File photo (Image credit: CFJC Today).

By Aaron Schulze

Kamloops Indian Residential School

Kamloops Indian Residential School building designated as national historic site by Parks Canada

Feb 12, 2025 | 11:49 AM

Support services are in place for residential school survivors and their families here.

KAMLOOPS — The former Kamloops Indian Residential School has been designated as a national historic site.

In a news release issued Wednesday (Feb. 12), Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc and Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault announced the Kamloops Indian Residential School was designated under Parks Canada’s National Program of Historical Commemoration. The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change is responsible for Parks Canada.

The former Kamloops Indian Residential School gained more prominence in May 2021 after Tk’emlúps announced that ground penetrating radar work had identified numerous suspected unmarked graves near the site.

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“It will serve as a place that will contribute to greater understanding of Secwépemc history and traditional knowledge,” Kukpi7 Rosanne Casimir states. “The designation symbolizes hope and the vision of our ancestors for a prosperous future for our children, and those not yet born. We collectively know all too well the often-impoverished view of reciprocal obligations and how it has dominated our people. Today, at Tk’emlúps we take great pride in this path we walk together to commemorate that real collective history.”

The federal government says Tk’emlúps nominated the building for its designation. Run by the Roman Catholic congregations of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Sisters of St. Ann, the Kamloops Indian Residential School was the largest institution in a system designed to carry out what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada described as cultural genocide. The federal government says many, including Pope Francis and the Canadian House of Commons, have referred to it as genocide.

“Today’s designation acknowledges the harms suffered by the survivors of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School who fought so long and so tirelessly to have their stories heard,” Guilbeault states. “Their strength and grace in retelling their stories ensures that we can learn from them and enables us to advance the journey of truth-telling, reconciliation and healing… The legacy of their stories will resonate throughout future generations.”

The former Kamloops Indian Residential School operated from 1890 to 1969, with peak enrolment of 500 in the 1950s. The federal government took over administration of the school from 1969 to 1978, using the building as a residence for students attending other Kamloops schools.

Among the students who were forcibly removed from their homes and attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School were children between the ages of four and 18. The federal government says they came from more 108 communities and at least 38 Indigenous nations from across B.C. and beyond, including the Secwépemc, Stó:lō, St’át’imc, Nłeʔkepmxc and Syilx. The federal government says the children experienced physical, emotional, spiritual and sexual abuse, forced labour, malnutrition, inadequate and overcrowded living conditions, poor health care and high rates of infectious diseases and death.

Tk’emlúps members chose to preserve several of its buildings to commemorate and teach about the impacts of residential schools on children and families and to serve as a place for teaching Secwépemc language and culture as an act of reclamation.

According to Tk’emlúps, design development work is scheduled for this spring with rehabilitation work on the former Kamloops Indian Residential School scheduled to take place between 2025 and 2027.