Canada will investigate other sites
Remains of 215 children were found in Kamloops, B.C.
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged Monday to help uncover burial sites at other residential schools after the remains of 215 children were found at a former school in Kamloops, B.C.
The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced late last week that ground penetrating radar had covered the remains at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, which was in operation as a residential school until 1969. The school had thousands of children pass through over the 80 years it was in operation.
Perry Bellegarde, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said if needed, ground penetrating radar should be used at all former residential schools to uncover other unmarked graves which were believed to exist.
Trudeau said the discovery in Kamloops further underlined the horrific nature of residential schools.
“Sadly, this is not an exception or an isolated incident. We’re not going to hide from that. We have to acknowledge the truth. Residential schools were a reality, a tragedy that existed here in our country, and we have to own up to it.”
The government ordered flags lowered to half-staff over the weekend in response to the discovery. Trudeau said the government was prepared to work with communities across the country on further searches and believed there was merit to a standardized approach to look at all of the former residential school sites.
“There will be many, many discussions to be had in the coming days and weeks about how we can best support these communities and get to the truth,” he said. “We will work with the provinces and territories to make sure that we’re all doing the right thing.”
When it released its report in 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called on the government to work with landowners and Indigenous groups to try and locate potential burial sites and graves on former residential school property.
During its work, the TRC found several gravesites and found in many cases they had been abandoned or neglected. It said there were likely others it had not found.
“On the basis of the work undertaken to date, it is apparent that there are likely to be other unidentified residential gravesites across the country,” reads the TRC report. “A national program, carried out in close consultation with the concerned Aboriginal communities, is required to complete the task of identifying the many unmarked residential school cemeteries and gravesites across Canada.”
In 2019, the Liberals provided $33.8 million, spread over three years, to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to create a register of the children who died in schools. It has so far documented more than 4,100 cases, but the focus of the effort was using admission records, death certificates and other documentation to build the list of students who died in the schools.
The TRC found not only did Indigenous children die at a much higher rate than other children, but when they died their names and other basic information was frequently not recorded and, for most of the school’s history, the schools did not return the children’s bodies to their home communities.
In its final report, the TRC issued several recommendations around the missing sites including creating online registries of the burial sites and the children who died as well as creating appropriate memorials.
Bellegarde said those calls to action have not been implemented and the government must do more. He said the burial sites were known in the Indigenous community and too often dismissed, but the Kamloops site showed the truth.
“The sad part was nobody believed them. But now here’s your concrete, tragic, horrific evidence of 215 bodies that have been found.”
The funding for the search in Kamloops was provided by the British Columbia government. Trudeau said his government was consulting with provinces and territories and Indigenous communities to come to a solution.
Bellegarde said the work that had been done so far mostly relied on the school’s records.
“Here’s the catalyst to do the proper research and the proper investigation. It’s clear, more research, more investigation needs to be done,” he said. There was very poor record keeping in some of the residential schools across Canada so we have to use this now and get the proper research done.”
The Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe issued a joint call for the federal government to fund investigations at the 20 residential school sites in that province.
FSIN Chief Bobby Cameron said Indigenous communities needed the truth if they were to heal.