751 lights mark unmarked graves at Cowessess First Nation in Sask.

Over 750 individual lights were illuminated on the site of a former residential school in Cowessess First Nation, Sask. on Saturday to honour those buried in unmarked graves.

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69 comments

  1. they have known about these for decades and are acting like they have just been discovered? lol. get that tv time and government money

    1. @Robin Yuen
      Sure, But I do find the timing of it quite convenient for our politicians. Especially when I was reading that there was already a report on this from the truth and reconciliation commission back in 2015.

    2. @drfye someone started doing excavation work at a former residential school in Kamloops and found a mass gravesite. Covid could’ve just delayed this by a year

    3. @FC Mazzaroth No one replied, you bet they asked. Remember their kids were often taken by gunpoint with the RCMP involved, you really think they got answers?

  2. Not all family’s. Could afford a tomb stone or a grave marker. And some just wore out with time. I am not listening to special interest groups/news. Any more. More about money. Then anything else. Selling merchandise or services. In the name of the dead is sickening.

    1. Thats it, nobody is allowed to talk about the holocaust anymore because it happened over 60 years ago and they just died of disease, right?

      And their grave markers were made of wood and just rotted away, right?

      Thats how disgusting you pos sound.

    2. I am sure some died of disease, but there are witnesses too my auntie was there and seen children get killed

    3. @Lil Syrup Almost none of them were murdered, most died from disease. The deaths were not intentional, it was just poor care and lack of funds, the government in the 60s and 70s was already progressive, I’m sure the story is deeper than “duh gooberment was evil and wanted them to die”

  3. Just strange that they’re putting this on tv when they know all this stuff a long time ago. And that’s weeks when they want the rest of the country to feel ashamed for the 250 kids.

    1. @Colin Shafer and some kids were saved from epidemics which spread elsewhere, including their reserves.

    2. @HRE Then why the unmarked graves?. Were any non residential schools subject to this amount of deaths. Over 2,000 documented CHILDRENS deaths , many, many undocumented. All this while under the auspices of a conglomerate of ” religious” groups. Defund the Churches.

    3. @HRE the graves in Saskatchewan. The tombstones were removed in the 60s by the church parishioners and kept quiet until now.
      The tuberculosis outbreaks were reported by the chief medical office Peter Bryce in 1909

    4. @HRE this particular school. The Marieval Indian Residential School was located on  Cowessess 73 reserve in Marieval, Saskatchewan and operated from 1898 to 1997.

  4. Seems odd that all of this is only being “discovered” now, after the what… 2015? report that already covered these facts? Why now? Was it just Covid pushing this out of the news cycle for the past year? Or is it political?

    1. @drfye im disguested enough as is i rather not do the math to get to the average for how many had to die to get 751 dead within 100 years

  5. We do not know what this is about yet, a lot of these graves could be from the swine flu pandemic on 1918, we need more answers.

    1. @lavallee45 Not a mass grave, at all, every grave is in a plot in a row. Wanna see mass graves, look at Cambodia

    1. I’m no fan of Justin, however this is what he meant when he said “Canadians shouldn’t be shocked” as though pointing to some previous acknowledgement.

  6. Thank you for saying that the cemetery was not just for students but for anyone that lived and died in the area.

    1. @MotherLand17 There are at least 2 catholic churches , schools and cemeteries on one plot within 30 miles of my home.

    2. @MotherLand17 yes except they didn’t need cemeteries to begin with. When there was a death all they needed to do was notify the family so that the child could be returned to their home community for a ceremony and burial. That’s not what the church wanted though because that would be encouraging indigenous culture and family connection, which is the opposite to what they were trying to accomplish. They figured it was better to bury them at the school with a christian ceremony and not involve the home community or the family at all

    3. @Jason Payet ….in a large city where the kid’s families lived as opposed to residential schools where the children’s family could be hundreds of miles away when there was no way to transport the bodies home before they corrupted? I understand why they schools were made (don’t agree with them but I understand what they were thinking when they built them, wanted assimilation). The graves should have been marked, the children should have been treated with respect, this is what happens when a government runs an operation where those they put in charge have no respect for those they are supposed to be “helping”

    4. @Jason Payet no they probably did it cause it was cheaper then and or the bpsy would rot by the time it gets to the family.

  7. So right after 200+ plus bodies are discovered in Kelowna, suddenly they find 700 more? Seems like they were already aware of these 700 gravesites beforehand.

    1. Yes, indigenous communities did know about them already and they were discussed during the truth and reconciliation commission. Everyone else just chose to ignore it

    2. Every Prime Minister up until 1997 oversaw these “schools” and did nothing about it.

      Any more gaslighting you simps want to do?

    3. @Steve McLeish Problems are never addressed until someone sounds the alarm. Then, if it’s a problem in government, it will be ignored as much as possible. When blindness is no longer an option, the problem will be addressed, but ,as governments do, in a slow, clumsy, and indecisive manner. So, to suggest the government did nothing is a little off the mark. They simply used, as they do, millions/billions of our money to go at the issue in the same manner as would be employed by a lazy half-wit.

    4. Those were always known to locals. Every canadians knows about the catholic churches atrocities. This is gaslighting again to make trudeau look bad.

  8. Wow I bet that’s an amazing visual effect, sure to stir up emotions instead of inspiring rational thought. You guys are masters at what you do.

    1. Unless I’m mistaken, this school was taken over by the local tribal council in the 1980s until it was shut down in 1999 due to age.

    2. @Steve McLeish except liberal govt has been in power over 70% of Canada’s history sooooo….

    3. @Daniel Hannigan So intentional misinterpretation since you can’t win an argument to save your life…? LOL.

      P.S. This is a junk acct with notifications OFF, so have fun raging into the void. I won’t be seeing it. I guess you can always report me for spam tho. It’s something, at least! 🙂

  9. Id be curious how the news will spin it when they find the deaths are a result of Small Pox and TB.

  10. We need to hear more of their stories so that we will remember them marking their lives cut short.

  11. Why would deliberate killers take the time to 1) actually bury the dead respectfully? 2) Regularly space them apart? 3) Bury them at a school? 4) Hope to get away with it hundreds of times? 5) If they are children destined to be buried why would there be any housing for them? 6) How could it not be documented? 7)How could they confirm all the identities already? 8)Ever notice that the culture and language of others, such as Scottish and Irish, have been wiped out in Canada?

  12. Check out Alice vonHildebrand’s interview at Church Militant website for more understanding on this issue.

  13. What about holding living political leaders , of the last twenty years of residential schools , accountable ? Mulroney and Chretien in Ottawa , Devine and Romanow in SK, to name a few. .

  14. You’d think in light of this, our PM whose Dad oversaw the building of 5 residential schools would step down, right? Especially considering the Liberal party was in power while most of this was happening?

    Nah, it’s the rabble & the catholic church who should feel guilty (tho the church has an awful track record too, not denying that). Not the actual perpetrators. Canadian logic, everybody.

  15. I don’t condone the actions of the Catholic and Protestant Churches that were used by the government to “ civilize the savages” as they put it. Parents must have known their children were not coming home and why. Someone must have been responsibility for informing parents their children died. Who was that?
    Why hasn’t the government seizing those records and giving them to Indigenous Affairs Canada.

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