By CherryNyx, 4 September 2026 via FaceBook (with thanks for permission to share)
Long before ground-penetrating radar at former residential schools became a national controversy, human remains were physically uncovered at a residential school cemetery in Saskatchewan. Not in 2021. In 1974.
That matters because today there are people attempting to portray residential school graves as a recent story, one created after Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc announced the identification of approximately 215 potential unmarked burials at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in 2021. The history at Battleford proves otherwise.
The Battleford Indian Industrial School operated in Saskatchewan from 1883 until 1914. The federally funded institution was administered by the Anglican Church as part of Canada’s residential school system. Near the school was a cemetery containing children and others who died during the years the institution operated.
By 1969, the cemetery was already visibly deteriorating. A visitor reported seeing between 70 and 80 graves, many reduced to overgrown mounds. Wooden crosses that once identified graves had deteriorated or disappeared.
Then, in 1974, something happened that is particularly important to remember today. A team from the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology excavated 70 graves at the Battleford Industrial School cemetery. Those graves contained the remains of 72 individuals. At least two marked graves were left undisturbed.
This was not ground-penetrating radar. These were excavated graves.
Researchers documented human remains, coffins, burial objects and shrouds. Bone and tooth samples were collected, radiographs were taken, and the graves were documented before the burial ground was restored.
The excavation also exposed another serious problem: the surviving written records did not account for everyone buried there.
Historical documentation available at the time identified only about 50 people, despite the physical evidence demonstrating that substantially more people had been buried in the cemetery. Cemetery records did not begin until years after the school opened.
In 1975, the cemetery was reconsecrated and a memorial cairn was erected bearing the names of 50 people then known to have been buried there. Contemporary reporting from that year described 74 people as being buried at the site, most of them students.
Today, the Government of Saskatchewan recognizes the Battleford Industrial School Cemetery as the resting place of at least 74 children who died while attending the institution between 1883 and 1914. In 2019, Saskatchewan designated the cemetery a Provincial Heritage Property because of its historical significance and connection to the residential school system.
That history matters enormously in the debate happening today. The discovery and documentation of residential school cemeteries did not begin with Kamloops. Indigenous families were talking about children who died and never returned home long before Canada was willing to have a national conversation about them. Battleford provides physical and documentary evidence dating back decades.
It also destroys another common argument: the claim that residential school records accounted for every child and therefore undocumented deaths or burials could not exist.
Battleford itself demonstrates why that argument fails. The ground contained more people than the surviving records available to researchers could identify. That is not speculation. It is part of the documented history of the cemetery.
Yet more than 50 years after those graves were excavated, Indigenous people are still confronted with people insisting residential school graves are a modern invention or a “hoax.” Battleford happened almost half a century before Kamloops became international news.
There was no social media controversy driving the excavation. There was no national debate about the “215.” There was no political movement responding to the Kamloops announcement because Kamloops was still 47 years away.
There were simply graves. Researchers opened them. They documented what was inside. And Canadians were being told about them in the 1970s.
The Battleford cemetery is also a reminder that behind arguments about numbers are actual children and families. Children were taken great distances from their communities and placed in institutions where many became sick and died. Some were buried far from their families and homelands.
Their deaths are not political talking points. They are part of Canada’s documented history.
Battleford should therefore be remembered whenever someone claims the discussion about residential school graves suddenly appeared in 2021. It didn’t.
At Battleford, graves were physically excavated in 1974. Human remains were documented. The cemetery was reconsecrated in 1975. Decades later, Saskatchewan formally recognized the site as a Provincial Heritage Property.
Those people existed. Those graves existed. And the evidence existed long before Kamloops.
The question should never be whether residential school cemeteries are real. They are documented historical fact.
The harder question is why, more than half a century after the Battleford excavation, Indigenous people are still being asked to prove this history happened.
Sources
Government of Saskatchewan, Battleford Industrial School Cemetery Receives Provincial Heritage Property Designation, 2019.
Saskatchewan Indian, “Burial Ground Re-Consecrated,” September 30, 1975, preserved by Library and Archives Canada.
Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, research concerning residential school cemeteries and burial sites.
University of Saskatchewan research concerning the Battleford Industrial School Cemetery.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials.
Additional links found via Google 5 August 2026:
3 Responses
Thank you for sharing the truth and the facts behind residential schools and the atrocities that happens because of their existence.
Thank you for your hard work and your dedication to sharing truth and facts.
My grandfather James Solomon Buller was a resident of this school. His Nehiyawak name was KASAWAPAMAT (One Who Sees Far). I believe he was officially renamed with his British names at this school as follows: James-a British monarch, Solomon-biblical name, Buller-British officer Boer War.
I remember grandpa found it very difficult to talk about his years spent at the school. I am grateful that my cousin Ed Buller recorded and shared his stories with us, his grandchildren.
With respect, Elizabeth Buller Page
Thank you for the reminder!