News
St. John’s Indian Residential School Initiative
Initiative Updates, Community Gathering, and Upcoming Ground Searches
What is this initiative?
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- The St. John’s Chapleau Indian Residential School Initiative is a collaboration between Chapleau Cree, Chapleau Ojibwe, and Brunswick House First Nations, working to uncover the truth of the St. John’s Chapleau Indian Residential School that operated at two school sites from 1907-1948 in Chapleau, ON.
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- The Initiative’s main goals include:
- identifying children that never came home;
- locating children who died and their burial sites to honor and remember them;,
- building knowledge to bring those who attended the school and their families home in a good way​; and
- to share stories, record histories, and guide Survivors & Intergenerational Survivors in healing.
- The Initiative’s main goals include:
When did they meet?
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- The Initiative’s Fourth Gathering happened between April 29 – May 1 and brought together an estimated 120 people to the Chapleau Arena in town.
- Participants included Residential School Survivors, Intergenerational Survivors, other Residential School Initiatives, technical teams that support the St. John’s Initiative, and community members that gathered to share updates, stories, next steps, and healing activities.
What are the updates?
The St. John’s Initiative team provided updates on their work over the past year, which included archival data processing that has created a list of student attendance and deaths while students were at St. John’s.
Additionally, the Initiative reported on the archaeology groundwork that has happened to date inspecting the first school ground site. Another ground search team, equipped with LiDAR (light detection and ranging) drones, presented their plan for a further investigation of school sites. A representative for a historic human remains detection dog HHRDD team spoke to how these dog teams work, how they can help, and limitations to the method.
Amongst updates, the gathering provided space for other Residential School Initiatives to present on their respective community work and for participants to come together in sharing circles. Each day concluded with healing and social activities such as crafts, cedar foot soaks, and bingo to help lighten spirits after days with heavy material.
What’s next?
In the upcoming weeks and months, the St. John’s Chapleau Indian Residential School Initiative will be carrying out LiDAR work alongside further archeological site searches. This work will involve a drone team visiting the search site to set up ground scanning radar and reading the sub-ground layer landscape.
Results from this work will inform the specific search process for the archeological and other ground search teams that will also be working on the search sites in the upcoming months.
Image Source: Chapleau (St. John’s) – NCTR