included, to dig graves when children died at the school. When the first discovery of 215 bodies of Indigenous children in a mass grave in Kamloops was reported, and subsequent mass gravesites were discovered, our family made the decision to once and for all find out what happened to Emma. We found Emma’s death certificate. She
was admitted into the Port Arthur Hospital November 27, 1910 and died 10 days later. Cause of death was listed as Typhoid Fever but also included burst appendix. Typhoid fever was never the cause. Emma suffered an excruciatingly painful death from a burst ap- pendix; the high fever was the result of her body trying to fight the infection. The hospi- tal was either lacking proper medical staff to know what was going on or not willing to take care of Emma or both. It was not uncommon for Indigenous children attending residential schools to be denied necessary medical treat- ment, misdiagnosed and neglected. Through record searches, the Nishnabe
Askis Nation and author Tanya Talaga, we found Emma in an unmarked grave at St. An- drew’s cemetery in Thunder Bay in June 2021. On September 13, 2021, our family had a re-
22 ETFO VOICE | FALL 2021
patriation ceremony in which soil from the unmarked gravesite where Emma was bur- ied was placed alongside our grandparents’ gravesite in Garden River First Nation. It will be in proximity to my grandmother’s mother, her mother and my grandmother’s youngest sister who are also buried in the cemetery. We will have done our very best to bring Emma home to rest with her family. The same can- not be said for many Indigenous children who perished in these schools. Over 5,000 gravesites have been discov-
ered on the grounds of former residential schools. Some of them have been bodies of children as young as three. During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, residential school survivors testified to mass gravesites in many schools. Other than an apology by the federal government, no other action to find out what happened to these children has occurred. The legacy of residential schools in Cana-
da has had a lasting impact on the survivors and their families. Indigenous Peoples in Canada experience the highest levels of pov- erty: a shocking one in four Indigenous peo- ples (Aboriginal, Métis and Inuit), 25 percent,
are living in poverty and four in ten, 40 per- cent, of Canada’s Indigenous children live in poverty. A review of Statistics Canada suicide rate data for Indigenous people shows that one of the leading causes of these high rates of suicide is the intergenerational impact of the residential school system. Analysis of the high rates of incarceration of
Indigenous
people suggests that most of the increase is due to increased severity in the treatment of Indigenous offenders by the criminal justice system. Similarly, the number of Indigenous prisoners has increased because more In- digenous offenders are receiving prison sen- tences and for longer periods. Historical and present day racism, colonialism and apathy continue to contribute to the ongoing chal- lenges faced by Indigenous people. Talking about residential schools at one of ETFO’s past annual meetings, Indigenous Manitoba MPP Nahanni Fontaine said, “we are talking about what is happening and has happened to human beings. Some of them were babies, just babies.” As educators, we must teach more than
just awareness of the legacy of residential schools. Changing a name or removing a
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