PLACE OF PILGRIMAGE
Cemetery at Cowessess draws visitors to bear witness
Rhiana Cote takes loving care of her little son's grave.
Noah died days after his premature birth, 11 years ago. Cote comes once a year to clean up his plot, plant flowers and pick up garbage at the Cowessess First Nation cemetery. She brings her daughter Sophia to visit with the big brother she never knew.
But this year, Cote made a second trip to the cemetery. There were 751 more graves in need of love.
“It's hard for me to explain to my children,” says Cote, standing amid flags that show where radar detected signs of unmarked graves. She told Sophia, “let's just take a walk and speak out loud, and just tell them that they're loved and that they can move on to the other side.”
For a mother who cherishes her dead son's gravestone, it's hard to accept that others have none. Cowessess leadership believes the Catholic Church removed their gravestones decades ago.
“It really hurts me,” says Cote, who now lives in Regina but grew up on Cowessess. She's always felt a weight as she walked through that field.
“The feeling that I feel, the heaviness, it's always been heavy here every time I come.”
Cote knew there was something here. It was that heavy energy, but also stories from her grandparents. There were places she wouldn't walk. But she never imagined the graves went out so far.
Cowessess members say that again and again, as they return to the community to bear witness.
“We always knew,” says Chasity Delorme, but they didn't grasp the scale. She pointed out where children used to skate on a rink. “Never did we ever anticipate that it would be so far over that way — and there would be so many.”
Delorme has returned several times since the discovery was announced late last month. She comes to listen to stories, to absorb the knowledge preserved long after the gravestones disappeared.
On Thursday, Delorme passed it on still further. She led a group of teachers from Regina's Miller Comprehensive Catholic High School though the site. She says they're on “a genuine reconciliation journey,” and she believes they need to feel history with their senses.
“We're taught by oral teachings and by experiences, so I wanted them to have that experience and see how real the past is...,” she says. “I want to help them teach other generations of students.”
The cemetery has become a place of pilgrimage as hundreds come to learn, reflect and grieve.
Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme has seen about 25 people pass through that field each day. Many leave toys. The teachers left flowers. They spoke of the enormity of the site, physically and emotionally, and fought back tears. A mother and son soon came with two plush animals. She prayed. They called the feeling “overwhelming.”
In the place of headstones, some of the graves are marked with teddy bears, a pudgy giraffe, a bright red Elmo toy, a hedgehog holding a heart, a colourful bunny, a little plush dog.
“We prepared this area here for people to come,” says Chief Delorme. “There's a teepee. There's a fire ready to go. There are monuments. But just looking at the site, it's really heavy on the heart. It's really emotional. It's hard, but it can bring healing.
“Sitting here and reflecting, I think there is energy here for them to take back to wherever they go, to continue to persevere and get stronger one day at a time.”
It's uplifting for Chief Delorme to see far-flung Cowessess citizens make the trip home to the reserve. Like Chasity Delorme, he has watched some bring along family, friends or colleagues to share the truth.
“The grave site is the truth...,”
he says. “If we're ignorant to the truth, then reconciliation cannot happen.”
Chief Delorme has been clear about what the community has found and what hasn't been found on that 44,000 square-meter site. This is not a mass grave. Not all the dead are children. Some may not be Indigenous. But he believes many were students from the nearby Marieval Indian Residential School. Such institutions faced high mortality rates due to disease, malnutrition and neglect.
“If they passed in residential school, they were buried here,” he says, noting that there are families who have preserved the memories of relatives buried in those
unmarked graves. Every May, the community comes together for a flower day, where they clean the area, place new flowers and hold a feast on the site. There's a talking circle. That's where those stories come out.
“They will point out to the location they remember as a kid; there are aunties, uncles,” says Chief Delorme. “It's still real.”
Carol A. Lavallee, 69, remembers the spot where her infant brother Michael was buried, before he had a chance to go to school.
“When I was very young, I found that little grave and I marked it by taking steps from that statue,” says Lavallee, who walked seven steps to a spot now marked with a flag. “So I know where one little brother is, but I don't know where one sister and one brother are.”
Lavallee went to Marieval for nine years, beginning in the 1950s.
“Those were horrendous, abusive years” with 10 daily prayers and frequent runaways, she says.
Lavallee remembers the wooden clapper striking hands until they were red and swollen. She remembers the strap. She remembers the sexual abuse she endured in the basement of the church.
She still remembers her number: 39.
“Nothing had our name on it,” she recalls. “We were all numbers.”
Lavallee's parents went to residential school. So did her grandfather, who was the 21st registered student at Marieval.
She heard stories of disease outbreaks from those earlier times, though her father never mentioned widespread deaths. Lavallee said only one student died during her time at the school, a teenage girl named Joan who suffered from epilepsy. Joan may be buried in that field, though Lavallee can't say where.
Many of the gravestones were still there when Lavallee attended Marieval. She remembers they were beautiful, made of cement and marble. Some had crosses. Some were heart shaped. Others were adorned with angels.
She read the engravings. Some family names were unrecognizable, leading her to suspect they didn't come from the reserve. She believes a few may have come from white settlers living in the valley. In her estimation, residential school students make up only a small minority of the bodies in those graves.
But even Lavallee was shocked about how many were detected on the site.
“I was devastated,” she says. “We always try to look after our deceased ones, our ones that are now resting.”
There are stories suggesting that the gravestones were taken toward the river. Cowessess is searching for them in the hopes they can help pin down names, together with the help of records the First Nation is collecting.
“It's like a puzzle,” says Chief Delorme.
The past weeks have been among the toughest of his career, but the hard work of honouring the departed is rewarding.
“It gives me energy,” he says. “It gives me hope.”
As other Saskatchewan First Nations embark on their own searches of former residential schools, Delorme says they should prepare themselves to respond to the world and stand by the truth.
It will hurt but, by aiming for truth, they can persevere.
For Cowessess, it's been a time of anger, tears and trauma. Now is the time for healing, out of the limelight.
“We're at the point saying, listen, we love that you stand beside us, but give us our calm moment to heal and address the triggers. Let us finish these hits to confirm how many actual bodies are here. Let us find names,” he concludes. “It was just a little too overwhelming because we are a very close, quiet community. And for the last three weeks, we opened up to the world.”
Just looking at the site, it's really heavy on the heart. It's really emotional. It's hard, but it can still bring healing. COWESSESS CHIEF CADMUS DELORME