Grave Talkers, Wind Walkers, Media Grovellers: How FN Have Owned The Narrative

“Jack Crabb: Do you hate the White man now?

Old Lodge Skins: Do you see this fine thing? Do you admire the humanity of it? Because the human beings, my son, they believe everything is alive. Not only man and animals. But also water, earth, stone. And also the things from them... like that hair. The man from whom this hair came, he's bald on the other side, because I now own his scalp! That is the way things are. But the white man, they believe EVERYTHING is dead. Stone, earth, animals. And people! Even their own people! If things keep trying to live, white man will rub them out. That is the difference.”— Chief Dan George in Little Big Man, 1970

Here in Canada everything old is new again.The water, earth, stones are talking up a storm. First Nations chief Garrison Setee is playing Chief Dan George over the hoax about murdered babies and genocidal priests perpetrated by the irredeemable Justin Trudeau. Faced with demands that the graveyard near Kamloops be excavated (for which they’ve been paid millions) to prove the heated narratives of the Residential School inquiry, the chief was instead going full psychic savant.

”I don't think we should have to prove to anybody what happened to these [dead children at Kamloops] because they are there, and they send us messages telling us they're there...[@tkemlups] Grand Chief Casimir and I went to visit the sacred site. You can tell they're there, right?”

While resisting the science that says the “graves” are likely part of a septic system, the chiefs have talked about returning the bodies of dead three year olds to their families. Forgetting that Rez School only started at age seven. No matter when facts don’t matter in the first place.

The communing with the other side by Chief Casimir and his FN worthies has won the slavish loyalty of Canada’s wind talker Left. The land acknowledgements kabuki is the receipt of their capitulation. It would be funny to see the empathy brigades prostrate themselves at the sight of a war bonnet. Or Manitoba’s Ojibway premier Wab Kinew. "A single arrow can be broken easily, but a bundle of arrows cannot be snapped." 

In this veneration of pseudo mysticism the media is either complicit or MIA on the claims. Noted journalist Robert Fife claims he knows that there are real unmarked graves in Kamloops. He says journalists must now align their reporting with the “lived experience” of Indigenous people. How he didn’t say.

But you can’t blame the chiefs for taking their shot at avoiding production of the alleged murdered babies. Bolstered by the UN’s NDRIP and pious acceptance of their unproven genocide claims they’re raking in millions and, perhaps more ominous, staking a claim to being consulted on development of massive public projects across Canada. 

That would mean 108 separate tribes that want a say-so over the proposed new pipeline from Alberta to tidewater.. That's a consultation for every 11 kilometres of the route. The government that’s determined to criminalize disinformation can’t help spreading their own BS. Seeing Mark Carney’s collapse in negotiating the Gordie Howe Bridge gives faint hope that his parlays with the FN will produce anything but acceptance of voices beyond the grave as the new legal standard. Let the billions flow. 

As this spending graph shows, the Liberal Party has been a reliable spigot for FN grievances. From $7B in 2014 to $60B in 2024, the cash is inversely proportionate to the perceived culpability of federal and provincial officials. Here’s this story charts transfers from the BC to its First Nations.

If white citizens are confused the chiefs are not. They have seen the emergence of AI— where nothing is true— and see a population willing to accept just about anything as an AI video. A population whose liberal communications strategy with the First Nation was summed up in Little Big Man (1970). Today’s tangled tongues reflects General Custer asking his scout about the wisdom of descending into the valley at Little Big Horn. 

General Custer: You're advising me to go into the Coulee?

Jack Crabb: Yes ,sir.

General Custer: There are no Indians there, I suppose.

Jack Crabb: I didn't say that. There are thousands of Indians down there. And when they get done with you, there won't be nothing left but a grease-spot. This ain't the Washita River, General, and them ain't helpless women and children waiting for you. They're Cheyenne braves, and Sioux. You go down there, General, if you've got the nerve.

General Custer: Still trying to outsmart me, aren't you, mule-skinner? You want me to think that you don't want me to go down there, but the subtle truth is, you really *don't* want me to go down there!”

BC premier David Eby who has pursued compensation for his province’s FN communities to the detriment of everyone, couldn’t have said it better. 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2023 book Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, was voted a Top 20 greatest professional hockey books of all time by bookauthority.org . https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1770415300?linkCode=gs2&tag=uuid0a1-20 His previous book with his son Evan, Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/106980270