Uncover - S16: “Kuper Island” E5: Feeding the Dead

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

An archaeologist uses the stories of survivors and a ground-penetrating radar machine to pinpoint where children who died at the Kuper Island school were buried, sometimes in places where no one ever wanted them to be found. And we explore how the Hul'qumi'num people honour their ancestral dead, and why this work is important when it comes to unsettled spirits and unmarked graves. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/kuper-island-transcripts-listen-1.6622551

My name is John Cullen and I want to tell you a story. It's a story about a scandal, broken relationships, gossip, rumors, money, corporate rivalry, and curling. It's the story of Broomgate. How a single broom, yes, a broom, turned friends into foes and almost killed the 500-year-old sport of curling. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. This is a CBC Podcast. Before we start, this is a podcast about Canada's Indian residential schools,

and it contains descriptions of sexual violence, suicide, and abuse. If you need support, you can find information about where to turn for help at cbc.ca slash keeperisland. On a cool day last September, James and Tony Charlie gathered with their extended family, brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren, to feed the dead. They do this every four years or so. It's a ritual the Hul'q'uminim have been practicing since time out of mind. We call it a burning. What happens is we look back in our history of our family,

and we went back about three, four generations, and we remember our family who have passed on to the spirit world. They were next to the Penelaket Cemetery under the towering cedar trees. The ceremony lasted all day. At the heart of it was a lavish feast that took the family weeks to prepare. to prepare. We gather all our traditional foods and we set out plates for each family member with their food that they love and it could be the clams, crab, there was prawns and salmon and there was all the family done the foods, eh?

We had octopus, we had oysters, we had fish, we had deer. We did have some biscotti and hamburger for some of the younger ones that don't, didn't eat these cultural foods. They're a little picky, a little fussy. Don't eat these cultural foods. They're a little picky, a little fussy. The traditional spaghetti and hamburger. Yeah.

How many people ended up showing up then? This was a small burn-in, so I think we burned over 50 plates. Usually our burn-in is between 150 to 200. My goodness. Yeah. Wow, that's a lot of ancestors. To be clear, they weren't only feeding living family members. On a huge homemade cedar table, they set 50 extra plates for their ancestors,

piled them high with food, then burned them in the fire. The Hul'q'uminim believe that's how food moves from the physical world to the spiritual one. But this year, there were some unusual guests at the table. That's what the elder running the ceremony said. She has a gift of communicating with the ancestors and interpreting their signs. She says, and there was a bunch of young kids that had shown up. And I thank you guys for very much for feeding us. We've been neglected for so many years, just wandering around. Nobody cares for us.

We don't belong to anybody. These spirits were children who died at the residential school. They thanked us for bringing some extra blankets for them and extra food. Now they're being found and they're happy. They're no longer lost wandering around, nobody owning them. And I was very surprised when she said, yeah, there were some missing children here eating at your guys table and they thank you for sharing your food with them. So that is very unique, very special. You can believe it or disbelieve it, but that's our culture.

That's our way. Everyone at the burning knew these spirits were children who died at the residential school and that this is a mess the community didn't make but now have to make right. In this episode,

we're going to spend some time understanding how they've tried to do that using traditional and not-so-traditional ways. I'm Duncan McHugh, and this is Cuper Island. Episode 5, Feeding the Dead. When someone dies in a Hul'q'u'minim community, the traditional ceremonies that mark their passing can last days. Sometimes they carry on for months, even years. While recording this podcast, I attended a memorial for James' mother-in-law.

When she died, the family had to put away all the photographs of her. A year later, they held a ceremony just to celebrate showing her picture again. It lasted all day. Hundreds of people showed up, even during strict COVID protocols. The Hul'q'u'minim approach to death is intricate and time-consuming, and you have to get that to really understand how deeply hurt this community is about the kids who died at Cooper Island. It's not only that children were neglected in life. They were also neglected in death. Our children had been calling out for their families, you know, crying for their families, and no one would go get them.

And they couldn't be released. That's Jill Harris. Jill isn't only the former chief of Penelaket. She also grew up in a family that has a traditional responsibility to care for the bodies of the dead. They're known as a funeral family and they get called in as soon as someone passes away. I was given a name. Snemithia is my real name. And with that name I have the obligation to carry out the functions that my great grandmother Snimithia did. So I would be one who would open the coffin. I would be the person who would maybe unwrap the blanket for people to see. And I'm the woman with the basin. When people are finished, they're crying,

I'll give them a basin so they can wash away their tears. Other members of Jill's family carry out different traditional tasks. Her sons and grandsons are gravediggers. Her sisters dress the body of a deceased person and prepare their clothes. Do you dress like that all the time? Is that how you like to dress? Me? Yeah, this is pretty normal for me. Yeah, so this is what my sisters would remember.

Oh, yeah, you are known to look like this. So you would have four sets of clothes, complete sets, like right from the top to the under, shoes, everything. Then they would get that ready for the burning. Those clothes are burned, along with the favorite foods of the deceased. And lately, because we all love pets, we've put a basket of pet food on too. You've called it a duty. An obligation.

An obligation. Why is this so important to you? This is our culture. This is our sacraments. This is how we express our spirituality in these rituals and ceremonies that we inherit, that we carry on. It's not trivial.

It's not just going and digging up the ground. They prepare themselves. I was just looking at my grandson's shoes. It still has mud on it. When they come home from grave digging, their clothes have to stay outside for four days. Because you just finished work. Yeah. And if they have children, they can't hold their children for a few days. For a married couple, usually they can't sleep together right away. We have to do a lot of cleansing with ourselves. And for us, as people who are survivors of residential school,

ones who have lost so much of our culture because of residential school, we have so much brokenness inside of us. We need something to mend our lives it's that um maybe it's we become whole again all this explains why the missing children of cupar island mattered so much to jill long before unmarked graves at residential schools were making headlines. And it's why she agreed to walk me through one of the rituals they performed for those children's spirits.

So we went back to the site of the old school at Penelope. Thank you for coming over this morning. You didn't need to. Yes, I did. I'm glad that you feel that way. A couple decades ago, when the spirits of children began appearing, Jill and some elders invited a traditional healer known as a skunilach to the old school site to try to locate and heal places of spiritual unrest.

So it's up this way, right? Mm-hmm. Jill calls him a ritualist in English. The ritualist had never visited Penelakut before. He brought a cedar board about the size of a piece of paper and some traditional workers to help him. The first place they stopped was a big pile of excavated dirt next to the longhouse. The board started going up and down in his hands.

It was just, I guess my gut was all tight. And I felt like my heart was pounding in this. And the woman that was standing with me, she was going, I wonder what they found. I wonder what they found. Is there somebody there? The ritualist, whose name was Pete, said there were human remains in the dirt. Then he started walking around the old school grounds, letting the board identify other sites of death. They stopped at the old gym, where Richard Thomas was discovered hanging.

Then they went to where the incinerator used to be. The same incinerator James and Tony brought me to. And the board started going down like this and it would come back. It would go down and then come back. And they were making like a wailing sound, the ones holding the board. The workers. Yeah. And I looked at the lady that was with me and I said,

was that the incinerator? And she said, yeah. He said there was some babies thrown in that incinerator. It was like he was crying, crying for those babies. Oh, he just stood there and cried. It was just like, it was like unbelievable. I've heard multiple accounts of aborted fetuses being burned in the Cooper Island incinerator, and I'm starting to struggle with how to process all these heart-wrenching stories.

Can I be honest with you? I've started to get a little numb to it. Mm-hmm. Numb to the stories? Yes. Yeah. I mean, when I start to string together

even just the stories that you just told me and us in the past 15 or 20 minutes, that's a horror movie. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

The rain starts really pouring down on me and Jill, but she doesn't head for cover. She's trying to impress upon me that reporters need to change how we tell residential school stories and start naming names. For me, reporting on this is like the church did it, the church did it, the institution is the being that did it. That's the cover story. You know, but the actual crime is what the people did. What would it accomplish to try to find the brothers or the sisters who committed crimes?

Satisfaction. That the actual perpetrators of these crimes would be named. The church didn't do this. People murdered children. Church didn't do this. People, people murdered children. People, people ran these places. A lot of them are dead.

I know. I know, but look, all those children are dead too. And they're unnamed and unfound. But these people have marked graves someplace. Something needs to be done by the institution that they came from or they represented. Need to take account for the actions. When the ritualist finished for the day, he told the group they had to gather up all the scared spirits of those little kids and take them to the longhouse. The longhouse is the center of the community's spiritual life. They built a fire and burned some food for the children.

Everyone started to sing. And he looked all around and he said, they're here. They're all here and they're happy. For me, it was like if you look out of the corner of your eye and you see something moving here, that's almost what it was like if you look out of the corner of your eye and you see something moving here, that's almost what it was like. Like you could sense their presence. Did you feel like, okay, we're done, like that's good, it's all solved? No. No, because he said this is just the beginning.

There's more. There's more work that has to be done. So there had to be more of a search. Around that same time, police got involved in the search. Pursuing a tip from a survivor of Cuper Island, the RCMP dug up a small area in Penelaket. It turned up nothing. They concluded soil conditions may have destroyed the evidence. It would be another decade before the community decided to try more scientific ways to find missing children.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. In 2014, the community of Penelakut brought over Andrew Martindale to look for graves where the Cuper Island School once stood. So what's that? This is the cart that holds the ground-penetrating radar equipment. He's an archaeology prof at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver who specializes in ground-penetrating radar, or GPR for short. Are you taking an x-ray of the ground? Is that kind of like... No, no, That's a common, well, that's a common belief. And this was, this equipment was not invented for this technique,

or for this purpose rather. It was invented to map out subsurface service lines. And archaeologists, we pick up technologies that have been used elsewhere. GPR works like navigational radar, like how a dolphin uses echolocation. It sends out a ping, and depending how that ping reflects back, you get a sense of what's down there. To find the graves, they're looking for loose soil, because it holds more water. The ping that comes back from loose soil is different from dirt that hasn't been disturbed. And to be clear, you're not seeing a skeleton lying in the air? No. This is what we call a prospection survey.

We're looking for graves, and this equipment will do that. But it doesn't resolve the contents of the graves, but it will locate the graves. We're standing at the entrance to Penelakut Cemetery. It's early in the morning, because Andrew has to be out of the cemetery by noon, in accordance with Penelakut protocols to not disturb the ancestors. I need a little more slack if I'm going to hit that point. The graveyard is about a football field long. There are rows of graves organized by family name. In the middle, a tall white wooden cross.

I think I put it on your map, didn't I? Andrew and his grad student Derek Simons measure out an imaginary grid to guide them. Then they push the machine back and forth to create a map of what's below the surface. Andrew and his grad student Derek Simons measure out an imaginary grid to guide them. Then they push the machine back and forth to create a map of what's below the surface. Alright, I did it with my compass, but I think you've got it right. The archaeologists actually started their work at a different part of the island, next to the school. It was a long-abandoned graveyard for school staff that had four marked graves, first principal and three nuns.

But survivors insisted there were children buried there too, so they scanned. What they found upset everyone. Three rows of unmarked graves, at least 13 burials, with indications there were a lot more. Who were they? What happened? And what should the people of Penelaket do about these unceremonious burials? It brought back a lot of trauma, so the elders sent Andrew across the island to a safer place, the big cemetery. They believe there are unmarked children's graves there too, and it gave Andrew and Eric a place to fine-tune their methods with fewer troubling questions.

At least in the cemetery, the dead are where they're supposed to be, not scattered around the island in hidden spots. Even if we have a set of unmarked graves that come out of the GPR signal that might be from children or might be from the residential school, we don't know who is who. It would be hard with just radar to be able to identify. And then we move into possibilities of forensic work, which is a complex and daunting task. I don't envy the community for having to make decisions about how to take next steps. So this is really just one part of a very complicated pathway.

Finding these sites is the first step. Finding these sites is the first step. The next decision will her specialty, and she's been fielding a lot of questions from a lot of Indigenous communities looking for help with those next steps. That's a whole other part of an investigation, exhuming any bodies that may be there. The examination of these bodies, the identification of them,

and who do they belong to? Where's their home? Who are their families? It's going to require lots of cooperation, a lot of resources, and a lot of time if this is going to go into more of a criminal investigation. What are the ethics involved in collecting, you know, someone's DNA and bringing it and putting it in a system and testing it. How do we bring home these children that we do recover? What do we do with remains that we can't identify? Where do they go? So, I mean, the one thing you didn't mention was costs.

What about a community that has 160 graves? I mean, what would they be looking at in terms of costs? It's impossible for me at this point to put a dollar amount on it. But, you know, the cost for me, at least in terms of human life, it's immeasurable. And so is it going to cost a lot of money? Absolutely. Especially to do this right and to honor those children.

In the community that we were in, at one point the RCMP actually did go and do one search of a grave site. They didn't find anything. But there was a thing in the study that said if the remains had been buried on the site, the wet soil conditions would have obliterated any trace long before. Is that possible, that wet soil conditions can obliterate a gravesite? I mean, bones do degrade eventually. Nothing lasts forever. And, you know, things move. I know from listening to my colleagues in archaeology that, you know,

just because there has been a soil disturbance does not mean that there's a grave there containing remains. There may be sites that were completely missing because we didn't look. So you never know until you dig. And we're not going to know the answers to those questions until we start to actually dig at those sites and find out what's there. Some First Nations may exhume, looking for criminal evidence. Because of traditional protocols and the immense emotional cost, others may let the dead rest. I think in the very beginning, when these burial sites were first discovered, there was a lot of push to do this quickly and as quickly as possible.

And in giving the information that I have about the process and what's involved, I've discovered that people sort of pull back a little bit. They're like, let's do this right. You know, the children deserve this. They deserve a certain amount of respect that they did not receive in life. There's a lot of pain. It's going to be very painful for people to do this. There's real physical evidence that's going to be revealed. And how are communities and families going to react to that?

You know, that's going to be huge. And the rest of Canada is going to have to, and the world, is going to have to come to terms with what really happened because now you have the physical evidence to show everybody how devastating these schools really were. This section actually is pretty old. These go back to the late 19th century. Okay. Some have markers on them, and some don't.

These graves that Andrew's showing me in the cemetery don't need to be exhumed. They have bits and pieces of biographical information that, cross-referenced with archives, can help confirm they were students at the school. Francois, here. Just a single name. Died March 17, 1894, age nine years, RIP. The name Francois,

Francois Johnny, also appears in the register, and the dates are the same. So this could be a child who attended the residential school and died while at that at the school um over here we'll walk down this way this is the grave again it's a got a monument headstone and then a little border out of stone. This is in memory of Annie L. Pappenberger,

born June 18, 1894, died January 22, 1910. So Annie Lena Pappenberger was a student at the Cooper School, and she's on the list, on the NCTR list. There are only a few of these marked student graves, but even they tell a story of the racism Indigenous children faced. Annie's father was German. Her mother was Hul'q'uminum. Annie was Indian enough to be sent to residential school where she died,

white enough that she got an impressive headstone, unlike most other students. Annie was 16. She was born in 1894 and she died in 1910. Do we know the circumstances of her death? We don't. Here's what we do know about why kids were dying around that time.

When the Cooper Island School opened in 1889, it was like other Canadian Indian residential schools. Overcrowded and underfunded. Poorly built. Cold and dirty. The food was vitamin deficient and often rotten. In 1907, one of Canada's top public health doctors, Peter Bryce, sounded the alarm. In 2007, one of Canada's top public health doctors, Peter Bryce, sounded the alarm.

He investigated dozens of schools and found a quarter of the students had died there, or shortly after they left, many from tuberculosis. The death rate at Kuper was even higher. Four out of every ten students had died. Dr. Bryce recommended the government take over from the churches immediately, and at very least, start improving ventilation and sanitation. His report made national news. Indian schools deal out death, read one headline. Another story pointed out that Indian students were dying at higher rates than soldiers during war.

It should have been Canada's wake-up call. Instead, Dr. Bryce was forced into retirement, and residential schools became mandatory. He gave one more warning in 1922, self-publishing a pamphlet documenting how colonial policy was killing Indigenous children. Its title was The Story of a National Crime. It too was ignored. So, according to researchers who've combed through what records the Catholic Church and government have made public, at least 167 children died at Cuper Island. It's not yet known where they're all buried. Andrew estimates there are 40 to 60 unmarked graves here in the big graveyard,

plus those burials in the abandoned graveyard. graves here in the big graveyard plus those burials in the abandoned graveyard and then there are what andrew calls clandestine graves before he and eric rush off to catch the ferry andrew asks us to follow him far from the sanction graveyard to a place no child should have been buried it's very close to where jill took us when she was being guided by the ritualist and his cedar board. So this is an old playground, and this used to be the preschool. I don't know if it still is.

And there's a playground over here. I'm turning this way. A few years ago, a survivor named Monty Charlie brought Andrew here. Monty has since passed away. We sat over there where that pickup is, leaning against the vehicle with the maps out on the hood of the vehicle. And then, you know, he told us his story and then the story of the girl. Quite out of the maps, the places where the priest had raped him.

He was a senior citizen at the time we spoke. He carried himself, as seems so common, with grace and humility, but it was a difficult path that he walked. But he wanted me to know his journey, and I think he wanted a broader understanding of his experience to help people like me, non-Indigenous people, understand and illuminate

the history that he had endured. He also brought me here. That's an apple tree. It's just growing out of a stump. The old apple tree was very large and he said there's a girl from the school who was buried at the foot of the apple tree. Then we just laid out the grids and really our equipment is not particularly contemporary so it doesn't have a display that compiles the data for us. We take that back. It wasn't for several days until I looked at the grid that I realized and visualized

the data that there was the burial. He didn't tell me her name unfortunately or anything of her story but he did tell me where she was buried. You don't know her story, but she's buried underneath a tree. She's buried underneath a tree. I know, and that suggests to me the clandestine burials are clandestine for a reason. People who do the burying don't want anybody else to know about them. Why would you not want somebody to know if you're burying somebody?

Probably because their death reflects badly on you. And that suggests a criminal intent. Don't you think? Andrew brought the results back to the elders, including Monty. But Monty didn't need a white guy with a fancy radar to validate the horror he'd witnessed. What he wanted was for Andrew to see the truth. These children just die at school in a passive sense. They were, in some cases, they were killed

by neglect or by a criminal hand. And the stories of abuse, sexual abuse, and other forms of abuse are legion. And I think a pathway through that trauma, Stories of abuse, sexual abuse, and other forms of abuse are legion. And I think a pathway through that trauma, a healing journey, should include an understanding of the people who enacted those crimes. But that's not really part of this conversation. We're looking for the missing children,

but what about the people who caused them to go missing? As a white guy who has started to learn this history, what is your answer to what you think should happen there? I don't know if my opinion on what should happen is that important. I think it is, actually. You know, as a citizen, a non-Indigenous citizen of Canada, I've been taught that our country valorizes and values fairness, equity. And so if in this case we're not seeking justice, well, why?

Why is it because it's an Indigenous context we're not seeking justice? That's a form of racism and inequality that is, I think, endemic to Canada. That seems like a crime. The country would institutionally construct a system wherein children were likely to die. They built schools that were designed that had cemeteries attached to them. Who builds a school and puts a cemetery next to it? It's the racist double standard that Indigenous people have been subjected to since the beginning. It's ongoing now, and this is part of that history. But perhaps, as a nation, especially the non-Indigenous parts of our nation, we can recognize that we have not lived up to the aspirations that we have of ourselves as Canadians that we all learn about.

Penelaket started this work long before governments began shelling out funds for GPR searches. It's taken years, because it's painful for the community, and Andrew was squeezing the work into his university schedule. The old school grounds are vast. He and Eric have only scratched the surface. Just recently, they scanned a spot where the community wanted to put a sports park for outdoor soccer. To everyone's relief, they didn't find any graves. The park had just opened when we arrived, so we stopped.

Because in a podcast all about children, it felt great to see a big group of happy-looking kids. Let's go! Ready, on three. One, two, three. I love that. Good job. Thank you guys.

I'll see you on Monday. There's a fresh sign that says, Penelicate Strong. Another says, Every Child Matters. Lots of orange, the color that's come to symbolize the survivors of residential school. Hi. Can I ask you a question? What do you think of your new field? I think I like it. Why? Because I like how the ground is more softer than the gym. I've noticed your t-shirt. How come you're wearing orange?

Because of the kids that died in elementary school. Thank you for sharing. I like your shirt. Thank you. I leave it there for now. It's good that sometimes a soccer field can just be a soccer field. And it makes crystal clear how determined Penelope is to care for its children, the living and the dead.

You put out plates this weekend for them. You did a burning two years ago for them. You brought a healer here 20 years ago for them. You know, how long does it go on? How, how... Until they're at peace. So that healing's going to take a while. It's going to take a while.

Does the archaeologist help? Does the ground penetrating radar help? I think it does. Why? Because it gives us numbers to build against assholes that done this to our people. Numbers help. On our next episode, we track down the only oblate ever convicted of abusing children at the Cuber Island School.

Hello? Yes, hi, is Glenn Dowdy there? Speaking. Hi, Glenn, it's Duncan McHugh speaking. How are you? I'm doing very good. Cuper Island is produced by Martha Troian and Jody Martinson and hosted by me, Duncan McHugh.

Our senior producer is Jeff Turner. Our coordinating producer is Roshani Nair. Our mixers are Michael Catano and Jeff Turner. And Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. Theme music by Zibiwan. The Penelaket Paddle Song and Remembrance Song were performed by Fergie Charlie and singers from the Tsimanas Community School.

Art by Elliot Whitehill. Haichika, Jimmy Gwetch, to James and Tony Charlie, Jill Harris, Andrew Mart access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour National Indian Residential School Crisis Line. 1-866-925-4419. Or for more resources on Canada's Indian residential schools, go to our website, cbc.ca slash cupereisland. And if you liked this episode, please help others find it by rating and reviewing us. Miigwech bizindayik. Thanks for listening. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.