Canadian Indian residential school gravesites

The Canadian residential school system, funded by the Canadian government and administered by Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and United religious groups, was created to remove and isolate Indigenous children and assimilate them. The 1876 Act to Promote the Gradual Assimilation of the Indian Tribes of Canada provided the legal framework for the residential school system. The last residential school closed in 1997. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found records of 4037 deaths at the schools, and published a list. 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. Bodies were not returned to their families for burial, and families were not normally informed of the circumstances of their child's death. Some of the students who died at the schools were buried in unmarked graves. Over time, markers at some graveyards were lost or destroyed. ==Alberta==

Grouard On March 1, 2022, Kapawe'no First Nation announced the results of a search of 3696.5m2 at the site of St. Bernard's Residential School. Conducted by the Institute for Prairie and Indigenous Archeology at the University of Alberta, it used ground-penetrating radar and multi-spectral imagery captured by drone. It found 169 potential gravesites: 129 probable, 32 thought possible, and 8 likely. 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. At the time, the remains were re-interred upon discovery, but investigators searching for unmarked graves on their territory announced on May 17, 2022, that they believed the accidentally excavated remains were the remains of children who died at residential school. 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. To prevent further accidental excavations, the nation has requested funding to acquire ground-penetrating radar equipment and carry out a non-invasive survey. A report released in January 2023 said that the gravesite had been confirmed by ground-penetrating radar. A report in April 2023 announced that an investigation of the site using ground-penetrating radar and drone imagery found 19 anomalies which might be gravesites. The nation intended to use the findings as a starting point for further investigation. In October 2023, the remains of a child were found at the site. St. Bruno's 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. Based on that search, a report released by a group of Treaty 8 chiefs and the University of Alberta in June 2023 announced the identification of 88 "potential unmarked graves", of which 14 were listed as "likely", meaning that they had multiple indicators of being graves. St. Joseph's Industrial School (Dunbow Industrial School) 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. Joseph's. In May 2001, the remains of 34 children were identified and re-interred at a site further from the river following First Nations, Métis, and Christian traditions. Since then, local resident Laurie Sommerville has obtained school records from the Missionary Oblates, During the school's 38 years of operation, from 1884 to 1922, one in six of the 430 total students died. Most were Siksika, or TsuuT'ina (then known as Blackfoot and Sarcee). ==British Columbia==

Ahousaht Ahousaht First Nation in Ahousat planned excavations in advance of a planned real estate project. Ahousaht Indian Residential School, on Flores Island near Maaqtusiis, was run by Presbyterians. The Catholic-run Christie Indian Residential School operated on Meares Island from 1900 to 1983 and was the last residential school to close in Canada. Alert Bay 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. Malnutrition was rampant at almost all residential schools, but at Alberni, milk and dental care were deliberately withheld for two years from some children by researchers studying the effects of malnutrition. 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. Funding was secured by December 2021 of over and an initial GPR scan was scheduled in the spring of 2022. The search began in earnest in July 2022. Kamloops In 2021, Sarah Beaulieu, an anthropologist experienced at searching for historical gravesites, though "only forensic investigation with excavation" would confirm if these were actually human remains. 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." The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc band announced on the third anniversary of their initial announcement of the graves' discovery that their investigation was proceeding but would remain confidential to preserve its integrity. Denialists have gone to the burial site with shovels to "prove" that there are no human remains at the site. , no human remains have been excavated or confirmed at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site. Researchers and commentators have raised questions about the evidence supporting claims of mass graves, noting that the anomalies detected in 2021 remain unverified and that historical records and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s investigations did not previously identify the site as a burial ground. Kootenay On June 30, 2021, the leadership of ʔaq̓am, a band of the Ktunaxa Nation, announced that 182 unmarked grave sites had been identified in a cemetery next to the site of the former St. Eugene's Mission Residential School. Over 5,000 children attended the school between 1912 and 1970. Kuper Island 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. This work would build on previous GPR surveys conducted in known cemeteries in the community in 2014 and 2016. In a memo sent to band members on July 8, 2021, Chief Joan Brown of the Penelakut First Nation made reference to the discovery of at least 160"undocumented and unmarked" graves located on the grounds of the former school, on an island off Vancouver Island. The memo was circulated in national media coverage on July 12. The investigation made use of ground-penetrating radar and historical research, including interviews with survivors. Squamish St. Paul's Indian Residential School (Squamish), in North Vancouver – Joint investigation to uncover documents associated with the former residential school, as well as identify the burial sites of children that died while attending the school led by the Squamish Nation, Musqueam Nation and Tsleil-Waututh Nation, in collaboration with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver, announced August 10, 2021. 37 children died at or due to their attendance at Coqualeetza Industrial Institute/Residential School in Chilliwack, 20 at St. Mary's, five at All Hallow School in Yale and 96 children between ages five and 20 at the Coqualeetza Indian Hospital. • The Anglican Church of Canada operated All Hallows Residential School for girls in Yale. • The Methodist-run Coqualeetza Residential School in Chilliwack operated from 1889 to 1940. • St. Mary's Indian Residential School in Mission A 1958 photo of a funeral shows at least twelve graves outside the current St. Mary's cemetery fence line, an area now covered by blackberry bushes, with iron cross grave markers lying along the cemetery perimeter. to honor victims of abuse and those who died. Williams Lake In June 2021, Williams Lake First Nation announced it would lead a search of the site of Saint Joseph's Mission near Williams Lake. The search would use ground-penetrating radar, and focusing on of the site. Work began in late August 2021. Williams Lake First Nations announced on January 25, 2022 that 93 potential burial sites were discovered. The investigation continued, and on January 24, 2023, the Nation announced that it had come to the conclusion that at least 28 children had died while students of the school, as opposed to the 16 reported by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. The announcement also identified 66 more potential burial sites, for a total of 159, identified using GPR and aerial and terrestrial LiDAR. The Nation also announced that it was working with the B.C. 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. A least one student at the school committed suicide, and another died of hypothermia while trying to escape. == Manitoba ==

Brandon Beginning in 2012, a team from Sioux Valley Dakota Nation and Simon Fraser University investigated two cemetery sites at Brandon Indian Residential School in Brandon. The project, which received funding for its work in April 2019, was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On June4, 2021, it was announced that 104 potential graves had been located, of which 78 are accountable through historical records. Fort Alexander 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. On June 6, 2022, it announced it had found 190 "anomalies" during the search: 137 in one area and 53 in another. The anomalies were not found at the residential school. Having ruled out pipelines, sewer lines, and waterlines, work continued following the announcement to determine whether the anomalies were gravesites. Pine Creek On May 9, 2022, the Minegoziibe Anishinabe (formerly known as Pine Creek First Nation), began a ground-penetrating radar scan on the former site of Pine Creek Indian Residential School, through its contractor AltoMaxx. A preliminary report in June 2022 announced the discovery of six anomalies on the site. In August, 14 more had been found. 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. The community held a day of ceremony on July 24, 2023, to mark the beginning of an archaeological dig in the church basement, where 14 anomalies had been found. The excavation found no evidence of human remains. and the RCMP's investigation found no evidence of criminal activity. Sandy Bay A search at the site of the former Sandy Bay Residential School in Sandy Bay First Nation in May 2022 used ground-penetrating radar and drone imagery to identify 13 potential unmarked gravesites. Four were determined to have a "moderate probability" of being an unmarked grave and nine sites were assessed as "low probability". Plans were made for an excavation under the church.{{cite web|url=https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2023/07/20/first-nation-set-to-dig-under-church-for-potential-unmarked-graves |title=First Nation set to dig under church for potential unmarked graves |first1=Tyler |last1=Searle ==Northwest Territories==

Fort Providence From 1992 to 1994 Albert Lafferty, a Métis resident of Fort Providence, Northwest Territories led research at the old community cemetery near the former Sacred Heart Mission School operated by the Grey Nuns from 1867 to 1960 and the mission's associated hospital. He found that missionaries established the first cemetery there in 1868, but relocated the remains of eight missionaries to the present Catholic cemetery in 1929. They left behind the remains of hundreds of Indigenous people, and the cemetery was ploughed over in 1948, and became a potato field. Some members of the community believe the actual number of buried students is much higher. {{Cite news {{Cite news In 2013 a memorial was erected on the site listing the names or, in the case of those whose names were not known, the identities of the people buried at the site. 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. {{Cite news {{Cite news first=Simon == Ontario ==

McIntosh 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. The rectangular depressions on the ground are suspected to be graves or burials because the length of these depressions measured long, soil disturbance around the depression, the orientation of the depression was in an east-west alignment, and distinct patterns of defined rows of these depressions. All but eight of the "unmarked burial features" were located within the ground's cemetery. The dimensions of over 70 of the features were indicative of possible child burials. St. Mary's On January 17, 2023, a statement released by Wauzhushk Onigum Nation announced the discovery of 171 "anomalies", which it called "plausible burials", located by ground-penetrating radar around the former St. Mary's Indian Residential School. "The Nation’s next steps are to gain greater certainty on the number of plausible graves in the cemetery grounds using additional technologies and to conduct additional investigations at several additional sites not covered...," it said. == Saskatchewan ==

Battleford Battleford Industrial School's final principal expressed concern over future generations forgetting the cemetery containing the bodies of former students at the school site: The land was never officially registered as a cemetery, and became dilapidated and vandalised. In 1974, five students from the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Saskatchewan excavated 72 graves of the 74 in the Battleford school cemetery. Most of the people buried there are former students of the Industrial School. During the excavation, the contents of each unmarked grave were uncovered, identified, and recorded, then re-covered and marked with a marble marker, before a chain-link fence was erected around the outside of the site. On August 31, 1975, a ceremony reconsecrated the burial ground; a cairn had been erected with the names of fifty students known to be buried there. George Gordon On April 20, 2022, George Gordon First Nation Chief Byron Bitternose announced that 14 possible gravesites had been identified using ground-penetrating radar at the site of the former George Gordon Indian Residential School. Records from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation found 49 student deaths found in school records. The school operated from 1888 to 1996. Kamsack and Fort Pelly A search using ground-penetrating radar was conducted by Keeseekoose First Nation on the former grounds of St. Philip's Indian Residential School in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, and the former site of another school near Fort Pelly, which had been erected at the expense of the Oblate Fathers from 1905 to 1913. The search by ground-penetrating radar revealed 42 potential unmarked graves at the Fort Pelly site, and 12 at St. Philip's. The first St. Philip's boarding school was built in 1901 from logs daubed with mortar and was attended by students from the Cote and Keesekoose reservations. The students in 1945 were Anishnabe (then known as Ojibwé, Ojibwa, Saulteux, Sauteux, or Saulteaux). According to Oblate records, in 1966 345 Indigenous children attended the Pelly school, and 95 boarders and 207 day students attended St Philip's, which closed in 1969. The graveyard served community members, school staff and possibly students who died at the school. While the cemetery retains some headstones, rocks and other grave markings, SNC Lavalin was hired to search for potential unmarked graves using GPR within as well as outside the boundaries where some fear the unbaptized or those who committed suicide were buried. Marieval A community graveyard next to Marieval Indian Residential School on the lands of Cowessess First Nation in Marieval was first used in 1885, before the school was established, and has included the graves of both children and adult parishioners of the Catholic Church. However, by 2021, only an estimated third of the graves remained marked. In 2019, the Archdiocese of Regina provided $70,000 to identify the unmarked graves and restore the cemetery. In May 2021, Cowessess First Nation announced it would search the site using ground-penetrating radar in collaboration with a group from Saskatchewan Polytechnic. The preliminary figure was the highest number of potential or confirmed unmarked graves associated with a given residential school, according to the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN), which represents Saskatchewan's First Nations. Delorme underlined, "This is not a mass grave site. These are unmarked graves." On October8, 2021, Cowessess First Nation announced that names had been put to 300 of the gravesites. The identification was made possible through the records of the RCMP, the Catholic Church, and Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, as well as band oral history. Qu'Appelle As part of a project begun in November 2021, 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. Not all "hits" are suspected graves. Further work was set to continue as of January 2023. James Daschuk pointed out in his book Clearing the Plains that despite the deaths of "almost 20 percent of the children at the school...between 1884 and 1905" {{cite journal Regina Indian Industrial School In 2010 and 2012, an archaeological survey with ground-penetrating radar of the southern part of the private land that held the cemetery associated with the Regina Indian Industrial School (RIIS) found likely evidence of 38 graves, including six outside the cemetery fence. {{cite book == Yukon ==

Chooutla Indian Residential School A search led by the Chooutla Working Group in Carcross, Yukon, was scheduled to begin in summer 2023, with plans to expand search to other communities in future years. GeoScan, a survey company based in BC. searched 9.2 acres with ground-penetrating radar and found 15 anomalies grouped together in an area of 624 square feet. Built in 1911, the Choutla school was run by Anglicans and achieved a reputation for harsh discipline and poor food and health outcomes before it closed in 1969. == Communities debating ==

A number of First Nations announced searches for unmarked graves at former residential school sites. Some of these searches were already underway prior to the Kamloops confirmation. Below are a list of school sites announced thus far: • Old Sun (Blackfoot) Indian Residential School and Crowfoot Indian Residential School near Gleichen – search led by Siksika Nation using in collaboration with the Institute for Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology at the University of Alberta. --> Site clean-up began in early August 2021, and a community info session was held in September 2021. • In 2022, the Dene Nation proposed a plan to the government to investigate 15 residential school locations for unmarked burial sites identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. The schools are Immaculate Conception (Roman Catholic) and All Saints (Anglican) in Aklavik, Fleming Hall in Fort McPherson, Fort Providence, St. Joseph's in Fort Resolution, Bompas Hall (Anglican) and Dehcho Lapointe Hall (where children still attend school) in Fort Simpson, St. Peter's in Hay River, Grollier Hall (Roman Catholic) and Stringer Hall (Anglican) in Inuvik, Akaitcho Hall in Yellowknife, Federal Hostel in Délı̨nę, and All Saints in Shingle Point, Yukon. • Guy Hill Indian Residential School near The Pas – search led by Opaskwayak Cree Nation using ; Nation was preparing for the search as of late July 2021. • McKay Indian Residential School near Dauphin, Manitoba – search led by the Opaskwayak Cree Nation and conducted by SNC-Lavalin with . The search began in fall 2021, paused for the winter, and was to resume in June 2022. As of May 29, 2022, only a fraction of the search area had been covered. A search of the former school grounds began in November 2021. • Mount Elgin Indian Residential School in Chippewas of the Thames First Nation – on the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, September 30, 2020, Chippewas of the Thames announced that a probe into the site was in its early stages. • The site of (Notre-Dame de Sept-Îles) in Sept-Îles, Quebec – a group of Innu chiefs announced in June 2021 that they would put together a team to begin the process of conducting searches of the site for unmarked graves. • Spanish Indian Residential Schools in Spanish, Ontario – members of the Sagamok Anishnawbek, Mississauga and Serpent River First Nations, which came together as the Nisoonag (Three Canoes) Partnership, held a ceremony on Saturday, September 18, 2021, to ask for the permission of the souls of the children possibly buried at the site of the schools. Other gatherings were held in June and October 2021, to reflect and prepare to apply for government funding to help with a search, and in February 2022 was announced that such a search would be taking place over the following 2–3 years. • St. Anne's Indian Residential School in Fort Albany, Ontario – led by Fort Albany First Nation in collaboration with nearby communities, began in 2020 and ongoing as of April 2022. • 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, contracting a project manager, and erecting a monument following the investigation. An initial ground-penetrating radar search in July 2021 of the immediate area around the school site found no graves, but records and elder testimony indicate that 44 children died at the school. The gravestone of 14-year old Henry Atcheynum was also discovered by a farmer about a kilometre from the search area. This, and survivor testimony that graves were moved as much as twice, led BATC to expand the search area to banks of the Saskatchewan River. The BATC also planned to search the Battleford Industrial Residential School once the Delmas search was complete. The Catholic Church operated the Delmas school from 1901 until its destruction in a fire in 1948. • The Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations were also engaged in an investigation as of August 17, 2021. but nothing related to the school, which operated from 1929 to 1967. The building burned to the ground in 1986 and the land is now occupied by a plastics factory and used as farmland. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation lists 16 children who died while at the school, The investigation used GPR and aerial laser scanning. Sipekne’katik Chief Mike Sack said the search will resume if new information comes forward. The First Nation received federal funding in April 2022 to complete the fieldwork, gather knowledge, and commemorate the school's legacy. == Reactions ==

on June6, 2021 Community memorials were set up at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Ontario Legislative Building, as well as various government buildings and church buildings that had been in charge of running the residential school system. On May 28, 2021, the day after it was reported that the remains of 215 bodies (later referred to as 200 "targets of interest" by Dr. Sarah Beaulieu who performed the search) were discovered in an unmarked cemetery on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, an existing bill to rename Orange Shirt Day to National Truth and Reconciliation Day and make it a statutory holiday was fast-tracked and passed by Parliament with unanimous consent. In response to the media reports, there were calls and rallies across the country under the slogan #CancelCanadaDay. Many communities would go on to cancel official Canada Day festivities, with some citing COVID-19 concerns as the reason. According to Indigenous activist group Idle No More, by June 29, 2021, at least 50 municipalities across the country had decided to cancel Canada Day events that year. with thousands marching in Montreal to "acknowledge the genocide of Indigenous people". 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' ". Lasting for over five months, it would mark "the longest period in Canadian history that the flag has been at half-mast". On June2, 2021, the federal government pledged $27 million in immediate funding to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to identify the unmarked graves. The provincial governments of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario also pledged million, $8million, $2million, $2.5million and $10million, respectively, to fund searches. MPs Mumilaaq Qaqqaq and Charlie Angus called on Justice Minister David Lametti to launch an independent investigation on crimes against humanity in Canada. A month earlier, after Canada issued a joint statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council demanding China allow free access to Xinjiang to investigate reported human rights violations, China and its allies called on the UN to investigate crimes against Indigenous people in Canada, citing the preliminary discovery a month prior in Kamloops. Lametti said in 2023 that he was open to outlawing residential school denialism. In New Brunswick, Education Minister Dominic Cardy said the education curriculum would be amended to teach about the province's Indigenous day schools. The United Nations Human Rights Office and independent UN human rights experts called on Canada and the Holy See to investigate. Similar sentiments were echoed by the governments of China, Russia, Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela. , toppled on June6, 2021 (2005 photo) The discovery of suspected gravesites at Kamloops was followed by calls for name changes and the removal of monuments commemorating figures known for their colonial views or policies towards Indigenous peoples. These include monuments to Egerton Ryerson, John A. Macdonald, Hector-Louis Langevin, Oscar Blackburn, Vital-Justin Grandin, and James Cook. A school named after Prince Charles was renamed, and a statue of Queen Victoria and another of Queen Elizabeth II were toppled by protesters. Church fires By July4, 2021 nearly two dozen churches, including eight on First Nations territories, had been burned, with community leaders, commentators, and Prime Minister Trudeau correlating the fires with the involvement of the Catholic and Anglican churches in operating residential schools. The writer Robert Jago identified religion as a point of full separation between indigenous and Canadian society, holding that "[i]t is a legitimate debate for First Nations to talk about removing Catholic churches from [indigenous] territories". In 2024, a CBC News investigation identified 33 churches that had burned since May 2021, including 24 that had been confirmed as arsons and two that had been ruled accidental. Of the arsons, nine resulted in arrests; "no clear motive has been established" in the incidents that resulted in criminal charges. The CBC investigation found that the fires and vandalism of other churches correlated with the increased publicity surround gravesites at residential schools. Royal Canadian Mounted Police information indicated that between May 2019 and May 2021, there were nine arsons at churches in Alberta; between June 2021 and September 2023, there were 29. Some fires have been tied to discontent with a failure to address the harm done by residential schools, while others–including a fire at a Coptic Orthodox church–have been identified as being wholly unrelated to the residential schools. At least 24 suspicious fires have been recorded, with two arson convictions including one identified as unrelated to the residential school graves made as of January 2024. ==Aftermath==

Excavations In August 2021, one of the first formal searches concluded at the former Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia, the only residential school in the Maritimes. A team led by Saint Mary's University archaeologist Jonathan Fowler and Mi'kmaq ethnologist Roger Lewis, using GPR, LIDAR imagery, drone mapping, and electromagnetic induction, found no graves connected to the school. The anomalies detected were associated with earlier land use predating the school's 1929 opening by approximately a century. In August 2023, the Minegoziibe Anishinabe (Pine Creek First Nation) in Manitoba announced the results of a four-week excavation of 14 anomalies detected by GPR in the basement of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Catholic Church, on the grounds of the former Pine Creek Residential School. The dig, carried out by a team from Brandon University, found no evidence of human remains. Items recovered included animal bones and fire debris. Chief Derek Nepinak said the outcome took "nothing away from the difficult truths experienced by our families" and pledged that searches of the surrounding grounds would continue. As of February 2025, no forensic excavation had been conducted and no human remains had been confirmed at the Kamloops Indian Residential School site, despite the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc having received $12.1 million in federal funding earmarked for exhumation, forensic testing, and DNA analysis. Chief Rosanne Casimir acknowledged to the Senate that no remains had been recovered and that no excavation had begun. She described the question of whether to excavate as "unresolved," calling any such step "very intrusive" and requiring extensive community dialogue. In May 2024, on the third anniversary of the original announcement, the First Nation issued a statement referring to the 215 findings as "anomalies" rather than using the language of "children" or "confirmed remains" that had appeared in its 2021 press release. In contrast, the Deninu Kue First Nation at Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories, confirmed the first physical discovery of remains directly linked to the post-2021 wave of searches. Guided by elders including the late Angus Beaulieu, who had identified Mission Island as a burial site, an archaeological team excavated seven unmarked graves in August 2025, five of which belonged to children and two to adults, at a site connected to the former St. Joseph's Residential School. The school had operated from 1903 to 1957; an earlier mission school had stood on Mission Island from 1857 to 1890. The identities of those buried and the circumstances of their deaths had not yet been determined as of August 2025. In a separate development connected to the same school, the remains of Alma Beaulieu, who had died at St. Joseph's in 1944 at the age of five, were exhumed and repatriated to her home community in Fort Smith on 20 October 2025 following years of advocacy by her 88-year-old sister Delphine Beaulieu. Residential school denialism In the years after the initial 2021 reports, a lack of evidence for the existence of mass unmarked graves has led some to allege a "mass grave hoax". This view has been criticized has downplaying the validity of potential grave sites, and has been described as residential school denialism. {{external media == Media reporting in 2021 ==

"Children who never returned from residential schools" were the Canadian Newsmakers of the Year in 2021, an annual designation voted by a nationwide survey of editors and published by the Canadian Press. In July 2021, a New York Times article "'Horrible History'" sparked interest in the matter. 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". == See also ==