Survivors return to residential school grounds

Marjorie Prince had tears in her eyes as she searched to find her and her brothers’ names among more than 3,000 orange flags pegged in the ground at the Brandon Indian Residential School site.

The flags represent survivors and children who never returned home.

The woman from Dakota Tipi First Nation said it was her second time returning to the site since she was taken from her family at seven years old with her three brothers.

She couldn’t recall what year she attended the school or how long she was there. Prince said she also doesn’t know what harmful experiences her brothers endured at the school, but she remembers looking out for their safety the best she could.

“I wanted to look after them all the time. I couldn’t because I was in a dorm locked up, and I could hear them yelling,” she said.

“They’d say they want to go home. ‘You want to go home?’ I said, ‘Well, we can’t go home. We have to wait for Mom and Dad to come.’ And then my mom and dad hardly came.”

Prince said she and her brothers were bused out of the school and put in a foster home before they reconnected with their parents.

“We had people that were mean people that didn’t really care about us, and they did a lot of things to us. They really didn’t look after the kids,” Prince said of the residential school staff.

Being at the site of the school, which operated roughly five kilometres northwest of Brandon from 1895 to 1972, on Wednesday during a ceremony for the National Day of Action for Residential School Searches and Healing was emotionally difficult for Prince.

But it was also a form of closure, she said.

The day of action coincided with the fifth anniversary of Tkemlúps te Secwepemc First Nation’s announcement that ground-penetrating radar had found more than 200 suspected children’s graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

The preliminary findings ignited a nationwide movement of searches at residential school sites across the country.

Brandon’s ceremony included an opening prayer, drumming, stories from survivors and speeches from members of the Brandon Residential School Missing Children Investigation — an initiative led by Sioux Valley Dakota Nation.

Christopher Mancuso, who works as a geophysical scientist for the investigation, said his work searching for unmarked graves is deeply personal.

Mancuso, from Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, said his grandmother attended the residential school in Brandon from the 1930s to the ’40s.

“What goes through my mind when we make these discoveries is, ‘Was this something my grandmother witnessed at that time?’” he said.

Since 2021, the Brandon Residential School Missing Children Investigation has been completing a comprehensive search for unmarked graves, which are identified through archival research, non-invasive geophysical surveying, forensic scene searches and survivor testimonies, Mancuso said.

“The archival evidence has revealed, at this time, 113 names of children who perished at the Brandon residential school,” he said.

Some of the children have been buried in the Turtle Crossing Campground and at a cemetery further up the hill from where the school used to be.

The remaining children are documented as deceased, but their burial grounds are unknown, he said.

“This is where we get to the geophysical search … and so that has revealed a number of unmarked graves — some in the extension of the cemetery and some in other locations that we’re working on finalizing now,” Mancuso said.

“We’ve made a lot of progress, but … we need at least five more years of continued funding to do this.”

The investigation has been funded by Canada’s Residential Schools Missing Children Community Fund, but the group is pushing for the federal government to commit to providing sustainable funding for searches and Indigenous-led healing supports.

The Brandon Sun reached out to Rebecca Alty, the federal minister of Crown-Indigenous relations, on Wednesday, but was told by staff that she was unavailable to comment immediately.

The fund provided Sioux Valley Dakota Nation with nearly $5 million from 2021-26, the government’s website said.

Mancuso said funding for their work has been year-to-year and “clouded in uncertainty,” but a commitment to multi-year funding would allow archive experts and technicians to continue their efforts.

“The search itself is healing for the survivors. They’ve been telling us for a long time that there are children buried at these schools, and we’re finally in a position to be able to try to help them,” Mancuso said.

Sioux Valley Dakota Nation Coun. Melissa Hotain said the day of action speaks to the ongoing need for Canada to address reconciliation and the impacts cultural genocide and colonialism have on generations of Indigenous communities.

“It’s important because investigations do good work … and it would be a shame for government to not commit to the long-term funding for this, because then all that will come to a stop,” she said.

Hotain said a path toward healing involves telling the truth, holding the government accountable, giving survivors the opportunity to share their stories and providing closure to families whose children never returned home.

It’s also about investing in healing programs and countering denialism that claims residential schools were good for Indigenous people, Hotain said.

Children who attended Brandon’s residential school were taken from Sioux Valley Dakota Nation and communities in northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario.

Members of the Brandon group asked people attending the ceremony to sign House of Commons petition e-7410, which urges Parliament to commit to long-term funding for Indian Residential School investigations and healing supports.

Following the ceremony, there was a moment of silence and spirit setting — where food is presented to a boy and girl spirit to honour them.

Attendees also planned to walk to the cemetery north of the site, where a commemorative monument with the names of 11 children known to be buried there stands.

» tadamski@brandonsun.com