CANADA
FFWD
The legacy of residential schools includes unmarked graves
Published March 8, 2012 by Suzy Thompson in News
Cemetery foreman Greg Sundsten trudges back and forth through the foot of snow that has settled over Red Deer’s main graveyard. He takes a break from digging to explain how close he must be to finding the children’s graves. He rechecks his map and swears they are somewhere between Arndt and Bice. After an hour, he gives up. Whatever remains to mark the children’s plot must be small, hidden somewhere outside the trails Sundsten dug searching for them.
The search for these three children began 25 years ago with Lyle Richards, who was volunteering in the Red Deer archives when he was approached by a stranger.
“A man by the name of Albert Lightning came in,” says town historian Don Hepburn. The man informed Richards, “you’re the one who’s going to find my brother for me.” Lightning’s brother was one of three children from the Red Deer Indian residential school who died during the 1918 influenza epidemic.
Lightning was lucky to trace his brother to the town cemetery. Normally, students were buried at the school, beside the Kinickinick Creek, but during the flu epidemic no one at the school was healthy enough to dig graves.
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