Oblata Ready To Reveal All Their Documents About Native Boarding Schools | Boarding schools: eerie discoveries in Kamloops

The two communities of the Oblates of the Immaculate Virgin Mary (commonly referred to as Oblates) will present all their documents related to their participation and management of Indigenous Boarding Schools in Canada, specifically at Madadale in Saskatchewan and Kamloops in British Columbia.

We deeply regret our involvement in boarding schools and the harm they have caused to indigenous peoples and communities.

Cowessess First Nation said Thursday that penetrating radar had found 751 unmarked graves in the ground at the site of a medieval boarding school in Saskatchewan.

Indigenous nation Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc announced last month that the same technology had found the remains of 215 children in unmarked graves at Kamloops boarding school.

Indigenous leaders are demanding the publication of all documents relating to these federal boarding schools run by Catholic religious communities.

Our two faith communities (OMI Lacombe Canada and Notre-Dame-du-Cap) have worked to make our historical records available through partnerships with universities, archives and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Despite the progress made, this disclosure is incomplete and is complicated by issues of provincial and national privacy laws.

Oblasts promise not to block access to the historical documents they hold. They also pledged to seek advice from Ancestral peoples and governments. We will work with bishops and other leaders of the Catholic Church to advocate for the full truth on these issues.

Working with Governments and Ancestral Nations

Commitments also ask “indigenous peoples” and governments, federal and provincial, to work with them on these issues. Communities believe that managing and analyzing historical records requires precautions.

We are not experts in the management and analysis of these historical records or the complex privacy laws that apply to them. However, we must answer these questions because without a full review of existing historical documentation of our order’s involvement, the truth about boarding schools will not be fully known.

Altogether, Oblata operated 48 schools across the country, including Cossess Medieval Boarding School in Saskatchewan and Kamloops Residential School in British Columbia.