ROTHENBURGER: Discovery of gravesites highlights the tragedy of Indian residential schools

Indeed, the burial of deceased students in unmarked graves did happen at other Indian residential schools, too. They died accidentally, or from tuberculosis, pneumonia or influenza, from malnutrition or suicide. Sometimes, parents were notified, sometimes the body was sent home, but too often the child was put into a grave on the school grounds without ceremony and sometimes without benefit of a casket.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated 4,100 school-related deaths among the 150,000 children who attended, with only 2,800 having been identified by name, but there may have been a lot more. They’re known as “the children who never came home.”

Finding and identifying them all is an almost impossible quest because of shoddy record keeping — the cause of death or even the child’s name might not be put to paper.

Over the generations, the location of many of these ad hoc graveyards has been lost, as was the case in Kamloops. The memories of elders have often provided the only clues. In other cases, the location of cemeteries is known but there are no markers, and the number of children buried in them is uncertain.

At the site of the Muskowekwan Indian Residential School in Alberta, 10 to 15 potential gravesites were identified two years ago with the same ground-penetrating radar technology as that used at the Kamloops school. The year before that, researchers found the unmarked gravesites of more than 50 residential school kids near the now-demolished Brandon Indian Residential School.

But the 215 identified at the Kamloops school is a staggering number.

It’s easy to look at this tragic piece of Canadian history in simplistic terms, to label each and every politician, administrator and teacher who had anything to do with creating and running the schools as evil. But that ignores the context.

The schools were seen by the governments of the day as a way to provide Indigenous children with an education and to make First Nations economically self-sufficient. Some Indigenous leaders agreed with those goals but things worked out much differently than they’d hoped.

That’s because there were other motives at play — to convert them to the Christian religion, to reduce the costs to government, and to aggressively assimilate them into Canadian culture, that is, to make them “white.”

This was born out of an arrogant assumption that other cultures and peoples were primitive in comparison to Europeans. They needed to be taught to live, speak and act as Europeans lived, spoke and acted.

So, students were removed from their family homes and put in schools, often far away, where they weren’t allowed to speak their own language or wear their traditional clothing. Their hair was cut and they were given European names. Rules were strictly enforced; abuses were inevitable, including physical and sexual assaults. It was a horrible experiment and it’s shocking it persevered for so long.

A few years ago, I spoke at length with an elder who couldn’t stop crying as she remembered the pain of the years she spent at the Kamloops school.

The Kamloops Indian Residential School was opened in 1890 as the Kamloops Industrial School, administered by the Roman Catholic Church. It became the largest such school among the 139 established across the country. Others opened in Lytton, Squamish, Mission, Cranbrook, Williams Lake and other B.C. communities.

Two prime ministers — Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau — have issued formal apologies for that history but, of course, it can’t make up for what happened.

The National Student Memorial Register, which lists children who died while attending residential schools, includes 51 for Kamloops — kids like Archie Oxime, who died June 20, 1919; Christine Jules, who died Jan. 28, 1917; and Louise Seymour, who died May 26, 1936. The dates on which some of the others died, including Julienne Sharon Dennis, Henry Lulu and Willard Frank William, are listed as “unknown.”

This week’s news means there were so many more, and the total may yet go higher. The work continues at the site of the burials but, sadly, many will probably never be identified, known only as being among those who never went home.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.

by Mel Rothenburger

ROTHENBURGER: Discovery of gravesites highlights the tragedy of Indian residential schools

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