[BryantD]

Hey, try not to lie too obviously. I explicitly said "not a treaty matter," and I explicitly said I didn't necessarily agree with the decision.

Not that anyone's reading this but what a great example of the tired old trick of attempting to use social justice language as a rhetorical lever.

[mothballed]

You said

>This was an indigenous people treaty case

and here say

>not a treaty matter

The fact you may have contradicted yourself later by arguing it is a "case" but not a "matter" doesn't disprove that. It's just a cheap way to cover both bases by using vague enough overlapping terminology that you can claim it's a "case" when you want or a "matter" when you want so you can retroactively create a catch-22 where you win if it's heads and I lose if it's tails.

[BryantD]

How do you manage to have conversations with people in your day to day life with so much assuming negative intent? Some people treat these little linguistic excursions as ways to achieve common understanding, rather than as a sporting event with winners and losers, you know.

What you can do if you're uncertain -- and my language was sloppy, good point! -- is say "hey, I'm not sure what you meant here; can you clarify?" And I say "yeah, I was unclear. I meant that the question was related to treaty status but after digging in, it's not required by treaty for that elected position to only be occupied by someone of a specific heritage. Thank you for pointing that out."

(I might not have said thank you, to be honest, and of course you're welcome to assume I'm just covering up because you called me on the phrasing.)