Juno News - Is the media narrative getting away from the facts of this story？

00:00:00.000 hi and welcome to the candace malcolm show i'm your host candace malcolm thank you so much for

00:00:09.440 joining me today it has been a while the show has been on hiatus for a while because i was away i

00:00:15.260 had a baby in november but we're bringing it back now we'll be doing this show two days a week so

00:00:20.280 thank you so much for tuning in i really appreciate your support to find out more information about

00:00:26.480 this podcast or if you'd like to support it head on over to tnc.news slash donate that's true north

00:00:33.460 tnc.news slash donate all right let's get to the news so today i'm going to talk about the biggest

00:00:39.940 story in the country right now it's been dominating the headlines all week and obviously it is a very

00:00:45.820 sensitive subject i'm talking about this report that came out over the weekend about the apparent

00:00:50.760 discovery of 215 children's remains found buried near a residential school in kamloops british

00:00:58.800 columbia so first i want to say that this story is invoking quite an emotional reaction across the

00:01:05.340 country and you can understand why it's obviously a very very upsetting topic in general the topic is

00:01:12.060 very sensitive i'll just say this for myself as someone who leans libertarian especially when it

00:01:17.600 comes to the idea of families and a parent's right to raise their children however they want and how

00:01:23.300 they see fit the idea that the government once had a policy where it would remove children from their

00:01:28.280 homes is incredibly upsetting and i wholeheartedly condemn it obviously likewise as the mother of

00:01:35.540 small children the idea of children being separated from their parents is horrible it's very upsetting

00:01:42.000 so i understand why this story is creating such a stir and such an emotional reaction across the

00:01:49.360 country but the reason i want to talk about it on this podcast i want to talk about it with you today

00:01:54.620 is because i believe that the reaction and the media narrative is really running into some dangerous

00:02:01.000 territory for us as a country we now have people invoking the holocaust saying that what happened here

00:02:08.480 equates to genocide that this story confirms genocide and treating these residential schools like they

00:02:15.280 were some sort of a death camp now look i condemned residential schools i think they were a bad idea 0.65

00:02:20.340 obviously we all we all i think we all agree on that horrible things were done and the policy was

00:02:26.060 regrettable but i think we get into some dangerous territory as a country when we start equating our history

00:02:32.900 and what happened to the nazis to a holocaust and pretending that these schools were some kind of

00:02:39.020 a murder camp or a death camp so before we just accept this narrative let's go back to the facts of the

00:02:44.780 story let's go back to the original story and try to discern what facts we know at this point

00:02:50.140 so this entire story came from one news release this news release was issued by the cam loops band so this is

00:02:58.820 it came on may 27th from the tkem loops sekkemki apologies i probably didn't pronounce that properly but the

00:03:07.100 cam loops indian band so it says for immediate release it says it's with heavy heart that chief

00:03:13.220 roseanne castamir confirms an unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never discovered by the cam loops

00:03:19.440 indian residential school this past weekend with the help of ground penetrating radar specialists the stark truth 0.52

00:03:26.000 the preliminary findings came to light the confirmation of the remains of 215 children

00:03:31.380 who were students of the cam loops residential school so the news release goes on to have some

00:03:37.980 quotes about how hard this is and how they have been working to verify this so they they knew that

00:03:43.760 you know there were stories in the community that this had happened but they weren't able to find any

00:03:47.880 evidence and they're saying that they have evidence now with the use of this ground penetrating

00:03:53.120 radar but the interesting thing about this news release is that it doesn't release a report it

00:03:59.500 says that it basically just announces that that they found the remains of 215 children they don't

00:04:05.680 exactly say how and then they say that the report says that they expect to complete preliminary findings by

00:04:13.340 mid-june and will be providing an update as soon as they become available so the preliminary findings have

00:04:19.980 not yet been released the report hasn't been released we're saying it's forthcoming in mid-june

00:04:24.240 it also says please note that the heritage park is closed to the public and no one will be permitted on

00:04:29.700 the site for the duration of this sensitive work they still say that they are taking steps regarding

00:04:36.320 these preliminary findings engaging with a coroner reaching out to the home of communities who had

00:04:41.520 children attend the school and taking measures to ensure the location remains protected so again we

00:04:49.540 haven't had the official report we we just have a news release from the from the chief from this band

00:04:56.820 saying it has happened so we go over to the cbc story and it kind of confirms it you have to read

00:05:01.620 it carefully it says the headline here remains of 215 children found buried at former bc residential

00:05:07.520 school first nations say so at this point it is just a claim it's a claim that they say is coming

00:05:15.180 because they hired a specialist so they hired the specialist in ground penetrating radar to carry out

00:05:21.060 the work and that their language and culture department oversaw the project to ensure it was done in a

00:05:26.360 culturally appropriate and respectful way the release did not specify the company or individual

00:05:31.740 involved or how the work was completed then when it comes to outside confirmation it says that they're

00:05:39.160 working with the bc corner service but then in a statement to the cbc bc's chief coroner said that

00:05:45.060 the corner surface was alerted to the discovery on thursday we are in the early process of gathering

00:05:51.380 information and will continue to work collaboratively with the band and others as the sensitive work

00:05:57.220 progresses so the coroner's office has not yet confirmed this information so what we have at

00:06:03.840 this point is a claim not a verified report they haven't released their findings there's no public

00:06:09.220 access there's no third party verification and there is no report so obviously there's a lot of questions

00:06:17.400 that remain a lot of things that are unknown at this point so i have a couple of questions the first

00:06:21.680 thing that came to my mind is how do we know exactly how many remains were found how did we get to

00:06:26.800 that number 215 well there was a story in the national post that i thought did a great job of

00:06:32.960 explaining the radar technology and how it works so we're not talking about uh an excavation site here

00:06:38.440 they didn't dig up anything this was all above ground ground penetrating radar technology that's what

00:06:44.620 we're told uh that the report was used in order to find these remains so a lot of people are asking you

00:06:51.420 what is this technology i spoke to a professor friend of mine who said that this uh that does this kind

00:06:56.540 work and he said that this kind of technology is common it was originally developed to look for

00:07:01.180 abandoned oil drums and those kind of things and that now it is being used to look at uh ancient

00:07:07.160 cemeteries and first nation cemeteries so the national post did this story i thought they did a great job

00:07:12.180 this was tyler dawson over at the national post and he interviewed a professor of anthropology at the

00:07:20.340 university of alberta who focuses on this kind of thing in the interview i'm going to read part of it

00:07:25.960 because it's really interesting she says quote so it can map all kinds of things it was actually

00:07:31.440 originally developed for geology but it can be applied in the context to look for graves it doesn't

00:07:36.580 actually see the bodies it's not like an x-ray what it actually does is look for the shaft when a grave

00:07:42.980 is dug there is a grave shaft dug and the body is placed in the grave sometimes in a coffin as in the

00:07:49.580 christian burial context what the ground penetrating radar can see is where that pit itself was dug

00:07:55.840 because the soil actually changes when you dig a grave and occasionally if it is a coffin the radar

00:08:01.860 can pick up the coffin sometimes as well so that's interesting the whole way that they knew that these

00:08:07.440 graves were here was because of the coffins well that kind of flies in the face of part of the 0.80

00:08:12.180 mainstream media and what the left-wing media is telling you that these bodies were just sort of

00:08:16.320 discarded into some mass grave according to this national post story what it implies is that these

00:08:22.520 bodies were potentially buried properly and respectfully second the second thing that we

00:08:28.780 don't know yet is none of this confirms that these graves actually belong to children they were found

00:08:35.220 at the location of the residential school but they were just graves they could have been part of a

00:08:40.220 community graveyard for all we know we don't have that answer yet finally of course none of this tells

00:08:45.900 us about the cause of death we don't know how these people died lots of politicians and leaders are

00:08:52.440 jumping to conclusions they're saying this was murder some even say it was genocide but does the

00:08:57.720 evidence really show us that so just keep in mind this school was open from 1890 to 1969 if we go back

00:09:05.740 to 1890 just look at the statistics if we go back to 1890 and look at the statistics the infant mortality

00:09:13.020 rate in 1890 in canada was 27 27 so nearly one in three children died before their fifth birthday

00:09:21.600 and this of course was because of communicable diseases we're obviously talking about a very

00:09:26.460 different time we're talking about a time before modern medicine before vaccines were developed and when

00:09:31.980 communicable diseases diseases diseases like tb and spanish flu were rampant and there was no real cure

00:09:38.200 so all this is to say that my my great concern here is about the policy ramifications of all of this

00:09:46.060 so obviously there are very legitimate concerns and emotions out there right now my my worry though

00:09:52.820 is that snap decisions will be made without information letting emotions drive the public policy decision

00:09:59.280 that is not a healthy way to run uh democracy decisions should be made with a clear head we

00:10:05.560 should be examining the facts we should be considering the second and third order consequences

00:10:10.400 of these decisions not making snap decisions in the reaction of a huge huge national story that is very

00:10:18.880 emotional so all of this is to say again before we jump to conclusions we should just wait for more

00:10:23.880 information at the very least we should wait for the preliminary report or the official report to

00:10:29.200 come out maybe it's not as bad as we think or maybe possibly it's it's far worse but we don't know

00:10:34.720 at this point so let's wait for some concrete evidence it's always needed and that's the standard that

00:10:40.480 would be the standard for any other news story out there and the same should apply for us here all right

00:10:47.000 everyone have a great week this is candace malcolm this is the candace malcolm show i will see you next week

Juno News - June 02, 2021

Is the media narrative getting away from the facts of this story？

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