Former school yard searched for unmarked graves

On Muskowekwan First Nation, a search for unmarked graves has begun near a former residential school so a new health and wellness centre can be built without fear of disturbing any remains.

“What we’re planning on doing is putting a fence or a memorial marker there ... where we find these unmarked graves, just to acknowledge that they were there and buried there,” said band councillor Cynthia Desjarlais.

She believes most of the graves date back to the early 1900s. After the old wooden residential school building burned down around 1913, a new brick school was constructed on top of some of the graves, she said.

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) in Winnipeg, with funding from the federal government, approached the east-central Saskatchewan community about this project, said Desjarlais. The NCTR had the resources, equipment and experts needed to conduct a sonar exploration of the area.

Desjarlais emphasized they will not be trying to identify the remains in any way as they don’t wish to dig up the graves. She said just being able to mark these graves and properly honour them helps the community heal.

But the community also has another goal in mind to help bring healing.

Chief Reginald Bellerose said the community wants to build a new healing and wellness centre near the old residential school, and the sonar work is ensuring they can do that without disturbing any graves.

“Rather than have any disruption, we want to secure the site and make sure that that site where it’s going to be located does not have any graves below,” he said.

Earlier this year, 335 former students of the Muskowekwan Indian Residential School gathered to decide the fate of the school building. Desjarlais said 331 voted to let it stand as a reminder of the past instead of tearing it down. Now the building has been placed on the National Trust for Canada’s Top 10 Endangered Places List for 2018.

Bellerose said it’s important for the school to stay in the community — and for the wellness centre to be near it — so history is not forgotten amid the issues stemming from it.

“We’re dealing with poverty, we’re dealing with chronic health issues, we’re dealing with addictions. You know, for a community to deal with one of those alone is challenging, but then to deal with all three combined, there’s a multiplier effect to that,” he said.

“Many of those issues can be traced right back to those schools that were existing across Saskatchewan and Canada. That is the root of the problem. So if we don’t ever address the root of the problem, we’re not going to solve the issues that we’re dealing with.”

The wellness centre will have a combination of cultural and clinical approaches to healing, but with the focus on the cultural, said Bellerose.

He said current clinical approaches to healing have not seen good success rates, which is why the community is looking to do things differently.

“It’s controlled by First Nations with our own ... First Nation world view on healing and wellness, which is not clinical,” he said, noting that mental health care will be a key part.

“I’m not going to wait for the government to tell us how to heal because the government and their policies is actually what put us in this predicament,” he said.

Funding for the new centre is still up in the air, although Bellerose said the community has been working with all levels of government.

“Everybody likes to talk reconciliation; the challenge we’re having is nobody likes to fund reconciliation,” he said.

Bellerose said a public campaign will also be started to raise awareness of the centre and its goals, highlighting that there are other options for healing besides traditional institutions.

Programming at the new wellness centre will hopefully include language and culture revitalization, traditional parenting experts, traditional knowledge keepers, horse programming to help with mental health, and medical professionals in partnership with the province, said Bellerose.

“It’s not only Muskowekwan who needs this. Many First Nations need these models and this type of facility,” he said. “We have to take control of the process, design the program with input from our own people and then work on the solutions ourselves.”

The community is hoping to have the wellness centre up and running some time in 2019.