On a broader level, facts are always curated. We don’t know if Mims had a wife waiting for him at home, because no one cares. We don’t know whether the officer who fired the taser was left handed or right handed, because it’s not relevant to this story. Those are both details that ARE sometimes relevant to this kind of story, and are sometimes presented.
I was an officer of a student square dance club when a woman came to our executive committee meeting to ask us to post something along the lines of “our dances take place on land stolen from native Americans” on our website. I replied that i was uncomfortable making the website political. She replied, " it’s not political, it’s just a fact". I pointed out that we don’t publish the square root of 2 on our website either. We post facts that we think are relevant to club members and other people who might read the website. We curate the facts. And how we curate them tells other people things about us.
more hijacky details
I’ve since read good arguments for posting that kind of indigenous land acknowledgement. But she didn’t present any at the time, instead she said something about such a notice being welcoming to indigenous students. Then someone noted that there aren’t many indigenous students at the school, but maybe we have a problem with being welcoming to Black students. We then got into a really awkward discussion about minorites and the club, and whether we should reach out in some way to Black students–i guess the really awkward part of that was that one of our two Black students was sitting there because I’d given her a ride, and she REALLY wanted no part of the conversation. I just kept hoping the conversation would end.
Ironically, the land we dance on is landfill, and in some technical factual sense was never lived on by indigenous people. But that fact is less relevant than the political impact of posting a statement.