“What was, and still is, a residential school is a nightmare.” For more than a century, Indigenous children in Canada were taken from their homes and sent to residential schools to be forcibly assimilated into white society. And thousands were never seen again. Now, more than 20 years after the school’s last closure, searches are underway across the country for the remains of these lost children. “There’s nothing on the surface, but once we interpret the data, we can see if we can find these kids.” We followed a team of archaeologists who came to the Muskowekwan First Nation to investigate what lies underground. “There are unmarked graves there. They’re everywhere. But nothing has been done about it.” Here some survivors of a residential school hope that scientific evidence will reveal to the rest of the world a truth that they have known for a long time. “These stories are real. I saw something here. And people have never listened.” Harvey Desjarlais was taken to a residential school when he was 6 1/2 years old. “And I remember being locked in the dorm. I cried so much because of the hardness. Dorm for little boys – this is where we were held. They shave your head, cut your braids. This is where a boy hanged himself. I found him hanging. He wasn’t hanging. He was lying there. He was already…” Generations of indigenous children suffered physical and sexual abuse in the boarding schools. They were founded by the Canadian government and initially run by the Catholic Church. “This used to be the chapel here. We prayed here 10 times a day. They called us little savages. ‘You little savage. Your ceremonies, that’s paganism.’ That’s how they spoke to us.” After his years as a student, Harvey spent 22 years as the school’s janitor, and today he still visits the site of the former school, even though it closed in 1997. “I come here almost every day. I have a dream of the elderly. You know, like calling. And I know what they’re calling about. They’re our kids.” ‘You look at your map. And you could just draw a circle so we can figure out exactly where these graves are.” The First Nation has invited archaeologists to search for unmarked graves, and survivor testimonials will be crucial. Elders have long shared stories of what happened in these schools, but were rarely believed outside of their communities. “We have lived on the graves for many, many years. But we couldn’t do anything. There’s a big mound here – all the graves, all the graves.” “About the researchers who come here, it’s been a long time.” Laura Oochoo is Harvey’s longtime partner. She also went to Muskowekwan Residential School. “I’m on a point where I’m trying to understand what this all means – for all of us right now? People are angry with the discovery of our children. This horror, it’s living with it. They deserve to be honored and respected, you know? That’s all I think they’d want.” “I’m confident there’s something there.” Archaeologists Terence Clark and Kisha Supernant are leading the search. They use ground-penetrating radar to locate cemeteries. The rest of the team is made up of graduate students, including Micaela Champagne, who, along with Kisha, is Indigenous “So I’ve been an archaeologist for about twenty years now. And with Indigenous communities, they would often prefer less destructive methods, so ways not to burn a lot of soil.” So there are a lot of them. And that’s a 3-year-old.” “And it’s all in the same year.” “The work we do with the ground radar is locating children’s graves. And before we really get into that, we need to know how many children we’re looking for.” Many of the records from this time are incomplete or have been destroyed, but the documents that remain contain evidence of some deaths and abuses: “There are a few suspects who are about 14 years old.” “Babies, they’re babies.” Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated residential schools and concluded in a 2015 report that many children died from malnutrition, disease and suicide: ‘This was a deliberate act of colonization, ‘to eradicate the Indian in the child.’ That is. a direct quote.” “The mastery of words.” “This was planned, it was heartless and it was known about abuse and death.” “I was gang raped at school, you know? And after going through all the turmoil of sexual assault, I became suicidal in school. I was 12 years old when I tried to commit suicide. Many of us who came from that school had a hard time.” Harvey has come to the school to show investigators where to look in person. “My name is Harvey.” “I’m Terry.” “I’ve been here since 1949.” “Wow.” “I’ve attended school here for 17 years “I’ve been here and worked here for another 22 years. From here, all the way up here, it has to be looked at. There were bodies all the time, down to about the bottom, where the border is about there, maybe beyond that.” “OK.” “Okay, maybe let’s put it all down, and we’ll sweep before I put anything in the ground here.” “Sounds good.” “Archaeology has a very dark past about stealing indigenous remains. And there was something in me that told me this is something I need to be a part of. The equipment is actually quite heavy. It’s kind of representative of helping to carry some of that weight from those communities.” “So the ground-penetrating radar basically takes an electromagnetic wave and sends it from a sensor at a certain frequency to the ground. So the higher the frequency, the tighter the wave. And it sends that down. And it actually measures what’s going on.” bounced back.” After four days of scanning the ground, the team processes the data and sews it together in 3D to see if the resulting images show signs of childhood remains.”From four and a half to seven and a half, there’s just a lot going on. “There’s something going on there, yes.” “This is the type of shape we found. The color pattern, you can almost imagine a child laying on his side in that pit. We’ve had survivors who give us There’s no other kind of natural phenomenon that would explain why you’d have this oval pit below the surface, and then the fact that there’s eight to ten or twelve, all those things together, uh, yeah. ” “It’s as sure as we can get. “Yeah.” “That’s heartbreaking.” “This is what we do it for. It’s just — it shows the value of what we’re doing.” “And there are thousands of them all over the country. thousands. People deserve answers, and they deserve justice.” This time they have discovered two unmarked graves. But researchers say they expect to find more than 80 in Muskowekwan. They still have large tracts of land around the school left to scan. “It is in our traditional belief that our ancestors constantly walk beside and with us to give us strength. We turned a corner and there was the boiler room. The boiler room was used to get rid of some remains and children. It was difficult, but as a survivor’s granddaughter, I also had to understand what she went through.” “We’re supposed to be these objective scientists, but there are those moments of emotion. Sometimes it’s joy, sometimes sadness and everything in between.” “Under that sadness and stuff, you can sometimes feel relief.” After ground sonar determines where bodies can be buried, the First Nation hopes to hold a traditional celebration and ceremony to honor the children who died at the school. The next step is for the community to decide whether to exhume the remains. “Do you think all this will end the residential school era? I think so.” “I think so, yes.” “It’s making the choice to heal from the trauma, the abuse. We know who we are. We come from this Creator-given land. That’s who we are.”