“We will not stop until we find all of our children”. “We hope to find the gravestones that once marked these graves, and even if we should be unable to identify them all, that remains our goal”, First Nations chiefs intervened and pledged truth, justice and healing. A few hours have passed since the shocking discovery of 751 corpses in unmarked graves without headstones in the former site of Marieval Residential school in Saskatchewan, roughly 150 kilometres from the city of Regina. Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme reported on the figures, the status of the search and the surveying technology employed, during a virtual press conference on YouTube attended by journalists from world countries. From Germany to Spain, the world turns its eyes to Canada and sees a country sinking anew into the horrific depths of a dark page in its history. The Marieval discovery comes a few days after the remains of 215 children were found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
Excavations at the site in Marieval began at the beginning of the month, shortly after the findings at the Kamloops school, and some 44,000 square metres of area were searched. It was common knowledge that there was a cemetery there, but a priest who served in the region in the 1960s destroyed the headstones, preventing the identification of the remains. The Marieval Indian Residential School operated from 1899 to 1997. Children in southeast Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba were sent to the school. The educational model was unfortunately the same: indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families, forced to follow the traditions of the “European colonisers”, including the adoption of Christianity, and coerced by violence and abuse to abandon their customs and languages. “This country needs to have truth and reconciliation,” said Chief Cadmus Delorme.
“We hope to find the gravestones that once marked these graves, and even if we should be unable to identify them all, that remains our goal”
Responding to a question from a Spanish journalist on the subject of the indigenous peoples’ expectations of the Catholic Church and the Vatican, he said: “The Pope needs to apologise for what has happened to the Marieval residential school, the impact on Cowessess First Nation survivors and their descendants. An apology is one stage of many in the healing journey,” he said.
“We will not stop until we find all of our children”, said Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations . “We will do a search on every Indian residential school site and we will not stop there. We will tell the stories of our children of our people who died, who were killed by the state, by the churches. We won’t stop. The world is watching.” Chief Cameron did not hesitate to speak in terms of “extermination” and “genocide.” He decried: ‘This was a crime against humanity, an assault on First Nations. Those children were tortured and abused. I am saying this in a spirit of reconciliation.”
“Our people deserve more than apologies. Our people deserve justice.” With regard to the ongoing search, the Chief assured: “this is just the beginning”.
After the press conference, Msgr. Don Bolen, archbishop of Regina, posted a letter to Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme on the Archdiocese’s website. The bishop expressed his sorrow at the discovery of “an unthinkable number of unmarked graves.” “The news is overwhelming”, he wrote, underlining the “pain and waves of emotion” that have shocked the community and the whole of Canada. He assured: “I know that apologies seem a very small step as the weight of past suffering comes into greater light, but I extend that apology again, and pledge to do what we can to turn that apology into meaningful concrete acts – including assisting in accessing information that will help to provide names and information about those buried in unmarked graves.”
