What if the Knowledge Keepers are Wrong about Residential School Bodies and Graves?
What will happen when prophecy fails?
By Michelle Stirling ©2023
Canada has accused itself of genocide for the most part. Only a handful of dissident ‘deniers’ like me continue to point out that the claims of children being forcibly torn from their mother’s arms is not supported by the thousands of Indian Residential School enrollment forms, signed by parents. On the forms is a spot for designating the child’s family’s religion — which is typically filled in with Roman Catholic (R.C.) or Anglican. Rarely blank. Meaning, the families had chosen Christianity some time ago and they wanted their children to continue learning in that religious tradition. So, no forcible indoctrination either.
Likewise, the claim that thousands of children died or mysteriously disappeared at Indian Residential Schools, as claimed by Knowledge Keepers, elders or former residential school students does not jive with documented records from the government, Indian Agents, school records and provincial death certificates.
Following the money is why this trail is tightly documented. Schools were funded by the government based on the child’s whereabouts. If at school, the annuity money came to the school. If at home with the family or band, the money went there. If deceased, the money stopped.
Digging Up Memories — Detritus and Disappointment
Several digs have taken place where self-described survivors had remembered or ‘just knew’ there were dozens of people buried in forgotten places. A reported instance is that at the then-named Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton in operation from 1945 to 1996. The facility treated Indigenous Tuberculosis (TB) patients from across northern Canada. The architect in charge of present-day development on the property was deeply moved by the Kamloops Indian Residential School discovery of the claimed 215 unmarked graves. Thus, he paid for excavation services at the Charles Camsell sites that Ground Penetrating Radar had indicated as possible burial grounds. There were 13 digs followed by another 21. Only refuse and detritus was found.
Unfortunately, when no bodies are found, people who strongly believe that Indigenous people were secretly buried in unmarked graves only wonder where else the bodies would be buried, rather than reviewing the documented evidence of death and burial certificates and concluding that there are no missing children. These show where the persons were buried — typically at the person’s home reserve or sometimes in a local community graveyard.
Child Deaths were Common Across Society
Far too many people are shocked at the thought of child deaths at Indian Residential Schools, but life was grim back in the day. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that 423 children died at residential schools: proportionately a small number out of 150,000 students over more than 100 years considering the circumstances of the time.
Most of the former students of residential schools are now very elderly. They were children at the time they claimed to have witnessed nefarious events. In a CTV interview in 2021, one elder recalled that as kids, they used to make up stories about bodies buried in the orchard. It is possible that such stories snowballed into a sacred truth over time.
Children Did Disappear — Sent on for Care or to the Creator
Like all invisible things, including the monster under the bed, it is hard to argue with the reality of the fear and horror of the unmarked grave, especially when there are many hurts and harms that some children suffered at Indian Residential Schools. And especially when child death rates were extremely high just a few decades ago. Thus, many people are ‘missing’ because, to children in a classroom, they simply vanished overnight. Though diary records of the nuns and fathers tell us that the children were normally informed that a classmate had died, and of what cause, and in some cases, the children attended the funeral. When you think back on your youth, how many death notices or funerals do you remember over the days you spent playing, hiking, engaged in sports or arts?
Some of the vanished children were sick and had been sent on to hospitals. Some had advancing cases of Tuberculosis (TB), which is the forgotten plague of the time, and had been sent on to a sanatorium for treatment. In those cases, prior to the 1950’s, the TB treatment period was long, and methods were painful. (Thus, perhaps the source of claims that people were tortured.) Children lived in isolation at the ‘san’ for months or years. When they returned to their school or community they were as if a stranger to all. The former student had ‘disappeared’ as far as a child was concerned.
However, to date no ‘missing persons’ reports have been found. You would think, if hundreds, or thousands of children were ‘disappearing’ at Indian Residential Schools, that parents would have filed missing persons reports with police or complained to the schools, Indian Agent or Department of Indian Affairs.
Yet we find no such ‘missing persons’ claims out 150,000 students over >100 years.
https://opentextbc.ca/preconfederation/chapter/12-2-childhood-in-a-dangerous-time/
Low Life Expectancy led to Lack of Emotional Engagement
Historians of childhood have struggled to make sense of how the high rates of death affected families and some have deduced that families maintained an initial emotional reluctance — which would have been rather destructive to the child’s sense of self. As we know today, even the early hours of attachment to the mother are crucial for healthy child development.
But some theorize that back in the day:
Parents resisted making large emotional investments in their children until they demonstrated their ability to survive. The delay in naming infants and the practice of giving the name of a child who had died to a subsequent child are cited as practices which demonstrate this relative lack of attachment. Thus, a situation of high infant mortality is in a sense a vicious circle, with children valued less because they are less likely to survive, and with the lower emotional investment in children reducing their survival chances.[1]
This is quite relevant considering the claims that residential schools were the reason that Indigenous children never ‘learned how to parent’ because they did not live with their families. Only one sixth of all eligible Indigenous students ever attended residential schools. It is difficult to believe that this small percent of people and their residential school experience could be the culprit of all the many challenges Indigenous people on reserve face today.
In fact, many children taken in by residential schools were orphaned or had been removed from destitute or dysfunctional families or families where Tuberculosis was rife and posed a danger to the child. These facts are difficult to acknowledge if a former residential school student is unaware of the family’s historic circumstances and has decided that the residential school is the cause of all their present-day troubles. Many of these details are in the historical records and notes of Indian Agents, school diaries and government documents.
Genocide is a Unifying Narrative for Indigenous Canadians
Residential school “genocide” has given the disparate 632 First Nations, along with the Inuit, and Metis of Canada some kind of unifying theme that would not otherwise be found between groups that frequently waged murderous, slaughterhouse wars against each other pre-European contact. In fact, it was influential Oblate fathers who convinced Blackfoot and Cree to stop warring against each other in Alberta, as both sides were already facing extinction from disease and whisky traders — why continue to make it worse?
Thus, as in Festinger’s book “When Prophecy Fails,”[2] as residential school digs fail to turn up bodies or fail to turn up children’s bodies with forensic evidence of harm or murder, it is likely that Indigenous people who are deeply invested in the genocide narrative will cling even more tightly to the genocide theme, because it has become part of their identity. The search for bodies has given people a sense of purpose, but the desire for closure is likely never to come. Even if there are some bodies found, they may simply be those of passing travelers, other local orphans or citizens who came for food or medical aid but passed away — perhaps travelers unknown as was a common case during the Spanish Flu epidemic.
Though the jaw-bone of a child was found at the Star Blanket First Nation in Saskatchewan, is deemed to be historical, with the high ratio of child deaths in the early years, it could be a body unrelated to the school or to any nefarious activity, especially as the bone was found in isolation from any other body parts. Meaning that weather may have unearthed a shallow grave on the prairies and wildlife transported the bone, which would have no relation to the former La Brett Residential School, established about that time.
However, if the bones are determined to be those of a non-Indigenous child, such a finding of the ‘bones of others’ would simply further inflame the situation in my opinion. On the other hand, not finding anything may also result in an outburst of rage or violence rooted in a sense of impotent frustration.
I believe this genocide obsessive narrative may pose a significant risk to peace and order in mainstream society because of these unmet expectations, largely driven by media hype and misreporting (i.e. ‘mass grave’ terminology — which implies criminal activity and intent — being used to describe the benign ‘unmarked graves’ where wooden crosses have disintegrated over time in abandoned or untended graveyards).
Mystical Belief in the Memory of the Knowledge Keepers
In part, the dedication to the ‘missing children’ narrative is due to an almost mystical belief in the memory of the Knowledge Keepers and the divergence of Indigenous traditions from Western traditions.
The crux of the matter being the written language.
Western science relies on documented evidence, methodically plotted, where even disparate pieces, when brought together, can form a fairly clear picture of what happened. One piece of information can confirm or reject another. Thus, Kimberly Murray, Special Interlocutor on Missing Children and Unmarked Burials, has testified to the senate that the children have been deemed to be missing because families did not know where they were buried — but she said Ancestry.com provides that information. Yet, Ms. Murray persists in her desire to set up a University of Manitoba edifice to be the Indigenous Ancestry.com of Canada when the answer is already known. The records are on Ancestry.com.
Breaching the Terms of Agreement of Confidential Statements
However, CTV reported July 24, 2023, Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray now wants to go back to the personal, confidential interviews that individuals made in order to qualify for Independent Assessment Payments (residential school compensation) to search for references of children’s names or statements about murders, grave digging and secret burials. The statements, which are only provided in published form to the individual on request, and the records which are due to be destroyed because of their confidential nature, have any stated names of alleged perpetrators blacked out/redacted. The entire process was set up on the premise that former residential school claimants could make their statements privately to the investigator evaluating their claim for compensation, because the entities who might be accused had “waived the rights otherwise afforded in a court to mount a defence and challenge a survivor’s account.”
Normally, if one makes accusations of civil or criminal liability against another person or organization, that party is deemed innocent until proven guilty, and has the right to mount a defence in court, and to demand evidence from the accuser. As such a process was deemed to potentially retraumatize victims of abuse, this simpler method was developed, with nominal scrutiny by an investigator. Thus, the individual presenting a claim was able to freely state the names of alleged perpetrators, but this information was kept confidential and redacted.
Now Murray, a lawyer by training, wants to change the terms and use the personal testimonies in ways that no one originally agreed to. She seems desperate to find missing children and graves that are on Ancestry.com by her own admission. She seems to be desperate to find perpetrators, who may not be guilty at all, but whose names may simply have been used in private testimony as a means to leverage compensation.
That seems a crass and heartless comment, but one should consider that any former student of residential schools was granted a “Common Experience Payment” which was based on the number of years of attendance, and which was $10,000 for the first year and $3,000 for each year after. According to the Clifton and DeWolf book “From Truth Comes Reconciliation” the average payment was for 4.5 years attendance, or about $20,000. This was paid without question. The Independent Assessment Payment (IAP) process was different and did include a confidential probing interview to ascertain an individual’s claim of having suffered significant abuse. The payment was on a sliding scale, depending on what the individual claimed had been done to them. However, there was no cross-examination. The average payout was over $125,000. So, there was an obvious, inherent incentive to make statements that might win you a larger financial award, knowing there would be no further scrutiny as would be if presented in court.
Yet Kimberly Murray wants to now go back to these private statements and use them as source material for potential criminal investigations when these were not the terms under which this process was agreed to by parties who may end up as the accused.
It could be another gold-mine for lawyers if the whole process is up-ended. Then Canada can look forward to decades of claims and counter claims for heinous crimes, criminal defamation, perjury, fraud, etc. etc.
Where is the fundamental problem in all this?
Much of this missing children and genocide narrative stems from reliance on unverifiable oral claims of Knowledge Keepers, elders and former students. The approach now is “Two-eyed Seeing” instead of verifiable facts and evidence.
Unfortunately, with “Two-Eyed Seeing” and Indigenous ways of knowing, there is typically a reliance on a certain individual, or a few, who have the unique insights or who carries certain sacred traditions forward. These people are held in high regard by their communities, of course. But there is no way to independently verify anything that the individual says, remembers or claims to be true, no matter how venerated they may be within their own community. This is known as Indigenous science and is part of Canadian government policy now. With the adoption of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) this methodology is slated to become more prevalent and to affect all laws and processes in Canada.
Thus, regarding allegations of criminal activity related to graves said to be under the floor of the Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Roman Catholic Church on the Minegoziibe Anishinabe (Pine Creek First Nation) reserve, the RCMP issued a statement that they had not found evidence of criminality associated with the site after a year-long investigation, but that they would continue working with the band as they begin excavations under the floor of the church on July 24, 2023.
As reported by Global News on July 21, 2023, “We understand that over time burial sites may be lost to the natural elements,” Chief Derek Nepinak said in a media release Thursday.
“But to bury remains under a building suggests a dark and sinister intent that cannot be unaddressed as we expose the truth of what happened in our homeland.”
That is a highly charged, speculative comment.
So, this leaves us with a few possibilities.
· The Knowledge Keeper(s) of that band indeed has/have special knowledge in this case, and even though the RCMP have years of experience in criminal investigations they missed something.
· Or, the results that will be reported may be adjusted to reflect community perception, not the facts, in a manner in which honor and face are protected when the final results are known and announced.
· Or, if the site has not been secured, there is a risk that fraudulent tampering has taken place at the site to plant evidence to ensure that results are ‘proven.’ And if such a tampered find (i.e. bones) is deemed to be sacred by the First Nation, then there may not be any further opportunity for forensic examination to discover who the remains belonged to, what happened to the individual to cause the death, what time frame (and thus to correlate with other individuals attending or running the school or church), etc. But such an incomplete assessment would leave the door open for continued claims that this proves that children were murdered and secretly buried all across Canada when this may or may not be the case at all. Only proper investigation could prove it one way or the other — and with the gap of time, results may remain inconclusive, but the public perception of wrongdoing would remain.
· Or the search will prove that there are graves and bodies — but this is only the first step. A grave only indicates a death, not the cause of death nor whether it was due to natural causes or nefarious acts.
Likewise, no matter the outcome, it may be another trigger for more church burnings. Or worse.
I understand from friends in Saskatchewan that one of the churches burnt was a small chapel-like building east of Hafford, northwest of Saskatoon, that was on private property. It was a historic venue and had been left open in good faith so that passersby could see it. Thus bad faith prevailed.
Choosing Life or Living in the Valley of the Shadow of Death
Of course, many Indigenous people chose Christianity decades before residential schools were built, and despite much media coverage to the contrary, there are very strong Christian groups within Canada’s Indigenous people, many of whom find the messages and miracles of the Bible to be life-sustaining and joyful, unlike the present death cult preoccupation with genocide and unmarked graves. The church burners have hurt their own people (if the perpetrators were Indigenous; they may also have been virtue-signaling, self-righteous white people) and benefitted no one.
Whatever the case, Indigenous youth are now growing up in “in the Valley of the Shadow of Death” — imbued with death cult media messages on a daily basis. Rather than offering these beautiful young people a hand-up, hope, joy, and a vision of the future, the genocide activists are condemning their own youth to depression and a sense of worthlessness and rage. Many Indigenous youth already struggle to escape gangs, drugs like fentanyl, alcohol, and high-risk lives. Layering on the mythology that Canadian priests, nuns, and ministers (most of whom do not even support death by abortion or Medical Assistance in Dying) that somehow these people engaged in secret heinous acts and murders that only now people care about, more than 50 to 100 years later, beggars belief. Well, for some of us.
Indigenous youth, who may have dreamt of being in the travel industry, skilled trades, medicine, retail, high-tech, or the arts, are being offered career options by Kimberly Murray like learning to run Ground Penetrating Radar to search for graves of people who likely died about a hundred years ago, who no one knew, and who are probably buried exactly where their death certificate or burial data states. In a graveyard. Often an untended one. On reserve.
(3,280 words)
[1] Roderic P. Beaujot and Kevin McQuillan, “The Social Effects of Demographic Change, Canada 1851–1981,” in Perspectives on Canada’s Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues, eds. Frank Trovato and Carl F. Grindstaff (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 1994), 40.
[2] https://www.amazon.ca/When-Prophecy-Fails-Psychological-Destruction/dp/1578988527/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=229971490056&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1001907&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=5925449809986830537&hvtargid=kwd-299172358206&hydadcr=22433_10105321&keywords=when+prophecy+fails&qid=1690152228&sr=8-1
Michelle Stirling is a 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, then curator of the Glenbow Museum.
