Dozens of 'children' graves found near former indigenous school in Canada

Ground penetrating radar has unearthed 93 potential children’s graves, including 14 that could hold remains of infants, at the former Beauval Indian Residential School in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.

"This is not a final number. It breaks my heart that there are likely more," the English River First Nation chief Jenny Wolverine said during a news conference on Tuesday in Saskatoon as reported by CTV News.​​​​​​​

Since 2021, communities across the country have recorded more than 1,300 unmarked graves near religious educational institutions, which took in Indigenous children for more than a century as part of a Canadian policy of forced assimilation.

The Indigenous band began the search two years ago in August 2021. Wolverine said the search was based on historical stories communicated through time.

"We were not sure what to expect and what we would find. But we did know the stories that were shared over generations about the treatment of the students and those students who never returned home," she said.

Wolverine said the finding of possible gravesites marks the beginning of a “long and difficult journey.”

Between the late 19th century and the mid-1990s, some 150,000 Indigenous children were forced into 139 residential schools across Canada, where they were cut off from their family, language and culture.

This dark page in Canadian history was recently thrust back into the spotlight after the discovery in the spring of 2021 of the first child graves associated with a school, sparking a reckoning over the country's colonial history.

Managed by the Catholic Church and the Canadian government, the schools had an explicit objective to "kill the Indian" in the heart of the child.

English River First Nation is located in the north of Saskatchewan and the Beauval Indian Residential School opened there in 1860.

The boarding school was run by a Roman Catholic mission until 1969. The school officially closed in 1983 when it was given to the 10 Meadow Lake Bands, which included the English River First Nation. It was demolished in 1995.

The discovery of suspected graves is not the first tragedy at the school. In 1927, a fire killed 19 boys and one teacher, according to the University of Regina, Saskatchewan.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission also published survivor stories, including that of “boys who were caught throwing snowballs (and) were punished with blows to their hands from the blade of a hockey stick.”

Survivor Mervin Mirasty also told the commission that both he and his brother were sexually abused.

In 2013, a former supervisor at the school was found guilty of gross indecency for assaults on boys from 1959 to 1967, CTV News reported when the supervisor was paroled in 2016.

In 2015, a national truth and reconciliation commission declared that the forced enrollment of Indigenous children in the residential school system qualified as "cultural genocide".