Report outlined reality of residential school deaths years before recent discoveries of unmarked graves

The discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools in Canada has led to anger, sorrow and reflection. But sadly, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Part of a voluminous final report published by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada back in 2015 titled Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials, made clear the cruel collective fate of thousands of Indigenous children who died in anonymity.

The report, which was accepted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, identified 3,200 deaths among residential students, while acknowledging that “the work of identifying the number of students who died in residential schools has only commenced.”

Among the Commission’s findings:

• For just under one-third of these deaths (32 per cent), the government and the schools did not record the name of the student who died.

• For just under one-quarter of these deaths (23 per cent), the government and the schools did not record the gender of the student who died.

• For just under one-half of these deaths (49 per cent), the government and the schools did not record the cause of death.

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The Commission also found that children at residential schools died at a “far higher rate” than children in the general population, partly because the Canadian government, in a bid to keep costs down, failed to establish “an adequate set of standards and regulations to guarantee the health and safety” of students.

“For most of the history of the schools, the practice was not to send the bodies of students who died at schools to their home communities,” the Commission wrote. “For the most part, the cemeteries that the Commission documented are abandoned, disused, and vulnerable to accidental disturbance.”

“The tragedy of the loss of children was compounded by the fact that burial places were distant or even unknown. Many Aboriginal people have unanswered questions about what happened to their children or relatives while they were attending residential school.”

Of the known causes of death among residential students, tuberculosis outbreaks led to the greatest loss of life, although the Commission states that, “Many diagnoses of the cause of death may not have been accurate. The determination of cause of death would often have been made by individuals without medical training.”

As was highlighted by the late Gord Downie’s album Secret Path, some students died while trying to flee the horrors of residential schools.

The Secret Path album and accompanying graphic novel told the sad tale of 12-year-old Chanie “Charlie” Wenjack, who died in the fall of 1966 while trying to walk home some 400 miles from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ontario.

Chanie was not alone.

The Commission said at least 33 students died while trying to run away.

Accidents, fires, and exposure claimed dozens more, and at least a half a dozen died by suicide, although those numbers could be much higher after the Commission concluded, “there is no known cause of death” for at least half the recorded deaths.