Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc chief says the investigation into the unmarked graves at the Kamloops residential school is ongoing, but the steps are being kept confidential to preserve the integrity of the investigative findings.
The Nation's approach is multidisciplinary and includes archival, documentary research and analysis, archaeological and anthropological surveys and studies, and potential DNA and other forensic methods, Kúkpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir said Wednesday (June 26). She said when the investigation reaches its next milestone, Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc will be sure to provide an update.
"We're taking steps to ensure that the investigation is carried out in a way that does not preclude and will not interfere with potential future legal proceedings," she said.
The investigators findings, to date, are very consistent with the presence of unmarked graves, but she wanted to share the update due to misinformation and targeted denialism, Casimir said.
"Elders and survivors have always spoken of children dying and disappearing while at the school. Men speak of, as boys, attending the Kamloops Indian Residential School, being woken in the middle of the night, and asked to dig big holes that seemed like graves in the dark and not being told why."
When she thinks about that denialism, the Nation's focus is on their "sacred responsibility on finding answers," but also bringing peace to the families of the missing children from the Kamloops Indian Residential school.
Casimir said she knows this is difficult information for Canadians to process, adding it's natural that many people have a hard time believing.
"We will never jeopardize the integrity of the investigation in response to what is tantamount to hate speech, but also race remarks."
Casimir provided the update during a news conference that publicly revealed the details of a sacred covenant signed by the Nation and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver on March 30.
She was joined by Vancouver archbishop J. Michael Miller, who was asked by a journalist what he would say to members of his faith who deny there is evidence of graves at the former residential school sites, specifically Bill Donahue the president of the Catholic League in the U.S. Donahue has called for a day of reconciliation for Catholics.
"That is an American kind of point of view. It wouldn't be shared by very many people here in British Columbia. I haven't even heard the notion of hoax being applied to this, to the situation."
Miller said "there's no doubt" some things are contested, such as numbers, but "to deny that the residential school system had a negative effect and that many students died while registered at the school ... he's just wrong."
In B.C., Quesnel Mayor Ron Paull filed a judicial review in June to revoke the sanctions and censure against him put in place by fellow councillors. The city council censured Paull in May for jeopardizing relations with Lhtako Dene Nation after a contingent of chiefs, residential school survivors and descendants called for his resignation.
That call came after her Paull's wife, Pat Morton, distributed and complimented the book, "Grave Error," which is a serious of essays that argue the residential school system wasn't as bad as it's been made out to be, and that there is a lack of forensic evidence of mass graves at the former school sites.
According to the petition, Paull says he has never read the book and denies recommending it to other elected officials.
– With files from Austin Kelly, Angie Mindus
