CANADA
StarPhoenix
BY DOUGLAS QUAN, NATIONAL POST MAY 15, 2015
Growing up, Katherine Nichols went past the Brandon Indian Residential School every day in her school bus, but she had no idea what it was. After the school was torn down in 2000, and her parents took her to see the ruins, all she knew was that it was a school for aboriginal children.
It wasn’t until she took a first-year Native Studies course at university that she learned about the residential school system – Canadian history’s “sad chapter.”
And so when choosing a topic for her master’s thesis at the University of Manitoba, the budding forensic anthropologist was drawn back to the Brandon school, which operated from 1895 to 1972. She wanted to see if she could unravel its darkest secrets – and document all the students who had died or gone missing and where they were buried.
The small cemetery just north of the school has a cairn listing 11 students, but Nichols had heard whispers in the community about unmarked graves, and how they weren’t well-kept. She was certain there were secrets to be revealed.
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