Kamloops “graves” report still sealed despite unanswered questions

The Liberal government is refusing to release reports from a Kamloops, B.C., First Nation that received millions to excavate alleged graves of 215 children at a former residential school site.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Liberal government is refusing to release reports from a Kamloops, B.C., First Nation that received millions to excavate alleged graves of 215 children at a former residential school site, citing confidentiality rules, according to Blacklock’s.

The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in Kamloops, B.C., was granted $12.1 million for the exhumation of remains and forensic DNA analysis after its 2021 announcement of discoveries made using ground-penetrating radar in an apple orchard.

To date, no human remains have been exhumed.

Federal funding for “remains excavation” was initially budgeted at $7.9 million, expanded to $9.3 million, and then again to $12.1 million. The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations had said the funds were intended for field work, DNA research, and forensics.

This was in addition to the $12 million provided by the provincial government “to support First Nations throughout B.C. with investigative work at former residential school sites.”

However, scant and heavily redacted records indicate much of the funds were instead spent on publicists, consultants, lawyers, and other expenses unrelated to the recovery of remains.

It remains unclear if any of the money from either the federal or provincial governments was used for excavation or for proving the claims of unmarked mass graves.

The department said recently, in response to another Access to Information request from Blacklock’s, that the progress report documents were sealed under Access To Information Act section 20.1.b.

That section prohibits the release of “financial, commercial, scientific or technical information that is confidential information supplied to a government institution by a third party and is treated consistently in a confidential manner by the third party.”

Meanwhile, internal documents from other federal agencies have raised more doubts about the unsubstantiated claims of “unmarked graves.”

Parks Canada staff emails described the assertion of 215 skeletal remains as unlikely and improbable.

By 2024, agency managers concluded even “probable” was misleading. One executive email stated ground-penetrating radar shows only anomalies, not evidence of unmarked graves, quoting archaeologists.

“The challenge is that ground-penetrating radar does not provide evidence of potential unmarked graves,” said the staff email. “It provides evidence of anomalies. I am quoting the archaeologists here.”

Another manager suggested revising references to the radar findings and avoiding the term “anomalies” for the time being. Staff were also instructed to “stay extra quiet” regarding the residential school’s status as a national historic site.

Despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s public statements in 2021 describing the reported discovery as “heart-breaking” and the allocation of more than $12 million in federal funds to investigate, no human remains have been exhumed or confirmed at the Kamloops site.

In the aftermath of the announcement, over 120 churches across Canada were vandalized, desecrated, or burned to the ground, with many incidents attributed to outrage over the residential school system and the still unresolved and unsubstantiated claims of unmarked graves in Kamloops.