First Nation finds 751 unmarked graves on site of former Saskatchewan residential school

Warning: This story contains details of residential schools and the abuse that took place there.

A First Nation in Saskatchewan has found 751 unmarked graves on the site of a former residential school.

Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme made the announcement Thursday in a virtual news conference. Delorme said it's not yet clear whether the graves all contain children's remains. They were found on the site of Marieval Indian Residential School, which was run by the Roman Catholic Church.

We are treating this like a crime scene at the moment," Delorme said.

The discovery in Saskatchewan comes less than a month after the remains of as many as 215 children were found in unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. That discovery led to a renewed reckoning over Canada's residential schools' legacy and fresh calls to search the grounds of all former residential schools across the country, and even in the United States.

Earlier this month, Ontario committed $10 million to support Indigenous-led efforts to investigate and commemorate burial sites at former residential schools. Other provinces have made similar announcements. On Tuesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said her department launched an investigation of potential burial sites at former so-called Indian boarding schools, which were similar to Canada's residential schools.

Canada once had about 130 institutions spread across the country. The last shut its doors in the 1990s. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimates that about 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children attended these residential schools.

When the commission concluded its work in 2015, it had determined that at least 3,200 children died in residential schools. (Since 2015, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has added 980 names to its memorial register, and its work is ongoing.)

Children at residential schools died at a far higher rate than those in the general population, according to the Commission's research. For most of the history of the schools, the commission found, they would not return the bodies of children who died to their home communities due to the costs.

The failure to establish and enforce adequate standards, coupled with the failure to adequately fund the schools, resulted in unnecessarily high death rates at residential schools," the commission found.

In nearly a third of the deaths, the name of the child wasn't recorded; nearly half did not list a cause of death.

There was also no formal policy governing the burial of students who died, writes Scott Hamilton, chair of Lakehead University's archeology department, in his report for the commission on unmarked burials and missing children.

Instead, the burial of deceased students appears to be rather ad hoc, and varied from school to school."

Marieval was located in the Qu'Appelle Valley of southeastern Saskatchewan and initially operated by nuns from the Roman Catholic Church, according to a history recounted in an ebook called Shattering the Silence" that was published by the University of Regina in 2017 as a resource for teachers.

The federal government bought the school for $70,000 in 1926.

In 1949, parents at the Cowessess reserve asked the government for a non-religious day school that could provide a higher standard of education," but were denied. The federal government took over the school in 1968 before the Cowessess took it over in 1981. The school was closed in 1997.

The building itself was demolished in 1999 - a controversial move at the time that illustrated the dilemma posed by the former schools littered across the country.

While some in the community wanted the school preserved as a museum and a reminder of the physical and sexual abuse suffered there, others considered it a black mark that needed to be torn down to make way for a new school, according to a Canadian Press story from 1999.

Hamilton's report says that while the school itself was demolished, the church, rectory and cemetery remain."

- With files from Alex Boyd

The Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line is available 24 hours a day for anyone experiencing pain or distress as a result of a residential school experience. Support is available at 1-866-925-4419.