Photo: Castanet Staff Tk'emlups te Secwepemc Kukpi7 Rosanne Casimir
The remains of 215 children have been found buried on the site of a former residential school in Kamloops.
Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation says in a news release that the remains were confirmed last weekend with the help of a ground-penetrating radar specialist.
Casimir calls the discovery an "unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented at the Kamloops Indian Residential School."
She says it’s believed the deaths are undocumented, although a local museum archivist is working with the Royal British Columbia Museum to see if any records of the deaths can be found.
She says the children, some as young as three and were students at the school, once the largest in Canada’s residential school system.
The chief says work to identify the site was led by the First Nation's language and cultural department alongside ceremonial knowledge keepers, who made sure the work was done was in line with cultural protocols.
Casimir says the leadership of the Tk’emlups community "acknowledges their responsibility to caretake for these lost children."
Access to the latest technology allows for a true accounting of the missing children and will hopefully bring some peace and closure to those lives lost, she says in the release on Thursday.
Casimir says band officials are informing community members and surrounding communities that had children who attended the school.
“This is the beginning but, given the nature of this news, we felt it important to share immediately,” she says.
The school operated between 1890 and 1969. The federal government took over the operation from the church to operate as a day school until it closed in 1978.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its final report on residential schools more than five years ago. The nearly 4,000-page account details the harsh mistreatment inflicted on Indigenous children at the institutions, where at least 3,200 children died amid abuse and neglect.
PirateQueenOfAshes on May 28th, 2021 at 06:08 UTC »
I once heard a story on the CBC about a school like this. Boys as young as 3 or 4 were torn from their mothers and thrown into basement 'dorms'. Concrete floors nearly freezing with threadbare blankets and some musty lockers. Many would cry out for their mothers. The man recounting his story said that the older boys who had been trapped there surviving would take the little ones who were crying and put them up on top of the lockers, near the roof of the basement. Many ducts and such would stick out. They would tell the younger boys, "Hold onto this pipe here. It's kind of warm. Hold onto this pipe, and think of your mother." Edit: I also recall watching The Addams Family Values and Wednesdays speech about Native treatment is SPOT ON, if not lacking in the immeasurable amount of awful details peppered through the events she speaks of.
TakedownMaple on May 28th, 2021 at 05:04 UTC »
Opened the link thinking “please don’t be kamloops, please dont be kamloops”
Used to pass that school every day. Horrifying.
ObelusPrime on May 28th, 2021 at 04:00 UTC »
I listened to a survivor of a residential school speak around 10 years ago. She was around 6/7 years old at the time and she was just abused for years. She said she had her hair shaved, beaten for not standing up straight, would be slapped for speaking out of turn. She said they broke her friends arm and scolded her friend for crying about it. She also said that since this was during WW2, the country would ship uniforms of injured or deceased soldiers to be washed and patched up by the kids. She rembered patching bullet holes and scraping blood out from combat boots.
Fucking nightmare conditions for anyone, let alone children.