[calculoso]

Latest reports of unmarked graves lack important context says former Aqam chief

https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/latest-re...hief-1.5493369

For a country coming to terms with a painful past, the announcement of 182 unmarked graves identified next to a former residential school was immediately horrific.
"Every time there's those words come out: 'unmarked grave,' people jump on it and think 'oh, it's got to do with the residential schools,'" says Sophie Pierre, who served as chief of the Aqam community for 26 years.

But she says the context of those people's remains is far more complicated than first reported. She says although well-intentioned, the reports were painful to her and many others in the small community just north of Cranbrook. It demonstrates the difficulty of coming to terms with the often horrifying history of the settler-Indigenous relationship.

"It says to me that I think Canadians are finally hearing it, because of course we've been saying this for decades," she says.

…

The nearby site has been a graveyard for the small community since at least the mid-1800's, and for 25 years sat next to a regional hospital. Most if not all graves were marked with wooden headstones that have long since rotted away or been destroyed by grass fires.
"Including my grandmother and my grandfather - because they're buried in there and I don't know where their sites are because the crosses burnt down," Pierre recalls.
"I don't think there's any doubt that there are probably some children who went to school here and died and are buried in that graveyard, but it's not 182."

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As a young girl of five or six, Pierre stood in its halls for her first day of school.
"I went here for nine years. So every time this comes out, it affects me personally," she says, becoming emotional. "I think 'dammit I'm not a victim! I'm not an eff-ing victim."
Speaking in front of the former school, her long time confidant and advisor Gwen Phillips recounts the story of a close relative who ran away one year, up and over the steep dry mountains and back to her community. The girl was caught, taken back to the school where Phillips says she was tied to a bed frame for two days and beaten.