1,000 graves.

[Workingman]

They are what have been found in two indigenous residential schools in Canada. These schools operated from about the 1850s to the 1990s. The raw numbers are horrific, but stand back a bit.

The implications from the media are that these people were victims of some white Catholic supremacist atrocities back in the day. However, the deaths amount, on average, to about eight per year over that period, and in that time there were some epidemics, including smallpox and Spanish flu. It is too early to jump to conclusions, but jump we have. Healthcare was not great wherever you were in the world in those days.

I have letters from the late1890s from my great uncle Jimmy who sent them to his brother, my Uncle Jack, and who went from Ireland to the Klondike to seek his fortune. He was captured by a Sioux (Lakota) tribe when he jumped from a barn loft during a card game and broke his hip. Most of those who died did so from cholera and typhus, not by abuse from the Sioux, though malnutrition played a part.

Two sides to every story.