GRAPHIC WARNING: The main points of this article that readers might find troubling.
A historian and a fitness studies professor agree that bovine tuberculosis from untested animals is likely to be one of the causes of death of young people in residential schools in eastern Alberta.
On Tuesday, researchers from the Acimowin Opaspiw Society (AOS) held a news conference at Saddle Lake Cree Nation to discuss an initial report on the deaths of young people at Blue Quills residential school.
Executive Director Leah Redcrow said her organization has evidence of several mass graves in the area, which she says involve Blue Quills scholars and an earlier edition of the facility called Sacred Heart Residential School.
One of the graves was found through groups that excavated new burial sites in 2004, Redcrow said.
“The mass grave was filled with skeletons the size of children wrapped in white cloth. And now we know that in the white cloth they were wrapped in sheets from the boarding school,” he told reporters.
Redcrow believes milk is fatal because he said students were evaluated by doctors before attending school.
“They were healthy, there was no challenge with them. Suddenly, a month later, they became inflamed with tuberculosis,” he said.
Records show that academics drank milk from farm animals at the site several times a day. The same documents recommend that there was no pasteurization apparatus and that the cows were not tested for tuberculosis, Redcrow said.
“These young people died from the loads after drinking raw, unpasteurized cow’s milk,” he said.
Leah Redcrow, CEO of Acimowin Opaspiw, speaks at Saddle Lake, Alta. , January 24, 2023. (Jay Rosove/CTV National News)
Experts say they want to do more research, but it’s conceivable the company’s conclusions are correct. And if true, they reveal a glaring gap in the fitness policies of Canada’s residential schools.
“We know that TB is rampant in these schools. Especially because of the poor nutrition there,” said University of Guelph historian Catherine Carstairs.
“It is certainly conceivable that they contracted tuberculosis by drinking unpasteurized milk. It is also very likely that the milk has not been pasteurized. “
The school operated at two sites, one on Saddle Lake and more recently one closer to the city of Saint Paul, from 1989 to 1990.
“We had veterinary popularity for bovine tuberculosis around 1910. The fact is that residential schools weren’t a component of the advertising dairy economy, so they didn’t have the same kind of veterinary popularity to monitor their livestock,” said James Daschuck, a professor of kinesiology and fitness studies at the University of Regina.
“So that means unpasteurized milk was provided to those young people probably for decades after the non-indigenous youth went through pasteurization. “
Daschuk has also written a book titled Clearing The Plains: Disease, Politics Of Starvation, And The Loss Of Native Life and lately is reading the effect of brought species, such as horses and domestic livestock, on the well-being of First Nations peoples. .
“The rest of us went through pasteurization. And the only thing left is to boil it. Why didn’t they boil it?” he said.
Residential survivor and researcher Eric Large at Saddle Lake Cree Nation on Jan. 24, 2023. (Jay Rosove/CTV National News)
The initial report of the Acimowin Opaspiw Society also alleges that a member killed young men by pushing them down the stairs and then threatened witnesses to close.
“The investigation has gained revelations from intergenerational survivors, whose homicides they witnessed at the Saint Paul site,” he said.
He claims that the guy accused of those deaths died in 1968.
Eric Large, a residential survivor and OSA researcher, said he discovered the records of 215 academics who died between the ages of 6 and 11, but whose remains are still missing.
“The number of young people they lack is considerable. . . The establishment plagued by violence, disease, hunger, abuse and death,” Large said in the survey release last year.
AOS is now asking other First Nations investigating unmarked graves and mass deaths to records of milk that scholars drank in their local schools.
“Most residential schools had a school farm. They had farm animals and farm animals were purchased through the Department of Indian Affairs,” Redcrow said.
“A big component of what it is is to get non-secular justice for our circle of relatives who are missing. I myself didn’t know that my grandfather had killed 10 brothers in that school. “
She said AOS is now seeking a coroner to approve excavations at the site. The report says the company plans to repatriate the remains after DNA compares them with surviving relatives.
If you are a destitute residential school alumnus or have been affected by the Indian Residential Schools formula and would like help, you can call the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419, or the Society’s Indian Residential Schools toll-free line at 1-800-721-0066.
Additional indigenous resources and intellectual skills are found here.
With Alison MacKinnon of CTV News Edmonton and Bill Fortier of CTV National News