A group of academics and concerned citizens is calling for an evidence-based perspective on residential school burials, as well as for more disclosure and more investigation.
On Jan. 25, Williams Lake First Nation in British Columbia’s central interior announced that 93 possible gravesites had been uncovered on the grounds of a residential school that operated there from 1891 to 1981. Whitney Spearing, who led the investigation, said investigators found the “reflections” using ground-penetrating radar (GPR), noting that 50 of the potential graves were not associated with a cemetery on the school grounds.
In early January, the CBC' Fifth Estate dedicated a 50-minute program to allegations of crimes made by former students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in south-central B.C. Allegations included sexual abuse in the basement, children burned in the furnace or buried in the orchard in holes dug by children, and even children hung in a barn on the grounds.
Brian Giesbrecht, a retired Manitoba judge and senior fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, says he believes many news reports on the issue have been more sensational than evidence-driven.
“Many of the people there actually believe these stories. If that’s where this comes from, there’s no evidence that there are bodies there, nothing that would stand up in court,” Giesbrecht says of the 215 possible graves that were detected at the Kamloops school using GPR.
Tom Flanagan, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary, says that claims, stories, and oral accounts are not enough.
“I think all these people are sincere. I don’t doubt their sincerity for a moment. I think they have actually come to believe these stories. But for the rest of us, I think we’re entitled to see some actual evidence, of which there is zero at this point,” Flanagan said in an interview.
On May 27, 2021, Chief Rosanne Casimir announced that Sarah Beaulieu, a sessional lecturer in anthropology and sociology at the University of the Fraser Valley, found 215 soil anomalies that could indicate human remains. When Beaulieu presented her findings at a press conference on July 15, 2021, she emphasized that only by exhuming the bodies could their presence be confirmed, but other “supporting evidence” suggested they were there.
“There was an east-west configuration of the subsurface anomalies in the orchard that support typical Christian burial traditions, the juvenile rib bone and tooth discovered in the same survey location, and finally, but most importantly, the ceremonial knowledge keepers’ oral histories that recalled burials in this location,” Beaulieu said.
“It is important to note that remote sensing, such as GPR, is not necessary to know that children went missing in the Indian residential school context. This fact has been recognized by indigenous communities for generations.”
Scrutinizing Findings
Giesbrecht emphasized the importance of evidence and expressed concern that neither the government nor the media is making a push to seek out evidence to substantiate the reported findings.“For reasons that don’t seem very clear, journalists have just not asked that question. The prime minister has not pushed back on this. Nobody pushed back on it. So you have this national hysteria over this unsubstantiated report,” he said.
Flanagan shares that sentiment.
“The Canadian media swallowed the story, hook, line, and sinker, when it came out, and are still repeating it as in the CBC 50-minute show,” he said. “I think they have a lot to answer for because this has blackened Canada’s reputation around the world. There was something at the UN condemning Canada, and there was a big story in The New York Times.”
Giesbrecht, Flanagan, and about a dozen other retired and current academics and concerned citizens have formed an informal research group to scrutinize the findings related to the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The group has found the causes of death for all students known to have died during their years attending the school.
“It was a very large school. It was open for about 80 years, and over that period of time, 51 children died,” said Flanagan.
“Many, many of these deaths, when you look at them, at least according to the B.C. death certificates, they didn’t actually die at the school, they died ... when they were home for the summer. A few died from disease at the school.”
Attending school became mandatory for indigenous children aged 7 to 16 as part of amendments made to the Indian Act in 1920. This was over two decades after schooling was made compulsory for other children, starting in 1871 in Ontario and soon followed by other provinces.
Due to the remote areas where some indigenous people lived, requiring their children to attend school meant separating them from their parents.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard experiences of abuse in residential schools, including sexual and severe physical abuse. Its analysis found that around 50 people have been convicted.
The commission identified 3,201 deaths of residential school children, of which 2,434 occurred before 1940, prior to effective treatments for tuberculosis. The disease accounted for nearly half of the deaths for which there is a known cause.
As for the specific examinations in Kamloops and in Williams Lake, Giesbrecht says no evidence has been made public for independent analysis.
“They won’t release that, and they won’t basically give any of the evidence that they have been relying on to make these claims,” he said.
Demands for Compensation
Following the Kamloops school announcement last May, 25 Canadian churches were lit on fire as of late August 2021 and at least 43 more were vandalized. Flanagan says taxpayers will also pay a penalty.“All this outburst of emotionalism from Kamloops encouraged the Trudeau government to really grab this claim and to magnify the amount of money being spent.”
Miller had no doubt what an investigation would find.
“Communities that choose this path will need support to ensure these efforts respect strict trauma informed and survivor focused protocols,” he wrote. “As the results of these investigations are released, they will continue to shock the conscience of Canadians.”
