“What residential school was once, and still is, a nightmare.” For more than a century, Indigenous children in Canada have been taken from their homes and sent to residential schools to force them into white society. And thousands of people were never seen again. Now, more than 20 years after the last school closed, searches for the remains of these lost children are taking place across the country. “There’s nothing on the surface, but once we interpret the data, we can see if we can find these babies.” We follow a team of archaeologists to Muskowekwan’s First Nation to investigate what lies beneath the ground. “There are unmarked graves there. They are everywhere. But nothing has been done yet.” Here, some residential school survivors hope that scientific evidence will reveal to the rest of the world a truth they have known for a long time. “These stories are true. I have seen something here. And people have never listened.” Harvey Desjarlais was sent to boarding school at the age of six and a half. “And I remember being locked in a dorm. I cried a lot because of the injustice. Small boys dormitory – this is where we were kept. They shave your head, cut your braids. Right here, a boy hanged himself. I see him hanging. He was not hanged. He is lying there. He has been – “Generations of Indigenous children have been physically and sexually abused inside boarding schools. They were founded by the Canadian government and were originally run by the Catholic Church. “This used to be the chapel here. This is where we used to pray 10 times a day. They used to call us barbarians. ‘Barbarians. Your ceremonies are heresy. ‘ That’s how they talk to us. After his student years, Harvey worked as a school carer for 22 years. Today, he still visits the grounds of his old school, even though it closed in 1997. “I come here every day. I have a dream of the elders. You know, it’s like making a phone call. And I know what they’re calling about. They are our children. “You look at your map. And you can draw a circle so we can figure out exactly where these graves are. ” The First Nation has invited archaeologists to search for unmarked graves, and the testimony of survivors will be crucial. Elders have long shared stories of what happened “We’ve lived over the graves for so many years. But there’s nothing we can do. There’s a big hill over here.” – all the graves, all the graves. Laura Oochoo is Harvey’s longtime partner. She also went to Muskowekwan boarding school. “I’m in a place where I’m trying to understand, what does all this mean – for all of us right now? People were angry with our kids’ discovery. This horror, it’s living with that. They deserve to be honored and cherished, you know? That’s all I think they would want. “I’m very confident that there is something there.” Archaeologists Terence Clark and Kisha Supernant are leading the search effort. They are using ground-penetrating radar to locate the burial sites. The rest of the team consists of graduate students, including Micaela Champagne, who, along with Kisha, are indigenous. natives, they generally prefer to have less destructive methods, so ways to not disturb as much of the earth. So there’s a bunch of them. And that’s a 3-year-old.” And It all happened in the same year.” How many children are we looking for?” Many records from this era are incomplete or destroyed, but the documents still hold clues to a number of deaths and abuses. “There are a few types worth uh, like, 14 years old.” “Infant, it’s newborn.” Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated residential schools, and in a 2015 report concluded that many children died from malnutrition, disease and suicide. “This was a deliberate act to colonize the colony, ‘to destroy the Indians in the child.’ It is a direct statement. “”The mastery of words.” “This was planned, it was callous, and abuse and death were known.” “I was gang-raped by a gang at school, you know? And after I went through all the turmoil of sexual assault, I committed suicide at school. When I was 12 years old I tried to commit suicide. A lot of us came out of that school having a hard time. ” Harvey came to the school to show researchers where to look in person. “My name is Harvey.” “I’m Terry.” “I’ve been here since 1949.” “Oh.” “I went to school. been here 17 years, and I work here for another 22. From here, all these roads, it has to be looked at. There are bodies along, up to about the bottom, where the boundary is. there, can only be through there.” “OK.” “Okay, let’s put it all down, and we’re going to smudge before I put anything on the ground here.” “Sound good.” “Archaeology has a very dark history of stealing indigenous remains. And something in me is telling me that this is something that I have to be a part of. The device is actually quite heavy. That represents helping to take some of that weight off of those communities. “So ground-penetrating radar basically takes an electromagnetic wave and sends it down to the ground from a sensor at a specific frequency. So the higher the frequency, the tighter the wave. And it sends things.” And it basically measures what’s reflected back.” After scanning the ground for four days, the team processed the data and stitched them together in 3D to see if the images were captured. shows any signs of child remains. “This is the type of shape that we found. The color pattern, you can almost imagine a baby lying on his side in that hole. We’ve had survivors ask us to look where we are. this location. There’s no other natural phenomenon to explain why you have this oval hole below the surface. And in fact there’s 8 to 10 or 12, all of that together, um, yes.” “That’s for sure we can get it. “YES.” “Painful.” “This is why we do it. It’s just – it shows the value of what we’re doing. “And there are thousands of these across the country. Thousands. People deserve answers, and they deserve justice.” This time, they discovered two unmarked graves. But researchers say they hope to find more than 80 more in Muskowekwan. They still had large tracts of land around the school to sweep. “It is in our traditional belief that our ancestors have always walked by our side and are with us to give us strength. We turned a corner, and there was the boiler room. The boiler room was used as a way to remove some remains and children. It was difficult, but I also needed to understand, as a survivor’s niece, what she had to go through.” “We are supposed to be objective scientists, but there are emotional moments. Sometimes they are joy, sometimes they are sadness and everything in between. “Beneath the pain and everything, you can sometimes feel a sense of relief.” After the ground sonar determined where the bodies could be buried, First Nation hopes to hold a ceremony. and traditional rites to honor the children who died at the school The next step is for the community to decide if they want to exhume the remains. of residential school? I think so.” “I think so, yes.” “It is the choice to heal the heartache, the abuse. We know who we are. We come from this land given by nature. That is our people. “
