Recent accounts of 215 indigenous children buried and forgotten in a cemetery on a residential school grounds in Kamloops are shocking. According to these accounts the cemetery was described as a mass grave (the term usually describing war crimes and massacres) of children who were neglected, abused and abandoned in the residential schools and buried in the cemetery to hide their deaths.
However, the report of Dr. Scott Hamilton, Anthropology Department at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, who was retained by the National Centre Truth and Reconciliation to address this question, provides a different record.
Dr Hamilton’s report can be found at: https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AAA-Hamilton-cemetery-FInal.pdf
Dr. Hamilton’s report, based on available documentation, indicates that at least 3,213 children were reported to have died in residential school over a period of approximately 100 years.
h/t SMC
