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The discovery of the remains of 215 children at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., hits close to home for some in Saskatchewan.
Just off Pinkie Road on the outskirts of Regina stands a small plot of land surrounded by a white fence.
There are at least 35 children who died at the Regina Indian Industrial School buried there, in what’s known as the Indian Industrial Cemetery.
Aaron Desjarlais, a residential school survivor and a program co-ordinator with Regina Treaty/Status Indian Services, now runs the team that maintains the site. It’s part of a work program for men who are transitioning out of custody.
Aaron Desjarlais and his crew of workers did maintenance on the Indian Industrial Cemetery on May 31, 2021. (Dominick Lucyk/980 CJME)
In light of the news from Kamloops, it was an emotional experience Monday.
“In our culture, there is a thing (called) spiritual care,” Desjarlais said. “Some might see it as we’re just out here doing yard maintenance and cutting grass, but to us we’re taking care of the resting place of these people, these spirits that are here and that have gone on to the spirit world. To me, it just goes back to respect … to do the right thing.”
“We thought the least that we could do is come out here and pay our respects.”
The hardest part for him was explaining the news to his seven-year-old son.
“Just going to bed last night, I was thinking about it,” Desjarlais said. “(I was) just laying with him and we were talking about this and trying to get him to understand what residential schools (are) and what were the impacts on our people.
“It was tough. It was challenging, very emotional … having my seven-year-old son with me and thinking about all the other Indigenous families … (and) just thinking about what those families endured.”
Desjarlais agrees with the provincial government and the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations that more work should be done to find and identify any other unidentified gravesites in the province.