{"id":343,"date":"2026-07-30T16:43:38","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T16:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=343"},"modified":"2026-07-30T16:43:38","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T16:43:38","slug":"why-are-canadas-indigenous-leaders-still-pushing-the-school-burial-site-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=343","title":{"rendered":"Why Are Canada\u2019s Indigenous Leaders Still Pushing the School Burial Site Story?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five years after Canadians were rocked by the discovery of what Indigenous leaders described as mass burial sites scattered across the country, no evidence of mass graves has been discovered. But that hasn\u2019t stopped those leaders from continuing to insist that children were killed and buried en masse on their reservations, and that the public should take their word for it.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t think we should have to prove to anybody what happened to these people because they are there and they send us messages telling us they\u2019re there,\u201d Grand Chief Garrison Settee recently told attendees of the Assembly of First Nations in Ottawa.<\/p>\n

Settee is the leader of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, a group representing over two dozen First Nations communities.<\/p>\n

He paused briefly during his speech to recognize Chief Rosanne Casimir, leader of the Tk\u2019emlups te Secwepemc First Nation tribe. Casimir\u2019s announcement in May 2021 that the remains of over 200 children were discovered at a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia, elicited breathless coverage in the New York Times<\/em> and ignited a social panic that Canada is still reckoning with.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Chief Casimir and I went to visit the sacred site. You can tell they\u2019re there, right?\u201d Settee says softly. Feel the power. The energy,\u201d he continues.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor somebody that\u2019s not from our communities, that doesn\u2019t understand our culture, you cannot understand what that means. But we do. And you just don\u2019t go into any cemetery and start digging up graves just to prove that someone died. It is disrespectful to our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Settee was apparently not alone among convention attendees in his belief that claims of spiritual communication should be sufficient in proving the existence of mass graves. The convention passed an emergency resolution calling for the criminalization of \u201cresidential school denialism.\u201d A similar amendment recently introduced in a Canadian bill sought to criminalize speech that downplayed or dismissed claims of Indigenous victimization by residential school staff.<\/p>\n

Canadian political and religious leaders created residential schools in the 19th century to deprive Indigenous children of their cultural ancestry and forcibly assimilate them. Roughly 150,000 children were sent to residential schools that dotted the country between 1831, when the first school opened, and 1996, when the last school closed.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated as many as 6,000 children died in the residential school system, calling it \u201ca systematic, government-sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples.\u201d Over 3,500 minors are named on the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation\u2019s registry of student deaths.<\/p>\n

Residential schools undoubtedly took a toll on indigenous children, but influenza and tuberculosis, not the grisly mass murders implied by Indigenous leaders, were the primary cause. According to some estimates, the odds of a residential school student dying may have been as great as Canadian soldiers serving during World War I.<\/p>\n

Casmir\u2019s announcement and the resulting media coverage unleashed a wave of unmarked-grave declarations across Canada from indigenous leaders who claimed that ground-penetrating radar (GPR) had revealed geological anomalies on their reservations that could only be the bodies of children.<\/p>\n

One month after Casmir spoke out, the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan reported finding 751 unmarked graves in a field. Then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited the site in July, days after \u201cmuted\u201d Canada Day celebrations, to lay a teddy bear at the alleged site. Before year\u2019s end, a Ktunaxa Nation band in British Columbia was said to have discovered nearly 200 unmarked graves, while the Penelakut Tribe in British Columbia claimed over 160 \u201cundocumented and unmarked graves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar claims poured forth in the coming years. In 2022, Williams Lake First Nations in British Columbia reported \u201c93 potential burials.\u201d The following year, the St\u00f3:l\u014d Nation\u00a0alleged that over 150 unmarked graves were located and, most recently, in May 2026, a First Nations community in Alberta said it had identified the remains of dozens of unmarked graves.<\/p>\n

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But overlooked in the initial rush to condemn the atrocities committed against the Indigenous was the failure to produce any evidence they occurred. Little scrutiny was given to the Kamloops GPR surveyor, an anthropologist who boasted that science is a tool best used to affirm the intuitions of Indigenous elders.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy findings confirmed what Elders had shared,\u201d the researcher told her university after Casimir\u2019s bombshell announcement. \u201cIt\u2019s an example of science playing an affirming role of what the Knowledge Keepers already recognized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Grand Chief Settee nor Chief Casimir responded to National Review<\/span>\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the only remnant? to be unearthed was a solitary jawbone that a security member found walking the perimeter of the former Lebret Indian Industrial School in Saskatchewan, where members of the Star Blanket Cree Nation were previously sent. The community had earlier announced more than 2,000 \u201chits\u201d after surveying the school using GPR.<\/p>\n

The Minegoziibe Anishinabe, located in rural Manitoba, is likely the only community to have performed an exhaustive excavation at a former residential school after more than a dozen anomalies were found using GPR. No remains were located. Chief Derek Nepinak said afterward it took \u201cnothing away from the difficult truths experienced by our families who attended the residential school in Pine Creek.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Indigenous leaders say the investigations, which together have cost the Canadian government $285.5 million since 2021, must continue. Casmir\u2019s tribe, Tk\u2019eml\u00faps te Secw\u00e9pemc, alone has received more than $9.5 million. Earlier this year, Chief Casimir said her community was in the process of planning an eventual excavation \u201cpending consent from Tk\u2019emlups and the roughly 120 communities throughout western Canada that sent children to the school\u201d in Kamloops.<\/p>\n

While the investigations continue, the Canadian government has already begun making amends for crimes as yet unproven.<\/p>\n

Flags were lowered for nearly half a year at Trudeau\u2019s behest following Casimir\u2019s announcement, the longest period in the country\u2019s history. And there remains a deep discomfort acknowledging the political and journalistic shortcomings Kamloops revealed.<\/p>\n

When the Globe and Mail<\/em>, considered by many Canada\u2019s newspaper of record, released an editorial this May stating the basic facts that no human remains had been found while reiterating the terrible history of residential schools, it was hailed as a landmark moment of truth-telling.<\/p>\n

That conviction isn\u2019t shared by everyone at the outlet. The Globe<\/em>\u2019s recently retired investigative journalist Robert Fife insists there are human remains based solely on conversations he had with First Nations people. Like the Indigenous leaders, Fife argued that his identity, that of reporter, gives him special access to knowledge that eludes the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs journalists, you know when it\u2019s true and not true,\u201d he suggested on a recent podcast.<\/p>\n

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The lack of evidence hasn’t stopped Indigenous leaders from insisting on the reality of mass graves and the necessity of continued investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Are Canada\u2019s Indigenous Leaders Still Pushing the School Burial Site Story? - American Housing Transition<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=343\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Are Canada\u2019s Indigenous Leaders Still Pushing the School Burial Site Story? 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