WARNING: This story contains distressing details.
A search for unmarked graves at the former Blue Quills Residential School in eastern Alberta found 19 sites that contained anomalies consistent with burial plots.
The property, located about 150 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, was once a Roman Catholic-run institution. It now operates as University nuhelot’įne thaiyots’į nistameyimâkanak Blue Quills, which is governed by the seven First Nations communities that surround it.
An investigation using ground-penetrating radar uncovered “reflections” in the soil that are indicative of human burials or graves. The initial findings of the survey were released Wednesday morning as community elders, knowledge keepers and university officials gathered for a ceremony on campus.
Bertha Janvier Moir, 69, a former student at the institution, said the search for the graves of her former peers must continue.
The children who were buried at residential schools need to be honoured and “brought home,” Moir said Wednesday.
Moir spent four painful years as a student at Blue Quills and said she was taught to feel shame for her heritage and her language.
She speaks fluent Dene but said she never taught it to her children due to the shame she learned to carry inside the classrooms of Blue Quills.
There was a time when she was afraid to walk the halls of the large brick building, fearing the doors would lock behind her.
But Wednesday, taking solace in her children and grandchildren, she said she is no longer afraid and doesn’t want to feel anger.
Instead, she wants to find acceptance for herself and build understanding among all Canadians.
“We can’t move on by ourselves,” she said. “Canada needs to move on with us.
“Canada needs to hear it so we are treated as human beings because we are human beings. We bleed the same.”
‘People deserve answers’
At the invitation of the university, Kisha Supernant — the director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology at the University of Alberta — led the survey.
Between Aug. 9 and 13, 2022, Supernant and her team searched around 1.3 acres of land surrounding the school under the guidance of the testimony of elders and survivors.
Supernant said more study is needed to better understand the characteristics of the 19 sites. To complete an analysis, researchers need scans of known gravesites in the community to gather comparison data, she said.
Next steps will be guided by community elders, survivors and their families, Supernant said.
“The nature of the work that we’re doing with ground-penetrating radar can’t provide guarantees that we are finding unmarked graves,” Supernant said.
“That’s challenging in this work because people deserve answers.”
Supernant’s work relies on a transmitting antenna that sends the high-frequency waves into the ground that will bounce back to the receiver if they hit anything that is different from the medium of the soil.
The scans cannot pick up organic matter, meaning researchers can not determine whether skeletal remains lie below.
She describes the findings as a first step in offering the community answers about the children who never returned home.
“We need to look for additional lines of evidence or additional information to help support what communities and survivors already know,” she said in an interview Wednesday.
The university began operating as a federally-sponsored residential school in 1931.
Roman Catholic missionaries, however, established the school first in 1891, in Lac La Biche, Alta.
In 1898, the buildings were moved to the Saddle Lake Cree Nation and were renamed Blue Quills. The school was then relocated to the site in St. Paul in 1931.
The federal government planned to shutter the school in 1970 but the community fought back and transformed the building into the first residence and school controlled by First Nations people in Canada.
Gary Lameman, okimâw or chief of Beaver Lake Cree Nation, said the investigation has honoured the testimony of children who survived residential schools and the memory of those who did not.
The search at Blue Quills should continue to ensure no graves are “left behind,” he said.
“It’s very important to acknowledge these little people that didn’t come back, these young ones — acknowledging that they were here and that they haven’t been forgotten.”
Lameman, who attended Wednesday’s ceremony, said he hopes that by bringing light to the terrible history of residential schools, that it will never happen again.
Searches for residential school graves offer a chance for healing, he said, and serve as a reminder of the duty all Canadians have to move toward reconciliation.
“Non-Indigenous people of this nation should take a special interest in what’s happening, not only here at Blue Quills, but at all the other residential schools,” he said.
“This was a form of genocide.”
The search at Blue Quills was announced last year as Indigenous communities across the country grappled with the discovery of what are believed to be 751 unmarked graves at the former Marieval Indian Residential School, east of Regina.
An unrelated group was formed by Saddle Lake Cree Nation in 2021 to investigate possible Blue Quills residential school burial sites. The investigation detailed numerous discoveries of human remains and findings that suggest that tainted, unpasteurized milk was responsible for the deaths of many First Nations children at the school.
According to survivor testimonies gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), students at the school were often exposed to violence. Students were beaten with fists and whips and parents’ calls for their children to be protected were systematically ignored.
Between the 1870s and 1990s, more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children across the country were forced to attend residential schools.
At least 4,100 children died while attending the institutions and the TRC estimates the actual toll could be 6,000 or higher. At least 821 of those deaths were in Alberta.
Kimberly Murray, special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites said each search brings anguish and a renewed outcry for justice.
“As more truths come out, more records are found, more burials are discovered, there is going to be a louder and louder call for accountability and justice, and more investigation” she said Wednesday.
“We’re the only country that has committed genocide here and no one is being held accountable.”
A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available to provide support for survivors and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour service at 1-866-925-4419.
Mental health counselling and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat.