The news cycle in British Columbia over the last eight months has been an exhaustive litany of grim descriptors: unprecedented (the heat and its death toll); war zone (forest fires); devastating (floods.) But before all that was the shocking news in May of the discovery of more than 200 unmarked burial sites on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
In the aftermath of that announcement, the provincial government made money available for 21 other First Nations that wanted to examine their territories for similar evidence. And while public attention soon shifted from calamity to calamity in the ensuing months, the painstaking work of searching went on. On Tuesday, the Williams Lake First Nation announced the early results of its investigation.
The use of several technologies have indicated 93 “reflections” – potential burial sites – on a portion of a 14-hectare area where the St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School once stood. The school, which was around in one form or another for 90 years, was one of British Columbia’s most notorious: During the 1980s and 1990s, several former teachers were jailed for sex crimes involving dozens of students. The buildings have been demolished and much of the area is now ranch land.
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Archaeologist Whitney Spearing outlined a search that made use of several different technologies. Ground-penetrating radar, the same technique used at Kamloops, was used, and so was a laser-radar instrument known as LiDAR, which was mounted on a small airplane and helped locate the positions of old pipes and now-demolished buildings. Survivors of the school were interviewed and investigators are still combing through archives and interment records of a cemetery, which was in use until the school closed in 1981.
“It must be emphasized that no geophysical investigation can provide certainty into the presence of human remains – excavation is the only technology that will provide answers as to whether human remains are present within the reflections in the St. Joseph’s Mission investigation area,” Ms. Spearing told reporters.
Kukpi7 (Chief) Willie Sellars said the decades of horrific conditions at the school led to some official records being uncovered that detailed students running away and perishing in the wild. In one case, a group of nine children attempted to kill themselves by ingesting poison hemlock. Kukpi7 Sellars said only one died.
“At the time, the coroner’s service and RCMP saw no reason to investigate the death as the child was ‘only an Indian,’” Kukpi7 Sellars said.
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Kukpi7 Sellars said immediate steps need to be taken to protect the site and secure the evidence with 24-hour security before an eventual discussion is undertaken on whether to excavate these potential burials. In the meantime, he said, outreach will also continue with survivors and families of former students.
“In the coming weeks, the team will engage directly with the communities where children are known to be missing or deceased to discuss the investigation, return records and photographs of their children who were lost through the residential school system at St. Joseph’s Mission,” Kukpi7 Sellars said.
The question of excavating the St. Joseph’s site and the one at Kamloops will not be answered until after a long period of consultation with community members. The schools in both cases drew students from several area First Nations, so survivors and their families are scattered widely.
In the meantime, Indigenous groups across Canada will soon have access to historical documents related to residential schools.
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In December, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller announced that Ottawa would hand over thousands of previously undisclosed residential school documents to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and that the federal government believed hanging on to them would be a breach of its “moral duty” to the survivors.
Last week, the federal government said the transfer of documents will take place according to a schedule that works for the NCTR.
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.