Heroic BC RCMP officer braves fast-flowing, ice-cold river to save woman - Western Standard

An anthropologist’s report authorized by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission suggests some of the hundreds of graves found at residential grave sites are likely due to people killed by rampant disease.

Dr. Scott Hamilton, from the Department of Anthropology at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., was retained by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to look at the residential schools and those buried on school lands. His 44-page report is publicly available.

Hamilton said in 1883, Indian Affairs took over Christian schools for the indigenous and later established more to set up the “residential school system.”

A 1920 amendment to the Indian Act gave Indian Affairs the authority to send any school-age indigenous children to a day or residential school. The number of residential schools declined in the 1970s until the last one ceased operations in 1996.

“It appears that most residential school graveyards were established informally, and have left little in the way of formal documentation,” wrote Hamilton.

“This also likely contributed to a suspected under-reporting of mortality in the schools, particularly in late 19th Century. This would have been particularly the case when school staff faced emergency situations during disease outbreaks that resulted in multiple deaths. In such circumstances, they may have been caring for many sick people with insufficient medical assistance, and with little help in preparing and burying those who died.

“It is also clear that insufficient consideration was made for the continuing care of graveyards upon closure of the Indian Residential Schools.”

The report states at least 3,213 children were reported to have died at the 150 residential schools that operated over the roughly 140-year history.

In 1906, Dr. Peter Bryce, the chief medical officer for Indian Affairs, wrote that “the Indian population of Canada has a mortality rate of more than double that of the whole population, and in some provinces more than three times.” 

In 1909, Bryce and a colleague examined 243 students at seven schools in southern Alberta. Bryce found a “marked” presence of tuberculosis among all age groups. In some schools, “there was not a child that showed a normal temperature” and “in no single instance in any school where a young child was found awaiting admission, did it not show signs of tuberculosis.” In other words, they brought the disease to school.

The Spanish Flu was especially devastating. Hamilton writes that in 1918, only two people among the children and staff did not catch it at the school at Fort St. John, B.C., where 78 died. Hamilton quotes the diary of Father Joseph Allard who was the school principal who also conducted funeral services. 

“The others were brought in two or three at a time, but I could not go to the graveyard with all of them. In fact, several bodies were piled up in an empty cabin because there was no grave ready. A large common grave was dug for them,” Allard wrote.

Students weren’t the only ones buried at graveyards associated with the schools.

“Since the early residential schools operated at a time of high death rates, and were associated with missions located close to reserves, the mission cemeteries likely contain both the bodies of local school children and other community members,” Hamilton reported.

Indian Affairs did not have a formal policy on burial of children from residential schools until 1958. Schools usually covered burial costs for students who died, and the most inexpensive way to do so was to bury them in a cemetery at the school. Students, teachers, clergy, and nuns were buried there, and even those living nearby.

Yet, neither Indian Affairs, nor surrounding municipalities, paid for the maintenance of the cemeteries. That burden fell to local religious congregations. Over time, the wooden crosses marking the graves deteriorated, as did the fencing around the cemeteries.

Some school sites were remote and abandoned in the 1920’s and forests have grown over them.

“The cemeteries that have been documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are, for the most part, abandoned, disused and vulnerable to accidental disturbance. Developing a strategy to address this problem is complicated,” Hamilton wrote.

Harding is a Western Standard correspondent based in Saskatchewan

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