Look for unnamed graves at the old residential school in Brantford, Ontario. underway | The Canadian News

An area around several barns and buildings will be the starting point for survivors tasked with finding the remains of missing children who attended Canada’s oldest residential school.

On Tuesday, the first phase of the search began using ground penetrating radar to probe a 200 hectare plot of land where the former Mohawk Institute was located in Brantford, Ontario.

Dawn Hill, who attended high school with her sister from 1957 to 1961, says looking back and uncovering forgotten stories helped map out the area of ​​property search that can be the most fruitful in the midst of exploration.

“So all those stories are coming to the fore now, and I think that’s why they are starting where they are today,” Hill said during an on-site press in front of the school.

“A lot of those stories focus on the side of the children around those barns and buildings.”

A Secretariat for Survivors, which investigates the deaths of children who died while attending the facility, revealed Monday that it had a search plan to cover roughly 500 acres associated with the former church-run and government-funded school.

Clerk Executive Director Kimberly Murray says the joint police task force, which includes the Brantford Police, Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and the Six Nations Police, assisted with the design of the grids to be followed by newly trained community members operating the search. technology.

“We have paired members of the Six Nations police with members of the community to operate the machines,” Murray said.

“The search will last the entire week and the data collected from the search will be uploaded and backed up to secure servers every day.”

The data will be sent to archeology experts who are expected to produce a final report that will be shared with community members and survivors before being released to the general public.

In addition to assisting with a land search, the Secretariat has requested assistance from the federal and provincial governments in the form of records associated with the Mohawk Institute, such as death certificates and transfer notifications.

“Survivors want and need to get their lost family and friends back,” Murray said.

“There is simply no time for this nonsense of clinging to the records. They must be released immediately. “

In early November, Ontario was in the process of releasing the death records of approximately 1,800 Indigenous children to the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation.

A National Student Memorial, which states that 4,127 children did not return from residential schools, has suggested that there are potentially thousands more records still in the hands of various levels of government.

An estimated 150,000 children were placed in residential schools across Canada and many survivors accused the system of physical and sexual abuse.

Hill says the violence was something he experienced during his time at the old Brantford school.

“If they heard you speak, they would call you up and tie you up, which left big bumps on your hands,” recalls Hill.

“No one ever hugged you. No one has ever said anything really nice to you. “

The province’s progressive conservative government recently announced a $ 10 million top-up to the initial $ 10 million it pledged in June for investigations of unidentified graves in Ontario.

The search of the old Mohawk Institute, which operated between 1831 and 1970, is expected to take months, possibly even a year.