Journalistic Arson. Muskrat with a Zippo.

Premier Wab Kinew asks the Critical Question.

The question which was not asked at the Kamloops “Mass Graves” Press Conference.

By Michelle Stirling ©2025

The prairie provinces are in flames. It is wildfire season. With remarkable calm and aplomb, Premier Wab Kinew of Manitoba has been delicately navigating press conferences with understanding that since it is unlikely “there’s a muskrat out there with a zippo lighter” and there have been no lightning storms, humans are likely starting the many wildfires. Kinew also notes there may be no malicious intention at all. A summer bonfire can go awry. Someone having fun with firecrackers for a birthday. The hot exhaust pipes of an ATV on dry grass or a spark from an engine. A cigarette butt discarded carelessly.

However, in a recent press conference, a journo who was off-camera tried to accuse a mining operation of having started a fire. Kinew was quick and blunt.

“What proof do you have?”

The journo repeated off camera some people said…

“What proof?” he demanded.

(~15 mins)

He went on to calmly point out that he, too, had been a journalist and was familiar with the demands of deadlines and of looking for headlines, but he encouraged the gathered journos to observe journalistic standards and to double check claims from reliable sources before writing stories.

In emergency situations like this, fake news can lead to an escalation in public risk. Individuals may attempt vigilante justice, especially if they or their loved ones have suffered harm or loss. Reputational harm to individuals, organizations, companies can be massive as once the fake news genie is out of the bottle, it can’t be put back in.

Wildfire investigations, particularly into claims of arson, are often long and involved. But due to years of arson investigations, wildfire investigators have a good set of protocols and signs which help them make accurate identifications in many cases.

Some of the biggest wildfires, like that of Slave Lake in Alberta in 2011, were found to be caused by arson. Other wildfires, which were initially claimed to be arson by non-expert commentators, were found to have been caused by lightning or by accident.

By contrast to Premier Kinew’s persistent questioning, I watched the first in the series of “The Knowing” – CBC’s ‘documentary’ production of Tanya Talaga’s book. Fundamentally, Talaga has tied her own family’s search to identify early women in their family tree – specifically her great-great grandmother “Annie,” to the residential school story of “missing children” and “unmarked graves,” even though Annie was an adult and her case had nothing to do with Indian Residential Schools.

Talaga was a very influential person in the spreading of the claim of “mass graves” of murdered children, reported to have been clandestinely buried in the old apple orchard of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. In Tanya Talaga’s book, “The Knowing” she writes that her Globe and Mail editor called to check with her, for proof that the claim of the numbers. 215 children?

In Nina Green’s article Tanya Talaga Has Let The Cat Out Of The Bag, she quoted Talaga from her book, “The Knowing:”

As a Globe columnist, I was also fielding questions, but they were coming from the Globe's Parliament Hill bureau. On one of my first nights there, my editor called me. It was late, and I was in my hotel room, exhausted. She apologized for what she was about to ask me and then she said, "The Prime Minister's Office, the RCMP, is questioning the numbers - the 215." There was more. "There is talk that there is internal strife in the community." . .

I told my editor that what she heard was categorically not true. The number was correct. And furthermore, that I had not seen any division. In fact, I'd seen the exact opposite: unity. She said she'd tell everyone what I'd said, and she apologized for having to be the messenger. We hung up.

My head was spinning, but I had one clear thought: we needed Murray Sinclair. Tk'emlups needed Murray, former senator and the former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, or TRC. He was my next call.

When I reached him, I told him what was occurring, what I was seeing. He said, "You are in the eye of the storm now. Be careful."

“The number was correct.”

To which, did the Globe editor ask the simple question, “What proof do you have?”

They wanted to confirm with Talaga the finding of the “human remains” of 215 children, who were reportedly buried at night by 6-year-old classmates, digging graves for dead children as young as 3 years old.

However, in CBC’s “The Knowing,” Talaga reports that she was on site at Kamloops for 3 days before the Kamloops announcement was made, engaged in ceremony.

But was she doing any journalism?

“What proof?” is the real question about Kamloops.

The only “proof” is that of a Ground Penetrating Radar survey (GPR) which is an ultra-sound-like technology, typically used to find pipes or other infrastructure below ground. GPR cannot “see” graves, coffins, bodies or human remains. So, although GPR work had been done, that is not proof. To this day, 4 years on, we have not seen a written report on this search, though the Kamloops Band promised one.

So, “What proof?”

Talaga and GPR operator Dr. Sarah Beaulieu relied heavily on statements from anonymous Knowledge Keepers who claim to just “know” that such atrocities happened and such graves exist. But that’s not proof.

“What proof?”

In various media reports, Talaga and others also refer to indications that there are unnamed living witnesses to these clandestine burials. Who are they? Have the RCMP ever investigated their claims? No? Then that’s not proof – that’s hearsay. And since these living witnesses have no names, who can verify? Shouldn’t the RCMP have questioned them? Should they not still do so today? Instead, their official position is that the investigation has been turned over to the Kamloops First Nation itself – the alleged victims are investigating and managing their own criminal accusations of genocide against Canada. This is unheard of.

“What proof?”

There were two bone artifacts found on the Kamloops site over the years. One was an alleged to be a juvenile tooth (later found to be non-human, according to Dr Hugo Cardoso of Simon Fraser University); the other was an alleged juvenile rib bone which was turned in to the Kamloops Band's Museum at the Heritage Park but has since apparently disappeared.

The existence of these bones does not suggest criminal activity and is not proof of anything.

Did anyone ask for the names of the 215 children alleged to be missing?

What proof?

If you report a missing person to the police, a friend or a loved one, what is the first question you’ll be asked? What is their name?

CBC’s documentary team let Tanya Talaga make unsubstantiated claims – blood libeling Canada – with no supporting evidence.

At 22:46 in “The Knowing” Talaga is recorded on camera as she goes back to Kamloops for the 1-year anniversary of the alleged find. She says:

“It’s been a year since I’ve been here. I came here when no one else was here yet. The media wasn’t here. The world wasn’t here. It was just members of the communities. They all had children that were taken and were put here.”

23:02 “And we held ceremony for 3 days, here at the Pow Wow grounds.”

“It was like the children’s spirits woke Canada up to the true truth of its past…as I make my way back to Kamloops for the one years memorial, I can’t help but think of Annie. She wasn’t a child by she also went missing from us. I’m amazed by what’s happened in the last year. The recovery of over 10,000 potential graves of our children, and it all started here. The spirits of the children brought us here.” 23:22

Ten thousand? “Potential” graves. Most of the claims of unmarked graves are related to community cemeteries where probably more of my relatives are buried than hers, but the grave markers have disintegrated over time. No one cared enough to keep the markers up – now this negligence is framed as something nefarious on the part of priests and nuns and other clergy who had ensured a reverent, appropriate burial at the time. Now we should care? Why are we taxpayers now expected to pay reparations to people who did not care about their family members enough to keep their school records, their birth and death certificates safe, and their graves cared for, solely on the basis of unproven atrocity propaganda?

https://indianresidentialschoolrecords.com/death-records/

Curiously, Talaga’s CBC story is quite different in the interview with Tamara Khandaker for the Globe and Mail’s June 04, 2021, podcast “The Decibel.” In that interview, Talaga says she flew to Kelowna (and drove from there to Kamloops) on 30 May 2021, which is three days after the Band had released its announcement on 27 May 2021.

Indeed, when one does a fact check and takes a critical look at Tanya Talaga’s own work, truth by truth the myth of “The Knowing” falls apart.

Using Premier Wab Kinew’s reference to the firebugs and wildfires as an analogy, Talaga was the “muskrat with a Zippo lighter” who lit the world on fire. Her journalistic credentials, tied to those of Canada’s Globe and Mail, widely recognized as Canada’s newspaper of record, convinced Canadian government officials that indeed a real mass grave and bodies had been found. This blood libel lit a global firestorm against Canada as a nation, the Roman Catholic Church and Canadian history. Over a hundred churches were burned down or vandalized in the wake of the Kamloops phantom genocide revelation.

What proof? None.

Canada is now a nation divided; many former Indian Residential School students are psychologically traumatized by these claims; a mass psychosis gripped the country and geopolitical repercussions include China and fellow despot nations using these claims to support their declaration at the UN that Canada is guilty of genocide. When there is no proof.

When will the RCMP investigate CBC, the Globe and Mail, and Tanya Talaga for this case of journalistic arson?