Hymie Rubenstein is a retired professor of anthropology, University of ManitobaAccording to Blacklock’s Reporter, Canada’s premier newsroom revealing machinations our federal government leaders would rather keep hidden, “Millions paid to a British Columbia First Nation to recover suspected children’s graves at an Indian Residential School were instead budgeted for publicists and consultants.”The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations even tried to conceal the financial records under the Access To Information Act.Accounts show the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation — better known as the Kamloops Indian Band, its legal designation — received more than $12 million in funding after announcing on May 27, 2021, that it had discovered 215 children’s graves at the site of an Indian Residential School in Kamloops, B.C. based on the discovery of inconclusive sub-soil disturbances using ground penetrating radar. This technique can’t even determine organic material, let alone the existence of human remains.The announcement ignored this critical technical shortcoming, instead baldly claiming:"It is with a heavy heart that Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir confirms an unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented by the Kamloops Indian Residential School. “This past weekend, with the help of a ground penetrating radar [GPR] specialist, the stark truth of the preliminary findings came to light — the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School…. We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify.”Not only has Chief Casimir refused to document the contents of this “knowing or released the GPR findings as initially promised, but she even failed to mention that GPR is only reliable when employed in known and named cemeteries.Moreover, the assertion that the remains of 215 children were found was quickly but temporarily revised to 200 “potential burials” when it was discovered that previous archeological work had been done in the same area that easily could have been misinterpreted as burial remains. This was accompanied by a statement that the remains were not found in a “mass grave,” an assertion later denied by Casimir herself.By May 2024, three years after the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc first published the explosive news that they had uncovered the graves of 215 children, the band began officially referring to the 215 GPR hits as “anomalies” — soil disturbances of unknown origin — rather than confirmed graves.This retraction may explain why no attempt has been made to recover any human remains in the abandoned orchard next to the Kamloops Indian Residential School, the locale where these students are said to be buried.Indeed, whether to dig or not has been one of the most fraught questions surrounding the issue of unmarked graves at residential schools. No consensus has emerged among former Kamloops boarding school students, with some seeing exhumation as a process that could help lay victims properly to rest, while others wanted them left undisturbed.Kamloops school “survivor” Garry Gottfriedson said he struggled over whether the site should be dug up or left alone. Still, he leaned toward securing evidence to bring solace to himself, his band, and any buried children.“If you can imagine something gnawing at your whole soul for your whole life and then finally, there’s some peace of mind,” he said. “That’s how it is for me. This is one way in which part of that ugly history can be put to rest.”Conversely, Percy Casper, a fellow Kamloops school “survivor,” said he wanted the burial site left undisturbed. Exhumation would only prove what has already been established by ground-penetrating radar, he claimed.“The remains are there,” he said. “What more proof do they want?”The band's leadership upheld the lack of excavation of a single reputed burial, even employing minimally intrusive techniques like core sampling, despite “serious misgivings about the way their story was being told. The 14 major families within the community made it known to Casimir early on that an excavation of the orchard site should begin as soon as possible,” according to investigative journalist Terry Glavin.This same aversion to excavation has been followed at nearly all the suspected gravesites at some 30 other locations across the country. Why this has been resisted by band leaders even when community members have requested to do so is still unclear. Still, the probability of finding no remains seems a much more likely factor than the risk of disturbing burials, even when the presence of unmarked burials has been taken as a sign that its occupants were murdered by unknown school personnel, as in the case of Kamloops and elsewhere.In May 2022, Chief Casimir described her band’s approach to the site as an ongoing “exhumation to memorialization process,” which would involve finding evidence of remains and linking them to the students’ home communities.“We are utilizing science to support each step as we move forward. We do have a technical task force that has been put together that consists of various professors as well as technical archaeologists and we are continuing to work with a ground-penetrating radar specialist as well,” she said.“We know that when we start doing some of the archeological work, we know that, one, when we do that, it’s going to be about communication,” Ms. Casimir said.“It’s going to be about respect and honour and dignity. It’s going to be about connecting anyone that we may find to their home communities.”On June 26, 2024, Casimir repeated that the investigation is still ongoing, but the steps are being kept confidential to preserve the investigation's integrity.She claimed the band’s approach is multidisciplinary and includes archival, documentary research and analysis, archaeological and anthropological surveys and studies, and potential DNA and other forensic methods. She also claimed when the investigation reaches its next milestone, Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc will be sure to provide an update.“We’re taking steps to ensure that the investigation is carried out in a way that does not preclude and will not interfere with potential future legal proceedings,” she said.Over a year and a half later, the Blacklock’s Reporter revelations suggest little or nothing except perhaps some archival work has been done on the archaeological or forensic side of her band-led investigation.So, what happened to the initial $7.9 million granted by the federal government for field work, records searches, and to secure the Residential School grounds to uncover the truth of hidden graves? Accounts show funding subsequently increased to $12.1 million.Records show the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations questioned the Kamloops group on what “archaeological and forensic work” was underway. “I know you are aware of the incredibly complex nature of this type of work,” wrote Mandy McCarthy, acting director general with the department.“We are not seeking to intervene in this matter but are trying to understand the approach,” wrote McCarthy, who questioned whether “you have all the information you need to advance exhumation protocols and DNA testing.”The department censored all details of what became of the $12.1 million. However, the First Nations Health Authority that transferred $2.3 million in federal funding to Kamloops Band organizers did itemize partial expenses for a nine-month period.Costs included $37,500 for “marketing and communications,” $54,000 in travel, $100,000 as six month’s pay for two trauma counsellors, and $405,000 in “administrative costs,” including speaking fees and tent rentals. None involved fieldwork to identify graves.In a censored bookkeeping entry Community Support Funding Envelope, the department said the band hired 25 consultants to “provide advice and support to the Chief and Council” and paid publicists to develop “communications strategies.” None of the consultants were named.Some $532,000 was paid for security, while other funds were proposed for public works projects. Expenses included the hiring of architects, engineers, and contractors for “construction and operation of a Healing Centre,” “a new museum,” and “funding for an Elder’s Lodge,” a nursing home for Indigenous pensioners.“So many elders die in hospital or nursing homes that are hard to get to,” said a 2022 memo. “We need a place for them to feel safe and culturally supported. Most are Indian Residential School survivors. We need to start business planning, secure capital and long term operations and maintenance budgets, and need to develop cultural protocols.”The department only released the Access To Information records by order of Information Commissioner Carolyn Maynard. “I order the Minister to provide a complete response,” the Commissioner wrote last November 27.Cabinet approved funding for the recovery of children’s remains after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed horror over the Kamloops claim. “I think Canadians have seen with horror those unmarked graves across the country and realize that what happened decades ago isn’t part of our history, it is an irrefutable part of our present,” said Trudeau, who ordered the national flag on Parliament’s Peace Tower lowered for a record 161 days to honour Indigenous children.Kimberly Murray, cabinet’s Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves, testified last September 28 at the Senate indigenous peoples committee that she accepted some Canadians were skeptical of the Kamloops claims. “It is one thing to say you don’t believe there are burials,” she said. “That’s your opinion and you can have freedom of speech to say that.”Given the mounting secrecy and lack of accountability surrounding “the missing children buried in unmarked graves” issue, initial skepticism is evolving into outright denial, a transformation Murray says “is inciting hate against Indigenous people” and “That’s the type of speech we need to stop.”This is the same Kimberly Murray who on March 21, 2023 testified to the federal government’s Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous People that:"The family doesn’t know where their loved one is buried. They were taken to a sanatorium, an Indian residential school. They were just told … that they died. I can get the name of that [missing] individual, I can log into the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, find the name of the student, find a record, which will lead me down to another record …. And then those records will lead you to where they’re buried, hundreds of miles away from their home community. We are now seeing families going to cemeteries. I get this a lot. The children aren’t missing; they’re buried in the cemeteries. They’re missing because the families were never told where they’re buried. Every Indigenous family needs to know where their child is buried [emphasis added]."Murray was correct to opine that there are no missing children but wrong to assert that most residential school children who died were buried at or near their schools, rather than on their home reserves. As the records show, home burial was the norm. At the same time, all who died received a proper Christian burial after succumbing to contagious diseases like tuberculosis, over which indigenous people had little natural immunity.Meanwhile, not a single verified case of a student murdered by a staff member at one of these schools during their 113 government-funded existence, 1883-1996, has been reported.Hymie Rubenstein, editor of REAL Indigenous Report, is a retired professor of anthropology, University of Manitoba, and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
