Canadian Indian residential school gravesites
[8] As of September 2024[update], no bodies have been exhumed from the suspected gravesites due to a lack community consensus on whether to investigate detected anomalies at the risk of disturbing burials.
[15] In October 2022, the House of Commons of Canada unanimously passed a motion calling on the federal Canadian government to recognize the residential school system as genocide.
[25] There were repeated outbreaks of tuberculosis in the early 20th century; "given their cramped conditions and negligent health practices, residential schools were hotbeds for the spread of TB", a National Post reporter wrote.
[31] The nation announced plans to search further based on the testimony of residential school survivors, including at a nearby Anglican church and a site where Indian agents and the North-West Mounted Police had structures.
[30] Since 2004, partial remains have been repeatedly discovered while digging new graves in the Saddle Lake Cree Nation community cemetery, located near the former site of the Blue Quills Indian Residential School.
[33] The investigators believe that the discoveries include a mass grave, where they found "numerous children-sized skeletons wrapped in white cloth," and theorized that there could have been from a typhoid outbreak at the school.
[39] In June 2022, the Institute for Prairie Indigenous Archaeology (PIA) led a preliminary ground-penetrating radar search of the former site of St. Bruno's Indian Residential School, which covered the cemetery, the root cellars, and some areas of the schoolyard, 1.8 acres in total.
[40] In 1996, a flood eroded the banks of the Highwood River, exposing the caskets and remains of some of the 72 children known to have died while attending Dunbow Industrial School, also referred to as St.
[46] St. Michael's Indian Residential School, in Alert Bay – led by 'Namgis First Nation; the search was in "early stages" as of July 2021, and a press release in February 2022 officially announced the start of the inquiry, detailing plans for community engagement, a project manager, and a monument following the investigation.
Records reviewed by the TRC included 29 children who`lans to contact family members of those dead students that can be identified, and eventually hold a ceremony to tear the old school building down.
[54] In 2021, Sarah Beaulieu, an anthropologist experienced at searching for historical gravesites,[55] surveyed the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School on the lands of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation with ground-penetrating radar and observed "disruptions in the ground" which she concluded could be 200 unmarked graves, based on "their placement, size, depth, and other features"[56][55] though "only forensic investigation with excavation" would confirm if these were actually human remains.
[57] As of May 2022, the nation had assembled a team of technical archaeologists and professors as they continue their investigation of the site, which Chief Rosanne Casimir described as an ongoing process from "exhumation to memorialization.
[64] In 2018 the Penelakut chief, council and elders met with researchers from the University of British Columbia to discuss a possible survey of the grounds of the former Kuper Island Indian Residential school for unmarked graves using GPR.
[76] Late in 2021 memorial house post carvings were erected at the second location of the government-run St. Mary's, now Pekw'Xe:yles, and Coqualeetza[82] to honor victims of abuse and those who died.
Coroner's Service and attorney general to create a memorandum of understanding that would allow them to proceed with further work to confirm the potential gravesites, using small probes and DNA testing.
[88][91] As of late July 2021, Sagkeeng First Nation had begun a search of the former site of Fort Alexander Indian Residential School, near Powerview-Pine Falls in Manitoba, using drone surveying and ground-penetrating radar.
The RCMP began an investigation in October 2022 of 71 ground anomalies identified in five scans of a 100-acre area around the site of the residential school, and around and underneath a Catholic church.
Starting around 2009, former NWT premier Stephen Kakfwi made annual pilgrimages to the site to honour the dead in ceremony, and encouraged community members, and representatives of governments and religious institutions to do the same.
[105][106] In July 2021, Deh Gáh Got’ı̨ę First Nation confirmed that they would try to complete a further search of the former school grounds before the first snowfall, though community healing and acquiring funding were priorities.
[102][107] On January 16, 2025, it was announced that a search conducted on a small portion of the grounds of the former McIntosh Indian Residential School in Grassy Narrows First Nation near Kenora revealed 114 suspected unmarked burial sites through visual survey and ground-penetrating radar.
[108] On January 17, 2023, a statement released by Wauzhushk Onigum Nation announced the discovery of 171 "anomalies", which it called "plausible burials",[109] located by ground-penetrating radar around the former St. Mary's Indian Residential School.
[120] Initial work on a new water system accidentally dug up buried human bodies in 1992 and the nation ordered a search with GPR based on documentary records.
[132] On June 24, 2021, Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme announced that findings from the preliminary survey indicated the presence of up to 751 unmarked graves near the site of the former school.
"[137] As part of a project begun in November 2021,[138] Star Blanket Cree Nation carried out a search of the former grounds of Qu'Appelle Indian Residential School in fall and winter 2022 using ground-penetrating radar.
Its preliminary findings, announced January 12, 2023, included over 2000 "hits" on ground-penetrating radar and the discovery of a fragment of the jawbone of a child between 4 and 6, which the Saskatchewan Coroners Service estimated was approximately 125 years old.
[141] Documents from 1921 indicated that a prairie fire probably destroyed the wooden crosses marking thirty to forty gravesites, at the western edge of site of the former school.
[179][180] An opinion piece by Kisha Supernant and Sean Carleton, published by the CBC, responded to denialists, stating that "[t]here is no big lie or deliberate hoax", but is instead "the complicated nature of what the TRC calls the 'complex truth' ".
[184] MPs Mumilaaq Qaqqaq and Charlie Angus called on Justice Minister David Lametti to launch an independent investigation on crimes against humanity in Canada.
[201] Indigenous leaders, including Chief Clarence Louie of the Osoyoos Indian Band, as well as the prime minister and provincial officials condemned the suspected arsons.
In May 2022, the National Post article "The year of the graves" said that despite the saturation of news coverage and their consequences, nothing new had been added to the public record that was not already known and that "it wasn't the Indigenous people directly involved who made the disturbing claims that ended up in the headlines".
