Juno News - July 13, 2021


More claims of unmarked graves, more misinformation from the legacy media

Mentioned
Tristan Hopper
Episode 2： Gun Business Under Fire ｜ Assaulted The COVID busybodies continue to meddle in other people's lives

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

182.17

Word count

1,702

Sentence count

74

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A 4th First Nations band claims to have uncovered unmarked graves off the coast of Vancouver Island, Canada. This is the fourth band to claim they have uncovered these graves, but no further details have been released by the band.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 More claims of unmarked graves and a legacy media that is complicit in pushing misinformation.
00:00:05.580 I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:00:12.360 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in today. I want to spend a bit more time today
00:00:16.860 confronting the false narrative that is being promoted by the legacy media in Canada and abroad.
00:00:22.880 If you've been following my work lately, you know that I've spent a lot of time recently
00:00:26.560 refuting this media narrative about residential schools, about unmarked graves and the recent
00:00:31.860 discoveries and trying to bring more facts to the conversation. My report on this topic last week
00:00:37.120 which was called Six Things the Media Got Wrong About the Graves Found Near Residential Schools.
00:00:42.480 That article has become the most read article ever published in the history of True North. So I want
00:00:49.100 to express my gratitude and say thank you so much to everyone who has read it, everyone who has been
00:00:54.180 sharing it and helping to promote it. And if you haven't had a chance to read it, I encourage you
00:00:59.260 to go check it out over at tnc.news. It is pinned to the top of that page so it's easy to find.
00:01:06.660 Now before I get to the news today, I want to make a little side point, a quick side point about that
00:01:12.120 report over at tnc.news and how it went viral relatively speaking, modestly viral you can say.
00:01:19.580 Interestingly, I didn't see a lot of people sharing the article on Facebook or Twitter and none of my
00:01:26.880 posts about it had a larger than usual reach. It was average but it didn't lead to as many views as
00:01:34.200 we did get on the site. And I was thinking about it, I think that this really does point to a new
00:01:39.520 trend that we're seeing in Canada towards increasingly private forms of communication, specifically among
00:01:45.840 conservatives or just general people worried about talking about these sorts of issues, talking about
00:01:52.040 controversial things publicly. They don't want to be seen as doing anything politically incorrect.
00:01:57.680 And so what you start to see is Canadians increasingly staying off social media platforms and moving
00:02:03.660 towards this type of private communication, be it emails, WhatsApp groups, Signal, Slack, text messages,
00:02:10.760 or what have you. Because they don't want to share their news stories, they don't want to share the
00:02:14.980 things that they find interesting on social media. They don't want to be mobbed. They don't want their
00:02:19.840 words being used out of context. They don't want a grassroots campaign all of a sudden demanding that
00:02:25.060 they be fired from their job or that their life be ruined. So instead, Canadians are just instead kind of 0.99
00:02:31.760 opting out and saying, you know, instead of sharing this report on Facebook or Twitter, I'm just going to send it
00:02:37.200 in an email to my friends or send it through text message and just stay away from the public
00:02:42.500 altogether. And I think that in some ways is a good sign because it shows that Canadians want to
00:02:48.620 know the truth. In fact, they're desperate for facts. They're desperate for some nuance. So context
00:02:54.620 and an honest conversation about all of this. And they're simply not getting it from the mainstream
00:02:59.460 media and they're not getting it on social media. And so when we see a viral news story with very little
00:03:06.420 social media footprint, you know, it's because Canadians are encouraging their friends and their
00:03:12.100 social networks to read the facts and hear the other side of the story. Again, I think it's a very good
00:03:16.080 sign. And it shows that common sense in Canada can prevail and perhaps it will prevail. Okay, let's get to
00:03:23.700 the news today. We know that the mainstream media exaggerate and sensationalize the claims made by First
00:03:30.220 Nations and about what exactly was discovered in recent weeks and months. But I want to talk about
00:03:36.040 this latest story. So today we hear the news of a fourth First Nations band who is claimed to have
00:03:42.740 found unmarked graves. This time it's a small island off the coast of Vancouver Island who is making this
00:03:49.100 claims. Now, interestingly, unlike the first three bands who each claimed to have found unmarked graves
00:03:55.340 using ground-penetrating radar technology, this latest band, which is called the Penelacic Tribe,
00:04:02.420 they didn't use this technology. They didn't say anything about how they uncovered their findings.
00:04:07.300 So this became public because they posted it in a newsletter and they have not responded to any media
00:04:14.600 requests that I could see, any journalists who are trying to understand a little bit more about how
00:04:20.020 these graves were discovered, myself included. I sent an email and I have not yet heard back from
00:04:25.340 them. So this, this tribe, this group, they issued a newsletter to a neighboring First Nations
00:04:31.300 communities and they posted it online Monday night. So this is what the CBC had to report about it.
00:04:36.920 We are inviting you to join us in our work to raise awareness of the Cooper Island Industrial School
00:04:42.700 and confirmation of the 160 plus undocumented and unmarked graves in our grounds and foreshore,
00:04:49.620 the notice said. No further details were provided. The tribe did not say how the graves were found,
00:04:55.340 whether children's remains are suspected of being buried there, or whether ground-penetrating radar
00:05:00.260 was used. Officials did not respond to multiple requests for interviews. So unlike the other bands who have
00:05:07.400 issued news releases, held press conferences, and claim to be using advanced forms of technology to back
00:05:13.420 their claims, this latest claim today about the 160 graves found, it doesn't have any of that.
00:05:19.240 There's, there's no report, there's not even a claim of a report. And yet, multiple media outlets, including the CBC,
00:05:26.760 Global News, CTV, Post Media, and many others, have picked up the story and run with it anyway.
00:05:32.560 They will run a headline, knowing full well that in today's climate of social media posts and outrage mobs,
00:05:38.280 most people don't get to the part where they learn that this is simply a claim with no evidence,
00:05:42.160 or that the band is refusing to answer simple questions from the media. Instead, that number,
00:05:47.640 160, it just gets added to the total, to the tally, as if it's some kind of a scientifically verified
00:05:54.200 and valid count. Just look at this headline in the National Post. It says,
00:05:59.320 How Canada Forgot About More Than 1,308 Graves at Former Residential Schools.
00:06:04.740 This is how the author, Tristan Hopper, explains how he got to that number. He writes,
00:06:09.080 Since May, more than 1,308 suspected graves have been uncovered near the sites of former Indian
00:06:15.840 residential schools. 215 in Kamloops, BC, 182 in Cranbrook, BC, 751 in Merrillville, Saskatchewan,
00:06:25.540 and more than 160 found in Penelacic Island, British Columbia. So Hopper simply added up all the
00:06:32.520 claims and ties them to residential schools, even though, as I pointed out, when you look into these
00:06:37.980 stories a little more, you learn that the cemeteries serviced a broader community, including
00:06:42.360 staff and adults working at the schools, that many non-First Nations people were also buried in
00:06:48.020 these cemeteries, and that some cemeteries are affiliated with local hospitals that were servicing
00:06:53.600 the entire area. That was the case in Cranbrook. So it is a little dubious to tie all of these graves
00:06:59.780 to residential schools. But I also think that there is some progress here that I'm seeing in this
00:07:05.020 report, and I'm really not trying to disparage this article at all. Quite the contrary, I think
00:07:10.200 it's great, and I think that it is progress. It provides a lot more context in what we've been
00:07:14.760 seeing, and it addresses quite a few of the points that I've been making and that I've been talking
00:07:19.080 about. Of course, it doesn't mention the work that I've been doing, but that's okay. I think it's just
00:07:23.340 good in general that the mainstream media and outlets like the National Post are starting to catch up
00:07:28.820 a little bit. So forget about the headline, but note that Hopper writes that these are suspected
00:07:33.320 graves. I don't see very many journalists making this distinction before, but I'm glad to see it
00:07:37.920 here. Likewise, the piece discusses some of the broader myths and misconceptions that are being
00:07:42.400 promoted in the media, including the fact that these are not mass graves, he makes this point in
00:07:47.220 the article, and the fact that Canada hasn't really been trying to hide its past, and that's sort of what
00:07:52.180 many accusations and insinuations in the media suggest. This article discusses why the graves are
00:07:58.180 unmarked, how these communities were hit very hard by plagues like the Spanish flu in 1918, the whole
00:08:04.220 concept of wooden grave markers which do erode over time, and the important fact that all of this
00:08:09.800 information has been known and was addressed in that 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Report. So I'm very
00:08:16.280 glad to see voices in the media, including legacy newspapers like the National Post, finally having
00:08:21.520 the bravery to try to dissect this very thorny issue. Okay, so on that note, I'm excited to announce
00:08:27.360 that I'm going to be doing a series right here on this show, going through in more precise detail
00:08:32.600 more of the ways that the media narrative has gotten this story all wrong, and I'm devoting future
00:08:37.520 episodes to lots of different stories. For instance, all the different times that churches in Canada
00:08:43.000 and governments have acknowledged this and apologized for all the wrongdoings with regards to
00:08:47.900 residential schools. I'm going to do another show talking about all the payments and compensation
00:08:52.120 given to First Nations and students who attended these schools over the years, as well as
00:08:57.360 a deep dive into the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report that I mentioned, including
00:09:03.180 how it was established, what facts were determined, and all the ways that that report fell short.
00:09:08.960 So watch out for those in upcoming episodes. Canadians are hungry for the truth, and True North
00:09:14.380 is going to continue delivering just that. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Candice Malcolm,
00:09:18.980 and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.