A First Nation community in Saskatchewan says that it has found 79 suspected child grave sites and 14 potential infant grave sites at a former residential school in here, local media reported.
“This is not a final number. It breaks my heart that there are likely more,” CTV News quoted English River First Nation chief Jenny Wolverine as saying during a news conference in Saskatoon, the capital city of Saskatchewan, on Tuesday.
“We were not sure what to expect and what we would find. But we did know the stories that were shared over generations about the treatment of the students and those students who never returned home,” Wolverine said.
According to the report, the English River chief called upon the federal and provincial governments to provide resources for the First Nation’s search effort.
English River started searching the site of the former Beauval Indian Residential School in August 2021, using ground-penetrating radar, the CTV News report said, adding that the research team is preparing to move into the second phase of the search.
Beauval Indian Residential School was first founded in 1860 and operated for more than 100 years, according to the University of Regina.
In 2013, a former dormitory supervisor at the school was convicted of indecent assault and gross indecency for assaults on young boys between 1959 and 1967, CTV News reported.
The site is the latest of several Canadian locations being searched for possible unmarked graves of children who died while being forced to attend residential schools.
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