Residential school deniers tried to dig up suspected unmarked grave sites at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, not believing a May 2021 announcement from the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc that as many as 215 Indigenous children had been buried there, according to a new report.

“Denialists entered the site without permission. Some came in the middle of the night, carrying shovels; they said they wanted to ‘see for themselves’ if children are buried there,” said a Friday report from Kimberly Murray, the independent special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian Residential Schools.

She did not say who the denialists were or when they came to the site.

But the unauthorized visits to the site are the work of a “core group” of Canadians who continue to deny, defend or minimize the physical, sexual, psychological and emotional abuse inflicted on Indigenous children in the Indian Residential School System “despite the indisputable evidence of survivors and their families,” Murray said at a Friday news conference. Read Up . . .