Search for graves at former Manitoba residential school part of healing journey, survivor says

The past few days have been marked by tears, anger and fear for Sue Caribou.

This week, she'll be doing something she never thought she'd do — going back to the northern Manitoba residential school where she was once abused.

On Sunday, Caribou boarded a plane heading to The Pas, more than 500 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, where she will then drive to the site of the Guy Hill residential school to help other survivors search for unmarked graves.

"I'll be facing my biggest fear," said Caribou, 57. "This is part of my biggest healing journey."

Caribou was forced to attend Guy Hill when she was five or six years old and was there for about seven or eight years, until her parents died in 1979, she said. 

As a child, her family moved around a lot — something she believes was an attempt to keep them together and under her parents' care.

"They didn't want us to get taken to residential school," she said.

The group she is joining is starting their search Monday, and will continue until Friday, using ground-penetrating radar. 

"I feel that I need to be there for the search," Caribou said.

But she isn't sure what they'll find.

"We don't know if a student is missing. We used to ask, and they used to tell us they sent them home. We don't know if they did or not."

'Clear mind and a clear conscience'

The Guy Hill school was about 25 kilometres northeast of The Pas, near Clearwater Lake, where The Pas Airport stands today. The school there opened in the late 1950s and was Catholic-run, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation's website says.

Survivors have said they were physically, sexually and emotionally abused at the school.

Opaskwayak Cree Nation, whose main reserve neighbours The Pas, made plans to search the school grounds following the discovery of what are believed to be hundreds of unmarked graves in Kamloops, B.C., in 2021.

Edwin Jebb, an Opaskwayak councillor who is responsible for the First Nation's residential school portfolio, says many survivors called for a search to be done.

"There was enough people that said we should do a search to have a clear mind and a clear conscience," he told CBC in an interview on Monday.

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation's website lists three Guy Hill students who died while the school was operating. That includes Helen Betty Osborne, who had previously been a Guy Hill student but was not at the time of her murder in 1971.

Jebb, who spent nine years at Guy Hill himself, says because that institution had a nurse on staff when it opened, there were fewer documented deaths as a result of respiratory illnesses than at older facilities.

Still, he says some people wonder if there were other deaths that weren't documented.

"They have secrets and they come out years later, and you never know. Sometimes there's bombshells."

Ahead of the start of the search on Monday, Caribou said it would open with a ceremony.

"I'm going to sing and play my drum to the spirits," she said.

Caribou's family and community have supported her going back to the school. She said Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, which represents northern Manitoba First Nations, is covering the cost of her trip.

"They've seen what I went through," she said. "I got a lot of people supporting me. I am very grateful."