Cowessess First Nation says it has found an estimated 751 unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.
The Cowessess First Nation, located 164 kilometres east of Regina, began radar scanning of the school grounds and surrounding area on June 1. The findings of that search were officially announced at a news briefing Thursday.
Chief Cadmus Delorme emphasized that the findings were not from a mass grave but unmarked graves where headstones had been removed.
“The Catholic church representatives removed the headstones and today they are unmarked graves,” he said, adding that it was not immediately clear if all the grave sites belong to children.
The ground penetrating radar used to search the grounds marked 751 hits, but Delorme said the machine isn’t perfect and there is a 10 to 15 per cent margin of error with the process.
“Each of these hits will be assessed by a technical team, and we will get a verified number in the coming weeks,” he said.
This discovery comes less than a month after the discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous children buried in unmarked graves at Kamloops Residential School in Kamloops, B.C.
The Marieval residential school operated from 1898 to 1996 in the Qu'Appelle Valley. It was run by the Roman Catholic Church until Cowessess First Nation took over its operations in 1981.
“There will be hundreds more unmarked graves and burial sites located across our First Nations lands at the sites of former Indian Residential Schools,” Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Chief Bobby Cameron said in a news release. “There are thousands of families across our Treaty territories that have been waiting for their children to come home. Saskatchewan had the highest number of residential schools and highest number of survivors. There will be hundreds more.”
The Indian Residential School Survivors Society toll free line is: 1 (800) 721-0066.
A 24-hour crisis line for residential school survivors is: 1 (866) 925-4419 if you require further emotional support or assistance.