Former N.W.T. students call for probe into deaths at residential school

Some former students from a residential school in Fort Resolution, N.W.T., say they want an investigation into what happened to children who died at the school years ago.

For much of the 20th century, thousands of aboriginal children from across the N.W.T. were sent to the school at Fort Resolution, located about 150 kilometres south of Yellowknife on the southern shore of Great Slave Lake.

But former students like Wilfred Simon said many of those children never returned home, instead ending up buried in unmarked graves in a local cemetery.

"Right now we're walking on the graves of the residential school kids. They're all in this area," Wilfred said as he gave CBC News a recent tour of the site.

Wilfred said he is haunted by the fact that no one knows how many former St. Joseph's students are buried — or, for that matter, what their names were, or how they died.

"Some elders have said that people that have died in residential schools, they just wrapped them up in a cloth and whatever, and brought them here," Simon said.

"Dig the grave, no funeral, put them in there, buried them."

Simon said he began going through church records last year, in an attempt to figure out where the deceased students are buried.

However, he said his list is incomplete. He said he needs the help of elders and possibly forensic investigators to fill in the missing information.

Simon said he would even like to see graves exhumed, if that provides the only way to identify former students.

Another former student, Robert Sayine, said he remembers losing friends during his time at St. Joseph's in the 1950s. Many of them simply got sick and disappeared, he said.

"It's just like somebody jumping in the lake and never finding his body," Sayine said. "It's why all the old wounds are there."

More than 92,000 Canadians have applied for compensation with the federal government since September, all claiming to be former students at 132 residential schools across the country. To date, Ottawa has sent compensation cheques to about 64,000 of those former students.

As well, a federally-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission is set to begin touring the country and listen to people's residential school experiences.

Another federal working group is currently looking into deaths at residential schools. It will make its recommendations once the Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins its work on June 1.