disease
           | nexus, and that never happened either--more people died from
           | traffic accidents (which were down from previous years!) than
           | covid.
           | 
           | and now it's gone! look at that.
           | 
           | at some point, even if only years after the fact, one must
           | reconcile the reality of the situation with the narrative
           | they were sold on, and ask themselves if the two line up at
           | all. how many Republican-voting Americans today still believe
           | the Iraq invasion was ever really truly about weapons of mass
           | destruction, or that the entire incursion was righteous in
           | any way? how many Republican-voting Americans have any love
           | left for the 43rd President at all, despite their fervor at
           | the time?
        
         | prvc wrote:
         | >as with most other problems, more educated people, especially
         | regarding science, math and specifically statistics could help
         | prevent these foolishnesses.
         | 
         | "Could" is doing a lot of work there. I think, empirically, you
         | will find the opposite relationship.
        
         | anon291 wrote:
         | I used to believe that more education would help, but today it
         | seems that the most educated are most likely to spread these
         | dangerous kinds of misinformation, whereas uneducated people
         | are most likely to question it. The educated seem to be more
         | dangerous if for no other reason than they control the media.
        
           | Jonovono wrote:
           | Something I have noticed too, and it seems to be a common
           | trend many are noticing. What do you think causes it? Anyone
           | know any studied terms to explain this?
           | 
           | My thinking was that "smart" people are busier and outsource
           | their thinking in other aspects to media they can trust. If
           | that media lies to them, they are smart, so they don't want
           | to admit they were wrong. They are too smart to be fooled!
           | But I don't know if that explanation holds up.
        
             | jl6 wrote:
             | D&D explained it well: intelligence is a separate stat to
             | wisdom.
        
             | anon291 wrote:
             | Honestly, I have no idea. Being somewhat educated and by
             | all other metrics part of the 'elite' I am flummoxed by
             | people demographically like myself [1].
             | 
             | [1] By other metrics I mean, I live in a West Coast coastal
             | city, in a rich neighborhood, work in tech, educated, etc.
             | By all measurements I should be like others, but I'm not.
        
           | dinkblam wrote:
           | > the most educated are most likely to spread these dangerous
           | kinds
           | 
           | good observation and i completely see your point, but are
           | those people really educated in a scientific sense (and know
           | their confidence intervals) or did they just finish their
           | liberal arts degree and learn some french words?
        
         | Jonovono wrote:
         | The amount of lies during COVID is worthy of an entire book.
         | 
         | This decently sums it up:
         | https://www.piratewires.com/p/neurotic?s=r
        
           | jjoonathan wrote:
           | > It never really made sense. Does the virus stop working
           | while I'm drinking on a plane?
           | 
           | Two sentences in and he has already proven that he doesn't
           | understand the simplest concepts in pandemic management.
           | Nice.
        
         | NotYourLawyer wrote:
         | > covid, which is dangerous but not anymore so than many other
         | preventable causes of death
         | 
         | ... if you're vaccinated.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | dinkblam wrote:
        
       | reilly3000 wrote:
       | Ya this is Quillette being Quillette; heavy on indignation, light
       | on context. This has been a known issue since the 1970's and over
       | 150 bodies have been dug up the old fashioned way. I can't speak
       | to the credibility of ground penetrating radar, but it's not okay
       | to dismiss the entire atrocity as mass hysteria when there were
       | in fact mass graves.
       | 
       | Edit: Wikipedia has plenty of specifics and sources, including
       | confirmation of burial grounds with traditional excavation and
       | radar controversies:
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_...
        
         | ZeroGravitas wrote:
         | Yeah, the final clause of this sentence reveals he knows what
         | he's doing:
         | 
         | > No one, to my knowledge, has found any human remains--i.e.,
         | body parts or tissue from decaying corpses--either at Kamloops
         | or any of the other former Residential Schools, through the use
         | of GPR.
         | 
         | Very holocaust denial-like. Reminded me of the people who point
         | out that the "lampshade made of human skin" stories, haven't
         | been proved:
         | 
         | https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-lampshad...
        
       | mensetmanusman wrote:
       | Thank you for posting this. It's good to be reminded that even
       | people who think they are smart fall into the exact herd behavior
       | built-in to human psychology.
        
         | jagger27 wrote:
         | Except it's wrong and you fell for it.
         | 
         | https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-residential-schools-...
        
           | int_19h wrote:
           | The article you've linked to claims:
           | 
           | "some journalists -- in Canada and abroad -- mistakenly
           | called the unmarked graves being located "mass graves,"
           | inadvertently invoking the horrors of the Holocaust. But the
           | vast majority, following the lead of Indigenous spokespeople,
           | got it right"
           | 
           | The problem with this is that it's impossible to verify - who
           | are "some journalists", and who is the "vast majority"? But
           | anyway, if you google for "215 children bodies found", you'll
           | find that claim plastered all over the Net. First-page search
           | results include CBC itself, BBC, NPR, CNN etc. So this is, at
           | best, misleading.
           | 
           | The other statement that made me go hmph is:
           | 
           | "Denialists, to be clear, do not deny the existence of
           | residential schools or even some of the harms of the IRS
           | system. Rather, they seek to downplay or distort basic IRS
           | facts and question the validity of ongoing research to shake
           | public confidence and undermine truth and reconciliation
           | efforts. "
           | 
           | It is unclear which "basic facts" they claim to be distorted.
           | The article admits that it's not the existence of schools or
           | the abuse that happened in them in general. I've read some of
           | the denialist articles, and the only claims regarding facts
           | of the matter can find there are that no bodies - indeed, no
           | graves! - have actually been verified in this one particular
           | case. That claim is easy to verify.
           | 
           | The article seems to be claiming, in essence, that any
           | skepticism in this regard is _inherently_ wrong, regardless
           | of facts or lack thereof.
        
             | scarmig wrote:
             | > The article seems to be claiming, in essence, that any
             | skepticism in this regard is inherently wrong, regardless
             | of facts or lack thereof.
             | 
             | Even if it's false, it's true in spirit, and anyone who
             | tries to undermine its metaphysical truth by pointing out
             | its actual falsehood is likely a neo-Nazi who wants to
             | murder indigenous children.
        
             | ZeroGravitas wrote:
             | Why are you skeptical of graves existing?
             | 
             | We know for a fact that graves existed. We just don't know
             | where some of them are, because they were abandoned.
             | 
             | So, what is being added to the story by saying "this
             | particular discovery of a potential grave location hasn't
             | yet dug up a dead child"?
             | 
             | There's other grave sites where actual bodies were
             | discovered after floods or roadworks, where they've
             | identified what they think are other graves via the same
             | tech.
             | 
             | Those haven't been dug up either, because just randomly
             | digging up graves on an arbitrary schedule to prove to some
             | kook's satisfaction that you have the right to talk about
             | something is absurd.
             | 
             | "I think my grandfather died in France during world war I
             | and is buried somewhere in this field but the records are
             | patchy so even after looking for decades we're still not
             | certain" is something you respond to with empathy, not
             | skepticism and demands for certain proof.
        
           | AinderS wrote:
           | It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I am skeptical,
           | you are mistrustful, he is a denialist.
        
           | prvc wrote:
           | What are you claiming to be wrong?
        
             | jagger27 wrote:
             | I refuse to engage with the "let's hear them out" approach
             | of extreme far right rags.
             | 
             | I guess HN is happy to entertain them though.
        
       | trasz wrote:
       | Quick look at sources from Wikipedia confirms that the articles'
       | basic assumptions have a rather loose association with facts. And
       | the site itself is known for propagating hoaxes and promoting
       | alt-right (Noah Carl).
        
         | commandlinefan wrote:
         | > Wikipedia ... propagating hoaxes
         | 
         | Wikipedia itself is awfully untrustworthy, though - look what
         | they're doing with the "recession" page today.
        
         | AinderS wrote:
         | > the articles' basic assumptions have a rather loose
         | association with facts
         | 
         | Could you be more specific?
        
       | AinderS wrote:
        
       | compycom wrote:
       | Genuinely shocked to see something like this on the front page of
       | HN. Framing your misinformation in the form of a debunking
       | doesn't mean it's true.
        
       | matthewmacleod wrote:
       | Folks, this is an obvious troll article from a well-known source
       | of quite extreme propaganda. Read it with a skeptical eye - they
       | are lying to you.
        
         | jagger27 wrote:
         | It's incredibly sad to me to see HNers ignoring the source of
         | this piece. Downvotes throughout on all those who disagree.
        
         | tomohawk wrote:
         | Do you have something actually useful to add to this
         | discussion?
         | 
         | Perhaps some facts?
         | 
         | Or just accusations with no evidence?
        
           | matthewmacleod wrote:
           | Mate, all I've done is warn you to be skeptical, because you
           | may not be aware that Quillete is a quite badly biased source
           | of reporting.
           | 
           | You're welcome to ignore me, but I'd consider it pretty
           | useful to warn people about the provenance of this -
           | especially because the whole shtick of this outlet is a
           | veneer of respectability that makes it somewhat less obvious
           | what agenda it's pushing when compared to e.g. Breitbart.
        
         | jollybean wrote:
         | Just the opposite, it's a high quality piece from a high
         | quality site.
         | 
         | This comment, which offers no argument for illustrating why the
         | piece is misleading or unfactual, only hurts your credibility.
         | 
         | I myself was deeply moved about the 'grave discovery'
         | revelations in Canada, and after just a bit of investigation I
         | was 'shocked' to discover that the narratives were
         | misrepresentations to the point of lying.
         | 
         | A short compendium about some of the ruthless misrepresentation
         | can be found here [1], where they highlight some issues in the
         | press that, were these revelations to be made in any other
         | field, would be existentially damaging to those involved.
         | 
         | The press clearly misrepresented the views of even many of the
         | aboriginal leaders responsible for these investigations, and
         | much worse.
         | 
         | It's damaging to the integrity of the CBC and some others.
         | 
         | [1] https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-year-of-the-graves-
         | how-...
        
           | munk-a wrote:
           | Please be aware, the entirety of the linked article and my
           | statements below are both true.
           | 
           | There was a radar scan that revealed regular human-shaped
           | anomalies in the soil.
           | 
           | Follow up investigations have reaffirmed that these anomalies
           | were not equipment dysfunction.
           | 
           | In all of the digging that has taken place at this site no
           | bodies have been uncovered.
           | 
           | No digging has taken place at this site.
           | 
           | To the best of my knowledge, no living person has ever seen a
           | body located in one of these graves.
           | 
           | To the best of my knowledge, no one who would have been on
           | hand to bury one of these bodies is still alive (or at least
           | - none have come forward).
           | 
           | It is simultaneously true that no bodies were unearthed
           | (specifically - removed from the earth) and that what is
           | *strongly* believe to be a grave site was unearthed
           | (specifically - discovered).
           | 
           | There appears to be a concerted campaign to spread "correct"
           | information that strongly implies a state of the world that
           | does not match the actual state of the world.
        
       | YourFriend87 wrote:
        
         | dragonwriter wrote:
         | > Only someone who was born with ovaries and a uterus can have
         | a baby, menstruate, or chest feed (aka "breast feed").
         | 
         | This is D work (67%).
         | 
         | EDIT: For clarity, the last of the three claims is incorrect:
         | 
         | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779241/
         | 
         | https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/106/5/e2047/6123860
         | 
         | https://internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/...
        
           | YourFriend87 wrote:
           | But the first two are correct? Is that what you're saying?
        
             | idiotsecant wrote:
             | But my shoes are in fact not brown, but black? Is that what
             | you're saying??
        
               | YourFriend87 wrote:
               | I don't even understand your point. I cite three facts,
               | he says the last one is wrong, so I say what about the
               | first two? How does your post even relate?
        
               | happytoexplain wrote:
               | It's hard to believe that, given he only said one was
               | wrong, you think he might have meant the others were
               | wrong as well. You should try to rephrase your question
               | to get at your eventual point, rather than try to lead
               | people.
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | aaomidi wrote:
         | Why did you feel the need to comment this on something entirely
         | unrelated?
        
           | YourFriend87 wrote:
           | Because the topic is, broadly stated, "statements that are
           | taboo regardless of their truth."
        
             | happytoexplain wrote:
             | I think it's misleading to say that "men can't have babies"
             | is taboo. What you're actually referring to is a semantic
             | argument about gender identity, and the one-sentence
             | version just omits that context so it can "look"
             | objectively true.
        
               | YourFriend87 wrote:
               | No, it really isn't a semantic argument. We can accept
               | that a biological woman who identifies as a man is a man,
               | so there is no semantic argument.
               | 
               | We can still say that such a person _can_ have a baby,
               | but no biological men. The assertion is that it 's taboo
               | to say this. You can just admit that, and then you've
               | proved me wrong (or committed a taboo act, but that's for
               | you to deal with).
        
               | happytoexplain wrote:
               | If I admit that it's taboo, I've proved you wrong? Or if
               | I admit that a biological man can't have a baby? Which,
               | yes, I do admit (barring sci-fi-ish implant science I'm
               | not informed on). Your point is confusing - if you're
               | referring to people who literally think that biological
               | men can have babies, it's hard to believe that you think
               | they are _so_ prevalent that they pervade all of public
               | space. Unless you just mean that the unqualified act of
               | declaring they can 't in public will provoke a negative
               | reaction, which seems reasonable - without context, that
               | declaration is most often used as an implication that we
               | should hate or mistreat certain people, whereas I, for
               | example, am saying it in an honest/relevant (in my
               | opinion) context.
        
       | jollybean wrote:
       | I do not like to be 'one of those people' that laments the MSM,
       | but this story in particular is a glowing example of the lies
       | (and I mean 'lies', because the distortion is purposeful) to
       | support narratives.
       | 
       | There was an extensive piece by the National Post documents some
       | of the examples, it's bad. [1]
       | 
       | Ironically, even many of the aboriginal leaders themselves were
       | purposefully misrepresented. In some cases, these were just
       | regular graves that lost their headstones and relevant
       | documentation, there was not discovery etc..
       | 
       | Consider this: when the population at large derives a completely
       | false intuition for a set of events - the media is lying.
       | 
       | Some media 'misrepresents' the 2020 election by just repeating
       | Trump's lies without questioning them, and though this might be
       | hard for some to swallow, much of the real data behind police
       | aggression etc. is hidden and misrepresented in light of
       | emotional charges and BLM protests.
       | 
       | It's a really sad state of affairs but the MSM ('all sides')
       | narratives are so strong, that almost every issue is quite
       | strongly misrepresented due to 'sidedness' and/or attempt to
       | create false impressions.
       | 
       | Double paradox is that most of the MSM is actually 'fairl
       | factual' and if you go off the beaten path into YouTube and alt
       | sources, there are some good voices, but most of it is 10x worse.
       | Most 'independent thinkers' are not getting at the truth, just
       | being led even further astray. It's sad.
       | 
       | It's really hard to consume information these days.
       | 
       | Edit: for a good exercise, pay attention to news about Ukraine
       | right now. While I absolutely support their effort basically in
       | every way and am repulsed by Putin's 'useful idiots' all over the
       | web - we are engaging in a bit of misrepresentation ourselves
       | (pro-Ukrainian propaganda), which is what happens during wartime.
       | Ukraine is a bit of a mess of a country, a lot of corruption -
       | but that will be suppressed at least for now, where we 'need' the
       | public to be engaged in a way that's a bit more easy to swallow.
       | This soft-propaganda is of a different nature than the
       | ideological narratives in much of the press. 2 years after
       | Ukraine/Russian war is over (hopefully soon, and Russia is kicked
       | out of Ukraine) you'll see a lot more press about the conflicts
       | of interest etc. within the Ukrainian government etc..
       | 
       | [1] https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-year-of-the-graves-
       | how-...
        
       | jamal-kumar wrote:
       | I don't really see anything in what I read as a wonderful
       | genocide denial piece of the likes you see on catholic news sites
       | right now, about how the decision to exhume or not exhume is
       | being taken with a lot of care and the decisions lie with the
       | tribes on how to do this. It sounds like at the Kamloops site,
       | they're working on an archaeological dig. [1] These things take
       | time for reasons of doing what may involve the respectful and
       | dignified exhumation of potential corpses. If it's just some
       | anomaly then the people writing shit like this have a LOT of
       | words to eat. It's pretty much their word over elderly indigenous
       | survivors who have pretty much pointed to where they remembered
       | dead kids going in where to do some initial evidence gathering.
       | 
       | In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide
       | as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
       | or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as
       | such." These five acts were: killing members of the group,
       | causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living
       | conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and
       | forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are
       | targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a
       | group, not randomly. This happened in Canada regardless of
       | whether or not there's graves in these sites, but "oh yeah
       | where's the dead kids bodies already" is in my opinion kind of a
       | horrible point of view given light of the necessarily slow paced
       | process that's happening to uncover the truth.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tk-
       | eml%C3%BA...
        
         | jollybean wrote:
         | People die at schools esp. boarding schools of all kinds, all
         | the time, of normal causes. There aren't really allegations
         | that somehow these schools 'killed people' in the 1960's (i.e.
         | in living memory as you suggest) - or even in the past (when
         | people died at much higher rates than normal population of
         | illness etc.) and your choice of words very clearly
         | misrepresents the situation, which is actually the issue
         | presented in the article: how people lie about serious and
         | inflammatory issues.
         | 
         | There were major revelations about a century ago that
         | Aboriginal children were dying at higher rates than otherwise,
         | mostly due to tuberculosis, which spread rapidly at the shcools
         | over a century ago - it was a 'huge controversy' even in 1922 -
         | when the government commissioned an investigation into the
         | situation. [1]
         | 
         | Also, note (same reference) that deaths from aboriginal kids
         | since WW2/1945 is basically the same as death of kids from the
         | general population overall, which abnegates some idea of even
         | accidental physical genocidal acts due to systematic
         | oppression. These facts, which adds nuance to the situation,
         | create a more realistic dynamic to the historical situation
         | than your choice of words (similar to those in the press) would
         | imply. Hence - misrepresentation and hyperbole.
         | 
         | Residential School history matters, factually.
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...
        
       | rizoma_dev wrote:
        
         | littlestymaar wrote:
         | My reaction exactly. What's next, Breitbart News?
        
         | adamrezich wrote:
         | what issues have you found with the text of the article that
         | makes it unsuitable to be posted here? I've never heard of this
         | publication, but found the article to be an excellent read. I
         | only had vaguely heard about the "mass graves" situation months
         | and months ago and was completely unaware that no bodies have
         | actually been found. this article does a great job of
         | presenting this information, contrasting it with the blatantly
         | false NYT reporting on the subject, and tying the whole thing
         | together with warnings about media-fueled moral panic mass
         | hysteria, which is a pretty important topic to learn more about
         | these days.
         | 
         | I found the article well-reasoned and level-headed, completely
         | free of political extremism of any sort.
         | 
         | what is the reason for why I'm supposed to hate this
         | publication, so I know better next time to go into reading an
         | article from it with the Consensus-Approved Morally-Correct Set
         | of Preconceived Biases?
        
           | munk-a wrote:
           | If you are coming at this from a neutral angle - please be
           | aware that no bodies have been physically found but also that
           | no bodies have not been physically found. There is radar
           | evidence of bodies buried near the school that remains un-
           | refuted, there was a decision not to exhume the graves out of
           | respect.
           | 
           | By the same line of reasoning used in this article my
           | grandmother might still be alive - sure we all went to a
           | funeral but it was closed casket and very few attendees saw
           | the body... but I can take you to the grave stone and
           | probably dig up a few pictures of the service.
           | 
           | These techniques are not 100% reliable but they are very
           | strong indicators - especially when seen en-masse as they
           | were observed at this site - it is extremely unlikely the
           | ground soil composition is due to any sort of a natural
           | cause, but it is possible that something else is buried in
           | the ground... in human shaped holes, at regular intervals.
        
       | bena wrote:
       | So, in response to a story about alleged unmarked graves in
       | Canada we have:
       | 
       | A comment about January 6th
       | 
       | A comment about Kyle Rittenhouse
       | 
       | A comment about COVID
       | 
       | At least COVID is somewhat relevant to Canada.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | josephcsible wrote:
         | Those are all related, in that in all of them, the media gave a
         | lot of people a false impression about something, which is
         | exactly what this article is about.
        
           | anon291 wrote:
           | This story is about a New York Times portrayal of a Canadian
           | event. It's actually not really about Canada in particular
           | (although it certainly touches on it).
        
       | jl6 wrote:
       | Perhaps someone could make Wikipedia's article on this clearer:
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...
       | 
       | The words "suspected" and "potential" are doing a lot of work
       | there.
        
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