First Nations in Yukon hope search for unmarked graves of missing children can 'bring peace'

Adeline Webber walks up a dirt path to the site where children who attendedthe former Chooutla Indian Residential School in Carcross, Yukon, once played.

"I'm thinking about my brother," she admits.

A brother she never met. Albert Jackson died in 1942, before she was born. His body could be buried in an unmarked grave here.

Webber says being on the site leads her to think about "how he might have run around here before he got sick."

In doing research, she found that Albert died of dysentery at the age of five while attending Chooutla. Her mother didn't know about his death until it was time for the kids to return home that summer.

"He wasn't with them and she never ever, you know, forgot about that," Webber said. "She always talked about him."

In an effort to find out what happened to Albert and others, Webber helped establish the Yukon Residential Schools Missing Children Project, a working group made up of two representatives from each of the 14 First Nations in the territory. (Webber chaired the group until May 31, when she was named commissioner of the Yukon.)

The group met with people from across the Yukon to find out if a search for unmarked graves was worth pursuing. Last week, technicians with Burnaby, B.C.-based GeoScan began a survey on the site using ground-penetrating radar.

"The people are the ones that said we have to do something," said Maria Benoit, aa Shaad Hen, or Chief, of Carcross/Tagish First Nation.

"We're feeling positive and hopeful and that this work will bring peace to our community."

Chooutla1 of 3 sites being searched in Yukon

In 2021, a ground-penetrating radar survey detected about 200 potential burial sites at a former residential school on Tk'emlups te Secwpemc First Nation in Kamloops, B.C. It led to similar investigations across Canada.

Judy Gingell, vice-chair of the Yukon Residential Schools Missing Children Project, says they have been working towards this survey since 2021.

"It really means a lot for me and I know it means a lot for a lot of people in the Yukon," she said. "So it's a real honour to be able to stand here today and say it's finally happening."

More than 800 students attended Chooutla residential school from 1911 to 1969. They were forced to attend from across the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and northern B.C.

The building was demolished in 1993.

Peter Takacs, GeoScan's lead on this project, says ground penetrating radar (GPR) equipment and a magnetometer can typically survey about 2,500 square metres a day. GeoScan is also using drones for heavily forested areas.

"We might identify a location that likely there is a grave or something similar," said Takacs, but cautioned that it won't be known for weeks. Data collected from a number of sites around the former school, including an ice rink, has to be analyzed first.

"You don't see, you know, graves or unmarked graves directly," Takacs said. "We see changes related to different physical properties of the soil."

WATCH | First ground search begins on site of former Yukon residential school:

Search for unmarked graves begins at former Yukon residential school

1 year ago

Duration 2:31

The first search for unmarked graves is underway on the site of a former residential school in Yukon. From 1911 to 1969, more than 800 children were forced to attend the Chooutla Indian Residential School and many never made it back.

Three other former residential school sites in the Yukon will be searched at a later date.

Results from Chooutla are expected this fall. Gingell says she will meet with leadership first before revealing any results.

Casting a wide net

Tom Van Dewark of Know History, a research service based in Calgary, has been assisting the Yukon Residential Schools Missing Children Project. He says they've cast a broad net to find information, including gathering statements from families of students who went to Chooutla residential school.

"We've been looking at National Archives, provincial archives, territorial archives, municipal archives, church records could be anything that might be relevant to this, we've been pulling in and reviewing."

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission says it has identified 20 students who went missing from the school. But Van Dewark says the number is higher.

"Already we've identified over 60 deaths that took place while students were attending the school," he said, adding that the number is likely to grow as research continues.

Harold Gatensby, 71, attended the Chooutla Indian Residential School for a year as a child, and lives close to the former site.

"People came from all over the North [to go to school here]. And they got hurt here," he said with teary eyes.

Gatensby drives by the site every so often while the GPR work is being done. It gives him a multitude of feelings.

"When you see that, what they're doing on those grounds it brings up the horrific," he said.

But he is also relieved that the surveys are being done.

"Thank god. Finally! Thank you!" he said exuberantly, raising his arms up into the air. "We're doing something about this [history] that we've known about since the school was there. The people here have known."

Gatensby, who calls himself a "ceremonial man," says he's been called countless times by people in nearby Choutla Subdivision to smudge their homes. He conducts a cultural ceremony that involves the burning of sacred medicines like tobacco as a way to cleanse.

"Because there's spirits of little kids at night come into people's houses," he said. "Not horrific, not like a nightmare. Like, 'We're here.'"

'They got our attention now'

Gatensby says he smudges homes where people report lights that have mysteriously switched on and off or where something fell off a table when no one was in the room.

"[The missing children] wanna be acknowledged. But they definitely are being acknowledged now," he said. "It took a long time, but they got our attention now."

aa Shaad Hen Maria Benoit says spiritual activity of this nature has always been in the back of the minds of community members.

"We hear, you know, people have been fishing over here and there's a creek that flows down from Choutla Lake. And so sometimes people have gone fishing and they've heard other kids playing in that area," said Benoit. "They've looked around for those kids, but they've never really seen them."

Webber says she's also heard stories about people hearing the missing children's laughter.

"And they hear them and the kids actually play with them sometimes. The elders are saying, 'You know, they're happy we're here, [that] we're looking for them."

Including Albert Jackson.

"Hopefully, he's one of the children that are running and playing now," said Webber.