Cross Lake to launch search for graves

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This article was published 05/04/2022 (1275 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — A northern Manitoba reserve is preparing to begin ground radar searches for children’s graves at potential residential school burial sites next month after securing federal funding.

“A good majority of the cases that we have are not fully identified: who they are or where they’re buried,” said Chief David Monias of Cross Lake First Nation.

The Cree community 530 kilometres north of Winnipeg, known locally as Pimicikamak, has been trying to research, locate and commemorate children who died at the two local residential schools since last May when potential children’s graves were found at a Kamloops, B.C. First Nation.

The Catholic-run Cross Lake school housed First Nations children from 1912 to 1969, as did a smaller school from 1960 to 1967, known as the Notre Dame Hostel. Former students have said they were sexually and physically abused.

In the main school, nuns sometimes addressed students by numbers they had been assigned, instead of their name. Children from the community were banned for months from visiting parents who lived just kilometres away.

In mid-March, the reserve of 10,000 secured federal funding to hire three residents to lead the search, which will be guided by a handful of survivors, and supported by councils of elders and youth.

Neither the band nor the federal government was able to say Tuesday how much funding the band had received.

The team is selecting sites for ground-penetrating radar searches. The process involves taking drone photos of the land to look for anomalies in the soil, which data analysis could flag as possibly including a skeleton. The process could take six to 12 months.

The band will likely search an area called mission point, where the priests, nuns and students used to live.

“A lot of sites now have houses, an airport and a gas station,” Monias said. “We have to search around those areas, unfortunately.”

The community is combing over paperwork to learn about children from other communities who were sent to Cross Lake, as well as its own children who were sent to schools in the south. Monias said his band knows the local schools hosted children from northeastern Manitoba reserves, such as Fox Lake and Oxford House. The number who attended isn’t known.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission documented the deaths of 30 children at the school, including names.

Last August, the local diocese presented documents that reveal 54 other children had died at the main school; many on the list only have a first name, or have no name but a record of their gender and family members.

Monias said the band is still working to get annual enrolment lists, as well as records that were withheld from commission researchers, such as diaries.

“We have to look at the historical journals of priests, nuns and basically the church,” he said.

“With the historical records of band memberships, we can tie in the numbers or the names of the potential families who were affected.”

Monias said the band needs to learn where burial sites exist, how many children attended schools in his community, how many were known to have died and how many never returned home.

He said First Nations deserve the same attention to detail related to those cases as the alleged war crimes by Russians in Ukraine.

“You will have the police involved (in Ukraine); they will put in a full investigation and treat it as a crime scene, and try to ascertain whom the remains (are) through forensics, and find who did the crime,” he said.

“I don’t see why they can’t do that here, for all the mass graves.”

Monias said numerous survivors believe that many of the 12 children who died in a 1930 fire at the main school had their remains buried in a single coffin.

The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement recognized 14 schools in Manitoba. First Nations have started ground searches in Brandon, Dauphin, Pine Creek, Sandy Bay, Sagkeeng and Long Plain. Those involved in some of those searches said Tuesday they are still analyzing the data they’ve collected.

Chiefs recently formed a council with provincial and federal help to co-ordinate research and what they need to investigate sites.

Monias said he was glad Pope Francis apologized last week for the Catholic Church’s role in residential schools, but was unsettled he didn’t make any reference to unmarked graves.

He also wants the Queen to apologize.

The Vatican is planning for the Pope to come to Canada to apologize in person, likely in late July, and Monias hopes he’ll go to Cross Lake.

He said western laws focus on assigning legal liability to a government or a church, but Indigenous people instead want justice through healing and entities taking responsibility.

“Indigenous people are about rebuilding, or addressing the relationship that was broken or violated by the person,” he said.

“It’s not about the people versus the state. It’s about the relationship; the harm that was done needs to be addressed.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca