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Down in the apple orchard

Down in the apple orchard

Down in the apple orchard
Jan 16, 2022 4 mins, 39 secs

For survivors who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School, the discovery of suspected graves has stirred troubling memories of abuse they endured decades ago.

About Brother Joseph’s apple orchard.

Harvey McLeod attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School from 1966 to 1968.

Now chief of the Upper Nicola Band in the southern Interior of B.C., the 67-year-old remembers the hushed conversations he heard in the boys’ dorm about the orchard beside the school.

WATCH | Chief Harvey McLeod recalls students used to talk about the apple orchard:.

He attended the residential school from 1952 to 1962 and he, too, heard older boys talking about it.

Diena Jules, who attended the residential school as a day scholar from 1962 to 1967, says she heard horrific stories about the orchard.

On May 27, 2021, Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced the preliminary findings of a ground penetrating radar survey that identified 215 suspected graves of children in the apple orchard.

For survivors who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School, the discovery in the orchard has brought about a reckoning and stirred troubling secrets and memories of abuse they saw and endured decades ago.

For Retasket, the discovery only confirmed what he says he suspected for years.

Retasket says after the discovery of the suspected burials, he started to question what happened at the school.

When Jennifer Yvonne Camille, who attended the residential school from 1962 to 1972, heard the news about the suspected graves, she says she couldn’t breathe.

As a student at the former residential school, she says she was warned not to go near the orchard.

“We weren’t allowed to go over to the apple orchard when we were outside playing on the merry-go-rounds and the swings.

Chief Michael LeBourdais of Whispering Pines Clinton Indian Band, 35 kilometres north of Kamloops, remembers hearing stories from his uncle who attended the residential school in the 1950s about holes being dug in the orchard.

WATCH | His uncle said he dug holes in the orchard beside the school:.

The imposing red brick building that was once the Kamloops Indian Residential School still stands overlooking the South Thompson River.

Enrolment peaked at 500 in the 1950s, making it the largest residential school in all of Canada.

Retasket remembers what life was like before he was taken from his family in Cache Creek, 100 kilometres west of Kamloops, and forced to go to the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Camille remembers the day they came to Deadmans Creek, in 1962, to take her to residential school.

And they finally pried us apart and they took me to the residential school and I don’t know where they took my brother.”.

She later found out he was sent to Tranquille Sanatorium, an institution in Kamloops that treated people with mental illness.

The Kamloops Indian Residential School, like so many others, was a place of horror for the children forced to live here.

She says sexual abuse happened a lot.

She says she believes that some of the girls who were abused are buried in the apple orchard.

Audrey Baptiste, 69, attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School from 1957 to 1964.

She remembers when she was 10 years old, after church every Sunday she would walk with her friends from the school past a barn and down to the river.

She says she was struck with a thick leather strap on the arms and hands by a nun.

After surveying a 0.8-hectare site in the apple orchard, Beaulieu says the results showed more than 200 targets of interest.

She says the next step in the process would be excavation.

Beaulieu says oral stories from Kamloops Indian Residential School survivors helped her decide where to search.

The Fifth Estate was allowed to film in the orchard and show the suspected graves after getting permission from an advisory council made up of representatives of Tk’emlúps families.

“These missing children buried just a short distance from here exemplify [the] Indian residential school system that perpetuated mass human rights violations that might reflect criminal behaviour, including and suggesting violations of humanitarian law and genocide.”

She says the most important thing moving forward is that the area be treated as a crime scene

After the discovery of the suspected unmarked graves, McLeod says he was approached by a man and asked if he was ever in the furnace room in the basement of the school

Former TRC chair Murray Sinclair issued a statement on June 1, 2021, on his facebook, after the discovery at the Kamloops Indian Residential School

He says that survivors shared stories about the furnace to the TRC

“Some of the survivors talked about infants who were born to young girls at the residential schools who had been fathered by priests, having those infants taken away from them and deliberately killed, sometimes by being thrown into furnaces, they told us.”

Baptiste knows it is hard for people to comprehend the stories about the furnace room, but she says she was at the school for 10 years and says she believes the stories

Former Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc chief Manny Jules says the discovery of the suspected graves allowed Canadians to understand what the residential school survivors had gone through

“The reality of the grisly discovery led the majority of Canadians for the first time to see with open eyes, to hear for the first time, the words of the residential school survivors, that indeed what happened wasn’t our fault.”

Every Friday afternoon now, Diena Jules, Gottfriedson and staff from the museum walk the perimeter of the apple orchard

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for former students and those affected

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