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Search more school grounds, says Aamjiwnaang chief

Troy Shantz The chief of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation says the federal government needs to begin searching for human remains on the grounds of all former residential schools.
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Some of the children’s shoes and teddy bears left at a monument to residential school survivors at the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, following the discovery of 215 children buried in unmarked graves at a former B.C. school. Troy Shantz

Troy Shantz

The chief of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation says the federal government needs to begin searching for human remains on the grounds of all former residential schools.

Chris Plain said ground-penetrating radar should be used “to determine if these numbers are accurate, or whether there are any additional unrecorded burials on these grounds.”

The band knows of at least seven Aamjiwnaang children buried at a former residential school in Sault Ste. Marie, he said.

Ontario’s Indigenous Affairs Minister said last week the province knows of 426 children who died at residential schools and were buried in at least a dozen sites.

“The actual amount I was not aware of, as Aamjiwnaang students were taken primarily to four residential schools in Ontario,” Chief Plain said.

“What I am interested in is whether there are more that have not been recorded.”

The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc announced the discovery last month of the remains of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in B.C. Some were as young as three-years-old.

Beginning in the 1880s and for more than a century, 150,000 First Nation, Inuit, and Métis children were forcibly separated from their families and sent to Canadian residential schools run by Catholic, Anglican, and Presbyterian churches.

Thousands of young students were physically and sexually abused, contributing to a cycle of addiction and abuse among Indigenous communities today.

Sarnia-Lambton MP Marilyn Gladu said she “absolutely” supports a full investigation at more school sites.

“We voted with the NDP on the motion recently for the government to provide more funding to go and uncover the bodies of these children that are missing, as well as to come forward with the records from these schools,” she said.

Six Nations of the Grand River has asked the Prime Minister directly to search the grounds of the former Mohawk Institute near Brantford. A number of Aamjiwnaang children were sent to that school, including the late Geraldine Robertson, an Order of Ontario recipient and Aamjiwnaang elder who died last year.

An NDP bid calling on the government to recognize the residential school experience as genocide was recently rejected in the House of Commons.

But Gladu said there’s no question the residential school experience was, at the very least, cultural genocide.

“All the elements of the UN definition of genocide are there,” she said.

This month, Ontario committed $10 million over three-years to identify, investigate and commemorate residential school burial sites.

Sarnia-Lambton MPP Bob Bailey said he supports searching former residential school sites for undiscovered human remains.

He added that after hearing seven Aamjiwnaang residential school students were buried at Sault Ste. Marie he planned to contact Chief Plain.

“I’ll do what I can do and advocate,” he said. “We’re all hands on deck. It’s certainly a story that needs to be told.”

According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 18 Indian Residential Schools were in Ontario. The last closed in 1991, with some sites since repurposed, abandoned or destroyed.


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