Uncover - Introducing: Kuper Island

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

Long after the Kuper Island Residential School was torn down, the survivors are still haunted by what happened there. Investigative reporter Duncan McCue exposes buried police investigations, confronts perpetrators of abuse and witnesses a community trying to rebuild — literally on top of the old school’s ruins and the unmarked graves of Indigenous children.

This is a CBC Podcast. They called it a school, but what kind of school has a graveyard? I'll tell you. The Penelakut tribes, as it has found, more than 160 unmarked graves in an area near the former Cooper Island Residential School. This podcast is about that kind of school. The kind of school that was meant to kill the Indian in the child. But more than anything, it's about children who went there.

Three who survived and one who didn't. We're just talking and all of a sudden he says, you know what, I can't wait to get out of this hellhole. When I get out of here, I'm going to tell everything. And that was the last time we heard from him. And it's about a community that's haunted by its legacy. Children torn from their families, their language, and their culture. And that has everything to do with why children are missing and murdered. Why children didn't go home. Because they were raised by psychopaths. And sent to live in a place so terrible, it came to be known as Canada's Alcatraz. I have never seen such abject fear as what I saw in that child. And I have never seen such abject fear as what I saw in that child. And I have never seen such abject evil as what was in that man.

He was staring at me like he was hellfire himself. I'm Duncan McHugh, and this is Cooper Island. In this eight-part series, we'll take you on a journey to uncover truths that have been hidden for too long. We managed to find the autopsy report. How? Jesus, you'd think that would be buried so deeply. They don't want no one finding that shit. We'll learn from the survivors what life was really like at an institution designed to erase identity. The next morning, the poor guy could hardly walk,

but nobody said nothing because it could be their turn tonight. And will confront the people responsible for crimes committed there. God didn't do it to us. It was the bishops, the popes, the priests. What is that? Cuper Island. Coming soon to CBC Listen

or wherever you get your podcasts. This isn't just a story about how a child died. This is about what was going on inside a residential school

that drove a child to possibly die by suicide. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.