Biting the Hand that Feeds the Blood Libel at Blue Quills and Beyond

17 min readFeb 5, 2024

Tax dollars don’t come from the government. They come from working Canadians. About ten million Canadians are Catholic and more than 53% of Canadians are Christians (percentage includes Catholics).

So, perhaps it is time to stop the blood libel against Catholic and Christian denominations, the nuns, priests and clergy, who operated the network of Indian Residential Schools, until or unless there is actual evidence of the alleged “mass graves” or “genocide” at these former schools. Especially as it is tax funding — significantly drawn from Canadian Christians — which is funding the genocide fantasy.

Blue Quills OAS and Dr. Soren Blau — Missing Persons?

On January 24th, Leah Redcrow, CEO of the Acimowin Opaspiw Society (AOS), which was formed to represent survivors of the former Blue Quills Indian Residential School and their descendants, held a press conference in which she claimed that the RCMP and the Alberta Chief Medical Examiner were not cooperating with the Society. During the years 1898–1931, the school was located on what is now known as the Saddle Lake Cree Nation reserve, and some members of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation had found human remains on the grounds near the Sacred Heart parish church and its adjacent cemetery. The former residential school building had been located near the parish church and its cemetery but had burned to the ground not long after the school had relocated to St Paul in 1931, leaving no visible trace of its former location. In fact, according to Leah Redcrow, Band members had forgotten that there ever was a residential school on the reserve until they were told about it in 2021.

A forensic expert, Dr. Soren Blau, of the International Commission on Missing Persons was present at the press conference by Zoom. She confirmed that photographs sent to her by the AOS appeared to be that of part of a child’s cranium and post-cranial elements and that the bones were weathered, suggesting they had been exposed to the elements for some time.

According to online reports,[1] [2] most bodies become, as the Scripture says, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” over a short course of time of weeks to months. Can so many bones be over 100 years old and still extant — or are these bones from more recent graves?

Thus, can we believe the AOS when it claimed in the press conference it is embarking on a “humanitarian recovery” effort to match the DNA of the bones, claimed to be in two mass graves, with those of “survivors” of the school, if those people would be ~99 years old? Humanitarian recoveries of remains occur following wars or as a result of mass epidemics where the bodily remains can be forensically matched to living relatives, relatives who, like the families of the “desaparecidos” (the disappeared) of Argentina[3] actually know the name of the person, likely know them personally or are directly related (i.e., mother and son) to the person who was summarily taken away by militias, executed, and their body dumped in a mass grave; or hurriedly buried in a mass grave due to a natural disaster or epidemic — leaving the family wondering what happened to them; where they are?

In the case of Blue Quills, there is no list of missing persons.

Previous Unrealistic and Unverified Claims

The Society has made unconfirmed statements that hundreds of children died at residential school from drinking raw milk that was tainted with Tuberculosis (TB)[4] related to the 1940’s period. In some media reports, some individuals claim this was done intentionally. Pasteurized milk was not made law in Canada until the 1990’s. Life was a gamble back then. Tuberculosis was the “captain of all men of death” around the world until about the 1950s when antibiotics and vaccines were created. Indeed, Dr. George Wherrett’s book “The Miracle of the Empty Beds” stated that in 1908, in Canada, one person died every hour of the day from TB, and two people died every hour of the night from it. TB was the greatest killer of all Canadians from every stratum of society, though people in Asian and Indigenous communities who tended to live a more communal lifestyle and who were poorer had higher ratios of death.

The priests, nuns, clergy and lay staff who ran the Indian Residential Schools put their own lives at risk in these remote communities; some became sick with TB and some died of it as well. It is a cruel fantasy to claim that any one of these dedicated individuals would purposefully have given tainted milk to children while preserving untainted for themselves, or that by such subterfuge they would have been able to avoid contact with this deadly killer disease.

But no one said a word to challenge the TB blood libel. In fact, the media found various “experts” who chimed in and piled on,[5] clearly ignorant of the historical context of the time.

As I often do, I ask that people watch the excellent PBS documentary “The Forgotten Plague” to appreciate just how wide-sweeping and weird-making the world was when TB was the global epidemic. Then consider some of the bizarre societal divisions and dictatorial activities that arose just in the past handful of years during COVID. It might help you make sense of some aspects of this history.

In various media interviews, First Nations Bands representatives have claimed that children entered the school well and returned ill.

However, historical records contradict that claim.[6]

Confusing Sacramental Records of a Church for Residential School Student Deaths

For example, Sacred Heart/Blue Quills Boarding School documents drawn from the Oblate fonds at the Provincial Archive of Alberta (1898–1931) show that there were 45 pupils in 1902.

Overall, only one third of all eligible Status Indians were ever admitted to Indian Residential Schools.

Meanwhile, the Department of Indian Affairs school registry would have those 45 names, and the provincial archives would likely have any death certificates for named children that match the registry of the school. It is the death certificates that show the cause and place of burial, not the sacramental records. Someone relying solely on sacramental records might make that claim that there are 335 missing children because they don’t appear in the school registry, but they do appear in the sacramental records as having died.

However, those individuals were never in the Indian Residential School. Especially if the Oblate fonds and the Department of Indian Affairs records show that only 45 students were registered and attending over the course of those years. Students typically attended residential school for an average of 4.5 years, though some stayed for a decade.

One element that may be confusing people is that the Sacred Heart Mission was built first. As is Catholic convention, a graveyard of sanctified ground was delineated adjacent to the church. Subsequently the residential school was built in close proximity, but the graveyard was created for the wider Catholic community, not the residential school.

The Blue Quills Boarding School operated on the Saddle Lake Reserve only during the years 1898 to 1931. The Oblate fonds at the Provincial Archive of Alberta (1898–1931) indicate that in 1902 there were only 45 pupils at the school. Relying on the sacramental records of the Sacred Heart parish church on the Saddle Lake Reserve, it has been claimed that 335 children went missing from the Blue Quills school during the years 1898–1931 because 335 children are named in the sacramental records as having died during that period. This is clearly wrong, because the sacramental records contain the burial records of all Catholics who were buried from the Sacred Heart parish church during those years, including children who were members of the Saddle Lake Band, but also children from local Metis and white families. And in fact the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that only seven children had died at the Blue Quills school during the years 1898–1931, Angela Redcrow (1901), Eliza Oseemeemas (1910), Alice Cardinal (1924), Johnson Large (1925), Bella Rain (1926), Harry Lapatac (1929), and Henry Norris Katism (1930). A far cry from 335!

Angela Redcrow died of an abscess of the lung (letter from the doctor), and Eliza Oseemeemas (an orphan) willed her treaty money to Father Balter to say Masses for the salvation of her soul (letter from Sister Leveille).

Residential School Files Show Strict Procedural Admittance and Medical Checks

Today, media and various Indigenous spokespeople repeatedly make the false claim that children were forced to attend Indian Residential Schools, that they could not leave, and that unhealthy children were intentionally accepted.

The following records show that 8-year-old Michel Redcrow had an admission form submitted to the Department of Indian Affairs in 1904. His parent’s names are noted as Jean B. Redcrow and Marie Redcrow; both living. However, the admission form was signed by the principal, Father Leon Balter, and not a parent. This might have been due to the fact that many parents were unable to write back then; typically, then a signature of an “X” might suffice, if witnessed by another reliable witness like the Indian Agent.

Michel is listed as a Roman Catholic (R. Cath), in good health, not conversant in English and that he had never received prior education (meaning as in school).

Note that the application was sent to the “Honorable Superintendent of Indian Affairs” in Ottawa. Thus, there was direct correspondence with Ottawa and each local Indian Agent and Principal concerning each child admitted or refused.

We next see that there is a Certificate of Health for Michel Redcrow, completed on January 3, 1904, two days before the foregoing admission form was filled out. While overall the medical certificate states Michel’s health is good, it does note under “Evidence of scrofula?” that indeed there were swellings on both sides of Michel’s neck. Scrofula is a symptom of tuberculosis. The summary states “enlarged glands on both sides of the neck, otherwise healthy.”

A month later, on Feb. 6, 1904, a reply is received by the Saddle Lake Indian Agent, from the Indian Commissioner in Ottawa who had been sent a number of applications and medical certificates. The Indian Agent writes to the principal, Father Balter, and explains that Charles Cardinal and Baptiste Cardinal have been approved for admission. However, “The admission of Michel Redcrow is refused, the medical certificate being very unsatisfactory.”

Furthermore, Adelaine and Sarah Cardinal’s applications are refused, with the Indian Agent stating they have no claim on the department (for education). They were Metis children, who, at that time, did not have education rights, nor did the Metis have treaties with the government. (The certificates of health for both Adelaine and Sarah Cardinal say at the top ‘Non Treaty half-breeds Parents living just outside of the Reserve.’)

The Indian Agent admonishes the principal, writing that applications should be signed by the parent or guardian, not by the principal of the school. The Agent also notes that admissions and discharge documentation must match and that some of this documentation has not been properly done. He notes that the Commissioner asks “What has become of the boys in the attendance between no’s. 74 and 80?”

This suggests the boys may have left the school, (perhaps to help on the trapline or hunt?) but their discharge was not properly recorded; perhaps because they were expected to return but did not. This would mean the school could theoretically ‘bill’ the government for children that were not attending. Consequently, it is clear from these letters and forms that the children were well vetted and that their well-being and whereabouts was closely tracked, not only by local individuals like the Indian Agent, but also the Commissioner in Ottawa.

Note also that the numbering of the child related to admissions is helpful when the Commissioner is miles away from the Indian Agent and Principal. It is about the same as today’s “Student ID” which, in many school systems, stays with the student from early registration to graduation. The number assigned was simply a means of identifying a person and correlating their documents; in addition, most residential schools also had uniforms and linens which were assigned to individuals by number, just as may be done for summer camp today. In the early days, when TB was rampant in society, this separation of school uniforms and linens was one more step toward better sanitation, and it certainly helped the lay staff consigned to the laundry room, in charge of sorting dozens of clothes and linens. See “They Gave Me a Number” for more details on this.

Several Orders of Supervision and Inspection of Schools and Records

For those who suggest that Indian Agents and Principals made their own decisions, since the Commissioner was far away in Ottawa, there was another layer of supervision between as shown in the letter below.

Here follows a letter from the Indian Commissioner stationed in Winnipeg who has received two conflicting requests from the same woman to transfer her son to a different school, or that he remains at a specific school until discharged (by reaching age of discharge or by parental request). He follows the rule that declarations before an Indian Agent take precedence over a random request.

Now at the outset of this essay, I was talking about tax dollars and Catholics and Christians. What was that all about?

It’s about this.

Claims of Mass Graves Command Massive Funding

A few days after the claim by the Kamloops First Nation, that 215 children’s bodies had been found in a “mass grave” the Acimowin Opaspiw Society of the Blue Quills Reserve was incorporated as an external non-profit society in Alberta. Since that time, they have received federal grants totalling $4,942,004. according to the records online listed by the federal government. Some grants are spread over a few years for things like cultural redevelopment of languages, and some are not well-defined.

In a recent press conference on the progress of the Acimowin Opaspiw Society (AOS), it was claimed that the RCMP and Alberta Chief Medical Examiner were not being helpful to the society regarding their claims of finding human remains; the press conference included Dr. Soren Blau of the International Commission on Missing Persons who verified that a photograph, sent to her by AOS, taken of part of the cranial and post-cranial elements were that of a child, probably under the age of five, and that the bone(s) were weathered, meaning they had been exposed and not recently buried or recovered.

There was no photograph exhibited in the press conference, therefore no one in the public, who is funding this activity, can know if the photo was taken “in situ” or if the “chain of custody” has been maintained or not.

Previous stories in the press about Saddle Lake, dating back several years, note that gravediggers working at the site of the former Sacred Heart Mission (a church which had the attached community graveyard, on the same grounds as the Blue Quills school during 1898–1931) had inadvertently dug up human remains from unmarked graves and that this had been happening since 2004. One individual who was a gravedigger said they’d found a skull and ribcage; another said that there was no support for these gravediggers who kept uncovering human remains from unmarked graves. A report issued by the Acimowin Opaspiw Society in 2023, which does not seem to be available online, reportedly stated that no more graves should be dug in this area.

“The children’s graves are absolutely everywhere,” the AOS report notes, “unmarked and shallow, and being accidentally disturbed, each time a new grave gets dug in Sacred Heart. The community must immediately stop new burials at this site.”[7]

But they did not stop new burials there.

A gravedigger states that he and others had been digging up all kinds of bones and bodies for years, inadvertently, and then reburying them with the last accidental disturbance in December of 2021![8]

Another interview appears to claim that the disturbed remains were in one place.[9]

Obviously, the chain of custody of all these remains has been broken.

We do not see or hear of any photographs of the bones “in situ” (as found in place). The fact that the press conference comments by Dr. Blau indicate the bones were “weathered” suggests that human remains, once found, were not reburied properly, nor were they investigated at the time as any kind of a crime. People who found them understood them to be inadvertently exposed from historic grave sites.

Typically, for the RCMP or other police forces, if there is no extant missing persons report, when historical human remains are found in graveyards, this is likely to be a case of accidental exposure of a known deceased from many years ago, and no criminal intent can be inferred.

However, interfering with a dead body or human remains is a criminal offence in Canada under Section 185 of the Criminal Code.[10]

No List of Missing Persons

There are no lists of missing persons related to Indian Residential Schools.

Thus, in one AOS press conference, it was stated that the RCMP had told the Society “we don’t pick up old bones from cemeteries” which is likely a true statement. Why wouldn’t the Band have properly reburied these human remains of their loved ones, some of which were reportedly uncovered about 20 years ago? Furthermore, First Nations reserves (for international readers) are under federal jurisdiction related to the Band, the Department of Indian Affairs, and some other departments. Likewise, the Chief Medical Officer of Alberta has no jurisdiction on federal lands unless requested to be involved by the RCMP or Alberta urban police forces in a recent death or homicide.

In addition to the >$4.9 million granted to the newly formed Acimowin Opaspiw Society, there are other millions being spent on professional services for Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) searches and there’s even a $2 million contract pending with the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). In a September 26–28, 2023, conference last fall Sheila North of ICMP revealed that there is a contract with the federal government, signed in January of 2023, for a “Residential Schools Project.”

Has the Application of UNDRIP Tainted Due Process?

In an Oct. 1, 2023 Alberta Native News report about that press conference, one of the presenters stated that “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Bill C-15) was passed [in Canada], “Remember that Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand voted against it.”

That information right there should make Canadians understand these problematic claims of residential school “mass graves” and “genocide.”

Canada’s ~500 year long history with Indigenous people is one of trade and commerce. By contrast, the US conducted Indian Wars from 1622–1924. In the US, “Native children were originally brought to Carlisle (Indian Residential School) as hostages to insure that their parents would not continue armed resistance against the United States Army.”[11] Hostages!!

That never happened in Canada. Residential schools were seen and approved of by Treaty Chiefs during their “loyalty tour” to Eastern Canada. They understood this was a way to educate their youth for the New World where trapping and hunting would be a hobby, while agriculture, industry and technology would be the new economy and would thus require suitable education for this “Just Transition.”

In New Zealand and Australia, bloody conflicts marked early relations between Europeans and Indigenous people.

With the exception of the Riel Rebellion, bloody conflicts never happened in Canada.

But it is Canada being accused of genocide; not the USA, New Zealand or Australia where UNDRIP was rejected outright. The adoption of UNDRIP has made questioning oral history claims of elders an act of heresy; the adoption of “Two-eyed Seeing” has abrogated the fundamental principles of logic, reason and the Scientific Method; the application of amorphous Indigenous law has eviscerated the foundations of the requirement for due process and tangible evidence in law for claims of criminal acts. Thus, any wild claim made by an Indigenous person, whether the math makes sense or not (i.e. “every family had four or five children go missing in that school”) is dutifully amplified by the media with no questions asked.

Orange Shirt Indoctrination

It is Canada where little children are being taught that it was wrong for a school to take away an orange shirt of an incoming new Indigenous student.[12] In fact, this was public health practice at any communal facility to remove original clothing, shower and delouse all students, and provide a uniform, all in the interests of reducing the risk of possible contagious diseases while giving everyone a common style of clothes.

So, today, while Canadian school students dress in orange shirts and repeatedly denounce their ancestors as immoral abusers and genocidal murderers; while their teachers teach them to blood libel priests, nuns, clergy and lay people who gave their lives to the least supported people of society at that time, all of Canada must wear a hair shirt for having created an educational system. The Indian Residential School system worked quite well for most of those who attended and graduated, which includes many Indigenous leaders, artists and literary greats, past and present in Canada.

The constructive outcomes are self-evident, too. In the many press conferences where Old Stock Canadians and Christians are repeatedly accused of heinous crimes, every Indigenous person seems to be confidently speaking and writing in English. These skills are rooted in the Indian Residential School system. Even 100 years ago that would not have been possible for the vast majority of Indigenous people.

In these press conferences accusing Canadian Christians of murder and deception, instead confirming that the schools offered education and enlightenment, the Indigenous participants are using advanced technologies like computers and confidently speaking in international Zoom conferencing. This suggests the technological acculturation of Indigenous people is as avidly pursued today (and not rejected for the ‘old ways’) as were horses, rifles, ribbons, and glass beads, back in the day when Europeans brought this New World to the hunter-gatherers, many of whom were nomads.

Meanwhile across Canada, First Nations Bands and their contracted services are collecting millions of dollars in reparations for a phantom genocide, in a search for missing children that don’t exist.

Dry up the Grave Funding and Drive out the Gangs

Dry up the multi-million-dollar funding — much of it from Catholic and Christian taxpayers — and see how long this graveyard and GPR obsession lasts. If ‘every child matters’ so much, apply this funding to getting rid of criminal gangs on reserves and treating addicts and alcoholics.

Start reading the texts of the Sisters and Fathers in schools, instead of repeating the blood libels and making children tie 215 orange ribbons to fences, learning to hate their ancestors for a crime that was never committed. A crime that is all based on childhood memories of anonymous Knowledge Keepers and faulty interpretation of church records, rather than reviewing the detailed records of Indian Residential Schools and the diaries of those who cared for “Our Dear Children.”

Bite the hand. Lose the billions.

30 -

Michelle Stirling is a former member of the Canadian Association of Journalists. She researched, wrote, and co-produced historical shows about Southern Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Hugh Dempsey.