Penelakut First Nation

Toronto Star – Penelakut Tribe Chief Joan Brown “has told surrounding First Nations that it has found the unmarked graves of 160 or more people on the grounds of the former residential school”. Kuper Island School on Penelakut Island was operated by the Catholic Church until 1969. Outbreaks of deadly disease were a persistent issue at the school: typhoid, influenza and smallpox outbreaks… Students also did not receive enough to eat, according to school inspectors… A federal government employees wrote that Indigenous peoples “were inclined to boycott this school on account of so many deaths.”

Sexual abuse and suicides by students have also been recorded there…In 1939, an attempted escape drew attention to abuse. Six boys escaped by canoe and two, who were interviewed by police officers, said they fled because of “unnatural acts” one of the priests had tried with them…(The alleged perpetrators of the abuse having been sent away from B.C. before the investigation concluded.)

Archaeological research there began in 2014 as part of the TRC’s work on missing children. After the TRC reports were completed, a team at the University of British Columbia continued the work of collecting records, interviewing people who live in the village and searching the grounds of the former school using ground-penetrating radar.

Indigenous children from up and down the B.C. coast were sent there, and its remote locations earned it the nickname of “Canada’s Alcatraz”. A community march with neighbouring communities will take place on August 2.