Deaths at the Kamloops Residential School

 

Kamloops Residential School

The lead item in the Canadian national news yesterday was the discovery of 215 child corpses in an unmarked grave somewhere near the old residential school on the T’kemlups reserve in Kamloops, BC.

Should this be big news? Each of those deaths is terribly sad; it is sad that they were not better commemorated. But is there anything truly surprising or scandalous here?

To begin with, this is a preliminary report. No excavation has been done, the site has not been disclosed, and no images have been released. Preliminary reports are usually false. If there is a scandal, it is too soon to say so.

The old T’kemlups residential school is not in some remote location. It is iin plain view of downtown Kamloops. It is the most prominent building on the T’kemlups reserve, which is surrounded, or bordered, by the city on two sides.

If there was something untoward going on here, if children were being killed or even buried secretly in unmarked graves on the T’kemlups reserve, where was the band council? What was their responsibility? What about the municipality of Kamloops? Where were the parents? Did they not notice one of their children was missing?

Given the school’s central location, it even seems less than certain that any burial ground near the school was used exclusively by the school. These preliminary reports claim that the remains of children as young as three were found—below school age.

Perhaps the band council has simply found the local “Potter’s Field.”

Let us suppose, however, that the burials are from the school, and the number given is accurate. It may seem shocking to us today that a school-age child might die, but deaths of children were common only a few generations ago. In Tom Brown’s School Days, the classic account of Rugby School in the 19th century, Tom’s best friend is taken off by scarlet fever. In 19th century Canada, an estimated one third to one half of all children died before the age of five. They fell from the general run of childhood diseases, from scarlet fever, from polio, from Spanish flu, from smallpox, and above all from tuberculosis. 

The Kamloops school ran as a residential school for 79 years. Two hundred and fifteen deaths over 79 years is 2.72 deaths per year. The school, I read, hosted 500 students. That means a death rate of 0.54% per year. This does not sound particularly high for the time. Especially since tuberculosis was a special problem in the residential schools—reputedly 4.9 times the national average.

If that sounds like a condemnation of the schools, the tuberculosis rate on reserves in general was eight times the national average. In 1909, two physicians examined 243 Indian children awaiting admission to residential schools in Calgary. They reported that “in no instance was a child awaiting admission to school found free from tuberculosis.” A study of 175 school-age Indian children in Saskatchewan in 1922 reported that 93 percent showed evidence of tuberculous infection.

Some children were bound to die. Sad that they were not given a more dignified burial; but where were the parents to arrange it? If the parents were too poor, or did not care, where was the band council? Where were the municipal authorities? The provincial authorities? The federal authorities? The local churches? Perhaps everyone simply thought it was somebody else’s responsibility.