James C. McCrae is former attorney general of Manitoba and a retired Canadian citizenship judge.

Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report, a retired professor of anthropology, and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

“Anomaly” was a word many people had never heard of before it was applied by ground penetrating radar (GPR) specialists to the results of their work looking for the remains of indigenous children said to have never made it home from their Indian Residential Schools.

Since mid-2021, with an announcement heard around the world from the Kamloops Indian Reserve about the burials of students in unmarked graves who attended its former Aboriginal residential school, the term has gained widespread usage as indigenous leaders and activists have routinely converted GPR “anomalies” to the actual “discovery” of the “remains” of hundreds of Indigenous children buried in unmarked graves near their former Indian Residential Schools.

In doing so, they have ignored the elementary fact that GPR is not capable of detecting organic material, let alone human remains like the bones of dead people buried six feet underground.

The latest such GPR “discovery” on the Cross Lake Indian Reserve/Pimicikamak Cree Nation, a community of about 10,000 people in Northern Manitoba, was announced on July 3 by its chief, David Monias, who claimed 187 “anomalies” were detected by ground penetrating radar (GPR).

Of these 187 GPR hits, 59 “unmarked graves” were in the community cemetery, 44 around the reserve airstrip, 24 near the former St. Joseph’s Residential School, and 60 in clusters scattered elsewhere.

This announcement comes after the band launched an investigation three years ago on the heels of the following famous May 27, 2021 Kamloops announcement by its chief, Rosanne Casimir:

“This past weekend, with the help of a ground penetrating radar 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," she announced.

St. Joseph’s Residential School was run by the same Roman Catholic missionary society as the Kamloops boarding school. The band said about 1,240 children from 12 northern communities attended St. Joseph’s.

Pimicikamak secured $2.1 million in federal funding and began the radar-penetrating search in the summer of 2022. The search continued last summer.

In 2022, Monias claims researchers had also documented 85 deaths of children at the school and that the radar search began the same year.

“Each anomaly and unmarked grave represents a life and a story that was unjustly silenced. As we move forward, our ceremonies will not only honour these souls, but also will serve as a crucial step in our community's healing process,” Monias said, his words arbitrarily transforming anomalies with unknown contents into the burial of Indigenous children in unmarked graves.

A reverse sleight of hand was attempted by Casimir last May 26 when she stepped back on her 2021 claim of 215 bodies found in graves at Kamloops Indian Residential School, instead referring to them as “anomalies.” No forensic examination has been undertaken and none is planned even though “14 leading Tk’emlúps families had already told Casimir that an excavation of some kind was necessary to clear things up.” This did not prevent Casimir from confidently asserting, “our investigators' findings to date are consistent with the presence of unmarked burials.”

As for Monias, he said the sites would have to be excavated and DNA testing done to determine what the anomalies represented and that would require more funding from the federal government.

In another part of northern Manitoba, 14 anomalies were detected using ground-penetrating radar in the basement of the church on the site of the former Pine Creek Residential School in 2022. Survivors had long spoken about "horror stories" in the basement.

Though several items were recovered during a four-week excavation, including animal bones and debris from a fire, none suggested evidence of human remains.

There is an important lesson here for the parties involved. Before any more funding is requested or allocated, the existing evidence needs to be carefully examined.

It is easy to dismiss the significance of the 59 unmarked graves in the community cemetery given that cemeteries are supposed to contain human remains, on the one hand, and because indigenous people have long marked the burials of their loved ones with simple wooden crosses subject to ordinary decay over the decades, on the other.

As for the 44 anomalies at the airfield, they are highly questionable because of the area’s intensive ground disturbance.

The list of 85 deaths of children at the school “who have simply disappeared” based on data commissioned by the Missionary Oblate Sisters of the Sacred Heart needs careful examination as well because it may include records from some or all six residential schools that operated in the Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas.

As for the remaining 84 anomalies, they bear no relation to official reports about the children who died while registered as attending the St. Joseph’s Residential School.

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, charged with compiling the names of children who died while registered as boarding school attendees, lists 30 pupils for the Cross Lake school throughout its operation, 1915-1969.

Twelve of these named children died in a fire set by student arsonists on February 25, 1930. One nun died while trying to save the little ones; four others were severely injured while they, too, tried to save them.

Of the 11 remaining children, their names and death records show that all died either in Cross Lake or on the nearby Norway House Indian Reserve.

In short, there are no named missing children who attended this school.

Also, none of the 187 children reported by Monias has been identified by name. This omission begs the question of why the federal government is offering hundreds of millions of dollars to investigate the deaths of children when no one knows who any of them were. Except for the parents of the victims of the 1930 fire, no parent, guardian, or chief is on record as having frantically reported a missing school child.

It is also beyond belief that neither Monias nor any news media have asked why police authorities are not investigating this situation, especially when this chief seems to believe some of the children represented by the soil disturbance indicate “a life and a story that was unjustly silenced.”

The 1930 homicides of the twelve Cross Lake schoolchildren were certainly investigated, and the perpetrators were tried, convicted and punished.

Countering assertions by band members of “injustices that happened” at the residential school are the views of community members in 1932, two years after its destruction by student arsonists. The “Treaty Indians and half-breeds of Cross Lake” petitioned the government in these handwritten words:

“We, the undersigned treaty Indians of the Cross Lake Reserve of Manitoba, regretting the loss of our residential school given to us by the Department of Indian Affairs and considering the great loss we have made for the education of our children since two years and for the future wishing that a good education will be still given to our children and our grandchildren, we the undersigned are wishing and begging from the department that considering our great desire of education for our children this same department will agree to our petition for the rebuilding of our Residential school as soon as possible so that our children won’t be deprived any longer from a good education.” (our emphasis)

In 1930, the school had operated as a residential school since 1915, so these 1932 petitioners would have been intimately aware of the school’s operation. No doubt some of them had attended the school themselves or were employed there. If children were being murdered and secretly buried in the area, it would have been impossible for such criminal activity to go unreported.

In short, there are no good grounds for federal government funding of civilian investigations across Canada when no one knows who is missing, whether any crimes were committed, or whether the soil disturbances represent the remains of children.

When there is no evidence of missing needles, it makes no sense to fund searches of multiple haystacks.

Conversely, were these truly searches for “unjustly silenced” missing children, they should be police led investigations: nowhere else in the civilized world are local political organizations corresponding to Canada’s “First Nations” allowed to investigate allegations of mass murder.

Regrettably, this is not a search for missing children but rather an example of endless treasure hunts aided and abetted by an incurious and compliant mainstream media.

James C. McCrae is former attorney general of Manitoba and a retired Canadian citizenship judge.

Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report, a retired professor of anthropology, and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Residential School Probe: Concerns Over GPR Anomalies

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