This article highlights why I’ve been pedantically correcting everyone that uses the term “mass graves”. “Unmarked graves” ≠ “Mass graves”, and it conjures an image of an atrocity that doesn’t match what happened in Canada. Predictably, now you are getting the “backlash” against a narrative that no one directly involved pushed.

We knew there are unmarked graves before GPR was even used. There is extensive documentary evidence. Some of the old grave sites are even known, and most of those graves were marked, but the markers were wooden and long since decayed. Specific records of who specifically each grave belonged to has often been lost as the schools closed down.

To quote the Bryce report:

I believe the conditions are being deliberately created in our residential schools to spread infectious diseases… The mortality rate in the schools often exceeds fifty percent. This is a national crime.

Dr. Peter Bryce wrote that in 1922. IIRC that was when he self published his report that had been commissioned years before. Those dead children were being given burials in school graveyards. The gravediggers and pallbearers were their classmates. Those graves are somewhere on school grounds, but many/most are lost to time. This is what is being looked for.

It was a much more “Canadian” genocide, more polite, less shooting. It was all very unfortunate you see, but it was important that these children learn English, Christianity, and Civilized Ways. Good job skills. Every death was a tragedy, but it was all necessary to “Kill the Indian and Save the Child”. of course, should be obvious but Poe’s Law demands it.

I disappointed but unsurprised that now the conflation of unmarked graves with mass graves is being used to downplay the tragedy.