There is no question of compromising the investigation into the graves at the former Kamloops residential school to respond to agitators who deny the facts, said the chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc first nation on Wednesday in a briefing. press taking stock of research into anonymous graves.
In front of a handful of media representatives, chef Rosanne Casimir recalled that the “research results to date agree with the presence of anonymous burials”.
“When I think about denial: we focus on the search for answers, on the search for peace for the families of the missing children. We know that our multidisciplinary investigation is progressing well. I have no time for agitators who deny the facts. We will continue to shed light on the truth and we will provide updates as we go,” she said.
“We will never jeopardize the investigation to respond to what looks like hate speech and racist remarks,” Chief Casimir then said. She still said she understood that the possible presence of anonymous graves could disturb Canadians. “It’s normal to have a hard time believing it,” she said, pledging to provide more information and evidence over time.
A change in vocabulary
On May 27, 2021, Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc announced in a press release the discovery of the “hard truth”, that is to say “the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students at the Kamloops residential school” . Three years later, the British Columbia community says it reported, in May 2021, “preliminary findings” about “approximately 200 anomalies” detected in the ground near the former residential school in Kamloops. ” Some [des anomalies] could be anonymous graves of former students,” Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc now suggests.
Asked about this new choice of words, Chief Casimir said that “from the beginning,” the expert in charge of the research — Sarah Beaulieu of the University of the Fraser Valley — confirmed the presence of anomalies in the soil. “But we also relied on historical details and oral history. […] We know this truth, which comes from our survivors [des pensionnats] “, she insisted. “Elders and survivors always spoke of children from the residential school dying or disappearing. Men talk about boys who were woken up in the middle of the night to dig holes that looked like graves, without anyone saying why,” she also illustrated.
Chief Casimir recalled that the details of the investigation were kept confidential, but that the research “consistent with the presence of anonymous burials”. She had clarified, as early as June 2021, that there was no question of a “common grave” in Kamloops.
Exhumations and legal proceedings
The ongoing research in Kamloops will help determine the cause of death of the children who were buried there and the nature of the legal proceedings that could result.
“We are ensuring that the investigation is carried out in a way that does not hinder or interfere with possible legal proceedings,” said Chief Casimir. She later clarified the nature of the work in progress. “What I can say is that the investigation serves to determine if, when and in what way we could carry out forensic work, such as DNA extraction, exhumation or others. »
The investigative work also consists of searching archive documents. “More than 128 communities and 32 nations have had children in this school,” recalled the head. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada had identified at least 51 children who died at the Kamloops Indian residential school between the years 1914 and 1963.
A model for the future
Mme Casimir gave a press briefing jointly with Vancouver Archbishop J. Michael Miller. On June 21, National Indigenous Peoples Day, Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc announced that it had signed a “sacred agreement” with the Archdiocese of Vancouver and the Diocese of Kamloops. The agreement, signed on May 31, seals the collaboration between the indigenous nation and religious authorities so that they establish the causes and circumstances of the deaths of children sent to residential schools.
It is based on a “papal bull” from Pope Paul III dating back to June 1957. This decree orders in particular that the “Indians” are indeed men, and that they must not be deprived of liberty and the right to property. This is “official Catholic teaching”, stipulates the agreement, which contrasts this “papal bull” with the writings relating to the “Doctrine of Discovery”. The Vatican repudiated this doctrine in 2023, which justified the colonization of the ancestral lands of the Indigenous people, on the pretext that they belonged to no one.
The “sacred agreement” also mentions the negative impacts of residential schools, which separated “more than 150,000 children from their families and communities” in just over a century. On Wednesday, Archbishop Miller said he hoped the text would serve as a model or template for other agreements. “There is no doubt: some things, like numbers, are still contested. But to deny that the residential school system had a negative impact and to deny that several students died while they were enrolled in school, it’s just… he’s wrong,” he said. of the president of the Catholic League, the American Bill Donohue. The latter described the Kamloops discovery as a “hoax”.