An awareness of missing children and unmarked graves desperately needs attention.

SIKSIKA FIRST NATION

It's one more indignity in a long line of indignities, claims Roy Little Chief, former chief of the Siksika First Nations and residential school survivor. And that indignity extends to the fact that cemetery and grave site research, linked to residential schools, was undertaken simply through a study of documents.

"It was all bureaucratic because (residential school) survivors were not included," said Little Chief, who was shipped off to Crowfoot Residential School, on Siksika in southern Alberta, when he was five-years-old.

Cemetery and Grave Site Research, an 18-page document, was undertaken by senior research consultants in Ottawa and Vancouver under the direction of the former interim director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Using maps, site plans, letters and memos that were identified in Indian Residential School narratives, many Indian residential schools across Canada were examined. Documents for the majority of these schools had no reference to cemetery, grave or burial--or even to church. There wasn't any documentation found for the majority of residential schools in the Northwest, Nunavut and Yukon territories.

One survivor who didn't want her name mentioned (will be referred to as Theresa), attended St. John's residential school in Wabasca, northern Alberta, from when she was five-years-old until the school closed its doors in 1978.

St. John's IRS has nearly a full page of documents listed in the report relating to a cemetery and grave. Three entries for 1961 note that work was undertaken in the cemetery to clean up brush and paint crosses. And, according to the May 26 entry, "the principal 'sent word that I would like to have any one who could tell me the names of those buried there to come next week and show me the graves, we will try to mark them.'"

Theresa has a brother buried in the now neatly-kept cemetery that is located near the Anglican church, which operated St. John's IRS.

"I remember where my brother was buried, but the cross that was there is gone and the cross that is there now isn't really where it should be because that's not where he is."

Theresa notes that triangular boxes were used to cover some graves and crosses marked other graves. "A lot of these were taken away and from there we're not sure if the cross there is where the person was buried."

More disturbing, perhaps, is the incident related in the report from the Muskowekwan First Nations in Lestock, Sask. Once more there is nearly one full page of information relating to Muskowekwan IRS, including a 1992 account where three graves were unearthed during construction work to install a gravity main between residences. In total, 19 graves were unearthed in the area and the remains were "placed in plastic bags and stored in a locked building," according to the 1992 entry. Officials at the Muskowekwan band office are not commenting on the report.

Mike Cachagee, from the Chapleau Cree First Nation, is the acting executive director with the National Residential School Survivors Society. He vividly recalls "children burying children" at the graveyard attached to the residential school he attended. The image of older boys digging graves and carrying caskets at St. John's residential school, in Chapleau, northern Ontario, haunts Cachagee.

"You go back to the cemetery and it's sad. You think of your own years in that school and you think the church can't even look after these cemeteries," said Cachagee, who says when he returned to the cemetery a number of years ago it was to find the local snowmobile club cutting a path through the unmarked graves. "People have traveled 800 or 900 km to visit the graves of their relatives and they couldn't find them. They were all grown over. All you could see were indentations and mounds," said Cachagee.

Circumstances are similar at Macintosh IRS, north of Dryden, and Pelican Lake, at Sioux Lookout. Cachagee notes that at Macintosh, the only markings at the grown-over cemetery were those for the nuns and priests.

"They were so hell bent on getting our souls when we were alive, once we were dead they didn't give a shit what they did with our souls," said Cachagee.

"It bothers me a lot that the graves aren't properly marked," said Theresa of Wabasca.

Little Chief is pleased that work has begun to discover the unmarked graves. "It's the right of everybody. It's only respectful."

While the Cemetery and Grave Site Research stuck to documents, the Working Group on Missing Children and Unmarked Burials has made recommendations to the TRC that research into missing children and unmarked burials go beyond historical documentation and include personal statements. The working group noted in its nine-page research recommendations document the "critical importance of meeting with survivors and listening to their accounts of children who died or disappeared while attending an IRS."

The Working Group on Missing Children and Unmarked Burials was established in 2007, also by the former interim executive director. It tabled its report September 2008.

Talking to residential school survivors directly is important, said Cachagee, but it can't stop there.

"The whole dynamic of reconciliation is not just the truth saying there were some children buried here. I think it's incumbent upon Canada and the churches to tell our people where those children were buried."

The working group's recommendations, which have been accepted in whole by the TRC, include the TRC consulting "with the appropriate band council offices to determine if and/or how the community wishes to proceed with further research and commemoration."

The working group is also recommending that the TRC raise the awareness of missing children and unmarked burials at one or more of its national events.

"The TRC is committed to implementing the research as outlined in the recommendations by the Missing Children Working Group. The budget for the Missing Children Research Project has not been confirmed," said Kimberly Phillips, spokesperson for TRC.

BY SHARI NARINE

Sweetgrass Writer