751 unmarked graves found on Cowessess First Nation

The Cowessess First Nation announced Thursday searchers had found the unmarked graves of 751 people at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School.

Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme and Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Chief Bobby Cameron made the announcement during a media conference.

“We cannot affirm that they are all children, but there are oral stories that there are adults in this gravesite as well because it was the Roman Catholic church that oversaw this gravesite,” Delorme said. “Some may have gone to the church and from our local towns and they could have been buried here as well.”

Delorme said the Marieval Indian Residential School — located about 25 kilometres north of Broadview — was opened in 1898 and closed in 1996. Until the 1970s, the gravesite at the school was overseen by the Roman Catholic Church.

After the remains of 215 children were found recently in unmarked graves at the former site of a residential school in Kamloops, First Nations in Saskatchewan started searching for similar gravesites in this province.

The search using ground-penetrating radar at Cowessess First Nation began June 2. Small flags have been placed at each of the unmarked graves.

“Over the past years, the oral stories of our elders, of our (residential school) survivors and friends of our survivors have told us stories that knew these burials were here,” Delorme said. “In 1960, there may have been marks on these graves. The Catholic church representatives removed these headstones and today they are unmarked graves …

“Removing headstones is a crime in this country and we are treating this like a crime scene at the moment.”

Elder Florence Sparvier, 80, spoke during the media conference of her experiences at residential school. She said the nuns were “very mean to us” while teaching the children how to be Roman Catholic.

“We couldn’t say our own little blessings the way we said it at home,” Sparvier said. “We had our own way of honouring ourselves and Mother Earth in our own homes when we were little, but we had to leave all that after (going to school).

“We were taught at home that we had to look after ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, so that got all stripped away when we went to boarding school. They told us what to say. They told us about a new being that was supposed to be our ultimate saviour.”

Sparvier said the nuns were “very condemning” and told the children their families didn’t have a way to be spiritual because they were heathens.

“They were putting us down as a people, so we learned how to not like who we were,” she said. “That has gone on and on and it’s still going on because we couldn’t teach our people, our own families, how to look after themselves physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

“When we became assimilated, they made us think different and feel different. A lot of the pain that we see in our people right now comes from there.”

Archbishop Don Bolen of the Archdiocese of Regina said in a statement he spoke to Delorme and Cowessess residents at the cemetery two years ago and apologized for past failures of church leaders. On Thursday, Bolen apologized again.

“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 — and to stand by you in whatever way you request,” Bolen wrote.

Delorme said the First Nation now will try to put names on markers at all of the graves. A monument also is to be erected at the site.

“We want to honour our loved ones that lay there together,” he said. “We want to make sure that we keep that place and preserve it so many can come here and heal.

“It’s going to hurt in the coming months because the more we put names to them, the more that it’s going to reopen some of the pains that many endured at the Marieval Residential School …

“This country needs to have truth and reconciliation. There are going to be many more stories in the future and this is Cowessess First Nation’s moment of our truth.”

Cameron said the residential school system was “a crime against humanity” and said the discovery of unmarked graves is proof of what residential school survivors have been saying for decades.

“We are seeing the results of the genocide that Canada committed here, genocide on our treaty land,” Cameron said. “We will find more bodies and we will not stop until we find all of our children.

“We will do a search of every Indian residential school site and we won’t stop there. We will also search all the sanatoriums, the Indian hospitals and all of the sites where our people were taken and abused, tortured, neglected and murdered.

“We will tell the stories of our children of our people who died, who were killed by the state, by the churches and we won’t stop until we will locate all of them.”

Cameron called for a independent inquiry into the deaths of all children in residential schools, saying the FSIN will “go the distance.”

“Our people deserve more than apologies and sympathies, which we are grateful for,” he said. “Our people deserve justice. Canada can start by handing over all of those records (outlining what happened in residential schools). The churches can start by handing over all of those records.”

The Saskatchewan government is contributing $2 million to the FSIN’s search for unmarked graves in the province. The federal government is giving the FSIN $4.88 million for the search.

Delorme said he has reached out to various levels of government and has been told they will stand beside the First Nation and residential school survivors as they try to come to grips with the discovery.

“The Roman Catholic residential school has impacted us intensely and today we have generations that may have not gone to residential school, but they are feeling the first and second generation of that impact,” Delorme said.

“All we ask of all of you listening (to the media conference) is that you stand by us as we heal and we get stronger and that we all must put down our ignorance and accidental racism of not addressing the truth that this country has with Indigenous people.

“We are not asking for pity, but we are asking for understanding. We need time to heal and this country must stand by us.”