"Decades of construction and other activity in areas like the abandoned apple orchard near the Kamloops IRS where many GPR “hits” were recorded could well account for soil disturbances. None of the technical reports resulting from GPR searches have been released by any First Nation for independent scrutiny...
Starr stressed that his First Nation had no financial motivations in all this. “We don’t want anything,” he said. “We want to honour the remains of this young child.” Yet this did not prevent Saskatchewan’s Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) Chief Bobby Cameron, whose organization funded the Star Blanket’s GPR search, from complaining that if the government was committed to helping, it “can start by building healing and wellness centres.”
The Memorial Register of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) has a list of Lebret IRS students who died while registered or within a year of their discharge. Of the 56 listed students, the date of demise of 17 is unknown, suggesting they died during the early years of the school’s operation when record-keeping was spotty. An additional 24 students are known to have died before 1900. This is a period when death rates from infectious diseases were at their apex in residential schools. Overall, 41 students representing nearly three-quarters of alleged missing students can be considered likely to have died more than 122 years ago, and most of them probably from contagious diseases such as influenza, measles and tuberculosis (TB), afflictions against which Indigenous people had little natural resistance.
There is no evidence that the families were not alerted about their children’s demise or that some criminal act resulted in their unfortunate deaths. And despite all the claims to the contrary, none of the 56 students appear to be actually missing; their names and other information can readily be found within existing archives. This discovery comes through the work of Nina Green, an independent researcher whose Indian Residential Schools Records website has collected and organized voluminous historical data that was apparently not consulted or analyzed by the TRC or NCTR.
Green and other independent researchers have found that death records actually exist for thousands of registered IRS children stated to be unaccounted for. This newly-revealed data shows most did not die at the schools. Instead, they died under care in local hospitals or in accidents or from disease on their home reserves. Their death certificates, some signed by their parents, show that most were buried on their home reserves. Moreover, the TRC did not record any instances of a parent searching at the relevant time for a missing child.
As her work has unfolded, Green has diligently reported her findings to the NCTR in cases where it contradicts official statistics. One major area of concern is the duplication of student records. Her work on the Lebret school, for example, suggests that 55 rather than 56 students died while in attendance. The records for students Josephine (Qu’Appelle) and Josephine Standing Buffalo, recorded as dying on the same day, probably refer to the same person. (See page 51 of her document.) Many other cases of likely duplication can be found at other schools. To date, no action has been taken to correct the Memorial Register as a result of Green’s painstaking archival work.
The unmarked aspect of many graves found around residential schools is neither a new issue nor should it be considered sinister. This is because permanently marking graves was not a traditional Indigenous practice. Pre-contact funerary practices among Aboriginals in what is now Canada typically involved interring the dead with their personal belongings to ensure a safe passage into the spirit world. Depending on the group, this could involve drying and embalming the remains, burying bodies in a sitting position, marking them with red ochre, or placing the remains in middens, earthen mounds, stone cairns or above ground on platforms or in trees.
Habitually visiting or memorializing the dead was also not common, given that most of Canada’s pre-contact people were nomadic hunters and gatherers who disposed of their dead wherever they happened to be. The migratory Cree peoples of the Prairies traditionally buried their dead in small shallow unmarked graves wherever they were temporarily encamped. Enclosed and permanent cemeteries were mainly established after the bison were all-but annihilated in the late 1800s, the same period as the land surrender treaties establishing Indian reserves were signed. As wooden cross markers deteriorate rapidly in Canadian weather, more and more graves became unmarked, or marked but unidentifiable, through a combination of traditional customs and the passage of time. This has made proving the existence of Canada’s IRS cemeteries or other burial sites difficult, a task exacerbated by politicization, sorrow and recrimination.
Underlying the exploration for unknown cemeteries is the belief that GPR findings can indicate the remains of children who were sent to an IRS but never returned home. A related assumption is that most children who died while registered at an IRS were buried in the school’s cemetery rather than on their home reserve. The TRC habitually called such cases “missing children.” Volume 4 of its report defined this term to include children who died at school, might have run away to urban areas, finished school but then moved away, fell ill and died in a hospital or sanatorium, or were transferred to foster homes. “Missing children” and “unmarked graves” (which may contain adults or children who were never reported missing) have thus become conflated so that many commentators now refer to “missing children in unmarked graves” as if the two distinct phenomena are synonymous.
There are other grounds to question the GPR results. On sheer logic alone, it seems inconceivable that 100, let alone 2,000, Indigenous children drawn from the 14 neighbouring reserves that made up the Star Blanket Band could have died while attending the school (which had 280 students in 1914) and ended up buried under mysterious circumstances (possibly in secret underground tunnels) without provoking a huge outcry from parents, family members, band elders – or other schoolchildren and workers. Moreover, if any of the 2,000 GPR “hits” do end up pointing to human remains, further investigation would still be needed to determine their origin.
Regardless of legitimate questions that may be raised about the jawbone discovery or below-ground anomalies, many Canadians remain shocked by the whole issue of residential school graves, perhaps most of all at the thought that some young students who died while attending school were not returned to their families to be buried on their home reserves. Modern sensibilities rooted in the logically shaky notion of “presentism” may well regard this as evidence of institutional inhumanity. But 125 years ago, local interment was perfectly normal for people of all races who died in hospitals, mental institutions, poor houses or jails, or along railway or canal construction sites.
With federal budgets perpetually strained in Canada’s early years – and given the lack of refrigeration and rapid transport – it was often impractical to send bodies to distant reserves. Instead, local churches often undertook the responsibility and cost of burying the local dead from indigent families, as this TRC report itself indicates. The same policy applied to European school personnel, including clergy. In extreme circumstances such as severe epidemics, mass graves could become a public health necessity to prevent further contagion...
School burials were the exception rather than the rule because a preponderance of student deaths did not occur at residential schools, a fact archaeologist Hamilton failed to acknowledge. None of this is new information or in any way sinister. In other words, the recent “discoveries” at the Wauzhushk Onigum First Nation appear both unremarkable and predictable...
The mere presence of a jawbone on the ground beside a gopher hole is not proof of anything beyond the industriousness of gophers. The same goes for the myriad allegations of missing children, unmarked graves and various other misdeeds laid at the feet of residential schools and their administrators. That old cemeteries contain dead bodies should shock no-one. Yet Canadians are subjected to a constant stream of new allegations regarding historical misdeeds at residential schools without any apparent concern for proof or coherence.
Another example of this worrisome tendency is a report released on January 24 claiming unpasteurized milk was responsible for the deaths of “many” Indigenous children at the Blue Quills IRS on Alberta’s Saddle Lake Indian Reserve. And that this in turn is more evidence of “a genocide.” That apparently healthy native children arrived at the Blue Quills school and later became ill and, in some cases, died of TB or other diseases is seen by Leah Redcrow, executive director of the First Nation’s Acimowin Opaspiw Society, as proof of a grand conspiracy...
Even the typically credulous CBC showed signs of skepticism in its coverage of the Blue Quills allegations. The broadcaster interviewed Keith Warriner, a professor of food safety at the University of Guelph, who explained that the adoption of pasteurized milk “was a hard sell” throughout the early part of the 20th century and its ability to prevent TB was often contested in public. So it remained common to consume unpasteurized – and potentially infected – milk. Even if these alleged deaths could be traced back to tainted milk, why would anyone have deliberately poisoned it?...
Suspicions that there are, in fact, no missing or secretly buried Blue Quills IRS students grow stronger when considering the absence of any relatives looking for loved ones who never returned home from the school. In fact, in all of Canada, only two distant relatives have been identified as looking for their ancestors from any residential school. In both cases, the children were found in provincial archives whose records showed they were properly interred on their home reserves. This is a far cry – orders of magnitude – from the “15,000 to 25,000…maybe even more” children Murray Sinclair, former chair of the TRC, has claimed may be missing...
Subjecting allegations of gravesites, serendipitous jawbones or accusations of murder by poisoned milk to the unblinking rigour of science, logic and archival proof is not “heartless cynicism,” as some critics claim. It is a necessary process to ensure Canadian public policy and opinion are formed on the basis of facts and reliable evidence, rather than rumour and hearsay. Such a verification process does not deny any of the provable harms caused by the residential schools...
Focusing exclusively on a victim-centric narrative denigrates the outstanding life achievements of many former IRS students. Here we include Phil Fontaine, former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations; Leonard Marchand, the first Status Indian to be appointed to a federal cabinet position; Wilton Littlechild, a Member of Parliament and Commissioner on the TRC; and Tomson Highway, a highly-regarded playwright and novelist, among countless others. Highway called his time at an IRS, “Nine of the happiest years of my life.”...
There is a more complete, balanced and fact-filled story waiting to be told about Canada’s residential schools. But it will take plenty of research and hard work to uncover amid the current preference for obfuscation, innuendo and slander."
"While the Queen Elizabeth abduction story probably would be regarded with skepticism by most, many similar improbable accounts of “murders” and “missing children” are being repeated by Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc “Knowledge Keepers” and are now accepted as “truth.” Knowledge Keepers, after all, cannot be questioned, because to do so would be perceived as “disrespectful.” This raises questions about the extent to which the “oral tellings” of the Knowledge Keepers, which have been provided as evidence for the existence of “secret burials” at KIRS, have been influenced by the lurid stories circulating over the past 25 years. These stories were given additional momentum in May 2021 and are now firmly ensconced within the Canadian consciousness.
Upon closer examination, the circulation of these stories has some similarities with the moral panic started by the book Michelle Remembers published in 1980. The case involved Michelle Smith, who, after engaging in recovered memory therapy, made sweeping claims about the satanic ritual abuse that she claimed to have endured. The book presented itself as being factual, but scrutiny of its contents did not corroborate its claims. This did not prevent it from instigating a social contagion, leading to a satanic abuse moral panic in the 1980s that resulted in over 12,000 unsubstantiated accusations being made. The hysteria eventually subsided, but not before a number of innocent people had their lives ruined.
The satanic abuse moral panic was made possible by the implantation of false memories. Research in psychology has shown that it is easy to manufacture memories, especially in people who are emotionally disturbed. The most famous example of this was the McMartin preschool trial in 1983. In this case, the claims made about those accused of satanic abuse, Peggy McMartin and Ray Buckey, were eagerly and uncritically reported by the media. Michelle Smith and others identifying as “survivors” of satanic abuse also met with the complainants, and were thought to have influenced their allegations against McMartin and Buckey. Furthermore, interview techniques using leading questions dramatically increased the incidence of remembered sexual abuse. Pressure was used to obtain disclosures, since interviews rewarded testimonies about abuse and discouraged denials. Similar cases of mass hysteria, in fact, have appeared periodically throughout history, from the Salem Witch Trials to the Hammersmith Ghost Hysteria. The current accusations of “Knowledge Keepers” about “secret burials” at KIRS take on a similar flavor. Furthermore, it is important to point out that these allegations have resulted in the extraction of numerous forms of compensation from governments, incentivizing indigenous organizations to enthusiastically promote them...
One colleague even argued a month later that “the murders of ‘hundreds’ (thousands?) of indigenous children in Canada’s catholic residential schools” meant that people should not be “blame[d]” for the burning of churches.
Because such statements were widely supported across the country, with almost no critical analysis, one could be forgiven for thinking that the claims about the “bodies of 215 children” had been substantiated. This is not the case.
What will be shown below is that there is no evidence to support the existence of remains at KIRS, not to mention the extraordinary claim of 215 “murders.” In a similar manner to the satanic abuse panic following Michelle Remembers, the recollections of Billy Combes and others, after being widely disseminated, are likely to have been absorbed into the memories of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc “Knowledge Keepers” and the wider public consciousness. This has been facilitated by indigenous organizations intent on increasing compensation from the government, as well as “woke” academics, journalists, and politicians who assume that the indigenous “genocide survivor” identity must be accepted without question...
This silence about the “juvenile rib bone” is troubling. Generally, if a human bone is found, one does not just hand it over to an indigenous group. Finding human remains is a serious matter, and the police would need to investigate so as to determine the identity of the deceased person and if foul play had occurred. Questions need to be answered as to whether or not the bone has been determined to be human. If so, did the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc involve the police in investigating this matter, and what were the results of the investigation?...
The possibility of the politicization of the SFU archaeology department is disturbing. Simon Fraser University is a public institution, and its ability to discuss research findings should not be controlled by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc or any other private entity. It also raises questions about whether the archaeological research undertaken about indigenous “unmarked graves” has been compromised by a particular agenda...
Grand Chief Archibald, after hearing these remarks, maintained that the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc case had enabled the world to learn “how 215 innocent children died and were buried in unmarked graves” and that this “crime against humanity” constituted “genocide.” She completely ignored the caution expressed by Beaulieu and the other archaeologists and argued that “this ground penetrating technology is revealing evidence, undisputable proof, that crimes were committed.” On the basis of these “probable burials,” Archibald argued that the “crimes have to be investigated” and “the criminals must be held to account.” In “looking for ways to heal the trauma,” Archibald recommended that Canadians call politicians to demand “reparations,” “justice,” and “action.” Similar comments were made by Don Worme, the legal counsel for the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc...
It appears that excavations will never be done because it is to be a “community driven process,” and many argue that the “bodies” should not be disturbed. This raises questions about why people who actually think that “murders,” “genocide,” and “atrocities” occurred would not demand that forensic examinations be undertaken. If “the criminals must be held to account,” as Archibald asserts, isn’t the first step in this process to determine whether or not the “probable burials” actually contain the remains of indigenous children? Or is the intent to convict people of “murder” on the basis of the “oral tellings” of the “Knowledge Keepers”?
Time and time again one sees assertions that GPR is being used to “confirm” the existence of children’s remains. The burials in question would be over 50 years old, when it is recognized that there are “limitations of detecting graves for extended postmortem intervals.” One scientific paper in Nature maintains, in fact, “Finding hidden bodies, believed to have been murdered and buried, is problematic, expensive in terms of human resource and currently has low success rates for law enforcement agencies.” It points out that “there is a general reduction in geophysical anomaly amplitude with increase in time since burial, so the sooner geophysical surveys can be undertaken the greater the chance of discovery.” This means that it will be more difficult to see indications of graves the longer bodies have been in the ground. Detection will be particularly difficult if bodies are buried without a covering; clandestine burials with unwrapped bodies are difficult to detect after ten years have elapsed.
It also is irresponsible not to point out that burials, even if they are “probable,” do not necessarily involve human remains. In the literature on excavations being undertaken on the basis of GPR, there are many instances of the investigations finding other materials that are buried. In the case of the search for three boys who went missing in 1966 from South Australia, for example, a “subsurface anomaly that was consistent with the size, shape and depth of a burial that could have contained three small children” was found, but this turned out to be animal bones and garbage. Therefore, it seems unlikely that Dr. Beaulieu would be able to make specific claims about “probable burials” involving the 215 (and then 200) “targets of interest” after a period of 50 to 70 years had elapsed. As there has been a refusal to release her report, there is no way for the findings to be scrutinized by objective observers...
Chief Casimir has never identified the Knowledge Keepers, nor has she specified what was said in their oral histories beyond what was asserted in the July press release. It is possible that the names of the Knowledge Keepers are in Dr. Beaulieu’s written report, but Chief Casimir has refused to release it. Four women are identified as Knowledge Keepers on the Qwelmínte Secwepemc website: Colleen Seymour, Jeanette Jules, Mona Jules, and Rhona Bowe. It also appears that some of these Knowledge Keepers are closely related, and they could have influenced the accounts of one another. This would impact their reliability...
It is shocking that what were once considered to be lurid tales attributed to a conspiracy theorist are now being credulously retold by Canada’s publicly funded broadcaster. Inadvertently, a major inconsistency is revealed in the Fifth Estate episode, which should make everyone take pause...
There were three indigenous teachers on staff at KIRS during the 1950s and 1960s: Joe Stanley Michel (now deceased), Benjamin Paul, and Mabel Caron (still living in Kamloops). These three indigenous staff members are featured in the 1962 CBC documentary The Eyes of Children (now considered, without explanation, to be a “propaganda film” by The Fifth Estate). Joe Stanley Michel was the first KIRS graduate in 1950 (register #589) and returned to KIRS to teach there from 1953 to 1967 and lived with his wife, Anna Susan Soulle (also a KIRS graduate, register #666), and young family in a teacherage next door to the school building. Michel and Soulle were also interviewed in Celia Haig-Brown’s Resistance and Renewal (1988), and did not mention burials. Would all of these indigenous people have kept silent about these alleged clandestine graves?...
This can be explained by what I have called “neotribal rentierism,” where compensation is extracted for wrongs that have been committed in the past. This rent-seeking has been assisted by “woke” non-indigenous academics who assume that, to combat oppression, they must “shut up and listen” and unquestionably accept the indigenous “genocide survivor” identity...
Postmodernism gradually became “reified,” leading to the aggressive demands that identities perceived to be oppressed be “made real.”
In the case of the “Knowledge Keepers’ tellings” and other testimonies about the “215 secret burials” in the apple orchard at KIRS, the identity that must be made real is the notion of being an indigenous residential school (genocide) “survivor.” This is why there were so many uncritically accepted references to “mass graves,” “denialism,” and “murdered” children in universities across the country. If one questions the claim that the residential schools were genocidal, or argues that they provided educational benefits to students, it is asserted by one’s colleagues that this is tantamount to being a Holocaust denier.
And just as teaching that the Holocaust did not occur would likely result in dismissal for academic incompetence, some professors claim that one should be fired for challenging the residential schools (genocide) “survivor” identity. The university’s widespread promotion of “decolonization” and “reconciliation” is now morphing into demands for affirmative acknowledgments from professors, as some indigenous students, faculty, and staff claim that being exposed to dissenting positions creates a “culture of fear” and challenging the “genocide” narrative “conveys a tolerance for violent and lethal behaviour.”
While these kinds of intellectual constraints around the discussions of cases like KIRS are destructive for academic freedom and open inquiry, a more disturbing consequence is the impact that this is having on indigenous peoples themselves. The acceptance of these lurid and highly improbable stories is causing increasing anger and bitterness about the past, as well as an inability to communicate, when what is needed are honest conversations about how to solve the educational, health, and housing problems facing indigenous communities. As has been said many times, there can be no “reconciliation” without truth.
Because of the accusations of “genocide” that have emerged with the moral panic brought about by the circulation of stories about “secret burials,” “murders,” and “mass graves,” the actual problems facing marginalized indigenous people are not being addressed. We are, once again, heading down a path where funds will be dispersed to alleviate problems that are not caused by a lack of money...
Much indigenous deprivation—low educational levels, poor health, and high rates of violent criminality, alcoholism, sexual abuse, and suicide—is due to being economically isolated and receiving substandard services, especially a poor quality education. None of this will be rectified by spending billions of dollars on the allegations about “unmarked graves.” This only benefits a tiny elite of indigenous and non-indigenous rent-seekers to the detriment of ordinary indigenous people. Money will be paid out to lawyers and consultants in what Albert Howard and I have called the Aboriginal Industry, and new grievances will ensure that funds are diverted to complex agreements and bureaucratic processes that benefit no one. Portraying the residential schools as “genocidal” is at best a distraction; at worst, it acts to disguise the serious educational challenges that face any nation-state trying to incorporate isolated and marginalized tribal cultures into a modern economy and society."
Indigenous memories are perfect, and only far right conspiracy theorists peddling misinformation would question them