Canada was rocked by the announcement last May that a gravesite with remains of 215 children was discovered near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School..This, plus announcements of similar 2021 discoveries, ripped open wounds suffered by residential school survivors, flooded Canadians with shame and sorrow and led to about 50 churches being torched..It generated international disgust from the UN, Pope Francis, even China. The condemnation was fueled by erroneous reports that actual remains were found at a “mass grave” site, a grievous claim disputed by some indigenous leaders. .There’s a vast difference between a mass gravesite and a graveyard. One’s a crime scene, a product of evil. The other may not be..Hard evidence has yet to be produced..Jacques Rouillard, professor emeritus with the University of Montreal history department, posed a critical question in an article entitled In Kamloops, Not One Body Has Been Found, which appeared January 11 in the Dorchester Review, a non-partisan journal of history and commentary..“After seven months of recrimination and denunciation, where are the remains of the children buried at the Kamloops Indian Residential School?” he wrote..“It is hard to believe a preliminary search for an alleged cemetery or mass grave in an apple orchard on reserve land near the residential school of Kamloops could have led to such a spiral of claims endorsed by the Canadian government and repeated by mass media all over the world,” wrote Rouillard..“The exhumations have not yet begun, and no remains have obviously been found … On the road to reconciliation, isn’t the best way to seek and tell the whole truth rather than deliberately create sensational myths?”.We don’t know if it’s a myth, as he claimed. We do need to know what — or who — lies beneath those grounds..Rouillard noted the discovery of “probable burials” is based on soil abnormalities and depressions. .Two acres where the school operated 1890-1978, were scanned by anthropologist Sarah Beaulieu, an instructor of anthropology and sociology at the University of the Fraser Valley..Beaulieu used ground-penetrating radar to search for remains of children. Initially, she claimed she discovered 215 “anomalies” or “targets of interest” then reduced the number of “probable burials” to 200..Requests for her full report to be released were refused..“Having ‘barely scratched the surface,’ she found many ‘disturbances in the ground such as tree roots, metal, and stones.’ The ‘disruptions picked up in the radar,’ she says, led her to conclude that the sites ‘have multiple signatures that present like burials,” wrote Rouillard..Beaulieu later said her investigation was “preliminary” and “only forensic investigation will provide definitive results.” .There’s staunch opposition to disturbing the land..Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation Chief Rosanne Casimir announced the discovery last May 27..Wrote Rouillard: “According to Chief Casimir, these ‘missing children’ represent ‘undocumented deaths.’ Their presence, she says, has long been ‘knowledge’ in the community and ‘some were as young as three years old.’” .The school was run by the priests of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and Quebec’s Sisters of St. Anne..“In the wake of unsubstantiated claims by Aboriginal leaders, several media outlets amplified and hyped the story by alleging the bodies of 215 children had been found, adding that ‘thousands of children had gone missing’ from residential schools and that parents had not been informed,” said.Rouillard..“By never pointing out that it’s only a matter of speculation or potentiality, and that no remains have yet been found, governments and the media are simply granting credence to what is really a thesis: the thesis of the “disappearance” of children from residential schools. .“From an allegation of ‘cultural genocide’ endorsed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) we have moved to ‘physical genocide,’ a conclusion the commission explicitly rejects in its report.”.In its 2015 report, the TRC identified 3,200 deaths of children at residential schools. .Rouillard pointed to anthropologist Scott Hamilton who said “one must be very careful with the use of ground-penetrating radar because the soil may have been disturbed over the years by “sedimentary texture … culturally-derived unconformities, obstructions or voids.”.Rouillard questions how perpetrators could avoid detection and why no righteous religious whistleblowers were heard..“Significantly, the Kamloops residential school is located at the heart of the Kamloops Reserve itself — a fact that is never reported by Aboriginal spokespersons or the media.”.The TRC report noted that Christian burial was the norm at most schools and adjacent cemeteries were used to bury students, community members, and nuns and priests..“With the cemetery so close by, is it credible the remains of 200 children were buried clandestinely in a mass grave, on the reserve itself, without any reaction from the band council until last summer?”.Having personally witnessed mass grave sites exhumed in Bosnia, there’s no doubt the grim process is forever haunting. But it can lead to truth. .These sites must be exhumed. There’s no other way to find out how many children were buried and why..Canada’s indigenous, all Canadians — including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau whose father Pierre was prime minister when residential schools were overseen by the Liberals from 1969-1978 — deserve answers..Did the scanner detect tree roots or remains of precious children who might have died at the hands of monsters?.Slobodian is the Senior Manitoba Columnist for the Western Standard.lslobodian@westernstandardonline.com
