Dem bones, dem bones -- and dem lies, dem lies

Two archaeologists who work in the area of underground radar surveying have written an interesting response to inflammatory non-fact-checked media reports of a "mass grave" found at a residential school in Kamloops, BC. See excerpts below from their article about these bones of contention (the contention being that these reports contain a lot of false "news": it seems that in media outlets we had thought were professional and mainstream, the backbone is connected to the TALE bone. 

This has proven dangerous, in that several churches have been burnt down as a result (in fire season!), and the culture-war temperature has risen dramatically.

"Despite sensationalized media coverage, there are reasons for skepticism concerning recent claims made of the “discovery” of unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools. Many experts are aware of discrepancies in these stories, but given a media climate that seems increasingly like mass hysteria, are reluctant to comment publicly. On May 27, 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc published an article on their website stating that the remains of 215 children were “found” through the use of “a ground penetrating radar specialist.” The name of the company or specialist who performed the survey work was not specified, and few other details were included in the brief report, other than to stress that it was only 'preliminary findings.'

In spite of the preliminary and vague nature of the report, it immediately sparked lurid and sensationalized headlines worldwide, which went beyond anything contained in the press release. The New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, The Toronto Star, and numerous other media outlets all ran stories claiming that a “mass grave” had been discovered, a term never used in the report. The Times ran the headline “‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada,” while the Toronto Star printed the headline 'Mass impact from discovery of mass grave.' ...

As archaeologists who have worked with ground-penetrating radar, we knew immediately that the media’s claims went far beyond the evidence, as ground-penetrating radar is quite limited in what it can reveal beneath the earth. … A little common sense and basic knowledge would have alerted anyone to the fact that the “mass grave” claim was highly improbable. A mass grave implies a single catastrophic event, in which all the dead were killed at the same time, and then unceremoniously dumped into a single pit and covered up. …

Ground-penetrating radar cannot determine the existence of a mass grave; although it can help determine the probable existence of individual graves by locating the suspected outlines of shafts and (depending on the exact technology used) possible coffin remains. But it cannot in any case determine the age, ethnicity, or cause of death, or how old the gravesites are. It was therefore obvious to us that the media headlines about a “mass grave” were false, a fact that was soon confirmed by the Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir.

… the confirmation that there was no mass grave should have prompted a media reckoning over false and inflammatory coverage, but did nothing of sort. To date, the New York Times and other media, including the Toronto Star, have not issued corrections to their initial false reporting. … The Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc press release made plain that the burial site had actually already been known, but since it had not been maintained it was half-forgotten until the recent survey (a fact also ignored in most of the media coverage). The actual details then are not nearly as sensational as the false media headlines made it out to be, headlines which sparked even more extreme social media commentary, and the burning to the ground of at least five churches. …

The only means to determine the age of human remains is to excavate them and examine the bones. But this, according to all publicly released information, has not been done. So how then can Casimir claim to know that the remains of a three-year old are under the ground? Certainly ground-penetrating radar cannot determine such details. Curiously, the Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc have declined to respond to media inquires about such details, or even to release the name of the private company that did the radar survey. Given the school’s long history (it was founded in 1890 and remained in operation until at least the late 1960s), it is entirely possible that the cemetery uncovered was used at an earlier date as a community cemetery, and that some of the graves may not be students.

But in any case, there is no real mystery over what the cause of death was in the majority of cases at residential schools. It is well-established that influenza and tuberculosis were responsible for the majority. … There is also the unacknowledged irony of much of the media trying to collectively blame all Canadians today for past pandemics and infectious disease outbreaks (even though most Canadians weren’t even alive at the time), while insisting that no one should be blamed for covid-19 (even if it originated from a lab leak). This obvious contradiction further highlights that much of the commentary on residential school graves are motivated by something other than a commitment to uncovering the facts. Even more telling is the complete absence of any acknowledgement that the infant mortality rate in Canada throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century was extremely high for children of all backgrounds. ...

Shortly after the Kamloops story, on June 24 in Saskatchewan the Cowessess First Nation held a press conference to claim that they had “found” 751 unmarked graves near the site of a former residential school, prompting similar lurid and patently false media stories across Canada and beyond. This time, the survey took place on the grounds of an actual cemetery, one that has been in use for well over a century, and which is still maintained as a cemetery today. In other words, this supposedly shocking discovery was actually nothing of the short — the survey literally found graves in a graveyard ... with no connection to any residential school. 

All subsequent residential school grave stories have followed a similar pattern: a sensational press conference announcing the “discovery” of graves through a ground-penetrating radar survey (technology which cannot distinguish between a child or adult grave) at sites that were already known cemeteries (and therefore contain plenty of adult graves). Any town or city in Canada, however, could do the exact same thing with ground-penetrating radar at unmarked cemetery sites. ...

The Population Reference Bureau estimated that as of 2015 approximately 108.2 billion people had been born in the history of the world, of which (as of 2015) 7.4 billion were alive. This means there are estimated 100.8 billion people who have died in Earth’s history, or put another way, the dead outnumber the living by more than 14 to 1. In Canada’s context, given our current population of over 38 million, even a conservative estimate would be that there are well over 50 million dead people buried somewhere in Canada (a number that takes into consideration cremation). … If we are really serious about surveying old graveyards, the final tally of bodies to be found in Canada will run into the tens of millions, including huge numbers of children’s remains (the vast majority of which will not be Indigenous).

Of course, many of the people commentating the loudest on historic graveyards aren’t actually interested in unearthing the past. They’re interested in pitting people against each other in the present."

*The authors are two archaeologists with experience working with ground-penetrating radar, including at burial grounds.

See the full article at: https://medium.com/@mountains95/a-skeptical-analysis