FIRST NATION IN CANADA SAYS 169 POTENTIAL GRAVES FOUND AT FORMER RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL

Wed 02 March 2022:

A First Nation group in Canada announced on Tuesday that it has discovered 169 possible graves at the former Grouard Mission, a residential school known for horrific abuses of students.

Officials from the Kapawe’no First Nation claimed at a press conference Tuesday that the graves were discovered using ground penetrating radar and a sophisticated drone.

The mission, also known as the St. Bernard Mission School, was run by the Catholic Church from 1894 until 1961 in the northern region of Alberta’s province.

Only ten graves were reported at the mission, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which spent years researching previous Indian Residential School atrocities.

“Finding one grave is too much,” said Kapawe’no Chief Sydney Halcrow. “Finding (169) is incomprehensible.”

It is the latest in dozens of investigations underway by various First Nations tribes. As of Jan. 25, more than 1,800 unmarked graves at former residential school sites have been located. About 150,000 First Nation, Metis and Inuit children went to the 139 schools starting in the 1820s. They were taken from their families, sometimes by force, and made to attend the schools in a bid to eradicate Aboriginal culture.

Former students of St. Bernard told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission there was serious sexual and physical abuse and manual labor, while illness was rampant.

A former student said one boy who had problems with his bowels was forced to eat his own excrement.

Kisha Supernant, director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archeology at the University of Alberta, which led the search for the Kapawe’no, said she had family members who died at St. Bernard.

“Each of these children was a beloved part of a family, and no one has been held accountable for their deaths,” she said.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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