I think most people were aware on some level of what residential schools were and had an opinion that bad stuff happened there. I do not think most people knew there was high levels of death. Even though that was quite clear from the report.
The other key thing is social media was not big in the era of the truth and reconciliation report. You could easily tune out the details or take it in passively. But finding the graves now, in 2021, allows for virality.
My argument was that most knew about the schools but not about death counts.
Presented accurately in school? No. Never heard about all the dead children or the abuse. Just this week there was an online course being presented to students in Ontario that was found to require students to list the “positives” of the residential school system. It’s propaganda.
In reality there was a single class in a single school in BC that had such an assignment. Trying to broadly wash that is propaganda. Tiny, isolated case on the other side of the country. Neat.
It is impossible to be Canadian without having been thoroughly exposed to the realities of the residential school system. There have been multiple government inquiries. There were reparations paid. There was a truth and reconciliation commission. This is not at all new news.
But it's being presented as new news making people think this is some new discovery, as if unknown murder pits have been exposed. As if it's in addition to what everyone already knew about the residential school system. But it isn't.
Aside from some exaggerated, unverified numbers, there is literally nothing new in these claims. And it has become essentially a PR vehicle, so it's going to percolate for months to come.