SD33 expresses grief after learning 158 Indigenous children died in residential schools, hospital

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“The Chilliwack School District is saddened by today’s announcement of the heartbreaking discovery of the death of 158 Indigenous children at the former St. Mary’s Residential School, Coqualeetza Industrial Institute, All Hallows School and Coqualeetza Indian Hospital on Stó:lō Territory,” SD33 wrote in a statement. “Our hearts go out to all the families that this tragedy has impacted in Pilalt, Ts’elxwéyeqw and Sema:th. Canada’s past injustices and unimaginable treatment of Indigenous children and families is a stark reminder that we still have a long path ahead of us towards reconciliation.”

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Chilliwack School District says it continues to acknowledge the unabating harm caused by residential schools and the traumatic legacy it still leaves in survivors and their families.

“We acknowledge the lasting harm done to Indigenous people and communities by Canada’s residential school program, and we are committed to truth, reconciliation, and healing to create an equitable country. It is only through recognizing the reality of our nation’s past that we can hope to do better for the youth of today and tomorrow,” SD33 said.

The announcement about the confirmed deaths came as Stó:lō Nation provided an update on its work into missing children and unmarked burials at three former residential school sites.

At Thursday’s press conference in Mission, Squiala Chief David Jimmie said the revelation of 158 deaths was a heavy burden for residential school survivors and their families.

“Our people are carrying mixed emotions,” said Chief Jimmie, president of the Stó:lō Nation. “We’re on a journey to confirming the truth that we carry in our DNA. We’re on a journey to discover facts to what we’ve already heard from our great-grandparents, our grandparents, past chiefs and leaders about what took place in residential schools. Our people are carrying incredible pain that was inflicted upon them by removal from their home, their parents, grandparents, their families and placed in residential schools where there was no oversight to keep those children safe, where there was no oversight to ensure they were provided adequate food, warmth, and shelter. None of those things that you take for granted were there for our children.”

The investigation was launched after ground-penetrating radar located what are believed to be more than 200 graves at a former residential school in Kamloops in May 2021, prompting similar searches and findings in several provinces.

Stó:lō First Nation says its initiative focuses on St. Mary’s Residential School in Mission, Coqualeetza Industrial Institute/Residential School in Chilliwack and All Hallows School in Yale, and the Coqualeetza Indian Hospital.

It says its Taking Care of Children team has been studying archival, oral historical and on-site remote sensing work in search of identifiable unmarked graves.

A post to the Stó:lō Nation’s website, dated December 2021, says the work for the project had begun that August and would be following a three-year plan.

The statement says remote sensing and imaging technologies including drone-based lidar surface mapping and photogrammetry, as well as ground-penetrating radar, would be used to search for unmarked graves.