751 Unmarked Graves Found at Former Residential School for Indigenous Children in Canada

By Amanda Coletta and Michael E. Miller, The Washington Post

24 June 21

 

First Nation in Canada says it has found 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, at least the second such discovery here in less than a month as the country again confronts one of the darkest chapters of its history.

The Cowessess First Nation made the “horrific and shocking discovery” at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in the southeastern part of the province, according to a statement released Wednesday by the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents 74 First Nations in Saskatchewan.

The announcement comes less than a month after the Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc First Nation said a ground-penetrating radar specialist had uncovered evidence of unmarked graves containing the remains of 215 Indigenous children on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.

In the days following the announcement that graves had been discovered at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, Indigenous leaders and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there probably would be more discoveries as other such sites were searched.

The announcement from Saskatchewan was met with expressions of sadness and outrage.

“The news that hundreds of unmarked graves have been found in Cowessess First Nation is absolutely tragic, but not surprising,” tweeted Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. “I urge all Canadians to stand with First Nations in this extremely difficult and emotional time.”

Nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were sent to the government-funded and church-run boarding schools, which were set up in the 19th century to assimilate them and operated until the late 1990s. Many children were forcibly separated from their families to be placed in the schools.

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in a 2015 report that many of the students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the schools, which barred them from practicing their traditions and speaking their languages. It said the schools carried out “cultural genocide” and effectively institutionalized child neglect.

The commission identified more than 3,000 students who died at the schools, a rate that was far higher than for non-Indigenous school-aged children. That number has since grown. Officials say the total number of children who died or went missing at the schools might never be known.

Children often died of diseases that spread rapidly in unsanitary living conditions, in accidents and in fires, the commission said. Some disappeared while trying to escape. To save money, authorities often buried the bodies on or near school sites, rather than send them back to their families.

The Cowessess First Nation had long suspected there were many unmarked graves at the site, which is about 87 miles east of Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan.

The Marieval Indian Residential School was founded in the 1890s by Catholic missionaries. The federal government began funding the school in 1901 and took over its administration in 1969 before turning it over to the Cowessess First Nation in 1987. It closed in the 1990s.

The First Nation received a federal grant to bring in an underground radar detection team from a local educational institute. The planning for the project began two years ago, but it was delayed until a few weeks ago by the coronavirus pandemic, Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme told the Regina Leader-Post last month.

“The pain is real, the pain is there and the pain hasn’t gone away,” Delorme told the newspaper. “As we heal, every Cowessess citizen has a family member in that gravesite. To know there’s some unmarked, it continues the pain.”

The First Nation planned to identify all the remains and build a monument to honor the dead, he said.

The findings have rekindled appeals for accountability, particularly from the Catholic entities that ran most of the schools. Officials say some of them have not turned over records that might help identify missing children or locate the graves.

The findings have also fueled calls for monuments to the Canadian leaders who set up the residential school system to be removed from public view.

The Vatican has come under pressure from residential school survivors and from Trudeau to make an official apology for the Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system. Trudeau made a personal appeal to Pope Francis in 2017, but the pontiff has stopped short of an apology. The leaders of the United and Anglican Churches in Canada, which also operated schools, have apologized.