Kamloops horrors

“Sooner or later the truth comes to light” – Dutch proverb

It’s that time of the year again in Canada when every other conversation seems to revolve around the hockey playoffs and the pursuit of the Stanley Cup. On Thursday last, however, the topic of hockey was placed on the backburner, as the startling news of a gruesome discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous children buried in an unmarked mass grave on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia, swept across Canada.

As the distressing revelation sank in, a nation reflected on the stark truth, which has long been an open secret among the Indigenous people. The memories of those present in Canada over the past weekend will be filled with the spontaneous memorials created across the country, the candlelight vigils held, and the flags drooping at half-mast on Monday, in honour of the children. The image of 215 pairs of brightly-coloured, tiny children’s shoes, empty, surrounded by silent weeping members of Indigenous tribes as they thought of the young lives which had been tragically snuffed out, will linger forever.

How was the discovery made? How does a tragedy of this magnitude take place? Was this an isolated incident? How was this covered up? Are there more similar grave sites? As the questions continue to mount, so will the search for answers to this horrific legacy. The harsh reality is; this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation of Southern B C, who had been searching for the remains of the children for two decades confirmed that the discovery had been made using ground-penetrating radar technology. In their release, the First Nation did not reveal the name of the hired specialist or how the work was completed, other than that it was done in a culturally appropriate and respectful manner. They revealed that these missing children were undocumented deaths and they are calling for the sites of former residential schools to be protected.

Over time, mass grave sites have been unearthed close to or at sites of former residential schools. The children’s remains found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, which opened in 1893 and was once the largest of its kind in Canada, were the fourth such discovery. It follows the 72 graves uncovered at the Battleford Industrial School in Saskatchewan in the 1970s; the coffins of 34 children who had died at nearby Dunbow Residential School in Alberta in 2001; and, the two dozen graves found near the Muskowekwan Residential School in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 2019.

The Residential School system was in place from the 1830s to 1996, and it is estimated that 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to these boarding schools. The aim of the network of schools was to eliminate Indigenous language and culture, and indoctrinate the children with English and Christian beliefs. The schools, which were run by large religious organizations and the government, were accused of perpetuating a reign of terror on the young innocent residents, including physical and sexual abuse. In some instances, the poorly funded schools allegedly conducted decadeslong experiments with poor diets which resulted in malnutrition in the children.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was established in 2008 by parties of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. (The word ‘Reconciliation’ has always been criticised by the First Nations since it suggests that there was some kind of harmonious relationship between the early settlers and the First Nations which is being restored, and thus, its use ignores the existence of “pre-Aboriginal sovereignty.”). The TRC’s objectives were to document the lasting impacts of the Indian Residential School system on Indigenous students and their families, and to inform the Canadian public, who had been kept in the dark, of this horrendous nightmare.

The TRC officially ended in December 2015 with the release of a multi-volume report, which concluded that the Indian Residential School system amounted to cultural genocide. The commission’s publication “They Came for the Children” has left a lasting reminder of this awful tragedy for generations to come. One of the projects established was ‘The Missing Children’ project to document the deaths of thousands of children since the Department of Indian Affairs had stopped recording those deaths in 1914.

As of July 2019, of the 94 “Calls to Action” summarized in the TRC’s June 2015 report “to redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation” only 10 had been completed, 21 were in-progress with projects underway, 37 were in-progress with projects proposed, and 26 “not yet started” according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s website Beyond 94 which was developed to track the status of each call.

According to the TRC’s conservative estimates, between 4,100 and 6,000 children died either through outbreaks of disease, neglect or abuse at the residential schools. The number of 51 deaths given for the Kamloops Indian Residential School is a far cry from the recent discovery. For decades prior to the establishment of the TRC, the anguished pleas of Indigenous families’ enquiries to what happened to their children who never returned home had fallen on deaf ears. Given the closure of the schools, the neglect of burying grounds over time, estimates of hundreds of sites to be searched, poor recording, and the reluctance of the religious organizations running the schools to release their records, the final number of children who died in the residential school system will never be conclusive. The Chiefs of the various First Nations bands have vowed to continue searching for their lost members despite these insurmountable odds.

While the Canadian Government has issued an apology, the Roman Catholic Church, which ran the Kamloops residential school until the federal government took it over in the late 1960s, (as of writing), has remained steadfastly silent on the discovery despite public calls for an explanation or an apology. The horrors which were meted out on First Nations’ children still lives on in the minds of the survivors who had assumed or hoped that their missing friends and classmates had successfully run away from the schools.

May the souls of those recently discovered children rest in peace.