Search for B.C. residential school grave sites a 'critical step for healing,' says archeologist
Williams Lake First Nation investigation identifies 93 potential burial sites by former St. Joseph's Mission
WARNING: This story contains distressing details.
Archeologist Whitney Spearing says she and her team are using science to validate what survivors of the former St. Joseph's Mission Residential School in B.C. already know.
Spearing is leading the team that has used ground-penetrating radar and aerial and terrestrial sensors to identify 93 sites of "potential human burials" near the former residential school by Williams Lake First Nation.
At a press conference led by Chief Willie Sellars on Tuesday, Spearing said the sites show "reflections" that suggest human burials, but added the only way to confirm the findings would be through excavation. She said the investigation is still in its early stages and the findings are preliminary.
Between the 1870s and the 1990s, Canada's federal government forced more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children to attend federally funded, church-run residential schools designed to strip them of their languages and cultures.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation estimates about 4,100 children died at the schools, based on death records, but says the true total is likely much higher.
Spearing spoke to As It Happens host Carol Off about Tuesday's announcement. Here is part of their conversation.
I know that in addition to the geophysical work, you have been interviewing survivors or descendants of survivors as part of the investigation. What have they been telling you?
A lot of the stories that we are hearing have common threads in them. They've definitely related stories of starvation, torture, physical and sexual abuse.
There definitely have been accounts of children going missing, sometimes in the night; definitely children having to dig graves for potentially other children who are buried onsite; and that definitely there have been cases where there's been child pregnancies at the mission and an attempt to cover up those pregnancies. The infants were sometimes removed from the care of the mothers through transferring them to unwed mothers' homes. And, in some cases, they were put into the incinerator.
Give us a sense of the history of this institution.
The institution opened in 1891 and it closed in 1981. So St Joseph's operated for roughly 90 years in the place that it is now.
Throughout that time, definitely the earlier years, the school was operated as an industrial school, and so the children who attended that institution were part of a slave labour exercise. They were predominantly doing things like rearing cattle, splitting timber, doing hard labour tasks associated with the running of the ranch and the farm in that area.
Into the '50s, '60s and '70s, we moved sort of into a chapter where different heads of the institution came into play, and we move into a chapter that's more indicative of sexual abuse, and really systemic and ongoing sexual abuse, of children at that institution.
WATCH | B.C. First Nation identifies 93 potential burial sites found near former residential school:
This what Chief Sellers was referring to as "the darkest recesses of human behaviour." And unlike many of the other schools, there were actual people who are convicted … of sexual offences against the children, and this is part of what we know of what was going on because of those convictions and because because of investigations into the deaths of some children earlier. Duncan Sticks, I think, and Augustine Allen, [were] two children who died.
Duncan Sticks was eight years old and he froze outside alone from exposure, and he was running away from the residential school. There was actually an inquiry into his death … and the school basically didn't change any of its policies and saw that their disciplinarian was acting in an OK manner in their eyes.
Augustine Allen was part of a suicide pact between students at that time. They ingested poison water hemlock, and sadly, he was the only one to pass as a result of that. But certainly the other children got very ill, obviously, from that ingestion. So again, there was multiple letters and lots of correspondence between the parents and the institution at that time, and no clear action was taken.
Leading to now … where you have identified 93 potential burial sites at the residential school grounds. Can you tell us what you've discovered?
What we have discovered to date is 93 reflections that are indicative of human burials or graves, unmarked graves.
There is a historic cemetery on the property, and so we are recognizing that fully. Some of those graves may be associated with the cemetery. However, at this time, we do know that 50 out of the 93 are outside of the cemetery boundaries, and so therefore we deem them to be not associated with that cemetery.
It's a very complex situation. The school operated for more than 90 years, as I said, and so dozens of buildings in that time went up and came down. There's multiple subsurface features that are showing up on the ground penetrating radar as well.
And certainly, the work is not complete. The area that we've conducted the search on to date, geophysical work, is 14 hectares. And the investigation area we've identified for the Phase 1 investigation is 470 hectares. So it's a very small percentage that's already had the geophysical work completed.
You use the word "reflections" to describe what you've found. Why is that important?
It's important in terms of our discourse, the way that we talk about these things in Canadian society. When we talk about anomalies, certainly that is a true technical term and one that we can use to describe what we're seeing on [ground-penetrating radar]. But an anomaly really is something that is unexpected or is anomalous. And in this case, we did expect to find graves, unmarked graves, and so anomaly isn't really the right term. And so we've really tried to take that very seriously.
We're trying to be very clear and very concise in our description of what we're actually talking about.
WATCH | Learn about ground-penetrating radar:
We've heard from many families that these discoveries that we're getting through the geophysical work, these are things that Indigenous people knew. They knew that their kids didn't come home, right? They knew that kids disappeared. They knew that these things occurred. They've been saying for decades that this is what happened. And so what's the importance of discovering this?
The importance of this information and coming forward with the reflections and the results is to validate what those people have been saying, what those survivors have been saying for years. They have been heard, but they have not been believed, and so that's a real critical step in healing, not only for those communities, but healing as a nation.
We need to listen to the survivors. And if the science is a tool that can back up the survivors' statements, then we absolutely should be using it.
But critically, we should be listening to those survivors' stories because they are pointing us in the right direction, and they have that firsthand evidence, that firsthand witnessing of these events that did occur.
Support is available for anyone affected by their experience at residential schools or by the latest reports.
A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for former students and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.
Written by Sheena Goodyear with files from CBC British Columbia. Interview produced by Katie Geleff. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
