100s of unmarked graves found at former residential school site in Saskatchewan
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Saskatchewan/Canadian-Media: Horrific and shocking Discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at the site of a former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, a news release from First Nation in Saskatchewan, Cowessess, and the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nations (FSIN) said Wednesday.
The Marieval Indian Residential School operated from 1899 to 1997 in Cowessess, about 140 kilometers east of Regina.
The 1970s school’s cemetery from the Catholic Church was taken over by the First Nation.
Ground-penetrating radar had been started to be used by Cowessess earlier this month to locate unmarked graves.
According to the predictions of Indigenous leaders and archeologists, there will be more such discoveries with the support of the federal and provincial governments along with private corporations for First Nations to deploy ground-penetrating radar technology to search for gravesites.
The First Nation has been working with experts, knowledge keepers, and survivors who attended the school to identify unmarked graves at the site of the institution’s cemetery.
Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett’s office declined to issue a statement until the community has had a chance to address the public.