A late summer prairie wind swung my beaded earrings as I looked down at a gray-and-black pattern on a computer screen. The grass beneath my feet quieted as I paused. A disruption appeared, changing the radar image on the screen. My breath caught. “There,” I thought, anticipating what might come to light when we took the data back to the lab. My feet grew heavier, as did the ache in my heart.
I will never get used to walking over the land that may hold the unmarked graves of Indigenous children.
I did not start my journey as an Indigenous archaeologist in Canada with the intention of working with the dead. But I now find myself using my technical knowledge and research abilities to help my relatives find the unmarked graves of our children. Beginning in the late 1800s and over the course of more than century, Canadian authorities forcibly removed more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their families and placed them in residential schools. Thousands never came home. In recent years, many First Nations have begun the sacred and difficult work of trying to find the children who are lost, and they are calling on archaeologists for help.
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Along the way, people have gained a better understanding of how complicated it can be to find the answers that families of missing children deserve. But even when radar surveys locate anomalies in the soil that may indicate an unmarked grave, a lot of uncertainty remains. Present-day archaeologists are collaborating with survivors and communities to bring together all the information they can to locate the children and bring them home.
These efforts are an example of how archaeology is transforming to become more engaged, more ethical and more caring about the…
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