Search of former Dauphin residential school grounds begins

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This article was published 03/11/2021 (1613 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — First Nations have started another search of a suspected Manitoba burial site at a former residential school in Dauphin with documented student abuse.

“These innocent children were stolen from their families and their nations,” wrote Grand Chief Eugene Eastman, who oversees the Treaty 2 territory. “They all deserve to be found and honoured, so that the Creator may guide them home, and bring peace to their families.”

Treaty 2, a grouping of 10 First Nations around Riding Mountain National Park and the southern Interlake, held a traditional ceremony Monday at the site of the former McKay school in Dauphin.

On Tuesday, they had the Winnipeg firm KGS Group start a two-day search using ground-penetrating radar. It will take weeks to analyze the data.

The six acres searched, known locally as Parkland Crossing, is owned by the Dauphin Church of Christ​. The land was originally owned by the Anglican Church, which ran the residential school from 1957 to 1988, as well as an earlier affiliate in The Pas.

In testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, survivors of the Dauphin school described intense loneliness, with one saying she attempted suicide through pills around age 12.

Another said the boys kept running away, and each time, supervisors would use the strap on the other students.

“This kept continuing, and it escalated so bad, a eight-year-old, a nine-year-old, 10-year-old — we ransacked the whole dorm. We went violent,” testified Larry Beardy.

He and other Cree children from across northern Manitoba described being taken on trains that departed Churchill, gathering kids at various stops, always without their parents. The children would be dropped off at Dauphin or schools in Saskatchewan, sometimes separated from siblings.

One described coming off the train and having officials at the Dauphin school immediately strip her, cover her in an oil and cut her hair.

A 1970 inspection of the school found the food to be repetitive, with students served the same meal each day through the week, and often missing the recommended two servings of fruit per day.

A man who attended the school and became a supervisor there in the late 1960s, Ernest Constant, was convicted in 2005 for incident assault against several pupils, and sentenced to two years less a day.

First Nations have started similar ground searches at the Brandon, Sagkeeng and Long Plain schools, while some are trying to access federal funding to start such work.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca