June 01, 2021

Kukpi7 Chief Rosanne Casimir talks about finding the graves at the Kamloops residential school

The effort to confirm the presence of graves at the Kamloops residential school was a painstaking process that took years to complete. On May 27, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation, near Kamloops, B.C., announced it had confirmed the mass grave. The school, operated by the Roman Catholic church between 1890 to 1969 when it was handed over to the federal government. It was the largest residential system in the country with as many as 500 students at one time. According to Kukpi7 Chief Rosanne Casimir, whose mother and grandmother attended the school, there is more work to be done. She talks with APTN’s Tina House about the discovery and where the community is going to go from here. “We are the responsible caretakers here,” she says. “These children are our responsibility.”

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