One of the first assignments I ever went on as a rookie reporter way back in 2012 was to attend Truth and Reconciliation testimony hearings in Prince Albert, Sask.
Over three days in February, survivors recounted the abuses they suffered in Canada’s residential school system.
Their accounts would help form the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s executive summary and accompanying 94 “calls to action” released in June of 2015.
Taking it all in was a harrowing, emotional experience, even as a mostly-detached, non-First Nations observer.
None of it was really news to me, even back then—I distinctly remember learning about Canada’s Indian residential school system growing up in the public school system—even if hearing about the associated trauma first-hand took it all to a more cerebral level.
But I was shocked to learn, upon moving to B.C., that many Canadians remained blissfully ignorant of the residential school system and its long-lasting effects.
Many people who went to school in Ontario, I found, did not learn about residential schools growing up.
Granted, this was before the discovery at Tk’emlúps in 2021 heightened awareness around residential school atrocities; before Canada had a dedicated National Day for Truth and Reconciliation—but even today, there are still those who don’t seem to know or understand the full truth.
Recent discourse has centred around Tk’emlúps, and its claim in 2021 that the remains of 215 children, all students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, were confirmed with the help of a ground-penetrating radar specialist.
It’s a shocking, eye-grabbing number, splashed across headlines nationwide—and the claim attracted no shortage of critics.
Since then, skeptics and naysayers of all stripes have fallen over themselves demanding hard evidence and proof, with some going so far as to attempt to dig up the site themselves.
“Denialists entered the site without permission. Some came in the middle of the night, carrying shovels; they said they wanted to ‘see for themselves’ if children are buried there,” said a June 2023 report from Kimberly Murray, the independent special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian Residential Schools.
I can’t for the life of me imagine what might compel someone to go to a suspected mass grave in the dead of night in search of some sort of backwards, macabre vindication or proof—but I strongly suspect it has something to do with their preferred online echo chamber.
Which is not surprising, but it is distressingly sad. We shouldn’t need to see the physical bodies of dead children to accept the horrific legacy of residential schools.
Because, as noted, it is not exactly news—it’s all right there at nctr.ca/records/reports, where published reports have sat for the better part of 10 years detailing the findings of Canada’s extensive, independent commission into it all.
Tk’emlúps and its specific claim of 215 missing children predictably became a lightning rod for the historic controversy, as media, Pique included, repeated the shocking claim as originally reported by the band.
Three years later, some now seek to use the absence of bodies to discredit the legacy of residential schools altogether.
There are “thinkpieces” out there, not worth noting by name, which discount the entire Truth and Reconciliation Commission and all of its findings, claiming the accounts shared by survivors were never fact-checked or cross-referenced, that no children ever died, that residential schools were in fact a pleasant experience for most First Nations people.
Seeing these pieces land in my inbox, reading them from the perspective of my Saskatchewan upbringing, makes my stomach churn.
My Ontario friends may not have learned about residential schools growing up, but what I learned in the Saskatchewan public school system was anything but pleasant.
Why was it part of our curriculum and not theirs?
Maybe because the effects are so much more visible in Saskatchewan, where Indigenous people made up 17 per cent of the population in 2021 (second only to Manitoba’s 18.1 per cent. In Ontario, Indigenous people made up just 2.9 per cent of the population in 2021, while here in B.C., it was 5.9 per cent).
The debate over the physical existence of 215 bodies on the site of T’kemlups is sadly little more than a morbid distraction. It is estimated 150,000 children attended residential schools, and according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at least *3,200 died, with another 1,000 leaving the schools sick, and dying within a year of leaving the schools (but poor record-keeping on the part of the churches and government means we will never know the true number—the TRC estimates it is as many as 6,000).
More than 130 residential schools operated in Canada between 1831 and 1996, with the stated goal of “killing the Indian in the child.”
“The fact is that if you wish to educate the children you must separate them from their parents during the time they are being taught,” secretary of state for the provinces Sir Hector Langevin said in a speech to Parliament in 1883.
“If you leave them in the family they may know how to read and write, but they will remain savages, whereas by separating them in the way proposed, they acquire the habits and tastes … of civilized people.”
The Canadian government of the day did not view First Nations people as human beings, and its negligence at said schools is well-documented in the history books.
In 1907, medical inspector for Indian Affairs, Dr. P.H. Bryce, found “extremely high rates of death from tuberculosis in the schools,” deeming their condition a “national crime.”
It’s not even just about those kids who didn’t come home—many of those who did were robbed of their ability to properly parent, or became mired in addiction as a way to forget what happened to them. Their trauma becomes their kids’ trauma, becomes their grandkids’ trauma.
Knowing what we know about the residential school system—have known for literally more than 100 years—it is frankly disgraceful to see people try to downplay it all in 2024.
This National Indigenous History Month, and every month, we should face the hard truths head on.
Learn more at slcc.ca and nctr.ca.
*The original version of this story stated at least 1,300 died. The actual number is much higher. Pique regrets the error.
