After reading Terry Glavin’s article, I’m not sure how a reader would fail to see that the only way to criticize someone who produces no material evidence is ad hominem. The claims that Annett makes are mysteries to those living in the effected communities.

In the facebook group about the alleged mass graves, it is implied that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s purpose is to stifle the voices of the victims. This can’t possibly help.

But what the hell did I do in 2005-2006? In 2005 I was working my ass off at various jobs to make sure that I could have a roof over my head and enough ramen noodles/kd to get by on, and to make sure I was passing my university classes. (I also admittedly met and fell in love with my girlfriend around that time too).

2006 wasn’t much better; I had two major CS projects that kept me awake for days at a time, and soaked up literally months of my life. I spent the vast majority of 2006 either studying, coding or passing out from heat and lack of available food(ask my g/f if you think I’m kidding). But at least I was able to read a little bit.

How the hell are we supposed to know about these things? Magic? Most of this stuff happened long before I was born, and I was never told about it, never found out about it on television, It wasn’t in any of the the thousands of books that I’ve read, really, where are we going to find out about these things except from a blog posting relaying information from a press release?! I won’t pretend to know even now what’s going on, but at least I admit this. How does this make me a bigot?

I consider myself ahead of the curve as far as knowing things generally go; I try to actually go out and research things just because…if I can’t find out about these things sufficiently fast for you what possible hope does the average person have?

As for ad hominems - I think they are called for when you’re dealing with shysters who make unsupportable claims whose veracity rests on the claimant’s credibility.

Incidentally, you should try to avoid strawman arguments. I, for one, haven’t bought into the notion of organized genocide, even though the concerns of the chief medical officer of Indian Affairs in the early 20th C.(Peter Bryce) are disturbing. (He thought that sick and healthy children in the residential schools, which had horrendous death tolls, were deliberately kept together.) Nor do I think that Glavin is a racist–in fact, I don’t know who does.

More on all that here. You should know, by the way, that “Eagle Strong Voice” (and I winced almost audibly when I first saw that) was not a name Annett gave to himself.