No human remains found 2 years after claims of ‘mass graves’ in Canada

[Bootstrap]

The children were taken away. Nobody knows what happened to them. Very likely, they died due to some illness and were buried without telling their parents or their communities.

Assuming that most of them died at the residential schools is quite a leap of logic, though. Is there any evidence at all to support this?

Yes, there are at least a handful of reports documenting these things. There are a lot of records from the time, documenting the waves of disease and how the bodies were handled. Here's one:

Where are the Children buried?
Dr. Scott Hamilton
Dept. of Anthropology, Lakehead University
Thunder Bay, Ontario

[Bootstrap]

What are you using for the definition of "mass graves"? The Wikipedia links, if I remember correctly, make few allegations of "pits dug in the ground to receive a large number of corpses" which is the actual definition of "mass graves."

By definition a cemetery filled with many individual graves is not a mass grave.

The phrase "mass graves" is in the original post of this thread. It refers to Kamloops, where they suspect 215 bodies are buried in a single grave. That site has not been excavated. The article talks about a site where they thought there were 14 individual graves instead, and blurs the two to imply that Kamloops has been disproven. Let's look at Kamloops first:

“After two years of horror stories about the alleged mass graves of Indigenous children at residential schools across Canada, a series of recent excavations at suspected sites has turned up no human remains,” the New York Post reported Thursday.

FWIW, "Thursday" refers to Aug. 31, 2023. This is not a new story.

The phrase horror stories about alleged mass graves" links to this article:

Mass grave with 215 Indigenous kids found on former school grounds in Canada

A mass grave filled with the remains of 215 Indigenous children, some as young as three, has been found on the grounds of a former residential school in Canada that was known for physical, emotional and sexual abuse, reports said Friday.

The grisly discovery in the interior of southern British Columbia was made at the former Kamloops Indian residential school using ground-penetrating radar and announced late Thursday by the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc people, The Guardian reported.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” Rosanne Casimir, the chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, said in a statement.

I think a grave with 215 children does count as a mass grave.

But the article in the OP does a "bait and switch". It discusses a different school, Pine Creek, where they thought 14 children were buried. 14 children in individual graves is not a "mass grave", but nobody claimed it was. They claimed that 215 children buried in a single grave at Kamloops is a "mass grave".

Minegoziibe Anishinabe, a group of indigenous people also known as Pine Creek First Nation, excavated 14 sites in the basement of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Catholic Church near the Pine Creek Residential School in Manitoba during four weeks this summer.

The so-called “anomalies” were first detected using ground-penetrating radar, but on Aug. 18, Chief Derek Nepinak of remote Pine Creek Indian Reserve said no remains were found.

14 individual graves is not a "mass grave". 215 children in a single graves is a mass grave. The article in the OP conflates two different sites.

And I think the chief at Pine Creek is reporting the results of these 14 sites accurately. He is not calling anyone to hate anyone.

[MaxPC]

Recycled soapboxes are very popular this time of year.

[Szdfan]

The phrase "mass graves" is in the original post of this thread. It refers to Kamloops, where they suspect 215 bodies are buried in a single grave. That site has not been excavated. The article talks about a site where they thought there were 14 individual graves instead, and blurs the two to imply that Kamloops has been disproven.

Even the New York Post, which published several articles referring to the allegations about "mass graves" as a hoax, published in one of its articles that the Kamloops site has not been excavated.

https://nypost.com/2022/05/27/kamloops- ... in-canada/

Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc spokesman Larry Read confirmed to The Post this week that no bodies have yet been exhumed from the Kamloops school and no dates have been set to start excavations. He added that the report showing the results of the ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has not been released by the band but may be at some point in the future.

So...of course no there have been no human remains found at Kamloops, because the site hasn't been excavated -- it seems premature to call this a hoax or fake news.

[Bootstrap]

And a little more research: the researcher who did the work does not say Kamloops has a "mass grave". The NY Post article in the OP used that term, and used it in an earlier article. That article took the phrase from an article in The Guardian. But The Guardian has now fixed their error:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... ass-graves

This article was amended on 31 May and 1 June 2021. An earlier version erroneously quoted the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission as describing a “culture of genocide”, rather than “cultural genocide” targeting Canada’s Indigenous people. Also, references to a “mass grave” at the former school in Kamloops were changed to “unmarked graves”, which more accurately describes the discovery.

It looks like that's the outrageous claim that the NY Post is upset about. But the NY Post refers to the Guardian article as its source, and did not notice when the Guardian corrected its error.

Here's an article closer to the researcher herself:

https://blogs.ufv.ca/chasi/2021/07/15/u ... al-school/

Dr. Sarah Beaulieu, a University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) anthropologist, presented a summary of her ground penetrating radar (GPR) investigation to media Thursday morning at an event held by Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, highlighting 200 “targets of interest” of what are likely to indicate human burials.

The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation have identified Beaulieu as a collaborating researcher whose work confirmed the probable unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS).

Beaulieu emphasized that remote sensing such as GPR is not the only means of knowing children went missing in Indian Residential School contexts. Beaulieu added that this fact has been recognized by Indigenous communities for generations, and that remote sensing provides specific coordinates to this truth.

I can't find an original source for the "mass graves" claim at Kamloops other than the misquotation in The Guardian, which the NY Post then quotes in later articles. Kamloops seems to be individual graves.

[ken_sylvania]

Now let's look at what Bootstrap posted:

It has everything to do with that. The children were taken away. Nobody knows what happened to them. Very likely, they died due to some illness and were buried without telling their parents or their communities. That's exactly what the issue is. And in many, many schools, there are mass graves that are either suspected or confirmed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_ ... gravesites

In these particular schools, the initial investigation said that there were likely mass graves in a particular place. Turns out, there weren't. But what happened to these children? We don't know, but that doesn't mean it's OK to take people's children and have those children just disappear without knowing what happened to them.

Your exact claim is that "In many, many schools, there are mass graves that are either suspected or confirmed" and then linked to a site that doesn't claim any such thing.
Either truth matters, or it doesn't. Words have meaning. So far, I have seen exactly zero credible evidence to support your claim of mass graves at many, many schools.

[ken_sylvania]

And a little more research: the researcher who did the work does not say Kamloops has a "mass grave". The NY Post article in the OP used that term, and used it in an earlier article. That article took the phrase from an article in The Guardian. But The Guardian has now fixed their error:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... ass-graves

This article was amended on 31 May and 1 June 2021. An earlier version erroneously quoted the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission as describing a “culture of genocide”, rather than “cultural genocide” targeting Canada’s Indigenous people. Also, references to a “mass grave” at the former school in Kamloops were changed to “unmarked graves”, which more accurately describes the discovery.

It looks like that's the outrageous claim that the NY Post is upset about. But the NY Post refers to the Guardian article as its source, and did not notice when the Guardian corrected its error.

Here's an article closer to the researcher herself:

https://blogs.ufv.ca/chasi/2021/07/15/u ... al-school/

Dr. Sarah Beaulieu, a University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) anthropologist, presented a summary of her ground penetrating radar (GPR) investigation to media Thursday morning at an event held by Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, highlighting 200 “targets of interest” of what are likely to indicate human burials.

The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation have identified Beaulieu as a collaborating researcher whose work confirmed the probable unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS).

Beaulieu emphasized that remote sensing such as GPR is not the only means of knowing children went missing in Indian Residential School contexts. Beaulieu added that this fact has been recognized by Indigenous communities for generations, and that remote sensing provides specific coordinates to this truth.

I can't find an original source for the "mass graves" claim at Kamloops other than the misquotation in The Guardian, which the NY Post then quotes in later articles. Kamloops seems to be individual graves.

So...no "mass graves" at all then? You said above that the grave site with 14 bodies buried together was not a mass grave. If Kamloops was individual graves...
Exactly where are these "many, many schools" with mass graves?

[Bootstrap]

Your exact claim is that "In many, many schools, there are mass graves that are either suspected or confirmed" and then linked to a site that doesn't claim any such thing.

Just like the article in the OP. The phrase "mass graves" does not match what the tribe or the researchers were claiming for Kamloops. They think they see 200 or so individual graves. So the article in the OP is outraged about their own sloppy journalism, I think. And the Guardian issued a retraction, saying "mass graves" is not an accurate description. The NY Post article that this links to hasn't caught up.

And FWIW, I don't think there's evidence that the fires are connected to Kamloops or these claims, that seems to be speculation, according to this article:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton ... -1.7055838

I do stand by this claim:

The children were taken away. Nobody knows what happened to them. Very likely, they died due to some illness and were buried without telling their parents or their communities. That's exactly what the issue is.

That is very, very well documented.

[ken_sylvania]

Your exact claim is that "In many, many schools, there are mass graves that are either suspected or confirmed" and then linked to a site that doesn't claim any such thing.

Just like the article in the OP. The phrase "mass graves" does not match what the tribe or the researchers were claiming for Kamloops. They think they see 200 or so individual graves. So the article in the OP is outraged about their own sloppy journalism, I think. And the Guardian issued a retraction, saying "mass graves" is not an accurate description. The NY Post article that this links to hasn't caught up.

And FWIW, I don't think there's evidence that the fires are connected to Kamloops or these claims, that seems to be speculation, according to this article:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton ... -1.7055838

I do stand by this claim:

The children were taken away. Nobody knows what happened to them. Very likely, they died due to some illness and were buried without telling their parents or their communities. That's exactly what the issue is.

That is very, very well documented.

I'm asking why you claimed that there are suspected or confirmed mass grave sites at "many, many" schools. Sloppy journalism at the NY Post is no excuse, as even their article didn't claim mass graves at "many, many schools." So what gives? You just made it up?

[silentreader]

Has anyone read "Grave Error" by C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan?