Jawbone found in possible unmarked residential school grave | "Six years old, I was imprisoned here"

 The landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report, released
in 2015, identified 3,200 confirmed deaths of children at residential
schools but the number is believed to be higher. Not all deaths were
properly recorded and the bodies of some of the children were never sent
home. In some cases, grave markers were lost to time or removed.

Getty Images:  Children's shoes have come to be a symbol for the estimated thousands of children who died while attending residential school.

By Holly Honderich (BBC)

An
indigenous nation in Canada said it has discovered evidence of possible
unmarked graves on the grounds of a former residential school.

Star
Blanket Cree Nation said a ground-penetrating radar had revealed the
jawbone fragment of a small child and more than 2,000 "areas of
interest".

Those are not yet confirmed to be evidence of human remains.

But the fragment "is physical proof of an unmarked grave", project lead Sheldon Poitras said on Thursday.

The
discovery from the Star Blanket Cree Nation in Saskatchewan follows a
wave of investigations into possible unmarked graves at the sites of
former residential schools in Canada. Ground searches starting in the
spring of 2021 have uncovered evidence of more than 1,100 such graves
across the country.

Areas
for this most recent search were identified after testimonials from
elders and former students of the former Qu'Appelle Indian Residential
School.

"It
was unthinkable. It was profound. It was sad. It was hurtful," Star
Blanket Chief Michael Starr said on Thursday of the discovery. "It made
us very angry what had happened to our young people here."

These
government-funded compulsory boarding schools were part of a policy
meant to assimilate indigenous children and destroy indigenous cultures
and languages.  Some 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were
taken from their families placed in these schools from the 19th Century
into the 1970s.

Survivors
had long testified about children who died at the schools, where
students were often housed in poorly built, poorly heated, and
unsanitary facilities.

The
landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report, released in
2015, identified 3,200 confirmed deaths of children at residential
schools but the number is believed to be higher. Not all deaths were
properly recorded and the bodies of some of the children were never sent
home. In some cases, grave markers were lost to time or removed.

VIDEO: Canada residential schools: "Six years old, I was imprisoned here"

Investigators
said they were considering options, including DNA testing, to confirm
the findings of the radar at Qu'Appelle Indian Residential School. Some
of the anomalies picked up by the search could be innocuous, things
like stones or pieces of wood.

The
jawbone was analysed by the Saskatchewan Coroners Services, who said it
belonged to a child aged four to six and is approximately 125 years old
- around the time the school was founded.

The
Qu'Appelle Indian Residential School, in southern Saskatchewan, was one
of the first residential schools to open in Canada and was run by the
Roman Catholic Church from 1884 to 1973.  It was eventually closed in
1998.

Noel Starblanket, a former student at Qu'Appelle Indian Residential School wrote in a testimonial for the University of Regina that he was constantly "slapped on the side of the head" at the school. One teacher struck him in the face and broke his nose.

"My
parents never hit me, my grandparents," he wrote. Before going to
school "I didn't know what it meant to be hit, physically abused".

The
Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program has a
hotline to help residential school survivors and their relatives
suffering trauma invoked by the recall of past abuse. The number is
1-866-925-4419.

More on this story

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