This post is part of a series entitled “Land, Memory, and Schooling: Environmental Histories of Colonial Education.” You can find the introduction here.
This post and series discuss Indian residential and day schools. Please take care as you read. If you are a Survivor or intergenerational Survivor of residential or day school and you need help, there’s a free 24-hour support line. Call 1-866-925-4419. Additional resources are available here.
In May of 2021, Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc announced preliminary findings from a ground search of lands near the Kamloops Indian Residential School. This moment became a flashpoint for the nation and the world to realize the scope and magnitude of the loss of children to the Indian Residential School (IRS) system in Canada, although Survivors and families had been sharing this truth for decades. As the world responded with shock and horror, many Indigenous communities began the long, arduous, and complicated journey of trying to find their children who had died at or disappeared from Indian Residential Schools and related institutions. Thousands of children were already known to have died based on extensive archival records and Survivor testimonies, but their place of burial was often not known to the families, nor were most of their graves appropriately marked or protected. This issue was raised so many times during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process that an entire volume of the final report and five Calls to Action (71-76) were dedicated to finding the missing children. Progress on those calls to action was slow for the first few years post-TRC, but after Kamloops, various levels of government started programs to support Nations and communities to search the grounds near residential schools for unmarked graves.
There are many lines of evidence to help find children, most importantly Survivor, family, and community knowledge, but also archives and ground search methods such as ground-penetrating radar. The task of locating and identifying missing children is a complex and difficult endeavour. It requires mental, spiritual, and emotional support for communities and Survivors, as well as significant technical expertise to know how to use various technologies in appropriate ways across a vast set of landscapes and environments. Faced with the challenge of figuring out where the children might have been buried at or near Indian Residential School sites, many communities reached out to archaeologists for help with ground searches. This represents a transition in the field of archaeology, from extraction to restoration.
“Faced with the challenge of figuring out where the children might have been buried at or near Indian Residential School sites, many communities reached out to archaeologists for help with ground searches. This represents a transition in the field of archaeology, from extraction to restoration.”
Archaeology and archaeologists have a history of doing harm to Indigenous peoples, lands, and histories. The foundations of the discipline in North America are based on the assumption that Indigenous cultures would disappear through the policies of assimilation, erasure, and dispossession. At the same time that Indigenous children were being stolen and institutionalized in Indian Residential Schools, anthropologists and archaeologists were going into Indigenous communities to record knowledge, take belongings, and dig up ancestors to also be held in institutions such as universities and museums. The legacy of archaeology, therefore, is literally skeletons in closets, boxes, classrooms, and for many years, on display in colonial institutions.
Much as Indigenous families have long been demanding answers about their missing children, Indigenous communities have also long been demanding the return of their ancestors and sacred items. In the United States, decades of advocacy led to the passing of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990. This law required all institutions receiving federal funding to inventory and repatriate human remains and burial items to culturally affiliated Native American tribes. While there is not similar legislation in Canada, over the past several decades archaeologists in this country have shifted from working on Indigenous histories to working “by, with, and for” Indigenous peoples (Nicholas and Andrew 1997: 3). This has led to collaborative, community-engaged archaeological projects and improved relationships between non-Indigenous archaeologists and Indigenous peoples. It has also set the stage for greater trust, meaning that when grappling with the complex and difficult task of using technology to search the ground for unmarked graves, archaeologists were seen as a source of help and support, not extraction and harm.
Archaeologists have been supporting communities in locating and protecting burial sites for a long time, including searching for graves associated with Indian Residential Schools using remote sensing and near-surface geophysical methods for the past two decades. My own involvement with ground searches began with a project in Treaty 4 territory in 2018. The Muskowekwan First Nation had invited Dr. Terry Clark of the University of Saskatchewan to help them locate unmarked graves in a field behind their still standing residential school building. Terry, in turn, reached out to me because I had access to relevant technology. In the summer of 2018, my student Liam Wadsworth and I helped conduct a survey of the land using ground-penetrating radar. Over the next few years, we continued to respond to community requests to assist with locating unmarked graves in known cemeteries and burial grounds, so when Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc made their announcement, we were positioned to support Nations in this sacred work. Since that time, my team from the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology has conducted ground searches at 14 different school locations in western Canada and provided expert advice and support to many more communities.
We are, however, at a critical juncture in this work of locating missing children. Support is waning, with government funding programs winding down, public attention being pulled elsewhere, and, perhaps most concerningly, denialism becoming louder and more prominent. In a time when reconciliation no longer seems to be a priority and public trust in the process of locating missing children is being actively undermined, the search for the truth held in the land where children are buried is even more critical. Survivors and communities know the truth already, but the use of technology to search residential school landscapes grounds that truth in specific locations and provides the opportunity for healing, accountability, and justice. Truth endures, and truth must come before reconciliation is possible.
Community connection statement: I am a citizen of the Otipemisiwak Métis Government. I am Métis through my father’s side of my family (my mother’s family is mostly British settler). My father is a Supernant/Supernault and was born in Edmonton. Some of the surnames of the ancestors from whom I’m descended, in addition to Supernault, include Knott, Pelletier/Campbell, Linklater, Gauthier/Gaucher, Gladu, Blandion/Dion, Desjarlais, Calihoo/Kwarakante, Grey, Nipissing, and Cardinal.
Feature Image: Ground-penetrating radar survey being conducted by Lyndsay Dagg and Madalyn Mandziuk. Photo by Kisha Supernant.
Reference cited:
Nicholas, George P., and Thomas D. Andrews, eds. 1997. At a Crossroads: Archaeology and First Peoples in Canada. Vancouver, BC: Simon Fraser University.
Kisha Supernant