Search uncovers 171 ‘plausible burials’ near Ontario residential school
Posted January 17, 2023 3:22 pm.
Last Updated January 17, 2023 3:33 pm.
Wauzhushk Onigum Nation in northern Ontario says it has uncovered 171 “plausible burials” in studies of cemetery grounds at a former residential school site.
The First Nation says with the exception of five grave markers, the rest are unmarked.
In a news release Tuesday afternoon, the First Nation says the site linked to the former St. Mary’s Residential School in Kenora, Ont., has been secured in accordance with Anishinaabe protocols.
The First Nation says the anomalies, which it also calls “plausible burials,” were found during studies conducted by its technical, archeological and ground-penetrating-radar team.
The release says the First Nation is meeting with federal and provincial ministers Tuesday to discuss the next steps, including the resources required to continue the investigation.
It says the First Nation it is looking to gain greater certainty about the number of plausible graves in the cemetery grounds and to conduct investigations at several additional sites in the vicinity of the school.
The news comes just days after a First Nation in Saskatchewan says ground-penetrating radar has discovered more than 2,000 areas of interest and a child’s bone was separately found at the site of one of the longest-running residential schools in the country.
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Areas for the Saskatchewan search were selected after testimonials from former students and elders who witnessed or heard stories of what happened at the residential school about 75 km northeast of Regina.
Residential school records needed to answer ‘hard questions’: special interlocutor
Meanwhile, the woman appointed to work with Indigenous communities as they search for unmarked graves around former residential schools says additional records must be shared in order to answer “hard questions,” including who the missing children were, how they died and where they are buried.
Without records of the genocide of Indigenous Peoples, special interlocutor Kimberly Murray says “deniers will continue to deny” and future generations could be led to forget.
Murray told a national gathering on unmarked burials in Vancouver that survivors have a “right to know,” and that right is not only individual, but collective, so they can “draw on the past to prevent future violations.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said his government is committed to sharing all the information it can possibly find about the institutions in federal records.
Despite the pledge, Murray says “the fight is not over” to find documentation with the potential to help people as they search for missing family members.
There have been numerous searches at the sites of former residential institutions since the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc announced in May 2021 that more than 200 suspected unmarked graves had been identified on the grounds of the former school in Kamloops, B.C.
