Muskowekwan First Nation says it stands in solidarity with the Kamloops First Nation that must heal from the horrific news of the remains of 215 children discovered on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Muskowekwan is the location of the last standing former residential school in Saskatchewan.
In a release, the First Nation says, “Our people have endured for generations the trauma and abuses perpetrated upon generations of our children from 1886 to the school’s final closure in 1997. We have always known of children disappearing.”

The release says that in 2018-2019, University of Alberta and University of Saskatchewan used ground penetrating radar to find the unmarked, unidentified graves of children who never made it home. With this work, and the discovery in the early 1990’s of graves during a water line construction, it was determined at least 35 unmarked graves exist.

Tuesday morning, at the site of the former residential school at Muskowekwan, Elders and community members, conducted prayers and ceremony, with the placement of 35 children’s moccasins and shoes to honour the missing and disappeared children at Muskowekwan and of those too at Kamloops.